Baseball

Well, I think today may be the last straw for me and Major League Baseball. I've stuck through a lot of things (strikes, favorite players leaving the Dodgers for crazy salaries, etc.) but in watching Manny Ramirez's at bat in the 6th inning today at Coors Field, I have finally had enough (I think). Ask any Little League baseball player what is the fundamental rule of umpire interactions and they will (should) all say you don't argue strikes with the umpire. It is a traditional rule of baseball enforced with an iron fist by the home plate umpire. Manny comes in as a pinch hitter, first pitch is a called strike, which he argues with the umpire about, gets ejected and leaves the game. Who does this guy think he is?

So, to back up a bit, Manny has been with the Dodgers for a bit over 2 years and initially had some success (hitting homers mostly) until it became official that he was using banned substances and was suspended for 50 games. More importantly, he exemplifies the mentality of so many of baseballs' mega stars that think the world revolves around them. They demand (and get) egregious salaries as if they were the only person on the team. Baseball, unlike many other sports really requires the entire team to win games. A great pitcher only pitches every 5th game, a great hitter only hits 1 out of every 9 at bats in the game and usually sees 4 or 5 plate appearances in a game. A great fielder can only field balls that are hit (or thrown) in his general vicinity. Conversely, while basketball is a team sport, a truly great player can carry the team much more significantly than a great baseball player can. The same can be said about a great quarterback (he does need other players but since he touches the ball every single offensive play, he has a much higher contribution to the winning success of the team). My point is, no matter how many home runs you hit, if your pitching stinks, you'll still most games or if your defense boots plays, you'll still lose most games.

Also important to note, in all top level professional sports, everyone that dresses out is the best of the best. There are no bad players in any major league level professional sport, they are all tremendous, the pick of the pick. It just happens that some manage to shine at a higher level than others.

Somehow though we have managed to elevate some of these players into the stratosphere and I do mean "we" as the public fan base. Like all things, these teams come down to money and if a player has celebrity qualities, he will draw the crowds which translates into revenue. Where things go astray is some of these players actually begin to believe that the world does revolve around them and begin to show that in their play. As in Manny Ramirez. He left Boston because of this attitude and I'm sure the behind the scenes reason he was traded from the Dodgers today was the same (cutting his $45M salary probably wasn't a bad side effect either). I used to blame the agents for much of this activity, but I think they are like blood sucking trial lawyers, they just go where the money is and do what they can to enhance their fees. They didn't create these messes, they just enhanced the messes being created all over the place.

I've been waiting for years for a new round of Cal Ripkens and Tony Gwynns to come to the game but I don't see them. People who play because they are talented and they truly love the sport and the franchises. I've boycotted just about everything to do with MLB at least as far as my wallet is concerned over the last few years. I went to the game today because I really love the game and the Dodgers but Manny's episode was too much, I'm throwing in the towel on baseball.

While I'm at it, isn't the purpose of the "commissioner" to regulate the game? In other words, promote what is good and punish/prevent what is bad? Why is it after all of these years and all of the "dirt" coming out and even several Congressional inquiries does Bud Selig still waffle on the thought of across the board drug testing? Why doesn't baseball suspend players for the rest of the year for first positive and for life for a second positive? It is a simple rule, we all know it is bad for the game and yet, it nearly take a federal grand jury to punish anyone at the MLB level.

Since I'm really throwing the towel at baseball, what the hell is up with unions? Since when do people who have multimillon dollar contracts need union representation? Send Donald Fehr and his whole bunch of cronies out to lunch permanently. I could see the value of unions 75 years ago when players were not much more than slaves and property, but lets face it, that ain't the face of today's player. Any occupation who's minimum wage is $400,000/year (2009 minimum) does not need union representation.

So I'm officially through with MLB until it cleans up its act, boots the prima donnas and becomes the national pastime with honor and dignity again. Somebody send me a message when that happens, I'll be busy rooting for Norway in the national curling finals.

