A Scattered Brain

Greetings to all of my bowling fans. The long winter season is finally over. We have two weeks off before the summer session starts; so now is the best time to post my last set of stats. So, without further ado, here are the details of the entire season:

Overall, I am much more pleased with the second half than I was with the first half.  My spare shooting improved tremendously.  I had a lot more clean games (especially in the last 5 weeks with 4 of them).

One striking statistic is the average per game number.  In the first half, they were all fairly even; now there is a clear improvement from the first game to the third.  Perhaps, I should come and bowl an extra game of warmup on league nights?  Something to consider for the summer.

Well, I’ll let you go for now.  With the new software I’m writing to track my scores, it may be a while before I write the ability to export to a web format, but it will be something I’m working on.

Have a great day and take care!

Check out this article:

Group Asks Congress to Adopt Five-Day Weekend

As much as it sounds like a good idea, this would kill society.  If everyone only worked for two days, can you imagine the lines at the DMV or medical practices?  Sure, different services could be open on different days to lessen it a bit, but things would grind to a standstill for those services that require lines / waiting.

The economy would be affected, but maybe not as much after a while.  Most people when working probably don’t get a full 5 days of real work done anyway, so if you only had to be in a place for 2 days a week, you could be more productive.  Of course, business couldn’t adopt a rolling schedule like independent services could; otherwise things would really never get done.  Imagine sending an e-mail to a client but they won’t be in until later in the week so it’ll be at least a week before you get a response.

I’m sure the idea behind the group isn’t really to effect change.  If they were truly serious, they would possibly push for a 4 day work week; which would have nearly no adverse side effects to economic or service abilities as each business could choose how to split up Monday/Friday off time.  I think they are just trying to make the point that Congress, for all of the money they receive (outside of PAC donations) as salary, is only in session for what works out to 2 days a week.  I’m not a fan of Congress in general and believe there should be some major overhauls in practice, but the last thing I want would be for them to be in session for any more time than they are now (do you really want them passing MORE stupid legislation?).  Also, even though they may be in session for only 104 days, they are working out side of that; theoretically; for their constituents.

I have a better overall solution… allow me to work 2 days a week at my current salary and the rest of you can all continue to work as you do (or don’t) now.

Take care all, sorry for the lengthy delay in posting.  My current bowling league ends tonight so I will post my scores for the league and how we ended up as a team.

Thursday, March 1st, 2007 will go down as one of my all time favorite days.  So many good things happened to come together on one day, it was almost too much to handle.

First the two small things; I got a brand new (FREE) bowling ball.  A friend of mine ordered one online and it came with a free ball that he gave me.  It took a while to come in, but it came and it’s getting drilled up now. Woo Hoo!  The second smaller item is my new computer came arrived.  It’s a new Intel Core Duo (2.4 GHz) with 2GB RAM, 19-inch wide screen monitor, 500 GB hard drive, Windows Vista Home Premium… ugh ugh ugh (think of the Tim Allen “Home Improvement” grunt).  I was only able to unpack it yesterday but tonight should be able to have some fun setting it up and getting it up to be our main computer.

The next great thing was some quality family time with my brother-in-law, my wife’s aunt and grandmom.  We had a terrific steak dinner and then played Yahtzee and a little Wii Bowling.  Tons of fun and I haven’t laughed that much in a long time.

But now for the important information and by far the most exciting part of the day.  We had our ultrasound yesterday.  That was the most amazing thing; to see the head, arms, legs, and spine of our child was breathtaking.  My wife and I listen to the heartbeat regularly, but to see it was a completely wonderful experience.  We also got to find out that we’re having a boy!  Now to start to think about names and how to decorate.  I can’t wait to be a daddy.  We’re also due the exact same day as one of my grandfather’s so if it happens, it’s a nice circle of life completion.

One final cool thing from yesterday is last night I got to feel the baby kick for the first time.  I guess he was fairly active for my wife; but I only felt one or two flutters, it was still cool nonetheless and was a great end to a nearly perfect day!

WOW!!!

That’s all I can do to explain the very best video game I’ve ever played. I had grown up on the original Nintendo and loved the Zelda series ever since. I had never gotten into Final Fantasy at all until Final Fantasy XII (FFXII) was recommended by a friend at work.

I asked for it for Christmas, and of course, my wonderful wife got it for me. I’ve been working on the game ever since (mainly while Kylah’s working) and I have been completely amazed. The story is engaging (follows a Star Wars-esque theme in some ways). The character development is incredible for a video game. The graphics were awesome, even still on the PS2. The gameplay is innovative yet challeging. Music and cutscenes helped set the mood throughout.

