A Scattered Brain

Here are two stories that indicate that the world is most certainly about to end:

First, apparently Pluto is actually NOT a planet.  After years of growing up believing that there are 9 planets and hearing that there may in fact be 10, I’m told that in fact there are only 8.  What’s going to be next; Earth won’t be a planet anymore?

Second, and even more of a sign of the end times, there will no longer be 24 hour marriage licenses given out here in Las Vegas and that they will in fact close at midnight.  Midnight?!?!?!  It takes at least until 3:00 am to make the ill-advised decision to get married while drunk.  I know they say it will save the state some money, but the math just doesn’t add up to me.  Doesn’t the publicity alone pay for being open all night long?

Last night was the last competitive night of the summer bowling league.  We had a nice, strong finish and won all three games plus total pins.  The win comes with a bit of an empty feeling as the other team didn’t even show up except for one person and you have to have at least 2 of the 4 be there for anything to count.  He seemed very disappointed and upset with his team and who can blame him?  Basically, it meant that as long as we were all within 10 pins of our average all games, we’d win.  We all bowled fairly well regardless and probably would have won at least 2 of the 3 games even if they had fielded a team.

I bowled my second best series of the summer, which I’m proud of.  Unlike the last good one, which just seemed to be all luck, this time I’d made some changes to my approach and delivery that look to be helping with two of my biggest issues: consistency and speed.  Here are my scores and averages for the whole season:

I ended up with an average just 4 pins off of my goal of 170 which isn’t bad considering it was a fairly arbitrary number based on what I used to bowl 7 years ago.

The next league starts Sept. 6 so that gives me three weeks to just practice, recondition my balls (insert dirty joke here) and get ready for the next season.  Don’t worry, the bowling blog portion will return.  We’ve even ordered really spiffy bowling shirts and if we can’t beat the other teams with talent, we’ll at least look better losing!

We are almost to the end of the summer season of bowling.  Only two more weeks left and next week is the last competitive week.  This week I was in a bit of a funky mood and I’m still not quite sure why.  I bowled better than my average in all three games and I’m happy with that.

Game 2 started out awesome.  Started with 5 strikes and then the wheels came off.  I couldn’t get any breaks on the left lane after that and left 3 straight wicked splits.  That killed the chance to get 200 but that happens.

I want to congratulate two of my teammates.  They both got their personal bests for this league in game 3.  Erin bowled over 130 for the first time and Ty bowled a team-best of 217!

Here are this weeks scores:

The average is still mid 160’s which is a little lower than my goal of 170 and with only one more week, I don’t think that goal will be achieved.

UPDATE: I almost forgot, we are still looking for a team name for next season.  If you have any clever (keep it clean) ideas, pass them along for consideration.  We also plan to buy shirts.  If we aren’t going to win, we’re going to look snazzy losing!

I hope you all have a good rest of the week.  It’s almost Friday!

Hey all, just got sent this nice link that shows some interesting facts surrounding your birthday.  I don’t buy into all that life path stuff, but still some cool parts:

Birthday Calculator

Check it out. Here are some of my highlights:

The Julian calendar date of your birth is 2443300.5.
The golden number for 1977 is 2.
The epact number for 1977 is 10.
The year 1977 was not a leap year.

Your birthday falls into the Chinese year beginning 2/18/1977 and ending 2/6/1978.
You were born in the Chinese year of the Snake.

Your Native American Zodiac sign is Elk; your plant is Mullein.

You were born in the Egyptian month of Mesore, the fourth month of the season of Shomu (Harvest).

Your date of birth on the Hebrew calendar is 20 Sivan 5737.

The date of Easter on your birth year was Sunday, 10 April 1977.
The date of Orthodox Easter on your birth year was Sunday, 10 April 1977.
The date of Ash Wednesday (the first day of Lent) on your birth year was Wednesday 23 February 1977.
The date of Whitsun (Pentecost Sunday) in the year of your birth was Sunday 29 May 1977.
The date of Whisuntide in the year of your birth was Sunday 5 June 1977.
The date of Rosh Hashanah in the year of your birth was Tuesday, 13 September 1977.
The date of Passover in the year of your birth was Sunday, 3 April 1977.
The date of Mardi Gras on your birth year was Tuesday 22 February 1977.

