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Rerun
Posted 8:30 AM, Jun 29, 2008 |
My episode of Merv Griffin’s Crosswords will re-air on Thursday, June 10th in select markets. If your market airs two episodes of the show daily, mine will be the second show aired. If your market only airs one episode daily, well, forget it, mine won’t re-air in your neighborhood.
In Los Angeles, check out KNBC at 12:30pm.
In Minneapolis/St. Paul and Duluth and Minnesota in general, forget it.
Check additional air-times here.
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Two Trivia Questions I Wrote
Posted 11:36 AM, Jun 28, 2008 |
1) The chemical symbol for what type of acid can be made by rearranging some of the letters in a South American country?
2) What band released an album that shares a title with the name of a film directed by Gus van Sant?
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Summer of Lull
Posted 4:41 PM, Jun 24, 2008 |
While most people I know look forward to summer, particularly those involved in education, I can’t quite do it.
Just this week at Ye Olde Math Shoppe, we switched our hours around a little bit, adopting our summer hours through the end of August. This results in me actually working 1 additional hour per week, but working 1 fewer day per week. So, I work longer on M-Th, but have Friday, Saturday, and Sunday off each week.
Ah, yes, three day weekends every week! Not so great, actually. (If, at this point, you’re bemoaning your 40+ hour workweek, best to tune out now.) It turns out having a lot of time off is really boring.
I only work 29 hours per week as it is (28 during the school year), so even on days that I work, I have some free time, and now I have a whole other day to fill up. I’m looking into various ways to fill my time, from buying a keyboard and re-exploring how to play a little bit of piano, along with keeping up on the guitar. Still lawn bowling. Bought and am reading a book on stock market investing, and am also doing some research on that online as well. Looking to play more tennis. Maybe, if you’re lucky, some more blog writing. So it seems like I have plenty of things to occupy my time, and we haven’t even talked about following sports, which could occupy some people’s entire waking lives.
Yet still, boredom creeps in. During the summer, as my hours change and I’m home by myself less (instead of going to work at 1:30 or 2:00 in the afternoon after spending the entire morning wasting time, I go to work around 10:30, which is much better), I’m less bored at home. Unfortunately, since YOMS is an educational business, it’s slow in the summer, leaving me with huge chunks of time in which the only recourse is to investigate offshore drilling and write rambling blog posts. YOMS is kind of like a cemetery in the summer.
So it’s a trade-off - less boredom at home during the summer, more boredom at work; less boredom at work during the school year, more boredom at home.
Any way you slice it, it’s boredom reigning supreme. Maybe I’ll start another blog.
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Elevator Exchange
Posted 3:04 PM, Jun 23, 2008 |
While taking the elevator down to my car, holding a yogurt, can of Coca-Cola, and frozen calzone in my hand, and wearing a Ye Olde Math Shoppe t-shirt:
Vaguely Familiar Woman: Looks like a good breakfast.
Me: (already confused) I guess so.
VFW: I guess it’s filling, at least.
Me: Yeah!
VFW: I bet you’re good with computers.
Me: (even more confused) I guess so.
VFW: I’m looking to hire someone to help me with my computer.
Me: What do you need help with?
VFW: It’s a long story. I’ll tell you later, and I’ll also tell you why I thought you would be good with computers.
Me: Okay.
VFW: What number do you live at?
Me: 311.
VFW: Okay, I live at 301. I mean, 103. I’ll see you around.
And then she muttered something as we were departing the elevator.
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Vaccinations
Posted 10:37 AM, Jun 19, 2008 |
The paragon of newsworthy sites, CNN, has an article about whether parents should vaccinate their babies. They provide a list of changes parents have requested of pediatricians, and make it clear that they aren’t discussing the pros and cons of any of these suggestions. What kind of news is this? It’s not even informative, other than to say, basically, “Here are what some parents are doing, despite medical advice and evidence. You be the judge.”
Even though the article is titled “Should I vaccinate my baby?” it provides no actual evidence, other than the anecdotal, to attempt to answer that question.
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Novice Singles
Posted 8:40 AM, Jun 16, 2008 |
Yesterday I (lawn) bowled in my first Southwest Division-sponsored tournament, the Men’s Novice Singles, at Newport Harbor Lawn Bowling Club. The US Lawn Bowling Association, of which the Southwest Division is a part, is the national governing body for lawn bowling.
Anyway, so there was a field of 32 men bowling singles; each of us were to bowl 4 games with each game being the first to 15 points. The winner would be decided on overall record, with “plus points” (the margin of victory) being the tiebreaker.
We got started just after 9am, and I was one of the people who got to immediately start their first game. (Since there were 32 people, we really needed 16 “rinks” - 1 rink for each pair; however, they only had 12 rinks available, so bowlers had to wait throughout the day.)
In order to bowl in the tournament, you had to be a guy, obviously, and a novice, which means you had to have been bowling less than 2 years. As a result, the tournament had people who had been bowling pretty close to 2 years (I’ve been bowling for about a year and a half) and people who just started a month ago, and everywhere in between.