The game has a complete re-playability, one of the things I loved about the Zelda series; the ability to go back after time and replay the game. When I do come back and re-do FFXII sometime, I will use a guide of some kind and do all of the side quests as I’m sure I missed a ton of them.

I’ve never been amazed by a video game such as I have with this. If you have a PS2 and like RPGs at all (even just a little), I completely recommend this game.

WOW!!!

Greetings all,

I hope you all had a terrific holiday season.  Bowling is back in full swing (it’s been going the last couple of weeks as well, but nothing really exciting to write about) and we got a 4th member for our team and I think that will work out very well.

So, why was it the best night ever?  Well, I had a couple of personal bests.  First, all of my games were over my average so that’s always a good thing.  Second, I had my highest series ever: 633 (for a 211 average for the night).  Now, that by itself is enough to make me happy and fairly proud, but there is more.

My last game was absolutely incredible.  I opened up with the first 9 frames as strikes and had a perfect game going into the 10th.  Well, rather it was nervers, freak release, combination of it all, I didn’t finish the 300 game.  I ended up with a 4 spare 8 in the tenth to finish with a 272.  Even in practice, where I normally average about 10 pins higher than league, I’ve never broken 270 before.  The game got really exciting after I got the first six strikes in a row, also a first for me.  I feel good that even after the nerves started kicking in that I continued to strike for a few more frames.

These are the types of nights that make bowling really fun and keep you coming back.  Now to find a way to do that kind of thing more consistently.

Have a great day!

Greetings to one and all (mostly I’m pretty sure it’s just my wife and the J that read this, and for that I truly thank you)

It isn’t exactly quite mid-season, but given that the rest of my team will miss the next two weeks I’m thinking we will just forfeit.  Of course, I’ll still probably go and bowl, but most likely not as part of my team at those times.  Given that, I’ll go ahead and reflect on my performance to this date.

Here are all of my scores up until now:

We’ll start with the bad news and move on to the good news.  First thing that sticks out is the fact that my best week (and only 200 game of the season) was the first week.  I have no real explanation for this.  The other truly bad statistic is in 45 games so far, I’ve not had one clean game at all.  I don’t get that many in practice (I’ve only had 2 in about 90 games over the same time period) but that indicates a lot of missed easy spares.  My average would easily jump 10-20 pins a game if I could just stop missing so many single pin spares, which are really inexcusable to miss with such a relatively large margin of error.

Now to take some positive things from these stats.  First, I’m within a 4 pin range for each of my games each week.  That means that I don’t consistently have a bad game based only on where it comes out of the three.  So week to week, I may have a bad game 1, but overall it seems to even out.  Also, my average has stayed consistent since it came down from that really inflated first few weeks.  It may mean I haven’t improved much, but it also means I haven’t declined either.

I have been working on many tweaks in my game from my stance, to approach, to release and I’m hoping that from the lesson I’ve taken so far to some more planned lessons in the future that these changes will pay off in the long term.

Most importantly, I still enjoy going every week and as long as I’m having fun, I will continue.  Of course, you always have more fun if you can see yourself improving, but I’m sure that will come in time.

I hope that all of you have a truly Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.  Be safe over the holidays and hopefully you’re able to take some time off to enjoy the season!

A friend of mine sent me a link to a site that is a set of riddles.  So far they’ve been fairly fun and challenging and I think they could take up far much more time than they probably should.  If you enjoy puzzles where one answer leads you to another puzzle, check this out:

weffriddles.com

If you need any help, there are forums with all spoilers removed to the best of the authors’ ability.  I am also willing to help where needed, of course leaving out spoilers myself.

Leave a comment and let me know your progress.  Up to this point, I’ve finished the first 10 and have taken a break.  Have fun!

Good morning all,

Last night was a strange night, and I’m just lucky it kept me around my average.  Apparently, they waxed the floors Tuesday night and everything was very slippery.  During practice a lot of people were sliding more than usual.  To counteract this, I put on a more sticky surface on my slide foot and boy was that a painful mistake.  My first (and only) attempt during practice with that I got stuck on my last step and fell face forward onto the lane.  Luckily I was able to break my fall without hurting myself at all.

Unfortunately, it made me timid the whole night and I was rolling the ball with little purpose or focus.  The ball wasn’t hitting the pins as hard and it left me with some tough spares.  I would also throw my spare ball lightly and that caused me to miss more than I would have expected.  Overall, I was right around my average with a 170, 159, 168 output, which is good considering the off night.

