2011 was another wonderful year for Wendy and I. We had a lot of fun and got to go see more new places. Its fun still being in the first years of marriage.

Wendy is still enjoying her job doing urgent care for kids. She works most evenings which means we get to spend time together during the day. Believe it or not, but I do mange to keep myself busy even though I don’t have a job. I just don’t see how families with both spouses working find time to get things done. This summer, Wendy got more interested in biking, and she joined me on some bike rides. I’m glad that she can share my joy in bike riding.

Speaking of bike riding, I had to buy a new bike this summer as my old one had frame issues I wasn’t aware of until a local shop pointed it out to me. After a lot of sweat and work, I finally was able to make it to the top of Little Cottonwood Canyon this summer riding my bike. Last summer I was only able to make it up part of the ride. It was a big accomplishment for me as I rode up the road several times a week. I was also able to do some bike riding with my neighbor this summer as well. It was fun getting to ride with other people this year. Enough about biking.

We spent another week in AZ this year to go see my beloved Cubbies at spring training. Wendy was able to go to a conference while we were down there so her job payed her way. Unfortunately this year my Cubs were abhorrent. I stopped watching baseball before the summer even started as I was so discouraged. To make things worse, I had to hear about the Cardinals winning the World Series. Ugh! Maybe I just needed to take some time off from baseball as I’m looking forward to next season already.

Later on in the Spring Wendy and I made a trip back to our homes to visit with family. We spent a few days in San Antonio, TX  (Wendy’s home town), and we spent a few days in Madison, MS (my home town). I’m pretty sure that is the last time I will cast my shadow on the state of MS as my parents have decided they are going to move out to UT. They are in the process of fixing up and de-cluttering their house so they can put it on the market come spring time. It will be nice to have family nearby. My parents have made three trips out to UT this year looking at homes and getting to know the area. They’ve also brought 3 trailer loads of stuff to put in a storage facility. Guess that means they are putting down roots. We don’t know when they will move yet, but they want to get their house sold first before that happens. Its a pretty big deal as they have called central Mississippi their home their entire lives.

My brother Chris and his wife Lisa left Virginia this year. Chris got a job back in California with the Air Force. They are back living where they were in Palmdale before they moved to Virginia. Chris will be teaching test pilots how to be test pilots. On their trek across America, they stopped in at our house for a few days. It was nice getting to visit with them.

During the summer, Wendy and I took a road trip out west. Yeah, I know, we live out west, but there’s more West past us. We drove through Nevada (Reno, you are a disgusting little town) and toured around Northern California. It was a fun little trip and we got to see some great sites.

Our big trip this year was a backpacking trip to SW Colorado. We spent 6 days on the trail in the Weminuche Wilderness. It was an awesome trip. Wendy said it was the most hardcore trip she had ever been on. It was a route that had been a dream of mine for several years. It was a tough hike, but we had a lot of fun.

We also made another short trip down to southern Utah to visit Zion National Park. We went in early fall so the temperature was perfect. There was a lot of beautiful scenery down there.

The week before Thanksgiving this year we flew to Tulsa, OK to visit with Wendy’s grandmother and more of her family. We had a great time. I think Wendy enjoyed showing me off to her family. Grandmom June is a wonderful person.

I’ve spent the last year and a half on the hiring list for Salt Lake City Fire Dept. I started as #13, but they only hired 8 people during this two year list time. I have sat at #5 since then. Unfortunately, the list is set to expire here soon, and I’ll have to test with them again. Its very frustrating as I am in a good hiring position, but the city budgets haven’t been conducive to hiring. Stupid economy. I’ve tested a couple of other times with other departments, but have had no success. I’ve decided its time to step up to wearing the big boy pants, and I’m going to go to paramedic school. Starting this January, I’m going to be taking a couple of classes (Human Physiology and Medical Terminology) at the local college for prerequisites so I can apply for paramedic school that would start in Jan 2013. I hope that getting this will help improve my chances of getting hired. I’ve also come to realize that I really do enjoy the medical side of firefighting. It will be a while before all of this happens, but I’m starting the process now.

As you can see  in the photo this year, we got an addition to our family. Her name is Daisy. She’s a German Shepherd/Lab mix, not quite a year old. Madie and her have become friends, and we’ve enjoyed having her around. Benjamin, the cat, was not so excited about our decision, but all the kids are getting a long peacefully now.

My parents are out here for Christmas. My brother and his wife will be coming in tomorrow. It will be a full house here at the Cotting residence, but its nice to be surrounded by family.

I hope this finds you all well and hope that the next year will find you even better.

Jason

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YARPP

A while back, sometime in the late 90′s, I read about a place in Southwestern Colorado called the Weminuche Wilderness. Also known as The Backpacker’s Nirvana, it is located in the San Juan National Forest. I made my first visit to there in 1998 with a Philmont friend, Bill Sassani, where we did an overnight trip, and then drove around the area. I was hooked. I wanted to do more exploring in the Weminuche. I’ve made two more additional trips there since then. Once with Wendy in 2007 where we backpacked up the Valecito River. The other time with my brother Chris and a college friend Ramsey where we did some day hiking the week before my wedding in 2009.

There is an historical narrow gauge railroad that runs between the towns of Durango and Silverton called the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad (D&SNGR). It runs along the western edge of the Weminuche Wilderness and makes a few stops along the way. I read about how backpackers use the train to access the wilderness, and I soon decided that one day I wanted to make a backpacking trip that took advantage of the train.

In the book Hiking Colorado’s Weminuche and South San Juan Wilderness Areas, there is a hike described using the train to do a trip. The hike starts with the train dropping you off at the Elk Park stop, and then you get picked up at the Neddleton stop. Wendy and I decided to do the hike over 6 days and 5 nights..

Wendy had some additional time off outside of the planned hiking days so we decided to do some extra touring around. Our first day we drove to Telluride, CO where we spent the night at the Victorian Inn. From the door of the inn, you could smell a mouthwatering restaurant. It smelled like a steak place, but I wanted to have a steak at the end of the trip, so we decided to try another restaurant. The inn was located within walking distance of the main strip of town where the shops and restaurants were located. We found an Italian restaurant called the Telluride Bistro. I had the best chicken parmesan I’ve ever had before. After dinner we took the free gondola up to the ski area. It was a nice little moonlit ride up and back.

