The URL is http://www.archermind.com

This “experiment” has been a failure and it should be abandoned.

The irony is that Selig’s decision marginalized baseball’s All-Star Game, which has always been the very best all-star contest in sports. For many years since it began in 1933, the two leagues have had a very real rivalry, but when Selig plunked down a contrived reason to win, the participants shrugged it off.

“It’s a joke,” one Hall of Famer said in 2005. “No one is going to risk any injury to win that game, and [the players] are not in favor of it [deciding home field advantage for the Series].”

In an article for the AP recently, Tom Glavine agreed. “I’m not a big fan of the home-field advantage thing. I don’t think most players are.” Glavine should know, he’s a player representative to the union and he’s been involved at the highest levels in negotiations with the owners for more than a decade.

“I just think that in an effort to continue the goodwill that was going on between the players and the owners, this is something that we agreed to do because Fox really wanted it. So it was kind of an olive branch thing. We agreed to do it, but I don’t think any of us agrees with it per se,” Glavine said. “We’re basically doing it because other people want us to. And so we do. In a perfect world, we would all love the team with the best record to have home-field advantage. But we keep being told that we can’t do that. I’m not quite sure why.”

In 2002, when the two managers - Joe Torre and Bob Brenly - misused their rosters, leaving them without pitchers for an extra-inning game, the media and fans were outraged that the game was ended in a tie. The poor planning by the league to foresee this possibility was the fault, not efforts of the players. Tying the game to the World Series isn’t going to make fans want to watch it. Fox Sports, who were left to explain the outcome of the 2002 game to their audience, has demanded the connection, thinking it draws viewers. Yet, in both 2004 and 2005, the All-Star Game drew the lowest ratings in its’ history.

Great players, exciting plays, and drama make for a good All-Star Game. That will occur naturally (as it has in recent years). There’s no need to manufacture it, and the unfairness of rewarding one league the home field advantage because of an exhibition game outcome (the American League has won every game since the ruling) is evident. Why should a National League team (say the Cubs) who may post baseball’s best record, have to play a deciding Game Seven of the Fall Classic on the road because a member of the Seattle Mariners drove in the winning run in the All-Star Game back in July?

Mr. Selig, wipe away this absurd decision and give us back the All-Star Game and World Series the way they used to be.

The conditions were perfect, the course was very flat, and I ran strong. My official time was 3:47:16 - nearly 12 minutes faster than my first marathon, which I ran in Nashville in April of 2007. For the record, I finished 411th out of 1,263 runners. I was 72nd out of 145 men aged 40-49.

I was feeling very good through the 18-mile mark, and then I started to tighten up. I gutted out the last 8 miles or so, really slowing my pace. Should I run another marathon, my goal is to run a more even “split” - meaning that my first half (which I ran in 1:48 this time) and second half (which I ran in 1:58) are nearly identical or at least much closer.

Those of you who pledged my run, thank you! I raised nearly $2,000 for Dakoske/Phoenix Treatment Center. The money will go to help pay the cost of drug and alcohol treatment for their patients. Also, for the rest of you, there’s still time to pledge.

If you pledged, you’ll receive a pledge packet in the next few days with details of where to send your check and how your money helps.

I appreciate everyone’s generosity so much. It’s a great cause. I was overwhelmed by the outpuring of donations and also good wishes for my run. I really felt like I was running for a purpose, which helps when you’re logging 26-plus miles. By the way, a funny thing happened on Saturday morning - I missed my ride to the race! My neighbor knocked on my door, but I had biked down to the store to pick up a few carb boosters for the race. When I got back, she was gone, and I didn’t have a ride across town. So, I rode my bike the 3 miles to the start and was there in time for the gun. Phew!

I loved the race and I’m sure I’ll do another marathon in the future. For now, I’m looking forward to some short runs with the Traverse City Track Club, and a marathon relay in August in Crystal Lake. If there’s anyone who wants to run the relay as part of my team, email me. You’ll only have to do a five-miler.

Until next time, keep on running.

The best thing about TravBuddy.com: Social networking. The site allows users to find travel buddies planning to travel to the same places at the same times, or to learn about destinations from people who have been there or actually live there. In fact, some users find friends on TravBuddy who they can travel with or get help from when they take their trip.

Another wonderful part of the site are the reams of travel reviews. There are, as of last count, more than 17,000 reviews of restaurants, bars, hotels and attractions. Need to know where the best martini is in Madrid? You can find out. Want to find the best place to rent a kayak in Sydney? That’s there too.

