Derek Bodner’s Blog

I’m a draft junkie. The NBA draft is the only draft I really get this way over. I don’t watch college baseball at all, and I just can’t get into the football draft as much, as it’s far too long and drawn out. The basketball draft is Christmas week for me. Having been working with the guys over at DraftExpress this past year has only made me even more of a junkie.

So, for some reason, this year I’m compelled to put down my thoughts on the draft for all to see, so that in a few years time I can look like a complete buffoon. I write this knowing full well that some of my opinions will probably look preposterous when these players rookie contracts expire. That being said, this is my opinion of the draft.
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moar funny pictures

Squirrel monkey, photo taken at the Philadelphia Zoo.

Originally posted at sixers.realgm.com.

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Is anyone else getting incredibly annoyed with Red Sox nation? They win 2 world series, and all of a sudden they’re worse than the Yankee fan base they’ve united against. Back when they were the lovable losers, you could empathize with the fanbase that had gone through so many near misses. Now, with all the bandwagon fans, they’re unbearable. After a couple of losing seasons, Red Sox Nation will turn into Red Sox Village, and all will be well again.

Jimmy Rollins failure to run out a pop fly last week is the stuff superstars do from time to time. Every now and then, a ball is misplayed and the player is caught. Occasionally superstars will get calls into the managers office after the game, and a private chat will be held to make sure said superstar doesn’t do it again.

This situation last week was anything but regular.

For an oft-regarded players manager like Charlie Manuel to bench the reigning National League Most Valuable Player mid-game for everyone to see was news. It’s also a move that in the wrong clubhouse, or from the wrong manager, could have been disastrous. Possibly more important than Manuel making the move was Rollins acceptance of it.

“I know better. He’s the manager, and that’s what he’s supposed to do. Charlie has two rules — be on time, and hustle. I broke one. That’s what happens”, Rollins said. “It’s like breaking the law and getting mad when the police show up.”

That’s the beauty of how the situation unfolded. Manuel handled it perfectly. By benching Rollins for the infraction, not only did he send a message to Rollins, but he also sent a message to everyone on the team. With two former MVP’s, a possible future MVP, and a Cy Young contender, there have been less accomplished players develop big heads and bad attitudes. Not only does it keep the stars inline, but everyone else lower on the totem pole knows they can be benched as well. After the game, Manuel didn’t air dirty laundry to the media. The benching was all that was needed to send the message, and the simple pronouncement that he and Jimmy had handled it left the press with no sound bites to let it linger.

Still, the situation could have gone bad had Rollins resented such treatment. After all, he is the reigning MVP, and with that award can come a sense of entitlement. But not in this clubhouse. Not with these players. And that’s why this team could be special down the line.

I recently got a Canon 30d, and went to the Philadelphia Zoo for a few hours over the weekend. The Zoo has 3 tiger cubs (roughly 1.5 years old, I believe), and they were particularly frisky. Click to enlarge:

The photos aren’t of the highest quality, partly because we were behind glass, which had the tigers splashing on one side, countless finger prints on the other, and terrible reflection. Still, all too often you go to the zoo and the big cats barely move, so this was fun. You can view more photos from the zoo here.

With 4 minutes remaining and the world champion already decided, the “Hey hey hey, goodbye” chants began to rain down. Doc Rivers substituted out his big three to a standing ovation, and the celebration began. The final minutes were a mere formality, a simple delay before the confetti came pouring down and the championship hats worn. It was a full scale party. I sat here imagining what it would be like, but the truth of the matter is…

I HAVE NOTHING TO COMPARE IT AGAINST. It’s impossible for me to imagine what it would be like, as I have no memory of anything even remotely similar. When the last championship was won in this city, I was just a few months older than the son Kendrick Perkins was bouncing around on his shoulder during the final minutes.

Can somebody please, please, put all their chips in and go for a darn championship? Just once? I would love to witness one of these events before I’ve become so cynical I can’t enjoy it.

David Montgomery, you might base success on more than wins, but I don’t. ‘Whatever it takes, dude’.

My position isn’t a desktop support position, and I’m thankful for that. That being said, we’re a relatively small company, and there isn’t anyone in the company dedicated to desktop support, so when problems arise, it often times lands on my desk. The lack of responsible computing drives me absolutely insane. I shouldn’t have to take hours out of my day because your spyware infested computer no longer functions adequately. Next time, please do not install the flashing christmas tree lights that illuminate your system tray. Thank you.

A while back I mentioned about how the webhosting industry scares me. It still does. Here’s some recent questions I’ve seen asked by people who actually sell shared/dedicated hosting plans:
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change site`s ip from the ssh ?
hello

i wanna know how i can change site`s ip from there server

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Hello,

We lost ssh access in one of our vps and we unable to give ssh access with putty.
How can rebuild ssh with yum? because we have console access to server.

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Hello,

How can use scp for transfer a folder?
I have following error when try to transfer a filder via scp:
…
scp: /backup/cpbackup/weekly: not a regular file

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Just remember. YOU MIGHT BE PAYING THESE GUYS TO MANAGE YOUR SERVER. If that doesn’t warn you to read up and use reputable hosts, I don’t know what does. That second guy was literally trying to sell VPS’s, and the level of troubleshooting he got to was “hm…can’t ssh in, can login at console, have no idea how to troubleshoot why I can’t login so maybe if sshd got lost and I need to reinstall it mmmkay?”. Not only was it sad that he couldn’t figure out how to use yum, the fact that that was his resolution to “I can’t ssh into my server” represents someone who started using linux within the, oh, I don’t know, last week?