Double 1get!  Tonight's puzzles were the perfect combination (Shikaku + Kakuro) and very nearly the perfect sizes (Medium Shikaku, Big (but not Huge) Kakuro).  A smaller Shikaku and the time-lag might've cost me; a larger one and...well, I guess that wouldn't have mattered too much, as I beat the Kakuro 2get by about six minutes.  This Hard 19x11 had a little more bite to it than normal, but I lucked-out as my style of moving all over the grid (in case I get stuck somewhere) worked well here.

It doesn't hurt that a bunch of contenders are probably still jet-lagged to a certain degree, while I'm all jacked up on Diet Coke and Kung Pao chicken from Pei Wei.  Anyhow -- yeah, I guess I'll take it.

I've decided to share the WWTBAM love here and post something.  First, a general life update.

Teaching is pretty ok!  It's a shame that the two classes which could use an extra day of lecture are, actually, the ones that lost a day due to Labor Day.  It might just mean I'm going to really zip through tomorrow's lecture, although the frightening thing is that said lecture took about 75min today, and I even skipped ahead a little bit.  Oh the perils of algebra teaching!  I may send them off with the textbook as a babysitter, we'll see.

I noticed in an email today that my last name had been replaced with "Sufferance" during a reply from a student.  I took this as a sign of sneaky disrespect -- it wouldn't be the first time my screwy name had been used in this fashion -- but I've a hunch that's actually not what happened.  I wrote him asking what that was all about, he wrote back and apologized for any disrespect without acknowledging what had "happened".  So it probably was just a voracious spellchecker.  It only makes sense, seeing as I've been likable in class thus far -- perhaps because I've not been terribly rigorous or demanding.

Two nights from now I'll be in front of my first class at ITT-Tech, for a 204-minute lecture.  The same can be said for three nights from now, and just about every Thursday and Friday through Thanksgiving.  I've got a little bit of trepidation here; that's more than 4x as long as my traditional 50-minute lecture!  I've a feeling there's going to be quite a bit of groupwork and discussions and, umm, breaks.

I'm also waiting for a phone call or an email that I've a sneaking suspicion isn't actually going to come.  I can only imagine how any hypothetical conversation would go during an accidental crossing-of-paths after the promise to reconnect electronically or telephonically is broken...

Me: "I thought you were going to write or call -- what happened?"
Her: "Well, our conversation during that awful orientation thing was just too much fun, I didn't think any future interactions could compete so I decided to pretend you didn't exist anymore."

I won't ever pretend to understand the (*cough*) fair sex, but maybe I'm so bad at it because I'm the most obvious guy on earth?  That might also explain why I've lost the last few times at the casino.  Well, ok, that and the absolutely atrocious luck I've gotten.  Which incidentally also kind of applies to the situation with the ladies...

Anyhow, as mentioned previously, my good friend Trevor was on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? during the recent prime-time 10th anniversary revival thing.  He requested some questions from his friends who happen to be subject-matter experts on things he doesn't know particularly well.  I used to be good at sports trivia, so I put together ten sports-y questions, WWTBAM-style, for him and the rest of the Phoenix posse to enjoy.  And now I share them with you.  Answers to follow when/if I post again; in the meantime, dig in.

1. Regardless of their actual attire, baseball and softball umpires in sporting events are traditionally referred to by which color?

 

A. Black

B. Blue

C. White

D. Gray

 

2. Which of the following NBA players was listed as 6'1”, easily the tallest among this group?

 

A. Tyrone “Muggsy” Bogues

B. Anthony “Spud” Webb

C. Earl “The Squirrel” Boykins

D. Nate “Tiny” Archibald

 

3. A baseball pitcher is incapable of being credited with a loss for any of the following except...

 

A. Facing the minumum number of batters over nine innings.

B. Throwing a nine-inning perfect game.

C. Throwing a nine-inning no-hitter.

D. Throwing a complete-game shutout.

 

4. Which of the following tennis stars won all four tennis majors at least once each?

 

A. Pete Sampras

B. Andre Agassi

C. Ivan Lendl

D. Bjorn Borg

 

5. In the closing minutes and overtime of the 2007 Fiesta Bowl, Boise State successfully executed all but which one of these unconventional football plays?

 

A. Flea-Flicker

B. Hook-and-Ladder

C. Statue-of-Liberty

D. Halfback option pass

 

6. Who is the only athlete of these four to win Olympic gold medals in two different sports?

 

A. Eric Heiden

B. Karch Kiraly

C. Jackie Joyner-Kersey

D. Florence Griffith-Joyner

 

7. What driver has won the most top-level NASCAR races without winning a series title?

 

A. Rusty Wallace

B. Mark Martin

C. Junior Johnson

D. Dale Earnhardt Jr.

 

8. 1975 Playboy Playmate of the Year Marilyn Lange was selected in the sixth round of a 1976 draft by a team from which men's professional league?

 

A. American Basketball Association

B. World Hockey Association

C. Northern League (baseball)

D. North American Soccer League

 

9. The Denver Dynamite defeated the Pittsburgh Gladiators in the first championship of which sport?

 

A. Roller hockey

B. Slamball

C. Extreme sports

D. Arena football

 

10. Baseball's Rip Sewell is credited with inventing which of the following?

 

A. Batting helmet

B. Eephus pitch

C. Split-fingered fastball

D. Batting glove

 

Seeing as I haven't posted anything in about two months, it's possible that I've just been super busy and haven't been able to find the time.  You'd be, errr, half right.

I finished up working at the Labs early last month, and have embarked on a new path.  There's no guarantee it'll work out, but I felt even more confident that, if I stuck with working a desk job, I'd be unhappy.  So instead I've decided to take up the previous "career" idea and get into math instructing.  That was the future I envisioned from 2000-2002, when I was a TA, which took a decided turn for the worst sometime around March of that year; my College Math class hated me, which made me resent them, and made me look for internships.  The one based in Albuquerque for which I applied responded about a week later, and that "three month stint" lasted about seven years.  Anyhow, the less the lousy MAT 114 experience is pondered, the better.

I think I've significantly mellowed since that class (scary, huh?), but...well, I guess we'll find out pretty soon here.  I've secured part-time employment at several places in town, with a staggered schedule of classes coming down the pike.  Starting next Monday I will be at UNM teaching three different sections of Intermediate Algebra, which, from the sound of it, is in-between ASU's College Math (see above) and College Algebra (went acceptably both times); I'll be getting the book later this week and will have a better idea of things then.  The following week sees CNM start their classes, of which I anticipate I'll be teaching one or two sections of what I've referred to as Algebra 0.5 (that is to say the first half of the first semester of Algebra, which I anticipate will look a lot like the UNM class).  The week after that I'll be starting at ITT-Tech teaching Introduction to Statistics on Thursday and Friday nights for 12 weeks.  Most people would be loath to surrender their Fridays from 6-9:30, but hey, it's not like I'm usually doing anything then anyhow.

One of the things I actually have been doing lately is puzzles, per usual.  I cannot speak highly enough of the Fed-Sudoku site, not only because of the puzzles themselves but because of their leaderboards and the like.  Once the interface is grokked, it's pretty smooth to use.  One of these weeks I'll finish top-three (read: third-place) , which will probably require a better "record against" the two powerhouses than 1-19; the one "victory" this week actually came on easily my worst of the ten variants.  Anyhow, sign up today!

Speaking of powerhouses: forget mullets, Nikoli folks, and FEAR THE MELON.  Good thing he didn't do the USPC this year, else I'd have gotten my rump handed to me all the more.

I went on over to Arizona for about a week over the past seven days, and it was one of the more entertaining trips in awhile.  It helps that my brother and his lovely family have moved back from Indianapolis, and that a good friend of mine is also "between jobs", and that the temperature didn't surpass 105 or so the entire time I was there.  Casino Arizona has to be the absolute worst, poker-wise, of any casino I've ever played -- and yes, that includes the Orleans.  But I dunno, maybe all the heat helps the locals build up a tolerance to dealers who can't read Omaha hands and show glimpses of the burn cards during dealing?

I had a pretty humorous Sunday night, visiting the church I attended for 8 years while at ASU and seeing some old friends.  And some new ones!  Who?  Oh, so many I can't mention them all...or maybe that's just because *I forgot nearly all their names that very night*.  I've never been much for first impressions, but this was especially embarrassing.

One particularly special event over the past week was the airing of Wednesday's Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?.  As it were, a very good friend of mine (and trivia teammate of eight years) was a competitor, and happened to smoke everyone on the first Fastest Finger and make the Hot Seat!  It's also highly possible that our two other regular teammates (plus an occasional fill-in) make an on-screen appearance during his impressive run.  I was initially considered as a Phone-a-Friend but had to decline when their stupid rule about using land-line phones came into play.  Pretty much my contribution to the entire endeavor was to clue Trevor in on the phone auditions...and to pull a somewhat finely-tuned ruse on another one-time teammate of ours when asked about how well he did.

We had a neat get-together in Chandler with a viewing party in the back room of the trivia pub they frequent.  Pictures to come on Facebook when I actually get them off of my camera...

(Links to the show are here, here, here, and here.  And if I had some more money, I'd personally cut checks to the charities of the celebrities and convince the good WWTBAM people to run the "real" part of the show for 60 minutes instead of the abbreviated mess it's become.  Good lord, the first six minutes of Wynonna Judd's cluelessness tonight was enough for me.  4 times 3!!!  It's not that hard!!!)

Especially given the teamwork angle -- with one team member on the show and the other three teammates standing-by to offer assistance (give or take a land-line phone) -- this feels like the culmination of eight good years of playing together; and yes, it feels even better than blowing a huge lead in the finals.  Furthermore, it would be tough to top the great showing from last week, especially given the less-than-stellar big-game performance of the one teammate yet to get on a show...

Speaking of big games, softball is now wrapped up.  The coed team finished tied for 3rd -- although we put the wood to our nemeses in the first playoff game and held a nice lead against the first-place team in the second.  The men's team...won!  I wasn't actually there for the finals (possibly a good thing) but from what I heard it took a remarkable play to finish the game.  Homer?  Diving catch?  Play at the plate?  No on all counts.  Try a double-play aided by a runner-interference call!  That's how we decide championships in work-league softball in the Burque!

In sports news -- that comeback win the Diamondbacks had against the Dodgers last week either means good things for the good guys or bad things for the boys in blue.  If anyone's good with baseball archives, find me a time before this month when a guy gave up 10 ER in 3.1 IP and, in his next start, set down 23 straight batters -- against the same team (!!) no less.  Also, I'm loving the Aussie/Valley baseball connection, with this guy being responsible for a current fantasy teamname of mine (Oeltjen Marvels -- formerly Viva Zavada) and this guy returning to Tempe for a second season.  As much as I wanted to see him make the Bigs quickly, I certainly don't mind him anchoring the rotation for another season.  Lastly, any Sun Devil should feel warm inside after reading this from our newest millionaire.

Part 2 to come when I think of all the things I've forgotten in this sitting.  I hope all is swell.

Nothing much new to be said here.  Just new takes on old favorites.  Plus a smorgasbord of sports chatter.

The USPC results are out.  My score was worse than any of my previous three attempts.  My effort was significantly worse than any of my previous three attempts.  It's all about points, and the missing points here fall into at least four categories...

1. I screwed-up (25 pts.).  The last word "into" my Lucky Sevens grid had to fit T-R---O.  To be a serious solver who doesn't waste any time, I didn't bother writing it in, and just mentally made a note of what word was unused.  Except I also didn't put the second-to-last word in, so it was read T-R----, and really, what are the chances that both of the final two words would fit?  TERRACE looked like it fit, so I submitted TORNADO.  20 pts, meet minus-5 points.

2. I screwed-up in a different way (25 pts.).  I knew I had the Masyu and eventually got around to dropping the letters into the submission page.  This included an R that it shouldn't've.  20 pts., meet minus-5 points.

3. I screwed-up in a third way (?? pts.).  Instead of wasting all sorts of time on puzzles on which I never got anywhere, maybe I should've taken on the counting puzzle, the maze, Sweet Sixteen, and even spent more time on (in?) Di-Agony.  And maybe I should've double-checked my solutions?  Typing them in with little time left on the clock doesn't necessarily allow for too much time spent on this, although theoretically one minute of penalty is better than dropping 25 points.

4. Mysterious reload (2-4 pts.).  Another regular feature of my success (*cough*) has been to save STDs until the end.  So I started with (what looked like) 90s on the clock, and found all of...four of them.  Time to start typing them in.  I type two in (20s or so left?) and...the page reloads.  So, hmm...I guess as soon as the time is up, the page automatically caches (is that the term?) so that all your answers are counted before penalty.  Makes enough sense...even if I don't get the other two answers in.  And then I see...none of my answers was listed.  And I submitted...with 90s or so left?  So apparently it didn't reload after all?  I figured "re"sending it with two additional answers (worth 2pts.) wouldn't be worth any penalty, although I'm not sure exactly if several submissions are considered and the top score is awarded to the solver.

(As it were, this is one STD I totally caught.  After time was up I actually found all 10, which isn't usually the case.)

So I put in enough effort to get 204, but maybe "deserved" a 179.  With some more intelligent planning (and non-sloppy finishing), maybe 220 was possible.  360?  Umm, not exactly.  Kudos to everyone who's happy with how they did.

The OAPC went rather similarly.  Plenty of more points could've been earned had I attacked the right puzzles.  A top score wasn't an option.  And somehow I must've screwed-up in submitting things, as my "Four Squares" (paper) solution looks to meet all the criteria, but I got no points.  I'm trying to see what my submitted answers were -- even asked how to see them on the Forum -- and since I don't seem to be able to click on my name in the Results table, I guess I'll never know.  29th place is fun, in that I was born on the 29th.  That's about the only upside to such a shoddy result.

The Sudokucup went very well for me -- probably my best result at anything, anywhere, ever!!  Or something like that.  Anyhow, I haven't exactly scoured the website, but I don't recall ever seeing any sort of time-based tiebreaker spelled out.  I like that I ended up 3rd (of 15 perfect papers), but I figure some of the others were checking the bejesus out of their answers and only finally submitted when time was nearly up.  As it were, I even *had* made an error -- a bunch of things were wrong with one of my puzzles -- but in redoing it during the 21min of leftover time, I saw it didn't change my submission rows.  Which is lucky...or something.  Fun set of puzzles -- the Secret one is cute.  I'd probably remove the circles for next time and just say, like...one set of regions (say all but 3/7) work for one side and another set of regions (all but 1/9) work for the other.  But whatever, great puzzles.  Even if, again, first-place wasn't an option.

I've really come to enjoy the Fed-Sudoku site, although I haven't done one of their daily puzzles in quite awhile.  There's a set of variants that is updated weekly, and I'm familiar with the interface enough that I have competitive times on some of those.  There's also a special weekly puzzle (with an archive 170 puzzles deep) that I've enjoyed quite a bit, getting an inordinate number of 2nd-place finishes among all logged solvers.  Once I wrap this up, I imagine I'll do some more tonight...

The local trivia A-team has been out in full-force of late, with three comfortable margins in the last three trips; well, ok, four if you include the time I got there late and played on a separate team and summarily got smoked by the rest of 'em (even if we got 3rd).  We like the name "Federal Department of Lunch" (5th on that page) so much that we may use it in future weeks.

The US Men's National Soccer Team was a real source of pride over the last few days.  I watched the game today, felt kinda guilty about getting up two goals on basically two shots, felt really guilty when Kaka's goal wasn't counted (replay should be used, without any question), and eventually was resigned to the loss after we got tied.  If the US held the ball for more than 10 minutes in the second-half, I'd be shocked.  There's still a long way to go, but this was great.  And the win over Spain?  Epic.

There's a preponderance of people I ran into this week who were cheering for other teams, which...is just so effin' weak.  One guy was born in Mexico (to US parents).  Rooting for Mexico against the US is partially defensible, but rooting for Spain against us?  No.  Another guy (pro-Brazil) was born in Brazil and left when he was young; he won a dollar off of me (well, ok, really it's just the dollar he lost when ASU beat UCLA in men's hoops a few months ago).  This is also somewhat defensible, although it's still unfortunate he's not on-board with his actual country.  Add in the Spain fan (she loved Michael Owen -> Liverpool -> Fernando Torres -> Spain?) and...well, it is what it is.  Growing up in Phoenix, which had only one professional team for most of its existence, you dealt with a lot of transplanted fans who never got behind the home team.  I guess this is just an international version of that.  Still, cheering against your home country's team is the worst.

