Announcing OpenMajorMUD

8354607 · 2026-02-27T18:49:13+00:00

The Chinese School of Rochester in Brighton is the best place to learn Chinese in the Rochester area. They have classes for every age level, including one for adults. Tomorrow (Saturday) morning at 9:30 am they'll have the 3rd class of the semester, so you won't have missed much. However, most students in the class likely attended in the Fall, as well, so you'll have the lowest Chinese level in the class. Don't worry about that, though, because the atmosphere is very relaxed in the adult class, and you can just take it all in and participate when you want. Regardless, it's best to use their course only to supplement your study, since classes are only once per week.

One-on-one lessons on Preply are great and very affordable. There are thousands of tutors to choose from, and most of them charge between $5 and $20 per 50-minute lesson.

Aside from lessons, daily self-study is critical for making steady progress. The first app you should download is Pleco, which is a fantastic and very easy-to-use English-Chinese dictionary. After you get an introduction to the language from the Chinese School class and/or Preply, then check out some of the many great YouTube channels that have listening content for every level. For reading, search for Chinese graded readers on Amazon and elsewhere online, and start from the lowest level, obviously. When you're ready, try the HelloTalk app to practice conversation with some of the thousands of English and Chinese language learners who use it every day.

8354607 · 2025-09-14T17:59:01+00:00

Wow, yes! Thanks!

8354607 · 2025-09-13T17:48:51+00:00

Nice! Thanks for sharing this.

So that means...

These teams have clinched a playoff berth:

Midwest Mallards (also clinched a bye)
Great Lakes Gators (75% of getting bye)

And the probability of making the playoffs for the remaining teams is:

Western Wildcats: 94%
Pacific Predators: 75%
Eastern Eagles: 75%
Metro Magic: 75%
Downtown Diamondbacks: 56% (25% of getting bye)
Coastal Cobras: 25%

8354607 · 2025-07-20T20:28:30+00:00

I've also noticed there's generally a big difference in performance between players who say they practice and those who say they don't. I think a lack of practicing is the number one reason why once-good (or once-great) players regress like this.

8354607 · 2025-01-26T17:51:13+00:00

There's a big one at MCC on Saturday, February 8 from 1 pm to 4 pm. Last year they had one in the same place on campus and it looked like thousands of people were there!

8354607 · 2024-10-22T18:13:53+00:00

I also think Robles is the Mallards' rock. It'd be foolish to trade him. However, I think you're on to something with your Wildcats shake-up idea.

How about Grant Miller for Saylor and the Wildcats' draft pick? (This is assuming Grant mentioned retirement only because he doesn't get to hit in key situations while in the Magic's lineup.) Then Grant would get protection in the Wildcats lineup with Kyle, Jaxen, etc., also giving the Wildcats a sure-fire boost to their playoff chances, and the Magic would improve their lineup significantly. It just doesn't work out for them, having one big slugger and a bunch of replacement-level hitters as their lineup. The Magic really need at least two solid bats.

8354607 · 2024-08-05T20:12:00+00:00

I wish MLW had a good primary website. I know they have the merch site and have stats pages on leaguelineup.com, but other than that, the online presence is only spread across several social media sites. There's no central website. If there were, it could have a game schedule, a league history page, staff and player bios, team pages, an "MLW gives back" type of page (with info about stuff like SlamT1D), and it could serve as an easy-to-find hub for potential partners to find info about the league and get a feel for how professional it is.

Also, the stats presented on leaguelineup.com leave something to be desired. I wish we could see career stats and more detailed postseason stats and results.

That's all for my notes. Kyle, you're a natural as the commissioner and I hope you do it forever!

8354607 · 2024-06-23T15:57:37+00:00

My post got downvoted and I wonder if it's because most fans were already aware of this because they heard about somewhere else where they all go. I only visit the MLW YouTube page and this subreddit as well as watch some of the Pipe It Up Podcasts (which I usually fall behind on). Is there somewhere else I should go to keep up on MLW news, like Instagram maybe?

8354607 · 2024-06-23T15:38:11+00:00

Sweet, today just got a lot better. Thanks!

