Hear ye!

Peoples, may I have your attention? I have an important assignment for you all. I cannot adequately express the magnitude of the consequences of this task. I will attempt to, though. It is not a matter of life or death, but it is close. I wouldn't say it is THIS big, or even T-H-I-S big. It is quite a bit bigger than those particular sizes. Were there to be a word or quantity that would be the exact proportion of this impressive job's meaning then I would use it; however, no such things exist. Thus, it is up to me to take on the task of trying to describe it for you (describing the task is not the task itself, though, so no worries there, my friends).

Peoples, this task is pretty important. Actually, I think it is about THIS big.

Peoples, your task, which you do not have an option of not accepting, is to help me bike to work tomorrow and hereafter. Every morning I either wake up too late, or have something after work that I "need" to drive to, or I just don't feel like it. These are not acceptable excuses. So peoples, please, if you are up around 8am PST on a weekday, contact me in some way to remind me that I should be preparing to bike or already be biking to work. If you do not have my contact info, please use your extrasensory perception to will me to bike to work. I am putting my future in your hands because I have butterfingers.

Thank you.

EDIT TUESDAY MORNING: SUCCESS!
EDIT WEDNESDAY MORNING: DOUBLE SUCCESS!

Bowl Shack

If you recall the shack back when I used to sometimes actually post, you'd notice that a few things have changed. Most notably I've added bowlstats. They aren't particularly exciting since I only track my game scores. If I really wanted some interesting information I would try to find stuff like strike and spare percentages, what kinds of spares I pick up or leave, how many splits I get, and other things like that which I feel would be too tedious to track while trying to have fun getting my bowl on. Until someone volunteers to be my bowling intern and logs my results frame-by-frame I'm not going to have any of that info at my disposal. For now, bask in the glory of my session averages and standard deviations!

I didn't record the dates for the first few score logs I kept (prior to April 22), so I just put them in order of increasing average to make it look like I progressed steadily. I have increased my average overall, though. I didn't include my buddy's scores, but I did graph them on my own and interestingly we shared a good amount of peaks and valleys in average confirming that lane conditions are a decent factor in how well we do. Hopefully conditions are good tonight and I can stay in the 170 range of the last two weeks.

Bore Shack 2.0: The Borening

What is up friends? Let us partake in further Bore Shack action! More to come.

Small ya later, Houston

I took a quick trip to Houston over the weekend to see the Padres lose to the Astros there a couple times. I posted some pictures of the game on P-Boi so I guess you can take a gander at those there. Sadly, I still have yet to upload the bobble head, which was pretty much the highlight of the trip. I didn't post pictures of our Houston park experience, though, but they aren't terribly exciting. My brother posted his photos and thoughts on Gaslamp Ball (A San Diego Padres blog) and I generally agree with his thoughts on the stadium. It was generally pretty neat looking. He asked me to post the pictures from our park walk, so they are up there. Most notable might be one of these ugly ducks:


They were pretty fearless. In one picture this duck just kept walking towards me and eventually out of the frame as I was trying to capture both ducks and the turtle in the pond. Your thoughts, Webber?

I tweeted that there were no bikers (eventually one biker) in Houston; however, this was only while we were in downtown. Downtown was barren in general, though. It was full of office buildings with little else. I have no idea where Houstonians go to lunch. We found that there were quite a few recreational bicyclists cruising through the parks. We didn't really explore too much, but Houston appears to be a boring city. Good ballpark, though.

Anecdotal Bowling Tips

I started going bowling regularly about a year ago. I had always been a straight bowler, and never being particularly strong I still used an eight pound ball that I got for Christmas when I was about 10. My buddies all hooked, though, and while I would have the occasional winning game my high was 175 and I rarely topped 150 averaging probably between 110 and 120. So I learned to hook. As my eight pound ball could never supply enough power I moved up to ten and shortly afterwards to twelve. My average increased a little bit, but I was still pretty inconsistent.