My Chevelle project

Some of you probably know something about my car project, maybe some of you don't. Well, its springtime and I've got the bug to get out and do some driving in it. Of course, like other projects, there is always way too many things to be done and never enough time to get to them. Adding a couple little boys into the mix doesn't do much for that schedule thing either.

The car started life with me in 1999 as a more or less basic 1970 Chevelle from North Carolina. The reason I mention where I got it is because that is also where most of the rust in the car came from. When I first bought it, I had big plans for a complete frame off project so I really didn't worry too much about rust and things like that. Also, for the $5,000 I paid for it, I probably didn't have a lot of room to negotiate either. This is a photo of the car shortly after I started working on it over at Donnie's shop. The original 307 small block and 3-speed trans have been removed at this point. What was left was the fake "SS" badging and the fantastic Maaco paint job the covered the original sea green paint but also covered the North Carolina rust patches.

The first steps in the project was to have a motor built for the car and to rebuild the entire running gear. The first part was easy, I called Rob Vischer who owned Rev Racing Engines in Great Falls, MT at the time and asked him to build a blown big block Chevy motor that would make at least 800 hp on pump gas. He got to work on that task and about a year later, I was the proud owner of a 540 c.i. Chevy with a 8-71 blower and a pair of Holley Dominators. On the dyno with a basic street tuneup, the motor made just over 900 hp on bad racing fuel. On pump gas, it made a little over 800 hp. Rob was pretty sure that the motor would make 1100-1200 hp on race fuel with a racing tuneup but since I had no intentions of racing it, we never pushed it that way on the dyno.

At the same time the motor was being built, I attacked the running gear and chassis. The entire suspension and driverain was replaced. This included a Ford 9" from Currie Enterprises, Hotchkis suspension in the front and rear, power disc brakes all the way around and a new 4L-80E transmission from TCI. I wanted to put a Tremec T-56 in but they wouldn't support any installation over 500 hp. There are a number of options now for high horsepower manual transmissions but that the time, it was automatic for this kind of power.

Over the course of the next 8 years or so, I continued to work on tuning the motor to make it run on the street. Unfortunately, the motor as it was originally built just wasn't very streetable and 2 rebuilds later, I think I've managed to get it streetable. Both rebuilds occured because the solid roller lifter's needle bearings exploded and demolished the cam. The first time it happened, I had had the motor for a couple years and had put a few hundred miles on the car. I trucked the motor to Great Falls and asked Rob to rebuild it. After that rebuild, I down jetted the carbs and continued to search for a streetable tuneup. A few years later, basically the same thing happened again. This time, Rob had sold his engine shop and gone off to work for Lotus in Detriot, MI. I turned to a guy in Bozeman, MT, Wes St. John who owns Internal Combustion Machine. Wes had just rebuilt a small motor for a friend of mine and was recommended. Doing a lot of research, I decided to move away from the solid roller lifers and the crazy .750 lift cam that had been in the motor. I opted for a street cam for nitrous motors from Comp Cams and hydraulic roller lifters. This would make the motor more streetable, eliminate the need for constantly setting the valves but at a cost of loss of top end power band. Ok, so I lost about 1000-1500 rpm on the topside and probably 200 hp or so. Probably not much of a loss for my purposes.

Wes is meticulous and very busy. That translated into my engine being at his shop for almost 2 years. However, when I got it back from him, it was in perfect condition, full of new parts and a fresh rebuild. I was happy to get the motor back last summer. At the same time, I added some O2 sensors to the exhaust stream so that I could hopefully tune the motor better using the LM-2 data logger from Innovate Motorsports. By the time I got to working on everything last fall, the summer car season was pretty much over. I did however, have enough time to fire the motor up and play with the data logger a bit. That led to more understanding of what was happening with the motor, which also led to knowing that the Dominator carbs were probably the biggest source of my problems. I simply could not get the motor to idle and operate at a partial throttle without dumping excess gas into the engine. So, the car project was shelved for the winter.

