So, within 24 hours of posting this, we found out that the Celtics would see what a world without Rondo would look like—but not due to a trade. Instead, Rondo tore his ACL and is 99.9% likely to miss the rest of the season.
And, almost universally (mostly due to the eternal optimism of the Kevin Garnett era), Celtics fans thought they'd be better off.
Pundits, analysts, and critics all circled in on some of the same things I had pointed out:
the Celtics' offense wasn't elite with Rondo; it was downright bad. How much worse could it get?
Rondo's style of offense might not be conducive to the types of players the Celtics have now
Maybe this team needs some new blood on offense
And now we'll find out. In the first game of the post-Rondo era (admittedly, against the lowly Kings), the Celtics did what everyone wanted to see: push the ball, move the ball on offense (no hero ball) and get open shots, and play hounding defense. Six players in double figures, with two more players within a bucket of double figures. Seven players with 2 or more assists.
Yes, they struggled sometimes to get the ball up the court, but Lee and Bradley should get better with experience. Yes, they struggled to get good shots when the Kings went to a zone, but that'll get easier as Doc and the coaching staff get more comfortable with the new setup.
The team looked like … a team. Something that hasn't really happened this year.
I'm not saying losing Rondo cures all the Celtics ills. They aren't likely to get out of the first round of the playoffs this year. Unless Pierce and Garnett retire, they're not likely to be in a great cap position next year to make changes to the team.
But we're going to learn what a Celtics team without the 2013 incarnation of Rajon Rondo looks like, and I think it's going to be a prettier sight than you might thing.
I've been to, live, I'd guess nearly 80% of Rajon Rondo's home games. Not this season. In his career. I've watched probably another 25-30% of his games on television.
As you can ask any of my friends who deal with my Celtics mania, I've always had a love/hate relationship with Rondo. Early on (including the year where the Celtics won #17), my issues with Rondo stemmed from his inability to shoot, his needless defensive freelancing, and his desire to make the flashy play over the simple one.
But you couldn't argue with success, right? A Championship, another Eastern Conference title, and a few games from a 3rd. He was the starting point guard on a very successful team, and arguably, the most important player on that team.
As the core around him has aged, the media story, the story from the team, the story from everyone has been that this is the year that it becomes Rondo's team. I bought in. Over the last year and a half, the improved shooting, the occasional glimpses of greatness (national TV triple doubles), and all of the talk coming from the team: I believed. I thought Rondo was ready to become "the man."
I was wrong. I'm out. I want off the roller coaster.
Even knowing that the team expected him to be a leader, knowing that the team needed him to step up and carry more of the load, Rondo hasn't changed. He still walks away from team huddles. He agitates officials such that he rarely gets calls (and the league has a hair trigger with regards to his behavior, making matters worse). He padded his stats by giving up easy hoops in favor of assists during his double-digit assist streak. His defense has gotten progressively worse, to the point his on ball defense has to be below average for a point guard.
The thing about it is, I know that Rondo could be better. When he wants to play defense, he can be stellar. His shooting has become an asset. He can finish around the rim and score, seemingly at will, but simply refuses(?) to do so. I don't know what it is, but it seems like Rondo coasts through games at 60%, turning it on when he thinks he really has to. Is it a coping mechanism, to help him last through a full season? Is it a coaching strategy? I don't know.
But it's hurting the team, and destroying my will to watch Rondo run the point for the Celtics.
Thursday's game against New York was the final straw. Rondo has a triple double, an amazing 4th quarter (almost single handedly getting the Celtics back into the game), and I'm stuck on the thought that Rondo's first three quarters were the reason the Celtics were down.
I don't think Rondo is a bad player. I don't think we could even get full value for him in a trade. I just don't think that he can run a team, that he's mature enough to ever be the guy. I'm probably wrong, but I don't care any more.
My epiphany is that Rondo is now like Manny Ramirez, circa 2008ish. When he's on, he's breathtaking to watch. When he's off, you wonder how a player could have that little regard for his teammates (let alone the team or the fans).
Sometimes you have to break ties. I think it's time.
I got into a somewhat interesting Twitter conversation during that Knicks game. As both an opportunity to try Storify and to show some of the feelings/emotions surrounding the issue. I'm sure I'll go back and forth on this, but I think the Celtics have reached the point where trading Rondo for a less flashy, straight ahead point guard might be a better option for the team.
Like this or this or this (probably unrealistic, but I can dream).
