TBWAIN - AKA Jeff Svare's Blog

No, this list doesn't include the two I know in Wisconsin. :-) Over at Aaron Gleeman's Blog he's working on a list of the top 40 Minnesota Twins. Since it's just plays who wore a Twins uniform, and only their performance as a Twins counts, you won't see Jack Morris or Walter Johnson on the list. The list starts with Randy Bush as #40. I wonder where Harmon Killebrew , Tony Oliva , Bert Blyleven , and Jim Kaat will finish up. I'll be paying attention to his list.

With the end of the Moslem Hajj aproaching, and all the coverage given to the horrible accidents that have cost the lives of over 300 people , I'm wondering why apparently no one in the Moslem world has taken this as an opportunity to decry the terrorist attacks in Iraq that are killing hundreds of innocent people . Where's the outrage of the Moslem world against this twisting of their religious values? Some has been reported, but most of what we see in the press makes the it look like they don't care. The terrorist actions in Iraq are Moslems killing Moslems. Sunnis killing Shia. According to Islam, is this wrong? I've heard people say yes, but I've also read this in the Koran: 2.190 And fight in the way of Allah with those who fight with you, and do not exceed the limits, surely Allah does not love those who exceed the limits. 2.191 And kill them wherever you find them, and drive them out from whence they drove you out, and persecution is severer than slaugh...

I was watching the news tonight when a report came on that legislators in the county I live in are considering making it illegal for teens to go to a tanning salon. During the report several teenage girls spluttered on incoherently about being deprived of their "rights." This is probably more evidence that the public school system is failing to teach children, but more likely it shows that society itself has blurred the line between rights and privileges. In the Declaration of Independence it reads, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." So just what are rights, and what are privileges? As the Declaration rightly states, Rights are bestowed by God. Privileges are granted and revoked by man. It's just that simple. A driver's license is a privilege, not a right. Freedom is a right, but...

Well, it's about an hour to go until the New Year arrives here. We're watching High Society , and I'm trying to figure out what I broke in a database I built. Only one of these two activities is going well. I haven't posted anything for about a month, which is mute testimony to how busy I've been. One thing I've noticed recently is the marked absence of Christmas lights. This is probably balanced out by the great excesses that some people go to in decorating their homes for Christmas. The utility company must love that. I grant that some may think that I fall into the excessive category with my decorating, but I still think it's tasteful without being gaudy. Newxt year there'll be a few more lights, but I still think it's not over the top. Well, ought-five has been pretty good to me, and I hope to you as well. Here's to '06, and the promise of the future. Good luck in your genealogical pursuits, hopefully Paramount will decide to m...

So it must be time for the new spring fashions. And accordingly, the Minnesota Twins have announced another new uniform for the 2006 season. The home version is sleeveless with navy blue pinstripes while retaining the current script Twins logo. The new batting practice jersey looks a lot like the 2005 bp jersey, with the addition of a thin red stripe running across the front up the sleeve and across the chest and back down the other sleeve. There's a currently a picture on the Twins home page, but it's not included with the main article. If you want to take a look at the picture they had up, click here . According to the article, this will give the Twins a total of six uniform combinations. The current uniforms are: • home white jersey and pants with blue pinstripes • home navy blue jersey and white pants with blue pinstripes • gray away jersey and pants with blue pinstripes • road navy blue jersey and gray pants with blue pinstripes • standard navy blue practice jersey with e...

Yesterday my son (he's 14) told me about something he wanted to do. During his exposition of this grand plan, I could feel every parental nerve in my body sending warning signals to my brain. I listened, trying to be patient and not interrupt, and shout "There's no way I'll allow you to do that!" After he was finished, I said, "I don't think that's a good idea." I repeated myself several times, hoping he'd get the gist of what I was telling him. It didn't work. Later that evening, he told my wife about what he wanted to do. She was much more direct in her answer. It was, "There's no way I'll allow you to do that!" At this point I inserted myself into the conversation, and said, "I already told him no." Son's rejoinder: "You said it wasn't a good idea." Father's response: "That meant no!" When I said it wasn't a good idea, that was a verbal clue which meant he should take ...

