Tonight was the last night of my “Winter” season league at the bowling alley. We fell two points short of making the roll-off last week, so we were only bowling for a little bit of money in sweepers. Last week, we needed to win all four points to force a tenth frame roll-off for first place in the second half. We crushed them the first game, but fell short the second. We won the third game, but it didn’t matter too much at that point. I bowled pretty well last week, and ended up throwing my first triplicate series. 220-220-220. At the end of the second game, I left a 10 pin in the fill ball which gave me the second 220. I didn’t realize before I threw the ball that I could match my first game’s score. Going into the third game, though, I knew I could get a triplicate. I realized I had a shot at it near the end of the game. After I got an 8 and a spare in the tenth frame, I needed five more pins to get it done. I threw the ball far left, hit the 4-7, and pins toppled to leave the 1-2-3-5-10 standing. I had my triplicate! It was awesome.

I wouldn’t have imagined I could outdo that this week. I started out with a 256. A spare in the first frame, five strikes and then a split which I left open, and then strikes the rest of the way. I was pretty happy with that. Started the next game with an open frame (picked the 10 off the 6-10), and then ran off ten strikes in a row. I left a 4 pin on the fill ball, for a 278. At this point, I started to think about an 800 series. I had 534 for the first two games, so I needed a 266 to get there. I’ve been in this situation before, but tonight was the first time I really felt like I was bowling well enough to actually do it. In the past when I’ve had over 500 pins for the first two games, I’ve been pretty lucky to get there and expect to wear down at the end. Tonight, the lanes were great, and I was feeling good.

I knew I didn’t have much room for error here. I started the third game with a few strikes, and then started to get nervous. I knew I really had a shot at this. A few more strikes, and then a 7 pin on a shot that was a little light in the seventh frame. That kind of shot had been carrying all night, but not this time. I picked up the spare, and knew I couldn’t afford to make many more mistakes. I had a nice solid strike in the eighth frame, but then threw an awful ball in the ninth. As soon as I let it go I put my head down and barely wanted to watch it. It hit heavy on the Brooklyn side of the head pin and somehow ended up being a strike. The 6 pin fell very late, and was somehow pushed forward from behind. I got lucky. Going into the tenth frame I knew I needed the first strike, but that was as far as I had gotten on the math. At this point, my legs were wobbly and my hands were shaking. Perfect shot for a strike. My next shot was less than perfect. It went high, and left a 9 pin. I had no idea if this had cost me my 800 series until I walked back and looked up at the screen. 248 in the ninth, and 19 pins so far in the tenth. I was already there, and didn’t need to pick up the last pin. I did anyway, and finished with a 268 for an 802 series.

Holy crap. 802 series. I think it still hasn’t sunk in.

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Today’s shirt I got on Saturday. I bowled in a doubles no-tap tournament in Santa Maria. During the tournament, they have drawings for sponsored prizes. I was complaining about never winning any of those, when a friend on my lanes name got called. He won a free t-shirt from Toyota, and didn’t want it. So I ended up with it.

My team came in second in the tournament. If my last game hadn’t been so bad (189, no-tap!) we would have come in first. Only missed it by 15 pins.

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Well, the Mets are no longer in first. They’re only half a game out, and I have a feeling the Mets and Phillies (and maybe the Marlins) will be trading first place back and forth through the end of the season. It would be an exciting division race if I didn’t care about the outcome. Since I do, it’ll just be stressful instead. To unwind after the tension, enjoying a refreshing Indacloud grape funta can help relieve some of that stress.

A lot’s happened since my last real post over three weeks ago. I went to NY. Went to a Mets game at Shea. Didn’t go to the 15 inning All-Star game at Yankee Stadium. Saw Billy Joel at Shea. Took home some warning track dirt. Flew back to LA on Virgin America first class. Bowled in the CA State tournament, badly. My tuesday night summer league team has moved into first place, and we barely held it after the first week there. Four weeks left to try to stay there. My parents are out visiting now, and leave tomorrow. A bunch of other stuff I’m leaving out, too. No motivation to write, as usual.

I don’t know why (or if) anyone still reads this, but I certainly wouldn’t blame anyone for not doing it. This blog has been pretty damn boring lately.

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I really suck at this whole blogging thing. I’ve had so much I could write about over the past couple of weeks, but I’m just way too unmotivated to do it, even though I sit at work all day with very little to do. I guess I can give a quick summary of some stuff.

