Double Tall Iced Mocha, Lite on the Chocolate

We are currently on a 10 game winning streak that started towards the end of the regular season and has catapulted us through the playoffs. We sent every team we played in the playoffs down to the losers bracket and this weekend we have “best 2 out of 3″ series with the winner of the loser’s bracket which happens to be The Garage.

In the regular season we lost every game we played against The Garage. Needless to say we wanted them in the playoffs. In extra innings, with a rocket from outfield to home plate which resulted in tagging out the game winning run as he slid into home plate, we took the game. The Garage went down to the losers bracket and fought their way back up to meet us again this weekend to determine who takes the “World Series”.

There has been much bantering on the team email list about pitching strategy, who to play where and how to handle them tomorrow.
I personally am contemplating washing my softball socks which have not been washed since the playoffs started. Good luck I tell ya.

I left the team with this final message today to get everyone in the spirit:

If your enemy is secure at all points, be prepared for him. If he is in superior strength, evade him. If your opponent is temperamental, seek to irritate him. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant. If he is taking his ease, give him no rest. If his forces are united, separate them. If sovereign and subject are in accord, put division between them. Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected.

- Sun Tzu, the Art of War

Other quotes emailed by teammates:

• “Try not. Do or Do Not.”
• “Don’t fuck with a winning streak”
• “If it aint broke dont fix it”
• “Dance with who brought ya”

Game Time: Saturday July 23rd 1:30 PM MapleWood Field

I am walking up to my house and a helicopter screams by. After some investigating I find that 16th and Union is completely blocked off with police and firetrucks.

Thanks to the live 911 page, I find out that there was a 911 call reporting “Assault with weapon”. I have yet to see anything in the news, but this is the second time the live 911 page has come through to let me know whats happening.

Well yet another thing to add to my travel schedule next year, Brat Fest. Claiming to be the worlds largest festival of its kind.

I really found the Brat stats to be the most impressive. 189,432 Brats consumed in 4 days, which would be 17.94 miles of brats stacked end to end. 98.7 BPM, no not Beats Per Minutes for all you djs our there, but Brats Per Minute.

Well between this, Lebowskifest and my usual hacker con trips, I am going to have a pretty booked up summer next year. Hopefully my plan of retiring by then materializes.

Among some of the more interesting things are:

• Worlds Largest Touring Grill
• Weiner Mobile
• Mustard Museum
• Rock Climbing Wall, in case you are not near your regular climbing gym (sorry couldnt resist)
• Celebirty Cashiers
• Pictures, look at all those Brat fans!

Quite a few people in our office make a lunch time pilgrimage to Whole Foods, aka “Food Hole”. We have had many encounters with the guy outside playing guitar. He frequently cracks jokes about a coworkers blue hair, sometimes using the word “freak”. Another coworker has decided in the past to fight fire w/fire and barrage him with sermons of complete nonsense spoken at 100 words a minute. Needless to say we have always been annoyed yet mildly fascinated with his aggressive tactics for milking change out of people.

Which is why we have had many a chuckle over last Thursday’s “I, Anonymous”.

Crap, I figured I would have scored 100%. I am not as much of an achiever as I thought.

Urban Achiever You scored 95%!

Shit yeah, the Achievers. Yes, the Little Lebowski Urban Achievers and proud we are of all of them. You are an Achiever, you know everything Lebowski, you probably called me out and helped correct the first version of this test. Not only do you own the movie, you attend Lebwoskifest, you dress up like the dude, you write checks for $0.68 and post-date them, you’re frantically checking to see if I got the amount right because I’m going from memory again, in short, you are a Lebowski fanatic. And you should be honored!

So I awake early this morning hoping to get some coverage of the Tour, free pay or otherwise. I figure someone must offer streaming coverage (haven’t found it yet).

I attempt to visit OLN’s website and am greeted with this:

Apparently someone OLN does not understand the concept of friendly application errors, so you don’t give away info
such as file system paths,internal addressing, and db connection strings. Anyways, I just wanted to watch some bicycle racing.

Oh this is cute too!

Last year I reported on the bike house near my office.The residents (which I have never met) are always up to some kooky stuff. I have contemplated knocking on their door a couple of times but have never quite mustered up the courage.

Since my last report we have seen some cool stuff in their front yard:

• A US Postal mailbox painted bright orange with a sign that says “For Love Letters”, circa Valentines Day
• A big chalk board that read “Oswego Analog Wiki” (oswego is the street they are on)

There most recent addition:

Good work Bike House residents. I will get up the nerve to knock on your door one these days before we move our office over to Freemont. Thank you for the chuckles and visual entertainment that wake up my sometimes slow work days.

A link to Last years bike house pictures

Last week a bought a P800 to replace the one I lost last summer. It showed up today, I am very happy to have another one of these phones. The p800 is end of life and was replaced by the p910 or p900. Which of course has brought the price of the p800 down quite a bit, when they first came out they were $1000 and could only be found in Europe, when I bought mine last year I paid $400, and now I scooped one of ebay for $160.

I will now be sending more pictures from my phone to the phonecam page on my website. I don’t know if I will switch to Rob’s hacked up blosxcam.sh, which would allow me to email pictures from my phone and create blog entries. I think for now I am happy with plain old phonecam.sh

Latest PhoneCam picture: