The West Roys

The Black

2008-06-24T20:00:00.000-07:00

(For some pictures, check here)

The executive summary: The most difficult straight-forward course I've ever played. Tobacco Road is hard, but mainly because you can't see half of the pins or fairways. The Black is just big and hilly and has the most penalizing bunkers imagineable. However, the greens are relatively dull, and so if you have a good ball striking day you can make a decent score. Check that -- a great ball striking day.

Here are my notes/thoughts from the day:

Pregame: Get there really, really early: 8:00 for a 9:51 tee time. Maybe the earliest Wiseman has ever been to a golf event. The clubhouse is gorgeous, and looks a lot like a real country club. That said, the range is ghetto, and amazingly small for a facility that hosts 5 golf courses. The security associated with teetimes at the Black is impressive: golfers get wristbands once they pay, and the wristbands are cut off by the starter on the first tee. The weather looks dicey as we tee off.

#1: The first tee is right there where everyone is watching, and with the signs for the Open looming above it is pretty nerve racking. The first hole is 40 feet below the tee box and a sharp dogleg to the right. I hit a solid drive just into the rough at the elbow of the dogleg, but still can't see the pin. 8-iron from 138 gets pin high on left. Easy chip to 5 feet below hole, knock in putt for par. Best drive may have been Mike's, which was 75 yards left of the fairway into the fairway on the Green Course.

#2: Probably shouldn't have hit driver, because I would have rather been on flat spots. Drive into right rough, can't hit any sort of fade/cut/slide off the side hill lie, so I pull a 7 iron into the rough 50 yards short of green. Hit a 60 degree wedge to 15 feet, two-putt for bogey.

#3: Playing about 152 from the whites. I knock it 5 yards right and 5 yards past pin, two putt for par. Wiseman hits 6 iron on the front part of green and rolls in a nice 25 footer for birdie.

#4: Yarg. Something makes me hit 3 wood to try and stay short of trouble that I couldn't have reached anyways. I leak my tee shot into right rough, try and get a 4-hybrid onto the 2nd plateau, but instead hit into giant bunker. Good lie, hit a 7 iron pin high about 40 yards right of green (great angle). Hit a good chip, but three-jack for double. Just a fantastic risk/reward hole for the pros, since they have to kill a long iron uphill to reach in two, but there is a false-back to the green.

(You'll notice a theme here: missing to the right. I have no idea what the left side of the course looks like. I hit a couple of drives down the left half of the fairway, but that's it. It could be really easy over there, but I'd never know.)

#5: Bust a high fade down the middle, which is perfect for the diagonal fairway. You could hit the left side of fairway and have 250+ yards. I have 180 back uphill and hit a 4-hyrbid pin high, 15 yards right of green (magically, not in bunker). Hit another good chip and knock in the putt for par.

#6: +3 through 5 holes, and the wheels come off. Kind of a tough tee-shot, since you can't really see anything except a little sliver of fairway (hole turns left and goes steeply downhill about 225 yards off the tee). I hit a weak two-iron that leaks into the fescue, chip out into the rough on the other side of the fairway, and chunk something just short of green. Try a miraculous flop (to an absurd pin position), blade it over the green into the fescue collar of the back bunker. Try to play it from the bunker (ball was level with my chest)... miss twice, come out of the bunker and hit it lefty... back into the bunker. Hit out, two-putt for X (counts as 8 for handicap purposes).

#7: Hit a decent drive into the fairway, but am pretty far left (another diagonal fairway). Hit a terrible weak layup into right rough, but am able to muscle an 8-iron from 132 onto the back of the green. It starts pouring. POURING. I try and make my 5 footer for par with the rain pouring down, but alas I miss. Bogey.

#8: We kind of play this on the run since the group in front of us was scared by the rain. I hit another weak fade 5-iron, nearly get stymied by a tree but hit a decent chip, two-ish putts and we're off to #9.

#9: Fantastic drive down the right side, although since it's a dogleg left I'm not in the best position. (Incredible fairway... not a flat lie anywhere.) Hit another weak fade 3-hybrid about 20 yards right and 10 yards short of green. Try and punch a wedge back onto the green but come up short. Plug into the lip of the bunker (remember that rain?). And I mean "plug" and "lip". Manage to get it onto the fringe, cover myself in wet sand, chip, and hit two putts for a triple.

So I was 3 over through the first 5 holes and 9 over over the next 4 holes. Suh. Weet. At least the weather was sucky.

#10: Great tee shot down the left side. 5-iron from 180 ish comes up short into the bunker. Rain is pouring again, we wait it out under the shelter. When it starts slacking off I chunk my bunker shot (yeah wet sand), finally get out and two putt for double.

#11: Dumb stuff all around. I'm too lazy to put my glove on and hit my worst drive of the day. Amazingly I find it in the fescue and the lie is a little bare. I try and hit a 4-hybrid back out to the fairway, but the club gets twisted and I barely make it back to the "short" rough. I hit the same club and chunk it down the fairway into the left fringe. Next comes a 60 degree wedge from 70 yards. The fringe is so nice and the grass is so dense that my wedge slides right underneath the ball, so I hit a really high shot that comes up about 5 yards short of the green. You shouldn't be surprised to find that there is a bunker short of the green. And that I had a buried lie. Again. I leave first bunker shot in the bunker, finally get out (hitting the pin) and two putt for my 2nd quad of the day. That's +15 over 6 holes.

#12: Turnaround. Decent drive down the right side leaves 235 to hole (my fade really doesn't do much good on a dogleg left). I don't trust my 3-wood so I try and rip my two hybrid. I remember doing the same back when I shot 77 and adjusted my posture so that it was a little more upright. Boom! I don't quite hit it 235 (more like 220, and then it plugged). Hit a 9-iron bump and run that rolled right past the cup and onto the back fringe. Cozy a putt down the hill to an inch for a bogey.

#13: Big par 5. Leak a drive a little right, but am able to hit a 4-hybrid out of the light fescue. Have 81 yards for my 3rd shot. I hit a 3/4 54 degree wedge exactly 81 yards. Unfortunately I hit it with a ton of spin (or, at least some spin -- that should be a pitch for Vokey, since I can't spin anything) and pull it back down onto the front shelf. Run the birdie putt by 5 feet and miss the downhill slider on the comeback.

#14: Leak a 6 iron from 167 to the right. Finally figure out how to hit out of the sand and hit a great bunker shot to 10 feet. Miss the putt, but hit my 3rd bogey in a row. That's pretty good here.

#15: The hardest hole on the course, and arguably the hardest par 4 anywhere on earth. I bust my drive down the middle and am left with 175 to the hole. I play it 2-3 clubs uphill (3-hyrbid), but catch it thin and land in the rough short of the green. (I did hit a 2nd 3-hyrbid and knocked it on... it was the club.) Make a good chip, miss a 20 footer for par, end up with bogey. Feel like a champ.

#16: Hit my 2nd consecutive fairway but am rewarded with 216 into the wind. Two-hyrbid comes up into the right bunker, hit a great bunker shot to 15 feet, two putt for another bogey.

#17: Hit a nice 3-hyrbid from 195. Ball fades a bit much and am left on the lower shelf. Have to putt through the fringe, which throws me off, and end up 3-putting for bogey.

#18: Close out with yet another fairway hit. Have 153 back up the hill to a dead-front pin position. Hit a nice 7 iron that comes up just short of the green, but make an easy chip 4 feet by and make the putt. Book-end the start and finish with pars.

Holes 1-5: +3
Holes 6-11: +15
Holes 12-18: +6
Total: +24, par 71 = 95

Some notes:

I didn't lose a ball. I hit the fairway on 7 of 11 par 4s and was rewarded by getting to hit 4/3/5/2/3/2/7 iron in to the greens (hitting none of them). I only hit my pitching wedge on the driving range, and only hit one 9 iron (a bump and run).

Yarg. What a rough middle of the round... In general it's tough to see how I would score a lot better here. I can obviously replace the quads with bogeys, but I don't see a ton more pars out there: I can't expect to reach the green on many of these par 4s in regulation (I'm not that accurate with a 3-iron), so at best I can make decent chips and try for bogey-option-par. I could realistically birdie #7 and #13 (par 5s), maybe #3, maybe #1, but that's about it.

The blog is dead, long live the blog

2008-06-23T19:47:00.001-07:00

For a variety of reasons, I'm done with the old blog about random stuff going on in my life. But I have decided to blog about golf, because I love golf and writing about golf. Sorry if that isn't your cup of tee. (HA! Tee! or Tea!)

Duke

2008-03-21T05:30:00.000-07:00

Long story short: blog has been silent for the past two weeks because I didn't have the InterWebs at home. Now I do. Regular blogging to resume shortly. In the meantime, I managed to score a ticket to the 1st round NCAA games yesterday. Saw Duke barely beat Belmont. Here's the thing: the crowd was so anti-Duke they booed the cheerleaders.

Read that again: they BOOED THE CHEERLEADERS. Who does that? Sure, Belmont is a great story. Boo our basketball players. But our cheerleaders? Jeez...

Day 4 Photos

2008-03-06T18:55:00.000-08:00

A little out of order, but here's what happened between Columbia, MO and Charleston, WV.

Ozarkland. We didn't go in, but it was the most interesting thing to take a photo of while filling up with gas. That and I didn't think that the Ozarks actually came that far north.

The Arch. I was surprised that the park is actually called "Jefferson National Expansion Museum." The brand "arch" and "gateway" aren't anywhere in the name. Go figure. Anyways, this thing is really cool, especially as you read about the history of the design (1947) and construction (not until 1960). Saarinen didn't know how to build it, and by the time they figured it out he had passed away.

Not much going on in southern Indiana, so we made a 7 mile side trip to Santa Claus, IN. They've got this and a huge wooden roller coaster. And farmland.

The profile of the Kentucky State Capitol from a hill way up above the heart of Frankfort. The Capitol building is nice, but the governor's mansion is off the hook.

4,238

2008-03-06T18:46:00.002-08:00

Fairfax Station, VA

2008-03-06T17:51:00.000-08:00

And... we're done. Or, a week ago today, we were done. There was something refreshing about waking up to a "short" drive of only 350 miles or so, but it was also sad to be heading into familiar territory. Once I crossed into Virginia there wasn't a stretch of road in front of me that I hadn't driven at least once before. That was true for the first time since I drove south of Salem, OR.

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We tried to end the trip the way we started: looking for a giant hole in the ground. Turns out there is something called the Grand Canyon of the South in Virginia, but sadly it was way further south than we were going. After reading a terrible review of basically all of the BBQ places in Charlottesville we decided to make a break from smoky pork products and go after more traditional country food. Lunch was at the Southern Kitchen (surprisingly, no website) which probably has the best imitation of my Grandmother's food ever. The tea was similar, the green beans were very similar, the potato salad was very similar... the fried chicken was a little different, but not by much.

After lunch we drove to Middletown, VA, home of Route 11 potato chips. It's a surprisingly small little building where they make small batch potato chips. They are unafraid to use the word "chip" as a verb, and are very proud about their deals with Cracker Barrel and someone else (can't remember). The best part about the "tour" was getting a hot chip, which is a surprisingly pleasant treat.

With that we hopped on I-66 and made the familiar 50 mile trek home. The trip was over. We could stand up and walk around and not get back in a car. Fantastic.

To close, pictures from Day 4:

The WVa state capitol:

Home Sweet Home!

Charleston, WV

2008-02-28T19:34:00.000-08:00

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Details to come tomorrow. Highlights:

Stopped to see the Gateway Arch in a frigid St. Louis. Pretty cool stuff, especially from an engineering perspective.
Didn't find a Starbucks to start the morning, which was a big disappointment.
Took a side trip to Santa Claus, IN.
Saw another State Capitol (Frankfort, KY)
Ended up in our last State Capitol (Charleston, WV)

Day 3 route

2008-02-28T19:30:00.000-08:00

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Day 3 Photos

2008-02-28T19:19:00.000-08:00

Trying again with Day 3 pictures:

East of Amarillo is, supposedly, the largest cross in the Western Hemisphere. I don't have any way to validate the claim, but it does look pretty big compared to the power poles nearby.

The Oklahoma State Capitol building. That's definitely an oil rig in the foreground. The building is quite impressive.

The inside of the Capitol Dome. The dome wasn't built until 1999, and the names of the donors are inscribed on the marble inside. Like SBC and Halliburton.

An Oklahoma rest area.

Some Kansas grassland. I can't begin to capture the emptiness... Kansas wasn't nearly as flat as advertised, but it was as grassy and empty as advertised.

The Kansas State Capitol in Topeka. We didn't get to go in. There isn't a lot going on in Topeka.

Columbia, MO

2008-02-27T20:15:00.001-08:00

We ended up in Columbia, MO today. Original plan was to stop in Kansas City, but we decided to grab our BBQ and then drive another 120 miles down the road before pulling in for the night. It was our first 4 state day, our first day over 700 miles, and our first day without a giant hole in the ground. The highlights, this time in bullet form:

BBQ stop 1: Lunch at Earl's Rib Palace. The food was good: my ribs were really good, and the sides were great. Dad's pulled pork was also good, but he hated the slaw. Their "sweet tea" also lacked... sugar. The food would have left us with a B/B+ rating, but the history of Earl puts it to an A++. Turns out that Earl was Elvis' personal chef and confidant, and was quite proud that Elvis put on 50 pounds while under his tutelage.
BBQ stop 2: The original Arthur Bryant's in Kansas City. Frankly, pretty mediocre. Was a little sketchy to walk into, and the ambience was such that it should have been a grade A joint. Turns out the ribs were only okay. The sauces, however, left me very confused. The "hot and spicy" sauce was pretty good, while the mild sauce tasted like Old Bay seasoning in a vinegar and tomato solution. Not very good.
The Oklahoma State Capitol is almost worth a trip to Oklahoma City. It's really a gorgeous building, and the actual House Chamber is really stunning (we didn't hit the Senate side, but I assume it was the same). Plus, you can pretty much walk in and go anywhere you want in the building.
Kansas is not as flat as advertised, but impressively empty, even when compared to wildly empty places like Northern Arizona and New Mexico. Its state capitol is way less impressive than Oklahoma's.

Photos coming later when my internet connection doesn't suck.

Amarillo

2008-02-27T19:22:00.000-08:00

Day 2 found us driving between Flagstaff and Amarillo (660 miles, with side trips); with the exception of Albuquerque there is stunningly little in between. The high desert of Arizona slowly melds into the slightly less high mountains of western New Mexico, which themselves slowly meld into the high, flat plains of Eastern New Mexico and the Texas Panhandle. To be frank, it's stunningly boring. Here are some pictures and stories:

Just outside of Flagstaff* is Meteor Crater. It's an enormous hole in the ground, which as you probably surmised was created by a meteor tens of thousands of years ago. The picture below doesn't really give you a great sense of scale, but you see some stuff at the bottom of the crater? That's a 6 foot tall fence, which is about the same height as my dad. Meteor Crater turned out to be the second and last stop on the "Giant Hole in the Ground" part of the tour.

This is a picture looking back towards Flagstaff taken from the rim of the crater. Yeah, that's 35 miles away. Flagstaff sits about 7000 feet above sea level, and I think the higher of the two peaks here is 11,000. We crested the road between them around 8046 feet on Monday night. In general I think this is my best picture in terms of capturing the enormity of the West.

