Making a change

Rattler Radio has moved. We are now part of the MLBlogs collective.

Blogger has been a good home for several seasons, but there were some problems with the links on the sidebar not showing up on some browsers over the last few months.

Make a note of the new address and update your bookmarks and links. http://rattlerradio.mlblogs.com/

This blog will stay active, but all future updates will be over at the new place.

Same story as yesterday

Sorry. I need to use Edgar, the Egret of Excuses today.

Game notes and a few other posts should be up soon, but with all of the stuff going on today, the Rattler Alumni Report and the Midwest League Action posts are either going to be put off until later or a pass will need to be taken on it again.

So,

Here is yesterday's MLB scoreboard. Click through to see how things went. Here is the MWL scoreboard from yesterday.

Early bus on Monday means that there may not be an update until after the team gets to the hotel in the afternoon. Just so you are aware.

Thank you, @MLB

I just want to thank @MLB. I put up this post about the wind before the game in Peoria last night and mentioned it on the Timber Rattlers Twitter feed.

They retweeted that update and this humble little therapy tool...I mean informative minor league blog had a rather large jump in traffic.

	Rattler Radio This Week's Visits

The hour by hour tracking that was available before midnight (But, I forgot to save) was very impressive.

I think that the next time I am in Peoria, I'll need to get a picture of the mural on that brick building with the BORN sign on it. I might break 1,000 visits in one day with that.

I may not get @RobertaCBS5 to comment on that mural, but who knows.

A few things from the end of the '09 season

First of all. Thank you for listening, reading, and coming out to the games this season. It means a lot.

Second, I will be updating the blog daily during the off-season - unless I go on vacation or want to sleep in for the day.

Third, There will be some posts up tomorrow that will have some notes about the season stats for the 2009 Timber Rattlers. You'll know them when you see them.

Fourth, In the past Mehring Monday on the Rattlers website has been an in-season feature. It will now be weekly all year long. You have been warned.

Fifth, I won't be making a lot of changes around here. But, I will hopefully be adding a few features and I need to figure out a new device for counting down to Opening Night 2010.

Sixth, I'll be back in the morning.

Well, hello there

Good afternoon.

Bus got in at 3:45 am. You would think that the family diner down the street would be open at 5:30, but nope.

So, after a few hours of sleep, there were a few other things to work on before getting on the blog. The bus to the field is in about 20 minutes so I'll be updating from there once the equipment is set up and working.

However, I do have a quick post to, um, post before heading to Dow Diamond.

A few notes about programming

As a heads up to my five readers:

This is the last post of the day. I'll have the usual stuff on Tuesday morning.

Then, on Tuesday night, I'll be live-blogging the All-Star game tomorrow from Clinton. I'll fire it up around the time of the Home Run Derby and carry it through the end of the game.

So. That's tomorrow.

As for today...I'm not sure what to do with myself....Probably should go into the office at the ballpark.

A short break.

There is still time to get in on the ticket giveaway below. Tickets available for the Famous Dave's Best Seats in the House (Seats four) and the Kolosso Toyota-Scion View From the Tundra Seats (For two).

I have to wrap up the column for SportsBubbler.com and probably a few other things, the regular afternoon postings will be up after I get to the stadium today.

Check for the latest This Week in Timber Rattlers Baseball around Noon CDT over at The Daily Drink.

It's a Beautiful Morning!

Awake and Alert

Four hours of sleep! Whoooo!

Stuff to do!

Hey, this is pretty nice

Elfstrom Stadium has been done up real nice. I may grab the camera tomorrow and take some crummy pictures with my eight-year old camera.

Today's posting follows.

Well, now what?

I have to run to catch the bus home. But, I want you to know that I did have a productive time waiting to see what the deal would be with the weather today.

The results are the next two posts.

I may check in later tonight with an updated rotation and there will be some light posting tomorrow.

See you all Tuesday.

Light afternoon workout

The team is going to have a quick afternoon workout before heading over for the Leadoff Experience at The Wave tonight.

I did my first -- and hopefully not last -- guest edition of Afternoon Delight over at Sportsbubbler.com today.

If I have some time and/or energy after the banquet tonight, I'll play a little catchup. Right now, there are radio commercials to track down and game notes to write!

This is being posted roughly 28 hours before tomorrow night's first pitch.

A few changes

Not much for posts this morning. Took care of most of that last night.

The blog roll needed a little organization. So, it has been half cleaned. A few broken links fixes and a better system of categorization.

I hope to have the rest later today...at some point.

Here come those mid-day updates

starting at 7:15pm...Can the season just start....now....please?

Starting today...

If there is time, I'll be doing a mid-day update from here through September. This will be for news items that I missed in the morning, new things that come in to Rattler Radio, and various other things.

For the new readers out there, the in-season post schedule for night games goes a little something like this:

MORNING POSTS:
MWL ACTION: Links to game stories in various Midwest League newspapers and on team websites.

MWL NEWS: Um, News from around the Midwest League.

BREWER SYSTEM REPORT: A look at how the rest of the Milwaukee system did.

MLB RATTLER ALUMNI: A look how some ex-Rattlers did in action the previous night.

TIMBER RATTLER GAME RECAP: A little something about the last Rattler game played. Still working on a theme. In the past it was something like...If Last Night's game were a movie...or If Last Night's game were a song...Developing

LUNCHTIME UPDATES:
MISCELLANEOUS: Um, Miscellaneous stories that don't fit into the morning update.