Now, this spring, arrives, with a renewed attack on getting the car up and running. While I would have liked to convert the car to fuel injection, the $4k-$6k for the parts needed for electronic injection just wasn't in the budget. However, a pair of 4150 Double Pumpers specially modified for blowers was, if I could get the Dominators sold. Well, everything worked out and the car now has new carburetors on it and is ready to be tuned up to drive. I just have to have someone hang out with me on a Saturday and get it tuned and running.

I'm sure there will be plenty more to write on the topic of the car but for now, this is going to have to be it.

Bad business sense in the .com era

UPDATE: 23FEB2010

I have been contacted by Casey Hall, VP of Sales and Marketing at Extron, about this matter. I've had a very cordial conversation with him and received feedback about why their channel works the way it does. Basically, they work very hard to control the channel so that the only companies selling their product are companies that are trained on the installation and support of their products. That I can appreciate, but it still doesn't answer one of my complaints about locating these resellers. I gave Casey that feedback and that is something they will have to work on improving.

He also addressed my technical challenges of the lack of speaker bind posts in their wall plate products, summarizing that I had recieved bad information when I had called the company. They don't offer the bind posts, but there is no technical reason, most likely it just hasn't been asked for. Finally, regarding purchasing the amplifier product I originally was searching for, he is putting me in touch with their internal product sales folks to help me purchase the product directly from Extron as a design consultant.

All in all, this effort has turned a negative, grumpy attitude on my part (justified or not) into a positive partnership between our companies. So, I guess the ".com" stuff really does work after all. :)

---------------------- ORIGINAL POST -----------------------------

I really thought that making mention of something in the ".com era" was a phrase of the past. Well, I've been pushed over the edge by a company called Extron. I've specified their multimedia modular wall jacks for several years now, mainly because of the high quality of the pieces. Yes, I've had complaints, namely for as many parts/pieces as they make, it is impossible to get exactly the right combination of modular pieces you want into a single wall plate. That combined with the grief I've had trying to get line input speaker jacks incorporated with their wall plates has given me grey hair.

I've put up with that though because when it comes to quality of the product, it is hard to beat. I've even gone to having a second wall plate adjacent to the Extron plate simply to support speaker bind posts. Extron claims they are concerned about having the high current speaker jacks in the same box as signal lines. While I appreciate their concerns, lets be honest here, anyone putting a system together with the kind of speaker currents that could cause problems on ethernet lines or shielded signal lines is not using this type of product.

This company also makes some very high quality switching and amplifing products for commercial AV installations. I've specified a few of these products for some of the K-12 schools I've designed for the multimedia outlets and the schools are very happy with the products. I've never really looked into buying their product, that is something the contractors deal with through their various distribution channels. Now, I'm getting to my point. Our main conference room in our Denver headquarters needed a small AV amplifier to drive a pair of in-ceiling speakers. I thought (wrongly) that it would be no big deal for me to pick up one of these items that for our internal use.

This is where the whole thing goes straight into the bucket. For some reason, the company protects their distribution channel like they are selling top secret nuclear arms to the US government. Go ahead, try to find some of their AV equipment for sale somewhere. You can find a few of their wall jacks here and there but that is about it. Ok, next step, I contact Extron directly through various links on their website. First response is a canned response that informs me that they only offer sales information to authorized designers and consultants. Second response is from a sales guy at the company who asks a lot of questions and sounds sympathetic but advises me I've just been dealing with the wrong access points into the company and that he was going to take care of me. Says that he will send me a bunch of information on how to buy stuff shortly. Note to sales guys: DON'T SAY YOU ARE GOING TO DO SOMETHING RELATED TO CUSTOMER SERVICE AND THEN NOT FOLLOW THROUGH! Yes, you guessed correctly, no response from the guy has arrived.

Ok, I then try contacting several of the AV companies I know that might be able to buy or resell their product. All of them inform me that Extron makes becoming a reseller very difficult and that they have all given up (or are still considering the value) on becoming a reseller. One does have the ability to sell but after a day of them trying to get pricing for the one stupid little switch device, the best they can do is slightly less than MSRP of $1,300.

