Ichiro

Seattle Mariners right fielder Ichiro Suzuki is out with a calf injury. Hopefully, he'll come back healthy this season; he's only 11 hits from his 2,000th MLB hit. Ichiro is in his 9th MLB season; nobody has ever gotten 2,000 hits in his first nine seasons. Nobody has ever gotten 2,000 hits in any nine-season stretch.

He also has 184 hits this season; if he reaches 200, it'll be the ninth time in nine years that he's done so, a record in the Major Leagues.

Ichiro, 35, is batting .359 on the season and .333 for his MLB career. He played in Japan's Pacific League for nine years before coming to Seattle, hitting .353 and piling up 1,278 hits, including a Japanese single-season record 210 hits in 1994.

He's on pace for 231 hits this season, which would break the record of 227 hits by a 35 year-old, held by Sam Rice and Nat Lajoie.

He has batted over .300 in every one of his nine MLB seasons, including .372 in 2004, when he broke the MLB record for hits in a season with 262. In his nine seasons, he's led the league in hits 6 times and in batting average two times.

Wait, here's more. He led the league in stolen bases in 2001, and that year was named the American League MVP and the American League Rookie of the Year. He was the MVP of the 2007 All-Star game. He was won a gold glove as an outfielder in each of his first eight seasons. He's been in the All-Star game in each of his nine seasons. He currently has the highest batting average among active players.

Who knows what kind of numbers he'd have if he'd spent his entire career playing in MLB. Ichiro is a legendary player, already one of the all-time greats.

Yahoo! Sports' Jeff Passan wrote a nice piece about Ichiro in "Ichiro defies critics and odds," and talks about Ichiro's chances of reaching the 4,000 hit mark (Pete Rose territory!).

For more on Ichiro Suzuki, check out this Wikipedia article.

The Answer

Yeah, I've criticized Allen Iverson as much as anyone, but as he sits in limbo waiting for a team to pick him up, let me give him his due.

Iverson is currently #16 on the NBA All-Time Leading Scorers list (Kobe Bryant is #17). That's total points. As for points per game, Iverson is #5 all-time (27.1)!

In his 14-year career, he's dished out an average of 6.2 assists per game, quite respectable for a high-scoring shooting guard.

He's #12 all-time in total steals, and tied for #6 all-time in steals per game with Fat Lever at 2.22.

He's averaged over 41 minutes per game; the all-time leaders in that category listed at nba.com are Wilt Chamberlain (45.8), Bill Russell (42.3), Oscar Robertson (42.2), and Elvin Hayes (38.4).

Over his career, Iverson's had season-bests of 33.0 ppg (2005-06 with Philadelphia), 8.0 apg (2004-05 with Philadelphia), and 2.8 steals per game (2001-02 with Philadelphia).

The 6'0", 165 lb. guy known as "AI" and "The Answer" will go down as one of the best small guards (and one of the best players) to ever lace 'em up.

Santa Fe Mountains

Views from the Santa Fe Mountains above Santa Fe, New Mexico, part of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, the southern-most subrange of the Rocky Mountains, on an overcast August day. Photos taken during my mom's (MALsPa's Ma, as she called herself once!) recent visit to New Mexico.





And up near at Ski Santa Fe, Santa Fe's ski area, a cool mountain stream and a little view of the forest.







"Sangre de Cristo" is Spanish for "Blood of Christ." For more about the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sangre_de_Cristo_Mountains.

Health Care Reform

While I agree with Mr. Obama that health care reform is sorely needed in this country, somehow I doubt that significant changes are in store.

For most of us, it would help if we simply reform the way we take care of our own health. How many health problems are a result of things we do to ourselves? Smoking, drinking, drugs, over-eating, poor diet, lack of exercise...

Dude. Most of us just need to be smarter. Look out for #1. Take better care of yourself.

Still, I hope Mr. Obama is successful. Too many people can't get the help they need, can't afford it. There's got to be a better way.

point releases

Hm, interesting question at the Linux Mint forums:

"What ever happened to the update releases of mint 5? I've been waiting a year now, still no sign."

Because Mint 5 (Elyssa) is an LTS version, a point release would be a good thing for anyone who wants to install it at this stage. Otherwise, you're gonna have tons of updates to pull in. Ubuntu's Hardy Heron (their LTS version) has released a couple, I think. Even Mepis has released 8.0.06 and 8.0.10 this year.

So what's up at Mint? Not sure. Maybe a point release is just too much to ask, with everything else they have going on, like the Mint Debian project, among other things.

Here's one person's reply to the question above:

"If it's that important to you why not simply install the point two release of Hardy Heron, and from there install the mint tools and change your repos to that of Elyssa. This will give you the closest thing to an Elyssa point release as you are going to get."

Better yet, install the point two release of Hardy and forget about Mint until next time. If you're gonna go through all that trouble, I can't see any reason to bother with Mint at all -- I mean, Mint's a fine distro, but after all this time, I don't see any big advantages to running Mint instead of Ubuntu, and there might even be a few drawbacks.

But I have to say, for people like me who started out with Elyssa when it was fresh, and have kept it updated, we're in good shape. Of course, for someone who doesn't have it backed up, if you bork your system and have to reinstall, well... If that was me, of course I'd pass on Elyssa and move on. She'd understand. :-D

You can lead a horse to water...

