An Open Letter to Cycling.TV and Roku

Dear Roku and Cycling.tv if I have been monitoring your product for the last few months, and I have come to the conclusion that what your offering is exactly what people have been wanting forever. In short you have the ability to offer ala carte TV viewing. This is brilliant. Why clutter your house with tons of movies, most of which you will only watch once or twice, when you can simply stream them on demand from the internet. This is truly brilliant. You then went a step further and offered your services to MLB. I have been an MLB.tv subscriber for the past 4 years. I love the product and I think it gets better ever year. My only complaint has been that I am stuck watching the game on my computer instead of my TV. You came along and fixed that problem.

Now here is what I think you need to do next. You need to go after Cycling.tv. and possible hockey (I leave the hockey to someone else). See bicycle racing is a wildly popular sport, but has terrible coverage here in a America. If you want to see anything other then the Tour De France or perhaps a thirty minute recap of a race you have to get Cycling.tv. Now Cycling.tv is a great product, but it suffers the same problem as MLB.tv. Unless I am willing to get a TV tuner card, or do some other such gyrations, I am forced to watch on my computer.

The merger of your two products makes far to much since. The cycling community is generally speaking a somewhat affluent group of individuals with disposable income. This is your exact demographic.

You could even partner with Cycling.tv to create interactive content that goes with the races. People could have their training regime become part of the race watching experience. There are endless possibilities here.

thanks for your time

Pyrrhic Victorys

One of my all time passions is the classics. Not classical literature mind you, but the study of the two great classical civilizations (Rome and Greece). My all time favorite story/historical account from this time is Thucydides. The way my boy Alcibiades comes off in the story is just straight up pimp. If you ever see me out sometime I can recount the story.

However, we are not here to talk about my favorite story or even my second, or really even my third. No we are here to talk about the war Carthaginian War. If me memory serves* we get the phrase Pyrrhic Victory from that war. I have often believed that there is no such thing as a Victory where you still lose. I tend to look at winning and losing as binary situations. They are states that can not exist at the exact same time. Now sure you can lose and still do something that feels awesome, but at the end of the day you still lost.

Well this weekend I witnessed a few things that made me wonder about this concept. My college football team lost, but they didn't lose nearly as bad as expected. Is that really a win? I don't think so, but I some how felt more ok that we didn't get blown out by fifty.

Then my pro-football team went out and pissed away another victory because we apperently forgot how to do the thing we are best at, but on the bright side our second year running back had a carrier game.

And now...we have this...one of the most beautiful shot shows I have ever seen, wins an Emmy right after it's canceled. Fuck the world is all I can say.**




*To lazy to do the research to confirm this morning

**Odds are this video will get pulled. When that happens I'll find another.

Giving Up To Soon

Often times in life I find we give up to soon on people. I am far more guilty of this then most people we know. When the phrase "Oh ye oh little faith..." is uttered, they are talking about me. I am a skeptic at best and a complete disbeliever at worst.*

For years now I have been told that Clay Buchholz would end up being a stud pitcher. I read some of the scouting reports. I listened as writers I respect crowed over his stats and his bad luck. I saw as he was clearly just trying to be to fine and strike everyone out. I watched with joy as he no hit the Baltimore Orioles.** I watched with abject horror as he walked batter after batter after batter. I gazed at the screen with sheer terror as he threw 100 pitches by seemingly the third inning. I lived the emotional roller coaster ride of this young mans carer first hand.

Now, I should I have known better. I went through the exact same thing with Jon Lester. I know in my mind that sometimes it takes young pitchers a while to get it together. I know this at the core of my very being. I also know that more often then not young pitchers simply don't work out due to a myriad of reasons.

So what does this all have to do with Clay Buchholz? Well, I had given up on him. I knew he was in the minors destroying people, but I didn't care. I didn't think we needed him after all we had John Smoltz and Brady Penny.*** I thought how the team didn't need to put their faith in this roller coaster of a pitcher. Of course it turned out I was way wrong and the old adage about you can never have to much starting pitching turned out to be true. So all I can say is that I think I was wrong about Buchholz and that his last few games are finally starting to show that pitcher that I think everyone thinks he can be. I leave you with some of his numbers from his last few starts.

September 13th vs The Tampa Bay (Devil)Rays
7.0 IP, 5 H, 1 ER, 5/3 K/BB, 12/8 GB/FB, he got a ND but pitched more then well enough to win.

September 8th vs The Baltimore Oriels
7.0 IP, 3 H, 0 ER, 5/1 K/BB, 12/7 GB/FB, Took the win.

September 8th vs The Tampa Bay (Devil)Ray (on the road)
6.0 IP, 6 H, 3 ER, 3/1 K/BB, 10/11 GB/FB, Took the win

August 29th vs Toronto
8.1 IP, 3 H, 1 ER, 9/2 K/BB, 11/7 GB/FB, Took the win.

Now these are not exactly the numbers of a number one starter (I'd like more strike outs), but if this is your third starter, you got a real chance to be good. Let's hope he can keep it going.



*Note: This isn't about religion. I promise.

**Yes they are a real team Doug


***That sound you hear is me slamming my head into my desk. Those guys were terrible with the Red Sox and now look like GODS in the N.L.

On Cell Phones

Maybe it's because I really like the idea of many business competing for our dollars, but this warms the cockles of my heart. Whatever the reason may be, this is a good thing.

Random Thought

Is Aaron Eckhart the new Matthew Modine?

I think I Might be better then Ice Cube

See, he thought today was a good day in the looking back sorta sense. He was reflecting on the day if you will. I am better then him because I already know today WILL be a good day.

How do I know this you ask? Why it's elementary my dear. On the way in to work I heard 1979 by the Smashing Pumpkins and now I am listening to the song The Rising Tide by Sunny Day Real Estate. How can I lose?

Google Reader

Odds are I should use google reader since it would save me the time of writing blog posts about things that I enjoy, but well...yeah...see pretty much every other post on similar type things.*

With that said, check out this great entry by David Millar on cycling news about the crash during stage 4 of Vuelta.