Northbound

I figure there has to be a way to do this, and someone knows how.

One of my projects involves taking really old WordPress blog posts and updating them.  Let’s say I have a blog post from 2005, but there’s new information, and I want that information to appear on the main page of my blog.  So whenever I edit it, I have to update the timestamp.

This is a major pain in the neck.  I have three thousand blog posts in this blog.  About a thousand of them need updating.  When you update the timestamp in WordPress, you do it by hand – changing the month, day, minute and second.

I say it’s spinach and to heck with it.  I want a plugin or a tweak or a widget or something that will give me a button marked “today” somewhere in the timestamp, and when I push it, it updates the timestamp to today’s date and time, and then I can publish it.  Boom.  Simple.  Easy.

The problem is, nothing like this seems to exist.  I figure somebody pays attention to this kind of thing and can respond to me with the information I need.  So this is a bleg.  Anyone know where I can find a “today” button?

(Anyone offering to tell me where I can find a “get a clue” button will be ignored.)

Thanks in advance.

In case you hadn’t seen it, Bill Simmons (aka Boston Sports Guy) (aka The Lesson, As Always, Is:  I’m An Idiot) published his plan for saving Holy Cross basketball:

I graduated from the Cross in 1992, my senior year doubling as the last undefeated season for the soon-to-be-emasculated football team. Our sports programs still meant something back then, even as the administration was cutting costs to get in line with Title IX and conceding our rivalry with BC, having recently joined the stuffy Patriot League (a homeless man’s version of the Ivy League). Over time, it turned us into a D1 school with a D3 mentality. Nobody takes it personally when we lose. The goal is to churn out decent teams with nice kids and high graduation rates. We try to win, but not really.

Yeah?  Try being a Baylor basketball fan sometime.  I got out of Baylor in 1990, when things were beginning to turn the corner – the occasional NCAA one-and-done appearance, the occasional college bowl game, domination in track and field.  Good times.  Since then, we’ve been swallowed up in the Big XII, pitted against Texas and OU every year in everything, and now even A&M is passing us in basketball.  A&M.  Basketball powerhouse.

Here are the first semi-serious heads of Simmons’s eight-point plan (the last four are just for comedy value, or I hope so), with my comments on how this would work for Baylor:

1. Give one scholarship every two years to a stud recruit who has no business getting into the school. Even if he can’t read the scoreboard, we don’t care. Think of it as an investment: For 120 grand and a few professors looking the other way, we gain exposure, make some serious TV money and lift campus spirits. It worked for BC, it can work for us.

Keep in mind that such “stud recruits” are thinking one-and-done with their basketball career, so there’s that.  And where are such stud recruits going?  Whereever they want.  Southern California (O.J. Mayo) for the sun and exposure.  Austin (Kevin Durant) for the coeds and Shiner Bock.  They might be talked into Boston.  But nobody, N-O-B-O-D-Y who is a stud basketball recruit looking for a quick payday is going to Waco, Texas to play for the green and gold.  Ain’t a-gonna happen.

2. Replace Willard with a disgraced coach looking for a second chance, someone who doesn’t mind bending a rule or 10 to get the program humming. Think Todd Bozeman or Larry Eustachy. In exchange, the Jesuit priests can offer around-the-clock availability to take the coach’s confession. This is a guy who’d deserve to have his soul saved from eternal damnation.

I understand Dave Bliss is available.

3. Get the new coach a plane ticket to Cameroon. It’s apparently a basketball hotbed now — every mid-major seems to have one Cameroonian.

Give Scott Drew some credit; he’s ahead of the wave on this one.  Last year’s Bears squad had two players from Senegal and one from Finland.  I guess if you’re from Senegal, Waco looks pretty good.

4. Remember when Swish dressed as a guy in “Fast Break?” We’ll convince a WNBA player to come back to school at the Cross as a “man.” I’d give you more detail on this one, but I can’t name a single WNBA player.

I just want Holy Cross to win the 2008 women’s championship just to hear Simmons’s spin on it.  He’s a bandwagon guy; he ought to jump right on women’s basketball.  Of course, women’s basketball, sports-wise, is all the Green and Gold has going for it right now, and the person who made that happen is on her way to Baton Rouge or Austin for all I know.

