A quick note before I relate this latest misadventure of the star-crossed Macondo franchise: I will no longer waste my time trying to upload images to this lame, primitive site only to be greeted by a message that the file type is unsupported. This used to be pretty easy but now it’s downright Sisyphian. Even some jpegs won’t “take.” To hell with it. Until WordPress gives us the capacity simply to copy the images themselves and upload them – a steam driven expansion of its antediluvian capabilities – from now on, you’ll all have to use your imaginations.
Anyway: the owner of the AAA Feesh afeeliate formerly known as the New Orleans Zephyrs, for incomprehensible reasons changed the team’s name to the Baby Cakes a few years ago. I have no idea what the owner, Lou Schwechheimer, thought this embarrassingly stupid name change would achieve. Now, he’s moved the team to, of all the available prairiebilly armpits, Wichita, where they’ll be playing to the heartland cracker audience as – are you ready for this? – the Wichita Wind Surge.
Ugh. What a cumbersome, awful name…but then I suppose anyone who could come up with an atrocity like “Baby Cakes” could just as easily expectorate this clunker. Anyway, the logo is a black winged horse with red eyes threaded through a big, distinctly non-aerodynamic “W,” which the team’s PR release described as Pegasus with a misguided description of the mythic creature that would have made Edith Hamilton and Joseph Campbell fight over the toilet so each could be the first to barf. Of course the actual Pegasus was always depicted as a white horse, throughout medieval and renaissance painting, but here he’s black with red glowing eyes like one of the horses from Hell in the song “Ghost Riders in the Sky.”
Well, I’m grateful for one thing, at least – that my father and mother got to name me instead of Lou Schwechheimer and his tone deaf marketing department. My condolences, meanwhile, to the MiLB lifers who just got shunted from the magical Big Easy to a city whose old timers are just now dying off and taking their memories of the dust bowl with them.
Fan Interference 
As you probably know, Gator, Wichita is the murder capital of Kansas by a considerable margin. However, Wichita’s murder rate is roughly half that of Miami’s and a quarter of the New Orleans rate. It may take time for the youthful Wind Surges to adjust to the more peaceful environment.
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Well, they can preoccupy themselves with drag racing on I-35, swilling beer or visiting the cattle driving and slaughterhouse museum, Anton Chigurh’s favorite stop in Wichita. At least it’s not Cleveland.
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Most of I-35 through Wichita is elevated and without much shoulder space, so anyone drag racing on that road best be hope they don’t lose control of their car!
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Hell, you talkin’ to someone who went to the University of Chicago when the infamous “S” curve at Lake Shore and Wacker Drives was still there. Guys would drag through that in the middle of weenter and the retaining walls had more scraped orf paint on them than concrete.
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Names for minor league teams are purposefully stupid to drum up attention and merchandise sales. This name should lend itself to some truly insipid marketing theme rhymes along the lines of “Feel the urge, come see the Wind Surge”. That said, this could be beneficial to the underpaid minor leaguers playing for the team as I’d assume the cost of living is lower in Wichita than Nola.
Wonder if Jimmy Webb (wrote the song) wanted too big of a royalty to use this name.
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No doubt “Wind Surge” was chosen because they decided Tornadoes, Cyclones, and Oz were too boring. “Baby Cakes” was apparently an obtuse Mardi Gras reference.
I have to agree with you about the pictures. Scouts showed me how to do the featured image thing just recycling a photo that has already been used on this site, but I haven’t been able to import any either. I was planning to email him about it.
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It’s easiest to just add it via the url from an internet posting.
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I, like Gator, have tried and gotten the same incompatible file type message he mentioned in his post above.
I’m stubborn even if a relative Luddite with computers, so will figure it out eventually.
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Make sure the image is either a jpeg or png format and you should be fine. I either use the URL link which works 99% of the time, or I download the image to my computer first, then upload it. I don’t typically write stuff using mobile, so I’m not sure if there’s any issues with that.
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Might be the mobile thing. I’ve never tried anything but standard jpg files, so it’s not really the file despite the error message that I get.
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I never use mobile to post here. This is all thru my desktop or laptop. I used to be able to put up these same images without any trouble but the last few months they’ve gotten difficult and now seem impossible. I simply won’t waste any more time on images until this host makes it simpler to put them up.
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Gator what web-browser are you using? I have zero issues using Chrome. I upload and I select the via link option.
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Chrome too, Scouts. I’ve also tried Firefox and Edge. Same thing happens.
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I was hoping you were going to say you were using Edge, since Edge and IE are dumpster fires and the issue could be a simple move to Chrome. Gator, next time it happens, take a screen shot (windows + shift + S, or snipping tool) and detail me the steps you took to upload the image and I’ll see what I can do to help. I don’t expect WordPress to be of much help here, but I’m very curious as to what’s going on and would like to help if I could. In the mean time, we thankfully have LOTS of images already banked to choose from, and there is an alternative method to upload images, which admittedly is a bit less convenient.
If it’s of any help, I could try to make a video or something showing the steps I personally take to upload images. If anyone wants, they can also email me at: fan.interference at yahoo and I can respond more directly. I try to monitor that box as closely as I can. (although sometimes my phone likes to stop checking it if I don’t log in weekly which is super frustrating.)
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Also, I will say that some sites are going out of their way to try to prevent you from being able to download or save their images, so maybe something is going on there. I usually try to right click and save as and make sure to download the image locally before I upload, double checking that it’s not got some super crazy file name or extension.
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And failing that, just find an image in the database we’ve developed over the years and use that. I also find that gify links are super easy and never have any issues with them.
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FYI, the only reason I even care that much about the featured image is it completely breaks the main page’s design. So typically if I see a post without an image I try to find an acceptable one to use.
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I get it—I want the page/posts to look good too.
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Wind Surge? Sounds like something out of Spinal Tap. Or something everyone experiences after eating the ballpark food there in Wichita.
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Well, they could have gone with Wichita Farts.
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“something’s rotten in the state of Kansas”
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