The Colorado Rockies got a new manager and immediately went on a tear.  Arizona got a new manager and...nothing has changed.  And Arizona has significantly more talent than Colorado.  If AJ Hinch is the answer, I'm not sure I want to know what the question is.

Today's game showed how bad some conventional wisdom is.  Namely, if nobody is in position to steal 2nd or 3rd (without a simultaneous steal of home happening), the pitcher will work from the windup if he so desires.  Fair enough; the windup is preferred by most pitchers, so they may as well use it if the runners gain no edge.  Still, when there's 2 outs and a 3-2 count, going from the windup is counterproductive, as the runners are practically to the next base by the time the ball reaches the plate.  You wouldn't pitch that way with just a guy on 1st (or 1st and 2nd), and this is essentially the same situation.  It cost Arizona a run when the slow guy on first was practically to second by the time the batter made contact, sending a grounder to left.  He then took third when a needless throw home (to get the slow guy) was made.  He then STOLE HOME during the next at-bat.  When the pitcher was pitching from...the windup.  I hope the extra oomph on the pitch is worth two runs there, bub.

Since I'm in the arcane baseball mood: how can a team effectively register FIVE outs in one ining?  This doesn't involve dropped third-strikes or simultaneous tags or something.  From what I've read, it seems legit, and almost certainly has never happened.

Shaq has been traded to Cleveland, which is terrific; it should make them formidable enough to knock off the Lakers, and Phoenix can get back to playing actually fun basketball -- and maybe even winning some games!  If they can somehow move Amare for Steph Curry, they'd be more relevant to me than any non-NFL team.  Please please please make that work.

In music news, I ended up going to karaoke twice this weekend; once on a thing I planned, once very briefly for someone else's impromptu idea.  Three new songs get onto the list (along with this repeat).  I also got one song in (over two hours and $35 of (waaaaaay overpriced) drinks!!) last weekend.  I'm happy with one or two performances, but probably won't be attempting the last one up there again anytime soon...

Oh, and I jammed with a local GBV fan on some tunes (GBV and otherwise).  I knew I sucked at bass anyhow, but wow...he's phenomenal at guitar, and can sing too.  So basically it's like I'm trying to start a new band, and so far...it's just him.  Maybe I can be manager...or, hmmm...

Tonight I reached new heights; eight songs at karaoke!!

In order: Your Love, Battle of Who Could Care Less, Stellar, A Praise Chorus, Angel of Harlem, The Promise, I'm With You, and (FTW!) Jet City Woman.  One of those was sweet revenge for botching it something fierce the previous attempt (3+ years ago), and another was on something of a dare; the latter of which can probably be inferred.  Oh yeah, and on (a different) one of those I said "I caught you a delicious bass" before the lyrics kicked in, and a couple members of the crowd helped me out with reverb on certain words.

There's something to be said for a guy who invites 18 people out, gets zero email responses, and is saved from utter solitude by someone whose flight to Florida was canceled earlier in the day.  But we'll take what we can get.

TRIVIA QUESTION: What do Van Halen, Bowling for Soup, The Vines, Down by Law, The Stooges, and The Smashing Pumpkins have in common?  Certainly other bands belong on that list too, but those definitely qualify for one somewhat peculiar distinction.  This is a possible Ken Jennings Tuesday Trivia question #7 (I had lunch with him and several others during a break at the NAQT HSNCT), but I post it here as he didn't seem to like my previous idea, so he probably won't like this one either.

I've been sitting on a lot of blog-worthy topics, and thought I'd just unload them all at this time.

To no one's surprise, I'm not actually gonna finish up the blogging on this year's WSC.  Maybe it's because I did poorly, maybe it's because the puzzles themselves played to, uhh..."mixed reviews".  Maybe it's a combination of both.  Whatever the case, plenty has been written about it.  Maybe next year (as a player or an author) there'll be a worthy writeup from me...

The Ours Brun Sudoku Contest thing (I don't if that's someone's name or what-have-you) was held a few weeks ago.  Due to some mixups, I didn't fully appreciate the puzzles at the time, but since have gone back and enjoyed them all...or almost all.  There were some cool new variations that held some intrinsic qualities I hadn't grokked until I actually gave 'em a whirl.  The results obviously were somewhat pleasing, certainly compared to the fiasco in Slovakia, although I'm not going to read too much into them.  Anyhow, if anybody wants the puzzles, let me know; I'm sure the organizers won't mind if I passed them along.

It actually made for a rather interesting night/morning/weekend, as that contest ran (for full points at least) from 1:30-3:30am, and was followed five hours later by the latest installment of the OAPC.  Which...went significantly worse.  I think my solving idiocy is less to blame than my strategic inefficiencies.  For one thing, there were major points available on the Toplamatik section (which I completely neglected), and Wiring is much more fun than I'd been expecting.  The former style also had an instructional ambiguity -- not merely a translational imperfection either; it wasn't clear to me that each row/column required a sum of two numbers -- I read the necessity of two numbers in each row meaning...well, you could leave two digits next to each other in a row and call it good since there's at least "two numbers".  Anyhow, again, it was a great time, even with the chumpy result over here.  Nice work Thomas and Dan.

I've exchanged several emails with Agnieszka from the Polish team, and in one of them she was kind enough to tell me about the Fed-Sudoku site -- a Slovakian site with a handful new puzzles each day (including a daily Non-Con) and a weekly set of variant puzzles.  It lets you compare your times with everyone else -- kinda like Nikoli, except...I typically don't max out at 50th-place on Nikoli sudoku.  The interface can be annoying and is clearly inferior to Nikoli's, but you can't beat the puzzles for the price.  I've taken to printing out their archive of Greater Than Killers (not like the ones on KSO, tho) and other variants and taking them on trips.  Give 'em a whirl!

Another convenient puzzle site is this Str8ts thing that appears to be an offshoot of the impressive Scanraid site.  The Str8ts puzzles themselves can be challenging-ish, and the 1 to 25 puzzles are quick and friendly diversions.  Again, you can't beat that price.  I'd like to hear any thoughts on these.

It appears Nikoli will be bringing Number Link into the fold as puzzle-type #11 on their website.  I think I like this type (not sure yet), but I'm certain that it's my worst style...and it's not even close.  I brought along a Penpa Mix on this past weekend's trip to Disneyland and got through a handful of the mediums in there.  I really don't have any intuition on these, and unlike some other types, I think you put everything together at once instead of working here and there until it comes together.  Is that even right?  I really don't know.  I've been checking the site to see if they've coded their example puzzle so I can follow their solution path.  I will likely lurk on the top-solvers' solution histories too...

The USPC is coming!  I brought along some tests of recent vintage on over to Anaheim and gave a couple of them a whirl.  One of them I lit up -- relatively speaking.  The other one I bombed.  Suffice to say, I don't know what kind of result to expect on the upcoming test.

So the Kakuro Time Trial has come and gone.  Hooray, I "won".  I also got pwned by H.Jo by a goodly 90 seconds, which is better than the four minutes he beat me by at the previous one, but still sucks rather hard.  I've got a few Kakuro puzzles waiting for me on my Nikoli queue, and when I get around to those I'll probably also give the Time Trial a whirl.  Now that I "know" that extra notes are possibly a waste of time...

Let's see...I thought I had killed the Conceptis site, but it turns out their applet thing doesn't like running on an IE window that's been open for a handful of days.  I still enjoy doing their online Sudoku/Kakuro/Calcudoku, and look forward to the new batch getting sent out every Friday.

In quasi-puzzle news -- my list of my favorite 250 songs (previously known as my "phatalog", but now I think that neologism is really lame) is almost ready for public consumption!  At some point a mysterious post with a few "clever" clues relating to that batch of songs (and possibly the bands) will appear on this here blog, with a rundown of those songs (plus a few more "clever" clues) to follow.  Do with that what you will.  It might be fun, or it might be a colossal waste of time.  I'll have six-some weeks off starting in July anyhow, so maybe that's just as well.

Last thing!  My Heat Index (#2)!

1. Kakuro (1) -- I don't think one'll be changing for awhile
2. Sudoku (NR) -- While I've not done these in awhile, and while I still feel like my solving is farrrrrr from optimal, the fact is the results are still pretty good.  I guess we'll see when I have a go at the 10+ I've got in the hopper...
3. Shikaku (2) -- These really really come and go, but when it's on, it's on.  I just got a top-time, for example, on a Hard (24x14) that took me less time than the previous two Mediums (18x10).  I don't think I'm the only one streaky on these.
4. Hitori (6) -- I may not love 'em, but the logic is easier for me to find than it is for other types, and I hardly ever notate anymore.  Oh, and I even used some intuition on one today...
5. Masyu (4) -- I've got a lot of speed here, although I seemingly screw up each one on my first go-round.  So annoying.
6. Nurikabe (5) -- When I just decide to do these, plonkingly, I can get mid/low first-page results.  When I go for the gold, I move a handful of slots up, a handful of pages down, or make an error.  Go fig.
7. Heyawake (7) -- I think my renaissance on these has come and gone.  More than Nurikabe, I think I can do these (at least the smaller ones) without any notes.  But I'm certainly less steady here than on Nurikabe...
8. Hashiwokakero (3) -- I can fraud some good times on the 9x9's, but have been lapped by the field on anything larger.  I still think I like them a lot more than I'd ever expected to, tho.
9. Slitherlink (8) -- Somedays I can get it rolling, other days...it feels like torture.  I've still got a stack of 36x20's waiting in my queue, and unlike any other type, I've very little desire to give these a whirl.
10. Akari (9) -- I think I like these more than Slitherlink, but I'm just soooo pedestrian that it doesn't matter.  But I think I'm relatively worse (than the field) at these than I am at Slitherlink.
NR. Number Link -- I'm really curious to see how these go.

Time to read junk mail.

Now this I've gotta see on SportsCenter...

DP - 2 (B Butler-W Bloomquist-B Butler-A Callaspo-M Olivo-B Butler-W Bloomquist-B Butler-A Callaspo-M Olivo, M Teahen-A Callaspo-B Butler)

(emphasis added)

The band got back together for a (final?) run at the TRASH world championship belt.  What follows is a rather lengthy description of how it all went down.

( TRASHionals 2009 Recap )

So, let's see...last time I posted, we were just about to enter the team portion of the first day's program, having just completed four individual rounds.  The recap of the team stuff will come later, but I wanted to expound on / moan about some of the early stuff, especially now that I've gotten my papers back.

The Mix round (round 1) went truly awfully: 56 points (out of...180-ish).  I never in my wildest dreams figured I would lay an egg -- effectively knocking me out of the individual competition immediately -- over two hours (and one minute) of testing.  Especially with some pretty easy-looking puzzles in the round.  Especially first thing in the morning.  TWO HOURS!

Looking back -- I am still infuriated about the feedback/feedforward part of the quiz.  I believe I have every right to be, and I don't imagine we'll be seeing something like this anytime in the future.  Then again, I got 56 points -- *I* may not be seeing any tournaments like this in the future anyhow!

Puzzle 1 -- PUZZLE 1!!!! -- should have clued me in.  A 4x4 sudoku -- I mean, for pete's sake, talk about easy.  It's right there for the taking/inferring, tho: there's no 1 *or* 3 in the grid, and since you can't tell the two of them apart, it must be the case that the gray cell (which I'd been expecting to find and then drop into another puzzle) is a 1 or 3 that you get from elsewhere.  Instead I took a stupid guess, got a valid solution, and received zero points, because my gray square does not match the one you get from puzzle 29 when you solve it right.  Which, as it were, I didn't even consider doing -- not just solving it right, but solving it at all.

An earlier commenter is right -- the instructions should be known backwards and forwards before the rounds begin.  But, with that in mind -- when something says "Put the digit from the shaded cell into the shaded cell in the puzzle A29", that tells me that A29 depends on this one, not the other way around.  Unforgiveable.  The fact that the puzzles were on different pages was also annoying, but that's no big deal.  I figured multiple solutions were possible (seeing as that's how a few of the practice puzzles went) and just plugged away.  In the rare instance when I *did* look at the later puzzles to try and get a hint for the earlier ones, I thought I was being clever.  I should know better.

I'm curious to see how I would do on this set if I followed the right path.  I guarantee not any worse.  I got no points (despite major effort) on puzzles 1 and 5.  And 8.  14.  17.  18.  20.  23.  And 24.  Some of these were going right until I made a mental glitch.  Some of these I just couldn't get through.  And a few of them actually had valid solutions but were worthless because of the stupid other-puzzle-dependency bit.

Lastly (and, seriously, I'll drop it after this...maybe) -- the classic puzzles...like the ones you see in the paper without any fancy rules...were just stupid hard.  I shouldn't feel like I have to guess at a solution on 80% of the puzzles I see.  The variations were almost uniformly terrific -- this one's kinda like a crossword, this one's has a main-diagonal constraint, this one's got irregular shapes -- but the round gets a fat F in my book anyhow.  Apologies to the well-meaning constructors and administrators, but there's no need for counterintuitive and fallacious bells and whistles.  Sorry guys.

In some sense, the second round (with all the non-Arabic numeral puzzles) was a fine round, if it weren't for the stupid "No extra paper" restriction.  And I guess the "Solve this puzzle in another language, just because" restriction.  I got that back -- 11 points, which put me (appropriately) tied for 29th for the round.  36 people advance to the playoffs, but still -- that's quite a dropoff from where I'd like to be.  Speaking of where I'd like to be...

Round 3 -- Snowman (00:30)

Wow, this is just a terrific round.  The two of you who like sudoku should definitely skip the first two rounds in the WSC09 Valu-Pak and dive right in here.

The "Snowman" fellow was created by the combination of four puzzles of different type.  The Snowflake puzzle made up his head, the Pencilmarks one made up his body, and his feet were made of two 8x8 puzzles -- an Irregular and a new style called Duo.  Furthermore, there was something of a VERY VERY OBVIOUS TO SEE (there you go again -- ed.  Sorry, it's force of habit now) connection between the neighboring puzzles.  In particular, two of the triangles of the Snowflake were equal to the two squares (respectively) from the Pencilmarks that they abutted.  Similarly, on the fellow's lower-half, one cell from each of the 8x8's lined up to one cell of the Pencilmarks.  So now not only is there an apparent connection between separate puzzles, but there's even a *reason* for the connection; these two touch and we wrote the puzzles so they're the same.  Not, say, a hypothetical round where they decided to pick a cell from two different puzzles and make them equal for no obvious reason...

The Snowflake was a good time, and its geometry (six clusters of six, well, essentially a Trivial Pursuit piece with all six pie pieces) makes for some neat deductions.  The Irregular was 8x8, but otherwise was a typical irregular, which has non-rectangular shapes for the regions.  Duo is something I had hardly seen before getting here, and was a type where each digit (1-4) appeared TWICE in each row/column/region.  There was also the restriction that two identical digits couldn't be in adjacent cells.  Neat!

The Pencilmarks one was essentially the only thing left for the last 20 minutes, and I was expecting the worst.  And I got...a surprisingly manageable puzzle!  Last year's WSC featured one of these buggers on the very first round, and (after probably 20 minutes of work) I was one of the choice few to actually finish it; I think only five people did.  The way it works is -- each cell in the (standard 9x9 grid) has some tiny digits written in it.  These are the only digits that could possibly go there.  You work with groups of cells to determine...say, these are the only cells in this row with a 2 in it, so I can cross off the 2's in the rest of the region...stuff like that.

Shockingly, this one had some...really quick-and-dirty half-obvious steps.  These two cells only have 3 and 4 in them -- so the rest of their row and region can see their 3's and 4's crossed out.  That gives us a 7.  Which gives us a 5.  Stuff like that.  Before you know it...well, ok, before you know it, five people raise their hands to claim the bonus points that come with finishing the round the fastest.  But furthermore -- I'm well on my way to being finished -- with a goodly number of minutes to spare.  How is this possible???

Whatever the case, I finished, and with the remaining time (and no bonus points left to be had), I checked the holy hell out of that thing.  No, not like that -- I mean I made sure I didn't make a mistake.  And on the others.  And...sure enough, I didn't.  30 points (out of 30) after, well, 56 out of 180+.  I won't be surprised if they check me for performance-enhancing drugs when I get back -- not because I'm doing so well, but because I did so awfully early on.

Oh baby -- it's time to really make my mark!

Round 4 -- World Record (00:10)

One puzzle, 27 givens, and 5:24 or less to glory.  Ummm...yeah.

So the puzzle they gave us -- a standard classic puzzle with one third of the cells filled in -- nothing really doing here.  I got one digit early on, then stared at it for another seven minutes, then made a series of guesses that got me nowhere.  No points for me, like much of the rest of the room.  Seriously, what's the point?