The first big step I took was learning to use the arrows on the lane. I had always looked at the pins when bowling and tried to look where I wanted the ball to go. This works pretty well for a straight ball, because pretty much all that matters is where the ball ends up. If you also know where you are starting from it is easy to notice how you are missing. With a hook, though, it is much harder to fix mistakes that way. My bowling buddy one day wondered about focusing on the arrows and we both tried it and found a good amount of improvement there. We found it much easier to stay consistently accurate by focusing on where the ball is going when it passes the arrows. Watching the arrows and feeling how much speed and hook you put on the ball, you can tell almost right away where the ball is going to strike the pins. Also, it's easy to make adjustments when you find you are consistently missing the right arrow. This probably bumped my average another five to ten pins and I eventually got a 190 high.

This past Christmas I got a twelve pound bowling ball and from all I'd heard having your own ball is supposed to dramatically improve your score. I couldn't get a feel for it, though. My average did get up to about 130, but that hardly seemed worth having my own ball. I just couldn't find the right approach. My ball tended to hook too early and lose its angular momentum by the time it struck pins. A few weeks ago my buddy and I were watching Women's College Bowling on ESPN2 and heard the announcers discuss the grease pattern of the lanes. The next time we bowled we found that the particular lanes we roll at are greased in the center much further down the lane than on the edges. Since I'd always tended to bowl to the outside the ball would hit dry boards too early and thus hook too early. I changed my approach to start more to the left of center (being right-handed) and to bowl more down the middle of the lane with great improvement. Two weeks ago I averaged 161 with a high of 201 and last week my average was 156 with a high of 207!

It's pretty awesome that we've figured these things out in order to get better. It wasn't just a matter of "Oh, I've bowled for a long time so now I'm good" or "Oh, I got this new ball so now I'm awesome"; it was a matter of learning more about the game and why the ball goes where it goes. I'm sure we could have looked online to find these sorts of tips, but it is really cool to see the progress from learning more about the game. Hopefully I can continue my new found success tonight!

More like bore-oken promises shack

It's been a while. Since I've said I'm sorry.

Geez it seems it has been twenty eight days since my last post that I retyped in Dvorak. Let us get back into it! Back then I was delving into my thoughts and feelings and questioning them. So how did it turn out? I noticed one thing and that is I know I enjoy going to games with my brother, which makes sense since he is the one with whom I go to games the most! Given that we've shared a lot of the same baseball experiences and have similar knowledge and opinions of the game we find a lot to talk about it. We talk about baseball plenty when not at games, but the goings of the game are fuel to the fire. I've gone to two games so far this season without my brother and found myself having to keep some comments to myself because I knew-

Hold on watching the old X-Men cartoon... what kind of name is Jubilation?

because I knew the people I was with wouldn't "get it". For example, they did not find it funny when Randy Johnson walked Jason Kendall to get to the pitcher, who then hit a homer. Jason Kendall: a man who has had a higher OBP than SLG the past four years. A man who the Brewers experimented with hitting ninth behind the pitcher last year. I'm not saying I don't have fun without my brother; I just think the game becomes more important to us because we discuss it more directly rather than using it as a social situation and having to find other topics to discuss. Both situations are fine, but the latter could potentially be replaced with other activities.

On other fronts, the weather has been nice! Been exercising more recently and my pants fit well.

Hot Pix

So I am back and so is my camera. Photobucket has an option to share an album as a slideshow. I tried to use it, but it semed to take a million years to load, so I guess I'll share things some other way. Let's start with a hot pic of m'bike for you bike lovers:


And now one of Maggie for you cat lovers:


Baseball to come.

Today I died. (April Fools!)

