Troubleshooting MLB.TV

Subscribers to MLB.TV premium service have been utterly disgusted with the lousy streaming video feeds of MLB games. Things have gotten outright nasty on their support forum. The inundation of complaints may have caused the support forum's moderator to quit. An advertisement in NY's Craigslist offers the chance to work as an MLB.TV moderator. There's quite a bit about the qualifications needed for potential candidates, but nowhere in the ad does it say that you need to deal with extremely pissed off people who just paid over $100 and can't watch any games without problems.

Responsibilities:
• Answering questions about the services available to MLB.TV subscribers.
• Troubleshooting MLB.TV and Gameday Audio.
• Giving real time technical instructions on how to use all of the features of MLB.TV.
• Escalate site problems to the proper contacts
• Reports summarizing the amount of activity on the forum, key topics, and unresolved issues.

Dance Flick

Judging by the trailer, this movie could possibly be brilliant, and possibly contain blatant racist humor.

In Japanese custom, it is very important, the toilets

Remember when the Seibu Lions received $51,111,111 from the Red Sox as part of the posting fee for Dice-K? 2 years later, NY Times investigated what they did with all that loot.

Whereas the old facilities were dingy concrete latrines, state-of-the-art urinals line the men’s rooms along with high-tech hand dryers built into the bright blue and white tile — the team colors. But the main attractions are the new toilets with TotTo’s Warmlet seats in stalls with floor-to-ceiling doors.

Each stall in the women’s bathrooms holds a Toto Washlet, a toilet and bidet in one unit. These $1,500 fixtures provide a luxurious experience for fans, who may spend their time in the restrooms contemplating the full extent of Matsuzaka’s legacy with the Lions.

“It looked like a women’s room in a nice hotel with the vanities and sinks,” said Tere Garcia-Pena, visiting from Manhattan with her husband, Miguel. “It was just so nice and clean, I felt like I just wanted to keep going in there.”

Takahashi, who studied English in Philadelphia and used to visit Veterans Stadium, said most of the money the Lions received from the Red Sox in January 2007 was used for the renovations the last two seasons.

Forty percent — more than $20 million — went to taxes. Of the rest, $25 million paid for stadium upgrades and $5 million was used to sign players who helped the Lions win the 2008 Japan Series.

MLB Cartel

Steve Malanga/ Real Clear Markets explains why pro sports can get away with charging exorbitant ticket prices ala Yankee Stadium.

Even though the Yanks have been forced for the time being to cut their top prices, time and demographics are on the side of the Yankees--and most other teams, too. Even the worst U.S. recession in more than a generation, even here in New York, the home of our sickly financial markets, isn’t likely to moderate the upward spiral of ticket prices. Why? Because for decades now major professional sports leagues, and especially Major League Baseball, have used certain cartel powers tolerated by government to restrict supply, even as we as a country have grown more populous and richer (the current recession notwithstanding). Pro sports aren’t retailing, where every economic uptick finds businesses elbowing each other for prime locations. Instead, the leagues have divided the country nicely, and short of some kind of major court decision or legislation in Washington that drastically reshapes the way leagues must do business (which would probably disconcert the very fans who abhor rising prices), the cost of attending games just about everywhere is likely to continue growing at a faster rate than most prices. The Yankees are merely leading the way.

To understand what I mean about sports and demographic trends, just take a look at the way the New York metropolitan area has changed in the last 47 years, and the way baseball hasn’t. Since 1962, when the Mets joined the Yankees in New York, MLB’s capacity in the area hasn’t grown. The teams both play a home-season schedule of 81 games, as they have since ’62, and their stadium capacities are actually somewhat smaller today than 47 years ago.

But since the last time the league added capacity in New York, the population of the metropolitan area has grown by some 3 million, or by nearly a fifth. More important, the wealth of that population has increased robustly. Per capita income, after adjusting for inflation, has nearly doubled in the region. All of those extra people and the additional wealth per person mean total income in the region, after adjusting for inflation is up by 115 percent. That’s a marketplace you’d love to have more or less to yourselves, as the Yankees and Mets do.

Obama's $100 Million Budget Cut

What's $100 Million out of $3.52 Trillion? Not a whole heck of a lot.

Jayson Williams' Cocktail Recipe

When the police busted Jayson Williams earlier this week, they found all kinds of psychiatric drugs in his possession [NY Daily News]. It was probably not a good idea for Jayson to mix them all together.

Two sources said the ex-NBA star had bottles for Celexa, an anti-depressant, and lithium, used for manic-depression - along with the sleeping pill Ambien, human growth hormone and two other drugs.

But when police arrived he couldn't even talk. He was crazy and out of it. Maybe the interaction of the drugs helps explain that."

Reputable medical Web sites say lithium and Celexa together can cause a toxic condition - serotonin syndrome. Agitation, delirium and even death can result.

Now that Williams is at St. Vincent's, he's on the mood stabilizer Depakote, which is used to get bipolar patients out of the manic phase of their illness, another source said.

So now that he's in a hospital, they put more drugs into him? That's some good doctoring right there.

ShamWow Is Low On The Wow

Cute little review by Consumer Reports on the ShamWow product