What happened, how to help
Wednesday we got overwhelmed by a traffic spike at least 50% off our normal traffic, which is already shockingly large. We blew up our web and database servers (and that’s “the massive shared servers our generous host had us on”) For a couple of hours, we were showing a version of USSM that was the last thing the web server managed to generate: a text-only version of USSM with no formatting, where every link led to a file not found error (because they’d been blown away).
This meant that while I was on the phone with our host, discussing what in the world we could do (because bringing the site back up only to get destroyed under the load again made no sense) we got high-quality emails like
What Happened to the USS Mariner web site today? New format is awful. . .and nothing about trade that just came down with Indians
No really, someone looked at that broken, formless thing and thought we were redecorating.
Helping
Probably… 95% of the email that’s come in has been requests to help in different forms, and particularly, requests to accept donations. Some of them were rather angry about not having that option. We’ve resisted this in the past, and now we relent:
And also this.
Wow, that Paypal box is way smaller. Oh well, there’s not a lot of time right now for tweaking and formatting.
Paypal (now a part of eBay) is, admittedly, uh, not the finest company, but they do charge us a little less compared to Amazon (PayPal is, I believe, 30c+2.2% while Amazon is 30c+ 2.9%) PayPal’s a little bit better, but Amazon is likely to be much easier for you if it was up, which it hasn’t had much luck at today. If any of our fine readers at Amazon want to kick their box in the hind end for us, that’d be helpful.
I fully admit that we don’t know what we’re going to do with the money right now, but the top candidates are:
- We port the site to use Movable Type, which I believe may be far better at handling the kind of loads we see. MT requires money
- Putting a box on a rack which is not hand-assembled by me with a Will Clark sticker on the case (for luck)
- Bribe our host
I would say right now that I’m 100% certain that we won’t be using the DMZ-built box as a long-term solution: either we’ll move to MT and solve the load issue that way, or we’ll be forced to buy or hire our own server. I promise not to buy my weight in Anchor Steam and try to forget all this when we’re up and stable. Unless that’s a request. Because I could do that.
Some people have suggested Google’s ad program — we’ve been down that path before, and it didn’t do it.
Friday’s news
4:00 pm. Bad news, bad news: Brandon Morrow, the M’s first round draft pick, isn’t pitching. “Sore elbow.” Yup. Update: just as the AP story on that came out, he threw two innings in the Arizona League (box score)
On the game thread front: we’re up on Marbledog again. Be good.
Player acquisition news: Cuban players SS Eduardo Paret and 3B Yulienski Gourriel have both defected in Columbia. Both were on the Cuban WBC team. Gourriel, whenever he can get his passport/etc straightened out, will get a massive deal.
1:00 pm. Texas beefs up. They get LF-R Carlos Lee and prospect OF-R Nelson Cruz (and a PTBNL) in exchange for CF-L Lance Nix, OF-R Kevin Mench and RP-R Francisco Cordero. Nice little deal for the Rangers. I’d have thought the Brewers would be more focused on getting future value.
So Doyle comes up, Dobbs DHs that game (and hits well, because he always hits well in games I attend — his agent should buy me some nice Tacoma and Seattle season tickets, because they’ll get their money back tenfold). Then Doyle’s put on the DL with a shoulder impingement and sent down to Tacoma — where he DHs.
From what we know, it looks like he’s just not going to play the field for a little while, but we really don’t know what’s wrong yet, and whether there are longer-term implications for his playing time, either there or here. I also don’t entirely understand the implications of the move, or Doyle’s option status for this year. I’d puzzle it out but there’s a lot going on here (sorry).
Thursday’s news
A cruel and vindictive deity continues to persecute Snelling and, by extension, his fans
The M’s just put Snelling on the DL with an “impingement in his left shoulder”.
As if I wasn’t in a spectacularly crappy mood already.
Go to a game to see my favorite Mariner reappear, but nope, Dobbs starts at DH and after the game, Doyle’s sent back down. Thanks!
Broussard news catch-up
Choo’s been traded to the Indians for Ben Broussard. Team link.
First story I think that mentioned the M’s have now bought both halves of the Indians platoon.
