I Love It When A Plan Fails To Come Together

No, wait, that’s not right. I fucking hate it when a plan fails to come together. Especially when I did absolutely everything in my power to allow things to go as planned, only to have someone else completely shit the bed.

I was so excited to watch (part of) the Phillies’ first spring training game at work today. I left the house just after 6:30 in the morning to ensure that I was at the office by 8. That way I could take an hour for lunch, which I did at 1. It takes about five minutes to walk to my car from my desk, so I was ready to launch At Bat on my iPhone at 1:05 (just in time for first pitch). I even had a car charger ready since my iPhone battery no longer wants to hold a charge.

Everything was great; it was all going according to plan. And then At Bat was like, “oh, sure, there’s a game being played, but you can’t watch the video feed or listen to the audio feed.” (It implied this by failing to provide options for either feed.) I took to Twitter to voice my displeasure and saw that lots of other people were having the same issue on multiple devices.

Once I got back to my desk I may have logged into my MLB.tv account just to see if it would work. (It did. I’m kind of surprised it wasn’t blocked on the network, though.) I decided to try At Bat one more time and, to my surprise, TV and radio feeds were finally available. Only an hour late, but who’s counting? (Me. I’m counting.) I tried the TV feed first and it had (unsurprising) issues with buffering, so I listened to Franzke and LA call the game on the radio until that feed started having issues. I consoled myself that I’d be able to watch the archived game once I got home from work.

Turns out I was wrong. When I got home the only archived game available to me (on iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV) was the Dodgers game. I put it on because a) baseball and b) I was pretty sure Vin Scully called it. (He did.) At about 8:30 I decided to look one last time for the Phillies on my iPad before I gave up and watched the game online. Well, the archived game had finally shown up, so I finally got to watch it.

Someone at MLBAM needs to be fired for this debacle, though. I know that this is the most luxurious of luxury problems. And I know that demanding someone be fired is a super douche-y move. But there should be consequences for a product launch this fucked up. Did the start of spring training games catch them unawares? Did no one ever realize that the pretty new iOS 7 version of the app needed to provide paying customers that which they paid for? (Scores and news and highlights are great and all, but there are a million other places I can get those things. I pay for MLB.tv Premium to stream live games.)

Incompetence makes me so angry, you guys.

Until tomorrow.

Worth Waking Up

The Phillies played an honest-to-God baseball game today, you guys. And I know because I watched it. Even after it got a bit ridiculous and the substitutions made me say “wait, who’s that guy and where did he come from?” or “that guy is still on the team?” I kept watching. After all, I’ve been waiting for this forever. And it really was the only reason I got out of bed, so I thought I should make the most of it. I really wish I knew why my Apple TV didn’t know about any of today’s games, but it’s not the end of the world because my iPad knew about them.

I decided I should write this now, while I still have some post-baseball energy. And since I’m starting to fade I think that was a very good decision on my part 🙂

Now it’s time to take some more Tylenol and watch some movies that I don’t mind falling asleep during. My life sure is exciting.

Until tomorrow.

This Is Progress

The first thing I did when I (finally) woke up this morning was check Is It Spring Training Yet? on my phone. What I saw is below.

this made me smile

This is progress. Admittedly, it’s not much progress. But beat writers were tweeting pictures of Roy Halladay throwing and Bright House Field and Roy Halladay running. This is tangible proof that baseball is really, truly coming back. And that makes me happy as happy can be 🙂 Plus, every time I saw a picture from inside Bright House Field I tried to figure out if I knew where it was and I went 3-for-3. I felt pretty proud of myself.

I was so excited that I decided to change my desktop wallpaper from a picture of Brand New to a picture of Ryan Howard, Chase Utley, and Jimmy Rollins. Switching from Brand New was kind of a big deal, but I’m happy I did it 🙂

All of the baseball on my Twitter feed reminded me to check on my MLB.tv account as well. I’m still set to auto-renew, which was the thing I really needed to check. And it looks like I’ll get At Bat for free again this year – yay! (I cannot stress enough how wonderful MLB.tv and the MLB At Bat app are. If you like baseball at all you should get them.)

I think this is the first time I’ve written about the Phillies this year without being full of negativity. But that’s what Spring Training is all about, right? It’s a blank slate.

Until tomorrow.

Month In Review: October

I am the spazziest of spazzes. I completely forgot to do an October in review post in October. And it wasn’t even like I wrote a post to explain that I was at my parents’ house so as to not be at my house on Halloween. Whatever. Better late than never, right?

• Take better care of myself. If the key word here is “better,” which is the way I’ve interpreted it all year, then I failed. I was eating pretty well until the day I decided to buy two bags of Halloween candy and two types of Klondike bars, but I was pretty darn sedentary. It can’t be healthy to sit as much as I do.
• Read every day. This always makes me feel better after admitting what a bad job I did of taking care of myself. The lesson, of course is that reading is fun and taking care of myself isn’t.
• Blog every day. Another fun resolution to keep. Which, again, explains my success.
• Work on my house. On January 1, 2012, I envisioned putting my house on the market in December. On November 4, 2012, I can’t envision any way that would be possible. And that pretty much says everything you need to know. Oh, and again, this resolution is the opposite of fun.