Telluride, CO

Next morning, during our free breakfast at the inn, we overheard some other guests referring to some snow coming in the next few days. The weather report I had seen earlier referred to a chance of snow, and these folks were talking about inches accumulating in Telluride. It was something to consider. We headed out towards Silverton. The drive between Ouray and Silverton is hands down my favorite drive in the country. Its a beautiful mountain drive that puts you up along sheer rock walls, with beautiful views, colorful mountains, and old mining ruins. Its a windy road that is just fun to drive, so it can be hard to look and drive. We took our time getting to Silverton stopping to read signs and take photos. We ran into some rain along the way too, a precursor to the upcoming days.

Related posts:

1. California Bound Wendy had some time off over the 4th of July...

YARPP

We left Salt Lake on June 30th. We had to drop Madie off at another boarding place as Dogmode was full for the weekend. Heading west, we crossed the Bonneville Salt Flats. It was an interesting thing to see. Flat white ground. Thankfully, this was the day after a cold front had pushed into the area, so it was pleasant traveling weather.

Bonneville Salt Flats

At the Nevada-Utah border is a town called Wendover. It advertises here in Salt Lake for its resort casinos. This picture depticts how the casino is built literally on the state line making it as close as possible for those looking for a respite from LDS land. The white line in the middle of the road is the state line and it says Nevada and Utah on either side of it.

Nevada - Utah state line

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YARPP

Ever since I was in Junior High School, I have been a Cubs fan. As fruitless as it may seem, I still continued to cheer for my beloved Cubbies with the eternal hope of “next year”. People often ask, “How did you become a Cubs fan when you lived in MS?” Its simple, we had WGN, the Cubs played on WGN, and most afternoons when I’d come home from school to watch GI JOE or Transformers cartoons, the Cubs game was running into the time for the cartoons to start. When I was younger, I was mostly annoyed by the intrusion into my cartoons. Eventually, baseball grew on me and the Cubs became my source of baseball. We also had TBS which showed the Braves, but they never really caught my interest.

Last year I was really excited about my opportunity to follow the Cubs. Wendy had agreed to let me get the Baseball package as Salt Lake doesn’t have WGN and I wanted to watch my Cubs. Wendy and I also got to go to AZ for Spring Training. I have wanted to experience Spring Training for a long time, and my experience there was wonderful. I also had some mild hope during that March that the Cubs might at least be good that year. Wendy and I also went to Seattle to watch the Cubs play. Wendy had agreed that we would go to a new city each year to watch the Cubs play as I was no longer able to go to baseball games since I had moved from Denver.

As the season started, my experience with watching baseball was no good. I had ordered the MLB.TV package so I could stream the games over the internet. We had also bought a Roku box as it had been promised to deliver the MLB.TV games so I could watch it on our big new TV. For most of the first month, the Roku box was not updated so that it could deliver the baseball games, although they had said it would be ready to work in time for the season. I later went back and read where the site said “Available early April” which I assumed meant opening day. To add to the frustration, the games were not playing over the Internet on the computer like MLB had promised. My frustration was growing. Major League Baseball Advanced Media is the company contracted by Major League Baseball to run the Internet side of their business. This included the video and audio streams that I subscribed to. During the outage at the beginning of the season, their support forum website was full of people, who like me, were unable to watch the programs they had paid for. Their forum administrators all gave the same solutions to the problem and told everyone there was something wrong with customers computers that was causing the problems. Strangely enough, this online video product of theirs had been successful the previous season, but they had made changes to it that prevented it from being ready for the 2010 season. I had no other option to watch Cubs baseball, so I, rather frustratingly, waited it out so that it eventually began to work. Sony also , early in the season, announced that their PS3 would stream the baseball games. I had been investigating solutions for watching video on our TV. I had been leaning to a PS3 as it played blue rays and our DVD player needed to be replaced. I returned our Roku box and bought a PS3. Games began streaming on the PS3 without the issues of the Roku and the MLB.TV website. If you ask me, someone in that company dropped the ball. It’s not as if you don’t know that there is a deadline for when the product needs to be ready, and then they refused to accept blame for their service not working. And don’t get me started on the blackouts during Saturday for Fox game of the week, and blackouts for Arizona Diamondbacks and Colorado Rockies games when the Cubs play them (somehow I am considered to be in both of their markets even though both are a days drive away and I only get Rockies games over cable).

STRIKE ONE

It may have been more of a blessing than a curse that I wasn’t able to watch Cubs games at the beginning of the season. As the season progressed, the Cubs played pitifully poor, and then it got worse. It got to the point to where it was no longer fun for me to watch the games. When the Cubs were losing consecutive games to a team like the Pirates, there’s not even good baseball to watch. I decided that I was getting more enjoyment by doing other things than watching Cubs baseball, and I eventually, just stopped watching their games.  The Cubs also traded away some of their veteran players. Fan favorite Derrick Lee was traded away to the Braves. They also traded away starting pitcher Ted Lilly, infielders Ryan Theriot, and Mike Fontenot. The team the Cubs were fielding was beginning to look more like a AAA team than a major league club. That added to my reasons not to watch their games.

The Cubs finished under .500. They got so bad that their manager, Lou Piniella, walked out on his contract and retired from baseball before the season ended. His public reason was to be able to spend time with his ailing mother, but during this offseason he took a job with the Yankees. I personally think he was just so embarassed by how badly the Cubs were playing that he just couldn’t take it any more.

As the post season came along, I began getting more interested in baseball as the post season always has exciting games in it. The Yankees didn’t win the World Series, so I was satisfied with how the post season ended.

Over the last few years I began to rely heavily on a podcast known as Cubscast to keep up with my Cubs news. I had noticed during the season that their podcasts had become less regular and at one point, stopped. Their message board was still active with fans, but there was no news as to why they had stopped releasing episodes. Cubscast was a podcast created by some Cubs fans as a way to interact with other Cubs fans. They didn’t make money off of it, but did it as a hobby and because they loved the Cubs. They finally released a final farewell episode to explain their absence. It was fairly interesting to hear their story. MLB Advanced Media, the same folks that run the Internet business for baseball, had sent them a cease and dessist order and threatened to sue them if they continued to make Cubscast podcasts. Their reason for the order, in my opinion, was based out of greed and not wanting someone else to profit off of their market. Never mind that fans were doing, at their own cost, advertising for baseball and creating an interest and promotion for their product.

