better late than never

As many of you know, I have been having problems with my left knee since last fall. I did have my knee scoped last Wednesday afternoon. I finally got the chance to sit at the computer and do this chart:



I decided to expand the time frame for last Wednesday and Thursday to show more detail. Fortunately pain pills (which I have not taken in over 10 years, allowed me to get to sleep on the first two nights.

Showing my "normal" side

I have seen and experienced many interesting things within my group of friends and in the world or sci-fi conventions. Sometimes the descriptions of what happened and in some instances what I have turned down would be only seen by those who enter certain stores where my daughter would not be allowed. So a thing like seeing two people dressed as Buddy Christ boffing (battling using foam swords) at a con is not out of the ordinary and actually rather mild.

At a sci-fi convention in 2004 shortly after I started to really know people well, a question was posed within our group of about 15 people who is the most normal and it was unanimous that I was. I get a laugh out of people (and occasionally a worried look) who know me at work or within my family when I say that. Being older than many, having a kid, not being a true computer person (talented enough to find a job in that industry), straight, having little artistic or musical talent, and mostly a sports fan are the things that make me such.

It rarely causes conflict since I escape my normal world with fandom. I usually don't want to talk sports or anything within my life there. When I am at a con, I don't care about what happens in sports and have to catch up the Monday after.

One thing that a difference shows is literature. When I was in grade school, I would read books about science, math, or sports. I had no interest in stories and having a test about a novel every other Monday in high school was the most difficult academic thing I had to endure there. Except for a period in the mid 80s where I read every Dr Who novel I could find, I never cared for fiction. Since I got a full time job in late 1987, I have read two books and one because I made a promise to people who were awesome enough to throw me a surprise 42nd birthday party. At conventions and at my friend's houses I see a large number of novels. They read them, I don't.

I do watch movies and tv and my friends' interest in certain ones and music about them have made me watch them even if they were based on books I would neither have the time nor interest to read. Harry Potter is one of them. Though I am not interested in reading 7 books, I do have the time to invest to see movies and for me it is ok that the movie will not tell the whole story as written since 2 and 1/2 hours can't cover 700 pages of material. The two occasions where I saw a novel from high school turned into a movie, I was disappointed in how it was adapted and in the Natural, upset they changed the ending of the story.

I knew something significant happened at the end of the sixth HP book. Whenever people in the chat room started to talk about it, I would conveniently need to leave since I was going to find out when I saw the movie. On Tuesday at the FuMP (www.theFuMP.com) there was not only a song based about what happened in the movie but in the description was listed how it did along with a statement that everyone knows what happened in the movie just like the secret in Citizen Kane. I was pissed off. I posted a comment stating the people who have been working for the past 20+ years might not have the time to read books and someone else commented about the same thing.

I also found little agreement from those in the chat room since they by being younger and into literature, were able to read all the books and surprise from them that I never read any of the Lord of the Rings novels either. After reading the Hobbit as a Junior in high school, I would never consider reading LOTR.

Out of curiosity I asked 20 people who have a full time job if they knew about the ending to the sixth book:



The 5 percents cover one who correctly guessed at it, one who knew about it but was not sure in which book it happened and one who not only was able to answer the question but provided unsolicited detail about the explanation given in the seventh book.

16 of the 20 knew Rosebud was a sled.

Geeks in love

As I stated in a post a month ago, I was in the bridal party for my best friend. They met through something called Nerds at Heart which was designed for people to meet people who define themselves as one. Here is a picture of the bridal party:



Last weekend, at a convention, another of my closest friends, Luke, proposed to his girlfriend, Sara while performing a song he wrote about her last year. Since I knew this was happening, I decided to drive 400 miles one way to attend the convention to see it. Knowing what was going to happen, I had the duty of recording it as seen here:



Picture taken by Baron Dave Romm

That got me thinking (yes, as dangerous a sentence as I can write) ... that when Luke and Sara met, they lived in Wisconsin and Tennessee and they are not the only long distance relationship I have seen in our group of friends over the past 8+ years.

Thinking about that I came up with this:



There is no way I am going to state who or how many relationships factored into this chart. Considering there has to be people from 20 different states in our chatroom, I am surprised that the in state percentage was not lower.

Board gaming pt 2

My favorite sports related board game is Strat-O-Matic Baseball. It also used real players but unlike All Star Baseball every player on the team is involved and games are played as teams. It also takes into account fielding, running, throwing, injuries, and most importantly pitching.

