The View From Wisconsin

There is this huge gob of rain, rain, rain, RAIN sitting over Wisconsin right now. It's been raining for about 10 hours or so, and it's probably going to be raining all day today. I'm a-gettin' tired of it. It's also not doing anything for my physical OR mental health.

Guess we need to blog a bit to get it out of our system...

• Some neat stuff about "Hacking Starbucks" from Slate Magazine. I actually tried the Starbucks Oracle... I guess I'm not in the "in" crowd of the coffee lovers.
• Happy birthday to the Compact Disc. I have to laugh that the first CD ever pressed was an ABBA album - and a forgettable one at that (The Visitors??? I don't even think my buddy Eriks has that one).
  
• The Brewers are now 2 1/2 games out of the NL wild card, and have four other teams to jump over - five if you include the team they're currently tied with, the LA Dodgers. Yep, it's all great when you drop out of the division lead by tanking in seven of your last 10 games.
  
• Gee, so nice of the Packers to give us all a false sense of hope tonight with the whomping of the Seahawks. 119.0 passer rating for Mr. Rogers. Can we get Favre the TD record sometime before the bye week, then give Aaron the reins to the team?
• Strange purchase of the week: I bought a Ferrari online. No, not a "real" Ferrari; a Lego Ferrari. I couldn't even afford a rear tire on the real thing.
  
• Strange purchase of the week, part 2: my baseball cap mouse. MouseSmart makes these things, and MLB.com has them for sale. I couldn't help it.
  
• I somehow suspected that, when it came out earlier this week that some of the investors in the group seeking to purchase the Predators were owners of the Nashville City News, that the Tennesseean would start to take a left turn on their coverage of the team and the sale. And, unfortunately, I was right. I don't know about the rest of the Predators Nation, but I'm bracing for nothing but negative spin from the TNan from here on out. With such venom in their paper, it's no wonder they've had to cut their staff by offering voluntary severance packages.
• After reading a bit in ESPN:TM sidebar, I'm going to do a bit on all-time "outs" leaders in MLB history. Someone who makes a lot of outs is doing something right along the way.