This was some very disturbing news for me. It was my only  link to other Cubs fans, and a fun source of news for me to find out what was happening with the club. As you can imagine, there’s not many Cubs fans here in Utah. At that point, I began to think really hard about not getting the baseball package again for nothing other than the purpose of protesting my dislike of their decision to shut down the Cubscast Podcast.

STRIKE TWO

Over the Winter the Cubs made some moves to shed and acquire players. They also announced their decision to hire a new manager. Fan favorite and my childhood hero Ryne Sandberg was a leading candidate for the job. He didn’t get it, and I have already posted my rant about that decision. This only spurned my disgust with baseball that much more.

FOUL BALL

Along came Spring Training 2011. Wendy and I had such a great time the previous year in AZ that we decided to go back down again. The best part was that she was able to attend a Pediatric conference that met in the mornings. This meant her company paid for a large portion of our trip. The baseball games all started in the afternoon so the arrangement was perfect.

We went to four games while we were there. Two of them at Ho Ho Kam Park, spring training home for the Cubs, and two other games. One was at the Brewers stadium and the other was at the Giants park. I was super excited about getting to sit in the sunshine and watch baseball after a long dreary winter here in UT. I bought a couple of baseballs in hopes to get some autographs. I’ve heard fans say that players are more generous with autographs during spring training. We were there for the first game of Spring Training. I hoped that would mean that no one would be tired of giving autographs, and I would be able to get some good ones.

At the end of the first game we headed down to where the players leave the stadium, and fans gather to get autographs. The only people who came out were some minor league players that I didn’t recognize. I was disappointed, but one of the stadium workers told me that the starters usually leave around the 7th inning. The next game that we went to there, Wendy and I headed down to get autographs before the 7th inning started. We waited until they closed the park and only one of the starters came out, Starlin Castro. When he came out he had his headphones on and tried to ignore the 10 of us there asking for autographs. One of the fans pleaded, and he gave in. He told us he was busy and didn’t have time. I got his signature, but he only signed for a few of the fans there before he left. The rest of the players that came out were minor league players. Apparently, the other starters left out another exit to avoid the fans.

Excuse me, but your team sucks, you haven’t brought your fans a world series victory in over 100 years, you made 14 errors in the first 4 games of Spring Training, and it’s the FIRST week of Spring Training. Tell me exactly why your millions of dollars you are getting paid to play a child’s game doesn’t justify that you give a few fans an autograph, even just walk by so people can get a photograph of you up close. I’m sorry but there is nothing you are doing that is that important that you can’t throw your fans a bone of some kind. Baseball players have achieved this celebrity status that makes them think that they are more important than they really are. Give me some reason to support you. I am, after all, your customer and part of the reason that you have such a cushy lifestyle.

STRIKE THREE, YER OUT!

I might also add that there have been two players who were pulled over for DUI this spring. Oakland Athletics Coco Crisp and Detroit Tigers Miguel Cabrera. I’m sure my firsthand account of what kind of destruction of life that drunk drivers cause may make my opinion a little biased to this, but more players being selfish and driving under the influence does not help my view of these overpaid celebrities.

So what does all this mean for me this year. Normally, I am so excited that baseball begins in a few days, I’m pouring over stats and coming up with my rosters for fantasy teams. I’ve got reminders for when the first games are played so I can be sure to catch them. Not this year. I can’t get excited about wanting to play fantasy baseball, so I’m not going to do it. I don’t have the baseball package, so I won’t be watching the Cubs. If they show up on a Fox or ESPN game, I might watch. I don’t have my podcast, so I won’t be keeping up with Cubs news. ESPN Baseball Tonight should be renamed ESPN Phillies, Yankees, and Red Sox Tonight, so I won’t be doing much keeping up with baseball around the league. The Cubs’ roster is even worse than it was last year, so I’m not expecting them to even have a winning season this year. I really don’t even know what I will do for keeping up with baseball this year as I have just become very disgusted with how things have gone.

Congratulations Major League Baseball, you have managed to kill a die hard fan in the midst of slipping ratings and popularity. I’m sure I’ll be back some day, but you won’t be making any more money off me this year.

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YARPP

Wendy and I have been very blessed this year. I know for me it has been the happiest year I’ve had so far.  We are still enjoying our home here in Utah. No kids yet as we are still just enjoying being a couple. The dog and cat are like characters from the Will Ferrell movie Step Brothers when they first met each other. Madie, our German Shepherd, knows she can’t hurt the cat, and Jamin, the cat, knows it so he chases Madie around the house. Never thought I’d see the day when a German Shepherd would run from a cat.

We’ve done a few improvements to our house. Changed out some light fixtures and updated some of the outlets with the help of my father in law Tim and my dad. We’ve also added new french doors to replace the sliding glass door that leads into our back yard. We are hoping to replace some of our single pane windows next year as you can feel the cold air rushing in the house as you walk by them. I’ve been put in charge of taking care of the outside of the house. The yard and what not.

Wendy and I have been enjoying our church we go to. There are a lot of great people there that we’ve enjoyed getting to know over the year. We found a small group Bible study class we really enjoy, and our pastors do a great job of delivering sermons. We both look forward to our Sunday mornings each week. (no, we haven’t converted to the local LDS culture).

Wendy and I have gotten to go on some fun trips this year. Our first trip was to Heber City about an hour from here. We went there for my birthday and valentine’s day. The motel we got was dog friendly so Madie went along with us. While we were up there we did some snow tubing and some snow mobiling. I never knew I could get so sore from riding on a snow mobile, but it was a lot of fun. Wendy and I plan to go rent another snow mobile again this winter.