If all goes well, you shouldn't notice anything (maybe things will be marginally faster), but I've been doing some behind the scenes work to a) learn a bit more about some technologies, b) make my site use a bit less memory (so I can do other cool stuff, and c) make the site hopefully a bit more stable and speedy.
Mostly so I can remember what I did later, here's sort of an inventory of some of the technologies I messed around with:
nginx - simply as a proxy in front of Apache. At some point, I'll mess around with using it to handle loading some of the static assets of the site
perlbrew - allows me to run some newer perl stuff without having to much around with the system perl (so I can start to play with something like Mojolicious)
I'm in the process of building out a new site for 2013, mostly because I'm bored with the current one, but also because it's good for me to actually try to do some modernish stuff so my skills don't atrophy (especially if I'm only doing certain types of stuff at work). So, yeah, if you find stuff broken, let me know.
It's good practice to have a few different levels of backups: your local backup (for me, that's via Apple Time Machine; for you, that could just be the backup you take every few weeks—or months—to your USB drive); an offsite backup (if you have two USB drives, you might leave one at the office and rotate your backup drives); and an online backup (something like CrashPlan or Carbonite, where some software uploads files in the background to "the cloud").
The idea behind this is that, if something really bad happened and you needed a backup but it was destroyed, you'd have your offsite backup; and if something really really bad happened, you'd have your online backup. You'd always be able to get back to something reasonably recent.
Until recently, I've not quite followed those best practices. I do have my daily backup (Time Machine), and a weekly cloned backup, but I didn't have an online backup, for a couple of reasons. First, they can get pricy (generally between $50 and $100 annually, though you might argue that's a small price to pay for security). I always justified it that a) I had really important stuff on Dropbox, and b) other important stuff (pictures, music, etc.) were synced to my other desktop computer and synced to Apple's servers (iTunes Match).
A few months ago, Amazon announced Amazon Glacier, which is their super high reliability storage, but at a really low price because it's slooooooow (get it, Glacier). You can store about 100GB of data for $1 or so per month.
But there's a catch. The idea is that you should not need to download the data very often, so pulling the data back down is where it gets expensive.
I figured, though, that this would be worth it. The Glacier backup is my super emergency backup. I have multiple other copies of my data, if something really really bad happens, I'd be willing to pay the price to get my data back
Paired with a really nice piece of software called Arq, which manages the uploads to Amazon, the encryption, and the tracking of which files need to be updated/uploaded to Amazon, I set out to get myself a nice online backup.
It took almost a week to get the whole thing uploaded (I was backing up somewhere north of 100GB of data). Once uploaded, it takes Arq about 10 minutes each day to figure out what it needs to update.
Total cost to me? $1.75/month.
Let's assume I end up averaging about $2/month. In year one, that's $30 for Arq, and $24 for Amazon storage, for a total of $54. That's almost exactly what an equivalent CrashPlan or Carbonite account would cost. But in year two, when it only costs me $24, it'll be less than half of what those accounts cost.
Now, really all I'm doing is hedging my bets. I'm assuming that I won't need to restore my data any time soon, and I'm banking that money. If you think you're going to need to restore files all the time, CrashPlan or Carbonite might be better for you. But if you think you won't need to restore very often at all, then this solution might be the right option for you.
If I do have to restore… that's when things get interesting. Restoring 120GB of data over 4 hours from Amazon will cost about $230. Over 12 hours, about $90. Over 24 hours, about $50.
So, if I needed to restore my entire computer from my Glacier backup, I could do it for $50 if I was willing to let it run for a day (and for $30 if I was willing to let it run for two days).
That seems like a reasonable risk to me. In most cases, if I lost some data, I would be able to go to a number of local backups to get it (cost to me: zero). In the event I lost stuff catastrophically, paying between $50 and $200 to get it back seems entirely reasonable. Your particular use case/risk tolerance may change that equation for you.
I don't know why. I'm not a huge Beach House person. I've listened to all of Bloom a few times, and it never clicked. But each and every time, I'd get to "Myth" and put the song on repeat a few times.
The song was added to my iTunes library in mid-May. It's been played, as of now, 52 times (53 times, in a couple of minutes). I don't know why I love it.
I'm not sure if it's the repetition. I'm not sure if it's the fuzziness of the song, how nothing sounds distinct. You can't quite hear the lyrics clearly through the dubbing or echo or whatever effect there is. Maybe it's the beauty of the chorus that sort of breaks out of the song. I don't know what it is.
Sometimes you're not sure why you love something, you just do.
