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FB10: Week 8

A small milestone this week, as I managed to finish above 4000 steps every day of the week.  Things got off to a decent start on Sunday, finishing just over 4000 steps.  Monday saw a nice increase, jumping up to 4600 steps as the good weather returned.  Things were just slightly worse on Tuesday, ending up with 4500 steps.  Another small decrease on Wednesday put me at 4300 steps.  Thursday needed 18 additional steps to get to 4100.  Friday saw a healthy increase, needing just an additional 3 steps to get to 4600.  Saturday dropped off again, falling back to 4000 steps.

Total steps: 30,248

Daily average: 4321.1

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Looking For Redemption

By nearly every metric, these last four season of Purdue men’s basketball have been the most successful in program history. They’ve won back-to-back conference championships.  They’ve won 59 Big Ten games, setting a school record and tying the conference record.

The one metric where they have fallen short is in the NCAA tournament.  Heading into this year’s tournament, they have put together two first round exits, against 13-seed North Texas in 2021 and 16-seed Fairleigh Dickinson last year, becoming just the second 1-seed to fall in the opening round.  In 2022, they advanced to the Sweet Sixteen, where they were felled by 15-seed St. Peter’s.

Purdue enters the tournament this week as the #1 seed in the Midwest region and look to have an achievable path to the Final Four.  But they are coming off of a rough Big Ten tournament, where they scored a season-low 67 points in their victory over Michigan State before losing to Wisconsin in the semi-finals.  While Zach Edey was able to get his, scoring 29 and 28 points respectively, Lance Jones was the only other Boilermaker to reach double digits in either game, scoring 10 against Michigan State.  The so-called supporting cast answered the bell all year, but if they disappear once again in the tournament, Purdue will once again be on the outside looking in and will have squandered their best chance in decades at making the Final Four, let alone winning a national championship.

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Fifty Years Of Music – 1984

Fifty years ago, I made my first appeared on the Earth.  In celebration, we are going to take a look at the year-end Billboard Hot 100 singles chart for each year of my life and see what songs resonated with me at the time and if they continue to do so to this day.

Today, we enter my second decade on the planet and look back at the music of my lifetime with 1984.  I am starting to become more familiar with the songs of the day, either from that time period or from later exposure.  38 of the Hot 100 are familiar to me now, with fourteen of them appearing in my collection in one way or another.

#89: Billy Joel – The Longest Time
iTunes stats: N/A

Written and recorded as a tribute to the music the influenced Joel as a child, the track peaked at #14 on the Hot 100.

#87: Ratt – Round and Round
iTunes stats: 25 plays

Reaching #12, the song is the band’s biggest hit and was ranked as the 20th greatest heavy metal song of all time by Rolling Stone in 2023.

#86: John Cougar Mellencamp – Pink Houses
iTunes stats: N/A

Inspired by a trip Mellencamp took from the airport in Indianapolis to his home in the godforsaken town of Bloomington, the song cracked the top ten, reaching #8 in early 1984.

#79: Madonna – Holiday
iTunes stats: N/A

Entering the Hot 100 in October of 1983, Madonna’s first big hit rose to #16, spending a total of 21 weeks on the charts.

#78: Michael Jackson – Thriller
iTunes stats: N/A

Peaking at #4 in 1984, the track re-enters the charts regularly around Halloween, giving Jackson a top 20 hit in seven straight decades.

#76: The Pointer Sisters – I’m So Excited
iTunes stats: N/A

Originally stalling out at #30 in 1982, this re-mix re-released in 1984 cracked the top ten, reaching #9.

#74: Wang Chung – Dance Hall Days
iTunes stats: 21 plays

A #1 smash on the Dance Club Songs chart, it hit #16 on the Hot 100.

#73: Bananarama – Cruel Summer
iTunes stats: N/A

Featured in The Karate Kid, the second most popular song with this name peaked at #9 in 1984.

#68: Quiet Riot – Cum on Feel the Noize
iTunes stats: 15 plays

Helping to bring national attention to LA’s burgeoning metal scene, this cover of an old Slade tune became the band’s biggest hit, reaching #5.

#66: Madonna – Lucky Star
iTunes stats: N/A

Madonna’s first top five hit, it peaked at #4 in the fall of 1984.

#64: Huey Lewis and the News – If This Is It
iTunes stats: N/A

The group’s fifth top ten hit, this throwback to the doo-wop of the 50s hit #6.

