Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

The words do not have to be perfect.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

This fight is for everything.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

The willow is too close to the house.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

Joe Lieberman disappointingly reemerged to remind us that he’s still alive.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

Consistently wrong since 2002

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Republicans can’t even be trusted with their own money.

In my day, never was longer.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

You are here: Home / Sports / Finally Some Good News

Finally Some Good News

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Just go away:

The Pittsburgh Pirates began to reshape their front office under new principal owner Robert Nutting by firing general manager Dave Littlefield on Friday.

Littlefield’s dismissal is effective immediately, the team said in a statement. A formal announcement will come at a news conference Friday afternoon. The decision comes after six-plus seasons in which the team showed little progress on the field or in its farm system.

The firing came with only three weeks left in the season and the Pirates in their customary spot in last place in the NL Central, with a 61-79 record — three losses away from a 15th consecutive losing season, one off the major league record.

No decision on the status of Littlefield or second-year manager Jim Tracy had been expected until after the season. Managing general partner Kevin McClatchy, who has run the day-to-day operations since 1996, is resigning when the season ends and his successor was expected to evaluate Littlefield and Tracy.

“It’s tough,” Tracy said upon hearing the news. “It’s real tough. He’s more than a friend to me.”

Littlefield, a former executive with the Marlins and Expos, succeeded Cam Bonifay midway through a 100-loss season in 2001 and was expected to make major changes in a team that had shown no headway since winning three division titles in the early 1990s.

But Littlefield’s efforts to rebuild the Pirates failed, and the Pirates never had fewer than 87 losses or finished higher than fourth in a full season during his stay.

If this guy ever works in baseball again, it is not because of his skills. It is because he is a warlock and can control people’s minds and convince them to hire him. Really- he is that bad.

Reader Interactions

110Comments

  1. 1.

    ThymeZone

    The firing came with only three weeks left in the season and the Pirates in their customary spot in last place in the NL Central, with a 61-79 record—three losses away from a 15th consecutive losing season, one off the major league record.

    Wow, I didn’t realize how bad it was back there.

    Makes us appreciate Jerry Colangelo out here in Phx.

    From 65-97 startup in 1998 to World Champs in 2001. Just shows to go ya, management makes a difference. Good luck to the Pirates, the town deserves a decent baseball team.

  3. 3.

    Off Colfax

    If this guy ever works in baseball again, it is not because of his skills. It is because he is a warlock and can control people’s minds and convince them to hire him. Really- he is that bad.

    In that case, I predict that he will be firmly in place within the Rockies management before the end of 2008. Charlie Monfort is both highly susceptible to mind-control rays and hates to give any fan what they really want, namely another appearance in the post-season, regardless of placement.

    Thank God I’m a Padres fan.

  4. 4.

    Third Eye Open

    Off Colfax,

    Is that West Colfax or East Colfax…cuz we all know what you’re doing in your free time if you’re on the East Side…Hustle and Flow if ya’ get my drift…you keepin Red Rocks down for me?

  5. 5.

    Third Eye Open

    Hey John,

    Since its Friday and all, can we get a discussion going on the greatest comedic bits of all time..I put my vote in for “The infamous gray gym sock” bit by Bill Hicks..whadd’ya think?

  6. 6.

    Geoduck

    If this guy ever works in baseball again, it is not because of his skills. It is because he is a warlock and can control people’s minds and convince them to hire him.

    Don’t be silly. There’s also kiddie-porn blackmail.

  7. 7.

    Pooh

    Seriously, he’s got a gem of a ballpark to work with, and it always seems like the Pirates have decent young talent. That they’ve sucked continuously for a decade is definitely an indictment of upper management.

  11. 11.

    Jimmmmm

    Florida’s second WS title wasn’t bought. That team was built. And from rubble, no less. Pieces were acquired, but I defy anyone to show me a baseball team of the last 30 years that didn’t go that route.

    (80 Royals don’t count.)

  12. 12.

    Zifnab

    About time. The Pirates Astros are the worst run team in all of sports.

    We like to try and stay competitive.

  14. 14.

    Gus

    I feel for Pirates fans. They have such a long proud tradition. I’d like to see them competitive soon.