As a chance to escape our winter and for me to see my beloved Cubbies play baseball, we flew to Mesa, AZ for Spring Training. I have dreamed of getting to go to spring training for a long time and I finally got to go. It was nice to be able to wear shorts and sit in the sunshine after a cold winter here in Utah. We are planning to go back again this Spring.

My brother Chris and his wife Lisa both finished their graduate studies at Virginia Tech this spring. My parents drove up for the ceremony, and Wendy and I flew out. It was a fun trip getting to be with my family. After visiting with them, Wendy and I rented a car to drive up to Washington DC. We were only there for about 24 hours, but we were able to see a lot of sights while we were there. Didn’t get much sleep, and it was a whirlwind visit, but we were excited to get to see some of the American icons that we’ve heard about our whole lives.

We flew to Seattle, WA this summer so I could get to see my Cubs play baseball during the regular season. I have always heard how nice of a ball park Safeco field is in Seattle, and I’ve never been to Seattle, so Wendy and I made a trip of it. We got to watch 3 games and the Cubs lost 2 of 3. It was a rough year, yet again, to be a Cubs fan. Seattle was a nice town. We were able to save some money by not renting a car and were able to get to see a lot still. The weather was perfect, and it only rained one day.

I spent most of my summer riding my bicycle. We live near the base of Little Cottonwood Canyon where Alta and Snowbird ski resorts are located. I rode my bike up that canyon several times a week. I never made it to the top, but I kept making progress. Wendy also got a bike this summer, and I am trying to get her to ride it more for next year. We went on a couple of rides together. We are both currently attending a weekly spin class. Our instructor does a great job of teaching the fundamentals of maintaining good positioning while on a bike.

Both Wendy’s parents and my parents came out to visit us this year. We enjoyed having them visit us and a chance to show off our home to visitors. My parents enjoyed it so much that they have decided they want to move out here. It will be nice to have my parents near by as it is difficult to get back to MS to visit.

Wendy and I continued our backpacking roots with a few trips this year. We planned a trip in September for Glacier National Park. In the mean time, we did a couple of shorter trips nearby to help us get ready for it. We went to the Uintas Wilderness for a 3 day trip. We took Madie with us, and I have never seen that dog so happy ever. She makes for a great backpacking dog. We had a great time too. We then took another 3 day trip to American Fork Canyon. Madie accompanied us on that trip as well. We wore her out hiking, but she loved it. We bought her some saddle bags to carry her food and water.

Our trip to Glacier was wonderful. We had planned to spend 6 days backpacking, but had to come out a day early because of an early snow storm that covered an exposed trail we were to cross. It was a very pretty park. Wendy and I were both glad to get back to the simple life of backpacking. We met some nice folks on the trail while we were there. Surprisingly, Glacier gets a lot of visitors from Washington State. My blog has a more detailed account of our trip.

For our first anniversary, we headed back to CO in September. We rented a cabin near Estes Park and enjoyed touring around Rocky Mountain National Park. It was a great time to visit as a lot of the leaves on the aspen trees were peaking. We had a great time there.

Wendy is still loving her job. She’s a pediatrician for an urgent care network in town. She works evenings and one day a weekend which leaves her with plenty of time to do things with me. We decided that me getting a job wasn’t as important for us as getting to spend time together. It’s been a fun year.

I eventually obtained my UT EMT Basic. It didn’t transfer from CO and I wound up having to retake my EMT Basic class again. Thankfully it wasn’t a hard class, but it was just frustrating having to go through the process again. There’s only one private ambulance company around here, and I may go work for them at some point in the future. I really do miss getting to work in EMS. I’ve also been applying to the local fire departments. My best luck so far has been with the Salt Lake City Fire Dept. I ranked #13 on their list. They hired 12 in November which leaves me #1 on their list for now. Their hiring list is good for another 1 1/2 years. I’m really really hoping they hire more firefighters as this will get me in. With the economy still recovering, local government hiring isn’t as promising as it once was. In the mean time I’ve been ramping up my exercise routines to make sure I’m in shape for any fire academy I get hired for.

Wendy and I are staying home for Christmas this year. We are enjoying having a nice quiet Christmas with just us and the animals. We’ve had a great year and look forward to many more to come.

We hope this finds you and your family in good health and joy.

Jason Cotting

My blog:
http://jasonblog.anvilgear.com/

Pictures:
http://anvilgear.com/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=10855

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YARPP

A number of prospective managers put their hat in the ring for the managing job of the Cubs. Many fans seemed to think Joe Girardi was a prospective candidate for the job, I really doubt it. Granted, he’s an Illinois native, a former Cubs catcher, and really likes the Chicago area. He even applied for the job back when Lou was hired. He has been a successful manager and is currently in the last year of his contract with the New York Yankees. I don’t see him wanting to leave a job with a championship calibre team like the Yankees to try and bring a losing Cubs team a World Series that has eluded other managers for the last 102 years. That and he would come with a large price tag.

Many folks seemed to think that Bob Brenly was a good candidate. He is currently one of the broadcasters for the Cubs television games. People point to his World Series Championship with the AZ Diamond Backs. I personally don’t think that means anything. He came into that team after Buck Showalter built it from its first year as an expansion team, and walked right into a well built team for it to win the world series. He didn’t win any more World Series after that first year.

Perhaps the most notable name that was interviewing for the Cubs managing position was Ryne Sandberg. Yes, Ryno, the Hall of Fame second baseman for the Cubs. A player that has a very large following amongst not only Cubs fans, but baseball fans in general. Personally, I believe he’s the best second baseman to ever play the game, but I’m also a little biased because he was my childhood hero growing up. Ryno not only was a great player in his skills, but the way he carried himself was also really good. He has often been described as a class act.

I have mixed emotions about the whole thing, but overall I am disappointed, which is the same word Ryno used to describe how he feels about the decision. That link has a radio interview with him about an hour after the decision had been made. I’ve read much more negative feedback from fans about choosing to hire Quade instead of Ryno.

