Sad news from the world of baseball today, as Herb Carneal, the Hall of Fame radio voice of the Minnesota Twins, passed away at the age of 84. He was about to enter his 48th season of broadcasting for the Twins, though for the past few years he'd been working a shortened schedule.

Now, I'm a Cubs fan, and nothing is ever going to change that. However, when I attended graduate school in Minnesota, I was there in 1991... the World Series year. With no TV, I had to listen to the games on the radio. Back at The Pond, I could always turn on WGN TV and catch the game... and with Harry Caray and Steve Stone as the on-air team, why would I listen to the radio?

It was Herb Carneal that taught me the beauty of baseball on WCCO radio. These days, I only rarely watch the games, and if I do, it's with the radio on. Otherwise, it's radio only, and it's great.

So, Herb Carneal, who was the first to show me the grandeur and majesty of baseball without using my eyes, thank you.

And "It's back, waaaaaay back, it's ... gone, touch 'em all".

(UPDATE: Here's a better article on his passing.)

(ANOTHER UPDATE: I submitted the WCCO link to Fark. It got greenlighted... my first. Wish it wasn't for this reason, though.)

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Yay, it works!

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The above comment, posted by Pixy hizzown self at or around 9:54 AM on March 30, 2007, holds a special distinction...

...it's The Pond's 1000th Comment.

Nobody is more surprised than I.

Thank you to all the readers, commenters and lurkers out there... I couldn't do this thing without y'all.

Now lets go someplace sillier than this and wear goofy hats. Drinks are on me.

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Can anybody recommend a good, free, CD-to-MP3 ripper? I've Windows XP, SP2.

Thanks!

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Wonderduck: Wazzup?
Brickmuppet: Nothing...I'm deliberately wasting your time
Brickmuppet: It's already to late....the Kiwis have infiltrated your headquarters and are saving the earth fom your tyrannty as we speak.....too bad we'll have to blow up MT rusmore though.
Wonderduck: Eh, I don't believe it exists anyway.

(read on, MacDuff!) more...

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Lynnwood pet store employee injured trying to save duck

Another person who knows the value of a duck.

Our plans are coming to fruition, bwah-ha-ha-ha-Ha-HAAAAA!

PS-yeah, I've given up on the baseball research.

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OotS is nice. Wildly popular, too. But even it must bow down to the master of them all:

What's New With Phil & Dixie.

THE ur-webcomic. How "ur"? There wasn't even a web when "What's New" was around. No, you could only read it monthly (or about how often Megatokyo updates), on the last page of Dragon magazine.

Yes, I had a subscription. Yes, I'm a geek.

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...and with Spring comes the start of the Baseball season. And with the start of the Baseball season comes the start of my fantasy baseball league.

The same league I've been in for 21 seasons; over half of us have been around for at least 15 years. As one could guess, the league is pretty good... I think the worst of us could perform pretty well in any Expert league (the type that ESPN or the like have for their 'experts') out there.

It also means that the league is pretty cutthroat. If you're not ready, you're going to be eaten alive.

I'm not ready; our auction is Saturday morning.

I'm doomed. But it'll be fun.

But I'm doomed.

It's 1138am as I write this, and I've already spent three hours doing research on starting rotations and bullpens in the National League (thank god we're not a combined league... I don't think I could deal with that).

But it's fun, right? Right?

I've won this league twice, in 2002 and 2004. As much as I'd love to predict a third championship for 2007, I can't. I don't have the time to devote to the league as I did those seasons, as I was unemployed.

So this is a long-winded way of me saying that I probably won't be posting more than this today.

Any other fantasy baseball people out there?

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See?

SOME people know the inherent worth of a duck!

(...and might I just say that OotS = laugh x 1.5?)

Posted by: Wonderduck at 11:06 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Over at the Fledgling Otaku's place, he's discussing his favorite painting.

Little does he know that the painting that he loves so much was actually just a rough draft. The finished painting really looks like this:

And now you know.

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She's given me permission to do this: Click Here.

I'm not to blame for any dane bramage that might result.

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So I've hit another stretch where I've got nothing much that I can post about (I've one topic on the back burner until something specific happens, but until that time I can't post about it).

You'd think that with the F1 season less than two weeks away, I'd be writing about that, but there just isn't much interesting happening.

So I leave it to you, dear readers: is there anything you'd like me to write about? Leave your thoughts in the comments, and I'll do my bestest to satisfy your whims.

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Here's what tonight's lunar eclipse looked like at The Pond:

What?

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1 I think you got the lens cap on...

Posted by: Nick at March 04, 2007 03:58 AM (Q0Emr)

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(from Lio, by Mark Tatulli. Check out more about the series HERE. Thanks in advance to the syndicators and the artist for not suing me.)

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The Brickmuppet is looking for the source of this picture, as well as having a bad week.

G'wan over and take a look. I think it's a piece of fanart, m'self, but I could easily be wrong.

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...canning The Duck.

Of course, all of this talk about putting an end to the Duck was true... until We had a little talk with them. If we can end the Tsar's rule, we can handle an insurance company...

Mwah-ha-ha-Ha-Ha-HAAAAAAAA!

Posted by: Wonderduck at 06:51 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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He's done it to me AGAIN. I've got "One-More-Turn Disease" again!

Civ IV is the culprit, but I can't entirely blame Sid this time around. No, he's got an accomplice now, a modder that goes by the name of "Sevo". Sevo took Civ IV, a good but not great game, and tweaked EVERYTHING.

The result is Sevomod. New units (including ethnically diverse settlers, workers, and scouts... no longer do the Zulu look like they're from Sweden!), new leaders and civs, new buildings, new techs (that make sense!), new wonders (and movies), new resources (salt? Who'd ever think THAT was important?***), and, even more impressive, new music and quotations for everything! It's an 170mb download, though... thank heavens Duck U. doesn't block 'direct downloads.'

To say this game has become engrossing is to put it mildly. Tonight is anime night, and I'll have to pull myself away for the evening... I hope I can manage it.

*** more...

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Say what you want about NASCAR being a 'hick sport,' perfect for the redneck set. Say what you want about the cars 'going fast and turning left.' It's pretty much all true.

But DAMN, can they put on a show!

The ending of the Daytona 500 had the winner, Kevin Harvick, coming from somewhere around 10th on the last lap, beating Mark Martin by .002 seconds. On the tube, that was about, oh, two feet.

It also had a huge accident on the last lap. One driver finished 18th by crossing the finish line upside down on his roof AND on fire to boot.

You won't ever see something like that finish in a F1 race... for good AND bad.

UPDATE: I couldn't resist this...

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250 mph on the water.

Better traction on the ground.

More manueverable in the air.

It's... TURBODUCKLING!

Next step: biplane ducks. Then ducks with the CC gear. Then ducks with heat-seeking missiles! Then we will RULE THE WORLD!!!!1!1!!eleventy!

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Yes, Spring is here... Spring is here, life is skittles and life is beer.
(/Lehrer off)

Pitchers and Catchers report to Spring Training camps today. In 49 days, the baseball season starts for my Chicago Cubs.

The return of baseball is one of those things that, well, makes me happy. Then I realize I'm a Cubs fan, and life goes back to normal, but for those few short minutes... things are Good!

All of which is my way of saying that I had a really nice post on parody AMVs that I was going to put up here, but I took a nap that lasted for almost five hours, and now I don't have time to put it up tonight.

Wednesday night, though...

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