Finally:

I now believe Holy Cross should drop out of D1 and join the well-respected NESCAC. What’s wrong with competing against the likes of Amherst, Middlebury and Williams? Aren’t those the academics-first schools we’re desperately trying to become? The truth is, we’ve belonged in that league for 15 years, ever since the People Who Run Holy Cross gutted the football team and killed school spirit to the point that students now e-mail alums telling them to take pride in a double-digit playoff loss.

The big tactical mistake was made by Baylor not so long ago, when nobody decided to save the Southwest Conference.  A reconfigured SWC, with former stalwarts Baylor, TCU, SMU, Rice and UH, combined with new blood (North Texas, Tulane, UTEP, Arkansas State, Vandy) might have been the way to go.  But it didn’t happen, and Baylor is stuck in the Big XII, an orphan in a world it never made.  Maybe we ought to check out the NESCAC.

Anyway, my point (and I have one) is that Simmons wants to raise high the Cross.  I don’t think he realizes how heavy something like that is to Bear.  Baylor’s got worse problems than Holy Cross six days of the week and twice on Sundays.

I do not understand these people:

Gibbons is part of a subspecies of frequent fliers who chase inaugural flights because they adore airlines, airplanes, even airports. They seek to be part of airline milestones. Among their ranks are those who like the prestige of being the first passengers on the world’s longest flight, or the first or last travelers aboard a specific type of airplane. Some want to be the first passengers to take a short hop on new routes offered by low-cost, low-frills carriers.

These airline maniacs are like spurned lovers — maintaining their affection for an industry that continually conspires against them with increases in flight delays, packed planes, lost luggage, and cutbacks in food and service.

Even the WP calls them maniacs!

The main protagonist of the story took a fourteen-hour flight from Washington to Beijing and then another fourteen-hour flight back home, just to say he did it.  And because he enjoys flying.

He enjoys it!

I used to fly a hell of a lot.  Not so much anymore, thank Cthulu.  But I never got to where I enjoyed it.  I’m too tall, for one thing, and bulky across the shoulders, not to mention that I’m just generally overweight on top of that.  I hate air travel.  I suspect that these people who do all this flying are skinny and short.

I had to ask my wife this question, because it was bugging me no end, and she knows these kinds of things because she works for a big heartless corporation, and since I work for a tiny federally-funded non-profit, I have no idea about financial stuff. 

Here’s what I found out.  It turns out that subprime lending has little to do with the prime interest rate.  “Subprime” means basically that you have a low credit score.  A “prime” customer in the loan market is someone who has a high credit score.  If you are “subprime”, that just means that your score is too low to get the “prime” interest rate. 

Since I’m an ordinary person who doesn’t know anything about financial jargon, I thought that “subprime” loans meant loans with interest rates below the prime interest rate.  Because, you know, that would make sense.  But, in fact, “subprime” loans are made at well above the prime interest rate to people with lousy credit scores.  Lenders like Ameriprise (former naming-rights owners of Rangers Ballpark in Arlington) are in trouble because they lent a lot of money to people with bad credit, and those people are defaulting, which means Ameriprise is getting screwed.  They are “subprime lenders” because they lent to people with below-prime credit records, not because they’re lending money at below-prime interest rates.

The word “prime” means the same thing in both contexts.  It means the best.  But the “prime interest rate” isn’t actually your best interest rate, it means what you lend to “prime” borrowers.  Anyone who is not a “prime” borrower is “subprime”, and that’s where the name comes from.

Of course, I have some loans out on Prosper, which makes me a subprime lender, too.  I’m as surprised as you are.

So there you have it.  Subprime lenders lend money at interest rates above the prime interest rate.  Weird, right?

US News & World Report, er, reports (h/t Instapundit):

Focus on the Family founder James Dobson appeared to throw cold water on a possible presidential bid by former Sen. Fred Thompson while praising former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who is also weighing a presidential run, in a phone interview Tuesday.

