My Side Door

The Arizona Diamondbacks have gotten off to an amazing start this year. Unfortunately, very few people were noticing, because the Suns were in the playoffs. With the Suns now out in the first round, all eyes in Phoenix will be on the DBacks for the foreseeable future. The DBacks finished April with the best record in all of baseball, and one of only a few teams to ever register 20 wins in April. At 20-8, the DBacks already have a 5 game lead in the NFC West.

What seems most noteworthy about this start to me, was something I noticed looking at their 8 losses. I couldn’t remember a loss that they had failed to score a decent number of runs in, so I looked into it more. Sure enough, the DBacks are averaging 4.25 runs scored in each of their losses. The fewest runs they have scored in any loss was 2. To beat the DBacks you must score 3 runs, and in all likelihood, you’ll need to score 5 runs or more. That’s simply amazing.

Also noteworthy is the hitting being done by their pitching staff. Pitchers are hitting .277! No wonder they are scoring so many runs. Micah Owings leads the DBack pitchers, hitting a torrid .421, including 1 home run (last night). Micah is simply a stud, and he’s now being used situationally by manager Bob Melvin as a pinch hitter.

Also impressive, is the start that Brandon Webb has had. He has 6 wins, a 1.98 ERA, and is pitching nearly 7 innings per start. He’s a true ace. He’s only hitting .167, but has driven in 4 runs to help his cause in several decisive situations. FYI, all of the starting pitchers (outside Micah

Then look at Chad Qualls. He has 15.2 innings pitched in 15 appearances for 0 earned runs. He’s also got 14 strike outs, while allowing just 6 hits so far. He’s nearly unhittable.

I predict Brandon Webb, Conor Jackson, and Orlando Hudson are sure fire locks to be on the all star roster, with Webby being the starting pitcher for the NL. Qualls should be on the roster, even though middle relievers rarely get in. Justin Upton has 5 home runs, and is hitting .327, making it difficult for him to miss the roster, even though he’s a rookie, if that pace keeps up.

Can the DBacks win the West? Absolutely. Can the DBacks win the NL? Again, I think they can and will. Will the DBacks win 100 games? I think they come up just shy. I predict they’ll win 98 games this season. A starting pitcher that is healthy today is going to get hurt, and we’ll lose some games due to injury, but overall, we are looking at a very strong, remarkable, hopefully memorable (flashbacks to 2001) team.

What better blog to be the guinea pig for WordPress 2.5, then my personal blog that I know almost no one reads. Out of the box, I love the new interaction with plug-ins. In 2.3, we got notification that plug-ins were out-of-date. Now with 2.5, we get a way to download and install plug-ins that are out-of-date, directly from the admin panel. This was awesome!

I’m using Windows Live Writer to compose this message, and then I’ll see if I can save as draft and edit online, just as I was before.

===save draft and finish editing online===

Yep, that works well. There is a problem in the online editor…it seems the editing window is too wide, and it’s covering up the publish button that should be the right of this editor window. I suspect that has to do with my variable width CSS, and possibly one of my editing plug-ins that hasn’t updated to 2.5 yet. Switching to the HTML view fixes it, but it’s annoying none-the-less.

Now I’ll add a picture online, even though I suspect I’ll always do that from Live Writer in the future, just to see if it’s different. Well, that’s not going to work. I can upload a picture, but I can’t seem to get the picture to want to go into the post. This was supposed to be one of the premier features of 2.5, so that’s not a good result, and it’s unacceptable that picture insertion doesn’t work…completely unacceptable.

Another thing that’s always annoyed me, and is no different now, the Preview button doesn’t save before it previews. What’s up with that?

Hmm, my verdict: I love the plug-in change, but the pictures not working is a deal breaker.

UPDATE: In Firefox images load and are managed perfectly…so it’s something with IE. I should have guessed. In Trac for WordPress, defect 6502 is noted with the same symptoms I’m having, so I added a note to the defect that I’m experiencing it too.

Just a quick update on my broken camera.  Canon confirmed receipt of the camera at their repair facility today.  Also, Jefferson Graham from USA Today contacted me yesterday to discuss my broken camera.  He said he personally had 3 Canon cameras fail, and wanted to know more about mine and my experience.  I let him know that it was about 45 days old, and I had returned it to Canon’s repair center. 

He then let me know that he had spoken with Canon directly about it, and that Canon does not advise people to put these cameras in their pocket, but instead to store them in a case.  Ugh.  I bought the camera to put in my pocket and to have it handy everywhere I go.  I want a camera I can put in a jersey pocket on my bike, in a backpack, or in a pocket while I’m roaming around the city/on vacation, so that I always have a camera handy.  If I can’t count on this new Canon camera to be that camera for me, I’m going to be quite disappointed. 

