Set to See Sox at Fenway Thursday

My wife is a history buff. I am a baseball buff. Our two passions will intersect tomorrow evening when we take a trip a few blocks over from our hotel to see the Boston Red Sox take on the visiting Cleveland Indians at historic Fenway Park, site of back-to-back walkoff wins by the Red Sox in the last two nights. I first made the trip to Fenway Park myself in May of 2005, when on a business trip, I had planned ahead and scored the much-prized tickets. Though I enjoyed the game a great deal, the outcome was not what I had hoped, as the A's, coincidentally visiting Boston that week, managed to cough up the lead against Boston in the 9th inning, capsizing on a Kevin Millar home run over the Green Monster.

It seems that the Red Sox play amazingly well while I'm in town, for some reason. They came back against their rival Yankees in the 2004 ALCS from an unprecedented 3-0 deficit. They had a record of 0-3 prior to my coming to Boston, and were 8-0 the rest of the way, including the 2004 World Series. In 2005, I saw them defeat the A's in brutal fashion, and it was repeated the following day. On this trip, the Sox have wowed fans in the bottom of the ninth both Tuesday and Wednesday. Needless to say, if you're a betting man, it's clear the Indians aren't going to give you any kind of returns tomorrow. You can put it in the bank.

While I'm very much obviously an Oakland A's fan, I am absolutely a baseball fan first and foremost. In the last years, I've capitalized on business travel to see Fenway (now twice), Wrigley Field, Camden Yards, and Bank One Ballpark. My hope is that I can someday catch all 30 teams, and somehow get work to pay for it. That would be grand.

Listening to ''Track 06'', by DJ Lithium (Play Count: 4)

Evening Tech Notes: August 2, 2006

In a surprising move, Lycos (remember those guys?) is now offering a larger mail repository than Google's famed GMail. Instead of 2 Gigabytes, which GMail offers, LycosMail promises that users can save as many as 3 Gigabytes, effectively raising the bar again for e-mail storage. You may remember that when Google first announced GMail in April of 2004, Yahoo!, Hotmail and others limited users to a mere 50 Megabytes.

TechCrunch writes that Lycos has a number of strikes against it, not to mention the strength of Google's brand name, saying, "Whether Lycos can offer search and spam filtering as good as Gmail’s remains to be seen. It also stands at a disadvantage via Gmail’s integration with the rest of Google’s offerings."

As mentioned this morning, the tumult over Microsoft Windows Vista's delays continues. As Good Morning Silicon Valley writes, not even the bugs are stable yet. It's now rumored Vista won't show up until February.

Continuing on the Microsoft bent, it looks like the failed MSN brand will go away, in favor of the new moniker, Live. With MSN always running a distant second, third or worse, in basically every category, it's time to knife the baby.

Lest you think we've switched over to loving Redmond, don't be alarmed. There's plenty interesting going on in Cupertino as well. With WWDC rapidly approaching, the rumors are flying thick on just what Steve Jobs will pull from his sleeves. Think Secret says that the second generation of iWeb will simplify the use of external site data - outside of the typical .Mac services, and integration of Google's AdSense. Being a RapidWeaver user, we're not affected, but will still watch with curiosity. Additionally, a MacRumors source anticipates Xeon-powered XServes, New Mac Pro desktops, and a preview of the new operating system, Leopard, which will no doubt debut before the much-maligned Vista.

Listening to ''Seven Ways (Star Ways)'', by Paul Van Dyk (Play Count: 7)

A's Win 2 of 3 From Rival Angels

In a critical latter-season series with the Angels in Anaheim, the A's extended their lead in the division to 1 1/2 games today, following the team's second one-run win in three days against their bitter rival, the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. Although the A's haven't exactly blown anybody away with their inconsistent offense, they are doing what is needed to win, and are winning with a frequency that has kept them in first place for the better part of the last few months.

Last week, I enjoyed one of the most A's-drenched weeks I've ever had, attending games on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, five games in a seven-day span. The A's won three of the five in that time, again just eking over the .500 mark.

With the team having a day game that started at 1 Pacific and 4 Eastern, it was all I could do to not stay attached to the Blackberry and follow the game pitch by pitch until our show floor activity was complete at 6. But somehow, we stayed focused, only to "see" the last inning and a half from the hotel room. With the calendar having recently turn to August, we're nearing the crunch time of the year, and the playoffs may await, should the team execute as we expect. But it's always that more sweet to accomplish it against a stiff rival like the Angels. The less seen of that team, the better.

Listening to ''Integral'', by Pet Shop Boys (Play Count: 8)

Microsoft Expanding Despite Vista Collapse

Microsoft is in an odd space right now, as mentioned previously. Nobody appears to have much confidence that the company's next generation OS, Vista, is going to ship in time for PC vendors to pre-package it before the end of the year, and some prominent bloggers, including Robert McLaw and Robert Scoble, are campaigning for the software giant to hold off on its release until all the kinks are worked out.

As Scoble writes, "This sucker is just not ready. Too many things are too slow and/or don’t work." But that's not stopping Microsoft from continuing to balloon - as the company announced recently it had expanded corporate headcount by an additional 10,000 in the last fiscal year, turning nearby streets into parking lots, according to Mini-Microsoft, who laments, "10,000 More Microsofties - What Do They Do?". You know that line about throwing good money after bad? I don't see that Microsoft can continue to throw people at the problem. After a while, they reach a point where they simply don't add value and contribute to the slowdowns...

Listening to ''I'm With Stupid'', by Pet Shop Boys (Play Count: 5)