  18. 18.

    Xenos

    These mediocre managers are like certain perennial losing Democratic campaign consultants. There is a small pool of people with significant experience, and it is a rare candidate or team owner who is willing to go with an unexperienced manager, even if most of the available ones out there are proven losers.

  19. 19.

    WaterGirl

    One big hurdle crossed! Step by step, inch by inch.

    I am going to be very happy to see our Balloon Juice site again.

  20. 20.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Well, that sounds promising. Thanks again to John and WaterGirl for keeping the place going and especially for keeping us as informed as possible with no bullshit.

  21. 21.

    Carlo Graziani

    About that worst-case scenario: should we start investigating what is involved — is it even possible — in taking archived content such as posts and comments, and somehow shoehorning them into a reverse-engineered WordPress MySQL database? And, if so, going how far back?

    I mean, it should be possible in principle, at the cost of a lot of experimentation, with some knowledge of the WP table structure and the MySQL APIs, and volunteer time and effort. It’s really a to-be-dreaded last resort.

  23. 23.

    MisterForkbeard

    That IS good news.

    Shoehorning the tarball/archive content back in would be a pretty rough deal. As in, probably something we’d need to contract someone to do unless we can get straight backups from the folks who did the redesign a few years ago (that MIGHT be lift&shift, but I really doubt it).

    Still, great news in general and I’ll absolutely take it. If it comes to needing to import old data and hiring someone to do it, we can start a contribution fund. I’d be in.

  25. 25.

    WaterGirl

    ‘@Carlo Graziani

    Data-wise, the only thing that makes sense now is 1) testing on a teeny tiny scale what the process would be, if we had to resort to that, and 2) preserving anything the is going to disappear in 15 or 30 days or whatever, in case it takes longer than that to get back our data.

  26. 26.

    WaterGirl

    ‘@Windpond

    With MailChimp, you can have one superset of all the names and then other smaller sets for particular things. So it’s possible to have a subset of people who want to get updates about particular things.

    For instance, we could have a subset of people who sometimes attend the BJ zoom, and then I could send zoom links out to all of those people in a single message instead of having to keep a spreadsheet and send email message with zoom links each time.

  27. 27.

    Old School

    We’re going home! Let’s throw a big party this weekend and completely trash this place!

  28. 28.

    Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg

    You never pay ransomware jerks.

    One of these days, they’re going to knock over a criminal operation (think old timey mob, drug lords, or something like that). I eagerly await the blood spatter in whatever sweatshop when it happens.

  29. 29.

    SpaceUnit

    I am prepared to repost every comment submitted over the last year if that is deemed necessary.

  30. 30.

    Ohio Mom

    I do not understand any of these detailed technical conversations about the state of the archives but I get that by early next week, things may be halfway back to normal. That is enough cause for hope for me.

  31. 31.

    Amir Khalid

    Well, it’s about time. We’ve been in this purgatory for, what, just under two weeks?
    Seriously, it IS encouraging news. Especially the bit about Balloon Juice maybe coming back Monday. You’ve been fighting the good fight for all us jackals, WaterGirl. John Cole should give you a medal.

  32. 32.

    Ohio Mom

    I must have made a typo in my name and/or email, I’m in moderation. Another reason to look forward to tne old site coming back.

  33. 33.

    Pete Mack

    How on earth did the infection spread from the first site? Surely any site able to execute arbitrary commands is running on a VM that has no privilege in the cloud? I agree 349 Data Centers really f***ed up

  34. 34.

    Carlo Graziani

    Hm. WordPress is GPL software. This actually could be done on a local-test basis, probably with python scripts to massage and move the data. Low-consequence. The table structure would be a bit of a learning curve, though.

  35. 35.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    This is good news!

    BTW, is there any personal data that the hackers could’ve stolen?

  38. 38.

    WaterGirl

    ‘@Goku

    Have you supplied any personal data to Balloon Juice?

    Hint: no you have not, unless you count your email address.

  40. 40.

    WaterGirl

    ‘@Pete Mack

    It may be the they broke in to steal the TV and then noticed some electronic equipment and jewelry and thought, hey, as long as we’re here, let’s go for this stuff, too.

