Irish Trojan in Tennessee

Fear! Fire! Foes! Awake!

By Brendan Loy

In case you hadn't heard, Southern California is on fire.

Much more here.

UPDATE: Gahrie's blog has photos from his back yard.

Rockies blame hackers, declare do-over

By Brendan Loy

Mulligan!

The Colorado Rockies say tickets for the World Series will again be sold online starting Tuesday at noon after an attack brought down the Web site on Monday.

Rockies Spokesperson Jay Alves said on Monday night that ColoradoRockies.com was the victim of an "external malicious attack" that caused a system-wide outage with Paciolan. ...

"We absolutely have backup plans in place that, should something go wrong tomorrow, we will immediately go to those plans," said Alves.

Alves would not elaborate on what those plans were.

I'm guessing they involve heading for the hills to get away from the angry mob.

Again, check out RoxandSox for the latest.

Scalia at NDLS: now with photos!

By Brendan Loy

Notre Dame has finally posted something on the Web about Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's visit to the Law School on Friday:

United States Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia joined several of the nation’s most prominent legal scholars for a conference Oct. 19 at Notre Dame Law School. Titled “Separation of Powers as a Safeguard of Federalism,” the conference was sponsored by A.J. Bellia, professor of law, and the Notre Dame Law Review.

Scalia delivered the opening lecture, “The Importance of Structure in Constitutional Interpretation,” during which he discussed the unique function of the judiciary in American government and analyzed several cases that have gone before the court. After his talk, Scalia allowed time for student questions. During a lunchtime reception, Scalia spent more than an hour mingling and talking with students in the student lounge.

The Law School has also posted some photos, including these:

See also here and here. And here's the updated schedule; Scalia's name has been retroactively added. (I was wrong in surmising that he gave the introductory lecture which Professor A.J. Bellia was scheduled to give. Bellia still gave that lecture. Scalia spoke second, after an introduction from Dean O'Hara.)

(Hat tip: Derek and ajb.)

I still want to know if he went to the USC game...

The Rockies are good at baseball and very, very bad at public relations

By Brendan Loy

I've just finished watching a live Internet feed of the Colorado Rockies' "press conference" about today's World Series ticket fiasco, and I have an announcement to make: ladies and gentlemen, the Rockies organization is -- officially -- completely and utterly inept.

Technical glitches can happen to anyone. But their response has been absolutely abysmal. This is a group of people with no ability to handle a crisis. None. My analogy to FEMA earlier wasn't that far off. It's a total nightmare from a P.R. standpoint. From head-smackingly stupid excuses (they had "no idea that so many people" would want tickets) to an utter failure to keep the public informed in any meaningful way (thus exacerbating a situation that has already caused a huge amount of fan anger), they've mismanaged this problem so badly that you'd really think they work for the Bush Administration or something.

But it just got even worse, as the Rockies committed the cardinal sin: pissing off the media. They summoned the entire local press corps to a 5:00 PM MDT press conference (at the top of the local news broadcasts) ... then kept the reporters waiting for an hour and 15 minutes with no explanation or information whatsoever (on the live Internet feed, you could hear all the reporters talking via cell phone to their bosses, saying they had no idea what was going on) ... and then, when Rockies vice president for communications Jay Alves finally emerged at 6:15 PM, he spoke for less than 90 seconds, provided absolutely no meaningful information, took about a question-and-a-half, snapped at a reporter for no apparent reason, and walked away. Unbelievable.

Here's an audio clip. Listen to the explosion of barely controlled outrage around the 1:05 mark, when the reporters realize he's leaving them in the lurch after making them wait for a time period about 50 times longer than the length of the press conference.

Alves's performance guarantees, if it wasn't inevitable already, that the Rockies will get absolutely horrible press in every newspaper and on every TV station in Denver tonight and tomorrow. And he's the P.R. guy.

It was a terrible day for the Rockies already, but that sorry excuse for a press conference just made it far worse, because now it's personal for the press corps just like it's personal for the fans. By keeping the reporters waiting that long, without explanation, for a totally pointless non-event, and then refusing to even make a half-assed attempt at answering their questions, he's made every single one of them feel disrespected and annoyed, and I guarantee you their pique will come across in the stories they write and the reports they file. (I used to be a journalist. Trust me on this.)

Stupid cell phone companies

By dcl

or, I agree with Walt Mossberg. Thank you that is all...

Rockies ticket sale goes kaboom

By Brendan Loy

Did the Colorado Rockies put the Notre Dame athletic department in charge of their World Series ticket sales? What a fiasco:

An overwhelming demand for World Series tickets at Coors Field led to an overload of Web site servers Monday, forcing the team to suspend sales just after noon [MDT] and regroup before reopening the sales system.

The Colorado Rockies put as many as 60,000 tickets up for sale, but only online. The company that runs the servers hosting the online ticket sales program reported a problem late Monday morning with the system and said "only a few tickets had been sold."

The company, Paciolan, Inc. which runs evenue.net, said it didn't know exactly what the problem was and that it was working to fix the issue.

"Several hundred" tickets were sold before the system was shut down, said Rockies spokesman Jay Alves. He added that nearly the entire allotment of tickets for the three possible home games in Denver were still available.

Alves reported that about 8.5 million people tried to access the sales Web servers in the opening 90 minutes.

The team said it would announce when online sales would resume, possibly later Monday afternoon.

At some point, you'd think people would stop being surprised by -- and start being prepared for -- extremely heavy traffic for web events like this.

UPDATE: According to the Denver Post, Rockies spokesman Jay Alves "said the servers were overwhelemed this morning and officials had no idea that so many people would try the website."

Seriously?!?

Forget the Notre Dame athletic department. With that sort of lack of imagination and inability to anticipate head-smackingly obvious inevitabilities, this Rockies braintrust has a bright future at FEMA!

Alvie, you're doing a heckuva job!

McCain on Woodstock: "I was tied up at the time"

By Brendan Loy

Heh:

(Hat tip: Joe Mama.)

Scientists to steer a hurricane?

By Jay Johnson

Saw this article, haven't read it, but thought I'd point it out for you weather geek types to read and consider.  Cliffs Notes version, please.

Bring on the Rockies!

By Brendan Loy

The Red Sox win the pennant! The Red Sox win the pennant!

It's Boston against Colorado in the World Series... and I'll be in Denver -- where hopefully it won't be snowing -- the night of Game 4 and (if necessary) Game 5. YES!! GO SAWX!!!

P.S. Make it a Bud Light! Heh.