The Sports Economist

The Sports Economist:

$20 million in revenue sharing – a welcome subsidy for teams that choose not to compete – is responsible in part for the rosy financials of the Rays. King George, you can be sure, is fuming.I get the sense that the Rays’ strategy is not about winning games in Tampa, but rather to cash in on a move to better digs, and perhaps the sale of the franchise.

Hockey fans take note: as we move closer to a labor solution that seems to involve serious and real revenue sharing, we need to remember that it is not a panacea. It merely changes the problems.

To ones hopefully more manageable and less draconian.

Finally… more than two sentences and a link….

Finally, time and energy to do something more than linkblogging.

At work, we’re crunching away at release 2.0 of the beast, which is a major deal. On top of that, I’ve been working to bring new staff up to speed, and getting all of our documentation written and in good shape, since we’re committing to moving to writing the specs BEFORE we code, not after — but the sync-up is meaning a lot of time and energy. the joy of making up for previously cut corners…. But things are going pretty well, at least so far, so that’s good. But ti’s been mentally tiring, which means I just haven’t felt like spending a lot of time blogging as well.

I’m frankly used to doing smaller projects than the Beast has become — where I’m primary designer, coder, and (usually) the operations crew. Now, I’m learning how to design and lead a team of coders — where my coding contribution is minor, if it exists at all. It’s a much different mindset, and one I’ve been having to find a comfort zone on. Trying to figure this out has been fun, in a way, but stressful in a positive way, and using a lot of mental and physical energy. And I hopefully haven’t been driving my crew too crazy figuring out how to translate from my virtual whiteboard to one they can see. I think once the transition is done we’ll have a much better product, too, but we grew so quickly and so much we’re now having to go back and rebuild parts of the foundation, places we made conscious decisions to build to throw away to make the system happen when it had to. We’re still under the gun, but it’s a good time to start that work on a few key components. But between now and July? We’re gonna be busy. I think it’ll be worth it…

It’s been seriously busy on the home front, also. The weather finally cooperated, and 3 weeks later than planned, they came and ripped out the old patio and poured a new one. Early results are quite positive (pictures soon) — a much nicer, and more usable space, plus improved access to the hot tub, and the side yard is finally usable for storage, cleaning up the clutter. And new patio begat new furniture, all in teak, and friday, I had a landscaping crew come in and tear out all of the weeds and the old raised beds and all of the old garden stuff, so it doesn’t look like there was a war in the yard, and while there’s a lot of planting and work left to do, 90% of the spring weeding and demolition are done. Out front, the lillies and the first of the dahliahs have woken up, the roses are in their first massive bloom, and the irises are starting their spring display, so all looks good (and the weeds are mostly under control). Next weekend, construction starts on the new raised veggie beds, and working towards the new beds and plantings and paths, and the flagstone patio under the arbor, and the arbor, and… oh, god, a busy summer. At least I won’t spend a summer digging weeds….

One thing that’s been frustrating me are the number of home projects in various stages of not-done, so I spent this weekend trying to finish them. The two doors I wanted replaced got replaced, and we changed the swing of the door to the main bathroom so the door opens into the hall — one place the folks who build the Eichler houses didn’t waste space was the bathrooms (they’re both 5×10′, with bathtubs) — so having the door open into the bathroom made a small space cramped. Opening out makes it feel larger, and gives us a wall for towels that was previously blocked.

The other bathroom, which has been laughing at me for months, finally got plumbed (and I *think* the vanity drain has stopped seeping), and I got the new shower curtain up, and the rest of the shelves and towel holders and the lick. It finally looks, and acts, like a bathroom again. Assuming the leak really IS fixed, all I have left is moulding (door and cove), and recaulking the tub, and then fixing holes in the plaster and sanding, and it’s ready for paint. the other bathroom is in about the same shape, so they can both be ready for paint in May. The living room got ignored this week, although I did box up some books in the areas where the movable shelves are leaving in favor of the builts-ins I’m going to build. Now that the bathroom is done (really!) I can focus on it some more… Oh, once I replace the water line to the ice maker. It’s spring, and ice would be a good thing.

and sometime this week, laurie’s taking me down to buy the new Barbeque — god help you if you decide to upgrade your patio folks, you’re going to replace everything on it, too. trust me. The cement is the easy part… (giggle). And then, who knows? maybe a party to break it all in.

The teak patio set is awesome, by the way. I found a place that sells primarily to hotels and businesses when they were having a sale to the public. it’s all Indonesian plantation teak, top quality, all built like a tank with high quality wood using mortise and tenon, and it won’t require oiling and sanding like lower quality teak — and it cost less than some “screw together” teak sets I saw, although it wasn’t remotely cheap. But it should last for a long time, and it’s quite pretty.

And the state of the server migration? oh, grumble moan. Ask me again in a week. I think it’s the next priority (then the ice maker)…. And that’s why there’s no photos: I’ve taken down the old photo stuff, and odn’t have the new one up yet. Stay tuned…..

