A Long Season Ahead

Well, it was a good spring training when the Mariners were 21 wins and 11 losses, but the season it's off to an early start of a long dreadful season of a lackluster team, again.

They are 8 wins and 15 losses after being swept by the Texas Rangers in 3 games and 5 of 6 games this year. They were beaten by the Houston Astros in 2 of 3 games early in the season after a 2 and 2 start and beaten in 2 of 3 games again by Houston for the second time.

The team is near the bottom of almost all the offsensive statistics except one, strikeouts where they near the top for the most by any team in Major League Baseball (MLB).

And their defensive is worse than last year when they finished second after leading the MLB most of the year, losing first by using some minor league players during September.

So that's the season so far and will be from now until the last game where they'll fight it out with the Houston Astros for the worst record in the American League West division and maybe the American League itself.

And in the end, everyone will blame the players who play their hearts out, but really aren't the caliber of MLB players. The real blame belongs with the President and General Manager who failed to get a team for Eric Wedge to manage and win.

He and the coaches can only do so much. The players can only do their best, although some are clearly not MLB quality, just look at their batting average (eg. Justin Smoak, Dustin Ackley, etc.). But the President and GM can do more and they haven't.

The brought in experienced players, Mike Morse, Raul Ibanez, Jason Bay and Kendry Morales, only one of whom is hitting over .250 so far. The team is near the bottom in pitching and their only saving grace is their defense, but it's worse than last year.

This has been the same recipe management used in the past, with "experienced" players who failed and young prospects who only succeeded to be traded leaving the team worse off. It's clear the management doesn't want to field a good team, but just hope it's good and sell the image of that hope.

And they've failed as have many of the players. The fans who paid for the ballpark (remember the taxpayers) deserve a winning team and the ownership doesn't care about winning, it's why attendence has fallen the last few years including this year again. Only the faithful still go and/or watch on TV.

There are 139 games to go. Any bets they'll struggle to match last year's record and be out of contention by the All-Star break if not sooner?

Apple Store Apps

Update (4/23/13).--I now have 6 applications waiting for the App store approval if the company even uploaded them to Apple as I know some haven't in e-mails they said it wasn't worth posting to the App store. They apparently don't care about the customers who bought their app through the store and can't get updates.

Original Post (4/4/13).--I've written about my experience with Apple's App store and the apps in the store, and I've long reached the conclusion if the company offering applications for the Mac's offer them from the App store and their Website, meaning not just their Website, but both, then take their Website.

I say this because I have three applications from the App store the companies have released on their Website to download through the app itself or from the Website but either haven't sent them to Apple or Apple hasn't offered them in the App store, like now weeks and months.

I've also had two companies pull their applications from the App store and some companies stop updating their applications in the App store, both of whom offer updates or upgrades through their Website, some for free with a Apple receipt or not and charging you again. Yeah, the latter sucks for customer relations.

Anyway, this is just a short note to say if you can buy the same application from both the App store and the company's Website, choose the Website. I don't buy applications which aren't offered in the App store unless I know the company to avoid buying applications which don't fit Apple's new rules or end up being a bad deal.

Apple Time Machine IV

Update 4/19/13.--I have found how to look at the history of the com.apple.backupd logs to see when the problems occur and saw on the 17th from 5-8 pm and the 18th from 2-5 pm the backup ate just over 50GBytes each time, reducing the free space by 105 GBytes.

That's not so much a problem down the road as the backup will erase memory for each backup when the disk is full, but it only causes the backup to take longer and start doing it earlier. As it is, this will eat a 1 TByte HD in under two weeks.

What I also know is nothing is wrong with the TC HD, nothing with the sparsebundle file and nothing with the spotlight files on the TC or the HD, so it's only left to the software which goes nuts every now and then for unknown reasons.

Original Post 4/17/13.-- It seems I likely misunderstand how the backup works. Reading what information I could find says it makes hourly backups, then a daily backup and then a weekly backup. If that's true, then it creating a lot of copies of files it doesn't really need.