#60: ZZ Top – Legs
iTunes stats: N/A

Cracking the top ten and reaching #8, it remains the band’s highest charting single.

#55: Huey Lewis and the News – I Want a New Drug
iTunes stats: N/A

Peaking at #6, the song earned Lewis a second payday when he sued Ray Parker Jr. for plagiarizing it for his theme to Ghostbusters.

#51: Billy Ocean – Caribbean Queen (No More Love on the Run)
iTunes stats: 13 plays

Ocean took home the 1985 Grammy award for Best Male R&B Vocal performance for this track, making him the first British artist to win in that category.

Continue reading →

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Active Batting Leaders – Through 2023

Last month, we looked at the overall leaders on both sides of the ball from all of the games I’ve attended between 1984 and 2023.  With the end of spring training in sight, Opening Day is right around the corner.  Let’s take another look at those numbers, limiting it to players that are still active heading in to the 2024 season.

Home Runs

Name Total
Jose Abreu 49
Tim Anderson 24
Luis Robert 20
Yoan Moncada 16
Avisail Garcia 15

Hits

Name Total
Jose Abreu 273
Tim Anderson 218
Yoan Moncada 133
Avisail Garcia 101
Yolmer Sanchez 93

Runs

Name Total
Jose Abreu 129
Tim Anderson 117
Yoan Moncada 64
Avisail Garcia 58
Luis Robert 50

RBI

Name Total
Jose Abreu 159
Tim Anderson 73
Yoan Moncada Continue reading →
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Book 11 (of 52) – Gone Tonight

Gone Tonight – Sarah Pekkanen

Ruth Sterling has always kept the details of her past from her daughter Catherine.  When Catherine starts digging into that past in light of her mother’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis, what she finds stuns her: her mother has been lying about everything, including her disease.  The more Catherine digs, the closer she comes to the painful truth, one Ruth has been hiding from and preparing for, for the past two decades.

Gone Tonight is my first solo experience with Sarah Pekkanen, who I have previously only read in her team-ups with Greer Hendricks.  In this outing, she switches chapters back and forth between Ruth and Catherine’s point of view, giving the reader insights from each character that the other doesn’t share.  It is an interesting set-up for what, ultimately, is a familiar tale, of a woman and her child hiding from a mysterious past.  I shall be looking out for more of Pekkanen’s work, either on her own or in collaboration with others.

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Collecting The Hardware

While Purdue begins their defense of the Big Ten Tournament title this afternoon, they’ve already started to collect some post-season hardware.  On Wednesday, the Sporting News announced that Zach Edey was their National Player of the Year for the second straight season, making him just the eighth repeat winner since the award began in 1943.  Edey swept the six National Player of the Year awards last year and is the favorite to do so again this year, a feat last accomplished by Bill Walton in 1972 and 1973.

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A Spring Training Surprise

When Chris Getz didn’t get the deal he was looking for during the offseason, it seemed pretty likely that Dylan Cease would start the 2024 season with the White Sox.  That plan changed last night, when the right hander was shipped off to the Padres.  In return, the White Sox are receiving right handed pitchers Drew Thorpe, Jairo Irairte, and Steven Wilson and outfielder Samuel Zavala.

Thorpe, a 23-year-old ranked as the 85th top prospect in MLB, has now been traded twice in the past four months after being acquired by the Padres in December as part of the return in the Juan Soto trade.  He posted a 2.52 ERA across 23 starts in High A and Double A for the Yankees in 2023.  Iriarte, the #8 prospect in the Padres system at 22, appeared in 27 games last season, starting 21, and finished with a 3.49 ERA between High A and Double A.

Ranked as the #7 prospect in the Padres system, Zavala, who is just 18, has three seasons of pro experience, splitting 2023 between Low and High A ball.  In 115 games, he hit 14 homers and 23 doubles, while knocking in 77 RBIs and drawing 94 walks, and slashing .243/.391/.406.  Wilson, 29, has made 102 appearances with the Padres over the past two seasons, posting a 3.48 ERA with 110 strikeouts over 106 innings.

Dylan Cease was first acquired by the White Sox, along with Eloy Jimenez, in the 2017 trade that sent Jose Quintana to the Cubs.  He made his major league debut on July 3, 2019, picking up the victory in the first game of a double header against the Tigers.  Since that day, Cease has been a consistent part of the starting rotation, eventually becoming the ace of the staff.  In 2022, he went 14-8 with a 2.20 ERA, finishing second in Cy Young award voting.