This is "70s man", just standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona. If that doesn't ring a bell, think about the Eagles song "Take it Easy". One and the same. Just to the left is historic Route 66, which is arguably the most disappointing part of the trip so far. There's nothing else to note about Winslow.

We ended up eating lunch at Mr. Powdrell's in Albuquerque. My dad got the pork ribs while I got the beef ribs, figuring we were in a beefy part of the country. Not to foreshadow, but I think this trip will permanently settle the beef vs. pork ribs debate across the entire country. My meal wasn't bad: I liked the sauce, but the meat wasn't fantastic. The ribs were also fatty and stringy. On the other hand, my dad's ribs were really good: very smoky meat, nice balance of meat and fat... very good. The downside is that they were coated in a sauce that would have been better on the side. Overall a B grade for Mr. Powdrell's (ambiance was nice, except we were the only ones in the place at 1:30 pm).

Sticking with the food story line, my last tale from Day 2 deals with The Big Texan. Calling it a restaurant kind of undersells everything it has to offer: restaurant, shooting gallery, motel, stable, trading post... it really earns the name "Steak Ranch." The food was actually pretty bad, but the ambience was A+++. There were cowboys walking around singing. Tons of taxidermy. And, it has a stage where you can sit and try to eat a 72oz steak in 60 minutes. Succeed and you eat free. Fail, and you pay $72 for the steak. Our waitress says that roughly one person tries each day, and only 1 in 10 succeed. Sadly no on tried while we were there.

Day 3 takes us from Amarillo to Columbia, MO via Oklahoma City, Wichita, Topeka, and Kansas City.

* The distance that is associated with "just" can vary, but in the Southwest I think the minimum unit of "just" is 50 miles.

Flagstaff

2008-02-25T21:28:00.000-08:00

We made it to Flagstaff today. Picked up my dad a little before 10:00 and immediately hit the road. 105 to the 605 to the 10 to the 15 to the 40 to Williams, AZ. In Williams we took a left turn and went to see the Grand Canyon. All I can say about the Grand Canyon is WOW. I'm not sure how many things in life live up to their hype, but this is one of them. Other than that, not a lot of news to report. It still amazes me how little there is in the West... it was easy to drive 60 miles today without seeing an exit from the highway, and often those exits lead to roads that didn't seem to go anywhere worth going to.

Two photos from today:

This was taken at speed somewhere on I-40 between Ludlow, CA and the California/Arizona borderd. But really it could have been taken anywhere on I-40, which has looked like this for the past 400 miles.

This, obviously, is the Grand Canyon. We got there just a few minutes before sunset, so the colors were very impressive. It was (un) surprisingly cold (you can see some of the snow on the ground). I'm not that talented a writer, so I won't try to put the GC into words. If you haven't been, it's on my highly recommended list.

Road Trip: Seattle - LA - DC

2008-02-23T22:45:00.001-08:00

I've made the last couple of posts from my hotel in Redding, CA. I did about 620 miles today, including some "sightseeing" in Salem, OR (a pretty lame state Capitol building). The trip went really smoothly until I hit Weed, CA, when I-5 goes back up into the mountains. It snowed on me for the last 70 miles, and snow/dark/unfamiliar roads is pretty much the trifect of super-stressful driving. But I'm here. Sadly I can't post any of pictures because of my lame hotel internet access.

That said, here's what I can tell about Redding:

There's a really cool bridge*
The "city center" has nothing open after 8:00
Well, it has some things open: a couple of cheap and seedy motels, and a couple of bars that looked way to tough for me.
The "Hill Top" area has every chain business imaginable. It's like they just said "Screw downtown, we're just going to build an entirely new city center about two miles on the other side of the interstate.
If it weren't night and raining I bet it would be very pretty.

On to LA (West Hollywood, to be specific) in the morning.

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My last days in Seattle

2008-02-23T22:16:00.000-08:00

Here's the quick synopsis of my last week in Seattle:

Saturday: Golf at Washington National
Sunday: Basketball and sushi
Monday: Work
Tuesday: Golf at Chambers Bay
Wednesday: Lunch at Salumi, errands
Thursday: Golf at Trilogy (missed an 8 foot birdie putt for 79)
Friday: Moving, which was pedestrian, and partying (dinner and drinks with my friends in Seattle.) And in between? This:

What am I thinking leaving this?

Beer

2008-02-23T22:15:00.001-08:00

It would be great if I could blog about the recent excellence of Duke Basketball. Coming off of a dominating win over Carolina my Duke friends and I were actually imbued with a confidence that hasn't been present since 2004 when we lost to UConn in the National Semifinal. We killed Maryland and seemed to have a legit shot at running the table in the ACC which we haven't done since the Battier years.

And then the Wake and Miami debacles happened, so I'm not going to talk about basketball.

Anyways, I watched the Wake game at a place in Seattle called Taphouse Grill. They are very proud about their selection of draft beer: over 160 regular taps plus 10 rotating seasonal taps. I decided to order a sampler of porters and stouts (winter time!). I had ordered the four beers that come in the sampler when the waiter informed me they might be out of one or two of my selections, so I should probably name some backups. I named two, and all was well.

Except that he came back and informed me that they could only find three out of the six, and could I pick yet another beer. Surprisingly, they actually had beer #7.

I ran into this same issue when I would go to the Brickskellar in DC: their menu has hundreds, if not thousands, of beers, but their refrigerators usually only have about half what their menu promises. I understand that it is hard to keep some things in stock, but why run your business in such a way that continually disappoints your customers? Why not have a more conservative menu (in the Brickskellar's case, maybe only 400 beers) and always have them. And if there are some rarities sitting around why have your wait staff offer them up as specials? Am I missing something here?

Sometimes you can't even give it away

2008-02-23T22:11:00.001-08:00

Craiglist provides a fantastic service: it's free, relatively easy to use, and reaches a much wider audience than many free classified ad services. The problem is that it attracts an absolutely bizarre clientele.

I've been wanting to get a new mattress, and the move provided me with a good excuse to make the switch: rather than shipping my old one back across the country I could get rid of it here and buy new once I'm back East. An 8 year old mattress isn't worth a whole lot, so I posted it on Craigslist as being free for whoever wanted to pick it up. I got a response pretty quickly, and we agreed she would come last weekend.

Nothing.

So I re-posted the ad on Monday figuring that I had just found one of the flakey people who cruise CL. On Tuesday I got an email from the girl apologizing for not checking her messages and telling me she still wanted the mattress. I responded that she needed to come on Wednesday night, and she agreed.

Until Wednesday, when I got a text message (really, her only method of communication) saying she wasn't sure if she could come by. Specifically, she said this:

Hey! I haven't checked messages yet, wast sure if u called! im at a police station now or wld call u bk! how late can I get it?

Now, I'm not an expert, but I think that being at a police station indicates something is "up". Especially when this is the followup message:

I dont know how long i am going to have to be here since i am helping a friend report something. is there any possible way that time tomorrow i cld get it?

Dicey. So I decided to donate the mattress rather than dealing with the CL flakes (probably the most connected flakey population on earth). I called the Salvation Army, and they promised to stop by on Thursday morning. Which they did, only to tell me that my mattress doesn't meet their standards. If you have ever felt ashamed by a piece of furniture try having the Salvation Army tell you that your mattress can't even be given away.

At the end of the day I had to call 1-800-GOT-JUNK, which is a pricey but good service. Unfortunately they do not have employees who understand geometry, and so coaching them on how to get my box spring into the elevator was, to say the least, a chore. At one point they decided to try and break the box spring in half rather than backing out and putting it in the way that it would fit.

After all that I got a text message from police girl asking if it was cool to get the mattress next week. Idiots.

Chambers Bay in detail

2008-02-23T22:03:00.000-08:00

In short: sublime. I honestly may not have a better golfing experience.

The crowd sounds are going to be really cool during the Open. The entire course sits in a little bowl (it is, after all, a former gravel pit), with the highest points sitting 100-150 feet above the lowest points. The dunes provide some separation between holes, but there really isn't anything to keep sound from traveling and echoing against the pit walls. When Tiger is pouring in 30 footers on Sunday it's going to be pretty intense.

The course record is 70; I've probably never been within 16 shots of a course record, ever. I can see how the course would get to be unplayable in a hurry. The USGA could set the course up to play anywhere between -4 and +20, especially if the wind blows. I had a four putt (coming off a birdie, too), but I didn't putt into a bunker (Michael did), nor did I miss a putt by 55 yards (Stewart did). I can see pros making the exact same mistake.

I seemed to be one of the few guys with a caddy, even though it was incredibly useful. Most 2nd shots were aimed 20 yards away from where I would have aimed if left to my own devices. I really had to suspend disbelief on a couple of the shots, thinking there was no way I really wanted to hit it where he had me aimed, but sure enough, things always worked out. While I needed the caddy's advice on 18 holes, I really only had about 14 holes of conversation saved up and only 15 holes of patience for some of his advice and telling me why his advice was good. That said, I did enjoy that he thought I should be a 7-8 handicapper with my swing. He wasn't wrong (13/14 fairways, 11/18 greens), except that he hadn't seen me putt yet.

My only regret is that I played the white tees (6000 yards) rather than the Sand tees (6400). Honestly, my score probably would have been the same. I had one six-iron into the green, but I was hitting driver/wedge most of the day, and there were four holes where I didn't even need driver. In general, I drove the ball like a fiend... made some really aggressive carry shots, and I was in the greenside traps on two of the par 5s (took 3 to get out of the first), and birdied the other. I really should have birdied 15... had 8 feet and one of the Scottsman drilled his putt on the exact line.

Everyone should have a chance to be paired with two Scottish guys from Canada. Hilarious, full of good stories. Thought I would split my pants laughing when one of them said "That's crap!" like Mike Myers in So I Married an Axe Murderer. They also had the best name I've heard for a 9: "Fraulein's Rejection" (or Nein, as it were). Also fun to see how they comfortable are putting from anywhere, including 50 yards off the green in swales 50 feet below the green. They had no fear of keeping the ball on the ground the entire way.

Chambers Bay

2008-02-20T12:00:00.000-08:00

I'll post my thoughts on Chambers Bay this evening, but here's the short story: There are probably fewer than 5 golf courses in the world that I can expect to play that will be more impressive than Chambers. I shot 86, including a birdie and a four-putt, and I played with two Scottish guys from Vancouver, which should be mandatory at a course like this, just like using a caddy.

I managed to take a bunch of pictures, which can be found here.

How to double the miles on your car in 8 days

2008-02-18T22:36:00.000-08:00

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I'll probably trip 5000 miles before I leave town on Saturday. When I roll into DC a week later I should be comfortably over 9000 miles.

Fore!

2008-02-18T22:26:00.000-08:00

I get to play this tomorrow.

Part of me is excited like a kid on Christmas Eve. And part of me wonders if I own enough golf balls. And part of me hopes I don't four-jack a green with a caddy looking on.

Not so live blog: Caucus day

2008-02-12T22:11:00.000-08:00

Well, the one thing about the iPhone is that it is very conspicuous, so my plans to sit and casually blog about the goings on of my precinct caucus while in my precinct caucus didn't work out so well. I did manage to make a couple of notes:

There was a huge line to get in. Since no one ever goes to caucuses no one know what district they are in. And since districts are literally the size of one city block pretty much everyone who showed up needed to be directed to the right place. I count myself as one of those people.
When I finally found the right building there was a long line there too.
As I was standing in line I wondered: Is it a valid reason to support the candidate who's volunteers are cuter?
I don't understand the whole "suspended" thing. There were signs everywhere telling people that Edwards' campaign was suspended rather than over. Is there really a difference? I don't know anyone who voted for Edwards, but I know that "Uncommitted" won at least one delegate. Wouldn't it suck to lose to Uncommitted?
It turned out that we didn't really have a precinct chair. Which, in a caucus, is a ridiculously important job. Primaries are simple: you show up, you vote, you leave. There's a whole process to caucuses that no one understands. Our precinct's solution: find the last person who walked into the room and make them be the chair. The chair's first job: find someone to be the secretary, and then find at least 12 people willing to be our precinct's actual delegates for the county and state nominating conventions.
My precinct was mostly women, and it kind of struck me that the caucus was turning out to be a fantastic place to find a date: politically like-minded people, cute girls, passionate arguments, etc.
Sadly, it later turned out that most of these women had brought along boyfriends.
Our precinct chair also claimed to be some sort of radio host, and interviewed me briefly. I think my insightful, witty comment was something like "No one has any idea what is supposed to happen here today."
My precinct's initial vote was 50 to 13 to 4 (Obama, Clinton, Uncommitted). Something happened to two of the uncommitteds, and we never saw them again. People then had to move around and stand with their fellow supporters. Each side was given 5 minutes to make their case for their candidate. It was astonishingly like listening to meet Meet the Press: Obama didn't vote for the war, Hillary has more experience, Obama brings in new voters to the fold, yada yada yada. The idea of "caucusing" is a good one, but at the end of the day no one was particularly persuaded by the arguments of the other side.
The two uncommitteds who we could find both ended up going to the Obama side.
Perhaps the most bizarre portion of the event was after the voting was done. In what seemed to be a ploy to get people riled up and start donating money willy-nilly the Chair told us that we were supposed to go around the room and discuss what we didn't like about the current administration. This is like asking people to strike matches in a room full of gasoline. Our precinct voted to save time and skip this, since we all generally agreed there weren't any secret Bush supporters who had infiltrated our caucus.

So that's pretty much it. Frankly, I still prefer easy democracy to hard democracy, and the total events of the day took nearly three hours to complete. And I didn't even get a date out of it.

Live blog: caucus day

2008-02-09T11:12:00.000-08:00

Whoever invented the robo dialer should be thrown in jail. My phone has been ringing off the hook since before 9:00 this morning. I've only picked up the phone once, and it was a Huckabee call.

In other news the moving company that stood me up yesterday seems to be standing me up again. Needless to say their quote will need to be approximately free if they want to earn my business.

A caucusing we will go

2008-02-06T21:13:00.000-08:00

I like democracy. I'm not so sure that we need to start wars to promote democracy in other places, but it seems to work pretty well here. One of the nice things about democracy is that it's relatively easy: I go somewhere, I vote, someone counts it, done. Sometimes I can mail my ballot in, meaning I don't even have to go somewhere.

But not now.

I got a ballot for the Washington state primary in the mail last week. After the relatively even Super Tuesday results I became excited that my vote would actually count. I filled out my ballot and mailed it in.

And then I found that it would count for exactly nothing.

Turns out that Washington state has both a caucus and a primary. And the primary doesn't count, at least not for the Democrats. And it only kind of counts for the Republicans. So rather than being able to choose my parties candidate from the comfort of my own home I now have to spend some time (one hour? three? ten?) on a Saturday to go stand around and caucus.

I haven't yet decided on a caucus strategy. I'm probably just going to stand around and hope that no one bothers me. But I may also decide to pledge my vote to someone stupid, like Mike Gravel, and start yelling at people who think that Hillary or Obama are the better candidate. Gravel: any man who throws a rock into a pond on YouTube can be my president. Or, I may choose to just walk around and scream "Ca-CAW!" like Gob on Arrested Development. You know, caucus. Ca-CAW! That's comedic genius.

