Baseball Economics are Voodoo

I'm not sure I understand how, if your baseball team has been "struggling" to make money in New Britain where your lease costs $110k and you can seat 6000, you can possibly make money when your lease in Hartford will cost $500k and you seat 9000.  

Moreover, I don't know which city officials in their right minds would bond $60 million (with payments of $1.5-2.0 million/year) in exchange for a lease of $500k.

For comparison, the 20th most valuable minor league baseball franchise in 2012 was the Omaha Storm Chasers.  With revenues of $8million they cleared $600k.  Their 6300 seat stadium cost $26 million and they pay $450k/year to the county that owns it.  The county gets revenue from all sales tax at the park, and a "portion of the sales and hotel taxes generated from stores and hotels near the ballpark".   Hartford has none of those options available.  They will probably get parking revenue although it's hard to see making up $1million/year even at $10/car.

I'm predicting that if this actually goes through, the Rock Cats will declare bankruptcy before the 2018 season and Hartford will have a shiny, two-year old, empty stadium attracting no one.

#thesecatsrock?

The Night Old Windows Died

I have been using Linux as my primary desktop, both at home and at work for over 15 years.  But since 1995, there's been a Windows box of some kind running in the house.  Windows 95, 98SE, ME (god help us) and finally XP for the last 10 years.    Until now.

We could have upgraded to Windows 7, but didn't spend the $100.  Since last summer, my wife has been using the Samsung Chromebook more and more and the Windows computer less and less.  This week, we've been preparing for a living room rearrangement and that necessitated the removal of the two computers and their furniture that have dominated the one side of the room for years.  The Windows computer was retired and its furniture reused.  What will we do without a Windows computer?

I still have the Linux desktop running Kubuntu Trusty Tahr and plan to keep using it daily.  It's currently the only thing connected to the multifunction printer/scanner and provides printing for other devices through Cloud Print.   I use my Android tablet (cheap 7" PIPO U6) for light browsing, Chromecasting Netflix and Hulu, and for reading email, Facebook and Twitter.   My wife does everything through her Chromebook or Android phone.  What are we missing?

The only Windows software I've used in years is TaxAct, but I've been using a WinXP virtual machine on my Linux box to run that for the past 3 years without any problems.  It's likely programs supporting XP will die off in the next couple of years and I'll have to find another way to do my taxes.