It would seem to be the case that -- the more givens at the start of a puzzle, the easier it is.  That's kinda true -- if I have a 26 given puzzle and you throw in a few more digits here and there, I don't imagine it could get any harder, and would probably get easier.  But for the most part, it's where and what the givens are, and not how many (per se).

This particular one had more givens than some I've successfully completed in the past, but it had just about as many useless givens as any I'd ever attempted.  It turns out the computers trying to solve this thing have to go through SIX crazy steps before getting to where it goes quickly.  I don't think any human is capable of that -- and certainly not in ten minutes.  I might seriously need a day with that puzzle to figure it out.

Speaking of performance-enhancing drugs -- there's a new world record holder.  A guy from Belgium successfully completed the puzzle in...3:06!  That is a phenomenal time -- over a full two minutes ahead of the old (suspiciously-determined) mark.  I don't imagine he figured out all the deep quirks here either -- he probably just took a guess early and it happened to be the right one.  In fact, I'll guarantee that's what he did.  I'd ask him myself, but I don't speak Belgish.

(Anecdote time!  Back in the day, Disneyland's California Adventure had a Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? thing set up where everybody in the audience played along.  The way they figured out who sat in the chair first was -- you were given a Fastest Finger question (which asked you to put four things in order), and you clicked buttons on the back of the chair in front of you.  One of the questions was about Demi Moore movies -- something like...order these four movies by the number of distasteful nude scenes (I quote from memory).  I was super fast -- somewhere around 2s.  The winner?  Some 10yo kid was done in 0.20s.  The host asked him if he was a big Demi Moore fan.  His response?  "No, but I always hit DBCA on the Fastest Finger question".  I guess in a room of 500 people, the likelihood that someone could just randomly guess the order before even hearing the question is pretty good.)

Anyhow, sudoku puzzles aren't meant to be guess-fests, and guessing shouldn't be the best way to get points on a given puzzle.  I'll give the round a D-, because I'm feeling charitable.  It shouldn't affect the final standings (since it wasn't worth many points, and so few people got it right), and besides, I'm at the bottom anyhow.

The food has been great here, btw.  Breakfast will be better when I'm not scooping the few remaining bacon pieces out of the grease, but otherwise -- it was good, as was lunch and dinner.  No "Mahatma's Revenge" for me this year!  I hope.  Holiday Inn Zilina: come for the rooms, stay for the food.

The team rounds (and one extra-sudokular activity involving my lousy digital camera) came later on, but I'll hang onto writing about those until we get back the results.  It's almost time for the Nightmare in Zilina -- an extremely late-running round with puzzles having names (and themes) of horror movies of the past.  Me, I'm not afraid -- not after a frightening bad performance on 2-3 rounds.

Hasta lasagna.

A few rounds are in the books from the 2009 WSC, and I thought I'd take some time and rant and rave (mostly the former) about the happenings thus far.

First and foremost -- Slovakia is beautiful.  As I look out the window of my room (all the way at the end of the floor), I see lush green trees covering a mini-mountain -- looking rather like the Tempe Butte, in size and shape.  I also see some fake grass (mini-golf style) covering the patio, and steps leading to the official court of the Holiday Inn Slovakia Open tennis tournament.  I think I got a good room.

Which is only fair, seeing as the ride on in to the hotel could probably have been slightly nicer.  I was kind/naive enough to let everyone onto the bus before I got on, which left me seatless.  Which is just as well, as somebody had to help keep the bags from sliding all over the place.  At least we heard Meatloaf on the radio.  Anyhow, I was extremely tired, more ornery than normal, dehydrated, and not exactly digging the surprisingly warm climate.  It all worked out -- and heck, last one on meant I was also the first one off, and into my room.

Which, for the record, had a phone that didn't want to work, preferring to just buzz nonstop -- even when it was on the hook.  That was resolved quickly enough, although they may need a new fuse.  Apparently the plug adaptor Captain Nick ("The Puzzle Shark"??) lent me works well enough with my laptop, but as for the power plug for my speakers...uhh, I guess that was a wee bit too much voltage for that poor thing.  It went from making some sort of a beeping noise to...well, shutting down all the electrical stuff in the room, smoking, and smelling a touch like green beans.  In all seriousness, I'm very glad I didn't end up burning the place down, as that was a pretty sloppy move on my part.

I'm going to jump right into the round results, as I've got less time than I'd like before the round starts, before which I'll be doing something that may be memorable or may end up pretty lame; video evidence is forthcoming.  Anyhow...wow, what can I say?  Better yet, what can I print on my would-be family-friendly blog?

Round One -- Mix (2:01)

I'll be honest -- I didn't exactly exhaust myself in training for the championship.  That, in-and-of itself, really isn't such a big deal, because the puzzles here are pretty standard -- lots of classics, plus some irregulars, some non-sudoku Latin square-type things, and a few with some new fancy rules that I'd seen in other types rather often.

What this also meant (and I feel rather ashamed for having to mention this) is that I didn't pore over the rules over and over and over.  This is no problem when it comes to the actual solving -- ok, yeah, I realize the diagonal constraints and the special rules where certain numbers can't touch each other.  What I didn't realize, and what took me longer than it should have to realize during the Mix round -- and what still steams me at this very instant -- was an innocent-looking tweak to a pretty trivial extra rule.

Was: "Do this first puzzle, and take the digit(s) you write in the gray square(s) and drop them into this other puzzle."
Now: "These two puzzles are related.  In solving one of them, you will get a number you will need for the other one.  Sometimes the second one will help you with the first one.  Sometimes it's the usual way.  Sometimes you will really have to compare the two different puzzles to see which number will work.  No matter what -- you are SCREWED if you try to solve one of them without looking to the other."

So, what may very well end up happening is -- my answer for a given puzzle is valid (no digits repeat in a row/column/region), but still isn't worth anything because I didn't end up getting the solution that would let me get a solution on the second puzzle.  This strikes me as breaking the constructor/solver gentleperson's agreement, but that's not going to help me a whole lot here.  And I really hate the fact that I came all this way just to screw that part up.

Put another way: %#$!%%#$@!%@!!!

So yeah -- we don't have the results from Mix back, but I don't expect they're too good.  I only got valid (and possibly non-pointworthy) solutions for about half of the puzzles, and had to really bust my hump to get even those; the classics are significantly more difficult than they should be (and...ohhh, just wait).  I anticipate my Mix results to be somewhere from average to below-average.  Ugh.

Round Two: Symbology (00:29)

The next round was much shorter, although equally silly.  Each of the three puzzles had digits/givens written in something other than Arabic numerals.  This isn't a bad idea -- despite my antipathy towards this type of puzzle -- but we were told that we were not allowed to use any additional paper in our solving.  Ugh^2.

So, for the first puzzle -- the Mayan numerals we were given (which look like some dots and/or a bar, with dots counting as ones and the bar counting as five) had to be read as that.  Despite being from the American southwest -- I'm really not familiar with this notation.  And furthermore, it's not the least confusing to look at.  Frankly, I don't really see the point -- the puzzle itself was perfectly fine and solvable (without guessing), but we had to use dots and bars.  Why not have us solve a puzzle while standing on our heads?  Anyhow, a late-round check saw that I had left out a bar (yikes!), but since I had all kinds of time to check my work (see: the other two puzzles of this round), I should be fine.

Up next was my traditional nemesis -- a puzzle where the givens are Roman numerals.  Annoying, sure, but kidna neat, as you could adulterate these numerals; II (2) could become VIII (8) with a few more pencilstrokes.  I have the hardest time seeing this sort of stuff on the page, so I had developed my ingenious plan of taking that information (say -- "II") and writing on a separate page all the possible digits that could be (2, 3, 7, 8).  Then it solves like something I've seen before.

As I mentioned, tho, the extra paper was figuratively ripped out of our hands, so I had to stare at this thing on the page and try to make sense of it.  I took Thomas' suggestion of circling numerals that weren't going to change so I could skip right past those and look at the non-assigned cells to find the next move.  And I did...until I got somewhere that I needed a six...err, "VI", but only had "VII" and "II" to work with.  No points.

The third puzzle -- where a 9x9 LED interface was the page, with regions still 3x3 squares and givens coming in the form of "These portions of the LED are highlighted", didnt' even get a look.  It's a great style -- you realize things like "This must be a 5 or 6 or 8 or 9 because the three horizontal parts of the LED are highlighted" -- but I've also struggled with that type without some sort of transcription onto a different sheet.  So, again, no points, but at least no wasted time.

So this round, like the previous one, was mostly a waste.

As I've mostly run out of time -- I'd like to point out that round 3 was great and round 4 was laughably stupid.  Much like how I feel, to be honest.

It's show-time!  More later.

(About an hour ago, the plane from JFK landed here in Prague.  6.5 hours from now I will be getting on another plane and heading to Zilina, Slovakia.  In-between...uhhh...??)

Welcome to the official 2009 World Sudoku Championship uninspired verbose blog!  I'm Jason, and I'll be your unreliable narrator explaining all the sordid details over the next few days of competition -- or at least for the next 390 minutes while I nurse this ($6!!) bottle of 7Up from the "wi-fi" restaurant.  Oddly, every computer appears to be plugged in.  The actual wi-fi, such as it is, costs $15/day (nearly three bottles!!), so the next best thing is the dreary cafe where I now sit.  It could've been worse -- the guy didn't have change for a $10, so I borrowed some money from Will to make it work.

(Incidentally, it's kinda neat to see that...every word I type is underlined with the "you misspelled that" red dots at this computer.  Red dots?  This thing looks like it's running Windows 95, the spacebar is clunky, and the mousepad is so warped that it elevates the $2 mouse half-an-inch off of the sticky counter.)

Anyhow, I'm in this part of the world for the next three-ish days as one of the three-member US Sudoku Team.  Two years ago we had six, last year it was four, and now it's down to three, with me being the only remaining mortal.  The competition itself is set to start tomorrow morning, running for the better part of 14 hours, leading into Sunday's...something-or-other, before a top team and individual champion are crowned.  Then I head to the airport for a 5:30am flight.

If it doesn't sound exhiilrating...well, that's the lack of sleep and the dread of being up for the next 15 hours speaking.  Deep down, I'm pretty thrilled to be here.  About 120 or so competitors are coming from all over -- five continents by my count -- and they'll all be looking to take on some puzzles cobbled together by the Slovakian contingent.  The new puzzle variations appear to be relatively tame (at least compared to previous years), but I have a hunch the lack of exotic new styles will be but a memory as we dig in tomorrow morning.  I've always been a better variant improviser than a speedy solver of the more typical puzzles, so I'm very curious to see how this turns out.

Two years ago I practiced for months only to show up in...hmm, here, actually...unheralded, and motivated.  End result: 10th, just out of the playoffs.

Last year I was more relaxed in my training, and slightly more confident seeing as I had built up some WSC experience and was known on the world scene.  End result: 10th, just out of the playoffs.

Oh, but it's on (like Zaxxon!) this year!  For one thing -- I've added yet another club to my solving bag (bringing the total number of clubs in said bag to about four), which has (knock on wood) eliminated the annoying 10-minute lapses in progress.  For another thing...it may have been lost in translation, but it appears no fewer than 36 players will take part in the playoffs.  Advancing is still no guarantee, but if I keep things at or near the same level, I should be in good shape...until the first knockout phase, of course.

Time-wise I'm only about halfway to my final destination, which is kinda odd given that I'm about 99% of the way there, mile-wise.  Thus far it's been a mostly uneventful journey.  The Czech Airlines personnel were impeccable, bringing just the right amount of snacks and drinks and everything.  I stayed plenty hydrated, and Will and I enjoyed doing some multi-decades-old trivia books that he dug out of his basement.  One was "The Original College Bowl Quizbook", so I enjoyed the chance to underachieve at just about everything (except the random baseball questions).  Another gem he brought along was the "New Masses' Book of Quizzes" or whatever it's called.  That's right; a socialist quizbook.  Many chuckles were had regarding the round on "Our Russian Ally", the general hagiographic bent to anything related to the Socialist Party of the 1930's and 1940's, and the trivia portion on "The Imperialist War".  You may know that one as "World War I".

I did some practicing on the way over, and have no real idea how well I'm doing.  For one thing, the puzzles I did aren't actually like the ones we'll be doing this weekend.  Also, I have both *lit up* and *bombed out on* sets of puzzles, sometimes in the same sitting.  From what I hear, the ZD-related over/under action in Vegas is all over the place, and rightly so.

Well I could go on for another, oh, five hours, but I think I'll end this one right now.  Tho I'll probably be back in a few hours with a review of every damn restaurant here in the Prague Airport.  Anyhow, until next time...

There was just an ad on the Yahoo! sports page for the "Gastric Banding Leader" -- with a picture of a before-and-after older gentleman above it.

I read this as "Geriatric Banking Lender" -- presumably specializing in loaning money to old people so they can join a weight-loss program.

Maybe you had to be here.

The competition was close through the first two months, but mid-March brought a gamechanger:

My niece does the voice of Dora the Explorer in this clip!  Starting at around 7:10.

Never mind the partisan snark; I can't stop laughing at the second paragraph (and accompanying photograph), especially the first line.

Wow, this Lent has actually proceeded pretty quickly.  I'm pleased to report that, if I in fact decided to give anything up, I've actually held strong on that front.  Furthermore, the meat-free Fridays have proceeded relatively smoothly.  Granted, one real meal (a fish dinner) plus a breakfast of Pop Tarts and a "lunch" of these potato-chip things isn't something I'd ever want to make into a full-time thing...

Today I didn't do a heckuvalot, and it felt great.  I worked a few dozen puzzles from a couple of Nikoli books, still lamenting the "perfect book" that got away (Kakuro #10 -- puzzle #70 or so, on which I dallied for about 6 minutes, then made a mistake in my mad rush to the finish -- 90 seconds over, despite being consistently 5-or-so minutes under on similarly-timed puzzles -- BAH!!!).  The online stuff brought a handful of good times, but no #1's.  In related news, out of the corner of my eye, the name of tonight's Akari author Ryohei Nakai looked suspiciously like that of a certain Mallorcan southpaw...

Speaking of southpaws -- yesterday was the $$ fantasy league draft.  For the first time in, well, maybe ever, nobody drafted a guy I was hoping to get a scant few picks later.  Either this means I don't have any idea of who's good anymore or I got lucky -- we'll see.  This team can MASH; sadly, they may be associated with M*A*S*H as well, as at least a couple of guys are banged-up.  The rundown is after the cut.

( Your 2009 Baked ZD Draftees!! )
For those that are curious: no, there's really really really nothing doing with that thing I mentioned last Thursday morning or whenever.  I'm sure everyone was expecting otherwise.

My NJ-based sister has generously offered to put me up for a night or two during this year's post-TRASHionals pre-WSC visit to the Big Apple vicinity.  Those living in that area should be hearing from me (more as social-director, less as couch-mooch) sometime over the next few days.

Tonight's karaoke was a good time featuring lots of mic-time, as there were very few people around.  Conspicuously absent was a clan of people I was expecting to see, based on one of their status updates from earlier in the day.  No big -- my friend and I had a good time anyhow -- although more is usually merrier, or at least equally merry.

The "setlist" follows, in YT link form.  But play my silly Fb status update game first and guess what songs I did!  Or...just click through below.

First, second, third, fourth, fifth.  The two 32-measure instrumental portions of the third one weren't as bad as I was expecting.  And I'm surprised I got over the tittering required from anybody saying the first line of the last one...

Finally, I re-made some acquaintances this past week, and that's never a bad thing.

Wow, some crazy happenings out at the local pub quiz tonight, bringing back memories.  Four of us showed up, mucked around in 7th after a good-but-not-great music around and a sorely lacking (in correct answers) multiple-choice round (on, for the record, Mormonism, Sharia, or both?), and made a furious rally to make the photos, and indeed take first.  After a...well, I'll hold off on that for a second.

A clever round reworking common idioms/slang into prim-and-proper Queen's English was good for a laugh, although everybody lit it up it seems.  The visual round -- match the person/character to the catchphrase -- went extremely well, with us only iffy on a couple of them.  The sixth round -- Questions about the Coen Brothers that have nothing to do with the Big Lebowski (the questions, not a different set of Coen Brothers) went reasonably well, although we missed the last two.  If you're curious -- Sullivan's Travels led to which 2000 movie of theirs? -- which actress and CB regular is married to Joel? -- which Shakespearean actor (and geek hero) played the role in the original Ladykillers that Tom Hanks played in the remake? -- stuff like that.  Oh, which Arizona child did Hi and Ed abduct?  The two we missed: what former B-movie (and now blockbuster) director helmed Crimewave?, and what type of movie did Barton Fink go to Hollywood to write?  Sorry, thedan , for at least one of those.