Oh yeah

2008-02-03T23:29:00.000-08:00

Some of you may have heard through the grapevine, but it's finally official:

I'm leaving Seattle. Got a cool job at a startup company in DC. Will be moving back East in a couple of weeks. Details to follow.

The iPhone

2008-02-03T22:46:00.000-08:00

It's here. I hesitated after it first came out, thinking that there might be bugs or glitches or new features that would be added. But the yearning and desire? It never went away. I need the iPhone. And so today?

I bought it.

It's gorgeous. It must be so easy to use that Apple doesn't even bother putting instructions in the box. Just the phone, a dock, a charger, and some headphones. Lovely.

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to use the phone yet, despite having owned it for nearly 10 hours now. It would seem the activation process doesn't quite work. I first ran into problems when I tried to transfer my number. It would seem that I can't transfer my 703 number to a Seattle billing address. So I had to set up my billing address as my parents. First hurdle cleared.

I continued through the process and got to the final screen. No dice. It would seem that there was an issue on my credit report. This isn't a surprise: I put a bunch of fraud blocks on my credit reports after I got robbed. This makes it impossible for anyone to pull my credit without my explicit permission. Well, the iPhone activation process doesn't take this into account, so I had to drive back down to the AT&T store to get approved in person. Sweet. Way to improve the AT&T experience.

After getting the necessary codes I took a six hour break to watch the Super Bowl and have some fried turkey. Got home expecting to finish up the activation and start playing with my phone.

No dice.

Despite have the right credit activation code, and all the other information, I got forced into a manual queue. And so now I wait. I've got nothing. The iPhone just stares at me, wanting to do something cool. It mocks. It laughs at me. The hours pass by. The hole in my heart gets bigger.

Come to me iPhone. Please.

My favorite Christmas present

2008-02-03T22:33:00.000-08:00

It's tough to rank Christmas presents, because they are all wonderful in their own way. But I would say the best thing I got this year is my laser rangefinder. Ostensibly it is for the golf course (it's actually called "The Pinseeker"), but since it's been too cold to play golf this year I've had to find alternative uses. Which means "stand out on my balcony and measure the distance to things." Here's what I've discovered:

The boat's mast is 576 yards away. Even down hill it's a 3-shot par five. The edge of the water on the left side of the photo is 408 yards.

The red brick apartment in the dead center of the photo is 266 yards. The yellow apartment to the left of center is 607 yards. The apartment building in the foreground is 62 yards. The Space Needle? I thought that would be just a touch out of range... but it's just at the edge. 1332 yards. Just over 3/4 miles away.

More blogs on the way

2008-02-02T18:57:00.000-08:00

Here at West Roy headquarters we had a pretty significant technology upgrade in the past couple of days. I managed to install some new RAM and a new hard drive in my laptop. Amazingly nothing broke, although I did need to take the machine apart an extra time because only about 1/3 of my keyboard worked after the first reassembly.

Anyways, with that out of the way I should be able to get back on the blog train. There will certainly be some interesting things to write about in the coming days.

Why Salt Lick sauce is so good

2008-01-16T23:46:00.000-08:00

I just wrote about my new favorite BBQ sauce, the original recipe from The Salt Lick, outside of Austin, TX. Now I know why. As I was perusing the label to look at the ingredients (oil, vinegar, prepared mustard, Worcestershire, spices, etc) I noticed the nutrition info.

Egad.

Take a look at whatever sauce you keep handy near your computer. (Don't tell me you don't have sauce at your desk at work.) You'll see that per 2 Tbsp serving it has something like 25 calories and no grams of fat. Well, the folks at the Salt Lick seem to have adopted the "Fat, it's where the flavor is" theory of cooking: their original recipe sauce has 160 calories and 16 grams of fat per two Tbsp serving. Which basically means it is BBQ sauce flavored salad dressing.

Now, God didn't design BBQ to be healthy, but do we really need to put a fat-based sauce all over our fat-based meat? That said, if there is that much oil in the sauce, I wonder if I can deep fry a turkey in it. Hmm.

3 bullets on food

2008-01-16T23:09:00.000-08:00

Some random stuff before I head off to New York:

I think I've found the best barbeque sauce in the world. My mom's family comes from the part of South Carolina that uses mustard as the base for their BBQ sauce, and I'm partial to Mathews (which I think is from Saluda). I never thought that it would be replaced in my sauce hierarchy by a sauce from Texas, but it has. I'll be the first to say that Texans get a lot wrong about BBQ, including the feature animal (cow) and sauce base (tomato), but the folks at The Salt Lick in Austin are on to something great: a mustard based sauce with good tang, a touch of sweetness, and just the right amount of vinegar. I've been told their BBQ is also good, and if it's half as good as the sauce it's worth your trouble to acquire some.
Many moons ago I complained about the lack of decent yogurt around here. Well, my favorite market started selling Stonyfield, which is great. What's weird is that I've been eating a lot of the caramel yogurt. It seems pretty strange to have "caramel" on the bottom as opposed to "peaches" on the bottom.
Cheeks are hot. Huan experimented with halibut cheeks several times, and they were fantastic. Then on New Year's Eve I had a pasta dish with pork jowl. Now the New York Times just ran a story about to towns in Italy that have competing versions of a dish based on, you guessed it pork jowl. And it turns out that one of the few places you can get cured, unsmoked pork jowl in America is in Seattle. I'll let you know how it goes.

Sports!

2008-01-13T22:50:00.000-08:00

Despite being inhabited by relatively fit and athletic people, hosting three professional franchises and being home to a pretty big university, Seattle would not strike anyone as a "sports" town. Like most major cities people are rabid about football. Locals care about the Mariners until they fall out of contention in July (about three months after my Orioles have fallen out of contention back East), and after that the crowds are mostly Japanese tourists excited to see Ichiro. The Sonics get so little love that they are going to get moved to Oklahoma City.

Anyways, I'm a big sports fan. Back in DC I would usually go to a couple of Redskins games (thanks to my friend Todd's parents), maybe a baseball game or two, and a Wizards/Caps/Georgetown game if I could luck into Capital One's box seats. If you look at my sports attendance in 2007 you'd notice a difference:

Three Seahawks games;
One UW football game;
One UW basketball game;
10 Sonics games (3 pre-Durant, 7 post-Durant);
Five Mariners games

That's 20 sporting events in 12 months. I feel like that's a lot. I was talking with the girl who cuts my hair on Friday about how hard it is to make same-sex friends in a new city. She is young and hip and "Myspaced" someone, which I think means that she met someone randomly on Myspace who ended up as her best friend. Anyways, we were talking about the awkwardness of the "friend date", and got to talking about how men have sporting events, which are nearly perfectly designed for man-dates (firm stopping times, requires paying attention to something else making silence okay, excuse to drink obnoxious quantities of beer, etc). We couldn't decide if there was a female equivalent, although she thought shopping could qualify.

I was hoping to have a lot more to say other than "I went to a lot of sporting events" last year, but it turns out that I've got nothing. But I do have Sonics/Jazz tickets in two weeks if anyone is interested.

Redskins photos

2008-01-09T21:55:00.001-08:00

As promised, photos from my trip to the Skins-Hawks game this past Sunday.

http://www.flickr.com/gp/72188899@N00/29g855

34 hours in coach? One way? Sure!

2008-01-09T19:58:00.000-08:00

I've been toying with the idea of a trip to visit my friends in Asia this spring. It isn't hard for me to find a reasonable flight from Seattle to Singapore (under $900, stopping in Tokyo each way). Shanghai, it would seem, is nearly impossible to get to from Singapore for under $1000. I don't mind search engines returning expensive flights, since sometimes that is all that is available.

Kayak has managed to break all the records for "least reasonable flight suggested, ever." How unreasonable? Try this:

Leave – Wed 27 Feb 2008
This flight leaves and arrives on different dates.
	American Airlines Flight 5832 Operated by Japan Airlines	Departs: 11:30p Changi (SIN)	Arrives: 7:10a Narita (NRT)
	Coach \| Aircraft: 744 \| 6h 40m
	[ Layover in Tokyo, Japan (NRT) for 4h 50m ]
	American Airlines Flight 5822 Operated by Japan Airlines	Departs: 12:00p Narita (NRT)	Arrives: 8:20a O'Hare International (ORD)
	Coach \| Aircraft: 744 \| 11h 20m
	[ Layover in Chicago, IL (ORD) for 2h 35m ]
	American Airlines Flight 289	Departs: 10:55a O'Hare International (ORD)	Arrives: 3:25p Pu Dong (PVG)
	Coach \| Aircraft: 777 \| 14h 30m

Return – Sun 2 Mar 2008
This flight leaves and arrives on different dates.
	American Airlines Flight 288	Departs: 6:00p Pu Dong (PVG)	Arrives: 5:20p O'Hare International (ORD)
	Coach \| Aircraft: 777 \| 13h 20m
	[ Layover in Chicago, IL (ORD) for 17h 45m ]
	American Airlines Flight 153	Departs: 11:05a O'Hare International (ORD)	Arrives: 3:15p Narita (NRT)
	Coach \| Aircraft: 777 \| 13h 10m
	[ Layover in Tokyo, Japan (NRT) for 2h 35m ]
	American Airlines Flight 5836 Operated by Japan Airlines	Departs: 5:50p Narita (NRT)	Arrives: 12:30a Changi (SIN)
	Coach \| Aircraft: 777 \| 7h 40m

Yeah. That's right. Singapore -> Tokyo -> Chicago -> Shanghai. The Great Circle right my a**. Go find a globe. Trace that out. You'll find that a straight shot is 2300 miles, or about 5 hours on a modern jet airliner. American Airlines, in their infinite wisdom, would suggest you take a trip that is 34 hours (going) and 54 hours (returning), where you cross the International dateline TWICE on each leg, and cover approximately 33,308 miles. For those of you keeping track at home the circumference of the Earth is 24,901 miles. It's almost a bargain at $7,238.

You'll notice that the itinerary doesn't tell you what date you land. I'm not sure I could even do the math and figure it out.

It's a small world, but this is ridiculous

2008-01-05T22:23:00.000-08:00

Took my seat for the Seahawks/Redskins game today. Qwest Field is about 2700 miles away from DC. It holds about 69,000 people. The guy sitting in front of me? Went to high school with me. As in my same class.

Pictures to follow tomorrow.

Placed on the 15 day DL

2008-01-01T16:55:00.000-08:00

I sustained maybe the lamest injury of my 30.9 years this past Sunday. To celebrate the Redskins making the playoffs (and, as luck would have it, coming to Seattle) I decided to replace the flush and fill valves on my toilet, which has been slowly running for the past 11 months. Turns out that replacing the flush valve involves taking the bowl off the base of the toilet, which requires a lot of lying on the bathroom floor loosening old bolts*, which requires contorting myself into some weird shapes.

I woke up Monday with what is best described as a Grade 2 strain of my left hamstring. I literally hobbled around work on Monday, and couldn't actually do anything at the gym. I managed to walk 9 holes today, but it required lots of stretching. I don't know how I'm going to make it through life if I regularly injure myself by lying on the floor.

* Don't worry, I had mopped the floor prior to starting this exercise.

Required listening (if it really happened)

2007-12-28T22:05:00.000-08:00

DC radio has become so terrible that I listened to C-SPAN radio for a portion of my drive home tonight. Even though I can't find any proof on the C-SPAN website I swear that I listened to a Minor Candidate Republican Debate. It was fantastic. Way more interesting than any of the real presidential debates. Some highlights:

The first candidate I heard was discussing states rights. He was approximately as well spoken as a ninth grade. I actually wondered why C-SPAN was airing a (bad) high school debate match.
One of the candidates managed to dismiss both states rights and (whatever is the opposite of states rights) in the same answer. Say what you will about political double speak, but it is rare when a candidate nullifies his own answer in the same breath.
Easily the best answer of the evening, and the reason for this post, was the Boy Scout answer. The candidates (there were maybe 8 of them) were asked what kind of people they would nominate to the Supreme Court. One of the candidates said he would only nominate a Boy Scout. Not a metaphorical Boy Scout, but a literal Boy Scout. It would seem that they are taught a moral code consistent with the legal philosophy espoused by this particular candidate.

Seriously. This is why "minor" candidates should get more coverage. Who wants to hear "real" candidates prattle on about judicial temperament when all that needs to be said is "Scout*."

* This is not at all intended to be a sleight towards Scouting. It is fully intended to be a sleight towards this particular politician.

Best music from 2007

2007-12-20T23:16:00.000-08:00

Since I have 8 readers or so each day (I'm losing audience faster than most TV shows, and my writing staff isn't on strike), I feel like that is the appropriate number of albums to include in my first annual "8 best albums I bought this year." Unlike many other music lists I am including everything I purchased in 2007, whether it was released this year or not.

In no particular order:*

Arcade Fire, Neon Bible: Best live act who isn't U2 or Springfield or Zeppelin
Wilco, Sky Blue Sky: This convinced me to go and buy most of their older work, which I love
The National, Boxer: Still not a great live act, but they put out great records.
Okkervil River, Stage Names: My favorite find of the year.
Jay-Z, American Gangster: At times the parallels to the movie are overdone, but whatever it takes to motivate Jigga to make good music again after the Kingdom Come fiasco.
Nas, Illmatic: Yeah, I know, it was released in 1994 and is widely recognized as the greatest rap album of all time.
Radiohead, In Rainbows: It feels weird not calling this my favorite album of the year. It's absolutely incredible music, but it sounds like it's been in my collection for a decade, which makes it hard to believe it came out last month.
LCD Soundsystem, Sound of Silver: The only record where every track has stayed on my iPod shuffle all year long. I almost want to dance when listening. Almost.

That's actually 9. Deal with it. Others in the running: Kanye West (Graduation), Jose Gonzalez (In Our Nature), Caribou (Andorra), M.I.A. (Kala), Feist (The Reminder), Clinic (Visitations).

* Because I can't figure out how to make Blogger count down instead of up

Not all that deceiving, really

2007-12-20T23:01:00.000-08:00

I decided to go driving last weekend. Ostensibly I wanted to get some highway miles on my car to see if there was some reason I was getting 12 mpg, but I also thought it would be fun to see what's north of Seattle. Each mile farther north I go becomes the farthest north I've been in North America. I ended up driving to Bellingham (home of Western Washington U), but it was too rainy to bother walking around to see if there was anything interesting to, um, see.

On my way back south I drove onto Fidalgo Island and Whidbey Island and to the bridge between them at Deception Pass. I had heard that it was a pretty neat setting. I think the pictures seem to validate that:

Here's my problem with Deception Pass: it really isn't very deceptive. Apparently it was so named because the narrow straight fooled people into thinking that Whidbey Island was really Whidbey Peninsula. Or because Deception Island blocked the view of the pass from the ocean and deceived people into thinking the pass was really a bay. Take a look at the island.

Are you confused? Why do idiots from the 1700s get to name everything just because they were first?