Can a business, especially an AV product based company really expect to survive in a world where everyone expects to be able to locate and find resellers of product on the Net? Doesn't it go without saying that 15 years into the ".com era" all companies would realize this? I guess what I'm saying is, Extron can take a short step off a tall building. I don't need this kind of grief and I can put another company's products into future designs.

"rich" people

Over the last few weeks, I've had a couple encounters with people who have made comments related to "rich" people. I've head these types of comments for years, but I've been thinking more about them of late. These are comments that hint of anger, jealousy and outright disdain towards people who have wealth. I've never understood this attitude. Maybe I've been lucky but all of the "rich" people I've been around have almost all been fantastic people.

In my own life by American standards, I've been very poor and very rich and now consider myself somewhere in between. In terms of the standards that really matter to me, I'm wealthy beyond description now given the wonderful family I have. My point being, I've lived with no income and no cash in pocket and I still never resented people who had everything and then some. And when I've had cash to spare, it never really changed who I was, except that maybe I was more charitable with money and gave more away than at other times in my life. So, I just have trouble with statements like "I could never imagine that kind of life" or "some rich guy did so and so". In every instance that I've ever heard someone say that, the person saying these things would likely be "richer" than 75% of the world's population. I guess this leads into more of class envy than anything else.

I remind my wife often that if you always compare yourself and your situation to people that have more money than you, you will always feel poor and underprivileged. However, if you turn around and look at the world around you, most people go through the same challenges you do and many are much worse off. You can always find people with more assets and more wealth than you but those shouldn't be the metrics by which you judge your own life. That is a recipe for certain failure. If you choose to, you can always find people around you with less wealth than you too.

I have many friends who are multi-millionaires, I even know a few billionaires, and for the most part, they all are wonderful people. In fact, most of them, you couldn't even tell they are wealthy just sitting next to them on the plane or at a restaurant. Most have kids and are your typical families. The main difference being they don't sweat the small things in life, mainly because they don't have to. They do struggle with discipline for their children, bad airline connections, traffic on the highways and a whole host of other day to day challenges that we all face.

I think people tend to forget that they are people too and have families just like the rest of us. Maybe I am so fond of the Yellowstone Club simply because that place is built and designed around letting families be families. Every time I'm there, I find kids running around having a great time, parents relaxing and not worrying about their kids and people in general just being themselves. The membership is by and large made up of self made wealth and is a bit of a younger population than typical populations of wealthy people. I think that lends itself to a better environment all around. Yet people who don't know that or don't understand label it as "the playground for billionaires" when in fact, its primary purpose is to let families enjoy themselves with some privacy. Lets face facts, there is a higher probability of kidnapping and extortion when people have deep pockets. The privacy afforded by the Club simply lets people be people without worrying about stuff like that. Of course there are lots of other benefits of that place but to me and many of the members I know, that is the primary reason for their being there.

I also occasionally hear "rich" people referred to as "rich snobs" and I suppose that mainly comes from some of the exclusive memberships people with wealth participate in. Things like the country club or private beaches or whatnot. However, I'd like to point out that there is a population of "rednecks" out there that are just as exclusive and just as snobbish, just in different ways. Maybe they don't see themselves as being in a glass house when they point their fingers at the "rich snobs"?

So, in the end, why do people in general have such a disdain for people with wealth? Is it simply because they themselves don't have monetary wealthy? Is it because they squandered opportunities or never walked through doors when they might have had a chance to become financially successful? This is America and I have yet to see laws written the keep anyone from reaching success. Yes, it is hard, very hard at times and takes guts, endurance and willingness to take risk (and a certain amount of luck doesn't hurt), but in the end, everyone has the chance to strike it rich in this country. I think it is more important for people to find happiness with what they have in their lives. If they allow the bitterness of looking at greener grass across the street to hold their focus, they are setting themselves up for a lot of disappointment in their life.

So here's to a new year full of hope and optimism. Follow your dreams and passions and don't worry about what the person standing next to you has, make your own destiny.