Users can also create travel-based blogs and upload travel photos. The photos (750,000 have been posted to blogs so far) are a great way to actually see places you want to go to, but the blogs are a little thin. Though TravBuddy boasts 65,000+ blogs, most of them are old our rarely updated, and many of them offer little to help you plan a trip. The reviews are best for getting the nitty-gritty details.

As of March 2008, TravBuddy has nearly 1,350,000 registered contributors and it’s growing, as it has been featured prominently on the NBC Nightly News, Popular Science, Real Simple Travel, and other media outlets.

I signed up on TravBuddy a few months ago because I’m going to the South Pacific in 2009. In a very short time (within hours) I had connected with folks who had been where I plan to travel and they gave me valuable tips. I also met several very friendly TravBuddy users who gave me advice on booking flights. The community at TravBuddy is wonderful.

The worst thing about TravBuddy.com: the blogs are not updated frequently (user-driven so that’s to be expected somewhat). For that reason, the site just misses a 5-star rating.

The least you need to know: TravBuddy.com is a social networking site to connect travelers with similar interests and itineraries. It’s especially appealing to adventure travelers, the types who cringe at the thought of a bus tour or a guided walk through a museum. However, it still offers a community that will benefit all types of travelers. It’s a fantastic way to safely connect with people in the places you want to travel to, to learn the secrets of enjoying that destination. You may also make a travel buddy who will throw on a backpack and take the trip with you!

Website rating: 4 out of 5 stars

URL: www.travbuddy.com

Earlier this year I wanted to challenge myself to build a website completely with CSS and PHP. I did a a makeover of my workhorse site The Baseball Page, which has been online since 1995, chugging along with a faithful following and generating excellent page views and income via Google Adsense. All the content has been and always will be free, and with a loyal group of writers and contributors, the site is fresh.

The site has much more color and it relies more on graphics than ever before. As I always have, I relied heavily on PHP includes to make the site flexible for updating the look-and-feel.

In addition, this is the first of my sites that I’ve run on Expression Engine, the CMS from Ellis Labs. Outside of the dynamic database content that generates the player pages and the lists of rankings, etc., the content is stored inside EE.

New features include a daily baseball video provided by YouTube, and an email newsletter that delivers This Day in Baseball History info to your email box every day.

I like this quote and just wanted to share it.

Each year, there are more than 20,000 alcohol-induced deaths in the U.S., including more than 12,000 from liver disease. In addition, roughly 50,000 people die each year from their use of illegal drugs. Many of those who suffer the most are people who cannot afford the treatment, spend time incarcerated, and re-offend and relapse later, with devastating results for themselves and their families.

According to the Center for Disease Control and the American Society of Addiction Medicine, professional treatment in rehab centers or medical facilities is one of the best methods for breaking the cycle of addiction. Participants are much more likely to stay sober than those who do not receive this valuable treatment.

Dakoske/Phoenix treatment center in Traverse City, MI, has helped thousands of addicts (alcohol and illicit drugs) get clean since they were established more than 15 years ago. You can learn more about Dakoske/Phoenix at their website.

The average stay in the center is 21 days, with costs of $160 per day. Many of the candidates for this program do not have the means to pay for their treatment. The local, state, and federal governments assist where they can. I’m asking you to help me send one candidate through the treatment center. That cost is $3,360.

Last year, as some of you may recall, I ran the Nashville Marathon and raised more than $1,200 for the fight against Multiple Sclerosis. Please help me reach my goal this year to help battle addiction. Fill out the pledge form for whatever amount you can afford - $1, $5, $20, or more. Your gift is tax-deductible.

You will not be asked to make any payments online today. Your pledge will be recorded, and in June you’ll receive a letter asking you to send your pledged amount to Dakoske/Phoenix treatment center. I’ll also include details of my run and some information on addiction treatment, as I know it’s something we’re all touched by.

If you have any questions about my Run for Recovery, please leave a comment here or leave a comment when filling out the pledge form.

Here are five programs you can download today FREE. All five can do the same stuff as their pricey counterparts.

RSS Bandit
RSS Bandit is a RSS and Atom reader that allows you to keep track of all of your news feeds in one location via a very intuitive and feature-filled interface.

Miro
Tired of Windows Media Player or Real Player? Miro is a full-featured, free, open-source media controller. Videos can come in from lots of places– a web browser, email, a p2p application, or Miro. Miro can watch any folder on your computer and include those videos in your collection. So when you save something to your desktop, for instance, it will show up in Miro without needing to be added manually.

