Two 10.70 solves

My Son Charlie competed in anoter Rubiks Cube event this weekend. He films all his solves and made this cool video with two solves with nearly identical times from different days of the event.

Stats Sunday: Worst thing about the 2024 White Sox

The Chicago White Sox start ful squad workout for  2025 Spring Training tomorrow.  I thought this might be a good time to review the 2024 team.  The 2023 White Sox were horrible.  They were record breaking bad. I know, can I analyze or what?

One stat more than any other shows how bad their start to the season was.  This stat would be the number of 1 game losing streaks the White Sox had in the first half of the season.  A 1 game losing streak may sound like a bad thing but it is actually pretty good. A 1 game losing streak is really a series of 3 games in a row, a win followed by a loss followed by another win.  Here is a list of the 30 MLB teams last year listed with their record after 71 games and how many 1 game losing streaks they had at that point of the season.  

Arizona Diamondbacks        34-37         12

Atlanta Braves                      40-31         12

Baltimore Orioles                 47-24        10

Boston Red Sox                  36-35          7

Chicago Cubs                     34-37          12

Chicago White Sox             18-53          0

Cincinatti Reds                    34-37          8

Cleveland Guardians           45-26          10

Colorado Rockies                25-46          5

Detroit Tigers                      34-37           7

Houston Astros                    32-39           11

Kansas City Royals             40-31            10

Los Angeles Angels             28-43            7

Los Angeles Dodgers           43-28           10

Miami Marlins                     23-48            6

Milwaukee Brewers             42-29            11

Minnesota Twins                  39-32             9

New York Mets                    34-37              7

New York Yankees               49-22              8

Philadelphia Phillies             47-24              13

Pittsburgh Pirates                  34-37              10

San Diego Padres                  36-35               11     

San Francisco Giants             34-37              13

Seattle Mariners                     40-32              12

St. Louis Cardinals                 36-35              12

Tampa Bay Rays                     33-38              10

Texas Rangers                         33-38              13

Toronto Blue Jays                    35-36              10

Washington Nationals              35-36              11

In 71 games all the other teams in Major League Baseball had at least 5 1 game losing streaks.  1 game losing streaks are a key to any kind of sustained success.  A 1 game losing streak means you can start inching back up in the win column.  If its multiple losses are followed by a win or two and then followed by multiple losses you are never going to gain any momentum.   

lack of momentum was certainly yjr case for the 2024 White Sox. This was partially  because it took  72 games to finally stop the bleeding after a 1 game losing streak.  By that tine they were 19-53.  In the 90 games left in the season they would have needed to go 62-28 to get to .500.  They did not go 62-28 in their last 90, They went 22-68 or .244 which was actually worse than the  .263 winning percentage for the 1st 72 games.

Very few people including myself, expect the White Sox to be much better than they were last year.  They may well lose 100 or more game s for the 3rd year in a row.  One thing  I will be looking at is  if they can  put a win or two together and then lose just 1 game before getting back in the win column.  In fact I have a plan for a future  Stats Sunday focusing on  how long it takes each team to stop a losing streak at just one game.  Hopefully the White Sox won't be the last team to achieve that this year.  

Team Saturdazzle: The One Where Captain Abearica goes to work.

Team Saturdazzle is in the house.  I had many ideas this week for our time together.  Some of them I discarded, others I forgot what they were, still others, I discarded , forgot about them, remembered them again, bit forgot that I had previously discarded them, and then discarded them again.  This one  happened organically but took about a week to culminate, so I'll share a little of the genesis. 

Monday or Tuesday of this week I found out that our school was having yet another pajama day.  I thought that I might participate this time.  There also had been some talk about a lot of snow coming into our are Wednesday and  some thoughts that the regular school day might be replaced by an  e-learning day.  The main difference between a weather related closure, or snow day and an e-learning day is that an e-learning day does not be made up and a snow day does.  On E-learning days teachers give assignments to students, the students check in with them over the course of the day and it counts as a day of instruction.  E-learning days had their beginnings during co-vid 19 and can be used for weather related closures and other times when meeting at the school is not possible.  I think for the most part teachers like these e-learning days but as a building sub at least in my district I do not because I don't work on those days and when I don't work, I don't get paid.  In a traditional snow day situation,, I also don't work and don't get paid, but when the school year is extended because of the closure I work and get paid making up for the day I missed.

It turns out that our school was not cancelled.  But there was still a lot of snow in the forecast for the majority of the day.  So, I wore sweat pants, a tye dye t-shirt and then put warm pajama bottoms  over the sweat pants and a thick robe on over the ensemble.  As I was leaving I decided to bring 

Captain Abearica, the Build-A-Bear Captain  America my daughter Lucy brought for me and that I've been using in various ways as a Sub since 2019. I figured what goes better with pajamas than a stuffed animal.

Pajama Day  came and went.  The 6th grade science classes that I subbed for that day that weren't too cool for school enjoyed his appearance.  On Thursday after school I decided to take advantage of the perk I have at the movie theatre where I work and watch the new Captain America movie for free.  My plan was to bring Captain Abearica  in as well, because family members also get in for free.   I remembered to bring him to work on Thursday but forgot to take him into the theatre.  

