Living vicariously through myself

24

Good win for the Emmis softball team tonight. 35-4 (in three innings) almost doesn't seem fair. But when the opposing pitcher throws balls on about 15 out of every 16 pitches, what are you to do but stand there and look at them? I'm happy with the way I've played so far. I started out 1-for-4 at the plate, but have since raised my average to .625 by going 9-for-12 (including a number of walks). Had one really bad game in the field, but the team is finally getting into a groove and I think we're (to risk a tired cliche) peaking at the right time. We have two more regular season games left, and then the playoffs. I think we have a fair shot.

Today was also Nicole's birthday. I got her a bike, which she received last weekend, and I'm taking her out to dinner somewhere fancy of her choosing Saturday when I go down there for the weekend. Apparently there were some problems getting the bike out of her car when she arrived back home last Saturday, so it needs a little tweaking before it's again in good riding condition. I'll bring my tools down and we'll get it straightened out.

Looking forward to the monthly pub trivia contest at the Golden Ace in Indy this Friday. Eric and I have come in second the two times we've done it. If you might like to join our team, lemme know. I think both times a third person might have put us over the edge. It's $2 per person to play, so our team entry fee is relatively small, meaning there will be a big payoff when we finally break through and win the darn thing.

Two months between posts isn't too long, right?

It's been a very busy summer. I just completed a five-part series on a new law in Indiana which seeks to make it illegal for a company to operate an online gambling site on which Hoosiers can participate. During the process, I made an appearance on WIBC's evening talk show and did a 50-minute segment answering questions on the law, which was pretty cool. That actually may land me a spot as a fill-in host for the program when the regular host is gone. Stay tuned.

Nicole has moved to Bloomington to start J-School at IU. We're going to have to finagle our schedules so that we see one another and don't let the distance become an issue. We're both committed to the relationship, though, so I don't think one of us driving to see the other on a consistent basis will be much of an issue.

Lately, I've found several new things to occupy my time on the internet:

The first is that if you use the Firefox browser (Amanda was right, it's much better than IE), you can install a pulgin which lets you "stumble" across sites you might like. You tell it categories of stuff you enjoy and you benefit from other users finding stuff for you. I've set one of mine as "online games" and here are links to three I found WAY too fun...

http://technetguru.net/host/333/
http://www.nata2.info/humor/flash/bowman.swf
http://fun.drno.de/flash/antcity.swf

Also fun were these, but not in such a possibly sadistic way...
http://www.virtualtoy.nm.ru/games/starfly_3.html
http://www.freeworldgroup.com/onlinegames/gameindex/raiden.htm
http://www.ferryhalim.com/orisinal/g3/bauns.htm

But the BEST thing I've been alerted to is this (Be sure you open it in IE):
http://www.mindfun.com/chat/cv/shareBoard.php

That's an online group of people who write Jeopardy board and play them in real-time in this program a guy wrote. It works really well, takes away the former problem of lag in seeing questions and buzzing that felled games like "You Don't Know Jack: 5th Dementia". A number of former Jeopardy champions, including several who played in lat year's Ultimate Tournament of Champions, play on the site regularly. There are also a few stragglers from the college quiz bowl circuit of the last 5-10 years. Sign up on the message board for a time and then show up and play. It's like crack.

I'll try to go back to posting more regularly, I promise. Assuming all my time is not taken up by Vortex Jeopardy.