Doyle for Everett would have been a nice, if overdue move, especially since it would mean that you could put Doyle in LF and DH Ibanez, which would help out on the defense, too, but if they’re going to play Broussard at DH v RHP, then Doyle’s not going to get playing time, and he’ll probably go back to Tacoma so he can get his swings in. Bavasi’s not going to have our boy up if he’s not going to play.
An interesting possibility is that Broussard means a Sexson move is more likely, which if true… wow.
Also, as Jim Thomsen notes, “We get, in my opinion, the best musician in baseball. Broussard is a great guitarist who writes quality songs.” Enjoy the musical stylings of Broussard at his site.
Stone on Everett DFA
Larry Stone: “Bare bones with bat led to Everett’s extinction“. Note Stone here cites the never-before-revealed vesting threshold at 500 – we’d pegged it at about 450. The Times Mariner notebook “No hard feelings”
Disappointing headline for Thursday: “Leben, an Everett fighter, is top contender in booming sport”. Turns out that Leben is from the city of Everett, and the booming sport is ulimate fighting. I know!
Game 101, Blue Jays at Mariners
Laurie, who is in possession of a ridiculous bandwith quota and who is also not afraid to use it, is guest-hosting tonight’s thread. Head on over to Marbledog and knock yourself (and, quite likely, her server) out. While you’re over there, please thank her for this generous offer as we recover from the day’s fireworks.
Hello Doooooooooooooooyle
Chris Snelling is going to join the Mariners this evening in time for tonight’s game against the Blue Jays. Carl Everett has been designated for assignment to create room on the roster.
And there was much rejoicing.
[DMZ update: Here’s the team announcement]
Game 100, Blue Jays at Mariners
7:05, Halladay v Meche.
Notes: Lopez returns, bats 3rd. Everett’s still the designated out-maker, batting ahead three people who hit better than he has.
So let’s look at the Blue Jays lineup for a second
CF-R Reed Johnson
LF-L Frank Catalanotto
1B-L Lyle Overbay
3B-R Troy Glaus
C-B Gregg Zaun
RF-L Eric Hinske
DH-R Bengie Molina (whaaat?)
2B-R Aaron Hill
SS-R John MacDonald
There are some weird choices in there, too.
New arrival…
Long time readers may recall this post, dated two years and two days ago. Along similar lines, I’m pleased to announce the arrival of the newest M’s fan, Noah Robert Barker, born today at 8:24am. I’d have a picture for you, but WordPress is arguing with me at the moment. (Take that, WordPress!).
Alex Rodriguez and the uniform with pinstripes
I understand why Alex wasn’t embraced by Yankee fans. For all of his talk about embracing the pinstripes, he spoke with the same somewhat robotic insincerity that’s been his public face for years, a mask that he grew into that free agent year. Everything he says runs through the self-censor loop, because he’s been so consistently and so harshly punished for verbal slips before, and then he’s criticisized for not being frank and open.
In any event: Alex isn’t having a good year, and it’s certainly not the year the Rangers and Yankees are paying him to have.
From my distant view, this all looks insane. There’s the Yankees broadcast crew, possibly prodded from outside (see rumors), hashing on him, ESPN has been frantically whipping the flames of this conflict as a former GM (who once tried to sign Alex, failed, and then attacked him) and now analyst attracts more and more attention by, over and over, whipping Alex for real but mostly perceived shortcomings. The Yankee fan base seems easily-led and almost irrational, spouting off about how he lacks the soul to play in New York, or the courage to face pressure, and so on, until you want to be sick.
I wonder if this makes future signings or trades that require consent harder. If I was a player, knowing that any bad month or week might be fanned into a wildfire of hatred, I wouldn’t want to play there, no matter how good the money was. It wouldn’t be worth it.
In any event, for a reasonably intelligent view on this, I recommend Steven Goldman’s Pinstriped Blog, on the Yes Network site.
Here, a first view on what was happening, and here, even better, at length answering emails from readers on the situation.
As for the Mariners, if the Yankees did call, offering one of the best players in baseball for pennies on the dollar, well, you take that deal.
You do.