The cosmic stuff started falling into place in the 7th round: given the sexy sax solo from some 80's song, name the song *or* artist.  Oooooooh baby.  Foreigner, Wham!, Men at Work, Spandau Ballet, Breathe, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band (I don't remember which -- it was a song I'd never heard but...Clarence and the rest sounded familiar), The Motels, annnnd...one more I'm forgetting.  Solid.  The 8th round (random knowledge) started off slow -- and kinda bogus; name any 3 of the top 5 all-time animated films from some list...that apparently was written in 1995, because nothing was more recent than that, and two of our answers (Shrek, The Incredibles) possibly merit that recognition.  We also didn't know what company owns the trademark for the DLP technology.  But then...

What are D, E, and F in the phonetic (alpha, bravo...) alphabet?
Who's the only living ex-Justice of the Supreme Court?
Name the other movies featuring John Shaft besides the two named Shaft.
Name the Shakespearean play from a famous quote.
What President's estate in Tennessee is named The Hermitage?
What are the names of the two main characters in Cormac McCarthy's The Road?

12 of 12 got us to 13 of 16, times 2, which...dammit, had to be the top score.  Sure enough, we launched up from 5th to...tied for first!  How to settle this tie?

Oh, of course, a dance-off.  Ugh.  But we won!  And...hopefully the video will not see the light of day. :)

Here are some collected thoughts from today's 8-ish hours of watching hoops...

1. Seeing as one of my teams (yes, still!) is the employer of the namesake of the Hack-a-Shaq strategy, and seeing all the guys running around at the end of games looking to make a foul (but not TOO much of a foul) of the dribbler to send him to the line -- why don't they just maul whoever's standing near them, whether they have the ball or not?  Fouls away from the ball do happen, and aren't necessarily called intentional or anything; as a defender, you just have to sell it as, like, you were really trying to deny the guy from catching the inbounds and, oh dear, I guess you hacked him.

One way to fix this entire stupid situation, it seems to me, would be to have all fouls away from the ball committed by a team in the penalty result in...two shots by any (of the 5 on the floor) player the shooting team wishes to have at the line.  No more Hack-a-Shaq nonsense.  No more additional judgment calls (was it flagrant? did he sell it like he was playing the ball?) needing to be made by an already overworked (and, frankly, too powerful and too erratic) officiating corps.  Maybe mandate a 1-second runoff every time this situation occurs?

(My other radical sports suggestion, for what it's worth, would be to allow any batter receiving a HBP to be temporarily replaced on the basepaths by any player eligible at that point to enter the game.  David Ortiz gets plunked -- Jacoby Ellsbury (on his off-day) runs for him -- David Ortiz is still batting in that slot when it comes up next, and Ellsbury is still available for duty later in the game.  Seems fair to me, and makes plugging a guy hurt just a little bit more.)

2. I really like the Tim Lincecum and Dustin Pedroia commercials for that new baseball video game.  I've also taken a liking to the commercials featuring bitter fans of teams who got lit up by Nike-sponsored athletes.  Still, there's no reason for them to adulterate the "...HAMILTON!!" soundclip, which was plenty dramatic on its own.

(Ok, so that's not the Pedroia clip we all know, but the other one's a "private video" everywhere I find it.  And this one's kinda funny too.)

3. Speaking of commercials -- this girl makes me purr.  This other one seems to be a favorite of many guys I know, and I dig her even if she's not my favorite unheralded commercial star of the day.  And hey, she does comedy.  Local, inside-joke-driven comedy.

4. Anybody seen The Quiet Man?  This article makes me want to increase my total of John Wayne movies seen -- currently, and embarrassingly, at zero.

5. In order of hilarity, I think it goes: the Asthma speech, then the UK DVD screwup, then the introduction with the third-person thanking (video of which may not exist).  The un-PC bowling remark doesn't make the cut.  I'll leave it to youse guys to figure out the category, Only Connect style.

6. I've never rooted extremely hard for my two favorite college teams to have to face each other -- but will during tomorrow's early games.

In warming up for today's workout, I shot some free-throws and (high-school?) three-pointers.  I went, no joke, about 40% on the former and about 20% on the latter.  Somehow I scrounged together a 40% clip (my pitifully meager goal) during a 15-shot jag around the arc, but immediately hoisted up about seven straight misses from the charity stripe.

Sometime around then, I was informed by some strangely-dressed men (in long black robes, surrounded by people in workout gear) that they had reserved the basketball court for their swinging-of-wooden-staffs meeting, and they politely asked me to intrude upon a nearby game of 1-on-1 (being played by two older women) if I wished to continue throwing mess at the basket.  It couldn't have come at a better time -- I just ditched the ball and went to lift.

The whole surreal experience seemed like something likely produced by a 'shrooms trip.  Pretty sure the (rather stingy with the toppings!) lady at Subway didn't put any of those on to my turkey on honey-oat...

Also, I can't sleep.

(*The below will pretend I didn't eff anything up, either during submission or actual, you know, solving.)

I have to say, this was much more to my liking than that last logic puzzle with sudoku afterthought thing.  I mean, I liked them both, but I think I did significantly better here.

I started with the Vudoku, since it printed first.  Some nice deductions can be made in determining whether the middle is a sum or difference, and...uhoh, ran into trouble about five squares away from the end.  The entire middle chute got erased and retried, and I think it looks good.  I count two more differences than sums, fwiw.

I think I then took it from the top.  Same Regions Sudoku is more clever than I'd been expecting.  Little Killer took awhile to get going, but I've missed this style for awhile now and am glad to see it back.  Crosssumdoku went much better than the last time.  Missing Sudoku had the nice (and rather obvious, tho it didn't click with me immediately) intermediate check when you noted the three regions comprising a chute (do those go sideways too?) were missing the same three digits as the three missing from those rows/columns.  I mean, duh.

Scale Sudoku seemed rather overvalued, but that may be due to my overdosing on Greater Than Killers.  Where is Max? makes for a funny title, but also was kinda Skyscrapers-Lite, which is welcome in this household.  Arrow is fun and easy (I didn't even notice the smaller one on the left until I was typing in my answers, and went back and did it in 75 seconds), and Consecutive Regions has this sort of Sudoku Straights feel to it.  Seeing as I did one of the latter immediately before the test began, it felt good.

Pusula was about the last thing I did.  I got the first two, then left and came back to #3 with a few minutes to go.  I missed a key step (based on the double-arrow in R4C1) that left me with a few pairs of numbers left to fill in with just seconds left.  So, hmm...this arrow is *probably* bigger than the other one -- *bzzt*.  Oh well, I didn't want those 30 points anyhow.

I left the Pusula to go give the Error# and Multiplication Table ones a whirl.  The Error# one...well, getting the correct digits went pretty easily.  From there...I went region-by-region and tried to cram as many wrong digits in as possible.  Some squares it seemed wouldn't take *any* digits (R4C1, e.g.), and the ones that would...tended to have only one option, for the most part.  At least, they did this way.  I got 39 digits into the grid, none of which I believe are right.  Who knows, maybe I screwed up the original puzzle, and in putting "wrong" digits into the second one, ended up putting right ones?

Multiplication Table actually went really well, and I liked the work-in with the 5's.  I did hit a slight snag in the upper-right -- the entire table had to be made up of 236789 (pick four).  2 was not on top, and since a quick "check" of the six combinations of 6789 wouldn't work, clearly it was 9x3 = 27.  Uhoh, we've already got a 7 on the right.  Then the actual product hit me...and the rest went fast.

Fiver was actually attempted early (now that I think about it), and it looked practically intractible until...oh wait, 5's can't ever be part of the dots.  And furthermore, the whole "No dot means they don't fit the Fiver rule" is, per usual, a huge help.  Knight Step was rather straightforward, having seen enough of them by now.  And Triple Sum wasn't nearly as bad as the one from the Sudokucup.  It seemed just about every time I tried to get the units-digit to click (based on having one of the three digits already), it worked.

Assuming all's swell -- 744?  Adding that wrong wouldn't be the first screwup of my day...

I just can't help myself.

In reading a history of a particular band I came across this.  The third paragraph makes me happy.

Anyone gonna be in the Burque in 8 days?  There's still spaces open for Dork Fest 09!  Tagline: The Party with Sleeves!

I've often felt I must've done something back in the day to really put the kibosh on good karma.  It's stupid.  Nonono, not good karma (which is, of course, really really awesome!!) -- I mean the fears.  I have countless blessings, even if things aren't perfect.  Maybe I did something wrong, but whatever the case, I don't think that's how it works.  I mean, a part of me doesn't, and a part of me does.  Whatever.

Anyhow -- I awoke today to find...my first girlfriend (whom I've not seen in about 14 years) is now a member of Facebook.  Oh, it ain't like that; for one thing, she appears to be married (with child(ren)), for another, we were only "together" for three months, right after high school (for me at any rate).  This was back when I thought any girl with whom you spent face-time was no longer just someone you were dating but was, necessarily, your "girlfriend".  This reading of any dating situation stayed with me until...wow, two or three years ago?  Ugh.

I don't think I particularly did her wrong, but in some other sense -- she's one of the last girls I've steadily dated who actually really really dug me.  Girls have dug me, and I've dated girls, but rarely have the two meshed.  Hell, it appears occasionally I really dug girls who really dug me only to...wuss out or get discouraged over something stupid or whatever and end up with a bushelbasket full of "What if?".

I used to kinda joke about it...haha, wow, we were so different, what was I thinking?, I dated *her*...can you imagine?? -- but as I've faced more than a little rejection over the ensuing 15 years, I came to really appreciate the girls that actually took a chance on me.  If anything, atonement is needed for...I dunno, viewing our obvious incompatability as something that made our time spent together less worthwhile?  It's rather big-headed -- or at least medium-headed -- seeing as, before her, I never hardly dated anybody.

I anticipate the ceremonial friending to occur sometime soon.  Not sure if I'll say anything like what's written here...but maybe something.  Of course, the (theoretically) even bigger karmic black hole is still highly extant...and that (former) friend isn't on Facebook.  Tho I've considered dropping in on him in Phoenix and apologizing for being such a jerk back in the day.  It's much easier writing on someone's wall tho...

So I had a funny moment at the gym tonight.  It appears a young man on a nearby machine has a brother who plays on the UNM Lobo basketball team...

Me: Oh, really?  That's great!  Who is it?
Him: His name's Ian.  (Or is it Dion ("D-yun"?)?  That's the only one that makes any sense on the roster.)
Me: *Stares blankly at brother of player of whom I've never heard*

Speaking of working out -- I've been consuming this protein powder stuff on the days I work out; it tastes pretty chalky but I don't mind it so much when it's mixed-in with this other powder stuff that tastes like strawberry.

Anyhow -- I don't know who the genius was that formulated this crap, but goodness gracious -- it's practically hydrophobic.  You can stir all you want, you still may not get hardly any of it into solution.  At least you get a pretty good forearm workout using the spoon, but I don't think that's the idea...

I've listened to Alien Lanes a disgusting number of times over the last six weeks.  At work -- about 12 times.  On my ipod -- about 10 times.  When I shower -- just about every day for a month.  Thankfully I've branched out to something else I recently bought: Bee Thousand.  It's a good thing GBV stuff is so hard to find in a town with 0.5 good record shops...

The Turkish Sudoku Championship is coming this weekend, and should tomorrow's basketball game (and post-game would-be poker) not send me home at an awful hour, I anticipate taking part.  Per usual, there are some cool new ideas.  Man oh man do Turks love their logic puzzles!  This is the 3rd (of 7 or so) 120-minute+ puzzle rounds of the year from Turkey.  Just awesome.

Oh, also, I dunno what the ASU men used to have, but it's gone now.  Ugh.  OTOH, at least the ladies didn't let me down.  If you took the Lady Bears plus 21.5 points, I've got some bad news...

Well, despite my immense confidence going into tonight's trivia outing, we ended up in second.  Well, ok, we *tied* for first, but then lost on a tiebreaker.  We guessed $1.5M, they guessed $3.4M, and the answer was...a little over $2.5M.  Ouch.  We didn't want those minor-league basketball tickets anyhow!  (So what did you get instead? -- ed.  Minor-league basketball vouchers.  Big diff.)

Anyhow, it took some serious mangling to even end up tied.  Is that GE&MSM song Conga, or is it Rhythm is Gonna Get You?  Oh, it's the former, we settled on the latter.  That never-ending DJJJ&tFP song?  Nightmare on My Street or Parents Just Don't Understand?  Natch, we went with the former, it was the latter.  Bah.  Having basically heard none of the aforementioned songs in at least a dozen years, I'm happy to have gotten close at all, even if it was good for nothing.

Still, let's stick with the titular theme and relate some highlights, or at least memorable moments -- especially since two of them hurt.

Il Buono: What are the first three Coen Brothers movies?  I safely avoided conflating them with the Farrelly Brothers (Outside Providence ftw?) and...got all three!  Wheee!

Il Brutto: Who charted higher with their version of Giving HIm Something He Can Feel: Aretha Franklin or En Vogue?  Sadly, we got this wrong, and had we gotten it right, we would've won outright.  In worse news...I sneakily changed our answer while walking to hand it in!  Don't tell anyone!

Il Cattivo: "Name the famous mulleted Buffalo Bills' lineman who played in 3 Super Bowls in the 1990's and died of a heart attack last year at the age of 43".  Understand -- I am from Buffalo, and during those years they were my #1 team by a mile.  Also understand -- one of my teammates is from the Buffalo area and is a big fan.  Further understand -- the only team to get that right was...the ones we were playing against!  Ugh.

Upon further review -- I guess Phil Hansen and Mike Lodish didn't have mullets, and may in fact still be alive.  And I knew it wasn't Bruce Smith, Leon Seals, or Howard Ballard.  Nor Kent Hull, Will Wolford, or Glenn Parker.  And probably not Jeff Wright.  Jeezus -- I could practically name that entire team and we still didn't get it!!!

Ok, I'm better now.

The schedule (with a touch of detail) for the 2009 World Sudoku Championship has been posted.  A few notes of interest:

1. "World Record" sounds like an interesting round.  I dunno if this is a Guinness Book gimmick or an actual competition, but it is scheduled to last ten minutes.  If there's a category for "fastest WSC round", this would have to be up there, I guess.  I eagerly await more details.

2. While I can't speak about specifics yet, I will say there appears to be more of an emphasis on teaming this year, with what looks like six different team parts.  Then again, there's quite a few individual parts as well.  Unlike this past year when the individual stuff was done in five (calendar) hours -- here it seems quite a bit more spread out, and possibly longer in aggregate.  I dig it.

3. "Nightmare in Zilina"???  I love it!!  In some general sense, having the official program run past midnight is just a fantastic idea.  Having to get up early the next day, OTOH...

4. The final team part appears to be spent...on the road?  Or at least away from the hotel(s)?  Again, I'm very curious.  Here's hoping this will require a team sending some of its players into a large building and turning on the lights in the appropriate offices to make a valid sudoku.

5. If "Little Final" is what I hope it is (puzzles with the same rules as the finals, except 6x6 instead of 9x9 or whatever), that sounds like a great idea.

6. I'm already very excited.

7. I'm going to be in Philadelphia until Sunday the 19th, and the tournament itself starts on Friday the 24th (in Slovakia).  I can spend a day flying back to ABQ, do stuff here for a couple of days, and then turn around and fly back across the country --OR-- I can keep it out on the east coast in the NY/NJ area and leave from there on Thursday.  Would any of the NYC locals or other east coast denizens be up for doing anything between 4/19-4/22?  I'm sad to see the run of Thoroughly Modern Millie is over, but I imagine there's probably something else to do in the City...

How many people can say they began the day as a pedestrian competitor in the OAPC and finished the day with three karaoke songs, six shots, and one drunk girl in the spare room?

For the record, I gradually improved over the karaoke night, with Time of the Season followed by This is a Call, with my best performance of the night being Beautiful Girls; all three were first-time songs.  This night was more or less dedicated to a particular local, especially since one of the others in our party (unprompted-ly!) chose Sunday Morning for one of her two songs.  Happy February 21st, Stef!

