colin's intertube

Rich over at Craven Cottage Newsround pointed out an article posted on Paul DePodesta's blog. He describes possible outcomes of management decisions using this matrix:

Does anything scream "Bad Process" more than Ned's decision to use (and stay with) Julian Tavarez in Saturday night's loss to the Twins? Let's follow the Twins half of the 11th inning:

- J. Tavarez relieved S. Torres
- D. Young struck out swinging
- B. Buscher singled to left
- B. Harris singled to center, B. Buscher to third
- M. Macri hit for M. Guerrier
- M. Macri walked, B. Harris to second
- C. Gomez struck out swinging
- A. Casilla grounded out to shortstop

0 runs, 2 hits, 0 errors

Fool me once, shame on me. Bases loaded w/ one out is usually not a good situation, at least if you're a pitcher. Tavarez was lucky to get out of this mess. Bad Process, but it turned out ok equals dumb luck, says our Moneyball hero. After the Brewers fail to score in the bottom of the 11th, Ned fails to realize that he lucked out, and sends the ineffective Tavarez out for another go. The results are predictable:

- J. Mauer singled to second
- J. Morneau walked, J. Mauer to second
- J. Kubel walked, J. Mauer to third, J. Morneau to second
- D. Young grounded into fielder's choice, J. Mauer out at home, J. Morneau to third, J. Kubel to second
- B. Buscher singled to center, J. Morneau and J. Kubel scored, D. Young to second
- M. DiFelice relieved J. Tavarez
- B. Harris flied out to deep right center, D. Young to third
- M. Cuddyer hit for B. Bass
- M. Cuddyer tripled to deep center, B. Buscher and D. Young scored, M. Cuddyer scored on center fielder M. Cameron's throwing error
- C. Gomez flied out to deep left center

5 runs, 3 hits, 1 errors

Fool me...you can't get fooled again! The Twins scored 3 more runs on Cuddyer's little league home run after Tavarez was removed, but the damage was already done.

Yosted once again.

He has no business working at a high-quality establishment. Fish restaurant waiter AT BEST.

I bought a new server last Friday, spent part of the weekend installing it and migrating all of my email/websites to it. Everything went pretty smoothly, but I did have one hiccup with my Postfix/Dovecot LDA setup. When trying to deliver a message, I would get this sequence in my maillogs:

Jun  9 12:39:10 www2 postfix/pipe[24300]: fatal: user= command-line attribute specifies mail system maildrop group id 126
Jun  9 12:39:11 www2 postfix/qmgr[24159]: warning: private/dovecot socket: malformed response
Jun  9 12:39:11 www2 postfix/qmgr[24159]: warning: transport dovecot failure -- see a previous warning/fatal/panic logfile record for the problem description
Jun  9 12:39:11 www2 postfix/master[13698]: warning: process /usr/local/libexec/postfix/pipe pid 24301 exit status 1
Jun  9 12:39:11 www2 postfix/master[13698]: warning: /usr/local/libexec/postfix/pipe: bad command startup -- throttling

At some point, postfix must have stopped allowing stuff to be sent through the 'pipe' command running as whatever you have in setgid_group. My dovecot line in master.cf previously looked like

dovecot   unix  -       n       n       -       -       pipe
  flags=DRhu user=dovecot:maildrop argv=/usr/local/libexec/dovecot/deliver -d ${recipient}

I fixed this by dropping the group:

dovecot   unix  -       n       n       -       -       pipe
  flags=DRhu user=dovecot argv=/usr/local/libexec/dovecot/deliver -d ${recipient}

Works fine.

The ugliest yard in the history of the universe may be getting uglier! Last summer, a house down the street had a ridiculous pile of mulch delivered and piled in their driveway. Slowly, over the next couple months, the mulch was spread out over their ENTIRE front yard. By the end of the summer, the yard was approximately 90% mulch, and 10% rocks and various plants/weeds haphazrdly scattered about.

The end result was far from pleasing to the eye:

Do the Mulch People hate mowing that much? I cannot comprehend how anybody would think such an awful yard could be attractive.

Last week, as I was driving home from work, I saw that the Mulch People had a new pile of mulch in their driveway!

What could they possibly have planned? Convert the back yard into a mulch pit? Change the front yard from mulch pile into mulch mountain? Or perhaps convert the driveway from concrete to mulch? I suspect we will find out over the coming months.

Thank you, Mulch People. Thank you for the tremendous eye sore that is your "lawn". I'm sure your neighbors are happy about their plummeting property value.

Found at an antique store in Madison, the best St. Louis Cardinals pennant I have ever seen: