A Late-Winter Morning's Hallucination

I discovered this veritable gold mine on my bookshelf at home in San Jose yesterday: The complete plays and poems of Billy Shakespeare himself. I must have received the book years and years ago. Back when I got it I probably thought it was a pile of useless old sheets of paper. But now I'm actually interested in reading some of his plays. In fact, I finished reading A Midsummer Night's Dream just a couple of minutes ago. It was interesting, although not quite what I was hoping for. I'll have to reread the Sandman comic involving that play and see what I think of it now that I'm slightly more literate.

Meanwhile, I spent most of yesterday in Sebastopol, CA, at a wedding involving one of Tiffany's cousins. The ceremony was short and sweet while the reception afterwards was long and fun. Exactly the way it should be. Also, they had plenty of alcohol on hand for the reception, making it all the more enjoyable. Tiffany and I are going to head off Tucson tomorrow in her Prius. Then I'll spend Wednesday doing some errand stuff, then I think on Thursday we'll take off for the Southeast. We still don't know exactly where we'll be heading, but I want to meet Trent in Lousiana somewhere and then hopefully Andy in North Carolina, if we can make it that far.

Phil Jackson

I used to think Phil Jackson only tried coaching teams that clearly had the talent to win. Well, now he's decided to rejoin the Lakers. Interestingly, a poll at Yahoo Sports asking people if they thought Jackson could win another championship with the Lakers revealed that 61% of the population thinks the answer is no (including me). I think this proves me wrong on what I used to think about him, so I'm impressed. I still don't think the Lakers are going to win a championship with him though.

I took home a $3 profit by finishing 4th in our poker tournament last night. That means over the last four tournaments I've finished 1, 1, 4, and 4. Unfortunately, I won't be playing poker again for a month or so, as I'm going back to the bay area on Saturday, then on a two week road trip with Tiffany directly after that.

Softball playoffs tonight and ultimate frisbee starts tomorrow.

Work has been really frustrating the past several days. Maybe I'll elaborate later.

A Mystery

This morning I came in to work around 9am. After twiddling my thumbs for half an hour, I went down to the lab to look for some parts I need to continue building this electronics box I'm working on. I came back to my office half an hour later, at 10am, and I discovered [presumably] my Twins hat hanging on the doorknob to my office. This surprised me because I wasn't even aware I had lost it. In fact, I still can't remember where I might have left it. The only time I wear it is for softball... or for golf... hmmm. Perhaps in time this incredible mystery will be revealed. It's amazing the kind of drama I live with, isn't it?

Valentine's Music

Despite not being anywhere near Valentine's Day, I figured this would be a good time to make this post, since right now I'm listening to Hot Rocks for the first time in quite awhile. Listening to the lyrics reminds what great music this is for Valentine's Day. With classics like "Under My Thumb", "Time Is On My Side", "Play With Fire", and of course "Paint It Black", you'll show your lover just how much you care. And to think I'm providing this priceless piece of advice free of charge! You guys are pretty darn lucky.

Softball And Poker

I finished 4th out of 13 people in our weekly No-limit Hold'em tournament, netting me a whopping $2.50. In the hand that finished me, I went all-in as the short stack with A6. The big stack called with AK and that was all she wrote. On a related note, I'm impressed with how the level of play has increased since this group first started playing poker. It will hopefully motivate me to improve my game in various ways (e.g. better odds calculation).

Softball was close to a heart-breaker tonight. We were down a lot going to the last half-inning (the bottom of the seventh -- we played a full game this time!), but we batted around and came oh-so-close with the tying run at the plate before a 5-3 groundout ended the game. Argh! On the other hand, it was way better than getting mercy-ruled again. And we were playing the league champions too! Supposedly there is a playoff happening that we'll be in (yeah, all teams made the playoffs), but no details have been made available about that yet.

Getting My Money's Worth

Hack-man strikes again!! I played golf today with some friends of mine at a local Tucson golf course. On the front nine, I managed to shoot a 57, probably one of my worst scores in the past five years. On the back nine though, I came back firing on all cylinders and ended up with a 50. That's a total of 107 strokes, which is pretty doggone bad. Nowhere to go but down from there at least.

I wish I could create a couple of clones of myself. Then I could do what I want to do (play Final Fantasy 5) while my clones could find a house to buy and do work work. Unfortunately, my clones would probably act like the ones in Calvin and Hobbes and decide to stop what they were doing to watch me play FF5. Dumb clones.

Racquetball Frustration

The people that I play racquetball with have a tendency to stare at the front wall when they're playing, instead of watching the ball. This is bad, because sometimes, when the ball bounces off a side wall and then a back wall, I have to hit it without aiming. Today, this resulted in me nailing my opponent with a pretty hard shot. When this happens, everyone feels bad. I feel bad because I hit him, but I'm also irritated because he shouldn't have been in the way. He feels bad because I hit him, and he probably feels irritated because it's happened before.

Here's why I think I'm right.

In other news, I posted two new galleries, one from May 15 (hike up Miller Peak), and another from May 22 (trip to Lake Patagonia).

Why Racquetball?

In principle, racquetball is a silly activity. I mean, all you do is go in a large box and hit a rubber ball with a racquet. What's the point of that?? Well, for some reason it feels good. I suppose you could make the same question and answer for any sport.