(Incidentally -- as someone who usually is ridiculously wrong on lyrics, maybe I'm not one to talk, but...wow, the lyrics from TiaC were extremely wrong.  I guess those times i spent in '95 and '96 looking up what exactly Dave was saying there came in reasonably handy, for once.)

Also, I was one wrong guess (50/50) and one slight bit of inattention from getting a perfect score at a midnight MST NTN trivia game.  It was still good for #2 nationwide.

Big ASU vs. UA game tomorrow night, about which I'm not exactly teeming with confidence.  Then back to work on Monday.  Bah.

According to the ESPN ticker thing, the ACC is the top conference in men's college basketball.  Reasonable minds can differ.

The second-best?  The Big Ten.

Are you kidding me?  The Big East has five of the top twelve teams.  The ACC has four of the top thirteen.  The Big Ten?  One.  Who just lost tonight.

I'll take all the Big East teams in the tournament against anybody who wants all the Big Ten teams.  Anyone?

Wow, I wasn't aware of any of this controversy.

Backstory: What little I knew about Bill Hicks came almost exclusively from Tool's Aenima album.  He had some lines mixed in here and there, nothing too crazy...seemed particularly dry, kinda funny.  I'd no idea he was on the Late Show (or its stage at least)...and that his clip was cut from the airing...and that he died shortly thereafter...and that Dave decided to bring his mother on recently and air the clip from waybackwhen.

It seems rather edgy, with something to piss off just about everybody.  Seeing as I'm a member of the target demographic for at least two of the extended bits, and that I enjoyed the set for the most part, I guess Dave made the wrong move back-in-the-day.  As he seems to feel now, although he may have just been buttering up Mama Hicks.

Enjoy?

In the interest of playing catchup, here's the first installment from my soon-to-go-to-print "Late January travels and games and other fun stuff, much of which involves money".  The trip to Vegas (culminating with the triumphant Cardinals victory...right? I stopped watching after Fitzgerald beat the entire Pittsburgh D.) will get its own wordy thing later.

( Trip to Denver / Geek Bowl 2009 Recap )

A great writeup can be found here.  Remarkably accurate!  Come on out, dear reader(s), for next year's Geek Bowl!

Lots of stuff going down, lots of amusing links popping up.  Let's get this party started.

The Sudokucup has come and gone -- it was actually last weekend, but the final results were posted today.  Based on a screwy bug in the answer submission page, my answers weren't counted until this latest recount.  It meant I had to resubmit everything long after the test was finished -- which also meant I could easily fix any errors if I had to.  As it were, the ten puzzles I had completed had correct submission lines, and were possibly entirely correct...which isn't the most common occurrence in these parts.

Anyhow, 8th isn't terrifyingly bad, and it could very easily have been 4th had I fully understood the Pairs rules -- the misunderstanding of which led to about 15 wasted minutes at the end.  After eight hours of Hunting (I use this term loosely), I probably wasn't in tip-top shape.  I will make a point of not listening to music during future competitions -- something I wish I was capable of doing, and seem ok with on Nikoli (non-sudoku) puzzles, but has always slowed my sudoku solving.

Speaking of sudoku -- I don't know whether to laugh or cry about the Amazon listing here.  Do they give it a different name Across the Pond?

The OAPC results are up -- and may very well have been up for quite awhile, although I guess I didn't know where to find them, and only found them by a link from some other site.  This gives me a 10th to go with the 8th (Forsmarts) and 9th (Sudokucup) for this year, which either means I'm consistent or slipping.  Anyhow, I honestly don't know where two of my answers went -- they weren't marked incorrect, and appear to have not been submitted at all.  The additional 9.7 points, assuming I got 'em all, would have only bumped me up from 10th to 9th, so the general result is the same either way.  Fun test!

This is funny stuff.  In some general sense, doing some multiple of the evil you would normally be doing in an effort to tell people how evil said thing is -- that's probably a bad idea, regardless of format.  Then again, supposedly the movie Christine -- which featured the destruction of multiple antique Plymouth Furys -- somehow led to an even larger number of Furys being fixed-up and preserved.  That's the best way I can analogize why the Congressman did what he did, but then I'm not very smart.

Hooray, I won!  Granted, I would need significantly more time to make it through 161 puzzles, but I guess that wasn't the bet.  One downside to all this is consistently seeing the name motris  listed ahead of mine on the Nikoli leaderboard...

I've watched the Robot Chicken Star Wars episodes many, many times, and they've somehow helped jumpstart my interest in the saga; well, ok, at least Episodes 4-6.  Anyhow, someone passed along this humorous link.  I fear what I'd sound like if I were put into the same position, but then I probably wouldn't decline an invitation to watch just because I thought I knew what happened.  I really really don't.  But someday before the end of the 2009...

The biggest news of all, of course, can be found here.  I will have a full writeup of what happened, but suffice to say -- I don't know that I actually had an answer that none of the other five of us had, which had me somewhat glum despite the victory.  The Geeks people will list the scores sometime soon -- all we know is that we won.  I think the team probably obliterated the competition, which will make me feel better about the somewhat chumpy individual showing; it's not that I didn't know anything, but that our team was just SO EFFIN GOOD.

Lastly, the Citizens of Virtue ARG has been over for some time, and I didn't even take part in the final...86% of it?  Anyhow, they posted the solutions, and...maybe I'm easy to please, but I'm just so impressed by the good work that was done there.  The puzzle aspects are pretty impressive in their own right, but even the story is pitch-perfect.  Will I go pick up the book now?  Uhhh...

It's go-time.

With about 30 minutes left in 2008 (at least in this here timezone), someone I was with commented loudly about how crappy 2008 was, and how much better 2009 was going to be.  I felt kinda bad -- I like all years, and usually finish the year thinking that the year just concluded was the best one ever -- with my feelings towards 2008 being no different.

Nonetheless, 2009 is off to a rocking good start.  In no particular order:

-- ASU men's hoops is 5-2 after dispatching Arizona (in Tucson, no less) last night.  There was a lousy call near the end that more-or-less sealed things, although it's not like there wasn't any home-cooking before then.  With the two (or 2.5) hardest road trips in the rearview-mirror, the Devils are poised to go on an extended romp through the PAC-10.  I won't make any predictions (especially since our lottery-pick went down HARD yesterday...in a six-point game with six seconds remaining...ugh), but I would bet even money that the final conference record will be 12-6 or better.

-- Something about this result (Hat-tip: TLH) makes me glow.  I don't believe I could possibly distill my best-possible feelings towards my quirks any better than: "Ziti is the most ECCENTRIC person".  It's about time that was worthy of praise!  I'm very happy.

-- Many of my colleagues are working feverishly to get published -- a pursuit that's never really appealed to me.  But it really is pretty great to see your name listed as a contributor, especially when it's...one of my favorite online columns!  See for yourself.  If you're curious, I suggested a sub-heading of "Warrants still pending for Nicklaus, Mickelson", but am happy with the results, even if what I sent in is one of the least funny selections.  My favorite on the page involves cream cheese...

-- Oh, I suppose there's this little matter of...THE CARDINALS IN THE SUPER BOWL!!  Unbelievable.  Furthermore -- it's not all about "balance", don't get me wrong, but...I think I know which team's offense/defense is the least competent in the game, and it's not on the Arizona side.  I'll say it now: if Pittsburgh doesn't have more touchdowns than Arizona on defense + special-teams, Arizona wins.  With Polamalu and Holmes taking part, it's no guarantee that Pittsburgh won't score a non-offensive touchdown tho...

Me and the boys (including two guys with whom I went to high school back-in-the-day) were already planning on being in Las Vegas for Super Bowl weekend, even though...I mean, I'm not really gonna care about this game, am I?  And now it's...hello sportsbook!

-- As the picture on this page shows, I've had some visitors (from very far away!) in town of late.  That's right, the wonderful Max and Martin Danker (parents of UK logic (and math(s)) wunderkind George) were in the Duke City for the last few days.  They enjoy traveling across the US on vaca...err, "holiday", and on their tour of the southwest were kind enough to pay me a visit.  They even came out for pub trivia, at which we finished second (with a halfway-decent score!), helped no doubt by...one of the rounds being "British Movies".  Ha!  I even told the host (as he alludes to on the blog) that we didn't do so well on the round, but as it turns out we may have gotten the top score.  And even better -- the $10 vouchers to Albuquerque Thunderbirds games beat the hell out of the stupid Burn After Reading promotional wallet I won last week.

Max and Martin charmed the heck out of the locals (and vice versa, it seemed) during our discussion of British vs. American colloquialisms.  And one listener was especially enthralled by the David Tennant discussion, and requested a clone of him as soon as Max has one made.  It was a wonderful time (well, ok, ASU won during the quiz too) and I hope to head Across the Pond sometime this summer for more wonderful times.

-- Even some bad news still is better than terrible news.  Yesterday I got checked out by the shoulder doc who finally gave me a real explanation of what's going on in my shoulder; I've lost range-of-motion due to tendonitis and bursitis, and physical therapy should give me more flexibility and make the pain go away.  I was "worried" that the pain *had* gone away, but...nope, the simple motions he put me through brought it back with a vengeance.  Monday I'll get put onto the rack or whatever and we'll go from there.

-- Geek Bowl 2009 is coming up this weekend in Denver, and aside from doing absolutely no coordinating of the team, nearly dropping the ball by not getting the official information into organizers until after yesterday's (unbeknownst to me but still) deadline, and feeling the butterflies *already* based on our team's anticipated good showing -- aside from all that, I/we are READY to rock!  The prizes appear to have been increased, although...hehe, if it were about the money, I think we'd go with our best expected value and...not even make the several-hundred mile trek.  But I don't do it for the money: I do it to win!  Uhhh...

(OTOH -- Hooray!  I'd not seen that before.  Wow, I guess I beat...all zero other New Mexicans!?)

-- I was called into the boss's office today to...receive word that I'd gotten a raise!  Well, ok, everybody had gotten a raise, but he showed me what my salary was and what it is now.  That's good enough news, but more importantly...it wasn't a "Jason, you really suck" conversation.  So I guess this is a double-win.

-- I (remotely) took part in the Mystery Hunt last weekend.  Poorly.  I think my fingerprints were on just about...four solutions?  It's very hard when you only know one person on the team anyhow, and they're all very far away and not the least-bit interested in keeping me e-company, and no matter how good I might be at trivia or 3D minesweeper, I'm not better than 30 people at once.  (Ir)Regardless -- the Hunt was a masterpiece, and I'm glad I was able to take part.

-- Pretty clearly I'm not helping write the upcoming year's Hunt, but the whole thing got me thinking and...I've got a couple of sudoku-based puzzles on which I'm working.  Should I find myself in Maryland this July, I'll be sure to bring one of them along, plus maybe a trash-trivia round and...oh, that reminds me...

-- I anticipate Dork Fest '09 (no subtitle yet) to take place on 3/13-3/14 of this year.  Not only is that about a year after the previous incarnation, but...the timing is immaculate.  Come on by, dear reader(s).  The music round winner may very well go home with a...movie promo wallet!

On a down note: I did the Masyu Puzzle Championship today and ended up screwing up and subsequently giving up after 14 fruitless minutes.  Ok, that's not actually happened yet, but since I'm so bad with posting I thought I'd get it out of the way beforehand.

Lastly: karaoke may be on tomorrow night!  This is the year of, well, doing karaoke songs I've never done before, and thus far I've mauled the following: Everybody Wants to Rule the World (dear god that video takes me back!!); Inside Out (featuring one of my all-time favorite karaoke memories...hehe); Short Skirt, Long Jacket; Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat) -- a duet with Sharada; and The Way -- dedicated to Sharada and Eric, whose world-travels will take them...all over the world.  Ok, that's not very eloquent, but I'm sure they do a better job.  I've changed my mostly worthless links section to include links to their blogs, check 'em out.

It's almost 3am.  Time for "sleep"?

I'm anticipating finally doing some bighuge sort of thematic music activity with this here blog during the better part of 2009.  As something of a warmup, I thought I'd take some time discussing the Gleaming Spires.

The Spires are an act that had, as best I can tell, two songs in their oeuvre over the course of their all-too-brief early-80's career.  I guess they have some sort of connection with Devo, or rejected Devo members, or something like that -- an influence readily apparent from listening to the keyboards in their songs.

I had never heard of them, to the best of my knowledge, until sniffing around on the internet revealed their names to me late last year.  They are the act whose music can be heard in the first few seconds of this hilarious clip.  That's them performing the appropriately-titled (for the commercial, at least) All Night Party, which has to be just about the last song you'd ever expect to hear at a party lasting until the wee hours of the morning.  That's irony...right?  The entire track can be heard here, for the curious.

The song appears on the Revenge of the Nerds soundtrack, and may very well be what is played sometime during the Tri-Lambda / Omega-Mu get-together...the one with the marijuana and Wormser standing pec-level with two girls and other memorable moments I'm sure.  I hope I didn't ruin the movie for anybody there.

There's something endearing about the song, despite it...possibly being the worst thing I've ever heard.  It's truly so bad that it's good.  If the band is playing it straight...wow.  And if they're not...then they're brilliant geniuses.  Either way, the mp3 is a cherished part of my collection.

But it's possibly not even the most memorable of their songs.  And in the interest of providing something of value to the internet, I will touch up the lyrics found by Google on, of all places, Democratic Underground.  May this blog be the #1 place for mostly accurate lyrics to...


( Nonstop, yeah! )

Wow...talk about a necessary fifth verse!

(UPDATE: According to YouTube, there's at least two more songs by the Spires: How to Get Girls Through Hypnotism and A Christian Girl's Problems.  How can you go wrong with titles like those??)

Happy 2009!  Mine's been pretty good, I hope the same can be said for youse guys.  Already I've had more alcohol-induced making-out than all of last year!  As one might imagine, that had something to do with New Year's Eve itself, but hey, I'll take what I can get.

I've been getting back into lifting weights, having skipped essentially all of 2008 with some sort of shoulder issue.  What's the issue?  Dunno.  Did it prevent me from playing softball?  Not really.  Has it affected my lifting?  I've avoided all shoulder activity, and focused on some chest-specific stuff, biceps/triceps, back, and legs.  And belly, of course.  Getting back to that "legs" business...wow, I guess the hamstrings don't like being put to significant use after having it easy for 13 months.  I was hobbling for the three days after I did one lousy hamstring routine.  I'm hoping the worst is behind me.

I'm set to get the shoulder looked at by medical professionals sometime in the next couple of weeks.  I'm certain there's something wrong with me, but it may just be that I'm a hypochondriac.  Among many, many other things, of course.

The OAPC came and went -- mostly joyfully, certainly when compared to the Forsmarts 6th Anniversary thingy from last month.  I never ever got it rolling on that one, and on this one...I really felt like I was doing that much better.  I completed 31 of the 40 "regular" puzzles -- didn't attempt the Tanks or Laser, and only got the first three Tetroscopes.  The optimizer thing...nothing doing.  I'll second the thoughts of motris who likes optimizers with attainable "theoretical" maxima.  I think another way of achieving this would be...just to tell people "Best possible score is X" and leaving it at that -- or to consistently make puzzles that attain the top score.  I mean, right?

One thing of note from the OAPC was -- I would make runs at complete solutions for puzzles much earlier than I normally do.  That is to say, instead of trying to find the next logical step, I'd...have a go at, say, putting all the tetrominoes down or trying to get that snake to the finish line via a series of full-length attempts.  I understand this is part of my huge weakness when it comes to Nikoli Number Link (on which I suck hard...to clarify: even though it always seems to work out that way, you do NOT have to draw a line through all the empty squares, right?) -- that I'm too busy trying to be perfect instead of just taking a stab at it.  I don't think this counts as turning over some sort of new leaf or anything, but I was pleased to get through some puzzles pretty quickly through intuition, and may attempt to do so in the future.

Speaking of attainable top scores...I really really really coulda sworn that a Scrabblegram from late December had something of a screwup.  An answer of "WEASEL" with a "2nd Letter Triple" comes up worth less than "AWES".  I may have gotten the tripled-letter wrong (everyone had disposed of their newspapers with the recycling by the time the answers came around), but it clearly wasn't the 1st, and the 3rd would still see SAW come up worth more.  Maybe it was 4th/5th/6th and I just misread it.  I sniffed around on the web for others with the same issue and...came across Eric Berlin's funny note about the infamous "SUBTEXT" Bingo.  Wow, Bingo indeed!