    Or maybe they wanted to get in for Site X, but found some wide-open security holes and figured it was easy pickings

  41. 41.

    WaterGirl

    ‘@OhioMom

    The second letter of your email address was wrong. I fixed it. That would put you into moderation on Balloon Juice, too.

    edit: Did you click the box to have this site remember your nym and email address?

  42. 42.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    I wasn’t really asking for myself in particular; my email I use for commenting is a dummy email. I remember a regular commenter mentioning in last night’s 365 thread that the date could’ve been encrypted and might be scanned for things like credit card numbers and the like. I didn’t know if that information or access to other accounts could be hacked into somehow because of this ransomware attack

  43. 43.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    ‘@Goku

    To add to what I said:

    I suppose email addresses could be used to send phishing emails

  44. 44.

    David Collier-Brown

    I used to work for a paranoid company who said “if someone offers you a bribe, arrange to take it and we’ll have the police swoop on them at the handover. You get to keep the bribe, for all the extra work involved”.

    I wish we were dealing with them, as I suspect their ransomware response would be as robust. Alas, they’re not in the right industry. Or the right country (;-))

  47. 47.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    ‘@WG

    I….wasn’t worrying? I’m not freaking out about it, I’m just curious is all

  48. 48.

    WaterGirl

    ‘@Goku

    I don’t say this to be mean, but you are often *just curious* about something to worry about, and then the thread turns into whatever it is you are worrying about, which can get tiresome.

    edit: case in point. 8 comments about your worry on a 30-comment post. Most of which are my fault for answering you. WG, over and out.

  49. 49.

    Chris G

    This site works perfectly fine though. Seriously, it’s fast and compact. No tweets, but I consider that an advantage. Let all the old data expire gracefully and make this the new BJ.

  51. 51.

    frosty

    Sniff! I’ll miss our little vacation cottage / home away from home. A little bit anyway.

  52. 52.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    WaterGirl May 26, 2022 at 2:31 PM
    @Goku

    Geez, Goku, are you looking for things to worry about?

    Is it a day ending in ‘Y’?

  54. 54.

    Captain C

    Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg May 26, 2022 at 1:55 PM
    “You never pay ransomware jerks.”

    I’m not advocating that it legally be made open season on such people, but if, say, I was on the jury that was trying someone who shot such a person(s) in cold blood, I’d be extremely open to a justifiable homicide defense.

  55. 55.

    CaseyL

    And just as we were getting used to **this** place!

    Excellent news! Many many thanks to WaterGirl and John for not giving up and hiring a helicopter to drop paint-filled water balloons onto the 3XX DataCenter Corporate HQ. Also for creating and maintaining this very nifty summer house.

    Looking forward to inhabiting the OG digs again!

  56. 56.

    debbie

    I am filled with gratitude for this temporary home, but jeez, I miss the up and down arrows!

  57. 57.

    WaterGirl

    ‘@debbie

    I miss the arrows and so much more. This place is a fine summer home, but I am *really* glad to be going home.

    I would give it 5 stars for immediate availability, and maybe 3 stars for amenities?

  60. 60.

    WaterGirl

    I’m with John, I think they should pay them. It’s fine to stand on principle when your actions don’t negatively impact thousands of entities, businesses, hospitals, livelihoods, and communities.

  63. 63.

    Layer8Problem

    ‘@WaterGirl: I know it took some work on your part and the server gent to fire this up. I thought the user experience has been decent, and actually it’s been quite pleasant because /most/ of the crowd dealt with by the eye-pay ilter-fay haven’t quite found their way back.

  65. 65.

    gvg

    I think we should have this listed on our front page of the new/rebuilt site with “bookmark this site to check for info if Balloon Juice is ever down”.
    i also had watergirl in my contacts from something almost 2 years ago..

  66. 66.

    mrmoshpotato

    Confused (but also “Chicken” suggestive text)

    So the code for the redesigned site is available (foundation) but the database of past posts isn’t within reach (yet)?

  67. 67.

    mrmoshpotato

    ‘@Omnes

    “Never say “over and out.””