My first game was against a brand-new bowler, about a month in, and I won 15-0, giving me 15 “plus points” and a good start. My second game I won 15-5 against a gentleman who had been bowling about 6 months. So, I was 2-0 +25 before lunch, which is about the best start I could hope for.
After lunch, I bowled against someone who had been bowling about the same length of time as I have been; it was the toughest match of the day, with the score going back and forth until 7-6. At that point, my opponent gave up 3 points, and the next end he did the same, making it 12-7. I ended up winning by a final score of 15-8, making me 3-0 +32.
In my last game, I was up 13-5 and was holding what I thought was 1 point with 1 bowl to go. I bowled, hit the jack, and knocked it back to my opponent, resulting in 1 point for him. As it turns out, prior to my last bowl I was actually holding 2 points, meaning I shouldn’t have played my last one; had I just taken the two points, I would have won 15-5. As it was, after giving away 1 point and then scoring 2 on the following end, I won 15-6, finishing 4-0 +41. I should have walked down to look, but by this point it was about 4pm, I had been outside and bowling, off and on, for 7 hours, and I was tired. I also didn’t think it would make much difference, whether I finished +41 or +42; I figured my score was good enough.
However, that thinking and not walking down to look closely to see the score proved costly; someone else also finished 4-0 +41, resulting in a complete tie for first place. The tiebreaker was a one-end, four-bowl playoff.
After we had each bowled three bowls out of four in our final end, it looked like he was holding one point; it was close enough that it would have to be measured, though. His fourth bowl went wide and didn’t change anything.
At this point, I could have decided to score the end as it was, and if my bowl was closer, I would win; it was close, but I still thought he was probably holding the point, so I figured I had better use my last bowl. Fortunately, my last bowl came in and hit the jack softly, trailing right behind it, and finishing just inches away, good enough for the point on the playoff end and first place in the tournament.
For coming in first, I got a cash prize and a medal, and my name will go on a plaque, with the names of the second and third place finishers.
It was a long day, with excellent competition all around, and the playoff certainly could have gone either way. It was nice to get out and bowl with some younger folks (a lot of novices are under 50, which is what I now consider “younger”), and I managed to catch Tiger’s putt on 18, which was almost as intense as my last bowl. Almost.
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Roast
Posted 12:04 PM, Jun 11, 2008 |
So now I’m obviously back from my trip to Champaign, IL, by way of Indianapolis, IN. The trip was to see a couple college friends, a couple acquaintances, and my BIO 100 lab partner from freshman year, back in good old 1996.
Jeff and I looked familiar to one another and spent a fair amount of time figuring out where we knew each other from. We were about to give up when someone else mentioned that I was from Duluth, MN. “Strange,” Jeff said, “my BIO 100 lab partner was from Duluth.” Seems an odd thing for Jeff to remember, but he said that freshman year he was trying to meet someone from every state, and I was his token Minnesotan. We then described things to one another about BIO 100, each of us interrupting the other and saying things like, “Yes!” or “I remember that!” and then, well, a match was made.
Also, much pork was eaten, and beans and potatoes, and lots of beanbag tossing, along with washers and golf balls on strings. I turned out to be pretty good at all of it, I guess, thanks to lawn bowling.
Also got in some late, late night cribbage (2:45 - 3:15am, Sunday morning), about 20 games of Guess Who?, as well as one devastatingly brutal game of Sorry!. If it weren’t for cribbage, one would think we were only playing games that ended in punctuation marks. Alas, the Jeopardy! home game was nowhere to be found.
Sadly, no Yahtzee was played.
Also, while driving from Indianapolis to Champaign, I was caught in a good old Midwestern storm / tornado warning. It doesn’t rain like that out here. I kind of missed the torrential rainstorms but, as many people had experienced flooding in their basements due to days and days of heavy rain, I didn’t mention my satisfaction.
It had been 4 years, I think, since my last pig roast (which are now held twice annually, once in Chicago and once in Champaign, although the Champaign destination is moving to Edwardsville, IL for next year). I need to make it a point to attend more often. Good times were had by all.
Except the pig.
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Beer and Bathrooms
Posted 9:10 AM, Jun 10, 2008 |
There will be updates about the pig roast weekend sometime, probably today, but first:
Last night, a few of us went to the Brittania Pub in Santa Monica. I had part of a beer left and ordered another one. As the other beer was coming, I was holding the last bit of my first beer in my hand, prepared to drink it. The waitress came by, set down the new beer, and actually removed the first beer from my hand. She said, and I’m quoting, “I’ll take that.” And then it was gone. The remains of my beer.
Fortunately, I have a short memory, and the sight of a new, full beer in front of me made me forget the old one. Well, almost.
Also, I used the bathroom at Von’s grocery store yesterday. It required a quarter to unlock the door. It was located just past the electrical panels and the giant trash compactor. It was a dirty, dirty bathroom, definitely not worth the quarter I paid for it. (Well, actually, the EC paid for it.)
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Punching It In
Posted 1:44 PM, Jun 5, 2008 |
I’d rather not, actually.