Ryno first threw his hat into the ring in 2006 when the Cubs were doing their search to replace Dusty Baker. Jim Hendry, the Cubs GM, was surprised to hear from Sandberg that he wanted to manage. He told Ryno that he felt he lacked the experience to manage in the majors, especially a big market team like the Cubs. So, Ryno set about getting the job the right way, just like he played, by going back to the minor leagues and managing for the Cubs in their minor league system. He spent 4 years managing minor league teams. He didn’t just manage them to buy his time, his first season he took his team to the post season, and his last season he also took his team to the post season. Also his last year as manager of the AAA Iowa Cubs, he won the Manager of the Yearaward for the Pacific Coast league.

Arguments can be made that managing a minor league team and a major league team  are not the same. Managing minor leaguers is more of a coaching job and managing in the majors is more about managing egos, attitudes, personalities, and the press. But, Ryno has spent the last 4 years in the farm system of the Cubs learning how to develop players and getting to know the players that may become the future of the Cubs. Seeing as how the Cubs are moving towards a rebuilding period which will require getting young players, who better to manage a team of young players than the man that has been with many of these players for the last four years. The players respect Ryno because of what he has taught them and he knows their capabilities.

Instead, the Cubs are going with a guy that no one in the last 20 years has seemed fit to manage a major league team. Has Quade’s abilities changed that much in the last 37 games of the season to suddenly make him a good choice as manager for a big market team?

The 2010 season was an embarassment for the Cubs (75-87) who finished 5th, 16 games behind the NL Central leading Reds. The Cubs entered the season with the 2nd highest payroll in the Majors at $144,359,000, only behind the Yankees. Check out this break down of the team that someone put together. That is a lot of money to pay for a 5th place team. And that money part can only be blamed on Jim Hendry.

The man is a horrible GM. Jim Hendy decided to pay the mediocre talent on the Cubs way more than they are worth. On top of that, at the beginning of the 2010 season, the Cubs had 6 players with no trade clauses in their contracts. That doesn’t include the 10-5 men on the team. By comparison, the next team with the highest number of no trade clauses was the San Francisco Giants with 4. Even the Yankees don’t have that many. Typically, the no trade clause is given to the highest caliber player to encourage them to sign with you. It is a risk for the team because if they player is no longer performing, they are stuck with the player unless the player ok’s a trade. The list for the Cubs at the beginning of 2010 included:

1. Carlos Zambrano P $18. 875 mil
2. Aflonso Soriano OF $19 mil
3. Aramis Ramirez 3B $16.75 mil
4. Ted Lilly P $13 mil
5. Kosuke Fukodome OF $14 mil
6. Jeff Samardzija P $3 mil
7. Derrick Lee(10/5) 1B $13 mil
8. Ryan Dempster (10/5) P $13.5 mil

I wouldn’t consider any of these guys to be high caliber players. Heck, not even one of them made it to the All Star team this year. My favorite of those signings was Fukodome. He was signed to that much money and a no trade clause, and he had NEVER even seen a big league pitch. Granted, he was really good in Japan, but that’s not the same. The Cubs managed to get two of those contracts off the books during the season. Here’s a breakdown of what these overpaid no trade guys gave the Cubs. For $111,375,000 we got:

• OPS .750
• H 461 (at $143,507.97 per H for the hitters)
• HR 79 (at $807,692.31 per HR for the hitters)
• R 245 (at $266,949.15 per R for the hitters)
• RBI 272 (at $240,458.02 per RBI for the hitters)
• SB 13
• ERA 3.58
• WHIP 1.25
• H/9 7.689
• BB/9 3.549
• K/IP .818
• K/BB 2.074
• Pitching Wins-Losses 31-28
• Winning% for pitching .525
• Pitching Price/win $1,560,483.87
• Pitching Price/IP $93,508.38

This is abysmal. All but two of the teams (Yankees and Phillies) that made it to the post season paid less than that $111 million for their ENTIRE team. A link to my spreadsheet for this data. I got most of my data from Baseball-reference.com.

Why am I presenting all of this data? It is to show that Jim Hendry has a history of making bad decisions with signing people for his ball club. Let’s not for get about Milton Bradley, another player with a no trade clause. Although, I have to give Hendry credit for trading him away for Silva. Silva isn’t great, but he does more for the team than Bradley would have done. It has been rumored that Hendry made Piniella play these high dollar players despite their poor performance. I can understand the idea that you don’t want to pay lots of money for a player to sit on the bench. But there comes a time that when another player is performing better, that you need to play the guy that will help you win games.

It is my fear that one of the reasons that Ryno was not chosen is because he understands this basic element of baseball, that you play the guys that are doing good and bench the ones that aren’t. I have a feeling that Ryno would have refused to listen to Hendry and play who he wanted to play. Quade on the other hand is so grateful to finally be managing a big league club after several years of not, that he will do what ever his boss says to keep his job. And another thing, the Cubs owners just spent $145 million on a team that got nowhere last year. They saw attendance and TV viewers drop. The Cubs have become a money pit for the new ownership. Quade is a nobody and he will be a much cheaper deal than any other known manager candidate.

Ryno was a great player, a good person, and showed good results in managing the minors. Here’s a link to a post about how the Cubs have turned their back on Sandberg. It’s a shame how they don’t honor the hard work that Sandberg has done for the organization. Gene Wojciechowski has a nice article about how not choosing Sandberg was a bad choice.

The Cubs are not going to do well, again, next year. Its my belief that if the Cubs had hired Ryno, fans would have come to the games just for that. I don’t know what they are planning to do to get the fans to fill seats or watch on TV, but sure isn’t going to be the team they are fielding.

While part of me is glad that Ryno will not be stepping to the mess of what will be a horrible team for next year, another part of me would love to see Ryno be the guy to bring a World Series ring to the Cubs. Tigers fans can remember what happened to their beloved Alan Trammel. He was brought in to manage the Tigers and left town being remembered as having a horrible record for managing. Sandberg fans would not want that to befall Ryno which is a very real reality with the current state of the team.

I’m afraid that this will sever Sandberg’s desire to associate himself with the Cubs in the future. He says at this point he wants to move up to the majors. There are plenty of vacancies for managers this year, I’m sure someone out there will be smart enough to hire him. Cubs fans will be disappointed to see him take another team to the World Series before the Cubs get there and will wonder, what if…..