Cease’s numbers in a White Sox uniform, both for games I attended and overall, were: Continue reading →

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FB10: Week 7

A slight step backwards, after changing temperatures and work got in the way of a strong start to the week.  Things got off to a decent start on Sunday, finishing with 4200 steps.  Monday saw a nice increase, coming just 11 steps shy of 4800.  Things started to turn south on Tuesday, as I ended up with just 3600 steps.  Wednesday saw another decrease, going down to 2900 steps.  Things cratered on Thursday, as I dropped down to 2400 steps.  Things started to improve on Friday, needing just an additional 12 steps to get to 3500.  Saturday was even better, ending back up over 4000 steps.

Total steps: 25,600

Daily average: 3657.1

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Book 10 (of 52) – Hearts And Minds

Hearts and Minds – Dayton Ward

In the 21st century, decades before Earth made their official first contact with the Vulcans, a ship from a distant planet crashed into the Georgia forest, prompting the secret agencies tasked with keeping the planet safe to go into hyperdrive to respond, in their minds, appropriately.  In the 24th century, Jean-Luc Picard and the Enterprise-E find themselves making what they believe to be first contact with a new world, but instead find themselves arrested and made to stand trial for the devastation Earth caused to the planet.  With nothing in Starfleet’s official records, can they find the truth?  Or will they suffer the same fate as their 21st century forbearers?

Hearts and Minds, a 2017 entry by Dayton Ward in the post-Star Trek: Nemesis world of The Next Generation, pulls together characters from multiple versions of Star Trek, all of whom appeared in the time-travel stories from the 20th century, and ties them into the latest adventure of the Enterprise-E.  As usual, it is nice to take a break and revisit some old friends, seeing what they are up to, and seeing what is new in their world since last we met on the movie screen.

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Fifty Years Of Music – 1983

Fifty years ago, I made my first appeared on the Earth.  In celebration, we are going to take a look at the year-end Billboard Hot 100 singles chart for each year of my life and see what songs resonated with me at the time and if they continue to do so to this day.

We continue our look back at the music of my lifetime with 1983, the year I wrapped up third grade, moved to fourth grade, saw my beloved White Sox make the postseason for the first time in my life, and turned 9.  Michael Jackson’s Thriller, which placed five tracks on the year-end Hot 100, was the first pop album I ever owned.  At 39 songs, nearly 40% of the Hot 100 are familiar to me now, with only 16 of them appearing in my collection in one way or another.

#93: Frank Stallone – Far from Over
iTunes stats: N/A

A top ten single in September 1983, this lone hit from Sylvester’s brother is more familiar to me as a song I played on the organ.

#92: Spandau Ballet – True
iTunes stats: 18 plays

Peaking at #4 on the Billboard Hot 100, the song was sampled for the #1 hit Set Adrift on Memory Bliss by PM Dawn in 1991.

#90: Def Leppard – Photograph
iTunes stats: 24 plays

Written about Marilyn Monroe, this first single from the band’s third album reached #12 on the charts.

#89: Michael Jackson – Human Nature
iTunes stats: N/A

The fifth single from Jackson’s smash Thriller album, it became the album’s fifth top ten hit, reaching #7.

#81: Journey – Faithfully
iTunes stats: 10 plays

Considered one of the greatest power ballads of all time, it peaked at #12 on the Hot 100.

#68: Michael Jackson – Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’
iTunes stats: N/A

Hitting #5, this fourth single from Jackson’s Thriller, originally written in 1978, was the first without a video.

#56: Laura Branigan – Gloria
iTunes stats: 13 plays

Setting a new record for female solo acts with 36 weeks on the Hot 100, it made the year-end charts for both 1982 and 1983.

#53: Madness – Our House
iTunes stats: 10 plays

The first single from the group’s fourth album, it reached #7 on the charts, becoming the band’s biggest hit.

#52: The Clash – Rock the Casbah
iTunes stats: N/A

Becoming the group’s first and only top ten hit in the US, it peaked at #8 on the Hot 100.

#50: Kajagoogoo – Too Shy
iTunes stats: 10 plays

Thanks to heavy rotation on MTV, the song, the group’s only US hit, peaked at #5.

Continue reading →