This collection of entries is from November 01, 2005.
Here's something that caught my attention when... reading the newspaper today, yeah, that's it... newspaper...
The Tribune had an article that said talked about reading blogs at work. I guess this started because the writer was... reading blogs at work and found this at Romensko (which I guess started because of something that was brought up at Ad Age).
Apparently, employees spend about 9% of their work-time reading blogs. And the Tribune article thinks that one of the reasons is that reading a blog looks like you're doing work (even though the blog being read is not work-related). As the Tribune writer (Steve Johnson) says: "To a boss standing at, say, 20 paces, reading a blog resembles work." Apparently, if you look at some blog stats, you'd see that page hits "peak during working hours, then plummet on weekends when, of course, there's no incentive to read them that's quite so strong as productivity avoidance".
Now, my stats start rising dramatically at about 11am and stay there all afternoon and then dip slightly over dinner and it's back up again from 7 to 8. The weekday/weekend usage tracks toward the workweek with the weekends lower.
Still, interesting that we're out on the web reading that many blogs...
Here's were it's all going to start for the 2006 White Sox - the first player movements.
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The big positive move - picking up the option on Cliff Politte for $1.2 million
The team declined the 2006 option on designated hitter Carl Everett, buying him out at $500,000 instead of his $5 million option. So he's the first guaranteed to go (and, you know, I'm OK with that).
The first Free Agent move was actually Paul Konerko last Thursday (the Sox have exclusive financial negotiating rights to Konerko through Nov. 10, but you know he's going to test the waters and God knows what kind of offers he's going to get. PRIORITY, people, let's get ready to handle getting this guy back), but another happened quietly - Geoff Blum. Both guys have said they want to return to the Sox.
Frank Thomas exercised his $10 million player option for 2006 (but the team has five days to elect to give him a $3.5 million buyout and people believe that's going to happen because of his ankle fractures).
We've got arbitration coming up for Jon Garland, A.J. Pierzynski , and Joe Crede so there's going to be more money there.
Oh, then we have the incentive bonuses: Jon Garland and Mark Buehrle can earn at least $60,000 if they finished no lower than fifth in the American League Cy Young Award voting (to be announced Nov. 8).
Oh, let's bring up something that caught my attention: The Curse of 1906
This is a Chicago-wide baseball curse. Chicago has not celebrated a postseason baseball series championship of any kind on its own soil. Didn't happen this year (ALDS was won in Boston, ALCS in Anaheim and the World Series in Houston). In 2003 the Cubs won the NLDS in Atlanta.
In 1906 it HAD to be a Chicago team: the Sox topped the Cubs at South Side Park in Game 6 of the World Series.
Great, just what the city needs, another curse.
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