...but you can't make him drink, as the saying goes. And you definitely can't make him think!

I don't waste my time anymore suggesting to people that they try Linux. I figure that if Linux is a good fit for a person, that person will most likely gravitate towards it naturally. She or he will be looking out for an alternative to Windows, and will find out about Linux and want to try it, without any help from me.

Folks who know that Linux is out there, or who don't know about it and don't seek it out, are most likely not the kind of people who would want to take the time to learn to use it.

My friend ComputerBob included this quote from The Windows Secrets Newsletter in his post from today:

“It sometimes seems like we spend more time protecting our PCs than actually using them. Sadly, in the modern computer age our systems are under continuous attack. Even worse, those attacks take ever-new approaches to break into our PCs and steal our personal data.”

That's not the case for those of us who use Linux. I spend almost no time at all concerning myself about protecting my PC; and I watch in amazement when I'm in computer stores (which isn't often anymore) as customers drop big dollars on Windows operating systems, office suites, games, security software, and other software -- none of which Linux users have to pay a dime for! I listen patiently (a bit less patiently these days) as friends of mine complain about viruses, worms, corrupted files, and other problems they are having with their Windows computers.

I just shake my head, and, walking away, think for the umpteenth time, "I'm sure glad that I use Linux!"

WNBA - Heating Up!

We're getting down to the end of the regular season in the WNBA, and teams are jockeying for playoff position. Standing going into tonight's games:

Eastern Conference Standings
	W	L	Pct	GB	Home	Road	Conf	Streak	L10
Indiana	19	7	.731	--	12-1	7-6	15-2	Lost 2	7-3
Atlanta	15	12	.556	4.5	11-5	4-7	9-10	Won 1	8-2
Connecticut	14	13	.519	5.5	10-5	4-8	8-11	Lost 1	5-5
Washington	13	15	.464	7.0	8-6	5-9	9-9	Lost 2	3-7
Chicago	13	15	.464	7.0	9-4	4-11	7-9	Lost 3	5-5
Detroit	12	14	.462	7.0	6-6	6-8	6-11	Won 3	6-4
New York	11	16	.407	8.5	6-7	5-9	7-9	Won 2	5-5
Western Conference Standings
	W	L	Pct	GB	Home	Road	Conf	Streak	L10
Phoenix	18	9	.667	--	10-4	8-5	11-6	Lost 1	6-4
Seattle	16	11	.593	2.0	11-3	5-8	12-5	Won 3	5-5
Los Angeles	14	13	.519	4.0	8-4	6-9	8-7	Won 6	8-2
San Antonio	11	16	.407	7.0	7-6	4-10	7-8	Lost 3	3-7
Minnesota	11	16	.407	7.0	6-8	5-8	5-10	Lost 6	1-9
Sacramento	9	19	.321	9.5	5-8	4-11	5-12	Lost 1	5-5

Each team has 34 games in the regular season, so each team has seven or eight games remaining. The top four teams from each conference make the playoffs.

Tonight's games:

San Antonio at Indiana: San Antonio has been playing poorly of late, and is in danger of losing their playoff spot. Indiana has dropped their last two, but first place in the East seems secure.

Atlanta at Detroit: The Shock are trying to make a run the playoffs, and have won their last three. Atlanta will try to hold onto 2nd place in the East.

Connecticut at Seattle: The Sun are currently in 3rd place in the East, but can't afford a mis-step here, with four teams hot on their heels. Seattle seems to have gotten back on track with three straight wins, and still has a shot at first place in the West.

Phoenix at Los Angeles: Phoenix has been a bit inconsistent lately, but they're still holding on to first place in the West. The Sparks' Candace Parker, last year's MVP and Rookie of the Year, is finally coming around after having her baby, and L.A.'s been hot, winning six in a row. They've had their problems this season, but I don't think anyone relishes the thought of facing them in the playoffs!

Individual statistics leaders (I'll have to leave Minnesota's Seimone Augustus out of this listing because she only played in six games before going down with an injury, but she was averaging 21.0 ppg):

Diana Taurasi, Phoenix - 20.8 ppg
Becky Hammon, San Antonio - 19.7 ppg
Lauren Jackson, Seattle - 19.3 ppg

Erika Desouza, Atlanta - 8.9 rpg
Candace Parker, Los Angeles - 8.7 rpg
Sylvia Fowles, Chicago - 8.6 rpg

Sue Bird, Seattle - 5.8 apg
Cappie Pondexter, Phoenix - 5.2 apg
Ticha Penicheiro, Sacramento - 5.2 apg

Diana Taurasi, Phoenix - 2.8 3PTs made per game
Shameka Christon, New York - 2.6 3PTs made per game
Becky Hammon, San Antonio - 2.3 3PTs made per game

Tamika Catchings, Indiana - 2.9 steals per game
Nicky Anosike, Minnesota - 2.8 steals per game
Alana Beard, Washington - 2.4 steals per game

Candace Parker, Los Angeles - 2.0 blocks per game
Tangela Smith, Phoenix - 1.8 blocks per game
Sylvia Fowles, Chicago - 1.6 blocks per game