I was prepared to treat this year’s Major League Baseball playoffs with casual indifference. I had no real ties to any of the teams. And after the Yankees went up 3-0 and the Cardinals went up 2-0 in the LCS, I was all set.

Then the Red Sox made an unprecedented comeback to eliminate the Yankees. And the Astros won three games to go up 3-2 before the Cardinals evened their series. Now they have pulled me back in. And whether the National League is represented by the Cardinals and the Astros, I’ll be watching the World Series.

I just don’t get Baseball Interference and Obstruction. Last night, A-Rod motions with his hand, knocks the ball out of Arroyo’s mitt, and is eventually called out on interference. Jeter, who had rounded the bases, is sent back to first even though he would have easily reached second without the interference. Last year, Mueller obstructs Tejada as he rounds third. Tejada is awarded third, allowed to advance at his own risk, and eventually ruled out at home.

Why is there a punitive penalty for interference, but no punitive penalty for obstruction? In the one case, the offending team is punished by losing a base that it would have clearly reached without the interference. In the other case, the offending team is not always punished - the umpires rule based upon their determination of the expected outcome without obstruction.

It seems to me that there should be a punitive penalty in both cases. As it is, there are cases in which it is to the fielder’s advantage to obstruct baserunners.

… there’s a lot of money to be made selling installable enterprise-ish software like Basecamp. The problem for us is that even though the revenue is there, we don’t have the manpower to service a wide and varying installed base. And – even more fundamentally – we don’t want to. I’m afraid that a large installed base will divert our focus away from progress and more towards management.

That’s a bit of a twist. The conventional thinking is that software is scalable - major non-recurring costs up front to develop the software and minor recurring cost for each copy sold.

I wonder how they would do selling a Basecamp appliance? The majority of support requests have to do with installation, customization and upgrades. Sold as an appliance, installation issues go away. Since Basecamp is currently sold as a hosted service, I assume that there is no customization - only configuration. Leaving only upgrades as an issue.

NewsGator Online Services is now free. Given the competitive pressure of Bloglines, I think the price reduction was inevitable. NewsGator couldn’t continue to charge a premium price for a product insufficiently better than the free alternative.

I was once a believer in the integration of email and RSS and purchased a copy of NewsGator over a year ago. But my practical experience has soured, the deluge of RSS through my email archive has proven unmanageable, and searching my email archive has proven less effective than searching the internet.

I switched to Bloglines several months ago, as Read Anywhere became my top requirement in a newsreader. Both NewsGator and Radio Userland fell by the wayside in that switch. But a free NewsGator Online could lure me back.

I just wish that I knew how Bloglines and NewsGator were planning on making money. I’d like to hitch my wagon to a horse with some bottom.

Thanks to Tivo and Spike TV, I’ve just finished season seven of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. I had forgotten how much I enjoyed the final seasons of Deep Space Nine. Deep Space Nine suffered by comparison with Babylon 5. Deep Space Nine had the budget; but Babylon 5 had the writing and the vision.

But Babylon 5 aside, Deep Space Nine was my favorite Star Trek Series. It spent more time developing characters and its story line had more coherence and depth. Star Trek may have lost its way since, but Deep Space Nine stands as a reminder of what Star Trek can be.

The MasterMind is sitting pretty. Reuben Droughns rushed for 176 yards on 38 carries with a touchdown. The defense held Oakland to a single field goal and those points were generated by an Oakland interception return to the Denver 20 yard line. Receivers other than Rod Smith are stepping up and making plays.

The defense earns another week as the top ranked defense in the AFC. And the offense moves up to the second ranked offense (top ranked rushing offense) in the AFC. The season is shaping up very nicely for the Broncos.

I thought that the Bailey-Portis trade was a mistake. But I’m very happy that everyone is proving me wrong. The Broncos offense is back and running on all cylinders. And the defense is coming together much better than I had envisioned.

It looks like there are some improvements to Radio Userland comments ahead. Peeking at Steve Kirk’s site, the changes seem to call for a consolidation of the comment and trackback counter code into a single http call and the addition of sp and ep parameters (presumably start post id and end post id) when making the call. I expect to have an updated version of my standalone comments and trackback package available shortly after the Radio Userland update is made available.

P.S. I wonder if it means anything that Steve’s Radio Userland number is 111853 and mine is 118153?

Dave is unhappy with the ads in the engadget feed. I think that he’s placing the blame in the wrong place - the problem lies in his newsreader’s mishandling of the feed html not in the ads. If the div tag was properly handled, then the ad would consist of only 2 lines.

A successful RSS feed requires good signal to noise. Engadget easily passes that test.

It seems that the spam-master is nothing if not persistent. It continues to probe my defenses even though my latest Comment Spam counter-measure has locked it out so far. Here’s the recap of my current defenses:

1. Both robots.txt and the robots meta tag are used to prevent the indexing of comments. Presumably eliminating the motivation for comment spam [although that didn’t deter my adversary].
2. Tag moderation prevents links from being displayed until the comment is approved [which also did not deter my adversary].
3. Outbound link blacklist blocks comments that link to known bad sites.

I hope that my defenses continue to hold - the next step from here is adding support for the MT-Blacklist Master Blacklist.

I was on the Upper East Side the other day, and I dropped by the new Juan Valdez Cafe at Lexington and 57th. It could be first week jitters, but I doubt that Starbucks has anything to worry about. They don’t have the institutional handbook that makes the Starbucks run smoothly. And I doubt that Colombian Coffee Growers Association wants employees to respond that it’s like a Frappuccino when they’re asked what a Nevado is.

It is possible to compete with established corporate giants. But you need to bring passion and personal commitment to the table. I don’t see how the Colombian Coffee Grower’s Association is going to find the passion and commitment to become a serious threat to Starbucks.

30 Oct: Juan Valdex Redux
1 Nov: Juan Valdez Tridux