A ruined post

2007-12-20T22:48:00.000-08:00

A couple of weekends ago I went to see the UW/Pitt basketball game. The UW arena is a nice little gym that reminds everyone of Cameron, only with no sense of history or awe. What was memorable about the game for me was that our seats were row 2, mid court. This is how the 2nd half started:

There's no zoom on that shot. They were just that close. It was pretty cool.

Anyways, the blog post is ruined because Pitt, after surviving a last second scare against UW, beat Duke tonight. During the game my friends (also Duke alums) and I observed that Pitt, while not great, is exactly the kind of team that would give Duke fits. They're big, slow, and rebound like crazy. Spurs vs. Suns.

I will give the UW fans some credit, as they made several "taser" cheers when the Pitt point guard shot free throws. It would seem he got tased, bro, this summer back in Pittsburgh. Taser or not, the guy is pretty clutch; he reminds me of Khalid El-Amin (fat, Duke-killer). He beat Duke on a crazy 3-pointer tonight, and made some tough free throws at the end of the UW game. I even had a picture of one:

Back on the horse

2007-12-18T23:13:00.000-08:00

It probably isn't right to say that I'm 100% back, but I feel largely recovered from the little incident that happened a few weeks ago. My insurance company should be cutting me a check for most of my loss and I'm not afraid to walk past the scene of the crime at night any more (but I still cab back when necessary; my boss also is terrified that I might start riding the bus again).

Two things remain unresolved.

The HOA of the condo I live in gave me the bill for the locks on the front and back doors ($450!), along with the most stereotypically passive-aggressive email talking about how many residents were inconvenienced because they only got two free keys, and some people had collected more than two keys prior to the lock change. I declined to write a screed discussing the relative inconvenience of having a gun pointed at you while being relieved of nearly $1000 worth of stuff. I also declined to leave a steaming bag of poo on everyone's doorstep. Luckily my landlord is being cool and has told the HOA to shove it.
I've received lots of emails about whether I recovered the number of the girl I met prior to getting jacked. I did. Nothing to report, however, even if there were that stuff isn't going on the blog. Personal stuff and work stuff are for emails and phone calls. That said, I think my crazy officemate is leaving the company, and at that point I'll be able to share some fascinating stories. Not quite like the guy I worked with in Texas who torched his hotel and then torched our office, but close.

Breaking the silence

2007-12-18T23:02:00.000-08:00

I don't know how professional bloggers do it. I guess the key is to have a topic to write about other than yourself, because even the most interesting person doesn't have that much stuff going on in their life to make a post a day. I really do try and keep a log of things that might make good blog posts. You know what the list was today before I erased it?

I really like pomegranate juice
Despite blogging about my love for baby carrots I've recently switched back to full size carrots
I'm reading a 1000 page novel that has 300 end notes, and some of the end notes (ranging from 1 word to 6 pages) even have end notes. Unfortunately I will not finish it before traveling home for Christmas, so I'll have to take it with me. It makes me wish I had a Kindle.*

Seriously. That is AWFUL material. Which is why I haven't written anything. I've got some stuff that should get posted before I head back East on Saturday.

* Speaking of the Kindle, I actually got to play with one a few weeks before it launched. It really is godawful ugly compared to an iPod, but it's surprisingly ergonomic, and the screen is just great. If you have $400 and do a lot of traveling, I highly recommend.

It's not all rain. Just mostly rain.

2007-12-04T00:01:00.001-08:00

This was my grill on Saturday afternoon. When it was all said and done there was probably an inch of accumulation on most surfaces downtown, with a lot more snow out in the burbs (which are hundreds of feet above Seattle).

Of course the snow melted pretty quickly and was replaced by an ungodly amount of rain. Like 10" in 24 hours within 20 miles of where I sit right now. They've closed I-5 for at least 3 days between Olympia and Portland. If this were a real part of the world, that would be like closing I-95 between Baltimore and Philadelphia. The Seattle Times has some really good photos (can't link directly, but you're smart, figure it out.)

My life as a season ticket holder

2007-11-28T22:44:00.000-08:00

I live about 8 blocks from Key Arena, home to the Seattle (Super)Sonics. If you are a basketball fan you know that Seattle has made its mark on this basketball season in two ways:

It managed to draft Kevin Durant, supposedly half of the pair of 19 year olds who are going to save professional basketball.
It's the only NBA team to have the owner suing the city and threatening to take the team to Oklahoma City, and the only NBA host city to be countersuing the owner of its basketball franchise.

This, of course, sets the stage for a fantastic season. Young team, two-time failed head coach who is mainly known for being choked by one of his own players, and an ownership group investing $0.00 in the franchise... How could I not get involved?

I managed to find a pretty great deal on a 25 game plan: $25 per ticket for lower bowl seats, kind of behind and above one of the baskets. Key Arena may be old, and may not have enough corporate boxes to keep the franchise in business, but it is a fantastic venue to watch a game. I picked out my 25 games to maximize weekends and games against Duke players (easier to do these days).

I've always been a sports fan (Orioles, Redskins, Duke basketball, Wizards/Bullets), but it has never been convenient enough to get to sporting events to warrant any sort of season ticket purchase, so I've never really been able to see the progression of a team with my own eyes. I can tell you this after 5 games: I can see how being a beat writer wouldn't be a great deal of fun. To be sure, the games I've attended have all been close, with the Sonics being tied for or in the lead in the last couple of minutes.

Unfortunately they've lost all 5 of those games.

And the two other games they've played at home.

And seven of the nine games they've played away from home.

Since I don't have anything invested in the team I don't care that much; I've been able to see pretty fantastic teams (Suns, Jazz, Pistons, Spurs, Nets), and at some point I've got to believe that the team will get better, because they actually don't have very bad talent. But if the momentum builds for the team to leave for OKC I could see the 2nd half of the season being pretty brutal, especially after Durant and Jeff Green realize they are moving to the 44th largest TV market in the country where it is 200 degrees in the shade in summer. (I don't know this to be true, but I figure OKC has to kind of be like Dallas, which mean it has to kind of be like the worst place in America.)

What's likely to be way more entertaining than the basketball is the row of seats behind me. They seem to be reserved for the 2nd tier friends and family of the opposing team. On opening night there were a bunch of kids who were "DJ's cousin". It took me the entire game to realize they meant "DJ Strawberry", and I would have gladly bet $250 that he couldn't possibly be an NBA player. (Turns out that bet would be a loser.) Against the Nets some guy walked in with a 3" in diameter piece of diamond-encrusted jewelry. In the center read "#21", encircled by "The Truth." Turns out Antoine Wright is The Truth. Unless there is another 21 I don't know about.

Anyways, in honor of the best sports blogger in the land, I'll keep bringing you updates on the friends and family of 2nd tier players for the Sonics opposition. Not a full time job, but a job nonetheless.

Let me breathe!

2007-11-28T22:26:00.000-08:00

I've been fighting off a head cold for the past three days. It sucks. But you know would make it a lot better?

A raging crystal meth epidemic.

You may have noticed that in the past couple of years cold medicine has either A) gone behind the counter or B) become completely worthless. Thanks to lawmakers like mine, pseudoephedrine has largely disappeared from the shelves of drugstores across America. In some places, like Washington State, you have to go to a pharmacist to get the good stuff. In others, like South Carolina, you just have to sign some forms and show a drivers license.

Well, here's why I'd rather deal with meth heads running around my neighborhood*: phenylephrine, the most popular replacement in NyQuil, Sudafed, etc, must be a fancy chemical word for "sugar pill." Seriously. It does absolutely nothing. I rummaged around my stash of old drugs and found some Advil Cold & Sinus from 2005. It had well since expired. But you know what? It had psedoephedrine. Guess who was able to breath for 4-5 hours?

This guy.

* Given recent happenings in my current neighborhood and former neighborhood, I'm not sure the addition of a healthy meth scene could do a lot of harm.

The real villians

2007-11-25T22:49:00.001-08:00

Well, the post below this was going to be my last word on the "event", but I feel I have a legitimate screed to launch into.

All told, the folks who jacked me made off with $80 in cash, $100 in free range balls, $58 on my debit card, an iPod shuffle, some nice headphones, a cheap pair of sunglasses, my work laptop, a bluetooth headset, and a BlackBerry Pearl. Pretty nice for 30 seconds of work, even if the phone and laptop are largely worthless. I've been told that renters insurance may actually cover some of the other losses, which would be strangely fantastic.

But this is where Verizon steps in and pisses on my shoe while telling me it's raining (sorry mom and grandmoms, that's just the best phrase for what is happening). Since I didn't buy the insurance on my new phone Verizon is requiring that I pay full retail price for a replacement phone. They just renewed my contract (locking me in for 2 years) 10 days ago, so I am ineligible for any of the deals they offer. I phone I got for $150 (actually, $50 after some other rebates) will cost me $425. I didn't look very closely, but most phones have retail prices well north of $300. The guy at the store today told me I might have some luck finding something on eBay.

$425. The Verizon guys didn't even bother to show me the gun, they just flat out held me up.

To put this into perspective, here's how dumb this is: I can currently get a brand new BlackBerry Curve for -$50 through Amazon.com. Sure, I have to pay $175 to end my contract with Verizon, but do the math. $425 to stay with Verizon. $125 to leave them. You've got to love corporate policies that encourage customer attrition.

Please add Verizon to the list of companies that are now dead to me.

Moving on

2007-11-25T22:38:00.000-08:00

It's weird to be freaked out about your own neighborhood. I'm definitely still a bit skittish walking around in the dark near my apartment, which is a problem because it is legitimately dark around 4:50pm. I've been able to walk from my apartment to other places past the scene of the crime a couple of times, but I haven't been able to fully retrace my steps in the dark. Obviously this is the type of thing that takes time... it's all much better than Wednesday night when I walked back from picking up my mail (at 7:05 pm) and needed to drink about a bottle and a half of wine to calm down.

In general I don't think I'm naturally very good at this type of "recovery." The only comparable incident in my past is when I got in a big wreck while racing go-karts. I was a really good driver at that point (especially on that day); arguably I was better at that than anything else I've ever done or tried in life. Anyways, I got in a big wreck and my confidence pretty much never returned. I was able to get out and compete, and even won a few races after the accident, but I wasn't a tenth of the driver I was before the wreck.

Walking around my neighborhood brings back a lot of the same memories I had when I started racing again. I know that there isn't anyone waiting to jack me, much like I knew that I could take certain corners flat out or out-brake certain drivers. But before the wreck/mugging there was no counter knowledge; how could I be afraid of consequences if I didn't know what they were? Now I know the consequences, and even though the probability of them occurring are as minuscule as before, they loom much larger in my head.

So what do I do? In the short term, I give a spare set of keys to my friends and I drive to and from work (I also am sans bus pass, so this isn't as reactionary as it sounds) and I cab home on weekends rather than walking. Nothing life changing. I'll be curious how I react once I start back to the gym next week... I was so comfortable before that I would walk home from the gym with my iPod playing. Obviously that won't be the case any more.

Lastly, thanks to everyone who has sent me a note of encouragement. I'm obviously blessed to have lasted 30 years with no real exposure to street crime (I have no idea how 100% of soldiers don't come back from combat with PTSD), but I'm more blessed to have you all as friends. Holla.

As promised, the mother of all blog posts

2007-11-22T00:13:00.000-08:00

(Part 1 of several. Maybe a touch melodramatic, but written in relative real-time.)

For me the peace and serenity of Seattle ended on Tuesday, November 20 at 8:05 PST. I was walking (nearly running) back to my apartment; I was in a rush because I was supposed to meet a friend to return some things that had been left in my apartment. I was also in a rush because I had come from watching Duke play Illinois in Maui, and when I had left the bar with my friends the Illini had started a bit of a rally.

As per normal I walked down Mercer Street and turned up 4th Ave West. That's my favorite street to walk up in my neighborhood because at the top of the street is a gorgeous apartment building that I love to look at. I turned on to Roy and started the final stretch to my apartment at 5th W and Roy. There were a couple of guys walking the other way on Roy, but otherwise the street was empty. I was wholly focused on getting back in a hurry, as my friend had already called to inform me he was waiting.

Which is why I was pretty surprised when I noticed that after passing the two guys one of them immediately turned around.

Which is why I was really surprised when he pulled out a gun*, told me to turn around, and told me to give him everything.

Luckily my body responded faster than my brain, and I turned around and raised my arms and lifted off my messenger bag. While I performed this split-second pirouette I saw a glint of light off something in the bigger guys hand. It clicked.

The guy without the gun* started to frisk me and try and get my wallet. He succeeded. He got my cell phone. The big guy with the gun kept saying "Give me everything", and its possible that I mumbled something like "that's everything." It was the truth. It was everything.

Having successfully relieved me of many of my portable worldly possessions and a good deal of my street confidence the two culprits took off down Roy Street, turning right on 4th Ave West. It would seem they passed somewhere near my KFC before making their way to Fremont and points beyond.

My journey was much shorter. After they turned the corner I ran towards my apartment to find my friend John and his girlfriend waiting. I blabbered something like "I just got jacked" and John, having lived in DC, immediately dialed 911. I was on the phone at 8:07, maybe 60 seconds after the event. I described what had happened, what I could remember of the culprits, where I was, etc etc etc. It took five minutes or so for the first squad car to arrive. I repeated my descriptions and pointed to the location again. I first officer told me that they were sending a K-9 unit to see if they could pick up a trail, but she seriously doubted it would do much good, as there had already been ample time to escape.

A second officer arrived on scene and proceeded to... chill. After a while the first officer said "Hey, maybe you should just cruise around to see if you see anything." Duh. The K-9 officer arrived and I recounted my tale a third time, although the details were starting to sharpen and blur simultaneously in my mind. The K-9 officer seemed reasonably satisfied, got the dog, and took off. He was gone for a while; we tracked his progress over the radio, hence we knew he was near KFC. At this point I was sitting in the first officer's car (well, the back seat) because it's freezing right now in Seattle. Cold and dangerous. And dry. Three things I wasn't expecting. Another officer arrived on the scene, seemingly someone of higher rank than the others. For a fourth time I retold my story, and for a fourth time the listener seemed disappointed with what I could tell them. Apparently it is key to remember what colors your assailants are wearing when you are held at gunpoint at night on a dark street. My bad.

Eventually whatever scent the dog had went cold and they started searching for my stuff, most likely a discarded bag and an empty wallet. I can't imagine they'll find it. The officer gave me a card with my case number. It took me a while to figure out what to do. I counted my assets: a friends cellphone, a cop's business card, a sharp mind. I counted my liabilities: no keys, no identification, no phone numbers for anyone I know, no coin of the realm, a mind clouded by the shock of the situation. I was pretty close to declaring situational bankruptcy.

I decided the biggest problem to solve was that of shelter. I knew my neighbors kept some sort of master key to the building, so they would probably be able to let me into my apartment. But then there was the fact that I didn't have a key to my building... hmm. Luckily as I approached the front door there was a fellow resident standing there. I knocked on the door and he looked at me reluctantly. After opening the door I explained what happened and showed him the officer's business card. Success! Return on assets = infinity. I made my way upstairs and knocked on my neighbors door. After some machinations (involving 90 year old ladies and some debate over whether I have some sort of magical master key) I was able to get into my apartment and arrange for new locks to be installed tomorrow.

At this point I sat down and ate a significant chunk of a candy bar. It was fantastic.