I know you're looking forward to my discussion of the three reasons why the Twins didn't make the postseason this year, but my attention has been drawn to the AL Cy Young award for this year. It seems like everyone is heralding John Buehrle as the man who will win. He shouldn't be. Johan Santana should. Through 29 September both Buehrle and Santana have the same number of appearances (32) which I think makes this a pretty fair comparison. Buehrle has been playing for the wire-to-wire champions (who've barely been able to maintain a winning record since the end of July), the ChiSox. The Twins however have been sliding all season, and may just barely be able to wrap it up over and finish over 500. If you ignore the press and the oft-heralded "smart ball" management syle of Ozzie Guillen, and look at the numbers it's clear that between Bueherle and Santana, Santana has been the better pitcher this year. Here's the numbers (sorry about the crappy formattin...

Actually, this piece should be titled "On Reaching .500 for the 4th Time." The First time was after the second game of the season, when the Twins beat the Mariners. That win was followed up with another over Seattle, and then loosing to the White Sox to hit .500 for the second time. The third time was the 6th game of the season, and their first series loss to the ChiSox. The Twins made it up to .727 on 16 April, but it's been a continual downhill slide all season long. After tonight's lost to the embarrasingly bad KC Royals, the Twins are at .500. Congratulations, you've achieved mediocrity. So, why after winning the AL Central title three years running did this happen? There are a few reasons that can be clearly identified. 1. No run support. 2. Allowing the other team to score first. 3. The Chicago White Sox (and no, it's Ozzie's "small ball" that did it!). I'll examine each of these in future posts, so stick around if you are interes...

Ren Cahoon, CIO of the National Archives and Records Administration gave a presentation that showed how the government's new electronic archive will work. I've been following this for a few years, and I was really excited to hear about this. On Thursday, September 8th, a contract was awarded to Lockheed-Martin to build this system. The cost? 308 Million. Yeah, that explains why no one has tried to do this before.

During his lunch presentation, David Rencher, Director of the Records and Information Division, made the statement that the Church has the capability of digitizing all 2.5 million rolls of microfilm within 6 years. As he said, "The planes are lined up, waiting." If you are into genealogy, this is exciting stuff.

The most newsworthy event of the day came during Jay Verkler's keynote presentation. He demonstrated the new collaboration tool that will be available through FamilySearch.org. This will allow users to search the database to find matching individuals among the other pedigrees that have been submitted. They can they attach that individual to their pedigree. This is a much different approach than existed with AncestralFile where a computer algorithim merged two individuals together. What I found when using AncestralFile is that the algorithm sometimes mismatched two people, and frequently could not identify that two persons were the same when a trained researcher can clearly see they are the same. The announcement and demonstration was so subtle that I wonder is everyone understood what they were seeing. Jay didn't announce a date when this would be available, but I would think that it should be sometime soon. After the presentation there was a small crowd that gathered around th...

I was out of the country on business for a couple weeks and found Internet access to be problematic so the frequency of my blogging has suffered considerably. My burning desire to keep up on baseball has suffered as well. Being forced to watch soccer games (sorry, "football") surrounded by hordes of alcohol-fueled fans just didn't cut it. Praise soccer all you want to, it's still nothing more than kick-the-ball-and-run repeated ad nauseum. This synapse-destroying activity is interrupted only by an occasional score accompanied by some announcer shouting out a lengthened "Gooooooaaaaaallllllll!" until he passes out from oxygen starvation. I guess baseball is just too cerebral for most people. Back to the lack of Internet access. I would think that when you consider that I was in two of the wealthiest countries in Europe, that wireless access would have been easy. Wrong. It was expensive and frequently very, very slow, on the order of 14.4 dialup slow. In refer...

We had the memorial service for my brother today. He passed away yesterday, the 29th of July after a three and one-half year struggle with cancer. Glen was a great brother. I'll always treasure the time that we spent together as roommates along with our other roomie, Mark, affectionately referred to us as MK VII Ltd. There were other good times, too. And after the service most of us got together for dinner at a nearby restaurant. Knowing he was going to die for some time has given me ample time to steel myself for this. It's been difficult, but I'm coping pretty well. One of my sisters asked me how I was after the service, and I told her I was OK. She said, "You're not." "Yes, I'm fine." "I want you to be fine." Knowing that I have access to that kind of support is a great source of strength to me. Two of my siblings couldn't make it to for the service. One is in the hospital, and the other lives in Mississippi. I would h...