The other puzzling of note lately involved the Nikoli Kakuro Puzzle Championship of this past Friday.  I could tell things weren't going well (enough) rather early, and I didn't really feel like I got much into a groove the whole way.  I mean, for pete's sake, it took about a minute just to get my first digit down!  It turns out the puzzle was extremely difficult, and the 24:50 I got was actually good for 2nd.  Which is still worthless (especially after losing to the winner by a ridiculous 4:41), but at least doesn't crush the spirit quite like...I dunno, losing to a bunch of people by that much?

I took on the recent Hard Kakuro tonight and -- not only did I beat H.Jo by about 2.5 minutes (he appears to have made a screwup -- his number of steps was far above the number of squares), but I even beat the guy who appears to do the puzzles by hand before actually registering his first "attempt".  We'll take it.  It's still not as good as actually beating H.Jo at one of the Kakuro Championships (which didn't even happen last July for that matter), but it's better than nothing.

Up next is a huge Masyu, at which I somehow got 4th the last time one of those Championships came along, and...heck, what else am I gonna be doing at 6am on a Friday, eh?

Hmm...also up next is the matter of this Mystery Hunt thing-a-majig.  I'll be remote hunting for the second time in three years for the Metaphysical Plant team, who appear to be pretty good.  I'm sure it's all a moot point for this particular year (if the Beginner's Luck murmurs I hear are any indication), but I still anticipate having a pretty darn good time.  I have a feeling that this year's Hunt is going to be to the Hunt what the Beijing opening ceremonies are to Olympics opening ceremonies.  I'll leave it to youse guys to figure out what I mean by that...

As evidenced by about eight straight cryptic status updates on Facebook -- I've still got the New Pornographers on the brain.  I even popped Twin Cinema into the car CD player tonight...despite having listened to it about a week ago, having them currently in random on the WinAMP, and having them on the current list on the ipod.

Anyhow -- tonight at trivia I was schmoozing with the table near ours with two likeable gals (and no discernable male presence).  We made some sort of plans to play together next Sunday (I'll believe it when I see it), but my attempt at getting the phone number of the more talkative of the two was...blunted, if not outright rejected.  All of which is to say: right now if I want the Jessica numbers, I'll have to listen to the NPs.

(If anyone can figure out why every listing of that song in concert on YT lasts 40 seconds or less, let me know.)

More posts to come -- but not tonight.  Also, go Cardinals!

Well, it's been something of awhile since I last wrote here.  I guess the long-winded report on the, ahem, exhilarating third-place finish at the Colorado TRASH Regional has been looming, and if I convinced myself I didn't feel like writing anything at all, then I could convince myself I didn't feel like writing it.  Something like that.  Old habits die hard.  Maybe this week I'll type that up for the three of you who'd like to read it.

Anyhow -- wow, what a year!  Err...right?  I don't know what qualifies as a great year in these parts anymore, as most folks my age are doing things like starting families, adding to families, starting their own businesses, etc.  Meanwhile, what's the memorable stuff from this year?  In chronological order:

An amazing Super Bowl
The outstanding ASU WCWS domination
My Nikoli Time Trial victory
Some great Olympics moments
My team's fantasy football championship (!!)

Not a particularly impressive list, eh?  I could throw the big election stuff onto there, but we're talking Jason-specific things here.  Mercifully, I'll forgo the whole "Omg Tina Fey was so unforgettably funny as Sarah Palin" banalities, for at least two reasons.

In addition, I met a sizable portion of folks this year; it feels like more than normal but maybe that's just due to the recentness.  I thankfully appear to have shed very few friends (old and new), and save for one (maybe 1.5) ruthlessly awful internet exchange(s) with people who couldn't possibly "know" me any less, I don't have a whole lot on which to look back with dismay.

For these last few years I've tried to come up with overarching themes for the year to come.  2007 was the year of "Spectacular Success or Spectacular Failure".  I think it meant (to me) that I wanted to actually take chances on things (mostly ideas bouncing around in the more creative (this is relative) portions of my brain) and see what happened.  2008 was/is the year of "No Regrets", which was basically a tamer version of the previous year: now I just wanted to take prudent chances and hope for the best.  For both years I hoped to not be left wondering "What if?' at the end of the year.  In that regard -- either I'm the most boring, least innovative, and laziest guy on earth, or I'm a big wuss.

Well it's nearly 2009, and time for the new theme: this is the year of "Being Me".  Which should look a lot like the past two years, results-wise, if the most memorable things that happen involve me (or some entity representing me, or which I favor in some fashion) attempting to come out on top of some form of competitive endeavor.  For pete's sake, today was a pretty excellent one, and all I "accomplished" was some good kakuro times and a pub trivia pounding.

There's still an excessively large number of aspects of life out on which I'm missing.  Some (say, oh, I dunno, steady and promising dating) are rather obvious.  Others (such as striking out on my own) are going to be taking dead aim at me, like it or not, when my work contract runs out sometime in the second quarter (I hope!?) of the year.  Will I become something of a math instructor?  Will I be here in Albuquerque for all of 2009?  2010?  Will I need to pursue other forms of income?

Whatever 2009 hurls in my general direction, here's hoping "to thine own self be true" is more than just a line from Shakespeare.  And here's hoping said self is actually going to make something happen in the coming 12 months.  The whole "be me" thing may be a huge copout anyhow, as I'm pretty bad at faking just about anything, and epitomize WYSIWYG.  But there's still some second-level progress to be made; not only will I invariably be having a go at winning something, but I need to own it and not feel the slightest bit of sheepishness.  Based on some disappointing results, I guess there's quite a bit of first-order progress to be made as well.  Furthermore, I don't even know which area is more important.  I'll shoot for more of both, just to be safe.

Happy New Year all!  Let's do this.

(Really, I'm not just writing these things to tick off a particular lurker...)

Well, it's that time of year again: college football championship posturing.  Enter Texas head coach Mack Brown, lying through his teeth in his attempt to woo voters.

According to Coach Brown, the best tiebreaker for the Big 12 isn't actually the Big 12 tiebreaker, but those employed (somewhat stupidly -- see below) by the SEC and ACC.

According to Coach Brown, he can't think of a reason Oklahoma and Missouri, two teams Texas beat, will be playing in the conference championship game.

According to Coach Brown, winning a "neutral-site" game in Dallas, against a team from Oklahoma, by 10, automatically neutralizes (or more!) the 44-point blowout Oklahoma delivered Texas Tech.

The SEC tiebreaker says, basically...if the first handful of schedule/victory metrics are the same between three or more teams, then look at the BCS standings.  The team among contenders with the top BCS ranking would advance (in this case to the Big 12 title game), UNLESS they are within five spots of the next-highest-ranked team in the BCS; in this case, you would consider both of these teams and look at their head-to-head results.

Shockingly, using this method...not only is it better (according to the impartial, sage Coach Brown), but it actually results in Texas advancing to the title game.  I mean, who saw that one coming??

Unfortunately, this is one of the stupidest fashions to decide these three-way ties.  Why is Texas ranked ahead of Texas Tech, who beat them?  Well, you see, Oklahoma DESTROYED the Red Raiders, which (rightfully) knocked them down a few pegs.  So, to recap, Texas Tech is knocked out of the running, a result that most notably hurts...Oklahoma (at least in the SEC tiebreaker).  And who exactly knocked TTU out of the running?  Why, Oklahoma, by beating the hell out of them.  Perversely, it was in Oklahoma's best interest to not win by too much.  And this is better...how??

Furthermore, TTU is currently listed at #7 in the BCS -- UT is #2, OU is #3, and it's pretty certain those two will flip should OU beat a good OSU team tonight; believe me, Coach Brown would be extolling the virtues of the Big 12 tiebreaker if UT was a sure #2.  But anyhow, #7 is only five places behind #2 -- why isn't TTU still in this "Look at the BCS standings" mix?  If four teams were 2/3/4/5 -- wouldn't you consider them all?

In the case of an OU/TTU/UT three-way tie, it seems to me that Oklahoma deserves to advance more than the others -- and I say this as someone who somewhat pulls for TTU.  Three games are most relevant among the three teams, and Oklahoma was the only one to clearly, unequivocally prove to be better than the other, so they should get the edge -- if not via the objective tiebreaker, than by the computer and by the polls.

I don't have a real beef with UT advancing to the title game, but Coach Brown's "reasoning" had better not be responsible for it.  The three teams are tied via five different, objective (and sensible, contra SEC/ACC) metrics: if there's ever a time for subjectivity, this is it.  Which team looks the best of the three?  That's the one that should advance.  And, should Oklahoma win this tough road game tonight, they're the team with the best case.

Meanwhile, if he's looking for a reason why they won't (nay, shouldn't!) be playing in the title game, maybe Coach Brown can point to the crappy freshman on defense who dropped the simplest interception in the history of competitive college football, thereby allowing for the big TTU finale.

I won't be holding my breath.  If Les "Nobody beat us in regulation" Miles can win people over, who's to say Mack "Oklahoma hurt their own cause by blowing out TTU" Brown can't?  Right now, just as the baseball season turned into Operation: No-BoSox, college football is Operation: No-Gators-vs.-Longhorns -- the former being a team that's all well and good, but just won not too long ago.  MLB turned out ok, here's hoping for more of the same for NCAAF.  I'm not counting on it tho.

First things first: Does anyone in these parts remember the early 80's PBS tv show Powerhouse?  I don't believe I've ever met anyone  who's ever seen it.  The above link is surprisingly thorough...and doesn't even have me to blame.

The big news out of baseball, if there is such a thing in the dreary days of late November, is the signing of Rinku Singh and Dinesh Patel to minor league contracts for the Pirates.  This makes them (un?)officially the first Indian-born athletes to sign with any American professional team.  And I, for one, couldn't be happier.

The fellas were part of The Million Dollar Arm, a talent-finding reality program that went to India to see if the world's #1 cricket-loving country (with their population 1.1 billion strong) could produce a pitcher capable of playing in the US.  Rinku won, Dinesh placed, and both were sent on over to the US to get training from the miserably-punned Tom House, a world-class pitching coach with Southern Cal (who caught Henry Aaron's homer #715, I believe).  You can read about the rest online.

I'm not sure why I even bother to mention this, except that...well, an Indian-born player excelling in the Majors (or, convesely, an American-born player somehow turning into a cricket legend) is just about the coolest baseball-related thing of which I can think.  Plus, their blog is highly-entertaining...and not in the Engrish way that some people seem to think.

There's been a bunch of haters out there, directing rather much of it at...the Pirates?  $200K is trivial by MLB standards, and furthermore, the upside (the best pitching prospect(s) out of 1,100,000,000) seems rather worth it; I mean, how much did Carl Pavano make last year?  I imagine the positive press will be worth its weight in gold in India, and they'll only move through the minors (and possibly into the Bigs) if they've earned it, so what's the beef?  Just imagine how much Pirates' gear will get spread around India!  (What about the Nymets?  -- ed.  A solid #2, just like for me.)

Best of luck, boys! 

To stave off bankruptcy, I should definitely avoid action-packed weekends such as the one of which I refuse to let go.  Nonetheless, in addition to the tons of pleasant memories, at least I'll get a long-winded LJ post about it...

( This Was the Weekend that Was )

So ASU goes on the road and gets a nice win, while UA loses, at home, behind two of the biggest foul-related blunders I've ever seen.  An intentional foul 70 feet from the basket in a tie game with under a second to go?  And they say we're the school with the idiots??  These geniuses make DIck Jauron look like he knows how to win a game!

I hope this is the beginning of an ASU hoops statewide landslide this season.

TRASH Regionals recap to come, one of these nights.

Well, ok, "bleg" may be too strong of a term here.  You tell me.

I was contacted by the Albuquerque Journal people for a story they're going to run.  What's the story?  It seems they want to run a feature on...Kenken.  So they're going to be carrying it?  No.  It seems they got a press release related to the first paperback Kenken book being published in the US, and they want to write about it; I tried my best to dissuade them from the notion that this is the "Next Sudoku", but more puzzle stories are better than less, so I guess it's ok if that's how they feel.  As an aside, not a lot of newsworthy things happen in these parts.

Anyhow, if anyone has any Kenken thoughts, as well as a desire to maybe find their way into the prestigious ABQ Journal, here's your chance to maybe make it happen.  I can see it now: "Slugworth, who didn't want to give his real name, says he likes Kenken because of its emphasis on arithmetic...".

Also, I've decided to put together my first "Heat Index", in which I will detail how well I feel I'm doing at the ten different Nikoli online puzzles.  I don't foresee updating this more than once every couple of months, and it might be fun to see if it changes over time.  This list will basically be ordered by best-to-worst expected rank (quickest times) on a particular puzzle-type.

Rank, Puzzle, Previous Rank (in this initial case, where I had mentally ordered things w/o posting a couple of months ago)

1. Kakuro (1).  I absolutely just LIT UP the Easy from earlier this week, and absolutely BOTCHED the Hard from tonight.  Still, I rather consistently find myself in the top three, slightly more than the types to immediately follow, with plenty of #1's.
2. Shikaku (3).  I experienced something of a Shikaku renaissance not too long ago, and haven't run into too many real puzzlers of late.  Until, again, the one I most recently undertook -- I think this morning.  I don't think I've had too many #1's of late, but had a pretty nice streak of front-page finishes.
3. Hashi (NR).  I really do enjoy this type more than I'd been expecting to when I heard it was the next one to come.  I don't know how much any speed here is owed to a logical mind and how much is due to fine mousemanship, but we'll take it either way.  I've had a couple of #1's, mostly on really silly Easy puzzles, but even represented reasonably well at some Hards.
4. Masyu (5).  I think, more than any other puzzle, my speed here has benefitted from the new computer.  That may be a false impression, I dunno.  Some nights I just find myself in the zone, not just on that day's puzzle but on a handful of ones I redo from the past.  I think I've also cut way down on my screwups on the 36x20's.
5. Nurikabe (6).  This also has improved with the new computer; I even was in the top 3 or so for awhile a couple weeks ago (before getting bounced way down, but still...).  But furthermore -- attempting these in the Penpa Mixes I picked up has helped me worry less about the islands and focus on just marking water.  It's funny too -- why is it that so much easier to see on paper?  Maybe it's me.
6. Hitori (4).  During the previous Nikoli Challenge (which may resume someday), I had a surprisingly capable run on these, but it's basically died of late.  The Easy puzzles sometimes will lend themselves to sub-25sec finishes, but the Hard ones haven't had anything close to flow of late.  I think new authors have made a point of not just relying on sets of three numbers to get the ball rolling, and I've adapted poorly.  Also, I've been making a point of not using notation, which only helps in the ones I grasp quickly, and has contributed to some pretty pedestrian times otherwise.
7. Heyawake (9).  I think the Penpa Mix experience on these has helped me not bother with extra notation.  I don't know if it'll work for 24x14 and larger, but a recent 18x10 Medium went entirely swiftly (even if a particular heavy-notator ended up in front of me by a few seconds).  Is it time for a Heyawake (re)naissance?
8. Slitherlink (8).  Notation has been minimized here too -- not from Penpa but maybe just from discipline.  Tonight's 36x20 went a lot better than, well, the Kakuro I botched, and I've had finishes in the 80%iles or better for awhile now, I think.  Rarely in the 90's, tho.
9. Akari (7).  To notate or not to notate.  I'm blinder on these than on any of the others (save for Hitori, probably) of late, and it just seems that the site's denizens are pretty familiar with and good at these.  I think I'd also like to see the expected times in the corner for these, but I guess it's no big deal.  They're so simple that I guess I don't devote a lot of effort to getting better at them.  At least, that's my story.
NR. Sudoku (2).  I'm holding off on these until Christmas or so.  This makes two straight years of sudoku fatigue after the USSC.

Anyone care to share?

Coed playoffs ended tonight on a bitterly cold day here in the Burque.  And, for the fifth time in six work softball fall leagues, my team played in the finals.  And lost.  No big -- we had to work our way into the finals, and upset a team with a...well, they didn't have a better record than us, but they did win the three-way tiebreaker (among all 3-6 teams -- the leaders were 9-0) via total runs scored.  And they beat us twice during the year, once rather handily.

The title references maybe my favorite play of the year.  We were really dealing tonight -- playing our best defense of the year -- despite the nasty conditions.  I had several balls hit to me in LCF, and pulled down most without a hitch; one required a bit of a slide, and another was held up by the wind and botched by me into an error.  Anyhow, it felt like I was really in the flow -- no butterflies out there (probably because all my nerves were frozen solid) -- and slid over to an extremely short RF when the other team's lefty (who consistently pulled the ball) stepped up with two on and one out.  She's a friend of mine too, and I hope what transpired is at least offset by their easy victory to cap off their perfect season.