“Punching it in” is the new high-five, I guess - it has been for a while. Instead of the usual high-five, both parties make a fist and then knock them together, knuckle to knuckle.
This makes no sense to me, but apparently it’s what all the kids / presidential candidates are doing nowadays.
High-fiving doesn’t make much sense either, but this seems even more ridiculous. We don’t need a new ridiculous thing to replace the old ridiculous thing we already had.
Don’t try to punch it in with me; I just might miss.
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Old Friends
Posted 8:49 AM, Jun 5, 2008 |
Sometimes, rarely, before I write a post I write some notes, mostly if I don’t want to write the post at, like, 11pm, but don’t want to forget my thoughts. The notes for this post were:
old friends - email - email = closer world? - looming Cal “college friends” - ‘treacly’? - LA - best friend DVR - Indy trip - board games / Magic - inability to visit
So, things might get a little hairy.
In no particular order:
When I was getting ready to leave high school and move to college, I was enrolled in my high school AP English course. We were required to write “lit logs” - basically, weekly letters to our teacher, Cal, in which we discussed what we were reading that week. Instead, I wrote some treacly not-so-lit log about how I was moving away and my friends would all disappear, etc. Cal wrote me back in a letter I still have in a shoebox and told me, a) not to worry, and b) the real friends you make are the ones in college; he doesn’t communicate with anyone from high school, and few people do.
I’m not sure how much of a consolation that is, but okay. Seems reasonable.
There were a few college friends I was close with post-college, living in Minneapolis, and the rest were friends born from some high-school associations, friends of friends, brothers of friends, etc. And then there were co-workers.
The high school friends all did fade away, for one reason or another, but I think, now, that it’s less that we were friends in high school and more that, even with air travel, the internet, email, IM chat, Skype, and so on, the world still isn’t that small of a place or, perhaps, that it isn’t conveniently small.
What prompted all this thinking? First, that I’m flying to Indianapolis tomorrow and then driving to Champaign, Illinois, to visit a couple college friends and eat lots of pork. Second, I got an email from a Minneapolis friend in which he talked about some old mutual friends and also mentioned names like Dana and Simone as if I was supposed to know who these people are. No fault of his, and I’m smart enough to use context clues, but the quick realization is that, look, life keeps going whether or not I’m there. I know, no kidding, right?
Turns out the rest of the friends, the non-high school ones, also faded away, mostly. Some faded away completely, although instead of using the word “faded” I should use the word “vanished.”
Yes, Los Angeles has it’s problems: smog, traffic - well, I needn’t go on. But it’s not like I’m asking people to visit me in Nome, Alaska, or some Soviet gulag. But, people seem stricken by the inability to visit. I’m not sure why that is, but. The people I know here, they always have people visiting - it’s like they can’t even get one group out of their hair before someone else shows up. So maybe I’m blessed.
There isn’t really a point, there’s no call to action, and there’s nothing in this post that hasn’t been said or thought of by millions of inter- or intra-national expatriates.
It’s just a bunch of stuff I’ve been thinking, all of it brought to the blog due to a single email and two people, Dana and Simone, that I’ve never met. Dana and Simone, I miss you guys.
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Nap Afterthought
Posted 12:17 PM, Jun 3, 2008 |
Oh, man, I just woke up from a monster, killer two-hour nap. Fell asleep watching tennis. Could have slept for another hour, but work is looming on the distant horizon.
Today, I hire a new employee. I make someone’s day, and also break someone’s heart. It’s a tough life.
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Technological Advancements
Posted 6:42 AM, Jun 3, 2008 |
So I have a hate-hate relationship with my cell phone, and cell phones in general. Mine, in particular, gets terrible service - T-Mobile has, cleverly, been renamed T-Immobile here at YoG HQ. I almost never get a signal; yesterday, the EC, also on T-Immobile, won a prize on a call-in radio promotion but, unfortunately, T-Immobile dropped the signal/call, and so, well, she didn’t win a prize.
Also, every day at Ye Olde Math Shoppe, we get at least 2 phone calls which, when I answer, result in complete silence - no background noise, no traffic, just silence, which leads me to believe they are cell phone calls that never quite connected.
So, on both the giving and receiving end, I loathe cell phones.
I understand the appeal (or need) in terms of preparing for emergencies, “always” being able to get help when there are car accidents, fires, etc., but I don’t understand the appeal when people start talking about, “Well, this way I can do work from home,” or when people say, “Well, it’s so my job can always get in touch with me.”
But people actually say these things.
I call these people maladjusted.
Listening to early-morning radio today (I woke up around 4:30 and was kept awake by the hoot owl that I have nicknamed Thor) I heard an ad for some program, I forget the name, that lets you access your work computer and desktop from home. I’ve heard of the program many times before, but never really thought about it.
The big selling points are things like, “It will let you spend more time with your family,” but really what it does is lets you take your work home with you. It lets your boss say, “Hey, do this project over the weekend - look, you don’t even have to come in!” and before you know it you’re working 60 hours a week, you loathe your once-comfortable home office space, and you haven’t had a true day without work in 6 months.
Can someone explain all this to me, because it seems like everyone is losing their minds.
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