Soul Searchings

The last couple weeks, a bunch of us have gone for bowling at Revs on Tuesday nights - Chanh, Clara, Gary, Mimi, Will, Thi and myself. Shoe rental costs $4, the first game costs $3, the second costs $2, and every game after that costs just $1. On Monday nights, the pricing structure is completely different, but ends up working out to be pretty much the same. Shoe rental is only $2, but the first game costs $6, and every subsequent game is a buck. If you work it all out, it just means for those that bowl one game, it will be a dollar more on Mondays, but for two games or more, there’s no difference between the two days.

However, for those that have their own bowling shoes, like myself, Tuesday is the cheaper night. The cost of one game is $3 instead of $6, and for two games $5 instead of $7. They both go up by a buck each for every additional game, so two bucks is the difference. Just from these last two weeks, I’ve saved $8 from shoe rental costs. I highly recommend getting a pair of bowling shoes, even if you don’t bowl very often. I picked up my new Brunswick shoes for about $30 on eBay a couple years ago. It has pretty much paid for itself after just a few uses, and I know the only feet that’s been in them are mine, and not hundreds of others. Now I’m wondering whether I should get my own ball or not. Consistency is the key to bowling, and when using balls that vary greatly from session to session, it’s hard to get into a groove.

I haven’t bowled very much in the last few years, usually just once or twice a year. Back in high school, we used to bowl often, when we had our summer bowling championships in 1998 and 1999. We bowled pretty much every week during those summers, with those 2-for-1 T&C coupons, and some weeks we even went twice. I kept meticulous stats for those sessions, and in fact, I still have them on my computer and was looking at them just a couple nights ago. Doing these bowling stats probably led to helping me know how to use Excel a lot better, which has proven useful over the years.

During the 1998 season, we bowled 20 official games between July 1st and September 3rd. Here are the stat highlights:

• Highest single game score: 186 (Me, 14th game - 4 strikes, 5 spares)
• Most closed: 9 (Me, 14th game - 4 strikes, 5 spares)
• Most strikes in a game: 4 (Gary, 3rd game; Will, 5th game; Thi, 11th game; Me, 11th game; Me, 14th game)
• Most consecutive strikes in a game: 3 (Will, 8th game; Me, 11th game)
• Most spares in a game: 6 (Ken, 12th game)
• Most consecutive spares: 4 (Will, 3rd game; Me, 5th game; Me, 15th game; Ken, 15th game)
• Highest average of closed frames per game: 4.25 (Me), 4.21 (Thi)
• Highest average of strikes per game: 1.71 (Thi), 1.70 (Me)
• Highest average of spares per game: 2.55 (Me), 2.50 (Thi)

That 186 score was quite the anomaly at that time, as the next highest game during the season was only 156, which was also by me. Ken got the third and fourth highest scores at 155 and 154, while Will and Gary shared fifth with 152.

The highest score for the girls was a 119 by Elaine.

I won the 1998 championship with an average score of 115.85, with Thi coming second at 111.71.

It’s actually quite remarkable how much the skill level improved overall during the following season, as the stats will show.

During the 1999 season, we bowled 23 official games between June 29th and August 23rd. Here are the stat highlights:

• Highest single game score: 209 (Me, 22nd game - 5 strikes, 4 spares)
• Most closed: 9 (Me, 9th game - 4 strikes, 5 spares; Ed, 20th game - 2 strikes, 7 spares; Me, 22nd game - 5 strikes, 4 spares)
• Most strikes in a game: 6 (Gary, 10th game)
• Most consecutive strikes in a game: 5 (Me, 22nd game)
• Most spares in a game: 7 (Ken, 17th game; Ed, 20th game)
• Most consecutive spares in a game: 5 (Ed, 20th game)
• Highest average of closed frames per game: 5.26 (Me), 4.29 (Ken)
• Highest average of strikes per game: 2.48 (Me), 2.24 (Thi)
• Highest average of spares per game: 2.88 (Ed), 2.78 (Me)

Gary was actually the first to reach 200, and he got to 200 exactly on the 10th game, when he registered the six strikes. On the final day of our so-called competitive bowling era, I surpassed it with my 209, powered by my five-bagger. The third highest score was 188 by me, while the fourth highest scores were a pair of 185’s by Ed and me again. I also had the sixth and seventh highest scores at 181 and 180.

The most consecutive strikes we’ve ever had was actually six, and that was accomplished by Elaine. I don’t recall when that occurred, but it must have been outside of our championships, as I don’t have it recorded. I also can’t remember what her final score ended up being, but it was definitely over 200. I don’t think she beat my score of 209, because I’m thinking I would have remembered if she did, but Elaine thinks she may have gotten higher.

The highest official score for the girls was a 159 by Justine.