This does describe part of what I see but not everything. The hourly backup takes a few minutes and the daily backup, if it's backing up the previous day, explains the excessively long one backup which takes 2-3 hours or more but still that's excessive as the overnights with another applications are relatively short (10-20 minutes).

What I'm trying to find is where the com.apple.backupd logs are kept to see where the large jumps are in the backup and available space. In the past the daily log hasn't shown a consistent time for these jumps as the occur days apart.

Anyway, more information is what is needed to understand what's happening, something Apple's Website and other Websites seems short. I'll post if I find anything new.

Apple Time Machine III

I wrote about Apple's Time Machine backup software after upgrading to OS-X 10.8.3 where I found the software under 10.8.2 had problems. Well, it still does have problems which are worse than the problems under 10.8.2. So it's simple to me that the software sucks.

First the complete backup, which took only 8 hours the first time, quickly jumped to 13 hours the next times after zeroing the TC's hard drive. That's still faster but still too long for just 300 GBytes of stuff (only the primary HD of the four, the rest backed up overnight using Integral's software).

The problem is that every 1-2 days the backup decides to go nuts and instead of backing up the normal hour's work, which is usually a few gigabytes takes 3-5 minutes, less if you're doing nothing or the Mac is sitting idle, it decides to back up 25-50+ GBytes of stuff.

What stuff is a good question but it seems to just lose what's new for the last hour and backup the whole fucking day and more, again. That quickly eats a 1 TB HD over 2-3 weeks where you get to no unusued memory and the backup taking longer to clear space for new backups.

In short, I ended up watching the space and when it gets to less than 100 GBytes, I stop the backup and erase (zero) the HD and start over. I do this because the backup only takes longer when it has to clear memory first when it shouldn't in the first place.

And now for the second time in a row of testing within a week, the backup went nuts within two days, this time eating 50+ GBytes of memory for nothing. And no one on the Apple forum has any clues or ideas what to check or debug with the backup.

And Apple needs to address this, by allowing users to check the TC's HD directly - only technicians at Apple stores have the software to do this, and provide users with debugs tools to find why it's going nuts every few days for no apparent reason.

Apple is better than this because the backup worked great under 10.8.0-10.8.1 and then it broke under 10.8.2 and is worse now under 10.8.3. So, Apple, how about some help?

Can We Not Be Stupid

Do we realize the more news stories about the Boston bombing we air, the more human interest stories we tell, the more analysis we do, and the more editorials we give, the more we give credence to the bomber(s)?

Let's not hype this beyond what it is, a bombing carried out by some group for some purpose unknown, and we will know who and why, but let's not overhype the importance of the target, whatever or whomever it was.

Let's not call this a national tragedy to give it importance in the mind of those who carried it out. Let's not call it an attack on our nation, the people or our democracy.

Let's not call it an attack on some pretigious event because of the event.

Let's not put it in the realm of the real terrorists attacks we've experienced in hour history. There's been enough bombings in the past more potent, as we experienced in New York City in 1920 and Oklahoma City in 1995.

Let's not make it more that it is, a criminal act of violence meant to kill and injure people at an event. Anything more only helps those who want and plan new attacks to feel more important than they are, being just criminals.

Let's not be stupid. But I'm talking to a wall of media cameras and TV shows doing just that, being stupid.

Our Government

Our government, specifically the FBI, is putting the whole weight of the government's resources to find who planted and detonated two bombs in Boston today killing two people, one an 8-year old boy, and injuring dozens more, but our government isn't putting the weight of the government's resources to go after the companies responsibile for killing 80 people every day in this country.

Our government calls the bombing an act of terrorism against our nation but our government does not call the acts of terrorism of the gun manufacturers producing weapons which killed 20 children in Newtown, Connecticut or other places of mass killings in recent years.

Our government calls a bomb an act of terrorism but calls a fully automatic assault rifle a right. How many people died from bombs in this country in recent years (hint, it's a city in Oklahoma) and how many from assault rifles and automatic weapons with high capacity magazines?