Google has apparently started penalizing poker blogs, or any blog that sells paid links without rel=”nofollow”, or something. The result is that people can’t actually find what they’re searching for. Search for my name, and this page doesn’t come up until the sixth page of results. ColorPearl (http://www.geekandproud.net/blackberry-software/) isn’t there until the third page of results. Both of these use to the first hit, and most likely what people were actually searching for. I realize there are other people with my name, but three out of the first four hits on my name are about me, just not this site. Someone had to post this: http://forums.crackberry.com/f79/looking-softreset-app-48982, looking for one of my other Blackberry apps. Google is failing. I might have to find a new search engine. “softreset blackberry” doesn’t show my page until the fifth page of results. Also, the spam filter on gmail has been seriously lacking for a while now. They need to get their act together again.

Update: Just searched for all those things on Yahoo! The Blackberry software comes up as the first hit, and the search for my name brings this page up as the second hit. Google is broken as a search engine.

The fire in the area has moved away from the city, and there’s nothing left to burn between here and there, so my house should be in no danger. I moved a bunch of stuff from home to the office, anyway, though. Things could change, I suppose, and I’m going on vacation tomorrow, and will be gone a while. While there’s not really any danger anymore, that hasn’t stopped the power from going out every day since Wednesday. It’s been quite annoying. If you’ve been following me on twitter, you probably knew that. I was in the new bar Wednesday night (it opened Tuesday, but I was bowling), and at some point during the night walked home, got a flashlight, and walked back. It was a fun night.

Tomorrow morning, I fly out to NY, where I’m staying for a week and a half. Hopefully, I’ll get to a game at Shea while I’m there. I’m also going to a Billy Joel concert at Shea, and quite possibly the All-Star game at Yankee Stadium. I’m flying back directly to LA, not Santa Barbara. The next morning, I’m bowling down there the CA state bowling tournament. It’s going to be a good couple of weeks, I hope.

The Mets are starting to show signs of life. They’re above .500 again! They just took three of four from the Phillies, but the last two games were a whole lot more interesting than they should have been. Last night, they had a 9 run lead, and almost blew it. They won the game 10-9, with the tying run on base. Now they get to face the Giants, so if the recent pattern follows, they’ll lose this series. They’ve been beating the good teams (Phillies, Angels, Yankees) and losing to the bad ones (Padres, Rockies, Mariners). It’s very frustrating.

Damn, some of my vacation days for this trip might have to be taken unpaid. That sucks. I kept asking how many days I had left, and kept getting no reply. Maybe I can take them from the next quarter.

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I’ve been trying to post more often lately. Really. I’m not going to commit to anything crazy, like a post every day (like both of my brothers are trying to do), but I just want to get something up here more regularly than I have been.

Tuesday night, I finally had a good night of bowling again. I’ve been struggling a bit lately, and my average has dropped a few pins in all my leagues. One of them ended last week, and the other two have a couple of weeks left. Then the summer leagues start. Anyway, Tuesday I shot 194-215-258 for a 667 series. Not bad. In the 258, I put together eight strikes in a row from the second frame through the 9th frame.

Yesterday, I got a color calibrator for my monitor(s) at home. I chose this one despite mixed reviews at Amazon (and elsewhere), because the positive reviewers were all very happy with it. I ran through the setup, and it seems to have worked nicely. The color on my monitor looks much nicer, and at the very least it at least did something. The real test will be when I try to print at Costco, soft-proofing with their custom printer profile. The whole idea behind it is to be able to see on the screen exactly what the print will look like.

After calibrating, I was going back through some old images, and some of them looked quite a bit better. Here’s one I found from a year ago that I apparently didn’t think much of the first time through, but I like it now:

Tomorrow night, I fly out to Phoenix to visit my brother and his wife. I’m going to get to two Mets@Dbacks games while I’m there. Hopefully, they’ll play better than they did in their 13-1 loss to the Pirates last night.

The hardest part of posting more often is coming up with good post titles. It tends to get very repetitive.

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Monday night, I started a game with 9 strikes, then left an 8 count. Finished with a 278.

Tonight, I put together 12 strikes in a row, but it was 8 at the end of one game (260) and 4 to start the next one (236).

Hopefully soon I’ll get 12 in a row in the same game. Dammit.

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I want one of these…

Unfortunately, the chances of it ever being made are pretty much as close to zero as you can get.

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