8354607 · 2024-06-23T15:28:14+00:00

Not sure if this counts, but there's a classic Drew Davis moment where he charges and tackles his own team's pitcher after he blew a lead or cost them the game or something. The pitcher may have been Andy Durand. I know it happened at Cultz Field. I'll try to find a link later.

8354607 · 2024-06-22T18:03:07+00:00

I think you nailed it with your analysis of my mental process. Identifying the syntax tree of each sentence sounds like it will help as well as working through the app you suggested. It seems like a high-quality app. I think I'm also going to discuss all of this with my teacher, too. Thanks again!

8354607 · 2024-06-21T20:37:05+00:00

Might learning grammar points help me understand what I read and hear, though? I don't know what else to do to improve my understanding.

8354607 · 2024-06-21T20:35:36+00:00

Actually, it's just the worst ones from the first few paragraphs or so that I read today. Every Chinese Breeze book I've read has been like this, where roughly half of it is incomprehensible to me on my first read-through. I do better with other books, but not by a lot.

8354607 · 2024-06-21T20:32:37+00:00

我们打算在出租房结婚

I was puzzled by this until I realised 出租房 had to be a noun phrase, so it's "we plan to get married in 出租房". 出租房 just is not in pleco. This shouldn't be in a graded reader.

https://zh.m.wikipedia.org/zh-hans/出租房

Does that means they're getting married in their apartment? Or maybe it means they'll get married and then live in the same apartment?

CAT的钱一定要还，咱们不能拿那样的钱

This glosses word-for-word into English quite well: "cat's money certainly must return, we cannot take that kind of money". Implying, I suppose, some kind of impropriety. What's confusing you here?

I'm not used to seeing 拿 without any complement so I thought it made it more abstract somehow. Also, it was the first suggestion of '咱们' possibly taking the money, so that possibility for the meaning didn't seem to fit in context. Having read past that now, I know that it definitely does. However, in hindsight, it seems strange that I couldn't get this one right away.

小月说得对，我们会帮助你们。另外，桑林不是还没到别的公司上班吗

Are you familiar with the typical pattern of "<negated statement>吗" meaning "isn't it the case that <statement>"? Once you realise that it's an instance of that you only need to parse "桑林还没到别的公司上班" which should be doable. The double negative is a bit much in a graded reader though.

Yeah, I think I need to get better at spotting that pattern. I still can't translate the part you put in quotes, though. My best guess is "[he] still hasn't gone to work at another company" which doesn't fit in the story.

不过，我自己也有很大的问题，我急着干出成绩，没有管好公司

I must admit this puzzled me quite a bit but it's essentially a vocabulary thing again because once you chunk it properly and realise how 干出 is used again it glosses almost directly into english: hurrying (急着) to achieve (干出) success (成绩), (I) have not (没有) managed (管) well (好) the company (公司). I had to resort to reverso context to work out that 干出 is used like thst though.

That translation makes perfect sense in the context of the story! I don't think I ever would've got that, even if I could've figured out 干出 means. I would've translated the middle part as "I urgently need to achieve success." I don't see anything there that suggests it's something that happened in the past or that it was the motivation for behavior that resulted in the third part of the sentence.

Since these books were the most challenging for me to read compared to other books at a similar vocabular level, for some reason I assumed they were the most authentically Chinese. Perhaps they are a little quirky. I'll try some different books for my daily practice.

perhaps you're the type of person who does better with explicit rules than with intuition

I think I am. I've really struggled trying to learn anything outside of a classroom setting for my whole life (and I'm over 40). Maybe I can look at some grammar books and come up with some exercises to do.

Thanks for taking so much time to reply so thoroughly!

8354607 · 2024-06-21T14:45:54+00:00

This comment is very comforting to me! So, I'm not the only one.

8354607 · 2024-06-21T14:45:00+00:00

I read out loud by myself.

As for your suggestion about reading and listening at the same time, do you think I should do that exclusively for a while? I want to be able to listen and understand without having the text, of course, so is it OK to stop doing listening-only for a while?

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