My old Canon G3 has been through a number of bumps and bruises and has always worked.  It’s just too bulky to stick in a pocket.  I wanted the SD870is to do everything the G3 could do, but in a smaller package.  Hopefully I’ve been unlucky and it’ll work like I want, and not like Jefferson Graham from USA Today expects.

WordPress is the software for this blogging platform.  They released their latest version 9 days ago, and I naturally waited for the more experienced bloggers to do the upgrade before I ventured into the craziness.  I figured let someone else be the guinea pigs.  Well, there were enough posts about it for me to get a feel for what to look out for, so I’m giving it a shot.

First I saved off my private content, which turned out to be super easy, with the database backup plug-in that I have.   Then I de-activated all of my plug-ins.  Then I downloaded the new upgraded onto the server, and overwrote my wordpress installation with the new files.  I was supposed to delete everything first, but that seemed a tad risky…I don’t like deleting if I don’t have to. 

Next, I ran the upgrade script which took less than a second.  In fact it was so fast, I thought for sure something didn’t work.  From there, I went back to the plug-ins page and sure enough, I could see one new feature work right away, the plug-ins upgrade alerter.  I got busy downloading all of the upgraded plug-ins, and activating everything that was active before.

As a test I wrote a test post, which immediately failed with this error:

WordPress database error: [Table 'wordpress.wpsteve_categories' doesn't exist]
SELECT c.cat_ID AS ID, MAX(p.post_modified) AS last_mod FROM `wpsteve_categories` c, `wpsteve_post2cat` pc, `wpsteve_posts` p WHERE pc.category_id = c.cat_ID AND p.ID = pc.post_id AND p.post_status = 'publish' AND p.post_type='post' GROUP BY c.cat_id

Ugh. That’s not what I was hoping for.  I went to the WordPress’ release notes, which stated that the categories table was removed.  This meant the offensive code above surely must have been a plug-in that hadn’t upgraded.  I decided to turn off my 2 sitemap plug-ins, because neither had an available upgrade, and sure enough, I can now save without error.  Now I just need to get a new auto-sitemap generator.

Otherwise, it all looks good.  As a result of the upgrade, I’m finally going to get around to implementing tags, since that was the #1 new feature of WordPress 2.3, while before you needed a plug-in to get tag support.

Update: The Google Sitemap-XML Plug-in that was giving me grief was updated by the author today.  I’ve downloaded the new version of the plug-in and it seems to be working as exptected.  Nice work.  I think this basically gets me back to even, and only in about an hour.  Not bad, really.

I posted about Maui Saito’s Ninjitsu on the Phoenix Area Real Estate Blog today.  That post describes a bit about what Master Maui’s trying to teach and how it differs from many of the martial arts programs that are out there.

But, you haven’t heard anything about what I’m actually doing.  I’m loving the martial arts training there.  Right now I’m a yellow belt, along with Hayley and Emily.  I’m getting somewhat close to trying for my orange belt.  I just wish I could attend more of the open session Friday afternoon classes.  On Fridays, Maui and I are able to look over the test and see what I don’t yet know, and then I can practice those items in more depth.  I really love being there on Friday, but because his Friday session is 3pm-6pm, it’s not always possible for me to get in there that early.

As an example of the kind of “fun” we are having, on Monday we actually hit each other for the first time.  We practiced our most powerful punch struck into each other’s stomach.  First we’d strike just to brush their gi, and then we’d strike to make a 1″ penetration of their stomach.  Master Maui hit me as hard as he can, with almost 1″ penetration (I think he held back a tiny bit), and since it was my stomach, it really didn’t hurt.  I could feel his power, but no pain at all.  Then we all practiced that on each other, and honestly, it was fun.  At least, it was fun for me to hit someone without the intent NOT to hurt them.  1″ into a fleshy area, like your stomach won’t hurt.  1″ penetration into a rib, could actually break a rib, and that was the purpose of the practice: get used to punches with an intent not to damage, but still demonstrate our proficiency with the move.

Along with punching, we practice blocking (typically more time is spent here), wrist grabs (the most painful thing we practice), tumbling so that you don’t get hurt, and sword play (like a samurai).  The sword work is very interesting, and while I never thought of myself as any type of gymnast, I’m reasonably good at tumbling now.

One thing we’ve done very little of is practice kicking.  We’ll get to it I know, but it’s not something that we need at this point in our understanding of the art.