Since I’m in crunch mode through July, Laurie and I are talking about vacation in August for a couple of weeks — going north (gee, what a surprise). Right now, the tentative itinerary is to take two weeks and drive, hitting Seattle going north for a couple of days and an Aquasox game, then Vancouver, and then driving up the sunshine coast, probably to Powell River and taking the ferry across to Comox, then up to Campbell River for a couple of days, to allow us to explore the north island. Then down to Victoria, and then we’ll hit Portland on the way south again.

Between now and then, I’m going to try to find a couple of days for a long weekend down in SoCal with the family, and perhaps take in disneyland once the 50th celebration begins… we’ll see. We’re also going to head up to Fremont peak in May to play with the 30″ scope, which means I need to get my ETX up and running again — but not until the server migration is complete, or I’ll never finish it. And I need to find time to play with my new Digital Rebel XT…

Maybe I’ll take pictures of the new barbeque….

SportsBiz: Opening Day

SportsBiz: Opening Day:

It’s Opening Day in baseball and despite Commissioner Bud Selig’s craven surrender several years ago to the money being waved in his face by ESPN so that years of tradition were thrown away and the Reds no longer open the baseball season,

As I remember it, this wasn’t Selig’s doing, but Marge Schott. She chose to break the tradition, and once she did, Selig refused to give it back to her the next year.

And more power to him. Schott had no sense of history or tradition, unless she could squeeze a buck out of it. And while the Reds opening the season was tradition, you have to agree that yankees/sox is a much more powerful and interesting story.

So perhaps Marge did us a favor by allowing Selig and the league to create an opening day that generates excitement instead of JUST tradition.

Tradtion has its place. Slavish reliance on tradition is one step onto the path towards irrelevance.

The Sports Economist

The Sports Economist:

High salaries for workers and rising prices for the product (ticket prices are reportedly up 6.3 per cent) reflect a healthy business, with high and growing demand. They are problems any business would like to have

unless, like hockey, you don’t see the revenue curve level off fast enough, and you spend money you don’t have. Rising revenues can flatten, and unless you see it coming and be ready for it, you can outspend your budget before you notice, and then you’re in trouble. Adn the inertia of increasing salaries is a lot harder to deal with than a fan’s inertia of buying tickets in the face of increasing prices. Stopping the salary train is very difficult.

On top of thisserious financial disparity continues to exist betweeen the haves (Yankees, Red Sox, Braves) and the have-nots (Royals, A’s) — a ticking time bomb that is just looking for an excuse to explode, and one the Billy Beane’s of the world can’t solve, merely continue to defer. Sooner or later, he’s going to trip, or sneeze, or blink.

before declaring the sport healthy and happy, I’d want to know where the advance ticket sale increase came from: a normally well-attended team leaving a down cycle? new ballparks generating temporary demand where none existed? some cinderella team geting a burst of support it won’t sustain into future years? That number may well be less than it seems to be at first glance.

And any time I see ticket prices rising above inflation, I worry. I see that as mortgaging today’s salaries against future dollars, because you are sending tickets closer to that nebulous point where fans declare “too expensive” and start looking for reason to stop buying, or buy fewer. you can cotinue to hope to drive demand beyond that point and defer it, but as long as tickets prices are growing faster than the salaries that pay them, you’re at risk of some event changing fans perceptions and redefining that line downward suddenly.

this isn’t to say things aren’t going well for baseball — they clearly are (and even I, after years of more or less ignoring baseball, have been following it a bit again, and have even — gasp — bought tickets to a game. for laurie. well, mostly (it’s A’s/Mariners, and she’s become a big M’s fan). So if even I’ve gotten interested again, they’re doing many things right.

but if you look behind the good numbers, you see a sport that really ought to be doing even better — IMHO, salaries are escalating too fast, driving ticket prices beyond inflation, and the revenue inequities create an unstable franchise environment potential — and gee, they had to move a team, and it took how long to find a new home? for the first time in how many years? (hello, seattle pilots!). but unlike hockey, they didn’t have the teams go bankrupt or owners go to jail….

Not trying to rain on baseball’s parade: just trying to remind us that beyond the good numbers are many challenges and problems yet to be solved in major league baseball. Steroids is almost a non-starter, except the union futzed around on it so long, they allowed it to become a problem that never should have existed. but it’s also one that the average fan just isn’t going to care about, and will soon be relegated to the hard-cores looking for an excuse to complain…

Google Gulp

Google Gulp:

At Google our mission is to organize the world’s information and make it useful and accessible to our users. But any piece of information’s usefulness derives, to a depressing degree, from the cognitive ability of the user who’s using it. That’s why we’re pleased to announce Google Gulp (BETA)™ with Auto-Drink™ (LIMITED RELEASE), a line of “smart drinks” designed to maximize your surfing efficiency by making you more intelligent, and less thirsty.