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YARPP

My first post will be about a piece of software I’ve been using for about a year now called KeepassX. This is a program you can use to keep your passwords organized. It’s free, its open source, and best of all, its cross platform. More and more sites these days make you sign up to use their service. Whether its a forum you participate in, you bank, credit card, email, Facebook, Twitter, servers, websites, the list goes no. Some folks have a separate user name and password for each place they log into. This can be hard to keep track of. I personally have some passwords that are tough for me to remember. KeepassX will help you keep track of that. Have you ever forgotten what user name or password you use on a website? KeepassX is your solution.

Is it safe to keep all your passwords in one place on your computer? I believe it can be. The file that KeepassX uses to store your information in is encrypted with Twofish or AES. You must remember one password to get into this file. It is a lot easier only having to remember one password instead of a whole list of them. If you don’t want to use a password, it will allow you to use a keyfile as well.

This method is also safer than keeping a word or excel document on your computer with all of your passwords. This is also better than the piece of paper some people keep by their computer (like my wife used to do before we got married).

There’s lots of features that you can explore about it if you like. For example, it can remind you to set a new password after a certain length of time. It can generate a password and tell you how strong the one is that you are using. One of my favorite features is when you open the program, you can right click on the list of logins and have it copy the user name or password to your clipboard. Then you can paste it into the form field without having to type it in. For security, it clears your clipboard after about a minute.

I use two computers in two different environments on a daily basis. Overall, I use Mac OSX, Ubuntu Linux, MS Windows, and Android on my phone. All of those environments have a version of KeepassX that will allow you to access your logins and passwords. You can keep one file that has all of your information in it. I have a file server that I had been using to keep my keepass file on that I could use to share the file between computers. I recently started using a program called Dropbox to keep the file synched between computers. I’ll write more about that in a later post.

You can download KeepassX from the website for free for what ever of the popular operating systems that you use. The android app is called KeePassDroid and is developed by someone else, but uses the same file format.

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YARPP

When we left town, we left Madie, our German Shepherd, at doggy day care at Dogmode. She seems to really like it there, and we have been impressed with how well they treat the dogs. We drove all the way to Missoula, MT the first day by interstate. That took most of the day and left us with about another three hours to get to the park. More importantly about the day, according to Wendy, it was Wendy’s birthday! She opened gifts and had cake a couple of days earlier to celebrate.

The next day, we toured around Missoula a little. Missoula is one of the bases where the National Forest service keeps some of its smokejumper wildland firefighters. I was particularly interested in this and was excited to get to see the base. There was a college intern there that was taking care of the visitor’s center and gave us a tour.

This is the base for the National Forest service Missoula Smokejumpers

After driving around town a little more, we headed on to Glacier. We bought a National Parks annual pass earlier this year and used this to get into the park. Once inside we headed to the West Glacier visitors center. I have to say, I was not impressed at all with the visitor’s center. It wasn’t very big and it didn’t display much information. Even the gift shop was just a small room. We later discovered that the newer larger visitor center was on the East side of the park. From there we headed over to the backcountry office where we got our permit for staying in the backcountry. A number of national parks have gone to a backcountry permit or reservation system to help regulate the number of visitors to areas of the park. This helps with overcrowding issues that have been happening in national parks.

The sign to the entrance of Glacier National Park on the West Entrance

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YARPP

This year, I wanted to do better. I bought a couple of fantasy baseball magazines and watched the fantasy baseball 404 on mlb.tv. I also resided not to pick Cubs players for my team. I always pick them because I think they will do well, and I need to realize that they while maybe good players on the team, are not so great compared to the rest of baseball. The Cubs haven’t won a world series in over 100 years, maybe I should think about that. I also took some advice I read about not relying on rookie potential. It may be cool to land that next star that no one else took, but that won’t win you the league. However, Nelson Cruz worked for me last year, and this year I picked Jason Heyward fairly early on.

This year, I picked two teams again. One rotisserie and one head to head. I also picked another one as an experiment that I will outline later. The leagues are 12 team leagues. Yahoo uses the 5×5 format which keeps track of the following stats.

Batting:

• batting average
• runs scored
• RBI
• HR
• stolen bases

Pitching:

• wins
• saves
• strikeouts
• ERA
• WHIP

Yahoo fantasy baseball lets you have 10 position player positions and 8 pitcher positions. I also have 5 bench positions.

So for my first team, Splinter_hands, it is a rotisserie league, and my head to head team is blister. Don’t ask me where I got the names of the teams from, I’m horrible with being creative. This year Yahoo added an additional position to the position player group, another util spot. Yahoo also added another pitcher position. I was not aware of this until half way through the draft.

My draft picks are as follows:

Splinter_hands (7th draft position):

1. 1B Prince Fielder
2. P Roy Halladay
3. SS Derek Jeter
4. P Mariano Rivera
5. OF Jason Heyward
6. 3B Adrian Beltre
7. P Josh Beckett
8. P Heath Bell
9. OF Ryan Ludwick
10. IF Placido Polanco
11. P Jorge De La Rosa
12. P John Lackey
13. OF Carlos Gonzalez
14. C Benjie Molina
15. IF/OF Mark DeRosa
16. OF Brett Gardner
17. P Clay Buchholz
18. OF Juan Pierre
19. P Andy Pettitte
20. P Joba Chamberlain
21. P Phil Hughes
22. OF Austin Jackson
23. IF Troy Glaus

Blister (5th draft position)

1. OF Ryan Braun
2. OF Matt Holliday
3. IF Kevin Youkilis
4. 2B Robinson Cano
5. P Mariano Rivera
6. OF Jason Heyward
7. P Josh Beckett
8. IF Gordon Beckham
9. SS Elvis Andrus
10. C Bengie Molina
11. IF/OF Mark Derosa
12. OF Ryan Ludwick
13. P Jorge De La Rosa
14. P Tim Hudson
15. P Jon Rauch
16. IF Placido Polanco
17. C Yadier Molina
18. P Clay Buchholz
19. IF Maicer Izturis
20. P Joba Chamberlain
21. P Phil Hughes
22. P Derek Lowe
23. P Mark Buehrle

I feel better about this year’s teams than last year. I plan to rotate through my pitchers more on my head to head team. In previous years I had more luck in being able to hold just a couple of good starters and pick matchups that I liked each day to acquire pitchers each day. However, I just saw where I won’t be able to do that as much as Yahoo has put a 6 player a week acquisition rule in place. That puts a damper in my strategy. I wasn’t expecting to have great starting pitching picks as I would just choose each day who I thought would win. I’m going to have to keep an eye on the free agents and see if I can’t hold down some better pitching and just draft one pitcher a day for match ups.