GAME NOTES: Notes about the game that evening.

RATTLER STARTING PITCHER NOTES: Pretty self-explanatory

PRE-GAME UPDATE:
Maybe the starting lineups, maybe a promo for that night's pre-game show guest, maybe a quick weather report, maybe something else. This is fungible.

POSSIBLE IN-GAME UPDATE:
I am thinking about having a liveblog during some games. This will let you chime in with questions, comments, or just talk with the two other people who would be on-line to comment.

If there is a rain delay, I'll bring back Rain Delay Theater.

To follow up on the Live Blog idea...I am about 98% sure that I will be doing a live blog for the scrimmage between the Timber Rattlers and UW-Oshkosh during Fan Fest on April 7. Some, if you can't be here, I can make stuff up to keep you informed.

POST-GAME UPDATE:
Nothing except a link to the box score and the game story with perhaps a pithy comment or two. I'd lie and say that I have a life, but that much time on a computer can't be good.

The posting schedule for day games will be very, very compressed.

Notice anything different?

After about 18 months of saying that I was going to do this, I finally did it. The FREAKING SNOW outside had nothing to do with it either!

To tell the truth, I've spent the last three Saturdays trying to figure this out, but today was the day!

Labels are a bit easier to find, show off that you are a follower, take the poll. I'm going to see what else this new format can do over the next few days so that it is ready on April 9. That is only 19 days away. Which reminds me...

19 dies insquequo Oris Dies!

A few changes here. A few changes there.

The changes here:

Added links over on the left to the following blogs

The Watson Files

Between the Green Pillars

The Junkball Blues

I'll mention this again. If you have a Brewer Blog let me know and I'll put up a link in the blogroll.

Added LumberKings to the Mariner System section.

Also, the link to the internet broadcast has been switched from MiLB.com to 1280WNAM.com. Didn't want to leave that until April 11.

The changes there -- with there being the Timber Rattler website:

New, sharp-looking banner at the top (we -- meaning people more talented than I -- did that)

New ads for various businesses (we -- meaning the sales department -- didn't do that)

A change elsewhere is that I am now on facebook. Or, I at least have an account. Having a blog and a facebook account seems like overkill, but I figured...what the heck.

One last change...there is one less day on the countdown....

73 dies insquequo Oris Dies

A few things before getting started in '09

First: Thanks to Paulie and the Baron for filling in the last two days. I really needed it.

(Note to self: Paulie and The Baron would make a great sitcom!)

Second: The toughest part about cutting back on caffeine intake is the first month. Three more weeks and I'll be down to a 12-pack of 20 oz bottles of Coke a day.

Third, thank you for a great 2008. How great? Well, these numbers may not seem like much and the traffic I received in all of 2008 probably equals a week compared to other blogs out there. But, here (as of last Thursday) goes....


Click the image for a better look. You'll notice that more people checked out Rattler Radio in December '08 than in May '08. That's a bit surprising. But also -- I hope -- a sign of things to come for 2009 and not just for this little piece of therapy I call a blog.

Stay classy, Rattler Radio readers. And thanks for stopping by...But mostly stay classy, Rattler Radio readers.

And....heeeere....we...go!

The day got away from me. Probably because I was reading this.

You Are Not Spam
That is good to know....

You knew that already, and now we do too. We have now restored all accounts that were mistakenly marked as spam yesterday. (See: Spam Fridays)

We want to offer our sincerest apologies to affected bloggers and their readers. We’ve tracked down the problem to a bug in our data processing code that locked blogs even when our algorithms concluded they were not spam. We are adding additional monitoring and process checks to ensure that bugs of this magnitude are caught before they can affect your data.

At Blogger, we strongly believe that you own and should control your posts and other data. We understand that you trust us to store and serve your blog, and incidents like this one are a betrayal of that trust.

I will accept 100 shares of Google. Then, I'll be able to trust you, you wacky Blogger overlords -- after I sell them and pay off the trailer.

I'll try to get to as much as I can today. But, it is a 6:35pm game tonight and there is a HUGE crowd expected for Saturn Night. Yes, any native of the planet Saturn gets in free tonight.....Sorry, I've been off here for the last two days? Am I supposed to use up my A-Material right out of the gate?

Since I don't have a life and there is a mound of laundry I'll need to take to the Laundromat Sunday night, I'll take the computer along and borrow a wireless signal to do a large amount of posting then. Sounds good to me.

Unlocked

I'd apologize, but I'll let blogger do that...kind of:

While we wish that every post on this blog could be about cool features or other Blogger news, sometimes we have to step in and admit a mistake.

We've noticed that a number of users have had their blogs [ed. Like Rattler Radio] mistakenly marked as spam, and wanted to sound off real quick to let you know that, despite it being Friday afternoon, we are working hard to sort this out. So to those folks who have received an email saying that your blog has been classified as spam and can't post right now, we offer our sincere apologies for the trouble.

We hope to have this resolved shortly, and appreciate your patience as we work through the kinks.

Well, it's resolved. For now. Back with a fresh day of posts tomorrow! I hope.

I thought there would be more...

Posts today. But, the Game Notes and Tonight's pitchers entries took -- and I am not exaggerating -- 90 minutes to get on the blog.

If I was exaggerating, I would have said: For the last 5 freakin' hours, I have been screaming profanities at my computer, blogger, and that damn bird that keeps flying by my window as I have attempted to post two simple items.

Now, that's exaggeration.


Now, this has taken around 50 minutes