Luckily I have been paying $21.85/month for local phone service that I never use, and so I was able to call can cancel all of my credit and ATM cards. Sadly, the programmer for the lost and stolen card VRU (voice response unit) at Citibank hasn't realized that when people are calling that number they likely don't have their card number handy, since otherwise they wouldn't be calling that number. Eventually I found a way around that block, but it was the closest I came to losing my patience all night. When I canceled my debit card I found out that my antifriends had made their way to Fremont, as there was a $1 auth sitting on the card. This means they bought gas. Funny to think they chose my debit card as opposed to my other cards. I'd say I have about 4x the open-to-buy via credit as opposed to debit. But they had a gun*, so they could spend my/their money accordingly. Helpfully, the BofA rep told me that I would be credited with any money that followed the $1 auth on Thursday, even though Thursday is Thanksgiving. Way to go BofA.

With the financial accounts settled (no shopping for me on Black Friday) I called Verizon. The dual mini-tragedies of this episode have to do with my phone. First, I bought a new Blackberry last Sunday. I loved it, but it is gone. Second, on that phone was the number of a pretty cool girl I met this past Saturday. I was supposed to call her on Tuesday night, but sadly, that number is gone as well. At some point I will get my monthly bill from Verizon that contains her number and I will see if she believes that I was actually robbed at gun*point. On the positive front, I realized that I still had my old phone sitting around, waiting to be donated to someone in need. I declared myself "in need". The Verizon rep was able to reactivate it, so now I have telephony and the numbers of everyone I know. Except the girl. Subtract most of a liability. Add two assets. Things were looking up.

At this point I had finished watching Duke win (on TiVo), which was surprisingly reassuring. I surfed the InterWebs for a while and found some crime stats. They aren't surprising. My old district in DC had 8800 major crimes reported in 2006. My census tract in Seattle had 700. If you expand my census track to include everywhere I actually go in Seattle that number runs up to 3900. If you look only at robberies then DC's 3rd district maintained a 1095 to 220 edge. I was never touched in DC. This is why I'm freaked out.

I've written all of this because I'm not sure if I'll be able to sleep tonight (eventually sleep fell on top of me around 3:00). Technically my antifriends have my address and my keys, so if they wanted I guess they could come back for a visit. I don't actually believe that will happen. They seemed to young to do that. But they did have a gun*, so I've wedged my armchair in the entry nook.

The last time I felt this jumpy at night was when a roach crawled across my pillow in my new apartment in DC.

Another asset! While rummaging through my desk I realized that I actually have some coin of the realm. I've never closed my Capital One card, so it will now enter the fray along with my Discover card, who's sole purpose in life is to refill my Starbucks card. Armed with credit, Americans, myself included, are unstoppable.

So this is where I will finally sign off. I'm safe. The rest really doesn't matter.

* I say my antifriends had a gun. There's a nonzero chance that whatever they had wasn't a gun. The one guy was definitely pointing something at me. It definitely reflected what little light there was. It clicked. These would seem to indicate a gun, but along with almost everything about the situation I don't really know. The click sounded like plastic. Could it have been a toy? Sure. But do I know? Not really. I can't even say for sure what the guys were wearing even though I was thinking "remember what these guys are wearing" when the whole thing went down. I can totally see how eyewitness accounts are a joke; I told the officer that I could probably identify one of the guys if he walked in front of me, but if he was in a lineup of similar looking dudes, well, no chance. I notice everything about people except their names. Obviously names weren't an issue here. The gun* was.

The mother of all blog posts

2007-11-20T21:27:00.000-08:00

It's coming. Maybe Wednesday. Definitely Thursday. Be prepared.

I am less popular than freak dancing

2007-11-12T22:52:00.000-08:00

According to the Googles I've had 1801 visitors to my blog since May 26, which is an average of 10.7 visits a day. I'm proud of this, as I figure having 10 friends/family members bored enough to read my blog on a regular basis is a pretty good sign.

You know what is WAY more popular than my blog?

Huan's freak dance interview video on the YouTubes. I posted it on May 26, and it has had 33,542 views since then. Which, if my math isn't awful, is 200 views a day. Or 20x as popular as my blog.

There may be some changes around here.

I'm a sucker for good dressers

2007-11-12T22:32:00.000-08:00

I'm not a marketer, but I'm pretty sure that dressing up monkeys like people is always successful. Spend 90 seconds watching these clips and tells me I'm wrong.

That's really just an excuse to post the monkey ads. And this is just an excuse to post a link to cute baby pictures. Check out my vote for Baby of the Year, Jackson Weinstein.

The worst business idea ever

2007-11-11T22:01:00.000-08:00

There haven't been a whole lot of variations on the pizza joint. As best I can tell, they fall into one of the following categories:

Eat-in: Pizza Hut, Pizzeria Uno's, etc
Delivery: Domino's, Papa John's
Take-out: Little Caesar's

What do each of this establishments have in common? They all serve you a cooked pizza. It's possible they have other value propositions, but in general you patrionize one of these establishments because you want to eat a pizza without preparing a pizza. Which is why I'm not sure I understand what Papa Murphy's is all about. They are the 5th largest pizza chain in the US.

And they cook exactly zero pizzas a year.

Yes, they do "take-and-bake"pizza. So in case you really want pizza, but you don't want to let other people cook your pizza, call Papa Murphy's. They'll whip something up in a jiffy, so as soon as you get home and preheat the oven and wait another 15 minutes, you can have a fresh pie.

What am I missing? I know the chain is based in Canada, so maybe this is some weird north-of-the-border thing, but how does a place that performs the least valuable part of the pizza value chain end up with 1000 stores?

You say Camano, I say Camino

2007-11-11T21:47:00.000-08:00

My friend Chris has decided that he is into birding. On a Seattle scale this is not all that strange. Nor is it strange given that my roommate once decided he was into mushrooming. So when Chris called me up and asked if I had any plans this afternoon I decided to take the plunge and see what Camano Island had to offer.

I imagine that the first rule of birding is something like "Do no harm." We pretty much broke that within 30 seconds of arriving on Camano Island. Chris, Sarah, and I went to the first site suggested by the InterWebs. We saw three pheasants wandering around. They ran away from us. Into a big field that was full of hunters with dogs and shotguns. Not wanting to hang out near hunters we went on to another location, but it's hard to imagine that those three pheasants aren't cooked/stuffed right now. Sad. They were pretty.

Our second stop was on the north side of the island at the English Boom Preserve. With a name like "preserve" you would suspect there would be birds. You would be incorrect. We saw nothing. Not even a gull hanging out over the water. Not even a duck. The only three heartbeats belonged to Chris, Sarah, and I. It was pretty, though.

The feeling of deja vu was strong, only I was coming up zeros with birds rather than mushrooms. Hmm. We left for Site #3.

"Stop! Wild turkeys!"

Sure enough, we saw about 10 wild turkeys hanging out in a yard. We assume they were being fed by the homeowners, and we assume they aren't going to be alive in a couple weeks. Still, turkeys are underrated in terms of birds. They're quite pretty.

Site #3 (Iverson Spit Preserve Trail) was slightly more promising in that we could see actual birds. We didn't see a lot of birds, nor did we see birds that weren't part of the family "birdus genericus", but we saw live birds that weren't about to be killed. I would share pictures at this point, but one thing I did learn in my 4 hour birding adventure is that pocket cameras are worthless. Well, not worthless; they take great pictures of your friend taking pictures with his 100-400mm lens.

With the sun setting quickly we rushed to our last stop of the day: a state park on the southwest side of the island. The scenery was gorgeous (unfortunately clam season is closed, otherwise there could have been clamming in addition to birding). I got my best bird shot of the day. Sadly, my little camera could capture nary a feather of the giant bald eagle we saw (Chris got good pics, which you can see here). They really are amazing birds; we didn't see this one fly but even from a couple of hundred feet below its perch you could sense the power and size of the bird. I still like Ben Franklin's idea to have the turkey be the national bird, but the bald eagle is a strong second choice. We also may have seen a marble something-or-other.

Or, it may have been a log. 12x digital zoom = worthless.

The fruitless mushroom hunting trip was softened by the fact that I could buy morels in a grocery story. A no-bird birding trip would have been a blow to the ego. Luckily the eagle saved us, and the scenery was tough to beat.

Closing the loop on Dr. Ryan

2007-11-10T11:06:00.000-08:00

All the data are in. I have no idea what to do.

I made my third visit to the House of Comedic Dentistry a week ago Thursday for my cleaning. Obviously the good doctor wasn't there, as he was in Belize getting hammered on rum drinks, so it was just me and my hygienist. This was not the ditzy hygienist who kept apologizing for messing up during my previous visits, this was a very nice woman named Camilla who used to live in DC and with whom I pleasantly bonded during my first visit.

Anyhoo, the short and long story is that I have no story. She cleaned my teeth, did a little extra work, gave me a toothbrush and floss when I left... it was exactly what you expect from a dental visit. She's comforting and funny, which makes her the exact opposite of everyone else in the office.

So now the question is whether I return. The popular opinion is that I need to get out of there as soon as possible. And if I thought I would have to interact with the dentist I would agree. But as I think about the dentist/patient relationship, well, there isn't much of one. It's all about the hygienist. That's who you spend time with. And to date my hygienist has not made a joke about being drunk or brought unannounced strangers into the room or gotten upset when I paused a procedure. She's a keeper.

The verdict will remain out. I have a follow up visit in December, and that will probably be the tiebreaker. Maybe Belize will calm the good Doctor down.

Turns out that Dr. Ryan is a "diva"

2007-10-30T21:19:00.000-07:00

I had my second trip to the dentist today. As you'll remember I was a bit weirded out by the first trip, and I walked into the office with more uncertainty about the outcome of the procedures than I've felt before, at least in a dental setting. To begin with, I wasn't really sure what the procedure was going to be... of my two appointments this week one was for a cleaning, and the other was to replace my silver fillings with something newer.

Turns out that today was filling replacement day, so I'm still a bit sore as I write this. I don't think that soreness has anything to do with the skill (or lack thereof) of Dr. Ryan, but I still can't say that he's an inspiring dentist.

To be sure, my bar for dentistry is quite high. I was only able to go to the best dentist in the world two or three times, but she left an impression. Dr. Mona Nashid (I think) was my mom's dentist when I had outgrown my pediatric dentist. I remember my last trip to Dr. Nashid was a week before I left for the Atlanta Olympics. She's the only dentist I know that stopped the procedure to administer more novocaine after I flinched; I hadn't even requested it, but she was so empathetic towards pain that she made doubly sure her patients felt as little as possible. She looked like she would cry if I walked out in pain. There's no debate: empathy for pain is the #1 skill I want in a dentist.

And Dr. Ryan is still working on it. He's a guy, which puts him somewhat behind the 8-ball, but he showed some signs today. With that, here's the bulleted report:

His sense of humor continues to be bad. He made a joke about me complimenting the background music that insinuated that if I hadn't liked the music that I would "pay for it."
The first filling was replaced without incident, but as he started to drill the second one I definitely felt some pain. I gave him the "pain" signal and he gave me another shot of novocaine. Now, this was the same thing that Dr. Nashid did, but she never seemed perturbed about interrupting the procedure. Dr. Ryan seemed put out to have to pause for 5 minutes. Not encouraging.
During the 5 minute pause the hygienist called him a diva. Since my mouth looked a lot like a bass that's been jerked out of pond I couldn't really dig deeper, but this isn't an encouraging sign.
What I felt like all day:
I did find out that I am younger than Dr. Ryan. I talked about remembering the music video for Europe's The Final Countdown. He said this aged me, and asked how old I was. I answered "30" and he said he was older than that. My hygienist piped up that she was 24, and it was her iPod that was playing.
There were no fewer than three instances when the hygienist had to ask Dr. Ryan how to do something, which makes me think she's had her job for about three weeks. Again, there's nothing inherently wrong about that, but it makes me long for my previous hygienist who alternately told me that I looked too young to be taken seriously in business, and said I was getting old when she spotted a few gray hairs.
Last time I reported the good Dr. was hurrying me along so that he and the staff could get to happy hour. This time he was hurrying me along so that he could go to Belize and drink a lot. Actual quote. Also told me he drank a lot the previous weekend. Not encouraging.
Lastly, and easily the creepiest thing going on was the mystery 3rd person in the room. There was some dude who hung around for my entire procedure looking over the doctor's shoulder. No one ever told me who he was, or what he was doing. I heard that he was 23 years old, and when he asked a question about how to do something Dr. Ryan kind of told him to shut up. A student? A recently hired hygienist? A homeless dude?

So we're not quite at prognosis negative, but we're close. I go in for my cleaning on Thursday, and hopefully I'll get the first hygienist I met, who seemed to be the adult in the office. I'll get the scoop from her. Or, I won't and I'll find a new dentist in the Spring.

Dear Zucchini

2007-10-30T19:45:00.000-07:00

Dear Zucchini (and onion) --

I do not have the patience to wait for you to release your liquid. I know the recipe says to turn down the heat so that you cook without browning, but what progress does that show? Obviously browning is a sign of cooking progress. If there is no browning, how am I to tell if there is any progress being made? This seems like a cruel trick... if I just turn up the heat won't everything just finish sooner?

Would someone call the Councils a cab

2007-10-21T22:22:00.000-07:00

Seattle politics really aren't that exciting. When I moved here 9 months ago there was a bizarre referendum on how to replace the Alaskan Viaduct (always sweet to have a road closed every six months to see if it's going to fall down). The winner, I'm not joking, was None of the Above. But the scandals are starting to get mildly interesting. The Mayor's son was arrested for being a dirty card dealer or something. And it seems like the various councils in the area are populated with frat boys and sorority girls:

A King County councilwoman was arrested for DUI in June.
A Seattle City councilwoman was arrested for DUI last week.
Another Seattle City councilman was arrested for assaulting his wife, while drunk.

Of course, all of this falls under the category of "alleged" crimes. It's nothing compared to my Mayor 4 Life Marion Berry, but it's better than nothing.

My dentist prefers that you call him Ryan

2007-10-18T21:32:00.000-07:00

Technically he introduced himself as Dr Ryan, but I'm pretty sure that I could get away with Ryan. You see, it turns out that my criteria of "closest to my apartment" when search for a dentist out here has led me into the new age of dentistry. Some might call it the New Face of Dentistry. (Seriously, click the link.)

Frankly, it's too early to tell whether I like the new face or the old face of dentistry. I'll be honest: we pretty much accomplished nothing during my first visit. There was a lot of chatting with the hygienist (who used to live in DC, has a husband who knew HBS and Duke people), lots of x-rays taken (and re-taken), and only a few minutes looking at my teeth. There wasn't even a cleaning. For a few minutes it felt like I was getting an estimate on car work, and then, in fact, I got an estimate. Or will, whenever the "encrypted email" arrives.