I'm going down to San Diego this weekend. On Friday my mom, my brother and I are going to a Padres-Angels exhibition game at Petco Park. On Saturday I have a fantasy baseball auction draft at my aunt's parents' house and that night I am going to a Dodgers-Brewers exhibition game at Dodger Stadium with my uncle, his friend and my brother (Is my aunt coming? I don't know...). On Sunday I will not attend any baseball events. On Monday my mom, my brother and I are going to the Padres' Opening Day game against the Dodgers. On Tuesday my mom, my uncle, my brother and I are going to the Padres' second game of the season. On Wednesday I am flying back to San Jose and that night I am going to the Giants' Opening Night game against the Brewers with some friends from work.

Baseball.

I might need a vacation soon that doesn't involve baseball. In May I'm going to Houston with my brother. We are flying in on a Saturday, seeing the Padres play the Astros that night and seeing them play again on Sunday then flying home that night. Do I really like baseball this much? On Google Reader the only articles I usually don't skim are from my Baseball Prospectus, Hardball Times, and FanGraphs subscriptions. I definitely enjoy looking at statistics and reading analysis and such. Sometimes I wonder if I actually enjoy going to baseball games, though. I've never really felt like I didn't want to be there, but I've never really gotten too excited at a game, either (I'm not a very excitable person, though). If someone said "hey let's go to the baseball game or let's do something else fun" I'd probably go to the baseball game, but why? This I shall ponder over the weekend.

Papa loves mambo

I have a confession to make. I went to Jack in the Box last week for lunch. I wasn't having a good day and it did make me feel better, at least for a little while. More interestingly (somewhat more), they apparently changed how they give out their food for dining in (at least at this particular establishment). Rather than give and call out a number, the cashier took my name, and he did so by reading off my credit card. However, he did not seem to recognize the name Wesley. While I've always enjoyed that my name is not super common, I was taken aback a bit for it to be wholly new to a grown person.

I haven't really made any exercise reports in a while, so here's one! I ran 2.1 miles on the Saturday before last, last Monday, and last Wednesday. I played softball on Thursday and tweaked something in my leg, so I didn't run over the weekend. Tomorrow I'm definitely going to bike to work, though. The only reason I haven't lately is because I've been waking up late: a poor reason. I need to start keeping track of this sort of stuff so I can just throw it in a table at the bottom rather than wasting this precious space here.

I also have a new project in analyzing my typing. It is not completely new, as I suggested it a while ago, but I am going to commit to it. It is looking into the frequency of characters in my posts. My intent is to see if particular posts were heavy in characters I hadn't typed as much up to that point. Typing a bunch of k's, numbers and other characters in the Kent Hrbek post sort of made me more curious about that. My ultimate goal is to create some sort of difficulty score for my Dvorak typing. Ideally this would smooth out the curve, but as I said before, the infrequency of the posts themselves rather than their content is probably what creates the bumps in the chart. Regardless, I think it would be neat to see the general frequency of the letters I type to compare the keyboard formats. That has probably already been done a bunch by others, but not by me!

How's my typing? (Call 1-800-TIPTUPTYPE)

As the last post before Fucking Gaetti! was my twentieth that I retyped, I posted a new graph. Since post 10, my progress seems to have been limited. My Dvorak rates had a steady climb over the first ten posts, which was not maintained over the last ten. This most likely can be attributed to my infrequency of posts. I posted the first ten entries within a span of 14 days; the last ten took 43. If I intend to achieve a usable Dvorak typing speed, I need to return to my initial rate of practice. And I will!

The Dvorak zine Adam Cz (z practice!!) posted on P-Boi said that Dvorak's study of his layout claimed that new typists reached a WPM of 40 in 18 hours of training. I have spent a little over 4 hours with Dvorak on this blog and perhaps another hour or two before that and my highest WPM so far has been 22.71. Being a successful QWERTY typer prior to delving into the Dvorak world I would hope I'd top 40 WPM far before 18 hours. Setting goals is a good way to stay motivated so let us set a goal! How about 40 WPM by 10 hours (only including time typing for the blog)? I feel that with consistent postage this is attainable as well as ambitious: a good goal! For every half hour I beat this goal by I will post a picture of something cute. For every half hour over the goal I will post a picture of Fucking Gaetti!

