Game On!

Have I used that title before? I feel like I have, but I'm not sure and I'm not gonna bother checking.

So spring has hit Poughkeepsie pretty hard this week, and I'm thrilled. From Thursday through Saturday I had my first softball game (Andrew's work is sponsoring a team), my first golf outing of the season with Andrew, and the Marist College Computer Society's annual Gaming For Hope.

Softball was a lot of fun; it's been so long since I played any form of organized ball, and while we aren't exactly a team of all stars, we've got a reasonable amount of talent and everybody seems to be out to have a good time, which is really all I'm looking for. The best part is we actually managed to win. We took a six-run lead into the top of the seventh (and final) inning, and things got a little tight as our pitcher (who had never pitched a balls-and-strikes game before) had some control issues. The other team ended up down two with a full count, runners on second and third with two outs, and a guy at the plate. That's scary because the co-ed league has this interesting rule that walking a guy is a two-base walk, so that you don't pitch around them to get to the girls. So in other words, one more ball and we would have walked in the two runs to tie it up. Fortunately we got a popup to the pitcher, which he put away handily. Very exciting.

Golf was a lot of fun, although about halfway through I realized I was a bit of a schmuck for not thinking to invite Chris to join us. Fortunately, we've got plenty of chances left to play, and he's not the kind of guy who gets uppity about something like that. At any rate, given that I'm still a total newb at golf and this was my first time swinging the clubs since last fall, I was very happy, as I was no worse (and occasionally better) than my last few rounds last year. I really tried to slow down my backswing this time out and that seemed to help a lot with the slice, although I still had my share of embarrassing ten-yard flub shots. The big upside to the round was that I had I think five shots where the appropriate shot was "nine-iron or pitching wedge" onto the green, and I actually managed to put four of them within twenty feet of the hole. I also putted pretty well; I didn't make any huge putts but I was pretty accurate on my long putts pretty much all day. So the last halves of the holes were pretty good; if I can actually get my long clubs cooperating I think I can put up a birdie or two
this year. :)

Gaming For Hope was also a good time, even if I was dragging a bit for a good portion of it (I basically got back from golf, changed into fresh clothes, and headed over). It was a huge relief to finally not have to be involved in any official capacity OR have any homework I was supposed to be doing, so I could just relax and enjoy myself. I still ended up helping a bit, with things like pizza pickup (somehow my Prius was the highest pizza capacity car available), but not having anything actually be my problem was very nice. I also finally got to play the drums on Rock Band. We played Paranoid, and I chose easy, so it wasn't the most challenging thing in the world but I loved it. Nina also sang with some people for a while and really seemed to enjoy herself, so that was great to watch. I still contend that I would buy it in a heartbeat if I actually had two other people who would be over playing it once or twice a week, but I'm not sure I can actually justify the purchase. It was still great fun to try it out, though. Oh, and Matt had a couple friends from high school there, so we made a team for the Halo 3 tourney and, as expected got absolutely destroyed by a group of 14-16 year-olds. We were up against tough odds; none of us have played much lately, the game type and rule set was exactly not what we like to play, and kids that age can afford to play five hours a day. The nice thing was the whole adventure took about five minutes so there wasn't exactly a lot of emotional investment in it. Besides, bottom line of the day was everyone had a good time and they raised a new record amount of money for the event, all of which goes to the very worthy Child's Play.

So, yea, it's been a fun last few days. I just hope the nice weather holds for awhile; I know it's gonna cool off a bit before we really approach summer proper, but this weather is just soooo much nicer than the crap we've had to deal with all winter that I would really appreciate just a few more days of it.

Being a Fan

Just encountered this in a Sport's Guy article, and it really resonated with me, so I'm putting here to make sure I can always find it. It is a quote from Roger Angell of the New Yorker, in "Agincourt and After":

It is foolish and childish, on the face of it, to affiliate ourselves with anything so insignificant and patently contrived and commercially exploitive as a professional sports team, and the amused superiority and icy scorn that the non-fan directs at the sports nut (I know this look -- I know it by heart) is understandable and almost unanswerable. Almost. What is left out of this calculation, it seems to me, is the business of caring -- caring deeply and passionately, really caring -- which is a capacity or an emotion that has almost gone out of our lives. And so it seems possible that we have come to a time when it no longer matters so much what the caring is about, how frail or foolish is the object of that concern, as long as the feeling itself can be saved. Naivete -- the infantile and ignoble joy that sends a grown man or woman to dancing and shouting with joy in the middle of the night over the haphazardous flight of a distant ball -- seems a small price to pay for such a gift.

The only thing that I will add to it is that the lesson here, that we should not begrudge someone their enjoyment of something they love simply because we do not share the feeling, is something that "real" sports fans should think about the next time they turn up their noses at NASCAR, professional wrestling, or whatever other child's amusement they deem unfit for an adult's entertainment.

Suck It, Time Warner

I hate Time Warner, and I can't wait for Verizon to get FiOS TV to my house (we're wired, but Verizon doesn't have TV rights here yet), so I consistently lose my shit at the TV when I see the Time Warner ad that mocks the FiOS ads and claims that "Time Warner has been using fiber for decades." It's true, they have been. IN THE DAMN BACKBONE! Everybody has been running fiber backbones for years, but they obviously imply that their service is fiber just like FiOS, even though you can't get TW fiber directly to your houses. It's a blatant attempt to mislead customers who don't understand IT infrastructure (read: almost everyone), and for weeks I've been saying that if Verizon doesn't sue them for it, some sort of consumer protection group should. Well, I just noticed on Engadget that Verizon finally threw down the gauntlet. I can't say I exactly love Verizon as a company, either, but I hope they take Time Warner to the cleaners.

Ah, April Fool's

Honestly, I'm not a huge fan of April Fool's Day. All the really good jokes will most likely get you fired and arrested nowadays, so it's mostly just morning DJs on the radio making some poor woman at a Chinese place sound like an idiot, which isn't really my idea of a good time, but Google had a pretty good one for GMail today. They introduced a new fake feature called Custom Time where you could essentially forge the sent timestamp. That in itself is a clever joke, mostly because it's so easy that for a second it's like, "Yea, that could work," even though it would be a horrible horrible thing. But the FAQ is priceless. The help page is here, not sure if it will stay around so I'll quote a few choice sections.

Is there a limit to how far back I can send email?

Yes. You'll only be able to send email back until April 1, 2004, the day we launched Gmail. If we were to let you send an email from Gmail before Gmail existed, well, that would be like hanging out with your parents before you were born -- crazy talk.

And one of the beta user testimonials.

"I used to be an honest person; but now I don't have to be. It's just so much easier this way. I've gained a lot of productivity by not having to think about doing the 'right' thing."

I also like that they went overboard enough for it to obviously be a joke by the time you've read the whole page, even if it seems plausible at first. This way everyone gets a laugh and you don't have people feeling like total idiots. A perfect little joke.