We had Beccas brother and family arrive at our house last night. My in-laws are celebrating their 50th Anniversary tomorrow. It has been an exciting, but stressful time for us. We are throwing a big party for them tomorrow and so the last several weeks have been very busy as we have put together some displays showing some of the significant events during their marriage. I am looking forward to this significant event, and getting so many of Beccas family.

As a additional benefit to celebrating the anniversary we get to have Beccas brother and family stay with us. I haven't seen them or their kids for several years so it is interesting to see how much the kids have grown. Becca and I tried to make sure we had everything set-up to make it comfortable as possible for them.  I am really excited to have them visiting. When I was dating Becca, Stephen and Ashley were the first members of Beccas family I met. They treated me very well, and I am glad they are here.

I am sure this will be a busy weekend with the party and the visitors. I will be leaving for Las Vegas on Sunday to attend the Microsoft Management Summit. Unfortunately this means I will only have until Sunday evening to spend time with the family, but it is also important to attend the conference since I am doing a lot of work with our operations team.

With a season 20 games in it seemed like a good time to look at the Mariners and see how they are doing versus the expectations of the fans.

Positives

The Mariners are 10-10, which might not seem so good, except that they did get swept my the Baltimore Orioles in one series earlier this year. If they split that series (which they should of) they would be 12-8 and tied with the Oakland A's and Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim for first place in the American League West. The other good news is that so far the Mariners have a 7-4 record against the other teams in the west so that would help should we get to any tie-breaking situations. Considering that Ichiro is hitting about 100 points less than you'd expect and Richie Sexson is still struggling I am pretty happy with where the Mariners are in the standings.

Negatives

The Mariners have lost their number one pitcher Eric Bedard for at least a couple of starts, and their closer J.J. Putz for about 2 weeks. I'd also be worried since the Mariner's offense has been pretty anemic so far. We need Richie Sexson, Ichiro, and Jose Vidro to start hitting. We also need our starting pitchers to continue looking good and getting us far into games. The relievers will need to step it up though and start getting batters out. If we get Putz back this week we should be pretty solid from the first to sixth inning and in the ninth, but we will need to be able to cover the seventh and eighth in order to be successful.

Conclusion

I would like to see the Mariners winning a bit more, but considering the injuries that have hit them I think 10-10 is pretty good.

Dear Mr. Stern;

I want you to know that I am a huge fan of the Seattle Sonics and the NBA as a whole. In the past I have admired the job you have done as the commissioner of the NBA and I know you care about the health of your sport and how it is perceived by the public. Over the years you have made many important  decisions that have helped the league. Of course you are facing a challenge now as it is obvious that the NBA has fallen to 3rd or 4th among the major professional sports leagues (NFL, MLB, NASCAR). I blame most of that on allowing the rules to change to reduce the amount of scoring that can take place in a game. Seriously, look back to the 1980's or the Michael Jordan years. While people will claim to love defense the fact is people want to see games with a significant amount of scoring. While I believe the way the NBA has changed under your watch has made the game much less interesting I am much more concerned about your actions regarding the city of Seattle and the Seattle Sonics.

Mr. Stern you have been disingenuous regarding the desire of Clay Bennett and his ownership group to stay in Seattle. The recent publication of their email makes it very clear that they had no intention of keeping the team here. I don't understand why you can't just be honest and say, "They are the owners and they have a right to move their team wherever they want." Most people, fans included, understand capitalism. Don't try and pretend that the owners had any intention of keeping the team here though. The fans here in Seattle are not idiots Mr. Stern. Keep in mind that business sometimes makes for strange bedfellows.

I would also not make threats about Seattle never getting another team if the city continues to pursue it's lawsuit to enforce the Key Arena lease. The city has a vested interest in forcing the Sonics to fulfill their lease unless they come to a settlement with the city. Based on some of the financial's that have been released about other teams in your league I certainly wouldn't rule out allowing another team to move here if they chose to.

I want to remind you that it is in the interest of the NBA that you negotiate from a position of strength. Threatening a city with the loss of a team only works when fans are passionate about the team and will feel it's loss. Right now there aren't many passionate Sonics fans, but because the team has sucked for the last several years the casual fan isn't fired up about the arena situation. Since your hillbilly friend down in Oklahoma has removed all of the interesting players from the team not many people here care one way or another.

You need to examine your business model Mr. Stern. I will be very interested to see what happens to the Oklahoma City Sonics or whatever they are called once the novelty wears off, and fans realize they are seeing some pretty bad basketball with limited media coverage. You have also insulted one of the richest people in America with your dismissal of Steve Balmer's bid to purchase the team. It would seem to me that the NBA would want that kind of owner.

I am sick and tired of the dismissive nature of your comments regarding Seattle. Suck up your ego a bit and realize that there are fans here that want to keep the team, there is an ownership group that wants to purchase the team, and with a little time and pressure the politicians will eventually have to contribute money to remodeling Key Arena or building a new stadium. I recognize that the politicians in Olympia bruised your ego when they didn't bow down to you when you came out here. Maybe they just recognized what we all see. You are simply a little tyrant with a league in deep financial trouble, and you are fiddling while your Rome is burning away.

When we took the twins in for their 3 year check-up we talked with the doctor about how their speech was behind. We got the twins tested and it was determined that their speech development was behind. Because of how far behind it is the twins qualified to attend preschool at the same school my daughter attends. As a part of this they get to ride the bus to and from school which they think is great. I took some pictures this morning of them waiting for the bus and actually getting on. I hope you like them.

It looks like Josh (left) and Jake (right) get along pretty well.

They were so excited to get on the bus.

My wife's brother and sister-in-law are coming up in a few weeks to stay with us while we celebrate my in-laws 50th anniversary. Since their children are older than my kids we decided to get Guitar Hero 3 so the kids would have a game to play while they are here. I was surprised at how much my kids like the game though. My daughter Sarah really like the game ad has been practicing "Slow Ride" by Foghat. While I am really tired of hearing the song, I am glad to see her take an interest in trying something new, especially when the game is pretty hard for her. I also like that in practice mode you don't hear the lyrics. This isn't a problem on Slow Ride for example, but is an issue for some of the other songs in the game. The younger kids also like the game, but they are either pushing the strum bar or the fret keys while Becca and I do the other part for them.

My son Matthew had his first tee ball game this weekend as well. He was really excited to get dressed and go to the game, but something happened when we got there, and he ultimately decided not to play. I have a real problem with him quitting on his team, but I believe Becca and I were able to help him resolve the issue and he is now attending practices again. He knows that if he quits again that he has to pay us back for the league fees and all of the equipment we purchased.

I recently started using Search and Give as my web search engine. It is powered by the Microsoft Live search engine, but as you search, play games, etc. money is contributed to the charity of your choice, or you can also collect tickets to exchange for prizes. I really like this option because I use Live search as my default engine in any case, and I can use the proceeds to help out the parent group at Sarah's school. For those that wonder if I have something against Google, I do not. In my time here at Microsoft I have seen the Live team really trying to make the search engine better and I like how it is working now. Also, as I use it I can provide feedback to help it become even better.