Fucking Gaetti!

Hrbek and friends

Last night I played D&D. Judge not lest I jump on a table and cleave you in twain! I dubbed my dwarf Hrbek after Kent Hrbek, one time All Star first baseman of the Minnesota Twins in the eighties and early nineties (the beta baseball-reference is pretty sweet). My perception of Kent Hrbek was previously limited to the image of him as an R.B.I. Baseball 4 power hitter.



He hit 20 home runs in 1991! Although you could play as playoff teams from the eighties, I guess I never connected one of the best years of his career, 1987, to my general conception of him because I've erroneously likened his career to a flash in the pan sort of guy like, say, Brad Wilkerson. After browsing through his numbers, though, I found that he actually had a pretty consistent 14 year career (1981-1994): all but his initial year (only 24 games) as the Twins primary first baseman and a fixture in the middle of their order with Kirby Puckett and Gary Gaetti. He had 293 dingers and a respectable slash line of .282/.367/.481. Not bad, Kent Hrbek, not bad.

Speaking of Gaetti [known to my family as "Fucking Gaetti!" I believe because of his 3-run homer against the Padres in the 1996 ALDS (also because he's fucking ugly)], when I quickly looked at his numbers something stuck out to me; in 1984 he played in 162 games, had 588 at bats, and only had 5 home runs. He had 117.6 at bats per home runs that year while his career rate was 24.7 and the next highest season rate he put up was 38.0. None of his other stats that year are very out of the ordinary for him. Weird!

Looking further at the rest of Hrbek's 1987 World Champion Twins teammates, they all have some pretty inspiring names: Gaetti, Blyleven, Gladden, Larkin, Reardon... Presuming I continue rolling the dice (pretty sure I am), I believe I'll continue to name my characters after members of the 1987 Twins.

It is all good.

I still didn't get in motion this weekend, but I went for a run today. Previously, my calves wouldn't let me get past two laps around my apartment complex (one lap is seven tenths of a mile according to Google). Today I made that elusive third lap and that second mile. Hooray! Let's do some pushups!

...

Twenty four. Eh...

My typing hasn't been doing too well lately, either. My Point Break post was rather daunting and took me a while to take the time to type it in Dvorak, which was quite a chore. My DWPM had been steadily climbing until that break. I probably should stick to short posts to continue steadily practicing. However, I probably need some more interesting topics. There's nothing like retyping your writing a couple times to realize how drab it is. I may need to make a fifth goal: to improve the quality of my writing. I don't know a good way to measure my progress in achieving that, though.

Vacation all I ever wanted.

I have been slacking on my goals mostly due to my recent illness, but also because I went to Phoenix for some Spring Training games over the weekend and took a little vacation from them. I had a soda at every ballgame and it was wonderful. We went to a nice restaurant on Saturday and my Dr. Pepper came in a bottle and had cane sugar: yum!

On Thursday we saw the Rangers play the Padres. The Padres were down the whole game. They tried to come back, but alas they went down 4-3. We were only a few rows back from the Padres dugout, which is always cool. I only took two pictures the entire trip, as I left the photography to my mom; they were both of David Eckstein running to first on walks. Scrappiness knows no exhibition! Also of note was Josh Hamilton. I've heard scouts say the sound when he makes contact is just different, and they were right. He stroked a nice double to the gap and the crack was indescribable.

On Friday we saw the Dodgers and Cubs play. I don't really remember anything noteworthy from this game. Before the game we went to see the Padres' batting practice. My mom got Chris Young's autograph. Bud Black told my brother he would sign soon as he still had a little more work to do. He went into the cages and when he came out he gave the same line to some other dude.

We went to the Dodgers' new park on Saturday, which had much more energy than any other Spring Training facility I've been to. There were a ton of Dodgers fans there way before the game started and there was a steel drum band playing. Every other Spring Training stadium is just chill. It's an exhibition and it is treated that way, which I always liked. Their park had music between at bats and beats and stuff to try to get the crowd cheering. It all seemed unnecessary. Also the diamond faces to the southeast, which is just wrong. Silly Dodgers... To cap it off, the Mariners came back to beat them 8-7 in the ninth. Ha!