    Can we still say penis?

    ETA – apparently so!

  68. 68.

    RSA

    David Collier-Brown: ‘I used to work for a paranoid company who said “if someone offers you a bribe, arrange to take it and we’ll have the police swoop on them at the handover. You get to keep the bribe, for all the extra work involved”.’

    Wow. I’m not that trusting. In the federal government, insider threat training says to be non-committal, as you send your report up the chain.

  70. 70.

    Carlo Graziani

    ‘@Omnes! You’re here! Excellent. Next time there’s a Ukraine-related thread, please tell us what you’ve been thinking about the developing artillery battles in the Donbas.

  71. 71.

    Quiltingfool

    I’m so glad to be able to read Balloon Juice while we wait to “go home.” We may not be in the fancy coffee shop (we’re hanging out at the park pavilion, lol) but better than nothing! Very grateful!
    In other news, I woke up this morning with extreme blurry vision in one eye! Yikes! Of course I just HAD to google my symptom – uh, don’t do that. Went to the eye doctor, got some eye drops, the eye is okay. Been having small spots of blurriness for while, but it would go away – my vision was much less blurry when I went to the doctor. So much for my plans today! I do have WaterGirl’s quilt done, just need to take a photo and then off to the post office! I am working on a new Ukraine donation quilt, I’m calling it “Cats and Sunflowers,” you guessed it, there will be Cats! and there will be Sunflowers! Or, Koty ta Sonyashnyky (according to Google translate, perhaps Gin&Tonic would confirm this is correct? I put some blocks on Instagram (Quiltykitties) if anyone wants to look at them.

  72. 72.

    WaterGirl

    ‘@Omnes

    Why not? Not challenging you. There’s obviously something I don’t know about radio or walkie-talkie communications. Well, to be more correct, I know almost nothing so there’s a lot I don’t know about that!

  73. 73.

    WaterGirl

    ‘@ mrmoshpotato

    The code for the site was tucked away in a drawer somewhere, probably on the computer the site programmer uses. Not literally in a drawer, of course, but they had the code separate from the regular backup system.

  74. 74.

    WaterGirl

    ‘@Qultingfool

    ooh, I didn’t know it was that close!

    So scary about your eye, I’m sure you were worried about all sorts of awful things.

  77. 77.

    Layer8Problem

    And I’m awaiting moderation as well on that last comment. I obviously shouldn’t wait so long to start my day-drinking.

  78. 78.

    Gin & Tonic

    ‘@Quiltingfool – You are correct.

    Коти і соняшники if you want it in Cyrillic.

  79. 79.

    Modern Solution

    Why not just point the url thingy to this site and call it a day?

    I would bet that less than 1% of your actual real people traffic is people looking back through the archives from some recipe that was posted in 2014 or whatever.

    I know it’s fun to be angry at data centers or whatever, but who cares, really in the big picture?

  80. 80.

    Gin & Tonic

    ‘@Quiltingfool – You are correct. “Коти і соняшники” if you want it in Cyrillic.

    @WG – I just posted this comment, went back to edit it, edited it and *poof*! it was gone. So I re-typed it. It’ll probably show up twice now.

  81. 81.

    Omnes Omnibus

    ‘@WG. Over says you have finished speaking for now but the conversation is not over. Out says the conversation has ended. IOW, out includes over. Saying both is redundant. FWIW a junior person never says out to a senior person. Okay, they may do it once, but it never happens again.

  83. 83.

    Timill

    WaterGirl May 26, 2022 at 4:02 PM
    Not Omnes, but…
    ‘Over’ means “I expect a reply”
    ‘Out’ means “I’m done here, no reply expected.”

  87. 87.

    WaterGirl

    ‘@Quiltingfool

    I went back and fixed the previous references, so if you change your nym before you post again there will be no references to your real name.

  88. 88.

    WaterGirl

    ‘@Aleta

    Your first comment went into spam. It’s all good now.

    Thanks for the song!

    edit: I am enjoying the song.

  89. 89.

    WaterGirl

    ‘@Omnes Omnibus

    Oh, then not only was it redundant, but I used it completely wrong. I was attempting to say “out”. As in “I’m done.”

