Ever turn on your portable hard drive that was working perfectly the day before, only to hear it make a knocking noise that it definitely wasn’t making before?  Well, pray you never do.  Those of you have heard this noise know that it means there is some kind of mechanical failure with the hard drive, which means that the only way is to send it to a lab where they have a clean room with guys in hazmat outfits who put the read head back into place, and then send it back to you for 1200 freakin’ dollars.

Thankfully, for once in my life, I was overly careful with my data and everything I need for the dissertation is backed up via my gmail account.  Sure I lost a bunch of movies, and the last three episodes of Dexter and Heroes which I haven’t been able to watch yet.  But seriously, thank the lord that I didn’t lose any interviews or transcripts.

Anyways, I begin phase two of interviewing on Thursday.  I’m interviewing an actual MLB statistician and I am very excited about starting this part of the project.  After all, I think this is where I will really be able to get at the process by which sabermetrics becomes incorporated into mainstream knowledge.  So right now, I need to come up with an interview guide.  There will certainly be some overlap with the interview guide I have been using, but there are going to be less questions about the role sabermetrics plays in a normal life and obviously more questions about the reception of sabermetrics within an actual baseball franchise.  I’ll report back on Friday with some details of the interview.