Night Owl Cards

   There's a certain amount of isolation built into being a blogger, or a writer in general. I don't know if that's exactly the right word but I definitely have the feeling of being on my own island from time to time, and probably more often lately.   There's no easy way to gauge who is reading your copy or how often. Blogger (and I'm assuming Wordpress) is imperfect like that. All you have are comments -- and Blogger has now made that more difficult by requiring you to use the Google Chrome browser to comment on its blogs (but I make sure to go that extra step to comment on other blogs). And also you have reader numbers, and wow is that inaccurate, especially lately.   Have any other bloggers experienced this?:      These are the viewer numbers for my posts on NOC for the last week or so. Numbers are on the far right. They are wildly beyond what is typical. The same holds true for my 1993 Upper Deck blog, where posts the last couple of cards is in tri...

   Growing up a music fan, I never gave much thought to a musician's gear. My interest in music and musicians was solely in the songs and the lyrics. When I envisioned myself being a musician, I pictured writing lyrics and coming up with songs and that's it.   It wasn't until I really started following music and musicians online the last five years or so that I was hit with how technical the job is. Musicians spend, it seems, much more time discussing their gear than their songs or music. I suppose if I took up the guitar as an instrument as a youngster, I would've found that out early on. But I played the piano instead.   Take your average musician's electric guitar. To get music out of that thing takes more than the guitar. it takes a pick, capo, amplifier, microphone, tuner, effects pedals, and many other things that a humble writer like me doesn't know or couldn't describe. I just know they probably involve miles and miles of cables.   This made me glad ...

  For the last year-plus, my Wednesday workload has been what used to be the job of 4-5 people.   That meant that virtually my entire day was devoted to the job, even the so-called "off-hours" of the day. And many weeks work tasks bled into Tuesday, too. Writing a blog post on Wednesday was usually impossible.   However, finally, after wondering how long I would put up with this, yet another downsizing has meant that I'm getting my Wednesdays back. Beginning next week, Wednesday will be just like any other day of the work week.    I'm really happy about this, even though I have to get through this Wednesday first. As a bit of a pre-celebration with (checks clock) very little time, I'm squeezing in a short post. I received some cards yesterday from a stack sale over on Bluesky. After directing some of the cards to fellow collectors' stacks, I have eight cards left for my collection that I will count down.   Nothing exciting -- except to me, of course. Here t...

   I hardly ever play Immaculate Grid anymore. During its early days -- about a couple of years ago now -- I played fairly frequently. I enjoyed coming up with team combos for long-forgotten or hardly known players. Team combos were my thing.   At the time, the categories were mostly team combos and awards, which I could tackle fairly well. Then, about 100 days into IG, numbers categories started popping up. My brain doesn't retain numbers nearly as well as which player played on which team. Also, numbers remind me of homework, and, yes, the game started to feel like that.   So I mostly only play now when I see that one of the rows or columns is the Dodgers. I can find really obscure players in that category. Trying to get a low rarity score was always an objective for me when I played -- I can be the competitive sort -- so I like the obscure guys.    My ears perked up when a couple of Immaculate Grid users recently mentioned Jim Hutto. Hutto is a 1970...

   Somehow, I've managed to land nearly 75 percent of the 2025 Topps flagship set. TCDB says I have 516 of the 700 cards.   This is despite making exactly one retail purchase of 2025 Topps the entire year. I bought a blaster back in February when it came out. Nothing since. I've done very well with cutting back on spending for new sets that are merely "meh" to me.   But thanks to a great send of almost the full Series 1 checklist and gifts of hanger boxes and random packs from loved ones, I still have accumulated enough that I'm battling the "go ahead and complete it" whispers in my brain.   But, no, right now I'm treating 2025 Topps like I do all flagship sets that don't inspire me enough -- just get that Dodger team set.   I finished that off with an online purchase that arrived recently. I needed only six Series 2 cards so I've got some dupes to repurpose. Here are those six:   I hate it when the Mookie Betts card is elusive, so that'...