Archive for July, 2008
Pictures from the Wedding
Well, Nickel City was awesome - videogames that take nickels! - and now I’m back here in the hotel, unable to sleep, as usual. So, here’s some pictures from the wedding, as taken by my brother Chris:
Check out the rest here. Beautiful weather - couldn’t have asked for better.
Greetings from San Diego
The honeymoon is going very well. Lots of sleeping, relaxing by the pool, eating, and generally enjoying some time off. Astrid and I are getting changed and heading out to a “fancy” dinner at a steakhouse, and then we’re going to make the trek up to the last remaining Nickel City Arcade, just north of San Diego. $2 to get in and then all the games take nickels! How can you go wrong?!
We have two more days here, and we’ll spend them at a Padres/Diamondbacks game as well as the San Diego Zoo. We’ve yet to make it to the ocean (literally across the street), but the pool is nice enough for now.
Life is busy
So tonight my parents just flew into town, it’s time for the rehearsal, the dinner, and all that other stuff between the final preparations for getting married. Over the weekend I had my bachelor party-related events, which spanned three days and involved a lot of baseball and drinking. What a great turnout for the public events, especially considering I have only lived in the city for 2.5 years!
Right now I’m unpacking and moving items in the new house in addition to finishing my vows, and at this point I can’t wait to fly into San Diego and sit on the beach and do nothing. Between starting a new job, moving to a new house, dealing with business matters, getting married, my birthday, and playing a ton of baseball, it’s been a busy month. I’m ready to relax.
Until I have to go to Cleveland and see everyone at the reception and do it all over again, of course.
Birthday!
It is my birthday. On the east coast, anyway. And I am packing to get ready to move tomorrow! And then bachelor party stuff on the weekend, and then more moving/cleaning, and then the wedding, and then the honeymoon, and then work, then going back to Cleveland for a reception, and then maybe some rest.
But I doubt it.
PSSBL Mid-Season Update
This year I’m having a pretty good season in PSSBL with the Mustangs. Fresh off a 3-3 game, I’m batting .435/.576/.565 with 3 doubles, 7 walks, and 2 strikeouts. No home runs yet, but I have a few close calls. It’s only a matter of time before one clears the fence! I lead the team in OPS and OBP and rank 2nd in batting average.
On a bad note, I haven’t been in the gym or the batting cage as much as I should be, what with my laziness and the busy life I’m currently involved in (getting married, flying back to Cleveland, moving in a week, starting a new job). Furthermore, I have been fully pushed out of the rotation (and the bullpen), since I can’t seem to throw strikes for the life of me. This is really annoying to me, but expected, given that I didn’t work nearly hard enough on pitching and videotaping myself to analyze my mechanics; most of my focus was on my hitting, which fortunately has been good to date. Not having a dedicated bullpen catcher or pitching partner hasn’t helped matters, but there’s nothing stopping me from throwing into a net, as boring as that sounds.
The Mustangs have so far had a disappointing season. After high hopes going into the season, we are currently 2-8, and our pitching is mostly to blame. Clearly I am part of the problem, since I was brought on to pitch for the team and haven’t had any success in that regard. We have two solid starters, but they’re going to have off days once in awhile, and our relievers haven’t been very good despite some of them with plenty of talent. Our defense plays well for the most part, but we give up too many runs in the late innings and make mental errors. We have scored so many runs in the first part of the game only to let teams back in the game, which really sucks. We’re also not getting much production from the bottom half of the order, which is to be expected, I guess.
Anyway, I should say that I love playing for the Mustangs. It’s a team full of plenty of great guys, and we’re all pretty damn dedicated. Our talent level is higher than what our record currently is, and I think we’ll start turning things around in short order. I’m going to start throwing more often and with any luck I’ll be contributing again. I think that I have figured out a small mechanical flaw that kills my control, but I’ve said that before. Pitching is frustrating.
Oh, the humanity (or: Kyle is usually right about these things)
Second-largest bank failure in U.S. history
The federal government took control of Pasadena-based IndyMac Bank on Friday in what regulators called the second-largest bank failure in U.S. history. Citing a massive run on deposits, regulators shut its main branch three hours early, leaving customers stunned and upset. One woman leaned on the locked doors, pleading with an employee inside: “Please, please, I want to take out a portion.” All she could do was read a two-page notice taped to the door.
The bank’s 33 branches will be closed over the weekend, but the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. will reopen the bank on Monday as IndyMac Federal Bank, said the Office of Thrift Supervision in Washington. Customers will not be able to bank by phone or Internet over the weekend, regulators said, but can continue to use ATMs, debit cards and checks. Normal branch hours, online banking and phone banking services are to resume Monday. Federal authorities estimated that the takeover of IndyMac, which had $32 billion in assets, would cost the FDIC $4 billion to $8 billion. Regulators said deposits of up to $100,000 were safe and insured by the FDIC. The agency’s insurance fund has assets of about $52 billion.
This is only the beginning:
Do I get tired of posting this graph?
Not hardly.
NASCAR
Remember when racing fans said that Japanese automakers would never compete in NASCAR? Toyota now dominates through the Joe Gibbs Racing team.
Just another nail in the coffin of U.S. automakers.
Casio Exilim EX-F1 - Do Want
I’m not much of a digital photography buff, but I am definitely in the market for an affordable high-speed camera. Prior to finding the Casio Exilim EX-F1, the only other high-speed cameras that do up to 300 FPS cost well over $5,000 used.
It does up to 1200 FPS (albeit with poor resolution) and only costs ~$950 from various Internet retailers. This would be a huge help with analyzing pitching/hitting mechanics - during the pitching delivery, the shoulder externally rotates at higher than 600 frames per second, or twenty times as fast as the human eye can see.
Of course, I don’t have $950 to spend on a digital camera…