Checking My List...

[dxmachina]

...And I seem to have finished my shopping, at least the part where I have to venture into retail stores. Newbury's came through last night for both of my brothers (mostly because they are each getting essentially the same thing), Sam's came through for a couple of sisters with freshly minted Serenity DVDs, and the good folks at Hickory Farms were there for my BiLs. (Side note - I have a terrible time thinking of stuff for my brothers, and even more so for my BiLs. The BiLs get short shrift, I'm afraid.) I do still need to get a couple of gift cards for the eldest nephew and niece. I have no frelling clue about teenagers.

I still need to make a couple of food based things, and I'm still working on a DVD project. That hit a huge snag the other night when Windows Movie Maker decided to stop working properly for no reason I could fathom. It was suddenly incredibly difficult to use the editing functions because the response had slowed down to a crawl, even to the point of freezing. Then, when I actually finished editing a clip and tried to save it, WMM would save the clip, and then continue to save the entire AVI file I'd pulled the clip from along with it. I tried defragmenting the drive, allocating more virtual memory, and everything else I could think of. No joy. It was driving me crazy. Then I found a post on a help forum for WMM that mentioned conflicts with video filters for other applications. I went into WMM's options, and turned off every external video filter. Everything was suddenly working again. Happy, happy, joy, joy, but I was muchly puzzled. I hadn't changed any settings, or installed any new software. Why did they kick in like that. Then I looked at what was in there, and saw a couple of filters for Nero, and remembered that I'd had to update Nero over the weekend. Aha! Stoopid Nero must've installed new filters during the update. The really dumb thing about all this is that as near as I can tell, WMM doesn't even use the filters for anything, which makes me wonder what the frell they're doing there in the first place.

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Hee-Seop re-signed with the Dodgers for $750K. The offense is looking pretty good. In fact, we now have too many position players. It has been mentioned elsewhere that Neddy should've signed people in the reverse order. If he had done so, perhaps either Saenz and/or Mueller wouldn't have gotten offers. OTOH, it's possible some of the later signings never would've happened if Neddy hadn't shown his desire to improve the team by signing those guys. Now we've got a surplus. There's only one outfield spot left for Jason Repko, Jayson Werth, and newcomer Andre Ethier, and only one infield spot for Oscar Robles and Willy Aybar. It's a good problem to have, unless you happen to be one of the players involved. Werth will probably get the outfield slot, unless he's still injured come spring. Robles and Aybar is tougher. Robles is experienced, a better fielder, and more versatile. Aybar is a lot younger, and looks to be a better hitter based on his stellar September. Not an easy choice.

Comments

[hecubot.livejournal.com]

They'll start Ethier at Triple-A to see if his Fall numbers were a fluke, or he's really moved up a level.

And as I've seen with the A's, you rarely just plug in a player and let him run all season like Cal Ripken (or Tejada) anymore. People go down and it's good to have a quality backup right there.

The question with the A's is whether they'll still try to sign Frank Thomas. With the Milton Bradley pickup, they'll move Swisher to first and Dan Johnson to DH. Suddenly the A's have three outfielders who can play center and hit a bit too (Payton, Kotsay, Bradley). And CFs are a hot commodity now (ask the BoSox). The A's also have a surplus of pitching, so I think Beane will be trading again before Spring. Maybe just to load up on prospects.

[dxmachina.livejournal.com]

I have no problem sending Ethier back to AAA, but some folks do, given that we gave up two major leaguers to get him.