Blah. I almost feel like I can’t give myself credit for being good with respect to the fun resolutions given how terrible I’ve been with the other two. Oh well.

In other news, I got my COMPS results back. I passed 🙂 I will be able to graduate. That is pretty awesome. Also awesome is the fact that my parents supported my anti-commencement ceremony decision. Some things are going my way. Yay!

Also, I figured out how to deal with my post-baseball malaise and get the most out of my MLB.tv subscription: watch archived games! I can watch them on my iPad and my Apple TV. It’s fantastic. I can relive awesome moments and just ignore the shitty ones 🙂

Until tomorrow.

National Blackouts Can Go Screw

Seriously MLB, I didn’t pay you more money than I could really afford to be blacked out of watching even one of my team’s games. Sure, some people get MLB.tv to be able to watch all of the baseball, and I have been known to use it for that purpose, but it wasn’t my primary reason for subscribing. No, my primary reason for subscribing was to be able to follow my team with its broadcasters. (I know I complain about the Phillies broadcasters, and they are annoying, but at least they’re rooting for my team. It’s a million times worse to listen to a bunch of annoying homers who are rooting against my team.) But then you get a situation like this evening, when the Phillies-Cardinals game is one of several “national” games being broadcast by FOX, which means that the game is blacked out nationally. Of course, “blacked out nationally” means “the viewer is at the mercy of the local FOX affiliate.” And, sure, that’s okay when the local FOX affiliate runs your team’s game (as was the situation for me last Saturday night). But you know what other game was playing on FOX this evening? The Rays-Red Sox game. Three guesses as to which game the FOX affiliate in Tampa Bay was airing (and if you need more than one guess, you’re an idiot and we can’t be friends). The real problem with the whole blackout thing is that MLB markets MLB.tv to out of market fans (i.e., people like me who live in one city and root for a team from another) as a way to follow your favorite team. But then they do dumb stuff like leave the fan at the mercy of FOX Sports. And it seems to me that they’re doing nothing but shooting themselves in the foot with the whole blackout thing. Grr arrgh.

Once I got over my initial disappointment, I realized the silver lining to all of this was that I’d get to listen to Franzke and LA call the game on the radio. That was at least something to look forward to. So imagine my dismay when I launched the radio feed and the first voice I heard belonged to Chris Wheeler. Gorrammit! It’s like I was being thwarted at every turn. Thankfully I was able to mostly tune Wheels out and only listen to Franzke.

Of course, Twitter informed me that Joe Buck and Tim McCarver were calling the Phillies game. So at least I dodged that bullet.

I suppose one solution to this problem would be for me to have gone out and done something fun on this Saturday evening. But that would run counter to my whole hermit vibe. And we can’t have that.

On the bright side, the Phillies won. Woohoo! Kyle Kendrick pitched his first ever complete game shutout. Good for you, KK. To be honest, though, I would’ve been okay with the Phils losing if the Sixers had won. But, sadly, the Sixers are out of it now. At least the Phillies decided against losing in solidarity and really depressing the hell out of Philly sports fans. A one for two is so much better than an oh for two.

Until tomorrow.

Tweets From The Future

Today I experienced the phenomenon that I call “tweets from the future.”  Now, today wasn’t the first time I experienced this phenomenon.  In fact, I experienced it approximately 162 times last year.  The weird thing is, I had completely forgotten about it until this afternoon.  And I’m kinda surprised that I forgot it since I enjoyed it so much last year (most of the time, anyway).

See, today marked the first time that I watched a baseball game between two MLB teams (Phillies and Yankees) this year.  Oddly enough, it wasn’t broadcast on any Tampa cable network.  No, it was broadcast on CSN Philly and I was watching it through the miracle that is MLB.tv and the MLB At Bat app.

The only (little, bitty) problem with MLB.tv is that the feed is a little behind the live feed on actual TV.  And that is why I’m able to get tweets from the future.  Approximately 95% of the Phillies fans that I follow on Twitter live in the land of Wawa and TastyKakes and they’re watching the game on CSN Philly or PHL 17 or wherever that day’s game is being broadcast.  Which means that they’re always a couple of seconds ahead of what I’m watching.

This tweets from the future phenomenon isn’t as annoying as it might sound.  For the most part, the tweets I’m reading match up to what I just saw.  But sometimes my feed will be flooded with UUUUUUUU or Chorch or something else that would tell me that something good was about to happen in the game.  (For example, a home run from Raul Ibanez or Carlos Ruiz.)  I really enjoy those future tweets.  The other type of future tweets, the ones that presaged doom, aren’t as much fun.  But they don’t seem to happen nearly as often either.

Today’s tweets from the future were the good kind.  The Phillies’ third baseman, Hector Luna, apparently made a great catch.  Or something.  I never actually got to see it because that was when my WiFi decided to start going wonky and I had to give up the video feed.  (That’s a problem that’s far more annoying than tweets from the future, but I can’t blame MLB.tv for it.)

Really, the weirdest thing I saw today was this thing on Scott Podsednik’s hand.

Is it a mitten?

For the record, I am fully cognizant of the fact that I’m not getting tweets from the future.  In fact, I think it’s good for the superstitious fan in my head that what I am watching has already happened.  I can’t do something dumb like hold my breath in the hopes that Chase Utley will tie the game; Utley’s at bat has already happened.

Until tomorrow.