I started doing Ninjitsu as a chance to do something with Hayley and Emily, together as a family.  However, Emily has shown that she doesn’t like being with all of the adults that are now in the class at our 6pm timeslot on Monday/Wednesday.  So, we are moving her to an earlier timeslot where she can practice with a couple of other kids her size and age.  Master Maui says Emily is among his best young students.  In the current class, she basically refuses to practice with Hayley or an any other adult besides Maui and I.  So she’s often sitting around unhappy.  Hopefully she’ll feel more comfortable around the younger crowd, and even challenged to do as well as Maui’s other good young students.

Hayley is staying with me at 6pm.  She’s in Study Squad with Oxford after school, which helps get her homework done, so I don’t want to mess that up.

When I started the Phoenix Area Real Estate Blog I didn’t give much thought to the domain name.  Instead, I wanted it to be free, and since I had the domain 101bell.com, adding blog at the front was indeed free.

But since the blog is doing so well, it’s time to revisit that decision.  I’ve done some hunting around and found a name I like.  It becomes available in October, so with any luck I’ll get it.  I’m not going to share it now, on the off chance that the owner could somehow see it here, but the domain name does include Phoenix in it, which I think is important for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) reasons. 

I’ve also got my eyes on another domain name for a Scottsdale focused blog.  This blog would differ from my current blog, in that it would focus solely on Scottsdale news and real estate information, while the current blog is general to Phoenix, real estate, and even national content.  The blogging description for this new Scottsdale blog would be “hyper-local”, and I’ll do my best to stay on topic and up-to-date with useful content.

This’ll be quick.  I purchased Halo 3 for the XBox 360 on Tuesday, unwrapped it and got busy.  Nice game.  Not much different than Halo 2, but you gotta love a game that has essentially no loading screens.  There seem to be more cut scenes in Halo 3 than in Halo 2.  Otherwise the action and play is about the same.

Viewed on my big screen in HD is really cool.  There are times when I’m honestly started by an attack from the site and jump out of my seat, due to the sound quality and immersion.

I was never a die-hard Halo fan, but it is a fun game for a first person shooter.  I suck at first person shooters, but Halo is very playable even still.

Ok, the Tour of the White Mountains is just 5 days away, and I still haven’t selected a distance.  Unless my friend Chris Z goes and does the 52 miler, I’m leaning toward the 41 miler.  Right now, I’m feeling more concerned with finishing the event than pressing myself to my limits…although I don’t exactly know why that is.

Last weekend I got 2 nice training rides in.  The first was Pemberton to Windgate Pass.  I’ve been looking up at Windgate Pass almost daily since it was built, and every attempt at making it to the top from the West side has failed.  So I tried it from the East side, via Pemberton, and while the final 3/4 of a mile is anything but ridable for a normal human, after riding 10 miles to get to that point, I wasn’t about to give up with the top in sight.

Sunday’s ride was out at Usery Park, doing the Pass Mountain trail.  This trail is listed at just 7.1 miles,but somehow it took me 2 hrs to complete.  Imagine that pace for 50 miles?  Fortunately Pass Mountain isn’t representative of the type of trail we’ll see next weekend.  What it is, however, is a total body workout.  That trail will test your balance, your nerve, your upper and lower body strength, and darned near every other skill necessary to be a good mountain bike rider.

Here are some trail side photos I took with my new Canon SD870is (click to enlarge):

Friday night I sat on the roof of the office and shot photos for 45 minutes as the sun went down.  Then I doctored and toyed with them, and finally selected this image for the new banner image on the real estate blog:

What do you think?

The banner image for the Phoenix Area Real Estate Blog is a photo that I took of the Grand Canyon.  It’s a nice photo, and I like it a lot.  But it really isn’t anything Phoenix Related.  I need to fix that.  I’m contemplating a night shot from the roof of my office that would include Camelback Mountain, Squaw Peak, and the 101 Freeway.  A long exposure would get some cool headlights going by on the freeway.  I just need that perfect night when the clouds are just right to really set it off. 

The photo would be similar to this photo (which I also took), which includes Camelback, but not Squaw Peak.  That’s my idea anyway.  If you’ve got a better idea for a photo that says Phoenix and Scottsdale, let me know.

Another thing I’d like to create is an avatar or icon for the blog that isn’t just my face.  I mean, I absolutely love my face (all sarcasm included), but I’d prefer something again that’s a little more Phoenix-y.  The cactus has been done to death, so I’m kinda thinking a bit more in the vein of the Phoenix Logo, possibly merged in with a housing logo…still thinking on that too, but any advice here would also be appreciated.

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