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“Father of Army Baseball”

The 11/29/1940 Dallas Evening News (my thanks to GenealogyBank) tells me that R.H. Johnson’s military career mostly occurred during WWI, as an enlisted man in Artillery, which was before his West Point stint. At the USMA he was quite active in sports, including baseball; he captained the basketball team. Johnson subsequently served for a few years as a ROTC instructor in the NYC area before resigning his commission to enter the banking business on Wall Street. In 1929 he founded R.H. Johnson & Company, and in 1947 began Franklin Investments.

The Making of Victorian Values by Ben Wilson: a short review

A very readable and immensely likable book. This is more a collection of anecdotes, though, than a monograph. Absolutely delightful as a portrait of London during the Regency, but unfocused.

Beloit Snappers @ Quad Cities River Bandits, September 3, 2009

We’ve straightened out the pitching situation–Scott McGregor’s magically appeared on the mound. And we’ve released Ingram from his baserunning duties so he can return to QC’s CF. emBut: We’re still lost track of one out. That will haunt us.

Bureaucratic Whimsy

When I began this journal, my main purpose was to document the things I did for a living. I wrote these work-triggered essays so for about a year, then stopped. A few months later, as I moved the site to a new server, I removed most of the work-related pages, leaving only a handful of job-related pages which didn’t directly touch on my job. I always planned to recover and repost the removed pages at some future date, and have now done so. They can be found in the site’s Bureaucratic Whimsy category. A few have minor edits, and I’ve added an occasional explanatory note. Please be aware that all names (except mine) have been changed, though in most cases the identity will be obvious to folks who worked with me.

Wrigley Field by Stuart Shea: a review

This is a book mainly about the northside ballpark, and about the team executives who’ve been responsible for maintaining it. Although many ballgames are described, and seasons are summarized, the Cubs (and the ChiFeds who first resided here) are not the book’s subject. This is not a shortcoming, but is occasionally disconcerting.

Play by Play

In May of 2006 Jeff Sackmann announced that he’d begun publishing splits (left/right, day/night, home/away, etc) information for minor league players. His Minor League Splits (MLS) website became one of the most valuable minor league stats sources. He’s no longer providing the information in an easily accessible form, but he’s made the underlying data available. This is potentially an immensely valuable resource, as it may enable folks to study the disparities in performance between players taking the field at different levels of professional competition.

Automation

All in all it was a fun summer. I’ve always claimed this was my favorite job. Three years later, I gather, I’d been replaced by a computer. Hmmm.

Computer Decide

An unavoidable reality of DMV life is that the Legislature rewrites the Drunk Driving laws every two or three years. The Legislative package typically includes well-intended amendments to other driver licensing laws. The Legislators rarely give much thought to the new act’s impacts on the driver’s prior record, nor to their predecessors’ attempts to improve traffic safety. This routinely gives rise to odd interactions which need to be implemented in the workflow–and written into the programming supporting that workflow. A side effect is that Computer Decide has grown quite complex. Mainframe programs supporting other departmental operations have similar issues, and have grown similarly complex.

An Anniversary, a day or four late. And a thank you.

On January 24 of 1996 I began work on what would evolve into MWLguide.com, but the site’s original URL was www.wp.com/JOWO/. The first page, built from a template supplied by my Web Pages host, was an early draft of this biographical page–that bio’s structure remains basically theirs–and two days later I’d composed A Fan’s Guide to the Midwest League in Lotus Word Pro and uploaded it to the site.

Easy on Readers (1939)

Its four symbols and their meaning
V — Verified.
OP — Official propaganda.
A — Seems authentic.
R — Rumor.

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