About a third into the 2008 season, I figured we could revisit my preseason predictions and see how things are shaking up.

American League East Predicted: NYY, BOS*, TOR, TBR, BAL.
American League East Standings: TBR, BOS, TOR, BAL, NYY.
No one saw Tampa being this good this fast. I thought they’d have their best record yet - but that wouldn’t take much. Are they for real? Probably so, and I wouldn’t put playoff potential past them yet. Boston should still take the division, though, especially with a possible home field advantage even in Florida late in the season. The biggest question is whether a late-in-the-season first or second place Rays club will start to attract fans to the high school gym they play in. New York won’t finish last, but their playoff appearance streak is done.

American League Central Predicted: DET, CLE, CHW, MIN, KCR.
American League Central Standings: CHW, MIN, CLE, KCR, DET.
Well then. No one thought the Tigers would do this. Many picked the Tribe to take the division, but everyone else put Detroit in second. Third at the very worst, and those people were immediately ostracized. Perhaps they were soothsayers. This is easily the wackiest division this year and the one where it’s impossible to figure out how things will finish: with all due respect to the Southsiders, the White Sox would be the weakest division champ outside of Miami, and I don’t know if they can hold up their position. But who will challenge them? Last place Detroit? The slumping Indians? The circus continues.

American League West Predicted: LAA, OAK, SEA, TEX.
American League West Standings: LAA, OAK, TEX, SEA.
BORE-RING. Angels in a walk, done in the Division Series. Just another blah season in the AL West.

National League East Predicted: PHI, ATL, NYM, WAS, FLA.
National League East Standings: FLA, ATL, PHI, NYM, WAS.
Everyone else who picked Florida to lead the division two months in can leave the room. Now that we’re all still here, I TOLD YOU SO about the Mets. The pitching, even with Santana, is weak (Pedro is OLD,) Reyes slowed down in the stretch last year and hasn’t picked it up, and one Carlos is too streaky while the other one is just, well, OLD. The Mets are right where they should be. Whether Florida’s hot pitching will continue or not is the big question, but I figure the real race in September to be between Philly and Atlanta…just like I predicted.

National League Central Predicted: CHC, MIL, STL, CIN, HOU, PIT.
National League Central Standings: CHC, STL, HOU, PIT, MIL, CIN.
When David Pinto of Baseball Musings pegged the Cards for last place I almost plotzed. They’re not that bad. Are they that good? I still say they’ll finish no lower than third and with a winning record. But they might not contend; it’s too early to tell. Houston is surviving solely on the willpower of Lance Berkman and Rapidly Aging Miguel Tejada and won’t last. The Brewers might make a comeback if they fire Ned Yost, so look for them to stay in the second division. Cubs are still the favs, but it might not be easy even with their neighbors ninety miles north out of the picture.

National League West Predicted: ARI, SDP*, COL, LAD, SFG.
National League West Standings: ARI, LAD, SFG, COL, SDP.
LA’s got a youth movement going that may keep them in second the rest of the season. San Fran’s only in third by default since all of Denver is on the DL and San Diego just broke down on us; I originally picked them to take the Wild Card, but Peavy and Young being banged up will thwart any chance of such a comeback. Arizona’s in the NLCS.

One of the trends in TV production these days is to display your shot on a monitor…and then shoot the monitor. Local news stations do it by rolling video on a TV in set and using a crane cam to slide from it to the anchors. American Idol did it all season long by zooming in on the screen and not letting you know you’re watching them on a monitor through a camera…only to pull the crane cam back and show you what’s really going on.

Cute.

Too cute sometimes.

About a month ago Fox Sports Net Midwest crossed the line. During a Cardinals game they did a locator shot (a shot used to show you where you are, usually to bump into or out of commercial break) from outside of Busch Stadium. There was a small TV monitor sitting outside one of the main gates showing a replay of a play from earlier in the inning with the lights of Busch Stadium shining down upon it.

It was an innovative and original shot. The director, of course, immediately rode it to death, showing it constantly in and out of break. And then they took it too far:

Yes, in the middle of the inning…with Yadier Molina at bat…they went to the monitor-within-a-monitor outside. Did they show a pitch or any action this way? Thankfully no, but it’s the only way it could have gotten worse. After a couple games they put the shot back in the vault and I haven’t seen it yet which is probably for the best. This type of cute production can really spice up a broadcast, but you have to know when enough is enough.