We outlaw bombs but not these guns. What's the difference if people still die from acts of violence? The dead don't care anymore, they're dead either way. But we care, so why doesn't our government?

We Should Worry

We should worry that a criminal act today in Boston, seemingly simple bombs detonated near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, before 9/11 would have been considered just an act of violence, is suddenly an act of terrorism, an act against the nation, people and government of the US.

We should worry that our government now decides what constitutes a national threat and has taken it to the extreme by controlling everything now when this events happen.

We should worry as our government will now treat everyone, American or not, suspects, and consider them, meaning us, enemies of this country if they think, even without any evidence but just suspicion, we're linked to or related to anyone associated with those who might have done this act.

Our government now considers us the enemy. That we should worry more than the acts of violence by a few extremists.

Sorry Mr President

Sorry Mr. President, selling the American people out for a compromise with the Republicans in the Senate and especially the House, isn't why we elected you and what we expected of you. You're selling compromise you know the Republicans won't agree with and know they will move the goal posts for you to move more to the right.

You know this because you've seen this from the Republicans all along. They won't compromise. They won't budge. They won't do anything to help you, this country or the American people. They know this because you've always compromised more and more to the right of center.

Sorry Mr. President, I can't believe you or support you until you stand with the American people, stand with the Democrats, and stand for fairness for Americans, and then hold your ground even if the Republicans don't move. We get to and will decide their fate in 2014.

Don't sell us out for politics. We don't want pennies when the corporations, banks and industries get millions. We want a president who stand for and with us, not talk about it, but do that, and not what you're doing.

You want expedient political solutions. We want real solutions. We want you to stand where we are than where the Republicans stand as you have done and are doing now. Time to stop. If you don't, don't expect our support.

Congress

Why do I get the impression members of Congress feel they're paid to talk about helping America and the Amierican people than actually doing anything for the American people, like jobs, gun reform, the sequester, budgets, etc.

All we hear are their words, nothing of the actual bills they pass, which often turn out to be empty trojan horses, written by the respective industries the bill is targeting and mostly helps them in the end.

All we hear are good intentions and promises, like campaign promises which we know are forgotten they moment they're elected.

All we hear about are gridlock and partisan politics, blame someone else instead of looking the people in they eye telling them you failed.

All we hear from them is cow pasture material everyone knows by the smell of their words and the feeling you have when you hear it.

And they wonder why they have such a low approval rating?

McConnell Tape

Why do I get the feeling that the "secret" tape of Mitch McConnell and his re-election campaign staff meeting attacking Ashley Judd isn't a "left wing conspiracy" but an inside job of his re-election campaign staff in his "Whac-a-mole" tactics against any opponent in his re-election bid?

It's just smells of him and his corrupt political mentality to win at any cost. There's no opponent against him yet, his office was swept for listening and transmitting devices, and it's his style of campaign politics.

I'm betting his staff set it up with his knowledge so he could claim being a victim. But of whom, his voters who hate him? He has a 36% approval rating. That's the reality, not some made up story and secret tape.

iCloud e-mail lost

Update.-- After experimenting with my iCloud e-mail account I learned why the e-mails disappeared. When I updated my iPad recently, Apple automatically added my iCloud account to the iPad. Seeing all those receipts on my iPad, I erased them. That in turn erased them from iCloud which in turn erased them from my Mac iCloud account.

Lesson learned. Don't trust Apple to decide what you can and can't do on your iDevice. I didn't mind my iCloud being there, just not all the e-mails visible to anyone looking at my iPad. I just wanted the new ones which I can keep or erase. I can't do that according to Apple.

Original post.-- I went to check my iCloud e-mail today and discovered it was all gone, e-mails going back years documenting all my purchases with Apple in their stores and on-line (App Store and iTunes). Gone, like a very empty mailbox.

Fortunately I keep a copy on my Mac, but it only goes to show me the iCloud really isn't that reliable and goes to show anyone, if you trust them, you better hope they don't screw it up and lose it, like they have my e-mail.

It's their new slogan, "The Cloud, everything you trusted with us, Gone with the Wind."