She lines it between 1B and 2B -- typical base-hit, should score a run.  Except, err, that's not far from where I'm standing.  I snared the liner about a foot off the ground, at which time both runners had strayed pretty far from their bases.  With my momentum carrying me towards 1st anyhow, and with no chance for the guy to get back, I trotted over to first and completed the double-play.

So, if you're scoring at home, my team's LCF made a catch in short-RF and doubled-off the runner from first on an extremely rare outfielder unassisted double-play.  Finally, a notable softball play in which I participated...that didn't involve me hitting into a triple-play.  Sweet.

My top fantasy team has run into some trouble of late.  Two weeks ago we laid an egg against the top team, and while last week we destroyed the opposition (and took a commanding lead in the division), this week we lost yet again to a pretty un-good team.  How does this happen? 

Here's how:

My quarterback and #1 pick (Drew Brees) was on bye.
My #2 pick (Reggie Bush), in addition to being injured, was on bye.
My #3 pick (Andre Johnson) had to play at Minnesota.
My #4 pick (Antonio Gates) was on bye.
My #5 pick (Marion Barber III -- kept at #5) had to play at the Giants.
My backup quarterback (Matt Schaub) had to play at Minnesota, and got injured.
My backup RB (Ryan Grant) had to play at Tennessee.

So, if you're scoring at home, I'm missing the top-scoring quarterback and tight end, and a top-five RB, due to bye -- oh, and my kicker too!  Of the guys who actually did suit up this week, I had to count on five starters playing on the road at three of the toughest defenses, and one of them got injured near the end of the first-half.

Yeah, I guess this wasn't our week.

Well, that didn't go as well as I would have liked.

( 2008 USSC Report/Anguish )

Some people shouldn't use analogies.

"My prospective is this. If this were a bowling match, Senator McCain needed a strike. He left a seven and 10 pins, and while it's a hard pick up, it's not impossible." -- Mike Huckabee

So, to recap -- he needed a strike, didn't get it, and furthermore left himself the hardest possible configuration to make a spare.  Which won't help anyhow because he needed a strike.

Oh well, who needs the Ol' DIrty Pastor when you get these kinds of results?

Headline: Christ runs for 232 yards in Catholic victory (H/T: Taranto).

How can this guy's nickname NOT be Touchdown Jesus?

Not sure why I feel so cruddy.  Anyhow, this (13 seconds) elicited major laughter, so I hope it's worth the quick post.  Thx Jonah.

Not a whole lot of posting going on around here, which either means nothing's going on (since nothing's post-worthy) or so much is going on that there's no time to post.  Or maybe it's in-between and I'm just lazy.

As remarked on in a previous post, the fantasy baseball season was winding down, with my team nudging into third under the most miraculous of circumstances...only to wait for it to come crashing down shortly thereafter, due to a rescheduled game and possibly a game #163 pending.

It seems the guy whom I passed (safely in 4th) also was a bit miffed, and so we made a deal: should we finish 3rd/4th in some order, instead of the steep $200/$100 prizes (not real money, of course), we'd chop things up $160/$140.  This was my idea, and it was a good one -- it saved me forty bucks, as my team plummeted on the first day, losing points when one guy tied me in RBI's (thanks to Alexei Ramirez getting four on one swing) and when another guy's pickups of two random Detroit relievers ended up...giving him enough strikeouts (by one!) to pass me there.  More points could have been lost, but hardly any were to be gained -- I didn't really have any good batters in the Sox-Twins game, and unless these two relievers I'd picked up on a lark got me some strikeouts, nothing was coming from pitching, and that's that.

In some pipe-dream sense, I guess Griffey and Brian Anderson could have jacked a bunch of RBI's and scored a bunch of runs, but...nope.  1-0???  Ugh.  In the interest of seeing how truly awful the season finished up, I went to the standings page, annnnnnd...

Ok, back it up a bit.  During the flurry of emails preceding the start of the Tigers-Sox game (which, when it started, rosters would be locked), I was forwarded a line from the commissioner regarding my lineup.  He was worried ESPN would balk at me having no starting pitchers in the lineup, which had happened since I cut a slew of guys (but couldn't bring myself to cut Tim Lincecum or Ervin Santana, go fig) and picked up a bunch of batters and relievers and stuff, leaving nobody to fill the SP slots.  This seemed like an extremely specious claim, but I figured it couldn't hurt, so I cut Prince "First Round" Fielder and picked up Kyle Lohse, he of the idle St. Louis Cardinals.  I threw him into the lineup, and in the other slot I put...eh, why not, I don't think John Danks is gonna pitch, so he can't hurt me.

So, yeah, John Danks pitches the game of his life, I gain in strikeouts, WHIP, and wins, and end up in third by a full point.  Guess I cost myself $40 after all!

Fantasy football is seeing something of a resurgence.  Two 4-1 squads and two 3-2 squads beats the heck out of my standard (of recent years) middling squads.  One of the 3-2's was significantly hurt by Tom Brady (expected, by my count, to be worth significantly more than any other player in the league) going down on the first day, while the other 3-2 lost Trent Edwards this past week (also insanely early in the contest) and got 0.9 points from qb (when 12 would have won).  I guess starting the Bills' D (-4) over the Pats' D (7) was also unwise, although...had everything else stayed the same, I would have lost...by 0.05 points.  Eek.

Of the 4-1 squads, one of them is...utterly dominant in a Y! public league, despite Bernard Berrian's best efforts to swipe this week's game from my side.  The other of them is in my most competitive league, where I've got a record over 0.500 over the 7+ years I've been in it, and have made the playoffs...once -- losing immediately, no less.  This year we're rolling in it (thus far -- KNOCK ON WOOD), having vanquished our perennial rival (if I can even say that -- he's whupped me for three or four years) by a healthy margin this week.  Oddly, he'd had Drew Brees and Antonio Gates for the past four years, and now both of them are on my squad -- with varying degrees of success, but still.

This past week I dodged Plaxico Burress (suspended for a game) and faced a gimpy Deion Branch (recently activated after difficult surgery).  Next week I'm playing a friend of mine with a rather non-deep team.  He will be missing...his #2 RB (bye), his #1 WR (bye), his #2 WR (bye), and possibly his #1 RB (Westbrook).  I will be very distraught if we don't beat his team into the ground, but stranger things have happened.  Meanwhile, bye weeks don't significantly affect me for another few weeks, although the unexpected Texans' bye ended up hurting me pretty bad during our only loss.

A friend of mine at work is a big Red Sox fan, which...has quickly become the most annoyingly trendy team out of them all.  Please, please, Tampa Bay, take them out...or else I'll be the world's biggest Manny Ramirez (or, uhh, Shane Victorino) fan in the world during the Series.  Two championships in five years (or 89 years, take your pick) is enough for me, especially given the Celtics' dismantling of the NBA -- which really wasn't so bad.

Anyhow, she's on the IM client at work, so I get to read these ATROCIOUS puns of hers every day when I scroll over her name.  The current one is "Can you Bay-lieve it? The Sox advance to the ALCS!".  Dreadful.  A previous one was something like..."Papi's hand hurts -- the team needs a Manny-cure!".

I thought it couldn't hurt to actually come up with some of my own unbelievably bad Sox puns, with the hopes of preparing myself for the ones to come.  Let's see, what do we got?

"One day Jed was shootin' at some pitch and up from the ground came...the ALCS! Go Sox!"
"Julio is gonna hock a Lugo at his old team! Go Sox!"
"JD really Drew a big walk! Go Sox!"
"Longoria belongs on Wisteria Lane, not Victory Lane. Go Sox!"
"It'll take a Kaz-miracle to beat Dice-K! Go Sox!"

Please, dear reader(s), comment with some of your own.

Last week, an eventful trip to the local Graham's Central Station resulted in some spontaneous karaoke, so I can add The Cure's Friday I'm in Love to my tally.  Again, this is more for my benefit than yours (When isn't that true? -- ed.  Good point.).

Lastly, in puzzle news, I've had some pretty effective night Nikoli sessions of late.  Four top-ten international finishes over the last two nights...although all of them are of my preferred styles.  The team Nikoli competition has kinda died down (and rightly so -- it was originally supposed to only run for a couple weeks), but should it return, I'd do well to somehow find this mojo again.  I need to find H.Jo's email address...

Oh yeah, one more thing: 4-0 in SNL men's softball, with each win (I believe) coming via some sort of run-rule.  Tonight's 30-14 win over the other (previously) undefeated team was a nice statement.  Here's hoping for some good things in there...and maybe coed too?  I'll know more after tomorrow's late game.

This is political-y but isn't heavily partisan and is too good to pass up.

I'm sure, tomorrow morning, Howard Fineman will come along and say the exact opposite of everything he just said in this column.

So last night was the big karaoke party thing to celebrate (more or less) my birthday tomorrow.  It went really well -- was basically the enjoyment I thought was lacking from the trivia party thing I hosted a couple of weeks ago (which I described in something that started as a LJ post, turned into a morose LJ post, and eventually got "Diary Entry" status due to how miserable I sounded).  Everything last night trended upwards, with representatives from multiple facets of my social life finding themselves at the bar meeting the others.  Almost everybody sang.  Good times, thanks to all who took part.

For those scoring at home, I attempted to sing the following five songs:

You and Me and the Bottle Makes Three by Big Bad Voodoo Daddy
Allison Road by Gin Blossoms
Mama Said Knock You Out by LL Cool J
A Girl Like You by the Smithereens
Misery by Soul Asylum

One of those songs has been performed thrice by me (while the rest were all first-timers).  Also, Sharada and I led off the night and closed it, so while it wasn't quite a seven-song marathon, it was maximum singing fun.

Also, before singing a few of us met at this sushi place to get our eat on.  Now this is the second time I'd been to this particular place, and both times...nobody else was eating there.  This was mentioned to someone at karaoke, and he noted that he hadn't hardly ever seen anybody at the place when he's there either.  He posited that it's a front operation for some ilicit ring of something or other...which makes sense given its location in town.  I don't know if that means i should like this place more or less.

Today was the conclusion (or so I thought) of a few things that had been a part of my life over the last six weeks/months.  This weekend has brought at least one too many reminders of how truly non-important things like trivia and fantasy sports are, so I'll try to keep things in the appropriate perspective.

Quiz for Cash

Here it was, week six (of six) of the local Sunday pub quiz thing.  My team had jumped into first after the third week, and came into tonight with an eleven-point lead.  But things are pretty wacky during the final weeks of these competitions, and in this case -- the so-called "superjoker" was employed in a way to really put the pressure on teams.

We were told the categories (somewhat obliquely, but still) and were allowed to pick one round on the night where each question would be worth ten points instead of just one.  There are often these sorts of multiplier effects...but usually you hear the whole round before deciding.  Not this time -- and I like this way of doing it.

Sadly, we ended up using the superjoker on our worst round -- costing us at least ten or twenty, and up to forty.  I really didn't expect us to get three of eight on a round, but we did, and our main competitors gained twenty points on us that round.  We did rather horribly for the night, and on the season...ended up in second place.  Two points out of first.  I should have pushed harder for the multiple-choice round to get the superjoker I guess.  Oh well, dumb luck, costed us each $30...boohoo.

Fantasy Baseball

The most amazing turn of events had me in something of a daze, although now I'm very bitter about it.  FIrst things first.

As mentioned in a post about this time last week, I was looking at something from 1st-5th (most likely 3rd-4th) in my reasonable-money league.  Just about everybody did their part...I went into today with a halfway-decent shot of jumping from 4th into 3rd, or at least tied for 3rd.  I knew I'd need every point my team could get me.

It was possible I'd slip and lose a point in batting somewhere, but everything went pretty typically; nobody ever really threatened to catch me from behind in homers, steals, or runs, and RBI's were pretty scarce today, so I held on there too.  My team's batting average has dipped, but we ended up ahead of the guy on our tail by no more than 3 ten-thousandths of a point!  NO CHANGE.

I therefore needed to gain in pitching.  As it were, my pitcher was on a mission, and got me a point in strikeouts early in the day.  But then the guy I just passed had a pitcher equally motivated, and the two of them essentially went head-to-head.  Somehow the Rockies started hitting the baseball (even if just to get out -- it beats them striking out!), and I finished the day with a lead of two strikeouts.  PLUS ONE POINT.

I knew a half-point would come if my pitcher got a win, but the Giants couldn't score worth a darn.  In the seventh inning, tho, they finally started hitting...and took the lead!  My guy was out of the game for the 8th and 9th, so if the Giants surrendered the lead, I would not have gotten the win.  But they didn't, and I got the win and moved up half-a-spot.  PLUS ONE-HALF POINT.

My pitching ratio categories weren't going anywhere, despite the guys ahead and behind me being extremely close in both categories.  And somehow in the euphoria of getting the unexpected win mentioned above...what?  How'd the guy pull back ahead of me?

It turns out the guy with whom I was battling for third-place had...gotten a pitching point based on squeaking by another team in the WHIP category.  The specifics aren't particularly important, but suffice to say -- his WHIP ratio number got lowered ever-so-slightly, and that moved him from 2nd into 1st in that particular category, which got him an extra point.  MINUS ONE POINT.

There was only one hope: the guy whom he passed in WHIP had one pitcher eligible to pitch.  But it wasn't at all certain that he'd get into the game.  The Mariners had a 4-3 lead in the 7th, and I needed them to...keep this lead (but not increase it too much!) so that their closer would come into the game for the 9th.  Then he was required to set the side down in order -- or at least to not give up a hit or walk a guy.  Then I...would hope that would make his team's WHIP number good enough to vault back over the guy who just took the point from him.  This is incredibly difficult to describe.

Anyhow...it's still 4-3...Putz (yes, that's his name) comes into the game...and strikes out the side!!!  And...the stupid WHIP number doesn't move an inch.  Bah.  It's probably worth mentioning at this point that...these two teams were tied at 1.237 -- all the way to the third decimal place.  And somehow...even though I thought everything had updated...omg, he took back the point!  PLUS ONE POINT.  Which dropped my competitor down to 61 points -- a half-point behind my 61.5!  We've got third...and another $100!

Well, no, not exactly, as there's (somewhat unexpectedly) a game tomorrow, and possibly one on Tuesday as well.  But the rosters were locked, so while somebody could conceivably catch me in some category (or 4th could catch somebody else in a category and gain a point that way), it wasn't looking very likely.  What are the chances somebody had all sorts of White Sox and Tigers and Twins on their rosters AND was able to affect my third-place standing?

Somehow while I was at trivia...the rosters went from being locked to unlocked.  Which meant someone could go out, cut the guys they've had all year, and grab everybody who's playing tomorrow, since those are just about the only guys who can affect a team's stats from here on in.

It turns out the guy in first, the only guy I know more than just in passing in the entire league, decided to load up on the aforementioned players.  HE DOESN'T NEED THE POINTS.  He's got first wrapped up.  But yeah, now he's going to collect 30+ at-bats this week, and will likely pass me in RBI, dropping me back into 4th.  If you couldn't tell, I am bitter.

As it were, it's possible I could gain a point in ERA tomorrow, which would make losing the RBI point rather moot.  For this to happen, I need the starter for the White Sox to get lit up -- I'm at 3.989 and he's at 3.964, so we're not talking about a catastrophic implosion by the venerable Gavin Floyd.  Anyhow, I'll be following this intently, and would really really prefer (from a fantasy/monetary standpoint) for either an extremely low-scoring game or a Tigers' blowout.  I could fight fire with fire and pick up a bunch of other guys, in the hopes of keeping the pace in RBI, but since my lead in batting average is so slim, I don't want to put that point in jeopardy, especially since I'd be getting a bunch of scrubs and am likely to get out-RBIed anyhow.  Grrrrr.

Fantasy Football

One sure win, two sure losses, and one very likely win, this despite my four (!!) stellar running backs combining for a total, on the day, all four of 'em, of...16 points.  They collectively average something north of 60.  No big deal -- I had a weak opponent and some favorable matchups, but it's not over yet; my opponent needs 40+ points from the Baltimore defense and the Steelers' RB, who just happen to be playing each other tomorrow night.  It's highly unlikely they'll both put up big showings (since what's good for one is bad for the other), but stranger things have happened.

Wow, I'm no longer able to express my age in five-number binary anymore.  And I should probably get to bed.

The Albuquerque Journal is doing this Comics Shootout thing, which I may or may not have mentioned before.  They take a comic strip from the page and put it up against one that's not yet on the page.  Whichever gets more votes stays, and the other goes.