I’m excited to be doing my fantasy baseball this year. I know I spend way too many hours looking over all the numbers and keeping an eye out for better players to get, but that’s just part of the engineer in me liking to analyze numbers I guess.

So the third team I drafted I am experimenting with pitching. Typically, hitters are picked in the first round, and hitters continue to dominate the picks for the first few rounds. Pitching tends to be picked later on. I thought I would take advantage of this. Since there is no innings pitched limit in head to head,  I loaded my team with pitchers and plan to rotate them through on the days of their starts. I did however take hitters on first two rounds as they were top tier hitters, and I need some hitting production to compete at all. I’m not too concerned if I win this one, but I’m curious what kind of position I can get in the end if my picks are focused on only half of my stats (pitching) that I need to win each week. Here’s the results of my draft:

bud_selig_is_evil (7th draft position):

1. 1B Mark Teixeira
2. OF Ichiro Suzuki
3. P CC Sabathia
4. P Felix Hernandez
5. P Mariano Rivera
6. P Josh Johnson
7. P Heath Bell
8. P Wandy Rodriguez
9. P Clayton Kershaw
10. P Ryan Dempster
11. P John Danks
12. P Randy Wells
13. P Jorge De La Rosa
14. P David Aardsma
15. P Carlos Zambrano
16. 3B Adrian Beltre
17. C A.J. Pierzynski
18. IF Placido Polanco
19. IF Micer Izturis
20. OF Brett Gardner
21. OF Juan Pierre
22. OF Cameron Maybin
23. IF Troy Glaus

Now if I could only get Yahoo to make an Android app for fantasy baseball like they did for the iPhone

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YARPP

Our first stop after getting our rental car was to grab a bite to eat. We drove around downtown Phoenix a bit, but had difficulty finding reasonable parking near the pizza place we wanted to try. Wendy found a soda fountain (thanks to google maps on the cell phone) called MacAlpine’s nearby that we ate at for lunch. It was a nice little place. It was set in the 50′s. The food was good and the strawberry cheesecake milkshake we had for dessert was even better. According to their menu, they are the oldest operating soda fountain.

From there we headed to the Hall of Flame Fire Museum which was located next to the Oakland Athletic’s spring training field where they were playing a game as we drove by. The museum was great. It had a very impressive collection of old fire equipment and history. It had lots of hand drawn and horse drawn wagons as well as old motor driven fire trucks. It was very interesting to learn about the history of firefighting through the years. They had a section dedicated to wildland firefighting as well. I would recommend it to anyone who has the chance to go see it. Pictures

Next we went to the nearby Desert Botanical Garden. Wendy was excited to see wild flowers. I thought it was silly to have a botanical garden in the desert, but they had a lot of cool plants after all. Pictures

After the gardens, we went to check into our hotel. Wendy managed to find a great deal for us at The Hilton Phoenix East. Normally above our price range, but we got it for a great price. It was a nice hotel with large and comfortable rooms. The pillows on the bed were really soft.

While we were out that night we had stopped at a Target so I could get a baseball and sharpies. I hoped to get some autographs at the game. For dinner the first night, we ate at Grimaldi’s Pizzeria. It was some great pizza. You have to build your own pizza, and it was a bit pricey. We got a pizza with pepperoni, Italian sausage, and onions.

Next day, we decided to try to get to the Cubs game early in hopes to get autographs. For breakfast we went to a nearby place called The Good Egg. Really good breakfast with lots of choices.

We had bought our tickets online earlier and were going to pick them up at will call. We picked the tickets up right at 11AM in time to head into the stadium. Pictures. Hohokam was a nice looking stadium. There was a grass parking lot that we parked on for $5, not bad for this kind of an event. People were just starting to gather when we got there. Our plans to get in early to get autographs were spoiled by the gift shop. Wendy didn’t have any Cubs gear, in fact, she was wearing a red hat. We got her a new hat and shirt. I also got a new hat and a new Cubs shirt. We meandered around the ball park before the game started. There was a tent where some veterans were signing autographs for charity. Fergie Jenkins, Rollie Fingers, George Foster, as well as a few others were there. Had Ryne Sandberg been there, I would have waited all day for an autograph.

Ours seats were in LF on the LF fair line. They weren’t very good seats especially since the railing was right in the line of view. It was a good game. Cubs won 8-1 and Randy Wells only gave up one earned run for the win, but he did give up 7 hits over 5 2/3 innings. The Cubs put up good offensive numbers and chased Reds starter Carlos Fisher after only 1 2/3 innings of work.  Ryan Theriot had an impressive 3/4 day at the leadoff spot. Mike Fotenot and Marlon Bryd both had good days at the plate getting a HR each. Jeff Baker also came in to hit a HR. I was impressed with Tyler Colvin’s playing. I’m looking forward to seeing him play more this season. Aramis Ramirez and Derrek Lee did not make an appearance at the game.

After the game Wendy and I strolled over towards the Cubs dugout to see if we could get some autographs. Ivan Dejesus was signing a few, but I wasn’t real interested in him. Besides, he had gone back to the clubhouse by the time I got over there. When we got there, I saw a group of folks surrounding what looked like a Cubs official. I didn’t recognize him and asked someone nearby. Come to find out, it was Tom Ricketts, the new CEO of the Cubs. He was very friendly. He signed for everyone that came up to him as well as posed for pictures. He stayed for quite a while. I think he understands that we are his customers and if his customers want his autograph, he’s going to stick around for it. I wish the players understood that. I got him to sign my baseball. While he was signing I thanked him for sticking around to sign autographs and said to him “Why don’t we try to make this the year?” He responded by saying “Yeah, let’s put all of this behind us.” Maybe he came up with the “Year One” thing

I asked one of the Hohokam attendants if the players signed after the game and he directed me towards the back of the stadium. Back by the RF side of the stadium there was a wall of Cubs fans eagerly awaiting the chance to see their beloved Cubs hoping for an autograph or two. A few cubs strolled out during our time there, mostly newer cubs. I was able to get autographs from Sean Marshal and Sam Fuld. Only one other Cub came out during the time, not someone I recognized, before the security folks told us “The stadium is closed, you need to leave”. I asked Sean while he was signing my baseball if he was going to get to do any starting this year. He smiled and laughed saying “Yeah, I wish.” Looks like the bullpen again for him. I was glad to have long arms and my height so I could get past the people in front of me. Marlon Byrd came out towards the end but didn’t even acknowledge the crowd as he strolled by.