“Everyone knows he’s conservative and has come out strongly for the things that the pro-family movement stands for,” Dobson said of Thompson. “[But] I don’t think he’s a Christian; at least that’s my impression,” Dobson added, saying that such an impression would make it difficult for Thompson to connect with the Republican Party’s conservative Christian base and win the GOP nomination.

Okay then.  If you’re a self-appointed Christian political leader, I can see supporting a Christian candidate over a non-Christian candidate.  But that’s not the case:

Mark Corallo, a spokesman for Thompson, took issue with Dobson’s characterization of the former Tennessee senator. “Thompson is indeed a Christian,” he said. “He was baptized into the Church of Christ.”

So there.  Now, you’d expect Dobson to admit he was wrong and apologize to his brother in Christ, right?  Of course you would.  But nooooooooooo.

In a follow-up phone conversation, Focus on the Family spokesman Gary Schneeberger stood by Dobson’s claim. He said that, while Dobson didn’t believe Thompson to be a member of a non-Christian faith, Dobson nevertheless “has never known Thompson to be a committed Christian—someone who talks openly about his faith.”

“We use that word—Christian—to refer to people who are evangelical Christians,” Schneeberger added.

So, according to James Dobson’s spokesman, the term ”Christian” only applies to evangelical Christians.  Which means people who “talk openly about their faith”.  Which implies that James Dobson and his lackeys get to decide who is a Christian and who isn’t by their lights.  You can go to church every Sunday and Wednesday that God sends, and pray for hours on end, and tithe, and James Dobson still won’t consider you to be a “Christian” unless you “talk openly about your faith”, and it’s probably not a good idea to disagree openly with James Dobson about matters political, and it probably helps to donate money to Dobson’s radio network.

I say James Dobson is full of it.  I say Gary Schneeberger is a minion and a lackey and should keep his fool mouth shut if he can’t say anything constructive and useful.  If James Dobson doesn’t think Fred Thompson’s a good enough Christian for him, then that makes him a self-righteous Pharisee.  If James Dobson doesn’t think that I’m a good enough Christian for him, he can stuff his microphone in the nearest convenient orifice.

Either way, it doesn’t matter much.  I know Whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I’ve committed unto Him against that day.  Whether James Dobson likes it or not.

Theismann out, Jaworski in.  Love it.  Absolutely love it.  The only way it could be better is if Roger Staubach were in the booth — and I love Roger and you love Roger, but Roger is busy being a real estate magnate.

Somewhere, Lawrence Taylor is smiling.

It’s time to do one of those Prosper columns where I look at a lot of different borrowers and reject them because I’m evil and mean and stingy.  This should be fun.  (As it was the last time I did this, I am not purposefully picking on the borrowers that I link to; I am trying to help the entire borrower community by pointing out common mistakes.)

First, a word on the search process.  I use the advanced search on Prosper, and I typically use the following settings:

1. Minimum Rates.  I use the “Autofill” feature, set here to 12%.  That gets us up to 15% for C ratings and 22.4% for E ratings.  That filters out a lot right there.
2. Debt to Income Ratio.  I set this from 0 to “Any”.  Prosper tends to screw this up for some reason.
3. Loan Amount.  I use the default, $0 to $25,000.
4. % Funded.  I use 5% to 100%.  I don’t look at 0% except for the comedy factor.

And that’s it; I don’t mess with the rest of the settings.  Let’s see what shows up.