The problem, of course, is that they don't come anywhere near taking the worst strip and matching against an up-n-comer.  Instead, they take pleasant enough strips and put them up against edgy new stuff.  Hi and Lois vs. Get Fuzzy -- boy, who's gonna win that one?  Agnes losing to Frazz initially annoyed me, but Frazz is one of my favorites now, and I hardly miss the imaginative girl with the long feet, even if it wasn't nearly the worst strip on the page.

(Incidentally, Hi and Lois is back, this time as the challenger facing-off against Marvin.  I'd have to go with H&L there, but I like Marvin well enough.  Couldn't the dreadful 9 Chickweed Lane find itself on the chopping block, maybe against something nearly its entire opposite like...Rose is Rose?)

But here's the thing I've noticed of late: Get Fuzzy...SUCKS.  It's excessively wordy, to the point that I don't even want to spend time reading it.  I like the artwork enough, but it's no game-changer.  Bucky has become tiresome, and since nearly every strip is focused on how he's being mean, the whole strip has become tiresome.

So it looks like I'm on for the 2nd Annual Thomas Snyder Coronati...err, US Sudoku Championship, happening a little over four weeks in Philadelphia.  I guess I should probably get around to booking flights and seeing about Mom's hotel points and stuff, but the master plan is in the works: get to always sunny Philadelphia on Thursday night, do whatever Friday, underperform on Saturday, fly to Buffalo Saturday night, go to a sports-bar to watch the Bills on Sunday, and head back on Monday.

As it were, anybody who's gonna be there wanna do anything on Friday?  If anyone's looking for a room (or has one and wants a roommate), let me know; Mom isn't made of hotel points like in years past.

Also, we've gotten PDFs of the 2008 WSC rounds, which have made for some pleasant (and not-so-pleasant) reminiscing.  I took on the Relay Round (two sets of four puzzles where numbers from the first puzzle are placed into the second...and on down the line) this afternoon, and did better than in Goa, which I guess is bound to happen: no pressure, my brain wasn't fried from five earlier rounds, slight puzzle familiarity, reliable electric grid, I did horribly on it in Goa, etc.  It's possible I made some number transpositions, but a quick once-over didn't reveal any.  Tho they rarely do.

One puzzle though...wow, blew my mind!  I had just finished the second-leg, dropped those numbers into the third leg, started trying to solve...wow, nothing.  I had lots of pencilmarks, but no big numbers anywhere.  I guess that's to be expected, this is the world championship, I'm not very good at classics...oh, wow.

I dropped the numbers into the third (correct) puzzle and immediately began working on...the fourth puzzle (with its missing givens).  SHARP!

Speaking of sharp -- tonight I'm going to head to a local poolhall to watch the debates.  This whole endeavor is being sponsored by: Albuquerque for Obama.  As I say, it'll be good to see how the other 90% lives.

Fantasy baseball is looking reasonably promising (for 3rd), with a fall to 5th requiring something of a catastrophe.  I'm not spending the money just yet tho.  Also, softball started, with a perfect pitch and a perfect bat and a pressure-free at-bat leading to...a ball finding the warning track.  I gotta get back on the flaxseed oil I guess.

So I lost a bet this week, which was graciously nullified by the victor.  As penance, I thought I'd go into detail here, in yet another self-flagellating "I am odd" post.

A friend of mine from work got back from a work trip to France this past weekend.  He talked of the French cuisine he had, including foie gras, and asked if I had any experience with it.  I had partaken of some at a going-away party for a French friend-of-a-friend about three or four years ago.  Clearly it had been awhile.

Anyhow, the dispute arose: is foie gras the liver of an overstuffed goose (ding!), or is it the creamy excretions of said liver (bzzzzt!).  He offered a wager to the factuality of my (latter) statement, I went with it, and promptly dropped $5 after we consulted the oracle of all wisdom.

Now I've undertaken these silly bets before, and for someone widely avowed to know his stuff, I seem to come up on the losing end of, well, all of them.  One time I was wrong based on someone's erroneous opinion, as I don't see how A Midsummer Night's Dream is more popular/well-known than Hamlet.  One time I was making an educated guess on the order of Presidents -- I put Coolidge before Harding since, like, Harding was allegedly awful, and how on earth would Coolidge have gotten re-elected after Harding fouled everything up?  And now this one came along, which was...something of a faulty recollection of the conversation we had about what exactly the gunk being spread upon our crackers actually was; my impression is that, I understood there was a difference between pate and foie gras, but believed the difference to be "Actual liver vs. stuff coming out of said liver" as opposed to "Liver of <other> vs. goose liver".  Or something like that.  If I'm slightly off, please don't challenge me to a bet.

This latest episode left me shell-shocked...more than even normally!  I've tried to come up with the reasons for this, and present the following:

Utter Corruptness: There's something pretty shady about knowing a guy's wrong and goading him into a bet over it.  Wagering over sporting events is one thing, because they're at least somewhat stochastic.  Not so much about things to which you've just been exposed in some foreign land.

Dumb Luck: The previous night, my trivia teammate and I (he of the Shakespearian wager above) had come to another disagreement, which didn't get quite to money being exchanged, but probably should have.  The Battle of Shiloh (as it's known among us northern agressors) -- did it occur in Tennessee or Kentucky?  I was on the right side of this one, and wouldn't feel like shaking his brain down for $5 except that it used to be mine.  To only end up ponying up the money when I'm wrong just doesn't seem fair.

Technicality: This one's pretty weak, but I keep waiting for someone to come riding to the rescue, speaking of the gavage (which is force-fed to the goose...something like that) being the true delicacy that's enjoyed.  I made the analogy of the contents of a stomach being demonstrably different from the stomach itself, but I'm afraid that's now how livers work. and won't save me here.

Reciprocity: It might be the wannabe teacher inside of me, but I'm rarely in the mood to stick it to anybody over some factoid.  When someone questions the veracity of what I'm claiming, rarely will I put them on the spot (for money at least).  This isn't to say I shun confrontation: ha!  But I'm happy to show them the truth without using their stubbornness against them to get a free value meal out of it.  In my own smarmy way, the fact that I'm right is reward enough.

As mentioned earlier, the other party was kind enough to disregard the whole incident and hand me back my paper Lincoln, which was greatly appreciated.  Maybe the greater value here will be for me to totally run the hell away from these sorts of pointless put-up-or-shut-up moments in the future.

Heading into the final week of the baseball season, my team in my moderate money league is in fourth-place, with third-place a distinct possibility, second-place (or first) requiring something of a minor miracle, and fifth-place...lurking.  Money goes to the top four, with an extra $100 for each spot you move up.

Naturally, I've decided to put all my hopes on fantasy baseball stalwarts Shin-Hoo Choo, Brandon Wood, Ryan Rowland-Smith, Alfredo Amezaga, and David Price -- he of the six innings of MLB experience.  The league has seven counting categories (where guys can't hurt you -- the more stats they accumulate, the better) and three ratio categories (where you average out the good and the bad), and of the latter group, I shouldn't lose (or gain, really) any points in batting average.  The two pitching ratio categories...I have an aggregate 5 points (out of a possible 20), and could gain as many as 4 more points (should my guys deliver quality numbers while other teams' guys stay about normal)...or drop a couple.  Of the counting categories -- should these guys decide not to take the week off, I shouldn't lose any points in batting, and may gain one or two there.  Pitching-wise...strikeouts and wins are both prime targets for point poaching.  I'm expecting something in the neighborhood of ten starts from my five guys (which isn't so bad seeing as we only have 4 SP and 2 RP slots), and while gaining seven wins on the guy three spots ahead of me in that category is probably pushing it, should I gain three wins on my other competitors...I'll gain three points on the both of them.  That can't hurt.

It's hard to believe that it's all coming to an end soon.  No longer will I get Tim Lincecum in the 8th round, Geovany Soto in the 15th, or Joakim Soria in the 24th.  No longer will I take Carlos Guillen in the 5th, Nick Swisher in the 7th, or Pedro Martinez or Howie Kendrick in any round.  I went the "All Bats, Cheap Arms" route and drafted only hitters (or would-be hitters) in the first seven rounds, and after my sneakily cheap pitchers (Pedro, Brett Myers, etc.) didn't work out, I had to scramble...basically all year.  And something about that I'm gonna miss.  Here's hoping I at least get my buy-in back.

Football is working out rather well thus far, after a solid 3-1 this week (with 4-0 a slight possibility if Antonio Gates somehow outperforms Brett Favre tomorrow night).  It's looking like, for the second time in three weeks, I may end up with the league's top score in my $ league, and currently have the league's top two scorers on the season in Drew Brees (taken #6 overall) and Reggie Bush (taken #19, immediately after LenDale White no less).  When you throw in Marion Barber III (7th-highest scorer, although he's #1 in my heart), you end up with a pretty doggone formidable core group of players; the three of them outscored the bejesus out of this week's (Brady-less) opponent.

Of course, my next-highest guy is somewhere in the neighborhood of 60th, and my wideouts combined for a solid two points this week.  I guess relying on the Texans' passing game (I have both starting WRs plus their quarterback who starts at half-points) isn't as savvy a move as I'd been hoping.  Should Robert Meachem or Jabar Gaffney or Justin Gage become servicable, I'll be in business.  Ronald Curry doesn't make that list, as he's hopeless, and will be cut shortly.

I don't know how it's all gonna play out, although winning the league in two of the first three weeks is a good start.  Unfortunately, last week we didn't even win our game, putting up an anemic 4th-from-the-bottom total; yeah, I guess the Texans being out actually did keep the numbers down (as we only lost by 2.5 points).  Anyhow, I'm about as confident as a guy who's only made the playoffs once in seven previous years can be.  Check back with me when the Saints have a bye...

Lastly, in puzzle news...the Nikoli Team stuff has been going on for awhile now, and all in good fun.  I'm fine with it continuing indefinitely, although I'd be happy to bring new blood into the mix (not at the expense of the old blood, of course).  I'm going to be making some spreadsheet adjustments -- one to fix the tie scores (as mentioned by Thomas in a separate post), one to get some sort of tally of which puzzle styles are the best for each team.  I wonder how much balance there is?  I would imagine the Kakuro tallies got a little closer after I biffed the most recent one something fierce.  Also, detuned is on a tear!

Let's see -- the US won the Ryder Cup (thanks to a bunch of nobodies outplaying a bunch of well-known Europeans and Brits), and I really like countless songs on Rock Band 2.

And that's all.

Wow, that was certainly the best $4 concert to which I've ever been.  Maybe the only one too...

As seems to always be the case when it comes to concerts this month, the big snafu came on the front end.  This was my first time visiting the NM State Fairgrounds, and my prearranged rendezvous spot...ended up not actually having any parking.  Fair enough, we'll just make a left at the light and...

Oh, you can wait for that left, but it's never going to come.  In fact, you're not even going to get a green light.  So I went right, did a u-turn, went back past the designated parking area, did another u-turn, got in the "bus lane only" like everyone else, and went into the parking lot.  The people in charge of city traffic, btw, may get their own post.  It will not paint them in a good light.

Due to sickness, weakass excuse, or what-have-you, I was actually rolling with only one other tonight.  He and I met up, proceeded into the Fair, and...wow, perfect, we found a good spot when the Gin Blossoms took the stage five minutes later, almost exactly on time.  And they started rocking.  No opening acts, no pretentious make-them-wait period, nothing.  Perfect.

The trend was started early that they would mix in their third album (listed as fourth but that isn't exactly right) with stuff from the first two (which was NME-heavy).  The band consistently writes and performs good friendly-pop (with a little country mixed in), which has its drawbacks when it comes to distinct differences between songs; I don't know the most-recent album that well, and I found myself thinking we were hearing a song we'd heard earlier at least twice on the night.  But if you're going to (I daresay) overdo something, may as well be something I really like.

They played...well, every popular song of theirs, as well as some other goodies (but not greaties; no Cajun Song, As Long as It Matters, or Pieces of the Night, which are definitely three of my favorite non-radio cuts of theirs).  Then came the closer, Hey Jealousy (natch), which featured a pretty decent response from the "hold the mic out for the audience to sing" trick -- a trick that never gets old, fwiw.  Off they went and that was that...until our dedicated response brought them back out.

This is my third or fourth of their shows, and easily the one that pleased them the most.  I don't know if Robin Wilson has read How to Make Fans and Influence Crowds, but he had it going tonight: handing off the tambourine to someone in the front-row, giving a second microphone (!!) to someone in front, even taking a guy's cellphone (which was being held up so the person on the other end could hear the music) and singing into it along with the mic during a song -- not to mention carrying on a conversation with the person during the instrumental.  They seemed genuinely happy to have had a pretty good crowd (it was 2-for-1 day, after all) there to hear them, and appeared to be angling to return to that same stage a year from now.

The encore led off with, of all things. a Daughtry cover...hmm, I guess Elton John did it too.  Robin played it solo on acoustic to lead it off, and the band came in about halfway through, making it easily the best version of that song I've ever heard.  Robin seemed like he was trying to emulate Johnny Rzeznik, which is certainly fine by me, and is about as astute an observation as you'll get from me.  Anyhow, up next was Follow You Down, then Hands Are Tied (featuring extended musical outro).  Then came the usual disappointment immediately followed by...oh yeah, forgot to mention something.

If there's one thing this concert brought back was the 2000-2002 memories of going to Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers shows (dozens) and being surrounded by particularly attractive mid-20's females, often without pesky he-men accompanying them.  My buddy and I were fortuitously in the neighborhood of a couple of said demographic, along with their tall, seemingly harmless man-friend.  I actually introduced myself to one of them, who was excessively pleasant and with whom I carried on an amusing, if necessarily disjointed (given the setting), conversation.

Things began to go downhill when...I won't type it here, but remind me and I'll tell you in person.  I then briefly made the acquaintance of her female friend -- initial reports that she was the more approachable of the two were in error -- and ended up conversing with the guy, who claimed to know me from somewhere.  This was funny:

Me: How do you know me?
Him: I'm friends with Neeta.
Me: Yeah, I know her...my friend over there (*points at guy who was also at concert*) went to school with her.
--- Five minutes later ---
Me: So you went to Illinois with Neeta?
Him: No, UNM.
Me: I thought she went to Illinois.
Him: I think we're not talking about the same person then.
Me: Is she East Indian?
(We look at each other for two seconds, then slowly slide apart)

Suffice to say, despite early favorable returns, as soon as the show ended, the three of them began to make serious headway towards the midway.  I asked if they wanted to go for drinks, they said they were going for...pie, somewhere else at the Fair.  We/I tried tagging along, but...err, got the serious impression of being unwanted.  Not sure why...or maybe I am sure why.

Anyhow, all-in-all it was a superb show, and even the pre-show, sitting-in-parking-lot downtime was well spent with some well-needed chatting with family back east.  I'm already looking forward to next year's show -- and not just because there probably isn't going to be anything good in town between now and then either.

Something cool happened during the Dallas/Philly game: both punters were from the same foreign country.  And not just any foreign country, but the lovable rugged land of Australia.  This got positively zero mention (perhaps as it should be), and probably isn't even the first time these two punters have faced each other; both times these teams up last year may count as well.  I guess the fact that there were, what, two punts?...that didn't lend itself to this being much of a conversation topic.  Or maybe nobody cares.

It was, however, Hispanic Heritage Day...or Month...Week...something.  There were lots of clips about the top Mexican peewee flag football team coming to Dallas for the game and playing against a Texas-based team.  I also liked the Spanish-language commercials.  I could very seriously do without the "Aguilas contra los Vaqueros" bit -- I'd love to hear American sports announcers refer to the Mexican national team as "the three colors" -- but it's not remotely a big deal.  Japanese baseball teams call themselves Giants and Lions and Tigers (unless I'm mistaken), and I'll take their style over this fakery by the NFL any day.  But really, it's nothing.

What's bound to be more than nothing is (I would imagine) the pending fracas regarding the silly attempt at a joke of Tony Kornheiser immediately after the ESPN Deportes guys had their audio feed played for tv.  Tony said something like..."They either just said 'They're not gonna get him' or 'I need to pick up my dry cleaning'".  Oh snap, no he didn't!

I find TK to be a reasonably good contributor, but I'm an excessively cheap date when it comes to these things.  Or maybe my disappointiment at him took a back seat to the 2.5 point loss suffered by my team; I guess I could have really used Romo to not giftwrap a touchdown for the Eagles defense, who didn't deserve the 10 points they scored on the night.  Romo not overthrowing Barber during their last real drive would have been particularly helpful too.  Oh well, leagues aren't won in the second week of the season anyhow.  Thanks for your hard work, Marion.