I have to say, I was not too impressed by how the Cubs seemed to not support their fans. It would have been nice to see all of the Cubs come by and they could have at least signed a few autographs, but they must have had other more important things to do than support their loyal fans. For the price they are getting paid to play a game, I don’t think that signing a few complimentary autographs is too much to ask. Even if its just a few. Sean Marshall on the other hand went out of his way to sign a lot. For that I have to say I was very impressed with how friendly he was.

After the game we went to Diamond’s Sports Grille. This place was formerly Harry’s and Steve’s, a sports bar that was owned by the former announcers for the Cubs. I was of the opinion that this was a great place for Cubs fans to go. It wasn’t that great in my opinion. I’m not a huge bar fan anyway, but it was an OK place, not bad, just not great. There were a couple of murals up on the wall that were baseball related and a small case with some baseball memorabilia, but other than that, it was your typical sports bar. The food was good, but just your typical sports bar type food. I doubt I’ll go back. There were four old guys at the table next to us that were getting pretty lit. One of them fell out of his chair and that was kind of funny.

That night we went back to our hotel room. It was still early and we thought about going to see a movie, but there wasn’t much of anything playing that we were too excited about. We found a movie on the hotel on demand system that we wanted to see and just stayed in to watch that. It was The Informant. Pretty funny movie.

The next day, Tuesday, was going to be our last day. We booked a late flight out of town so we could spend the whole day in Mesa without having to pay for another night at the hotel. That and Wendy had to get back to work the next night. Again, we went to The Good Egg for breakfast. We really liked this place. We then drove back to the hotel to check out.

After breakfast we went for a drive. Pictures. We drove on part of The Historic Apache Trail. We only had a few hours so we just got to see a section of it. It was a pretty drive with lots of cactus. The flowers were blooming this time of year so it was a pretty to look at.

We drove back towards Scottsdale and made it just in time for the Cubs vs Giants game. Again, $5 for parking, but at a church parking lot, and we got tickets from a scalper on the side of the road. We hadn’t planned on going to this game, but decided to go since we enjoyed the first game so much. This was at the Giant’s stadium. Their stadium was a little smaller, but still nice. Our tickets this time were much nicer than the ones we had bought online and for less I might add. We sat near 3rd base. Pablo “Kungfu Panda” Sandoval was playing today and we were only 4 rows back from him. The guy next to us was a Giants fan and he brought two kids with him. The kids spent the majority of the time getting sugary stuff to eat and trying to get Pablo Sandoval to wave them. It was funny.

Tom Gorzelanny got the win for the Cubs and went 7 innings giving up 8 hits and 3 earned runs. I thought he did fairly well. I was glad to see him pitch so deep into a spring training game. The Cubs were leading when they brought in Carlos Marmol. Personally, I am not a fan of him. His control is terrible and he walks too many batters, but he has been given the role of closer this year. Prove me wrong Carlos. It was odd to see them bring him in in the 8th. It was a save situation, but I didn’t expect to see him pitch until the 9th. He only gave up 1 walk and pitched 1 1/3 inning. John Grabow came in to pitch the last two outs to get the save.

Again, I was impressed with Tyler Colvin. He got two more hits. He played LF the previous day and played RF today. He even got an outfield assist off of Aaron Rowand trying to stretch what was clearly just a single into a double. The throw wasn’t that great, it bounced a couple of times coming into second. The guy next to me said he believed Rowand was just wanting to get back to the club house sooner. Aramis Ramirez and Derrek Lee both started today. I hadn’t realized that Mark DeRosa was playing for the Giants this year until today. I still wish Jim Hendry had not gotten rid of him.

During the game, I cheared for the Cubs as they ran right past us. Usually Aflonso Soriano and Marlon Byrd were within shouting distance. Alfonso never once looked towards the fans. I already don’t like the guy, but I was saying nice things to cheer him on. Guess who just lost more cool ponts. The Cub fan in front of me got Marlon to say something back to us. He seemed much more friendly.

Before and after the game, locals had made their own bike taxis to shuttle people back to their cars (for a fee of some kind). It was funny seeing how each person had put their own personality into their bike taxi. One guy had a boom box blasting Michael Jackson music that he was singing to and had a shinny glove he was wearing. Another guy had an umbrella he was holding. One lady was old and skinny looking and didn’t look like she had enough strength to pedal more than herself on a bike.

After the game we got supper at Los Sombreros. I had the Carnitas and Wendy had Chile Rellenos. They had fresh squeezed limeaid as well as two types of home made salsa. The food was all really good, but pricier than what Mexican food should be.

After supper we drove to the airport. The car rental return is in a very inconvenient place. We only knew to follow the signs, but the signs lead you all the way into and through the airport only to have you go to a place outside of the airport to return the cars. There has to be a better way to get there, but no one told us about it. Thankfully we had plenty of time, but I can see how people can be late getting to the airport because of this.

Southwest took us home, just like they got us there, all in one piece. Maddie had been put in doggie day care at a place called Dogmode. They are a great place to board your dog as they have open boarding where all the dogs are let out of their kennels during the day in a big open area. Staff stay with them all day. I was impressed by them. Maddie was very happy to see us the next morning when we went to go pick her up.

Our trip to Arizona was fun. We believe we will do it again, and hopefully during Spring Training so we can see more Cubs baseball. Wendy has been indoctrinated into being a Cubs fan. Lets just hope they win the World Series before she realizes how tough it is to be a Cubs fan.

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YARPP