Red Sox Make A Good Trade

The trade deadline is never a fun time in the Red Sox season; we usually end up picking up some aging veteran or get called "the team that didn't make any moves to help them" by all the analysts, but this year we picked up Eric Gagne, arguably one of the best closers in Major League Baseball the last several years. You may recall that we already have Jonathon Papelbon, the best young closer in baseball, and Hideki Okajima, the most surprising shutdown set-up man of the year. Put these three together and the other team basically has six or seven innnings to score. Our starter makes it out of the fifth with the lead and things start to look awfully dark for the other guys.

I realize this means little to many of you, but for those that might care and are a little busy today to watch SportsCenter (read: Josh), I figured I would be a great bit of news.

Different Kind Of Weekend

This weekend had the dubious distinction of being one of the few weekends in the past year and change that Nina and I have not slept in the same house; an event that always comes with mixed emotions. While I am never happy about going to sleep when she's not around it's also nice when we both have plans with friends or family and those plans just don't happen to be the same. The occasional for this particular separation was a Jack and Jill (pre-wedding thing) and a grandmother's 90th(!) birthday on my side and a Bachelorette Party on Nina's side.

So after having been reminded of the fact that a two-hour drive by yourself really kind of sucks sometimes, I was back home and among family again. I won't drag out all the boring details of the weekend, but it was an overall success, mitigated slightly by my aversion to large parties where I don't know half the people. Fortunately I got enough food and soda in me to get over that (for the most part) and I enjoyed myself. I got to play horseshoes for the first time in my life. As it turns out, I'm very bad at horseshoes. But hey it's fun to laugh at.

The highlight of my weekend was probably Sunday morning, when Michael (cousin), Josh, and I went golfing at the Ellington par three. Jeremiah was going to come but Danielle's family had an event one town over that morning so he had to skip (it was a busy weekend for everybody). Mike is a pretty good golfer (career highlight a 180-yard eagle at the St. Andrew's), I have mere hours of golfing experience, and Josh has slightly less, so a par three seemed like a good choice. We had a really good time and we were all happy with our scores. Everyone of course made some bad shots and a couple of good ones, but the net result was high satisfaction all around. I believe I got a 41, with par being 27, which puts me at a little worse than one over par per hole, which for my first real attempt at a round of golf is one hundred percent acceptable.

But anyway it's late and I'm rambling, and I'm pretty sure the only thing more boring for most people than watching golf on TV is reading about it on the internet, so I'll leave it off here and wait for Nina to get back from the city.

Woah

Mike sent me a link to this video today. It's amazing. I seriously didn't think you could make a helicopter do most of what he does.

Jay Turns Fifty

Okay so I'm not fifty but I think I'm starting to act like I am. You see, I recently became a golfer. It all started innocently enough with the LTC (that's our organization at work) Golf Scramble, which I played with rented clubs (huge ding in the driver!), and then things took a turn for the worse this weekend. As I was leaving work, Chris, who organized the scramble and knew I really enjoyed it, asked if I wanted to go to the driving range on Saturday. I jumped at the chance and we each hit a bucket that purported to hold about 100 balls; I used mainly the driver and a 3 wood. I did alright and had a great time, even though my arms felt like they were going to fall off afterwards. We actually went back the next day and practiced short irons off the grass, which I found to be much more enjoyable because the swing is much more relaxed.

After the range on Saturday we chased down a bunch of yard sale signs to see if anybody had any clubs but struck out, and then today John explained that the problem with that approach is that most people will hold onto clubs for awhile before they admit they don't use them, so even good condition clubs will be rather old and behind the times. That, when combined with the fact that I can get a good set on sale (big time of the year for golf club clearance sales) for a couple hundred and use it for quite a few years, adds up to Jay going to Dick's today. I got a 12-piece set of Golden Bears (pictured here, although not for the price I paid) clubs for $180, on sale from $300, and the only thing it didn't include that some of the other more expensive sets didn't were a putter and bag. I was happy about the putter honestly, cuz I got to pick one I really liked for only $40. The bag cost a little more than I really wanted but it was one of those things where I didn't want to save 20 bucks and hate the bag for years. One thing I really like about it is that the shoulder strap has been replaced with a four-point, backpack-style harness. Very nice. After balls, tees, and a glove the grand total was a touch over $300, which I'm okay with, especially since the course I plan to play at most costs something like 5 bucks -- seriously -- for 9 holes.

The funny thing is you would think golf would be a terrible idea for me, since I get so frustrated with things, but in my admittedly limited experience I have performed mediocre at best for the majority of the time, but I always get like one good swing and that's all I need to feel good. Also, the thing about golf is that most people are pretty bad at it, so I have an incredibly limited expectation of success, and I get that thing where it's either exactly what I expected or a pleasant surprise. And I think the biggest thing is that since golf is an old man sport, the whole play dynamic allows for plenty of relaxing and socializing, where the golf part is really just something to do while BS'ing with your friends. I can't wait to get out there and try the new clubs.

Fireworks and Robots

Nina and I were involved in two attempts to see fireworks this year. The first one was on the 4th of July after we hosted ten people on about a days notice in the rain. Those fireworks did not go so well, what with the raining. It was tragic to the point of occasional comedy, with the tragedy kind of outweighing the comedy. But it was atoned for on Friday when Nina and I met Sean and Susan for the East Fishkill fireworks. There was no rain, the entirety of the plan was, "We'll see you at the fireworks," and the show was remarkable.

Then last night we went to see Transformers. It was freakin' awesome. I went into it with a mood best described as cautious optimism, as I do with most of these rob-your-childhood movies, and I was completely blown away. The only strike against it (in my mind) was that there was some hacking of some mainframes by some "'almost biological' viruses" that was standard Hollywood computer bullshit, but right after I had that thought I realized it was silly to bitch about computer terminology while not questioning that a 69 Camaro can turn into a 30-foot high robot with guns and incredible agility. The ending of the movie was slightly marred by an interaction between Mike and I. The problem is that Transformers is the exact kind of movie that I go into planning to enjoy myself and Mike goes into planning to find things to bitch about. The first thing I heard from him after the movie was, "I was just commenting on how terrible the flip to full-render was," to which I replied, "I was just saying how I couldn't give two shits." So maybe that was a slight overreaction. I guess. It's just that I didn't see anything that looked terrible and I'm sick to death of watching movies with people who spend the whole movie looking for flaws. Sure I'm sure a couple of scenes had some bad renders but I was a little busy peeing myself the first time Optimus Prime transformed out of truck mode to notice.

At any rate, if you are in any way curious about this movie, go see it. You will enjoy it.

OMG Famous

Okay so not really famous, but whatever. A few months back I found encountered an interesting pop up when going through HVFCU's me-too multi-factor authentication registration. I noted the difference between how they failed where ING didn't and submitted it to The Daily WTF, a site that collects examples of poor programming and displays them for the delight of nerds everywhere. It didn't run that week, but apparently they've hit a dry spell or had a big backlog to work through, because it actually ran today. Of course they messed up the story and said that ING had the bug, but whatever. I posted a correction in the comments because ING is excellent and I figured I should at least try to point out that this wasn't their error.

At any rate, it was a bright spot in my afternoon.

Edit: Three cheers for attentive editors. They fixed the story to read correctly now.