As a team, we didn’t bowl below our average but still lost 5 out of 7 points to the other team.

I was saddened when the J didn’t show up as the replacement for my fallen teammate so I guess I’ll just have to ask the league to find someone. 

On a much better and more serious note; today is our 4th anniversary!  I can’t believe we’ve been married for 4 years and more so how much more I love Kylah now than ever before.  My life with her is better than I could have ever imagined my life before I met her.  I love you, honey!  Here’s to many many more to come.

Take care all!

Greetings to all,

Last night was a decent night (178, 188, 146 – 512 series – 170 daily avg) so that was pretty nice.  The main reason for the good scores (and the one bad one) is that I had my thumb holes tightened up a bit.  This allowed me to not squeeze my grip as much which gives a much more consistent delivery.  However, my thumb swelled up a bit the third game and I couldn’t use my spare ball anymore and had a hard time converting spares.  I will leave things as they are for next week, but if it’s still too tight I’ll open up the hole just a little bit.

The big story of the night, and this is truly amazing, is that there were two 300 games bowled by two different people durning the second game.  One guy was on a lane on the opposite side of the bowling center, but everything stopped once he had 11 strikes.  Then about 10 minutes later, a guy on the pair of lanes next to me bowled a 300 and again everything was focused on him.  I’ve not seen a 300 bowled at all in league before personally, and to see two of them is pretty impressive.  Oh, to have one 300 game in my lifetime would be great.

As far as my team goes; the individual who was most likely quitting did in fact quit so now I have to find a replacement.  I thought I had one but that fell through as well.  I know there are other teams that had people left so there may be a way to combine some of those so we’ll see.

As always, have a great rest of the week!

Well, after 12 years of controlling both houses of congress, the GOP has lost the House and the Senate is too close to call and may be for quite some time depending on what happens in Missouri, Virginia, and Montana.

As most of my friends know, I’m quite the conservative Republican; and while I continued to vote that way for the Senate and House races in my district; I feel that the GOP has really let me down in many ways.  Most, if not all, of the ideals that took the GOP to the top starting in 1994 have all been lost in general Washington politics.  Fiscal responsibility is something that seems to be forgotten (and that is spending outside of Military spending, which I am 100% for).

Also, at least since Bush has been in office, the leadership of both the House and the Senate haven’t been leading at all.  Even with the President, it was their requirement and duty to lead with the conservative principles that got them (and continued to get them) elected in the first place.  That has been missing the last 6 years.

If we end up with a Democratic House; slightly Republican (or tied) Senate, things could get interesting as split party congres like that will make things difficult.  However, regardless of what happens in the Senate, the Democrates (gulp!) have a mandate and the public has given them the opportunity to try to lead and get things done.  I don’t see that happening and while Nancy Pelosi Speaker to be has stated that the House won’t spend a lot of their time investigating or trying to impeach Bush, don’t count on it.  It has been the mission of the Dems for the last 6 years to ruin Bush; not because of his policies and their disagreements for them, but rather some personal, deep-seeded hatred for him as a man.  I hope that Ms. Pelosi can keep her party in check and deliver on that promise.

The only good that I can really see out of this is when there are conflicting parties among the different branches of government, nothing tends to get done.  Most of the time nothing is better than what Congress does accomplish and while I had hopes in 2002 when Republicans had control of everything that many conservative legislation initiatives would pass, there wasn’t much; and the tax breaks that did pass still came with increased pork spending in government so no real long term benefits.

Congratulations again to the Dems; and to the Republicans; if you ever want to win back support among the voters you have to get back to a fully conservative base as right now there isn’t anywhere for us to look to right now.  The Democrats, with few exceptions, are too liberal and support too many increases in the size of government.  Some GOP members state they are for smaller government, but all recent evidence is to the contrary.

For the record, outside of the tightly contested races where I felt my vote truly counted, I voted for a third party candidate.  Generally, I would vote for the Independent American party (known as the Constitution party in most states).  This is the first time when I didn’t vote straight Republican across the board.

We need a government that understands that it isn’t the government that makes this country work; it’s the people.  It always has been and always will be.  Government, by it’s very nature, opposes the initiative, innovation, and imagination that is needed to create new ideas, products, and services to really help the people of this country.  I don’t expect much out of the next 2 years; or really just 1 before we start trying to elect our next President.

I’m sorry for all the rambling; if I took more time, I’m sure I could have posted a much more coherent and nicely flowing essay.  But hey, English was never my best subject; and I’ll admit at this moment I’m tired and sad and just don’t want to proof read my post. Hooray to all of you who actually read all the way through this.