• purchaing profesional,researching, academic items – If you misspell two words in the title of your loan, I am not loaning you one single red cent.  I don’t know how I can make this clearer.  (UPDATE:  This didn’t get funded, although it got some bids.)
• One Payment, One Interest Rate. Financial Freedom - I got as far as “Guardian Angel” before I clicked to the next loan.  Over twelve thousand dollars in delinquent loans just isn’t going to cut it.  (UPDATE:  This didn’t come close to getting funded.)
• Catch up before MOVE! – When your only source of income is a “guesstimate”, that’s a real problem. This is actually a tough situation, and the borrower has done a good job in setting out the income, and the credit record is clear. I might support this if the borrower had a full-time job.  (UPDATE:  This got all of five bids.)
• Completing Home Remodel – This was a tough one to turn down – the story was compelling, and the need for the loan was understandable. The one thing the borrower could have done to help herself was to give information about her other loans and a breakdown of her monthly income and expenses.  (UPDATE:  This didn’t get funded; only 38%.)
• Debt Consolidation – I support debt consolidation loans where the purpose is to get a lower interest rate. I don’t support debt consolidation loans when the borrower is going to be paying a greater interest rate with Prosper. If you’ve got a 6.9% credit card, don’t get a 19% Prosper loan.  (UPDATE:  This didn’t get funded.)
• This Loan Will Be Paid On Time In Full - That’s the kind of title I like to see. And I bid on this one. Tell you why:
  • No sob story.
  • Full accounting of income and debts.
  • Asking for a very specific amount — i.e., not asking for $25k just because you can.
  • Very high — but appropriate — interest rate.
  • A do-able monthly payment, in line with family income.
  • 100% funded, meaning other lenders saw the same things that I’m seeing.
  • Willingness to answer questions, even when the answers don’t look so good.
  • Closing quickly, meaning I don’t have to monitor it on a day-by-day basis and run the risk of getting outbid.

I hope this was instructive. Happy lending.

You know, one of these days, I need to go back to Grand Prairie and shake Mayor England’s hand, and say something nice.  I lived in Grand Prairie, off and on, from about 1974 to 1997, and in all that time, downtown Grand Prairie has been a pit.  People had the occasional idea to bring business and traffic downtown, but all of it was just talk.  Now it looks like the city is actually doing something — nothing that big and elaborate, just a new building for the farmer’s market – but the idea that someone is doing something, anything, is big news.  (I made fun of the plans to put something new in the old Uptown Theater site not too long ago — which I don’t take back — but if it’s part of an overall downtown redevelopment scheme, it might have a tiny, miniscule chance of working.)

Also, there’s news on the baseball front; there’s a “name the team” contest at the new website for Grand Prairie’s baseball team.  I had some suggestions, which I’m going to turn in, but don’t let that stop you.

DMN:  “Rangers Fifth Starter Still Uncertain.”

Loe is contending for the final spot in the rotation with Jamey Wright and Bruce Chen, both of whom are in camp on minor league contracts. Wright has an escape clause that allows him to take free agency on March 28 if he’s not added to the 40-man roster; Chen’s contract contains an April 1 escape clause.

Wright was a bit wild in his outing Wednesday and lasted just 3 1/3 innings despite being given 75 pitches. While the Rangers aren’t judging the candidates from one start to the next, Wright’s poor outing would seem to have given Loe a chance to make a stronger case for himself. Loe has not allowed an earned run in 13 2/3 innings this spring, but unlike the other two candidates, he has a minor league option remaining.

An “evergreen” is a story you could run every year without fail.  “Rangers Fifth Starter Still Uncertain” is just the tip of the iceberg for Dallas-area sports stories:

• “Oklahoma Sooners Face Recruiting Scandal.” 
• “Longhorns Cagers Fall Short in NCAA Tournament.” 
• “Funding Sought for Cotton Bowl Renovation.” 
• “Cowboy Fans Eye Backup Quarterback.” 
• “Baylor Basketball Tries To Live Down Legacy of Dave Bliss.” 
• “Texas A&M Athlete Is Academically Ineligible.” 
• “Longhorns Fans Complain About Officiating after Loss.” 
• “Rangers Struggle After All-Star Break.”
• “Mark Cuban Fined By David Stern Again.”
• “Texas Tech Players, Coaches Feel Lack of Respect.”

That’s just ten; surely you can think of more.

Somebody threw a snowball at me last night.

It was early in the evening.  My wife and I were in downtown Morristown, walking from dinner (a nice Italian place) to a concert (bluegrass music from Cherryholmes).  Just walking down the street, and bam!  There’s a snowball at my feet, missed me by inches.

What bugs me is that I have no idea who threw it.  There weren’t any kids around that I could see.  There weren’t that many people around, period, and none of them looked like they were the snowball-throwing type.  And there wasn’t a ledge or anything where a piece of snow could have fallen from, and I don’t think it came from a passing car or anything like that.

So there I was, on the sidewalk, and somebody threw a snowball at me, and got clean away with it.  It is vexing.  I am vexed.