In every at bat, a batter card and a pitcher card is involved. One six sided dice (d6) is rolled. If it is 1-3, the corresponding column in the batters card is used. A 4-6 roll uses the column in the pitchers card. Then 2 d6 are thrown and the total is read in the column to reflect what happened in the at bat. Some results need a twenty sided dice rolled as there are two options. Also the d20 is used for stealing, plays where a fielder's rating is involved, base running, and injuries.

To show how a card would look, I took my daughter's stats from this year and created a card:



For example if the first die is a 2 and the total of the other two dice is 8, the result would be a walk.

A few notes: Since the card only reflects half the possible options, it does not match the stats. I adjusted the card to provide the results if her batters card went against an average pitchers card from her league. (In the game, no pitchers card had a hit by pitch (HBP) possibility)

Fielding ratings in the game went from 1 (best) to 4 (worst) and throwing ability was from +5 (worst) to -5 (best). I created a 5 fielding rating and +8 throwing to be honest.

In the game, there are power ratings of "N" and "W". A "W" rating would turn a home run on a pitchers card to a SINGLE**(runners advnace two bases) for those who regularly don't hit home runs. I created "VW" meaning all hits on a pitchers card would become SINGLE* (all runners advance one base).

Also, I matched column 3 on my daughter's card with the column 3 on the card from Barry Bonds 2001 season where he hit 73 home runs.

Board gaming pt 1

When I was growing up, there were no video games so I was playing sports related board games. They involved individually or combinations of dice, magnets, levers, ping pong balls, charts, spinners, and football players that vibrate on a football field when electricity is turned on.

Most of those games involved generic players who occasionally had different abilities but the games were basically simple.

There were two baseball games that actually used real players that I played as a kid. One was called All Star baseball. Every all star player was represented by a disc which fit into a spinner. One player from each position was selected, a lineup was made, and every at bat was a spin. Numbers ranged from 1-14 and the space for each number represented how often each possibility could occur.

The numbers were:
* 1 Home Run
* 2 Ground out, double play with runner on first base
* 3 Runner reaches base on error
* 4 Fly out, all runners advance
* 5 Triple
* 6 Ground out, all runners advance
* 7 Single, runners advance one base
* 8 Fly out, runner on third base scores, others hold
* 9 Walk (Base on balls)
* 10 Strikeout
* 11 Double
* 12 Ground out, runners advance if forced
* 13 Single, runners advance two bases
* 14 Fly out, runners hold their bases

Since my daughter's softball season ended last Monday, I decided to create a disc to represent her season: (Note: Not all possibilities are on the disc since those situations did not occur in her 22 plate appearances)



I added number 15 to represent hit by pitch.

Steroids

I was working on this post anyway when the Sammy Sosa situation was made public. With how much pain my knees were in and with a con last weekend, I was unable to finish this until today.

Since my first game in June 1972, I have seen 13 of the 25 people who hit at least 500 home runs live in the fifty or so games I have attended over the years



For some reason, when posting color charts, I lose some of the image quality. I did see Frank Thomas at Comiskey Park and U.S Cellular Field.

Except for Hank Arron who I saw as a member of the Brewers but decided to use the Braves color, the colors of the players I saw reflect the team or teams they were on when I saw them. For those I did not see, I used the color of the team or teams they were most associated with.

Of the 12 I saw play in a game, (Mike Schmidt was a member of the 1983 all star team and I saw him at the workout day before the game) none hit a home run in a game. The player with the most home runs that I remember seeing hitting one was Harold Baines who hit 384.

Busted

While at my mom's last month, we heard a couple of police sirens and rushed outside to see what happened. We noticed two different cars pulled over by police and after they were done, they went back to the corner and pulled over two more cars.

Shortly after between my sister, parents and brother-in-law, we decided to put up a dollar guessing the color of the next car pulled over. From what we could tell, a third officer was a few blocks north of where we were relaying the info upon spotting the situation. Considering how fast traffic can go on Western Avenue, it was possibly a speed trap.



It got to the point where upon a car getting pulled over, one of us would cheer along with the kids as the other four pulled out a single. As the police car returned to the spot, we were cheering it and shouting out what color of car to pull over next. Not wanting to miss out on any action or add to the tally, we decided to order pizza and once it arrived, we stopped betting though more cars kept getting pulled over.