The Orioles came back from an early 3-0 deficit last night to beat Josh Beckett and the Red Sox. I'm sorry I missed the game, but I was having dinner with the wife (Post to come) and then watching basketball.

The game puts the Sox a half game back from first place Tampa Bay (Never thought I'd write those four words) and keeps the O's in third, 3 back. Not a bad place to be for a team expected to win 65 games this year.

Now, I've complained about the hold before. It's a stupid stat that rarely measures anything of real value to a baseball team.

But there was an interesting hold credited last night to an Orioles pitcher.

So, top of the seventh, Boston leads off with two singles, so we have guys on first and second with no outs. It's 5-3, Baltimore. Jamie Walker relieves Jeremy Guthrie and promptly throws a wild pitch and walks Ortiz to load the bases for Manny.

Pretty much anyone who has ever heard of baseball knows that no outs, bases loaded, and Manny Ramirez at the plate is bad times for the defense. This could be very ugly, very soon.

Jim Johnson relieves Walker and Manny grounds into a double play, then Mike Lowell pops out to end the inning.

THIS IS A HOLD. Bases loaded, no outs in the seventh, two run lead, and the 4-5-6 hitters coming up - allowing no runs here is a really nice pitching performance.

I have no problem giving the guy credit for a hold here. But I do have a problem with the next inning, where with one out, Johnson walks two and gives up an RBI single before getting lifted for the closer.

So, we have to try and get to the root of the hold. Is it given for getting out of a jam, regardless of the next inning? That is, let's say he had given up a two-run home run before getting lifted, making the score 6-5 Sox. Does he still get the hold for the previous inning?

Maybe my real problem here is my reaction to pitchers issuing walks. I think it's because I feel like, if the pitcher allows a hit, then the batter beat him. It sucks, but it happens.

But if the pitcher allows a walk, then he beat himself. I mean, sure, some guys are better at drawing walks than others, but in the end, the pitcher still has to throw four pitches that don't go through the strike zone and don't provoke a swing. Maybe my initial reaction to Johnson's night would have been better if he'd just given up two hits and the run instead of the two walks.

Anyway, I still hate the hold stat. But at least Johnson earned it this time.

So how's this for a great Friday evening:

I'm sitting on the couch. To my left, the windows are open because it's a gorgeous spring evening. Right next to me on the couch, the wife is napping, waiting for the Celtics game.

I have a kitchen full of beer and wine left over from my birthday party last week. We have the ingredients ready for dinner, pasta with tomatoes and asparagus, plus some cauliflower poppers.

In front of me is my brand new work computer, on which I've just installed Launchy, which everyone should install on their Windows machine. It's similar to Gnome-Do for Linux and Quicksilver for Mac - I've been using Gnome-Do for a while and I love it, and wanted something like it for my Windows work machine.

And speaking of Linux, my personal laptop is currently downloading and upgrading to the latest version of Ubuntu, Hardy Heron.

So, I have sports, food and drink, computer geekishness, and my fabulous wife. I have no idea what more I could possibly want.

So, I'm trying to think of something I want to write about rather than rehash yesterday's Orioles game. No one wants to hear about it - O's fans will just get depressed, and the Rays don't have any fans. Maybe the players' mothers. Anyway.

So I thought I might write about Quacker of the House Nancy Pelosi advising the President to boycott the Olympic opening ceremonies to protest China's all-around unpleasantness, but then I was reading the article and my eyes started to glaze over. No one cares what advice Nancy Pelosi has for President Bush. She'd be more likely to get a reaction out of a large rock.

Then I thought I should say something about IBM's temporary suspension from getting federal contracts for some horrendous thing they did to EPA that no one will explain. This is huge news, but until we get some more details, it isn't all that interesting. Or maybe it's not interesting because my mind is refusing to grasp the massive incompetence or malice necessary to actually be disciplined by the government at all.

But really, the most exciting thing about today is that I plan to go meet Charles Stross at the Brickskeller tonight. He's one of my favorite authors, and he's in town for something or other. He claims he's trying to fend off jet-lag, but anyone going to a place with a beer list like this is merely fending off sobriety.

I know that many of you are sick of hearing about baseball, but you're going to have to deal with a bit more. We have the Orioles in HD! Last year, the Comcast feed from MASN was not in HD, and it was absolutely terrible. It was poor even for a non-HD channel.

But today, I came home from work a bit early to watch the Orioles opening day, and we have MASN HD.

Now all we need is an Orioles win.

I wrote about this a little while ago, and now Boing Boing says, Copyfighters beat down Tennessee bill. Well done, Tennessee.

People in the comments point out that this is not a total victory - it still requires universities to police their students, which is a dumb idea. But at least it's no longer a horrible, despicable idea.

Making Light | Phase one: collect underpants via Whatever

Tor Books, a big (the biggest?) name in science fiction publishing, is opening a new website. It is supposed to be "a place and a context for the lively, ongoing, wide-ranging, and profoundly self-organizing discussions that have characterized the science fiction subculture since its earliest days". That sounds pretty cool to me.

I signed up for their advanced membership or whatever it is to get some free ebook downloads. I haven't read any of them, because I don't have an ebook reader (Please, won't someone make a good, affordable ebook reader?). But I have them, and I plan to read some or all of them, and I suspect that I will end up buying something from some or all of the authors that I read.

I hate announcements of far away website launches - I don't really care until your site is live. Actually, I don't really care until it's live and finished being Dugg and Slashdotted, which I'm sure it will be. But I am looking forward to this. I was really disappointed with Gawker's crappy science fiction blog, and I have high hopes for this one.