Sunday we saw the Giants and Angels play. The Angels brought their A-team minus Vlad, while the Giants had the wrong side of a Split Squad. I think Eugenio Velez and Rich Aurilia were probably the only guys who will make the Opening Day roster. Needless to say the Angels dominated.

All in all, it was a very nice little break, but I've got to get back in routine. I went running yesterday and just felt pooped. I took a nap when I got home from work today, so hopefully I can get back on track tomorrow.

STILL SICK (and overanalyzing Point Break)

Today was not the hooky day I wanted it to be. I still didn't feel well. What a drag. Dude.

So what did I do? What anyone who is sick and has some movie channels would do: I watched Point Break. Anyone who doesn't have movie channels would watch Bob Ross. Watching Bob Ross when you're sick is close to achieving nirvana. Watching Point Break when you're sick makes you question how your life got to this point (break).


The Wikipedia article for Point Break suggests the possibility of a sequel (with VH1's I Love the 90's as the source). Since the movie ends with Bodhi vanishing into his perfect wave without emerging, the audience is supposedly left wondering if he dies. This was a question I never asked myself. I always assumed he died. He has no need to go on. With his extreme lifestyle, his chances of surviving until the next 50 year storm are not very good. Even if he did, he probably would not be fit to even attempt to ride such a wave as a 70-80 year old man (Johnny Utah and Bodhi meeting up again on the beach as old fogies would be kind of neat, though). Also, he recently lost everyone he cares about. He really has nothing to live for except this wave. To him this is the ultimate experience and he seems like a guy who would want to die doing what he loved (ie go out on top: catch a wave and you are sitting on top of the world). Also, he would face near-certain incarceration if he was to live, but obviously a sequel would occur with the assumption that he is not caught (Point Break 2: Behind Bars doesn't sound very exciting).

Regardless, there would be nothing to add with a sequel. I could only see it as being pretty much the same movie: Johnny Utah trying to catch Bodhi. Of course, there is the problem that Utah threw his badge into the ocean at the end. That really only leaves one feasible plot for the sequel: Utah is your everyday guy who starts noticing a string of robberies very reminiscent of the Ex-Presidents' thefts and comes to realize Bodhi survived and is behind it. It then would just become the cat-and-mouse sort of movie the first one was and not worth a new movie in my opinion. You could say Bodhi finds Utah and convinces Utah to join him in sticking it to the man with a crime spree, but I don't think Utah's character lends itself to being corrupted. He did let Bodhi get away twice: once firing his gun into the air and yelling "aaaaaaahhh!!" and finally to let him have his last wave. Both weren't necessarily cases of lawlessness, though. In the first instance he just didn't want to kill Bodhi, and in the other he figured letting him go out in that storm would... kill him. Utah does show he is willing to kill as he shoots a number of others in the film, but he does see Bodhi as a friend and would rather give him a chance in jail than kill him. I suppose you could also count the time he has a gun to Bodhi's head while skydiving, but I believe he still needs Bodhi to save Tyler at that point, so love got in the way. Utah does go to great lengths to try to catch Bodhi, though, showing his strong desire to uphold the law. Even if something happened in his life to crumble his law-abiding spirit, it would be too disconnected from the first movie and I think an original movie would make more sense than a sequel of that sort. What's the use of digging up old characters if you are going to change their values right at the start?

What I do think might be an interesting movie would be a prequel to Point Break. What made Bodhi the way he was? When the other Ex-Presidents want to cash in their clams and paddle into the sunset, he reminds them that the money doesn’t matter. They are in it to rage against the machine and it doesn’t matter the outcome (gotta live your life). Where did he get this attitude? He must have an interesting background to get such a viewpoint and to become such an uncompromisingly dangerous character. Also, Johnny Utah was a quarterback at The Ohio State University and was a star in the Rose Bowl. He busts his knee and decides to go into law and become an FBI agent. While not quite as interesting as Bodhi's character, there does seem to be a bit of a story to tell there. Regardless, I think the main problem with a prequel would be an ending that would be a suitable transition into the first one.

