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.

College Admissions

My son is currently going through the college visitation and application process with me serving as part observer, part chauffeur or navigator and part confidant. Until now, even though I work at a university, I'd never had much interaction with admissions people and it was interesting to discover how much difference they have made in my perception of their individual schools for better and for worse (in a couple of cases).

In keeping with the theme of my blog, I'd thought I'd share these random observations. Because he is still in the process of applying to these schools, I'm not naming names. The schools, in no particular order are Enormous State U. (ESU), Small Urban Engineering U. (SUES), Hedera League U. (HLU), Small Rust-Belt Engineering U. (SRBU) and Small Polytechnic U. (SPU).

ESU had about 200 people attending a Saturday morning orientation; the presentation started right on time and the admissions staff gave a good 45 minute overview with slides and video explaining the admissions process and different opportunities available at ESU. Following a short Q&A, the 200 were pared down into groups of 15-20 with student guides who scattered the groups so that we could actually hear the guides. Most impressive feature? Buses were stationed at two different points during the tour with two tour groups converging simultaneously on the bus and transporting us to new points on the tour and ultimately back to the admissions building. ESU admissions earns kudos for coordinating 20 guides, 5 buses and 200 people in the course of 2.5 hours. Oh, and they gave us a free lunch at the student dining hall so we could see what the food was like. Grade: A+

Our tour of SUES was on a weekday and though traffic and parking presented challenges, we arrived on-time for the orientation for the program my son was interested in. There were about 100 people including about 35-40 prospective students. The admissions staff gave a good talk with lots of slides about the program at SUES and emphasized the importance of coops in the program. They also went on too long about potential careers, and high school course selection. The lecture probably lasted about an hour and fifteen minutes. So far, so good right? Now it's time for the tour of the program's facilities, but parents, siblings and other hangers-on are informed that there's not enough room on the tour for them, so there will be a Q&A with the admissions staff while our kids do a tour. Fine, we'll break for coffee and hang out for a bit in the auditorium. It turns out that unstructured Q&A's with parents are just as unproductive as when faculty do them with students. Typical questions were things like "Johnny got a 2400 on his SAT's and wants to major in metaphysical statistics. Do you offer that program?" At about 45 minutes, the parents run out of questions to ask and we wander back to the admissions building to wait in the lobby for the tours to return. With no chairs in the lobby and no indication when the tour would return, we hang out on the soft granite steps and dodge students ascending and descending for another 45 minutes. My son had a fabulous tour, met a former astronaut and saw all kinds of cool things, but hadn't been in a classroom or the student union and didn't see a dorm room. We decide that if we stay for the next tour that shows us those parts of campus, we will be leaving [insert favorite enormous East Coast City with horrendous traffic here] at precisely the time that will maximize the time spent in traffic. Grade: C

We visited HLU twice, once in the summer when the weather was gorgeous and once in 20 degree, -20 wind-chill winter since I insisted he visit the school when students were there. HLU does admissions by school so each school has its own admissions staff who do the presentations for their own programs. The slide presentation was well polished and informative and lasted about 45 minutes. Then students gave a tour of the school to smaller groups and this was also well done. Grade A

We had two tours at SRBU, one general campus and one program specific tour and there was no presentation about admissions or the program prior to the tours. Had we not taken the campus tour we would not have seen their typical freshman 8x10 concrete block prison cell dorm room or experienced the local wildlife campus greek culture. Grade A for honesty on the campus tour but B overall since we really didn't get an overall sense of the admissions process or the university.

SPU wasn't initally on my son's short list, but they have an award program for outstanding prospective students which amounts to a good chunk of change over 4 years. We visited during one of their general programs for prospective students which was held in an ugly concrete lecture hall/auditorium with about 300 people. The admissions staff member talked about SPU and their new buildings and sports and work hard in high school and on and on for an hour with no slides with very little information about the programs or admissions process. Then student tour guides took a group of about 20 on a walking tour of campus. Some guides had small amplifiers so that they could be heard; ours did not. The tour wasn't bad, the only classroom building we went in was the ugliest I've ever seen inside and out. It's a good thing they showed us the dorm rooms which were very nice or we wouldn't have gone back. Grade C- for the initial visit.

We again visited SPU on a day they had set aside for the award winners. This time, there were students directing traffic to the parking garage and then directing us to the opening session. They were serving breakfast in the atrium of their new, beautiful performing arts center and held the introductory session in there. There were probably about 800 people there and unfortunately, we were stuck in long rows of chairs behind the stage. This time a different admissions person welcome everyone and introduced a student who talked briefly about why she came to SPU and loved it there. Then they let us roam about the campus to talk to faculty and students in the individual programs. The ones we visited did a great job of explaining their programs and what made SPU unique. Student and other campus groups had informational booths which were not all staffed, but that was a nice touch. They provided lunch for us on the floor of the basketball arena and it was a pretty good day. Grade A+ for letting the faculty and students talk about SPU. About 2 weeks later the admissions office at SPU sends a letter to my son, not to follow up on the visit, but to congratulate him on the award and to invite him to visit SPU. Grade F for wasting paper.

Solar comparison Rotonda West Fl vs San Jose, CA

Help Me Obi-wan Blitzer

Now it's Ford's turn to be silly

Having once owned a '78 Ford Fiesta, I have a soft spot for these cars. But an article in Business Week nailed Ford for not importing this car. Ford's reasoning? "It runs on diesel".

What's wrong with GM?

Here is a summary of what is wrong with GM. Take a look at their top-of-line full size sedans. When GM phased out the Park Avenue Ultra, they replaced it with the Lucerne. The Park Avenue was slightly larger than the Lucerne, had more trunk space and more passenger volume but was lighter and got better mileage for better highway range. HELLO GM? THE 1970's CALLED; THEY WANT THEIR GAS MILEAGE BACK.