Running out of space? Miro can move your video collection to any location on your system, such as an external hard drive. When you install Miro, you can search you computer to find all your video files and list them in your Miro Library.

FileZilla
FileZilla Client is a fast and reliable cross-platform FTP, FTPS and SFTP client with lots of useful features and an intuitive interface. Among others, the features of FileZilla include:

Supports FTP, FTP over SSL/TLS (FTPS) and SSH File Transfer Protocol (SFTP)
Cross-platform. Runs on Windows, Linux, *BSD, OSX and more
Available in many languages
Supports resume and transfer of large files >4GB
Powerful Site Manager and transfer queue
Drag & drop support
Configurable Speed limits
Filename filters
Network configuration wizard

GIMP
GIMP is a versatile graphics manipulation package with lots of cool features. It’s amazing that this program is FREE! Numerous digital photo imperfections can be easily compensated for using GIMP: Fix perspective distortion caused by lens tilt simply choosing the corrective mode in the transform tools. Eliminate lens’ barrel distortion and vignetting with a powerful filter but a simple interface. Add edges, bevels, or perspective skews and drop-shadows very easily. There’s not enough space to list all the things GIMP can do.

Tux Paint
Tux Paint is a free, award-winning drawing program for children ages 3 to 12 (for example, preschool and K-6 in the US, key stages 1 & 2 in the UK). It combines an easy-to-use interface, fun sound effects, and an encouraging cartoon mascot who guides children as they use the program. Kids are presented with a blank canvas and a variety of drawing tools to help them be creative.

The drawing canvas is a fixed size, so the user doesn’t need to worry about “pixels� or “inches� when making a new picture. The entire program fits on a screen as small as 640×480, and can be displayed full-screen, to hide the computer’s underlying “desktop� interface. (It defaults to 800×600 mode, but can run at larger sizes and in portrait or landscape mode, as well.) Loading and saving of images is done using thumbnails, so no knowledge of the underlying operating system’s filesystem structure is needed. Even filenames are unnecessary. Fun sound effects are played when tools are selected and used. A cartoon version of Tux, the Linux penguin, appears at the bottom to give tips, hints and information.

I’ve been reading The Happy Isles of Oceania: Paddling the Pacific, in which the author tells of his journey by kayak to the Cook Islands, Australia, New Zealand, Tahiti, Vanuatu, Easter Island, and more exotic (or not so exotic) island locales. It’s brilliantly written.

When Theroux confronts a new culture on one of the islands, he doesn’t enter into it with a desire to change it, or make judgments. Instead, he embraces it and honors it through his respect for the land and the people he meets. Sometimes, the people he met meets are hostile, as when a group of islanders, all teenagers, mocked him and threatened him as he paddled to their shores. But his quiet and chilling confidence continutally led him out of harm’s way. Over and over again, he met islanders who changed his life and outlook on the world we live in.

Theroux has a wonderful way of finding stories among the people and places he blends into as he travels at the most basic level. This isn’t a travel guide for sight-seeing tourists, it’s a bible for the adventurer.

Be sure to browse other Books by Theroux from Amazon.com. He’s really the best of this genre of travel writing.

One thing’s for sure: we’ll be hearing a lot more about Web 2.0 in 2008. The Library of Congress has embraced the Web 2.0 philosophy by posting more than 3,000 of their photos on Flickr to be “tagged” by users. That means anyone can add their comments or tag a keyword to the photos. In essence, the entire world will help the LOC grow the knowledge of their collection.

From my standpoint it’s a lot of fun, because many of the pictures are baseball players from the 1910s. I can think of several former colleagues at the Baseball Hall of Fame who could add valuable knowledge to many of the photos.

Library of Congress collection at Flickr

Credit Card data for more than 650,000 customers is lost

Oops

“…a backup tape belonging to GE Money that contains the personal information of some 650,000 customers of J.C. Penney and about 100 other retailers.”

The missing tape affects 230 retailers, whose customers may be vulnerable to data fraud.

Coverage:
GE Money Backup Tape With 650,000 Records Missing At Iron Mountain
Credit Card Data on 650,000 Customers Lost

Britain vows to shut down terror web sites

British officials are calling for renewed efforts to shut down web sites that promote terrorism. “U.K. spending on counter-terrorism has doubled since the Sept. 11 attacks to 2 billion pounds ($3.94 billion) a year….”

U.K. to Urge Blocking of Web Sites That Promote Terrorist Acts