Since I have no fewer than three more appointments before the end of the year, here are my thoughts about what the future holds:

I'm fairly concerned by the website. First, the whole patient/guest thing is dumb. Guess what: one is not a guest if one requires local anesthetic on a visit. Second, look at the website again. Specifically, try and read this. While it's nice to be recognized with Capital Letters, I'd really feel a lot better if the grammar didn't suck. Read the sentence about putting stuff into my mouth and restoring my tooth. WTF?
My appointment was at 5, and my visit was definitely rushed because Dr. Ryan was taking his hygienists to happy hour. No joke. This was mentioned at least three times.
Rather than asking that I have my previous dental records transferred out here, he told me that he would assume I received terrible care in the past. I actually kind of like that attitude, but only if he brings it strong.
He started singing a Siouxie and the Banshees song and we got into an argument as to whether it was Siouxie or Ace of Base. No one should ever mix up these groups. The hygienist actually called Doc Ryan "stupid" for getting them confused. He said he hated to be wrong, and so he rarely was. Hmm. Misplaced intellectual confidence. Not a great sign for a dentist.

So, given all that, why am I going back? Well, others say good things about him, he is convenient, and then there's this:

HDTV. And tiny cameras. And digital x-rays. And text message appointment reminders. Ryan has certainly invested in technology, and as everyone knows, I am a sucker for unnecessary technology. I was hooked when I walked in and started signing documents on a computer monitor. When he then showed me photographs of my silver fillings that were starting to deteriorate (I guess they don't last forever) I was smitten. I'm pretty sure that at some point he will integrate the iPhone into my treatment. I'm giddy with anticipation.

Ooopen post 2

2007-10-17T21:16:00.000-07:00

The story of the 2007 Ooopen

As I mentioned in an earlier post I'm recently returned from the golf tournament that my friends and I have put on for six years now. And for the fifth time in those six years I returned home a loser.

In years past this would have put me into a tailspin of mild depression for a couple of weeks. With excruciating detail I can discuss how my poor play in previous Ooopens cost my team a chance to win:

In the first Ooopen I celebrated too soon after securing at least a draw after winning the 17th hole, quickly lost my concentration, and lost 18, costing us a win in fourball.
(I actually played well in Ooopen 2, going 3-1-0)
In the third Ooopen I was my team's sacrificial lamb in singles, but was even with Dooley (a far superior player) going to the 15th hole. I missed a 3 foot putt that would have put me 1-up. Instead I lost 16, miraculously pushed 17, but couldn't get the job done on 18. I also played atrociously on the par 3s (two doubles, two bogeys), which ended up costing my team the tiebreaker. I yelled at myself for four hours driving home. To this day I could walk you to the exact spot on the green where I missed that putt.
My team got blitzed in the fourth Ooopen 7-1, but I Franko and I had a lead against Dooley and Wiseman in the first round going to the 16th hole and lost. Things went downhill from there
My team won Ooopen 5. It was great. I still bask in the glory.

Which leaves me with Ooopen 6. I had incredibly high hopes going in. I was the first to arrive in Myrtle, and after picking up the keys to the house I got in a practice round. Shot 83, including birdies on the two hardest holes. It was arguably my best round of golf ever. We spent most of Friday hurrying up to wait... we arrived at the course early, early enough to watch it rain for about an hour. Then we got to wait as they sent out the other crazy people who waited around. Then, well, it started to rain again and they shut the course. The Ooopen did not get off to a very fast start. We made the most of our free time, including introducing some of the Yankee Ooopen participants to Bojangles. It also says a lot about the group of people that we bring together that we had a day of golf rained out and no one got very upset.

Day two started before dawn. My alarm went off at 6am and the sun was still an hour away from rising above the Atlantic. By the time it did we were on the golf course rather than on the beach. Despite gloomy skies and a waterlogged golf course the Ooopen finally got underway. I was paired with Wiseman (undefeated for two years, easily the best record in Ooopen history), and we played great golf. We were playing fourball against Tim Doyle and Chris Zimmer, and we never let them into the match. As a best ball team we shot 38 on the front nine, making seven pars and two bogeys, and made the turn with a four hole lead. Five pushes later and we had a 5&4 victory. Unfortunately the other Marchers (our team decided to call itself Sherman's March) didn't get off to quite the same start (it's tough to beat a guy who gets 15 strokes and shoots 102), and we found ourselves down 2-1.

I'll be honest: I have almost no recollection of my afternoon match. I know that it was back and forth, I know that I played pretty poorly, and I know that Rupert and Zim (my opponents) played pretty well. The loss hurt, but unlike previous matches I can't point to a hole where I made a shot I wish I could have back. The real story from the afternoon was the Jordan/Swennes vs. Feeney/Contarino match. It featured one player making three 10s in a row. Jordan and Bobby were down 11 points at the 8th hole, and came back to tie the match. It's tough to explain how big of a comeback this is, but it's easily the biggest comeback in Ooopen history. Incredible stuff.

Sunday dawned with my team trailing 3.5-2.5. Sunday would end with my team trailing by the same amount. Once again I came up short, although I don't feel as bad about it as other losses I've taken. I challenged Drew Fine, who is easily the best golf in the group. He shot 83. I shot 91. No one else broke 90 on the day. I was frustrated that despite knocking in nearly every fairway I couldn't give myself easy pars. The loss sucked, but it wasn't as devastating as years past.

So I drove out of Myrtle more ambivalent about the Ooopen than each of the previous four years. I think my lack of competitive fire this year was driven by two factors: first, I planned all the golf, so I spent most of the weekend worrying about logistics; second, the win last year released so much pent up stress that I could actually enjoy the event rather than focusing on the competitive aspects. I don't know how I feel about that.

Ooopen post 3: Was winning last year really the biggest accomplishment of my post-college life? Where else can I find an outlet for my competitive streak?

You know it's a great night when

2007-10-15T22:33:00.000-07:00

I would have been completely content with my evening after having a great dinner with my friend Fred (in town on a consulting gig). But it was elevated to being a great night when I saw two men jousting in the middle of the street with metal crutches. One of them (who had no shirt on, in the rain) answered the question "Who do you think you are" with "I'm Bill Simmons, b**ch!"

Live Blogging: Genius Math Kid

2007-10-13T11:55:00.000-07:00

I've been blogging this morning from a coffee shop in my neighborhood. I'm now watching some guy tutor this little Asian kid in math. But not the typical math that most 5 year olds would learn (he can't be more than 5). They started discussing the importance and history of the null set, have moved on to canonical forms, and are now discussing introductory number theory (real numbers, natural numbers, ordinals, etc).

The tutor just made the statement "I know you've done a lot of calculus."

Seriously, this is math that I didn't even get to in college. And the kid is 5. Maybe 7. Tops.

Golf interlude: Things I've heard on the bus

2007-10-13T11:46:00.000-07:00

Time for another installment of "Things that I overheard on the bus."

A couple of weeks ago I was riding home from work. The guy behind me was talking on the phone for most of the ride. At some point he mentioned that he had spent his day in court. Now, I'm still naive about who has to go to court. With all of my attorney friends I assume that people who go to court are lawyers or potential jurors. It turns out that when you ride a Seattle bus this is not necessarily the case. How did I figure out that this citizen was in court because he had done something wrong?

"Now the guy is saying that I pulled a knife on him"
"Yeah, it's total bulls***"
"Yeah, because if I had pulled a knife everyone in the store would have died."

I nearly choked on my tongue when he said that, mainly because I would pay money to see his attorney's reaction if he actually said that to a prosecutor. It would have been great. In a terrifying "this guy is riding the bus" way.

The other amusing thing I overheard was not, in fact, on a bus. It was at a bar while I watched the Redskins lose to the Giants. As the game finished one of the waitresses pulled aside the owner to explain why she wasn't going to be at work the next day:

Waitress: I'm going to be late tomorrow. I have to be in court.
Owner: Why do you have to be in court?
W: You'll totally laugh, it's such a joke.
O: [waiting, not expecting to laugh]
W: I got charged with DUI a few weeks ago. Get this: I blew 0.083. I was only .3 over!
O: [Kind of shocked]
W: I know! Isn't it total BS?
O: Um, but you were drunk.
W: Not really. I was only .3 over!
O: But you were legally drunk. Why the hell were you driving?
W: No, you don't get it, I was only 0.083. That's barely over the limit. I'm sure it'll get dismissed.
O: [Fighting urge to point out that small numbers sometimes do matter.]

Weclome to Seattle!

Ooopen post 1

2007-10-13T11:15:00.001-07:00

(Yeah, I own those pants.)

People who don't like my golf stories will likely not be interested in the next few blog posts, as I'll be recapping and waxing poetic on the Ooopen Championship, which is the little golf tournament that my friends put on each year.

First post: photos. Click here to see the Championship in pictures.
Next post: The story of the 2007 Ooopen.
Next next post: Was winning the 2006 Ooopen my most significant post-college accomplishment?

Bowling, Lunn, and mouse hockey

2007-10-11T23:03:00.001-07:00

After the Soap Box Derby excitement my friends Chris and Sarah (mostly Sarah) invited a bunch of us out to their house for dinner to celebrate a visit from Matt (aka Dumm Lunn) and Samantha.

Several interesting things happened:

1) Chris and Sarah own hunting cats. They look like house cats, but every time I see Chris or Sarah they have a story about a different animal that their cats have killed/maimed/stunned/injured. The cats feel the need to brag about their hunting prowess by bringing their prey into Chris and Sarah's house. This happened while we were there a couple Saturdays ago. We were hanging around after dinner and noticed one of the cats staring under one of the couches. We didn't think much of it until we lifted up the couch and a mouse came running out. This, of course, caused pandemonium in the house. A few minutes later I had a rake in my hand and was guarding one potential escape path like a hockey goalie.

2) After the mouse was scared out of the house (and back into cats' killing fields) we decided to go bowling. We split up into teams of 3: myself, Jay, and Sarah against Chris, Lunn, and Kevin. Lunn bragged about how he rolled a 269 a couple of years ago, so his opening 89 wasn't very impressive. Jay, Sarah, and I racked up two victories in a row.

Then Lunn got hot. The bad guys won games three and four, and we found ourselves in a stalemate. Even though the lanes were closing we had to find a winner. We bowled the 5th game. And unfortunately, we decided to put money on the line.

Ooops. We got slaughtered. I think we lost by 100 pins. Lunn rolled a 173, the best round of the night. My team then found out that games were $5.25 each, and since we each had to pay for 10 rounds, well, a casual night of bowling ended up costing $52. And maybe more, depending on how you factor in the cost of arm rehab. My wrist hurt for most of the week. I got a text message from Chris on the following Friday saying that his shoulder still hurt. I challenge anyone to go bowl 5 games and see what happens.

Just don't tell me when it doesn't actually hurt. I don't need people to tell me what a wuss I am. Oh, and the 3rd classic blunder (behind the Asian land war and going in against a Sicilian when death is on the line) is betting against Lunn after he's made a ridiculous claim that he can't back up. Of course he'll back it up, and he'll do it with this shit-eating grin on his face:

Soap Box Derby

2007-10-11T22:42:00.000-07:00

The blog has been out of commission for a couple of weeks. I've been focusing all my attention on the 2007 Ooopen Championship, arguably the most important 3 days on my calendar for any given year. There will be bloggage on the Ooopen over the weekend.

But now it's time for something I'm definitely doing next year: The Red Bull Soap Box Derby. Basically it's like go-karting, only the participants are usually drunk and the vehicles have no engines. Like this:

Literally there isn't much to these things. The real fun comes before they push these down the hill. Each team has to do some sort of dance, there's a theme and costumes and all sorts of good stuff. This year's judges included Sir Mix-a-Lot (of baby got back fame), Nick Collison (of Seattle Sonics fame), Amanda Beard (of Olympic gold medalist and, um, Playboy fame), and maybe some sort of X-Gamer who I've never heard of. But between a hot swimmer and Sir Mix-a-Lot I was enthralled.

Anyways, my buddy Chris has a garage, and I'm pretty sure that we can buy an old go-kart frame to use as a base, and then we just need a theme. Dad -- figure out how to get the old karting crew out to Seattle next September. We'll also need a welder. And a choreographer. And some creativity... here are some of the other participants:

Dead to me: Hilton Hotels

2007-10-01T22:35:00.000-07:00

There is a lot of stuff from this weekend that I probably should blog about: mouse hockey, having the proprietor of a restaurant come to our table and tell us that we were "some of the best eaters he had ever seen", the Red Bull Soap Box Derby races*, an epic 5-game bowling match... but all of those have to wait, because I need to use my soapbox to denounce Hilton Hotels.

They closed my account.

It's not obvious why this is so offensive, until you think back to Y2K. I'm not sure where you were that year, but I was in a Hilton Garden Inn in Addison, Texas. For 133 nights. That's right. More than 1/3 of a year. I built up hundreds of thousands of points that year, and ever since I've been bleeding off a few tens of thousands each year. Apparently I haven't done anything with Hilton in the past 12 months. Because that's the reason they shuttered my account, which had over 200,000 points in it (that's about 10 free nights).

I'm just stunned by this. I know that travel companies have been de-valuing points programs with amazing rapidity, but to not give me any warning before closing my account, well, that's just unacceptable. I'm sure I could have found magazines or golf clubs or something.

Anyways, that's it for me and Hilton. They are officially removed from my list of preferred travel providers. That should show them.

* Trust me, there will be blog about this, because it's possible I may dedicate myself to winning this even it 2008. Dad -- get the go-kart guys ready.

I'll post anything anyone asks

2007-09-26T23:21:00.001-07:00

Some things live up to the hype

2007-09-26T23:08:00.000-07:00

A sample ranking of the best concerts I've ever seen:

1) James Brown, House of Blues, Atlanta Summer Olympics. Went in through the VIP back door, convinced bartenders to serve me beer (I was 19), peed next to Scottie Pippen, and danced with a future TV sportscaster. Plus it was the Godfather of Soul.

2) U2, Verizon Center, October 2005. I'm not even sure if it was a great U2 show, but they're the definitive band of my generation.

3) Arcade Fire (and LCD Soundsystem), Bank of America Pavilion, September 2007. Kind of a crappy venue, but LCD Soundsystem proved that electronic bands can play mean live shows, and then Arcade Fire lived up to all the hype. Slightly fewer people on stage than Wu-Tang, but those that are there tend to be more involved in the show and less likely to be too stoned to sing. Seriously: go see Arcade Fire. They are worth the money and effort.

What really annoys me is that this cost me a round of golf

2007-09-22T21:33:00.000-07:00

I joke with people that they can plan for rain whenever I've made a tee time. When I woke up this morning I thought my prophecy would once again come true: it was cloudy and cold and ominous. But then the clouds started to clear, and while it remained cold it turned into a promising afternoon. So I was excited as I drove a couple of blocks to pick up my friend Cory.

I was considerably less excited when I got about halfway through the intersection of 1st Ave and Broad St. Basically, this happened:

Yeah. I got in an accident. And as a result I didn't get to play golf today, which may or may not have caused all of the clouds to burn away and temps to rise into the mid 60s. I spent most of my afternoon on the phone with my insurance company (actually not the worst experience in the world). I was surprised how many people asked whether anyone was hurt in the accident. I laughed it off and said no, and wondered why no one asked whether or not I missed a tee time. How rude.

Anyways, this is what my fender is supposed to look like:

And this is what my fender actually looks like:

Yarg. Now I have to decide between golf and football tomorrow. Booooo!