One of the only things I dislike about working at the radio station is our location out in the country, or, as the program director often puts it, “In the middle of a @#$% cornfield.” Working a 4 pm to 12 midnight shift is nice except when the backdoor swings shut just a few minutes into the new day and you’re by yourself in the middle of Central Illinois. Freaky. There could be wild dogs out there.

Today there were. I arrived just before 4:00 and almost ran over a scruffy-looking, dirty white thing that resembled a giant mop sans-handle more than a puppy. There were two identical mutts, actually, and they hounded me (intended) as I juggled my laptop bag, soda, bottle of water, plastic dinner bag and backdoor key. My attempts to shoo them away verbally were only successful for one of them, but I managed to sneak in without inflicting a canine invasion upon the studios.

Upon arriving inside, I was greeted with three pieces of news:
A.) The dogs had been there all day. Or at least since around 8:00 AM.
2.) One of them is blind.
D.) The other is deaf.

Wow. Hopefully they won’t be there when I go to leave. Not that I fear them - they’re not vicious. Just annoying.

I’m so glad that the judges on American Idol tonight were so in David Archuleta’s camp, crowning him King of Sucky Season Seven and just daring - DARING - America to vote the other way.

When Cook wins tomorrow night they’re going to be em-bare-assed.

Fun!

I read The Consumerist all the time.  At home, at work, on the road, in the shower, while asleep, in my coffin.  It’s a great resource of fun stories about our idiotic capitalist overlords, and occasionally they run with one my tips.  And then it makes Wikipedia. Cool.

Today editor Ben Popken ran a video from a PowerPoint presentation he recently did showing how businesses can hurt themselves with automated customer service, whether it be on the phone or through email. All of his points are valid, and for the most part these robots need to be done away with. But I wanted to pass on a recent example of how efficient it can be as well.

When we moved to Litchfield I was finally able to sign us up with DirecTV, a horrid little penny-pincher of a company that will screw you out of your grandma’s last nickle…but they have all the high defs. And cable here sucks. So we got hooked up literally four hours before the Cardinals’ season opener on FSN Midwest-HD. I wanted a three room system and only had two TVs, so the installer - seeing that I knew what I was doing - didn’t worry about dragging the little 13″ TV from the office to the bedroom to activate it. When I wanted to do that all I’d have to do is call DirecTV, tell them I have a “Error 22″ code (or something like that…those of you Googling that code please ignore my usage of it) and they’ll send me the programming. Okay, cool.

Several days later I did just that, and instead of having to talk to an operator I just pressed the button for service and said “error 22.” It made some noises and then the error code on my TV changed to a different one. I hung up, called back, thirty seconds later I said the new error code and *POOF*: the Fresh Price of Bel-Air was in my bedroom. Awesome. Great use of automated service.

On the other hand, I called a credit card company several days ago to activate our new piece of plastic, hoping and praying all the while to get an automated system so that some human didn’t try to sell me a protection program that I had no use for. Instead I got the real live person (who told me about sixteen times that he was in Phoenix. Phoenix, Arizona or Phoenix, India I don’t know, but it sounded like the former.) The man then proceeded to try to sell me nothing, instead explaining the rewards program, the website, activating the card, and then - gasp - spelled out exactly how long to the exact day the 0% interest lasted and what the APR would be after that.

Damn. I didn’t know credit card companies knew how to be honest like that. Chilling.

I haven’t been. I’ve been right here. But how would you know that?

We’ve been in Litchfield for a month-and-a-half now, or something close enough to that. I know I’ve paid rent twice and there’s another one coming us, so it can’t be too far off.

I’ve resolved myself to write something on here at least every other day. We’ll see how well that works. Leaving comments always encourages more posting.

• Since I last bothered to blab on here I (finally) got Digital Route 66 relaunched with a better design, bigger pictures and more content. So a minor victory on the Web front there. As I mentioned, Emily and I now serve as the Montgomery County representatives of the Route 66 Association of Illinois (though I wonder if their website will ever show this to be true) and this week I have to (finally) see about a couple of town festivals for us to hang out at this summer to pimp the Association as well as shirts (and maybe signs) for us to wear (the shirts, not the signs).