In the end, Point Break stands on its own as a pretty complete story. The characters are fairly interesting and the action is packed in tight. Unfortunately, Keanu Reeves.

Note: I actually don't mind KR in this role too much, but that seems the best way to end this.

Sick

Lisa got sick on Thursday. My throat tickled Friday and I was full blown sick all yesterday. I spent the day switching off sleeping and reading Watchmen. I finished it this morning; it was my first comic book experience. It was probably one of the best times being sick I can imagine: especially since I got it out of the way before going to Phoenix next weekend for Spring Training. I have been sick on a plane before and that is definitely one of the worst times being sick I can imagine.

I feel a lot better today and I think I would be able to work tomorrow, but I've decided I'm going to take the day off regardless. With my flight on Thursday, that makes it a two day week, which is pretty awesome.

Mirror in the Bathroom

Wade in the poignant thoughts of The English Beat.

Mirror in the bathroom please talk free. The door is locked: just you and me. Can I take you to a restaurant that's got glass tables? You can watch yourself while you are eating. Mirror in the bathroom I just can't stop it. Every Saturday you see me window shopping. Find no interest in the racks and shelves: just a thousand reflections of my own sweet self, self, self...

Mirror in the bathroom you're my mirror in the bathroom. You're my mirror in the bathroom. You're my mirror in the bathroom.

Mirror in the bathroom recompense for all my crimes of self defense. Cures you whisper make no sense. Drift gently into mental illness.

Mirror in the bathroom please talk free. The door is locked: just you and me. Can I take you to a restaurant that's got glass tables? You can watch yourself while you are eating. Mirror in the bathroom: mirror in the bathroom...


I heard this on the way to work and I never really listened to the words before. I like the first verse. Let's see how my typing does after a typeless week.

Pictures?!!?

Nope.

I have been thoroughly distracted by MLB Network the last two days. Yesterday I watched Carlos Delgado hit four home runs in a game, which happened to be a very good game, too. His third home run tied the game at 6, and his fourth tied the game at 8. Julio Lugo hit a home run and it was his fourth night in a row doing so. The Blue Jays ended up beating the Devil Rays 10-8 in a game that had no significance at the end of the season.

Today I watched most of Tom Seaver's 300th win, and now I'm watching Gaylord Perry's 300th win. Funnily enough Dave Duncan was the pitching coach for both, and the games were both against the Yankees. Duncan came out to talk to both of them, but they both pitched complete games. Also, Tom Seaver's was on my first half birthday and the Yankees fans cheered him, even though they ended up losing the division by 2 games that year, so a win would probably have been much better for them. I have seen no fewer than fifteen Jehri curls.

When this game's over I'm going to go for a run then bust out my camera fo sho.

Pictures

Just kidding, still no pictures. I have tomorrow off, so perhaps I will run around photographizing everything. PERHAPS.

It finally stopped raining yesterday and is all sunny, but the weatherman is a jerk and says more to come this weekend. Boo! I responded to the rain by sitting indoors and doing nothing. Sorry health, you are no match for the weather.

The last post was an attempt to screw with my typing results data with repetition and high characters per word (6!). It worked pretty swimmingly as my CPM rates jumped up and my WPM sort of fell. Blah blagh blar ba gdf

I am feeling entirely unmotivated in finding adequate content. I want to keep typing to make my Dvorak dominate QWERTY hardcore, but my brain is bored with itself. Reporting my daily typing and exercise activities and eating habits is not entirely satisfying. Just keep typing. Type whatever. Come on just a little more you can do it. Don't stop you are almost there. And I'm done.

What up boreosphere

It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining. It's raining.