    Thanks for the education.

  91. 91.

    WaterGirl

    ‘@Modern Solution wrote:

    “Why not just point the url thingy to this site and call it a day?

    I would bet that less than 1% of your actual real people traffic is people looking back through the archives from some recipe that was posted in 2014 or whatever.

    I know it’s fun to be angry at data centers or whatever, but who cares, really in the big picture?”

    It’s 20 years of history. This blog that John Cole made is in part of his legacy. It’s 20 years of John Cole’s life. 20 years of an amazing community.

    Comments by efgoldman and all the BJ friends of the years, just gone.

    None of that may matter to you, but it does matter to a lot of us, including and especially John Cole. And to me and many others, I think!

  93. 93.

    Quiltingfool

    Thanks Gin & Tonic for checking the translation! I did write the Cyrillic translation from Google. It was almost the same, except for one word, I think it would be “and” (Google translate had “Ta.” I’m using your translation. My sewing machine has a Cyrillic alphabet (for embroidering words), but it doesn’t have some Ukrainian letters, so won’t be using that!

  94. 94.

    Quiltingfool

    Watergirl, I agree about not ditching 20 years of Balloon Juice – that work must be preserved. It’s the history of this blog. That is important.

  95. 95.

    Omnes Omnibus

    ‘@WG. Ending your comment to Goku with “WaterGirl, out,” would have been perfect.

  97. 97.

    Poe Larity

    Well, I don’t have an ulcer but am wondering if the Diamond Member Area will be restored first or if the mosh-pit comes first. Over and out.

  98. 98.

    Gin & Tonic

    ‘@Quiltingfool – Either one works in this context, і or та. I don’t have a preference.

  99. 99.

    Another Scott

    I wonder if part of the delay in getting the 3xxDC stuff resolved is – if the hackers are Russian then it may be all kinds of illegal to pay them given all the banking sanctions since February, even if they wanted to pay them. The 3xxDC folks probably don’t want to go to Leavenworth…

    But, who knows.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  101. 101.

    Bill Arnold

    FWIW, was looking at a couple of crawls, and there are a few small gaps in the tgz i posted to google drive. (There may be other gaps because a similar wget-based script was used for each.) Still, the diffs are like a few hundred out of ~69k posts+comment threads. Will find the diffs and provide an update, just because.

    About 75 percent of ransomware is paid to Russian criminals and their affiliates. (Destroying them may involve collateral damage. Like, say, Russia.)

  103. 103.

    mrmoshpotato

    ‘@Poe Larity

    “Well, I don’t have an ulcer but am wondering if the Diamond Member Area will be restored first or if the mosh-pit comes first. Over and out.”

    I vote for the mosh-pit (to no one’s surprise)!

  105. 105.

    WaterGirl

    ‘@Jackie

    Thank you! I really like the blue background, too. I think it really spruces up the place. :-)

    The first couple of days it was so drab that it was dragging me down.

  106. 106.

    J R in WV

    I get phishing emails all the time.

    I always send them my CC data and bank routing numbers in case they really, really need the money!!

    HAHAH. no, I don’t.

  107. 107.

    Ohio Mom

    Another Scott: “…wonder if part of the delay in getting the 3xxDC stuff resolved is – if the hackers are Russian…”

    That’s been Ohio Dad’s take. He’s mused that ransoms for hacked sites may be Russia’s second biggest income stream after energy exports.

  108. 108.

    different-church-lady

    Look, why don’t we just re-create all the comments we’ve made over the years? I mean, I can remember every one of mine.

    (ETA: WOW, editing is back!)

  109. 109.

    Searcher

    If the old content is toast, I’d be willing to take a stab at rebuilding it from eg the cached HTML on archive.org. I’d just need to know the format you need it in to re-import; that sort of programming is well within my wheelhouse. Some Googling around indicates there are some services that already do that, although they charge (for non-tiny blogs) and I wouldn’t.

  110. 110.

    Racer X

    I hate to say it but I like this site better. It doesn’t freeze on my phone. It’s clean and easy to read and interact with…and I can edit

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