Ten Reasons Why

This New York Times article, “A Journey to Baseball’s Alternate Universe,” is the kind of thing that almost makes me wish I enjoyed math. Almost.

In a fit of scientific skepticism, we decided to calculate how unlikely Joltin’ Joe’s [56-game hitting streak] really was. Using a comprehensive collection of baseball statistics from 1871 to 2005, we simulated the entire history of baseball 10,000 times in a computer. In essence, we programmed the computer to construct an enormous set of parallel baseball universes, all with the same players but subject to the vagaries of chance in each one.

Although it doesn’t quite set free my inner mathematician, it does bring out the writer in me, that little inner voice that says “What if . . .?”
What if one of those 10,000 alternate Joe DiMaggios — one who was less successful in baseball and didn’t marry Marilyn Monroe — slipped through the dimensional interface into the universe where Joe DiMaggio is the baseball legend that he is in ours? Or vice versa?
Crap. Now I’m gonna have to go read a DiMaggio biography.

Other

Clearly I haven’t been grocery shopping in a while, because this morning I had to whip together a breakfast from whatever was handy. I wound up making tofu seasoned with red curry powder and scrambled with onions, red peppers, jalapenos and fried kielbasa.
I know. It sounds terrible. But it actually turned out to be a big plate of spicy deliciousness.
As I sat down to eat, I wondered if I could have found a way to represent at least one more culture’s cuisine in the same plate. I almost went back for the bottle of sriracha hot sauce to throw a little Thai into the mix . . . but in the end thought better of it. :-)

Other

Overheard 7/31/2007 in the Border’s Books and Music at 18th & L NW. A young woman talking to her friend:

“She tells me I should be celibate for 30 days. So I ask her, ‘Do you mean celibate celibate or just interactive celibate?’ Because there’s no way I can do celibate celibate for 30 days.”

What the hell is “interactive celibate”?

Other

The door-to-door mileage from my home on Capitol Hill to the house I grew up in (yes, my parents still live there) is almost exactly 115 miles. Nearly 99% of that is on interstates or expressways – matter of fact, only 2.2 miles of those 115 are on “surface roads.” Of that 113 or so miles of highway driving, about 92 of them are on Interstate 95. (Thank you, Google Maps.)

And therein lies the problem, for I-95 is the bane of my life. There is very nearly nothing in my life that makes me as unhappy as the stretch of I-95 between Alexandria and Richmond. It is the Demon Highway.

It was simple. So simple. I would drive down to my parents house on Sunday afternoon, buy them a nice dinner on Sunday evening, stay the night, help my dad to his doctor’s appointment on Monday, and drive back to DC on Monday evening.

Oh, but the Demon Highway had other ideas.

I departed on Sunday afternoon and had maybe a good 7 or 8 miles. Then everything ground to a near halt at the Springfield interchange (known semi-affectionately in these parts as the Mixing Bowl, since it’s a noodle-ish mess of seven or so different highways converging. I spent the next two hours and forty-five minutes creeping down I-95 in bumper to bumper traffic. At 3:30pm on a Sunday afternoon. I made it about as far as Stafford, VA, and gave up. I couldn’t take it anymore.

Departure time: 3:30 pm
Direction: Southbound
Driving Time: 2 hr 45 min
Miles traveled: 48 miles
Average mph: 17.5 mph

That’s an average 17.5 mph on the frickin’ interstate. On a non-holiday, Sunday afternoon. At one point I was sitting at a dead-stop on the interstate, with the car in Park, for nearly 10 minutes.

The insane thing is there was no reason for this. I kept listening to WTOP with its “weather and traffic on the 8’s” for the update every ten minutes. And they seemed as perplexed as anyone. No accidents, no construction. A brief thunderstorm — less then 20 minutes — had passed through, but other than that there was no reason whatsoever for a 40+ mile back-up. No reason other than the Pure Unadulterated Evil of the Demon Highway.

I gave up at Stafford. My patience had come to an end. I got off at the exit, called the parents, and told them they were on their own for dinner. I wouldn’t have wanted to inflict myself upon them in my dark, frustrated mood at that time anyway. So I headed back north.

Which wasn’t much better.
Departure time: 6:15 pm
Direction: Northbound
Driving Time: 1 hr 15 min
Miles traveled: 48 miles
Average mph: 38.4 mph

At least it moved. No dead stops.

Monday, I made a second attempt in the early, and, lo, did the light of the Lone Traveler shine down upon me and did the highways open up before me, and it was good.

Departure time: 7:30 am
Direction: Southbound
Driving Time: 1 hr 45 min
Miles traveled: 115 miles
Average mph: 65.7 mph

That’s the way it’s supposed to happen. Didn’t last for the drive back that evening. Stupid Lone Traveler.