On the other hand, there is something about teamwork that transcends individual accomplishment. This is why players generally say that all the care about is winning the big trophy at the end of the season and the individual accomplishments don't mean nearly as much. (That and it's really bad PR to say you care more about being MVP than winning a championship)

Scanning my (very faulty) memory banks, I can only remember a few instances where I was on a team that won some kind of championship. My first year in Little League, when I was 9 years old and my specialty was warming the bench, I was on a team that won the League championship. Then later on when I was 12 I was on another Little League team that won the League championship. That time I was not so useless, thankfully. In Senior League it gets a little more murky, because there'd be far fewer teams in the league, so winning the championship was a more dubious distinction. I'd like to think I'm a team player. Maybe I just haven't been on enough teams.

The Post

It's been awhile since I posted anything. Well, time to make up for it!

• Jesuits: Any time the topic of Jesuits comes up, I feel like I should contribute something to the discussion beyond "Jesuits are cool!" Considering I went to a Jesuit high school and I respect them a lot, I really should be more knowledgeable about them.
• The bruise on my butt is doing fine, thanks for asking. As is the bruise on my hand.
• My cold sore is finally gone, after what seemed like an eternal battle. I really hate cold sores. They make your lip feel all fat, and then when they're on their way out they turn all yellow and disgusting. Nobody commented on the bizarre deformation on my lip for the past week or two though.
• Episode 3: I saw it on Sunday. It was good, I thought. Sure, parts of the dialogue sucked, but on the whole the movie did a good job of setting up episode 4. And of course the special effects were awesome.
• Road trip: Tiffany and I are planning a road trip to the South for two weeks starting around June 22 or so. I'm thinking at this point of going straight East from Tucson through the deep South until we hit South Carolina, then going North a bit and back along the upper South. A stop in New Orleans seems mandatory, but I'd really like to visit Trent if he's around. Trent?
• Golfing: lately, I've been getting the urge to go out and play a legimitate par 72 course. However, I haven't gotten the opportunity to do it yet for one reason or another. Hopefully I'll be able to make time for it sometime in the next two weeks. I'd like to go on a weekday if possible, since weekend rates are typically so steep.
• Poker: I've been doing pretty well in poker the past couple weeks. Since I joined a poker league started by some friends of mine at LPL a couple weeks ago, I've finished first in both tournaments we've had so far, netting a tidy little profit of $55. I was fairly fortunate in both tournaments, so once my luck settles down it should be back to the trenches for me. =)
• Our softball team got mauled again on Tuesday. We did manage to do something that we hadn't done before, which was invoke a mini-mercy rule whereby the top of the first inning ended not because we got three outs in the field, but because the opposing team scored the maximum number of runs allowable in one inning (12, if you care). So that wasn't so hot.
• The Anime night last Saturday night concluded the showing of Evangelion. I wasn't too sad to see it end. Next Anime night will feature another series with giant robots, a shy reluctant male hero, Gundam Seed. Eric says it's the best ever, right up there with Evangelion. Unfortunately, Eva wasn't exactly my kind of show. But we'll see how it goes.
• The Phoenix Suns were eliminated by the overpowering San Antonio Spurs. It wasn't even close. As they say, a good defense beats a good offense. I was rooting for Phoenix, just because it would have been nice to have a different team than the Spurs in the finals. Fortunately, the other team I'm rooting for, Miami, beat Detroit tonight. I'm a big fan of Dwayne Wade. He rocks!
• I've been watching the French Open, when I can. I really hope I get a chance to see Roger Federer play against this 19 year old upstart Spaniard, Rafael Nadal. It should be a great match, with the nearly unbeatable Federer going against this new guy Nadal who's on some kind of tear. Plus Nadal is Spanish and as we all know the Spanish kick ass on clay. On the women's side, I was pleased to see Justine Henin-Hardenne get into the final match. She's had to come back from a lot of difficult injuries to get back to the top of the tennis world, but it looks like that's where she's going to be in the near future.
• Last but not least, I finally saw the last two hours of 24 yesterday. I thought they were very well done, although I have to admit I was surprised when Tony and Michelle turned out to be terrorists working for Habib Marwan and blew up CTU in the last moments of the last hour. Even Jack Bauer didn't see it coming. Some of you might remember that I boldly predicted that it would be revealed eventually that Beirus was behind the whole plot of this season's 24. While that hasn't happened YET, I'm even more convinced that this will be revealed eventually. Here's what's going to happen in next season's 24. With Jack exiled to Mexico and President Palmer kicked out by (weak) President Logan, it's obvious that Palmer will team up with Jack to overthrow the Mexican government. With Jack calling the shots and Palmer dealing with all the bullshit reprecussions of Jack's wildly illegal activities, there will be no stopping a Mexican takeover of North America. By the end of the season, however, it will be revealed that Jack did all of this on the hunch that Beirus was the real mastermind behind Habib Marwan's terrorist activities. By conducting a hostile takeover of North America, Jack will have forced Beirus' hand, brought his nefarious terrorist ring into the open and paved the way for himself to single-handedly take down every single terrorist on the continent (and some innocent civilians too, but you can't be too picky, right?). I guess now that I've got the plot all figured out there isn't any point in watching the show. That's 24 hours of my life saved right there! Bam!