Another long season ahead

Well, I suppose it could be worse from a baseball perspective: I could be living in Kansas City, where the management seems to have completely forgotten the methods that made the Royals so great in the 1980s. Or North Korea. Which is kind of the same thing, from a baseball perspective. Still, I have to face facts, and the facts are that I'm cheering for two teams that have next to no offense, and in the case of the Nationals, damn little good pitching either. At least the Nats have an excuse, since they're still drifting without an owner and have to put up with one of the biggest idiots to ever fill a General Manager's chair as a result. The Twins? Not so much. Terry Ryan has a reputation as a competent GM, although after he turned down Corey Koskie for Tony Batista and left Jason Bartlett in Syracuse for another year, I find my doubts renewed. You can only blame so much on the legendary cheapness of Carl Pohlad, after all.

Anyway, Aaron Gleeman has a nice analysis of the team at the Hardball Times which seems to fit the consensus that we're going to finish third in the AL Central behind the rejuvenated Tribe and the Pale Hose, not necessarily in that order. I'm a little dubious about the consensus; I don't think all the young talent in Cleveland is going to perform as well folks think it well, and I don't think los Tigres are going to completely suck the way they have for the last decade and a half. The Royals, on the other hand...DOA. They could lose a hundred games. Again.

As for the Nats, well, they're in a tough division where the Mets and Phillies will be hitting them from one end of I-95 and the Braves will be doing likewise from the other end; the only soft spot in that division is the stripped-down Marlins, but I don't know if the Nationals have enough offense to dominate them and manage a 4th-place finish, especially after sending down their best center-field candidate, Ryan Church.

So...anyone up for a fantasy baseball draft this weekend? I hear Yahoo! has some leagues open...

Another long season ahead

Well, I suppose it could be worse from a baseball perspective: I could be living in Kansas City, where the management seems to have completely forgotten the methods that made the Royals so great in the 1980s. Or North Korea. Which is kind of the same thing, from a baseball perspective. Still, I have to face facts, and the facts are that I'm cheering for two teams that have next to no offense, and in the case of the Nationals, damn little good pitching either. At least the Nats have an excuse, since they're still drifting without an owner and have to put up with one of the biggest idiots to ever fill a General Manager's chair as a result. The Twins? Not so much. Terry Ryan has a reputation as a competent GM, although after he turned down Corey Koskie for Tony Batista and left Jason Bartlett in Syracuse for another year, I find my doubts renewed. You can only blame so much on the legendary cheapness of Carl Pohlad, after all.

Anyway, Aaron Gleeman has a nice analysis of the team at the Hardball Times which seems to fit the consensus that we're going to finish third in the AL Central behind the rejuvenated Tribe and the Pale Hose, not necessarily in that order. I'm a little dubious about the consensus; I don't think all the young talent in Cleveland is going to perform as well folks think it well, and I don't think los Tigres are going to completely suck the way they have for the last decade and a half. The Royals, on the other hand...DOA. They could lose a hundred games. Again.

As for the Nats, well, they're in a tough division where the Mets and Phillies will be hitting them from one end of I-95 and the Braves will be doing likewise from the other end; the only soft spot in that division is the stripped-down Marlins, but I don't know if the Nationals have enough offense to dominate them and manage a 4th-place finish, especially after sending down their best center-field candidate, Ryan Church.

So...anyone up for a fantasy baseball draft this weekend? I hear Yahoo! has some leagues open...

Yeah, this sounds familiar

UTexas study says even "good" divorces suck for kids. No kidding?

Via Ivan Lenin through King Bananian; also note the link to Veronica Khokhlova's collection of political jokes about the ongoing fight for democracy in Belarus. Reminds me of the bad old days of the Cold War and Soviet humor.

Yeah, this sounds familiar

UTexas study says even "good" divorces suck for kids. No kidding?

Via Ivan Lenin through King Bananian; also note the link to Veronica Khokhlova's collection of political jokes about the ongoing fight for democracy in Belarus. Reminds me of the bad old days of the Cold War and Soviet humor.

Transitions

I've deliberately avoided giving a recap of Anime Detour, because so much of it would be intertwined with critiques of staff members and I want to save those critiques (positive and negative) for the post-mortem. Aside from that, it would be really boring reading for most people since I saw absolutely none of the programming or videos and only got to talk to the guests very briefly on Friday and Saturday night*. Well, I did get to say goodbye to Phade on Monday morning. Yeah. Too busy putting the chair in chairman and managing to keep things running somewhat smoothly. Fortunately for me, I enjoy doing that kind of stuff, otherwise the weekend would have completely sucked.

That having been said, people across the fannish landscape are more than a little croggled by the attendance we racked up this year, none more than Yr. Humble Author. Then again, I was only expecting 600 in 2004 and was wrong again in 2005 when I estimated 2000. So going into this year all I knew was that we weren't going to sign up any more than 2500 people, and I was wrong again. Not by much, though; the warm body count was less than that so we didn't have people exploding out of the windows or anything like that.

So where do we go from here? Well, I think we need to look back to our beginnings to get some perspective.
( Set the Wayback Machine for 2003... )

( So for next year... )

( And then there's this dynamics thing... )

So it'll be interesting to see how this year's Board elections go. I'd like to see someone from MAS take a more active role on the ATC side of the house, because they haven't really had one.

It'll also be interesting to see if the consensus on staff that we don't want to become another ACen holds up after we secure bigger, more spacious quarters for 2008. I'd like to think it will, but the history of other fan-run conventions is not promising. We are, after all, professionals, but only once or twice a month at staff meetings. ~_^

*Yes, I even missed the Staff & Guests Mixer on Thursday night after dragging in all the food with acdragonmaster. Somebody had to be in Ops.

Transitions

I've deliberately avoided giving a recap of Anime Detour, because so much of it would be intertwined with critiques of staff members and I want to save those critiques (positive and negative) for the post-mortem. Aside from that, it would be really boring reading for most people since I saw absolutely none of the programming or videos and only got to talk to the guests very briefly on Friday and Saturday night*. Well, I did get to say goodbye to Phade on Monday morning. Yeah. Too busy putting the chair in chairman and managing to keep things running somewhat smoothly. Fortunately for me, I enjoy doing that kind of stuff, otherwise the weekend would have completely sucked.

That having been said, people across the fannish landscape are more than a little croggled by the attendance we racked up this year, none more than Yr. Humble Author. Then again, I was only expecting 600 in 2004 and was wrong again in 2005 when I estimated 2000. So going into this year all I knew was that we weren't going to sign up any more than 2500 people, and I was wrong again. Not by much, though; the warm body count was less than that so we didn't have people exploding out of the windows or anything like that.

So where do we go from here? Well, I think we need to look back to our beginnings to get some perspective.
( Set the Wayback Machine for 2003... )

( So for next year... )

( And then there's this dynamics thing... )

So it'll be interesting to see how this year's Board elections go. I'd like to see someone from MAS take a more active role on the ATC side of the house, because they haven't really had one.

It'll also be interesting to see if the consensus on staff that we don't want to become another ACen holds up after we secure bigger, more spacious quarters for 2008. I'd like to think it will, but the history of other fan-run conventions is not promising. We are, after all, professionals, but only once or twice a month at staff meetings. ~_^

*Yes, I even missed the Staff & Guests Mixer on Thursday night after dragging in all the food with acdragonmaster. Somebody had to be in Ops.