Thursday was the soft opening of the new film whose full title is Captain America Brave New World.  The hard opening was Friday, I was working and I figured the place was going to be a zoo.  I have a very logical mind, at least to me. I thought if the place is going to be a zoo, why not bring a bear, especially one who's dressed for the occasion? 

I talked to my manager, who thought it was a great idea and provided me a name tag for "Cap".

Captain Abearica AKA Steve Pawgers

The Captain was a big hit and some people even offered to buy him.  My manager is letting me bring him back for my shifts for the rest of the run of the film.  Who knows maybe he'll even let me dress up like this?

I'll probably have to wait until the next pajama day.

April Blogging from A to Z Challenge 2025 SIGN-UP March 24-April 5 a-to-zchallenge.com

The A to Z Challenge blog posted yesterday for the first time since May of last year. Besides introducing the above 2025 badge.  They posted the schedule for this years challenge: 

 

2025 #AtoZchallenge Schedule: 

 The THEME REVEAL (optional bonus hop) : March 9- 15 

 Official Challenge Sign-ups : March 24 to April 5 

 Reflections (optional bonus hop) : May 2-9 

 Road-trip (sign up to keep visiting others all year _ optional bonus) : Opens May 10

I'm not sure exactly what I might be doing for the challenge.  I've had 4 ideas and I like all of them, but unlike some of the past years I'm only going to do one of them this year

Even as a big fan of the challenge,   I still take umbrage with the way they schedule the reflection so early .  This year challenge ends on a Wednesday and you have all of Thursday to reflect on the challenge before Friday when the reflection  sign up begins.  That's not enough time to reflect!!!  Well that's my rant.  Remember if you are missing any umbrage, I took it.  

Now for a new Saturdazzle feature:

 Something I said on Facebook this week

My friend's BIL posted on FB this week that he found the Super Bowl game boring. I so did not! So I said this on FB this week:

I loved everything about this game. The Eagles delivered in every aspect of the game after being overlooked in all the talk about a 3peat. Not a KC hater nor an Eagle lover but this was a quality football game Jeff. I’m sorry you didn’t like it.

That's it for this week.  That's my Saturdazzle and I'm sticking to it.   

An Open Letter to Bob Morgan

 

Bob Morgan

Il State Representative  58th District

Dear Representative Morgan:

A few years ago some well meaning member of the state senate decided to fix something that wasn't broke with  a bill called SB136.  At the time, I was the dedicate home educator of our family home school, and  as the bill  was primarily aimed at home education I rallied against it even writing several posts about it on my blog. At that time I thought I might be done with blogging about misguided bill proposals.  But thanks to you, I get to go at it again.  

 While it may have seemed to you  like a good idea to tie winning records into public funding requests  for sports facilities,  and it certainly  gave you 15 minutes of fame, The question remains why you would set winning records as a requirement for stadiums when it is not requisite for other public funding.  

Public schools, for example, continue to receive public funds even when the students are not showing winning records.  In fact, one can make the argument that we should put funds in schools that are not winning so their winning percentage can increase in years to come.  It's called development. Also ,we spend money on prisons and that money is spent on people who come to have losing records, sometimes in your line of work.  

{{Information |Description={{en|1=Staley Da Bear, the official mascot of the Chicago Bears. }} |Source=http://www.flickr.com/photos/blueyeda73/2988610732/ |Author=[http://www.flickr.com/photos/blueyeda73/ blueyeda73] |Date=10 28, 2008 |Permission=see belo

One of the main  reasons we should be exploring the idea of spending public funding for sports teams like the Bears is to bring more quality opportunities to our area.  If the Bears had a state of the art facilty they woukd be much more likely to be considered for hosting events like the Super Bowl and giving the State of Illinois and the City of Chicago more leverage in winning a future bid for hosting the Olympic games.    Those events would certainly bringg revenue to the owners of the facility but would also bring visitors, jobs and positive notoriety to the area.

If you still insist on making winning records part of government financing of a stadium I'm not sure the requirement of  3 of 5 years winning record your proposal calls for is the best way to go.   According to your plan, a team could win 3 of their last 5 and then have 9 straight losing seasons.  A back end approach seems more feasible. Perhaps after the team that receives financial backing from the state starts playing in their new facility there be a written into the contract that if the team has a combined losing record any 5 consecutive seasons in a 19 year period that they have to pay the state a predetermined amount.  This could either be a percentage of the original financing amount or a percentage of their annual revenue.

If such a plan was in place after government money was used to build what was then called Comiskey Park or Comiskey Park II, there would have only been 1 5 year period of 15 (1995-1999) where the White Sox would have needed to pay a penalty.  During that 19 year period the White Sox went to playoffs 4 times and won the World Series  in 2005.  Those 4 playoff appearances were one more than the 80 seasons played at the original Comiskey. When put that way it seems like it  was money well spent.  

By Tony - Bears vs Chiefs, CC BY-SA 2.0, Link

As for calling your act the BEARS act may make sense to you since Lake Forest, I believe is in your district but to name it  for just one team when many may  want to finance a stadium seems again like a cute way to make a name for yourself.  I would suggest a better acronym and a better plan before calling any more audibles.