In this modern age, we have a ton of ways to wish people a happy birthday. Some of them are essentially meaningless. Let’s list them out from most meaningful to least meaningful.

• Flying in from out of town to see you in person
• Engineering some elaborate, personalized birthday gift (e.g., wrote and recorded a song about you)
• Meeting you in person (not from out of town)
• Sending you a birthday card via snail mail that arrives on or before your birthday
• Calling you from a landline, when they probably should working
• Calling you from a cell phone as they walk from the office to the car
• Sending you a card that arrives after your birthday
• Sending you a card in an overnight package that arrives after your birthday
• Texting you
• Emailing you
• Sending you a personal Facebook message
• Emailing you a greeting card that is either relevant to your life or has a personal message
• Sending you a generic eCard that is all flash, seems to never end, and is signed with “Love, Me”
• Sending a birthday tweet to all of their followers by not putting your name first
• Starting a birthday tweet with your name in front, so only your common followers can see it
• Telling a friend to wish you happy birthday when they see you at your party
• Posting on your wall on Facebook
• Doing nothing
• Posting a “cryptic” message on their Facebook wall saying “I guess I missed her birthday”
• Checking in on Foursquare at the movie theater on the night of your birthday with the shout-out, “Sorry I’m missing so-and-so’s birthday but Saw 3D is out!!”

I could probably go lower, but it’s late and the thought that there is a lower is depressing.

These popped in my head over the last 72 hours and seemed like good solutions to two problems in baseball.

1. Instead of using the All-Star game to determine home field advantage in the World Series, use the cumulative record for interleague play. Using one game where the players aren't used to playing together and probably won't be going full force isn't representative and home field is a big deal. This year, the American League would have won handily, having bested the NL with a 149-102 record.

2. It's time to get replays going in baseball. The angles aren't as tough as other sports so replays should be fast. To keep gameplay moving, they should adopt the NFL rules and allow two challenges per team, per game. Not that it would have kept the Cubs from getting swept by the White Sox, but it's frustrating when replays show a clear mistake by the umps. Time to fix it.