As of 8/8/2006 11:32:24 AM EDT
You are 29 years old.
You are 350 months old.
You are 1,522 weeks old.
You are 10,655 days old.
You are 255,731 hours old.
You are 15,343,892 minutes old.
You are 920,633,544 seconds old.

Sweeeeeet.  Almost, 1,000,000,000 seconds old 🙂

Happy Monday!

My wife and I went to Arizona this weekend on a fairly impromptu visit to the Grand Canyon.  We drove out to Flagstaff on Friday and were able to eat at the best restaurant ever created (for those who know me, I don’t even have to tell you where that was; for others, it was Chick-Fil-A).  The drive was actually pretty nice and it appears that we just missed a passing rain storm so that’s good.

On Saturday, we took the Grand Canyon Railway from Williams to the canyon.  The ride is about 2 1/2 hours long and the train doesn’t go too fast, but it was a nice ride.  The canyon itself was magnificent.  If you’ve never seen it, you have to go sometime.

Once we arrived we walked about 2 miles around the south rim and each time we stopped, we continued to be in awe of what we were seeing.  At one point, Kylah and I talked about how we’re glad we waited until we were adults to see this as it may be difficult for children to really respect what they were seeing.  About 15 minutes later, at one of the overlooks, we heard a kid, probably around 12 or 13, say, “This is such a freaking waste of time.”  I feel bad for his parents who undoubtedly were going partly for his benefit, but also understand that when I was that age, probably would have felt some of the same sentiment.

After a few hours, we took the train back to Williams.  The experience was similar to one you find at theme parks like Disney.  On the train to the Grand Canyon, people are talking, restless and excited.  On the way back, nearly silence on the train… until… the train robbers came!  With only about 30 minutes left on th etrain ride, we were boarded by a gang of robbers who took all of our money and valuables.  I’m just glad we made it out alive!  Ok, so the train robbery was staged as part of the train ride, but still was a fun touch to end the day.

Of course, after we got back to Flagstaff, where did we go to eat???  The place doesn’t, need mentioning (Chick-Fil-A) so I’ll move on.

Sunday, we drove back and were able to eat at another favorite of ours that we don’t get here in Vegas; Cracker Barrell… mmmmmm best breakfast ever!

If you ever have the chance, I highly recommend seeing the Grand Canyon for yourself.  Pictures just don’t do it justice.  Have a great week, all!

Good evening all,

Well, tonight was just an average night… a little below actually but really not much to say.  I just need more practice to gradually get better and more consistent.  So without further ado, here are this week’s scores:

I hope you all have a terrific week.  Take care!

Greetings all,

Ok, I finally paid off my Saturn, and while I love the car and feel I have the last manual transmission in the United States, I’m jonesing for a new car.  I don’t need a new car, and I certainly don’t mind what I’m driving, except I love the little information gauges you can get in luxury cars.  I’m talking about really cool things like MPG, Average MPG, Miles left in tank, Gallons left, Extra trip odometers, etc.  I had all of this in my rental car (Mercury Grand Marquis, baby blue, perfect for retirement area Florida) and loved it even for just the two days I had the car.

So, this made me start looking for cars with this kind of information.  I’ve given up the idea of a navigation system… I hardly drive anywhere new so I really don’t need one.  I don’t need a new radio/CD player as mine is just fine and I don’t care for the XM or Sirius which tends to come with the navigation features anyway.  However, the Driver Information Center (GM’s term for these nifty features) is available on a Chevrolet Impala.  Hmm… a nice, new, fairly affordable Impala sounds really nice and the new design is pretty sleek as well.  Sounding better.

But, do I really want to chain myself down with another car payment just to get these nifty features and lose the manual transmission?  Hmm… there has to be a better way; someone somewhere has to make an after-market gauge that can keep track of these things.  During my lunch break, I decided to search for such an item expecting to find a whole bunch of them.  Alas, I only found one, and it’s not cheap at $170, but for a computer geek who likes to know weird things about driving statistics, this fits the bill.

It’s called the ScanGauge II and it has everything I mentioned above and even more than that.  This thing totally looks like the way to go.  ($170 is a lot cheaper than $27,000)  I’ll have to think about it and then find a place where I would actually put the thing that would work in my car.  Another nifty feature, supposedly coming out soon is the ability to upload the data to a computer.  That would probably just about send the wife packing, huh honey?

I’ll let you know if I get it and if I do, how it works out.  Have a great day!