Losing the Hard Way

Where Are You Now, Joe DiMaggio?

The Yankees lost again. Since my last little rant about the Yankees, they have dropped a series to the league-leading White Sox. They won behind Moose who pitched 6 innings, striking out 7 and walking none. That was good. Then, behind Shawn Chacon who pitched a tidy 7 innings, lost 2-1. Then, they lost 2-1 again in extended innings as Aaron Small pitched a nice game keeping it tight. Okay, even Mariano Rivera blows up sometimes, but this was just frustrating. The Yankees are actually getting good pitching out of these unlikelies; to not capitalise on their efforts and instead, lose, is just frustrating as hell - but I guess this is who the Yankees are this year.

Considering they were way back in the count 2 months ago, to be 5.5 games back seems like it's not as bad as it could have been. However, here are the facts:
1) They are 4.5 games back on the Wild Card standings as well. With 50 games left, this is looking pretty dicey, considering how well the Oakland A's and the LA Angels are playing.
2) They might get Jaret Wright back; they might get Tiger Wang back ; but The Big Unit is injured and Carl Pavano seems to be gone for more weeks than we care to think (six to be precise). So pitching is going to be the big question mark going into the home stretch.

The 29-year-old Pavano, who has not pitched since June 27, was placed on the disabled list on July 7 with right shoulder tendinitis. With him being out until late September and fellow righthander Kevin Brown likely sidelined for the rest of the season, the Yankees will continue to rely on the likes of Aaron Small, Shawn Chacon and Al Leiter to round out their rotation.

Lefthander Randy Johnson also will miss his next scheduled start with back spasms, but the Yankees soon could add righthander Jaret Wright - who has been on the DL since April with a right shoulder strain - to the rotation. Wright is 2-2 with a 9.15 ERA in four starts since signing a three-year deal worth $21 million in the offseason.

Those 2 things alone tell us that the Yankees are likely not going to make it into the play-offs this year. It would take a couple of major disasters to befall two out of LAA, Oakland, Boston Cleveland and Chicago Sox for the Yankees to sneak in. Well, after last year, I'm not going to count on Boston to choke and that's that. Season Post Mortems will start early this year for the first time in a decade.

To PC Or Not PC
I wrote on the SpaceFreaks' Blog that my PC died. Since then I've been looking at my options. one of them is to go and get another external drive and run Virtual PC on my Mac off that drive. The cost would be:
a) 300 for Virtual PC
b) 400 for the external drive
c) 500 for a laser printer

Or get a box and custom-build it again for about $1000. However, I really don't want to go down that alley again. My days of opening boxes is over.
...or buy a PC laptop for a little bit more.
I did my tax return this year and I've got about $1000 coming back, which I should plough back into equipment. I do want to keep things simple, so in some ways, having one computer to run everything would be ideal. Having said that, the guy in the mac shop said that Virtual PC runs like a dog and is almost not worth it. So now I'm looking at getting a PC again.
I do miss my PC. :(

A Shuttle Pic

I saw this on the web and pulled it down. It's a nice pic of the shuttle in orbit so I thought I'd share it with you all.