Last night I finally got a chance to see my first baseball game this season. And it served to confirm two of my long-standing observations about the game. First, most people who are selected to sing the national anthem can't sing. This was horrific, screeching cat-fight, headache-inducing, nightmarish event that will haunt me for years to come. Granted, it's not the easiest tune to sing, considering that it's supposed to be based on an old drinking song. Because of that, I suppose it would always sound better after everyone has kicked back a pint or two. A the singer, being that well-lubricated, is certain to be able to hit those high notes without breaking. OK, I'm exaggerating a bit about how bad it was, but it was bad. Maybe the singer was nervous, which is understandable, and it is a tough tune, but this was not a good performance. Maybe that's why most people who sing it feel they can so freely embellish it with their "own musical interpretation....

I hate 'em. Not the electrical kind--although they're bad enough--I mean sports blackouts. The "I'm sorry, sir, we haven't sold enough tickets, so we won't be putting the game on television." ones. I hate 'em. I understand the reasons why they have them. The need to protect their market, and respect other markets, so that the revenue-sharing plan can keep all the teams in the black. But what do you do when you aren't in a market? Or, at least, it seems like you aren't in a market? At my house, the closest team is the Colorado Rockies. They're 320 miles away, so I guess that puts me in their market. But, there's no possible way that I can tell the kids, "Go pile in the car, we're going to a ball game!" The Los Angeles/California/Anaheim/Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim have a AAA affiliate here, so you'd think maybe we'd get Angels games on the radio or tv, but no. I do get Rockies games on the satellite, but ...

Politics can be an ugly business to be in. At the best of times it is unpleasant, and at the worst of times, it's personal. Mean-spirited criticism never did anything positive for anyone. It hurts the person it's directed to, and shows to everyone else how petty and small-minded the assailant is. Recently, Pete Ashdown, the owner of my ISP, announced he was going to run as a Democrat against Orrin Hatch in the next election. Personally, I think it's great that someone wants to get involved in politics because they feel they can make a difference. I've probably had enough political involvement to last me the rest of my life. Just this morning, I learned that someone sent out an e-mail to "Republican activists" asking them to discontinue their service and "sign up with another provider." The logic in this? "...it still is not a good idea to support a Republican challenger like this Democrat XMission owner by using his services." A lo...

It must be June. The AP teachers are packing their bags and heading to Daytona Beach, Florida, for their annual "reading of the essays." Essays...the AP students have already forgotten them. Yearbooks are being traded around the senior tables, pages easily being filled in shiny glitter pens. There must be some larger plot there, the seniors think. Writing down feelings is so unnatural for most of them, but something about the glossy paper in back of a book full of mug shots makes it easier. Especially for the seniors. It's raining outside. The first time in forever that it's rained on the last day of school. The seniors wonder if it's a bad omen. Only rain in their futures? Perhaps. But as time passes, so will the horror surrounding the class of 2005, and this summer will be one to remember. The first time they were really free. Didn't have to go back to the same old building come the last week of August. There were choices to be made now. My daugh...

Sounds like a joke, right? Well, I was watching the news from the local Fox affiliate this morning while getting ready for work. One of the segments was talking up the Salt Lake City Reads program, and they were telling about the current young adult reader choices, City of Ember by Jeanne Duprau and A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle. The punch line to this joke? They were in a bar. Yep, that's where every kid I know goes to read.

Just this morning I was thinking about how busy things have been lately, and how I haven't updated my blog. In fact, Maren just told me that I need to update it. So I am. For fun, take a look at StoreWars .

As one sci-fi franchise is laid to rest, another prepares to take its final bow. Which makes me wonder: What's kept Star Wars going so strong that Star Trek was lacking? It certainly wasn't the limited creative control. George Lucas has maintained much tighter control over the franchise than Rick Berman and Paramount Pictures has. It might have been the marketing. Star Wars toys are much easier to find than Star Trek toys. But I don't think that's it either. Could it have been the strong recurrent themes Star Wars used throughout the movies? Perhaps. I remember the first time I saw those Imperial Storm Troopers and knew they were the bad guys even though they were wearing the white hats. Lots of people are making comparisons of "Revenge of the Sith" with the war in Iraq. IMHO, that's just silly. The themes of the movies are so heavily built on heroic imagery which has always served as a mirror for the human experience. Pick up a copy of Joseph Ca...