Departure time: 4:30 pm
Direction: Northbound
Driving Time 3 hr 45 min
Miles traveled: 115 miles
Average mph: 30.7 mph

Here’s the final totals. (Also, someone double check my math. Even though I used a calculator, I’m the guy who yesterday added 15 and 17 and came up with 27):

Total Driving Time: 9 hr 30 min
Total miles traveled: 326
Average mph: 34.3

On the highway. 34.3 mph. On the frickin’ interstate.

Oh, I-95, I-95, how I hate thee. The only possible reason I have to look forward to any potential thermonuclear holocaust scenario is that maybe, just maybe, some rogue nation will blow I-95 back to the Hell from which it was spawned.

Other

What does a guy have to do to get an invite into the beta?
Sigh. Anticipation blows.
UPDATE 11:29 AM: A big thank you to Anne Davis of EduBlog Insights for the Google Gmail invite!! You rock, Anne!!
UPDATE 07/17/04: Several people have posted comments here (which I have deleted) asking for a Gmail account. Sorry, but that’s a waste of time. I don’t have any to give out. You’re treading dangerously close to this. So comments are closed on this post.
If I do ever get the ability to grant other people Gmail accounts, I’ll offer them privately to friends first, and if I have more left over I’ll publicly offer them in a first-come, first-serve basis via this blog.
In the meantime, the way that I found to get a Gmail account was to (1) set up a blog (2) spend four years providing content that’s of at least some interest to a few people. That helps you (3) develop a regular readership which you can then (4) ask favors of, such as Gmail invitations.
Better get crackin’. You’re not getting any younger just beggin’ for accounts.

Other

From an Associated Press report, :

At the zoo’s new Regenstein Center for African Apes, chimpanzees can touch a panel hidden from public view that will shoot harmless bursts of air at unsuspecting visitors.

Apparently people were annoying the apes too much, so the zoo gave the apes a way to annoy the people back.
Brilliant!

Other

I’m really not this prolific on my lunch hour; I just had a lot of drafts from the last couple days sitting in the queue.

Other

One of my ongoing pain points is managing the crapload of information I have to track. To do lists just don’t cut it for me and I’ve managed to narrow my Inbox down to about 1500 items (and about 1800 in Sent Items). Manually organizing them into the several hundred folders I now have in Outlook has ceased to be productive. So here’s my request: does anybody know of an alternative to Lotus Agenda that is affordable (preferably free or at least has a free trial) built on relatively modern (e.g. post-DOS era) technology for Windows?
Remember Lotus Agenda from way back in the DOS days? That would be the perfect tool. And, yes, I know you can still dig it up online, but I’m not so desperate (yet) that finding it and dealing with the awkward install and lack of documentation just to be stuck in DOS hell outweighs the Outlook hell I’m in now. If you don’t know what Lotus Agenda was/is, here’s a description [source]:

A typical Agenda screen is divided into three columns: one in which you enter the specific piece of information (”Call Mom,” “Sell Yahoo stock,” “Memorize Hamlet,” etc.), one for date, and one for priority. Those left-side specific pieces of information can be further divided into categories (”Calls,” “Memos,” “Ideas,” etc.). Without doing any manipulation of your data structure, then, Agenda lets you view your data in four ways: organized by category, specific piece of information, date, and priority. Then you can assign your specific pieces of information to more than one category. And without noticing it, any words in a specific piece of information that are also names of categories automatically are filed into that category as well as any others you want to stick it into. For example, if you have categories called “Mary,” “Sally,” and “Sales” and you have a specific piece of information that reads “Tell Mary that Sally needs sales reports today,” the item will automatically show up into those three categories–plus, because you used the word “today,” Agenda will file the item by date, too.
This may seem like a lot of redundancy, but it turns out to be an efficient way of storing and deploying information. By placing specific items into multiple categories, any view you choose will reveal all relevant items. In other words, Agenda manages its database of information in the opposite way of traditional databases. In relational database-management programs like Access and Paradox, you build a structure for your data first. Only after the structure is set can you enter data. With Agenda, you input your ideas while they’re hot, and then work with the program to figure out where they belong in your structure-in-progress.

And, yes, I know Chandler is supposed to be able to provide some of that functionality, but since it’s a really thin 0.2 release at this point, that doesn’t help me much.
Ideas?

Other

This color scheme tool makes me want to re-design Ten Reasons Why.
Thanks to Richmond homeboy Smakbo for the link.

Other

I haven’t gotten back in the swing of blogging since my vacation at the end of August. You want to know exactly how slow a blogging month it is? I’m sharing random pictures.
Here’s a guy in full-on kung fu regalia; he was teaching himself to use his inline skates in the park this weekend. Had I been seconds slower with the camera we would have a pictorial record of the kung fu master busting his ass. Become one with skates, grasshopper!

Other