This is why I was at work late tonight

2007-09-19T21:22:00.000-07:00

I'll laugh at a lot of things. I smiled when my boss turned her laptop around and showed this clip to everyone at a meeting late this afternoon. But everyone else pretty much lost their sh*t. Rather than finishing the meeting so we could go home everyone loaded up YouTube so they could watch this again. And again. And then they watched the various derivatives. For 20 minutes. Even people who were participating in the meeting via phone got into the action. It was brutal. By the time we got down to bidness it was 5:30. Not that I had anything to do.

(Sadly, I didn't. I just hate missing the last express bus to my neighborhood.)

(Oh, and this is clearly a better video than the original.)

A band you should listen to

2007-09-18T23:36:00.000-07:00

My friend Brian does silly things like spending all his time and money starting a record label rather than playing golf. Some people just have different priorities.

That said, much like Christopher Walken in the More Cowbell sketch, Brian puts on his pants one leg at a time AND he puts out hit records. Please go check out The Diggs. Buy their EP or their first CD. Or, if you want to be ahead of the times, check out this song from their soon-to-be-released album:

http://www.sugarspunrecords.com/promo/Careen.mp3

(My thanks to Brian to letting me listen to this early. For those of you in the New York, these guys play all over the city. Definitely worth checking out.)

Rye bread subtypes

2007-09-18T23:16:00.001-07:00

Can someone explain to me the difference between all the kinds of rye bread out there? I love rye bread, and I think I prefer seeded as opposed to unseeded. In the past couple of weeks I've purchased Jewish rye, Russian rye, and Caraway rye. As far as I can tell I may have purchased the same loaf of bread three straight times. What's up with that?

Listen to my dad on the InterTubes

2007-09-16T19:02:00.001-07:00

I'm sure most of you are already huge NPR fans and thus have already heard this, but in case you haven't, let me present my semi-famous father being interviewed on NPR's "On the Media."

(Also, feel free to go to the On the Media website and mock the commenter who claims that USAT fraudulently increases its circulation numbers.)

(Also, the downside of not driving to work is that I rarely listen to NPR any more, so I didn't catch this live. Surprisingly.)

The outdoors

2007-09-16T18:48:00.000-07:00

Well, my mom seems to have taken my last two blog posts to mean that I do nothing by drink beer and eat french fries. Clearly she doesn't know how much I would like to be eating fries... but my lack of a deep fryer means that I usually end up eating chips and salsa. And occasionally yogurt and grapes.

In reality, I do a lot of other stuff. Like go hiking. My friend Chris sent me out to a trail along the Middle Fork of the Snoqualmie, about 30 minutes outside of Seattle. Gorgeous hike, although it nearly killed my car (4 wheel drive does not equal ground clearance).

Anyhoo, here are the shots from the hike.

http://www.flickr.com/gp/72188899@N00/6v1NHw

Maybe this is why Franko got a cat

2007-09-15T21:24:00.000-07:00

My friend Jon got a cat back in March. Somehow this was a replacement for the friendship of Huan and me since we both moved away from DC. We've long debated why he felt the need to replace us with a cat.

I think I know why.

Having someone around is a great excuse not to eat. I lost about 15 pounds after moving to Seattle. A lot of it was the stress and emotion of the move. Some of it was not knowing anyone, and thus having no excuse to go out drinking. But some of it was having someone else in my apartment who would (passively) make me feel guilty about sneaking late night snacks or eating a 2nd portion of my dinner meal.

Now that I've started to meet people who like going out, I find myself in bars a lot more frequently than in the Spring. And with Huan living it up in the China I don't have anyone to shame me into not eating. The combination (along with a stretch of work that kept me out of the gym and eating takeout food) has encouraged a couple of the lost pounds to find their way back to my belly. Which makes me wonder: Should I get a cat to shame me into not eating?

And then I snap back to reality and realize that cats are lame. I'd rather be fat.

Hard days work

2007-09-15T21:02:00.000-07:00

I wish I had some pictures to share, because it would make telling this story a whole lot easier. That's not entirely true... there isn't much of a story here. I spent today experiencing a real college football game, which not only includes an actual game but 2+ hours of pre-game tailgating, another couple hours of post-game tailgating, and finally wrapping up with a traffic-filled bus/car ride home.

Being a Duke alum I never really experienced real college football. Sure, we played Florida State and other actual football teams, but I think we won 9 games during my four years. The whole Duke football experience was so lame that students didn't even bother to drink at their dorms before walking 1/4 mile to the stadium, where tickets were free. It was awful. There is no debating that Duke has the worst Division 1 football program in America.* Basketball made up for it at the time, but now that I'm out of college I feel I missed something that most of my friends didn't.

So when I buddy from work offered up a ticket to the UW/Ohio State game I snapped it up. We were able to find a tailgate, albeit with Ohio State fans. Brats, sausages, grilled onions, bean salad, enough brownies to kill a horse... it was a veritable feast. Oh, and there may have been some beer. I love that the police can't/won't do anything about people walking around with keg cups, but they take extreme offense if you are standing around with an actual beer can. Is that what our public safety officers have been relegated to? Making me put it in a cup?

Anyhoo, the only thing more fun than a pre-game tailgate is a post-game tailgate, especially when the tailgate host's team won. UW gave OSU a fight for 30 minutes, but they didn't have enough in the tank to pull it out. I barely had enough in the tank to finish out the tailgate and make it home. Some of us leave it all on the field. And some of us leave it all in the parking lot.

* Holy S***! Duke WINS! First win against a real team in 3 years! Woo-hoo!

No me tuteas

2007-09-10T21:57:00.000-07:00

Tutear was easily my favorite verb in Spanish in high school. Babelfish can't translate it, but roughly it means "to use the familiar 2nd person pronoun", which in Spanish is a pretty big deal. (The formal 2nd person uses the same conjugation as the 3rd person.) This word has popped back into my mind recently as I crawl through a book for short stories by Elliot Perlman called The Reasons I Won't Be Coming.

I first came across Perlman when I read his novel Seven Types of Ambiguity a couple of ago. If I hadn't also read Lolita I would definitely have rated it the best book I read that year. You can click on the links and get better summaries and reviews than what I can provide, but the gist of Seven Types is that it is told through a rotating series of narrators at varying points in time. Some of the narrators tell the story in the 1st person, some in the 3rd, and a few tell the story in the 2nd person. It is very well done.

Reasons is not that well done. Specifically, it should be the poster-child example of why writing in the 2nd person generally sucks. Imagine writing a letter to someone... it would include a lot of phrases like "You remember when..." and "When you did that thing it made me feel good that you were there..." etc etc etc. That's 2nd person writing. (Or, for sports fans, Hubie Brown pretty much calls the NBA and NBA draft in the 2nd person). Unless the author can give the reader a reason to empathize with the "you" (or, in the case of a letter, you are the "you") they are pretty much wasting their time. I keep thinking "is the narrator talking to me? No? Then who am I supposed to be?"

It's all very confusing. Which is why no writer worth his or her salt writes that way. Which is why I like that the Spanish make you ask for permission to use the familiar 2nd person.

(BTW, go buy Seven Types. It's very good.)

3861

2007-09-10T21:47:00.000-07:00

That's how many miles my car had on it when I got the oil changed on Saturday afternoon. This isn't a particularly notable story except for what it means I don't do a lot of these days: drive.

Just how little? Let's dig into the stats a little bit:

I've owned the car for ~280 days
The car had 1700 miles when it was loaded on the trailer to be shipped to Seattle
Overall I've averaged 13.8 miles/day
While in DC I averaged 28.3 miles/day
While in Seattle I've been averaging just 9.8 miles/day
A 10,000 mile/year lease is 27.4 miles/day

Which means I own a very nice depreciating asset, albeit slightly slower than average. Which kind of sucks.

This is what I'm talking about

2007-09-10T21:42:00.000-07:00

Liquid Swords

2007-09-03T23:41:00.000-07:00

A Wu-Tang concert is music's version of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. How so?

If you can identify how many Wu-Tang members there are, you can't identify which ones are actually on stage at any point in time. Conversely, if you can tell how many people are on stage at any point in time, you can't tell which ones are Wu-Tang members.
It is impossible to say whether the music Wu-Tang plays during the concert is any good or not. Conversely, if they are playing good music then it is impossible to say whether it is coming from Wu-Tang or an individual member.

This might seem nonsensical, but have you been to a Wu-Tang show? I tried counting the number of people on stage tonight about six or seven times. I got numbers ranging from 7 to 13. My best guess is that there were 9 people with microphones who participated regularly, two hype men, and one DJ. But the confidence intervals around each of those numbers is just huge... there may have only been 5 Clan members present. Or maybe they've added a few. The point is that the Wu-Tang is unknowable.

So, is unknowable any good? Who knows. A few of the songs they played during the set were fantastic, but in reality those were just solo performances by Method Man, RZA, or Ghostface with some backing by the rest of the Clan. When they were all participating in a song it was terribly hard to follow what was going on. I can see why their studio albums are great... RZA can orchestrate the competing voices when he has them running through a mixer, but on stage he's just herding cats. The concert was hard to distinguish from the sound check at times.

All that said, I think they've recognized that their influence on the rap scene far outstrips the material they've contributed to the genre, and so they play to their fame: the W hand sign, the love of weed, the whole Asian fetish thing. They haven't really released a relevant album in 5+ years, yet they headlined the last night of a three day music festival in one of the whitest cities in America. They certainly throw out hardcore lyrics, but they don't sound very convincing... they pretty clearly did the rock festivals this summer to pimp a new album that may (or may not) be released this fall. Masta Killa spent five minutes begging people to buy his album and to buy something being released by ODBs family. Or by ODB. Again, the Wu-Tang's business is only knowable by the Wu-Tang.

The other striking thing about the concert was the crowd. I remember some guys from my freshman dorm driving to Raleigh to see Wu-Tang. The concert started with someone (presumably a Wu-Tang Clan member) telling all the white people to move to the back (they did), and most of the audiences pulled out real guns for Wu's 21 gun salute. That same band didn't play tonight. The audience looked like they hadn't moved since Joss Stone opened the day at noon. There were some fat spliffs on the field, but it was mostly white kids bouncing to songs written about the same time they were born. They didn't seem to mind that they were listening to a mediocre show put on by one of the great rap groups of all time. Or was it a great show by one of the mediocre rap groups of all time?

That's the beauty of the Wu-Tang. We can never know anything with certainty.

How many Wu-Tang members can you see?

Gratuitous night shot of Seattle

2007-09-03T23:40:00.001-07:00

Everywhere I've ever played golf (that I can remember)

2007-08-30T22:56:00.000-07:00

Google Maps is pretty much da bomb.

View Larger Map

While I've played a lot of courses, I haven't actually played in that many places (15 states so far). I feel a big road trip coming to knock off a lot of the midwest.

Chef recommends

2007-08-29T22:10:00.000-07:00

Two things I've been enjoying a lot recently:

1) Okkervil River. I feel like I get burned most of the time I take a risk and buy something recommended by Pitchfork, but something told me I'd like these guys. I do. Obviously I'm pretty behind the times (they've been around for some time), but if you like Spoon or newer Wilco then pick up both their new album (The Stage Names), and their older one (Black Sheep Boy).

2) The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Um, wow. For a plot that is kind of like Beyond Thunderdome I didn't expect much, but I nearly missed my bus stop yesterday morning, and then again yesterday evening, and I could barely make myself put it down and go to sleep last night. I'll finish it this evening, but it's incredibly powerful writing. I've not read McCarthy's other's stuff, but if it's half as good as this it'll be worth the time to go through his collection. (Normally I wouldn't recommend something on Oprah's Book Club list, but it's really that good.)

The question is what sense am I losing?

2007-08-29T21:44:00.000-07:00

I figured that turning 30 would mostly be a bad thing. I get jet lagged easily. Three beers turns me into a wreck the next day. I keep scaring away girls by telling stories about Europe that involve lots of different currencies.

But there have been two upsides:

1) I'm getting hairier.
2) My sense of smell has become remarkably acute.

With respect to Upside #1, let me not overstate things. I would estimate that the time it would take me to grow a full beard has declined from somewhere around "half-life of a carbon atom" to "duration of the reign of a communist dictator", and I might have double my chest hairs from 7 to 14. Baby steps. Baby steps.

With respect to Upside #2, I can't tell if I am developing this sense globally, or if I'm just noticing the incredible range of odors of the people in Seattle. I've blogged about this previously, but there are some really terrible smelling people here. I can now not only spot these folks a mile away, but I feel like I can predict if they will only smell bad when I walk by, or if they are leaving a trail of their scent. Kind of like a shadow of stink. I can detect the difference between "booze only" stink and "booze + piss" stink.

I've also become more aware of women and the perfume's they wear. For the most part I think I just appreciate anything that is feminine and not gross, but I find my head spinning when I pass a group of young ladies who are slathered in various fancy perfumes. This isn't always a good thing. The other day I was sitting on the bus when I had the overwhelming sense of panic... I was sure that the girl next to me was going to start yelling at me or crying or asking me if I thought her jeans made her look fat. It took me a while to figure this out, but she was wearing the same perfume as Crazy _____, a girl I used to date. Luckily there was no drama.

And this is the point in the post where I don't have anything else to say, nor do I have a cute way to wrap things up. So I'm done.

Gone, but apparently not missed by all

2007-08-22T23:28:00.000-07:00

This guy. As most blog readers know, Huan moved across the pond (the other pond) a couple of weeks ago, and is now running his own rickshaw business in Shanghai. Or doing biz dev for a semiconductor company. One of the two.

Anyways, Huan's parting shot to Seattle was a story on the, um, "urban cougar". Needless to say that everyone with an actual sense of humor who read the article found it hilarious. Everyone I know who reads the Weekly has mentioned how much they enjoyed the article. Obviously it isn't going to win a Pulitzer, but hey, it traces the roots of the term cougar. How great is that?

However, because Huan is the most controversial writer in Seattle alt-weekly history, the story doesn't end with the story. When Huan's name disappeared from Seattle Weekly's masthead the competing paper's news editor ran a blog post that insinuated that Huan had been fired. This was followed up by crappy local blog "Seattlest" posting an article that discussed both alt-weeklies. They felt the need to call out Huan specifically, and asserted that he got canned:

Newly-former staff writer Huan Hsu initiated a seeming race to the bottom. Back in April he started the trend by attacking Real Change's newspaper vendors for not being homeless. But it was sex--the nastier and raunchier the better -- that did him in. On May 16 he wrote an article about dirty-dancing high schoolers. On June 13 was the now-infamous story about a Ballard High School tennis coach and his pseudo-spiritual sexuality, shared with his teenage female wards. Despite the grotesque pun in the title ("Break Point: Ballard High School's New Age Tennis Coach and the Bad News Beavers"), the article led to the coach's dismissal and seemed to vindicate the teen girl navel gazing. On July 11, Hsu wrote a pseudo-environmental piece about new-agey sex-toy sellers protesting phthalates in dildos. Then there was the July 25 attempt at muckraking that recounted wacky, disgusting and lewd stories of Metro Transit buses. But the final nail in Hsu's coffin was the bottom-of-the-barrel Aug. 8 cover story about NW "cougars." Since that story appeared, Hsu has disappeared from the Weekly's masthead.
the Stranger didn't quite seem to know how to spin the story. On Aug. 8, news editor Josh Feit posted a brief announcement on the Slog stating simply that, "Seattle Weekly staff writer Huan Hsu (rhymes with "who?") has left the paper after a brief 5-month stint." No doubt Stranger staffers would have loved to make an issue of Hsu's dismissal following the story, but they're hardly in a position to talk: their editor Dan Savage made his name as the louche sex columnist behind "Savage Love."