I was the winner again of the 1999 championship with an average score of 138.30, with Ken coming second at 122.41.

What’s impressive is that three others (Gary, 119.42; Ed, 117.88; Thi, 116.35) all had higher averages than the previous year’s highest average. Elaine was right behind at 114.87.

I find it pretty interesting how I progressed through the two seasons. Breaking the averages down further shows the following results:

First ten games of 1998: 105.6
Last ten games of 1998: 126.1
First ten games of 1999: 130.7
Last ten games of 1999: 150.8

Before now, I never realized that I had actually ended up starting to be able to average 150. Since the summer of 1999, we hardly ever went bowling anymore, so my skills went into a decline, to the point where I feel like I had completely forgotten how to bowl, and was back to being about a 110 average bowler.

In fact, during these past two weeks, my game felt terrible. I had no control of my shots anymore. I couldn’t hit the head pin on most frames, and couldn’t pick up easy spares. During the second game this week, I started to actively look for ways to change my delivery to get my game back on track. In the past, I learned to line up by stepping on the second arrow from the left with my right foot. I came to realize that the arrows at different bowling alleys are not the same distance from the lane as they are at T&C, which completely throws me off. At Revs, after I take my three steps from the arrows, I’m still way too far behind the line, and it causes my release to be completely inconsistent and awkward. Towards the end of the second game, I made the adjustment to start half a foot forward, and switched down to a 11 pound ball from the 13 I have always used. It made a huge difference, and I was able to feel it immediately. Even though I still only finished that game with a terrible score of 85 - quite possibly the worst score I have ever had while bowling for real - I felt I was ready to come back into form in a big way. I was almost ready to proclaim I would bowl a 150 for our third and final game, even though I can’t remember the last time I’ve reached that mark. Turns out my feeling was right on the money.

I started out great, with a strike, strike, spare, strike combination. I already had 94 through five frames - more than I did in all of the previous game. I continued bowling decently and closed another four frames to finish with 179 - by far the highest score I’ve had since being in my prime.

While I don’t expect to be able to bowl that well all the time, I hope I can at least get back into form to average about 130-140. I feel fairly confident my adjustments were not just a one game wonder. I will find out next time!

It’s been a full month since the last entry, and the time seems to have just flown by.

These last four weeks have been incredibly busy at work. The most time consuming project has been putting together and setting up everything inside our cage at MCI. They are our new colocation facility, and are located at Waterfront Center. I now know first hand how ridiculous parking is downtown, after having to park there about 15-20 days in the past month or so. At Waterfront Center, the price is now $3 per half hour before 6pm, up to a maximum of $16, and $5 flat rate after 6pm. Despite the price, there was one rainy Monday afternoon where I couldn’t find an empty parkade within a two block radius. Every single one was jam packed. Finally, I found one a little further away, and had to park about a hundred floors up. At least that’s how high it felt from the number of times needed to circle up and down each floor.

Anyways, besides the daunting task of physically setting up our four server racks, complete with about $80K worth of networking equipment, and $100K worth of servers, we needed to configure everything too. With very tight deadlines to work with, we’ve had to work long hours everyday, and through most weekends as well.

In the past, with a much simpler setup, the entire operations department really consisted of just myself and one other guy. In the last two months, our department has more than tripled in size to seven employees, but yet there is never a shortage of tasks that need to be done.

Of course, it’s not only our department that’s been growing, and with every new face that comes to the company, I’m pretty much solely responsible for getting their equipment setup and ready to go. This has usually involved procuring them a new laptop, monitor, keyboard, mouse and IP phone. Generally, I’ve been helping the company buy most of these items first, and then expensing them later. For January, I managed to rack up almost $10K in company expenses, and for February, I bested that figure with over $15K. Suddenly I find myself with a lot of PC Points to buy groceries with, and Starbucks points to drink coffee with.

Being as busy as I have been with work, I didn’t find much time to play poker, and my final February stats show a net profit of a little over $300 in under 14 hours of play. That worked out to almost US$23 per hour, tax free. Not bad.

In all my life, I had never played a real game of foosball - until a couple months ago. We have a table at the office, and people started getting into it, and naturally I decided to give it a whirl. Well, it turns out I’m not a natural at it, and in fact, I sucked pretty good. A few of the players are pretty good, so I was determined to get to the point where I’m at least half decent and wouldn’t be a walkover. Well, I did get better after some practice, and have managed to be on the winning team a few times, but overall I’m still pretty weak.

I’ve been sick during the last week, but fortunately I think I’m on the recovery trail now. No longer do I feel physically weak and mentally out of it, but I still have the remnants of a cough. It seems that usually some phlegm will remain with me for weeks, sometimes even months, after I’ve gotten over a cold or flu. Hopefully it won’t be like that this time.