More quick (i.e. just a couple of sentences) reviews of the last three whiskies in the advent calendar.
It really was quite the experience to go through a whisky (or, sometimes, a whiskey) a day. It was a fantastic gift from my girlfriend. I tried a bunch of whiskies I wouldn't have otherwise, and certainly refined my whisky palette (or at least I hope I did).
But you won't be able to tell from these reviews, because these are for speed, not for thoroughness. Sorry, but football's on.
Glenfarclas 30 Year
Awesome, awesome, awesome. A bunch of us splurged on a Macallan 30 year at work ($80 gets you two drams). I think I liked this better. It's sweet, but not overly sweet. Vanilla, some fruitiness, and great flavor as you sip. And just enough smoke to make it feel like a scotch.
I loved it.
Glendronach 15 Year Revival
This was good, but might have been too sweet for me. Like a lot of whiskies aged in sherry or other wine casks, if they're not balanced with other flavors, they can run on the sweet side.
I would love to try this again; it might be a drink that takes more than one dram to discover.
Master of Malt 50 Year Speyside
The first Scotch I've ever drank that's older than I am. It's a speyside, which means it's bright and citrusy, but it's just really nicely balanced. It's got a bit of everything, including some smoke to temper the bright notes. Another great, great drink.
And that concludes the whole calendar.
I'm looking forward to trying some more whiskies in 2013.
Shut Down The Streets is an album that takes a while to grow on you. The big A.C. Newman/New Pornographers song is "Encyclopedia of Classic Takedowns". The rest of the album is, I'd say, more mellow than his previous albums. It's '70s AM radio stuff, done modern. And it's really, really great.
The whole album is about birth and death and loss and all of those experiences you have as you start to get older. "I'm Not Taking" is just a quiet song, long by Newman's standards (coming in at a robust four and a half minutes), but exquisitely crafted. I'm guessing there's 7 or 8 different instruments, just on this song, some only used to punctuate a few measures, like the sharp tambourine that is very much in the front of the mix.
It's already a pretty, melancholy song when the song hits its third minute and we get the call and response
No, I've never been close, I've never been close … but I've never been far away
You'll be hooked. I was. There's probably no better pop craftsman than A.C. Newman (between his solo albums and the New Pornographers), and this him at the top of his game.
This is kind of the year of Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, eh? They blow up behind "Same Love", which I've mentioned before, a strong argument for marriage equality and one of the two biggest songs of the year touching on similar topics (the other being Frank Ocean's "Bad Religion").
They rattle off a huge banger of song in "Can't Hold Us", which could just have easily been sitting in this same spot. "Can't Hold Us" fits the mold of Outkast's "B.O.B" with that beat that just pushes and pushes, filled with stomps, and handclaps, and a bit of piano, and it never stops. Throw it on the end of your runs and you'll finish strong.
But we're not talking about either of those songs, we're talking about "Thrift Shop", which has a great beat that, I guarantee you, will have you bobbing your head. Macklemore's flow is solid, changing pace and cadence, never seeming out of place. All leading into the hook, which you can't sing out loud in public, but you know you sing it out loud in your car.
It's not as deep as "Same Love", or as bouncy as "Can't Hold Us", but I've been singing about popping tags all fall.
I could liken you to a werewolf the way you left me for dead
But I admit that I provided a full moon
And she's back.
"Werewolf" starts out with just a few piano keys, laid under those lyrics, leading into another couplet about a shark and a bleeding wound. As usual, Fiona Apple has a way to layer contrasting sounds and ideas together into her special sort of genius, which seems to take her seven years or so to wrangle.
It's such a simple song, just piano and sparse drums, laid under this wonderful violent imagery of how powerful (and dangerous) a relationship can be—werewolves, lava, sharks, chemical reactions. All wonderful metaphors, and then the stomach punch—the recognition that it's the fault of both parties. The only way to end the destructive part of the relationship is to simple avoid each other. Take one for the team.
The song is capped off with the voices of screaming children leading into (and underlaying) the final verse. I'm sure the children are just playing, but it eerily sounds like they might be being chased by a werewolf. On this album, Fiona Apple has done a lot with minimal instrumentation. Here, a piano, drums, and some children playing are all that is necessary to build a phenomenal song.
On a side note, this could easily have been "Hot Knife" off the same album, which is just a ridiculously good song that is basically nothing but vocal tracks layered on top of more vocal tracks, all with big huge tympanis banging in the background. Another day, that track would be here.