(Sorry, I refuse to post a link to Seattlest, since they and their relative city -ist blogs blow.)

There are plenty of holes in the arguments here, but the one that is most absurd is thinking that Huan would get fired because of the stories that had been published. So let me get this straight: the editors assigned him the story, edited the story (it was 5000+ words), put it on the cover, and then decided that Huan's writing was "racing to the bottom" and fired him. Um, writers get fired for lying or not writing stuff good enough to get published. Obviously that wasn't the case. Good thing I'm one of 25 people who read that blog.

Anyways, join me in wishing Huan the best of luck in China. I'll miss him, even if the city doesn't.

Soul Man, and I don't mean the Isaac Hayes song

2007-08-21T22:08:00.000-07:00

So I was watching Soul Man this evening on the MOJO Network*. It's really one of the best movies ever: a kid from LA gets into Harvard Law but needs to find money in order to attend. He decides to take lots of tanning pills and gets a scholarship intended for African-Americans. Then he goes off to Harvard and learns about racism. Hijinks ensue. It is really one of the best movies made in the mid '80s.

Anyways, I spent some time on IMDB looking up the cast when I came across an incredible discovery: Jan from the Office is the crazy white girl who wants to sleep with a black guy (and later, an American Indian) in Soul Man. Turns out that she (Melora Hardin) was also supposed to be the girl in Back to the Future, but when they cast Michael J. Fox she got canned because she was too tall for him. This pretty much cements Jan as my favorite minor celebrity... Soul Man and The Office is a combo that few people can match.

(Her website is also priceless.)

* If you don't get the MOJO network, you should figure out how to get the MOJO network. Among the awesomeness it contains: Wall Street Warriors, a show about d-bags on the Street; The Game, a show about baseball; Three Sheets, a show about global drinking habits; and various other great shows in HD (like Soul Man).

Peach-O-Rama

2007-08-20T23:19:00.000-07:00

Apparently it is Peach-O-Rama time here in Seattle. What does this mean? Well, the peaches are quite good, so that's fun. Plus, there is some sort of new/fake metric that determines exactly how sweet the peaches are. The "Brix" rating is technically a measure of the specific gravity of a sucrose solution, but apparently it is also seen as the best way to measure whether a peach is going to be any good.

When my folks were in town I had some peaches that were 13-14 on the Brix scale, and they were very good. Today I had one that measured 14.5, and it was phenomenal. The little stand at my market states that some peaches can reach 18-19, and are "transcendental" in flavor. Given that both peaches I've had recently were WAY better than earlier peaches discussed in this blog I can attest that an 18 Brix peach would just be unspeakably good. So if you find one, peel it, and then eat it.

They didn't teach this in college

2007-08-19T23:13:00.000-07:00

Now, my life has never been stuff that would make the cover of Rolling Stone. Or even the cover of Atlantic Monthly. Or even the Duke alumni magazine. But since moving to Seattle I'd say that my sex, drugs, and rock and roll lifestyle has been dialed back even more. Which is why I have a blog that is filled with stories about various tomato based products.

Sadly, I have another story to add to the list. This one involves gazpacho. When my folks were in town last weekend we ate at a place that had, arguably, the best gazpacho I've ever had. As I gazpacho craftsman I respected the texture and ability to balance the sweetness of tomatoes with just a hint of spiciness. The fact that they also threw in a hunk of crab meat and some sort of guacamole-type foam was just pure overkill (in the "oh my is that good" kind of way, like frosting on a donut is overkill, but overkill you appreciate). The gazpacho used heirloom tomatoes, and since I had seen some good looking heirlooms in the store I decided to try it for myself.

Well, the short story is that the gazpacho turned out okay. I tried some different things this time (red wine vs. balsamic vinegar, less olive oil, no bread in the blender, no straining, basil and green onion instead of cilantro), and none seemed terrible. The problem is that after slicing the garlic and jalapeno I rubbed my eye. Didn't think much of it. And then 30 seconds later I felt pretty much the worst searing pain I've ever felt.

At least since I did this while camping before college in 1995.

On the camping trip there was a really beautiful girl who blew in my eye until the burning stopped. I didn't have one of those handy here in Seattle, so I ran into the shower and stuck my head in while getting undressed so I could really get into the shower. After about 5 minutes the pain went from Terrible to Bad, and after another five minutes it was down to Uncomfortable. I only thought I was going to be blind for 20 minutes or so.

All in all, it was probably best that Huan wasn't here for that because A) it would be embarrassing to do that in front of someone and B) it would have been incredibly uncomfortable to ask him to blow in my eye. One of us would have had to move to Shanghai.

An idea I can get behind

2007-08-19T22:23:00.000-07:00

I've said that I'm willing to fly back to DC for Felix Navidad 4.0 if my friends will arrange it, even if it means taking a redeye on Friday night and leaving Sunday morning. I enjoy a good party.

Easily the best party idea I've heard in the last year involves the Ducks. You know, the Duck tours that are seemingly popular in DC and Seattle and Boston and any other city that has land and water. (show a picture of a duck). This has to happen.

I was out for drinks with a couple people from work the other day and our SVP was talking about a trip he takes with buddies from college every year. This year they are deciding between golfing in Ireland, or a combo Jazz Fest / RTJ Golf Trail / Kentucky Derby week. The JazzFest-to-Derby trip would involve an RV that they would charter (this guy has that kind of money). We all agreed that Ireland can always happen, but anything linking JazzFest and the Derby would be more fun.

(BTW, I definitely want to do the JazzFest - golf - Derby trip at some point. Just say when.)

Back to the Ducks: as part of this conversation it came out that my boss once attended a bachelorette party on a Duck. They rented out a Duck and rode it from bar to bar all night. They had beer on the Duck. They drove to some bars and floated to others. I'm still struck by the brilliance of this plan... I've seen party buses before, but they seem somewhat generic. Plus, you can't drive a bus into a body of water. How fun would it be to say "Screw the Key Bridge, we're fording the Potomac!"? Even better is that it brings into play the risk of your drunk friend falling into a body of water.

I mean, look at these things:

Anyways, if anyone wants to do this just say the word. I'm in.

Breathe Wrong

2007-08-19T22:18:00.000-07:00

Generally I'm a believer in generic products. Everything is made in pretty much the same place, especially for commodities like spices and salad dressings and drugs and such. So when my friends bought me generic brand breathe-right strips for our hiking trip a couple of weeks ago I didn't think much of it.

It turns out that the Breathe-Right people really might have some defensible IP.

The generic brand pretty much fails on every count. It is really difficult to get the generics out of their packaging. The adhesive they use pretty much won't stick to anything but freshly cleaned skin. The shape is ambiguous, and I probably wear it backwards just as frequently as I wear it forwards. It just isn't a particularly friendly product.

Which makes it even stranger that it works just as well. Yup, despite all if its shortcomings the generic brand ends up doing exactly the same thing. Which renders much of this story pointless. Sorry.

RIP: My fan (2003-2007)

2007-08-19T22:04:00.000-07:00

When your mother tells you to dust your fan, do not listen to her.

I did. I love my mom, but she killed my fan. It was bound to happen sooner or later, because the only time that my fan turns off is when I unplug it in order to move across the country. But I turned it off today because the inch or three of dust that had gathered since January was a little unsightly. So I dusted. It looked nice. But it didn't turn back on. Despite my best efforts I can't figure out how to revive the little fan that could (I'd say for $20 it probably ran for 7000 hours or so). It passed away about 3:15 pm PDT on August 19, 2007. The fan is survived by two other fans in my apartment (neither of which will be turned off any time soon).

Hiking photos

2007-08-14T23:03:00.001-07:00

More blog coming re: camping trip, but here are the photos:

http://www.flickr.com/gp/72188899@N00/s81Z64

Please come and visit

2007-08-14T22:53:00.000-07:00

I have a lot of fun when people come and visit, so I hope more of you choose to do so. Bobby was here three weekends ago and we had a blast... drinking, kayaking, hanging out in his joke of a presidential suite hotel room. Good times. I had a similarly good time with my parents in town (albeit more sober... but they paid for better meals). And when Pat was in town back in April I went out and had a good time.

So, the lesson is that I have fun when my friends are around. Now that Huan is gone, there is even a guest room. Think about it.

My family is Ironman tough

2007-08-14T22:42:00.000-07:00

I've never really had an awful travel experience. I've been delayed, I've had cancellations, but I've never had to cancel a vacation or even spend a night in a place I wasn't prepared to be. So my heart goes out to my parents and what they dealt with coming to visit me this past weekend.

Here's how strong the parental instinct can be:

They spent ~6 hours on the tarmac in DC waiting to fly to Atlanta on Thursday. Given it was over two stretches, but that's 6 horrific hours on a plane. But not going anywhere.
They finally arrived in Atlanta about an hour after their flight to Seattle left. Which left them in the ATL airport at midnight. It wasn't exactly jumping.
None of the nearby hotels had room. I found them a place 15 miles south of the airport.
The airline did manage to get them a ticket. Arriving in Seattle on Saturday. Night. Remember, they were supposed to arrive on Thursday evening. My mom is devestated.
My sister arrives in Seattle (she made the connecting flight) at 1:00am.
My folks decide to buy one-way tickets on two other airlines to get to Seattle on Friday night (1:00am Saturday, actually). They nearly miss their connection in Vegas, but eventually arrive.
We spend a weekend in Seattle. It is pleasant. The weather is great. I have to work Saturday and Sunday.
Folks fly back east on Tuesday morning.
They make it to Spokane before being forced to land because of a sick passenger. This is literally 45 minutes into the flight.
They miss their connecting flights in Atlanta and are forced to spend ANOTHER night in Atlanta. I hear my dad getting a rental car and think he may be considering driving back from ATL to DC (10 hours) rather than waiting for a flight on Wednesday morning. But the airline gives them hotel vouchers and they stay.
I assume they will make it back home tomorrow, but at this point, who knows.

So, mad props to my parents (and sister) for putting up with the hassle of cross-continental travel. It was great to see them. Since I know they aren't coming back for a long, long time.

Lost near Lost Creek

2007-08-13T23:27:00.000-07:00

Some video of my hiking trip a couple weekends ago. Regular posts (including pics from the trip) should resume this weekend once work removes its boot from my rear.

To stink or not to stink

2007-07-25T22:16:00.000-07:00

As a group Seattlites smell really bad. As I've mentioned before, a lot of people eschew society's demand that they don't smell like animal feces.* Maybe DC smelled equally bad and I managed to not notice for 8 years, but I can't think of a single city I've been to in the world that has a populace this funky. It's one of the things that just puts you over the edge on marginally bad days. All I wanted on Monday was to go home. Instead, I had to endure human stink for the duration of my bus ride, and then again as I walked past the beggars who hang near my post office.

Obviously this sounds callous, and my heart goes out to these people, but Seattle doesn't seem to lack shelters, so I'm not sure what the issue is. I'd love to help if I knew how.

Anyhoo, this is all a lead-in to a story about my experimentation with stinking myself. Soon after moving to Seattle I heard someone talking about how people were starting to link the aluminum in anti-persperant with Alzheimer's. For some reasons I decided that I should immediately stop using products with aluminum... so I went and found some Al-free deodorant.

Now, here's the thing. I'm pretty lucky when it comes to body type in some ways: I'm not hairy. and I don't sweat a lot. I figured this, combined with Seattle's mild climate, would allow me to go anti-persperant free without adverse consequences.

Turns out I was mostly right.

I tried it for a week (this was WAY back in March or April). It wasn't a disaster. No one ever mentioned anything, and I couldn't smell anything amiss as long as I was wearing a shirt, but there were a couple of evenings when I'd change shirts in order to go to the gym and I picked up a certainy, well, funk. That had me worried, but my experiment didn't end until I rode the bus on a particularly warm morning and actually felt myself sweating. It was 8:30am, and I realized that I really was taking a gamble with this whole experiment. Sure, I might not be stinky in the context of a Seattle city bus, but what if I went out for a post work drink and met a girl? There's no explaining away manstink.

And so, I continue to apply a thin layer of aluminum every morning. I wish my fellow Seattlites would do the same.

* To be honest, that may be insulting to animal feces

On dogs

2007-07-25T22:03:00.000-07:00

I'm terrified to publish this post. With all the attention that Mike Vick is bringing to the treatment of animals in our society I'm afraid that anything I write that is less than 2000% glowing about dogs will be used against me later in life. This is on top of my long-standing belief that if you were to ask women if they had to choose between a dog-hater and an STD-carrier to date or marry, they would readily choose the STD-carrier.

So let me be clear: I've got no beef with dogs.

I am, however, a believer that there are some places that should be dog friendly, and some places that shouldn't be dog friendly. Specifically, I do not like the idea of dogs in they grocery store. This seems to put me at odds with a significant chunk of Seattle. I was perusing the produce section a couple of weeks ago when I noticed a young woman with carrying a rather hairy purse. Only it wasn't a purse, it was a dog.

Now, I'm not sure why anyone would want a dog that fits into a purse... it seems to defeat the whole purpose. At that point, why not get a cat. But just because your dog is compact doesn't mean that he or she is immediately welcome everywhere he can fit. I've heard stories of dogs going to law school (or maybe that was in a movie), but I don't get my food at law schools. I do get my food at grocery stores, however, and I really don't appreciate people deciding that it's cool if their pet hangs out near my cherries.

Of course, were I to say anything in Seattle I'm sure I would be run out of town immediately, and they would probably hold a protest and demand that Hilary or Obama stake out a position on the topic. Or, more accurately, Seattle would send me a very passive-aggressive letter highlighting the fact that "someone" hated dogs and their presence was no longer appropriate.

Comcast: Upgrading to next-to-worst company ever

2007-07-25T22:00:00.000-07:00

I hate to do this, but fair is fair: I can no longer say that Comcast has the worst imaginable customer experience of any of the monopolistic utilities. Since arriving out here on the Left Coast they've been nothing but helpful. Wait times are shorter. Appointments occur on time. CS reps actually seem interested in solving your problem and are equipped with the information to do so. This can't be the same company that provided cable in DC. Just can't be.

Death must be a growth business here

2007-07-17T22:45:00.000-07:00

Well, I got my 2nd direct mail piece instructing me how to save money and prepare for my funeral. Seems like they love their death marketing around here. I've got to say... I'd much rather be getting credit card solicitations than funeral marketing pieces. Boo ZIP+4 marketing tactics.

Azamat goes to my gym

2007-07-17T22:36:00.000-07:00

Well, kind of. A guy who looks shockingly like Azamat. And trust me, if you've seen Borat you know exactly how awful it would be to walk into a locker room and see, well, what I saw (imagine furry, 350 lb, and naked).

A single, magical animal: Bacon, ham, pork chops, and beef

2007-07-15T00:39:00.000-07:00

If this is 100% natural, well, standards for "100%" or "natural" have fallen substantially.