I'm not a big New Year's Resolutions guy. Perhaps especially this year when the new year doesn't feel like it will actually offer anything "new" out of the gate on January 1. Last year's post of goals for the year was a reach to try to create some kind of rubric for judging 2011. But the thing I think is that having goals like that is like trying to decide who you want for President based on a single issue. What I mean is that things often come up that you don't expect, and it's those things that have a tendency to shape a term in office, or in the case I'm writing about right now, a year in the life.
Friday, December 30, 2011
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Year In Review, Part 1
I wrote at the start of 2011 that, "At some point, I'll look back at 2010 and say "that wasn't SO bad." That time has come. I'm not exactly sure when that time got here, and interestingly enough I also sort of forget the parts that I thought would be "the good moments" from that year. At this point, I'm completely free to re-shape 2010 in my mind to whatever the hell I want it do be.
I certainly hope that at the end of 2012 I can say the same thing about 2011. For all I said in that post on January 1, 2011, that I felt I had not yet made the next step, it's still true. Maybe it will always be true. Maybe that's a defining characteristic for me, that there's always more for me to do or achieve. I notice that I said then that I didn't feel I had progress from 2010, though in the prior paragraph I said that I had gotten a raise and added a new job, and worked my ass off. Really, all three of those things are progress, in a way.
I certainly hope that at the end of 2012 I can say the same thing about 2011. For all I said in that post on January 1, 2011, that I felt I had not yet made the next step, it's still true. Maybe it will always be true. Maybe that's a defining characteristic for me, that there's always more for me to do or achieve. I notice that I said then that I didn't feel I had progress from 2010, though in the prior paragraph I said that I had gotten a raise and added a new job, and worked my ass off. Really, all three of those things are progress, in a way.
Friday, December 16, 2011
Intentionality and politics.
One of the highest bits of praise there is, I think, is saying that everything that a person (or an organization) does is intentional. The idea is that they are extremely intelligent and aware of what's going on, that nothing gets by them. It also suggests that they are focused, that they are not wasting words or wasting actions or wasting time. I like to consider myself fairly sharp, but I definitely don't fall into this category.
At some point in his 2008 Presidential Campaign, I began to consider that Barack Obama was doing everything intentionally. Now I'm not so sure. It seems to me that I've read a lot of criticism about Obama's presidency, especially recently with the President not vetoing a bill that allows the government to jail Americans suspected of terrorism indefinitely. Perhaps this is what's driving a lot of the status-updates I've been seeing recently about the PROTECT IP Act and SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act). Perhaps this is all holdover angst from the President and the Democrats capitulating to Republicans over the last three years despite having the majority of people in congress. In any event, I'm definitely wondering what the common thread is, here. What's he trying to do, exactly?
There's been a little talk on the radio recently of a comment Mr. Obama made last year that he would rather be a, "really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president." Apparently, he is no longer willing to address that comment with the media. I think it would be difficult to argue that he hasn't been at least good; the Iraq war has been formally ended, Don't Ask Don't Tell has been repealed, Health Care Reform was passed in 2010, Osama Bin Laden has been killed... that's a fairly impressive list, I would think. But there's still a sort of energy around liberals that what's been done hasn't been enough. They'll look at the debt ceiling crisis, the Occupy Wall Street movement, and the still-high unemployment rate and see a presidency that was big on promise, but just not there on certain results.
It's a lot easier to appear as though everything you do is intentional when there's nobody playing defense. That is, that another person's move can't force you to counter-move. You can have a great plan in chess, but someone may be able to play their game in such a way to nullify your plan. When you're campaigning, you don't have to worry about that. If you're making a work of art, you don't have to worry about that (If I didn't mention it before, I think Eternal Sunshine is also completely intentional). If you're a television station, you don't have to do that.
The Stranger today pointed me at a FOX News bit where they substituted in Barack Obama's photo for Mitt Romney. Sometimes it seems hard to believe that all the things they do over there are intentional, because there are a lot of small, "screw-up" type things like misspelling "Obama" as "Osama" early on. However, the sheer multitude of such "screw-ups" suggests to me that it's really not a screw-up at all. If people repeatedly screwed up a thing in a normal workplace, there would be a staff meeting to correct it and it wouldn't happen anymore (or at least with less frequency). The fact that this has happened time and time again tells me that it's being implicitly encouraged.
I really think sometimes that if you watch FOX News, it's really like watching the man behind the curtain do his thing. It's really out there for everyone to see. And then there's the worrying thing: how many people agree with it.
At some point in his 2008 Presidential Campaign, I began to consider that Barack Obama was doing everything intentionally. Now I'm not so sure. It seems to me that I've read a lot of criticism about Obama's presidency, especially recently with the President not vetoing a bill that allows the government to jail Americans suspected of terrorism indefinitely. Perhaps this is what's driving a lot of the status-updates I've been seeing recently about the PROTECT IP Act and SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act). Perhaps this is all holdover angst from the President and the Democrats capitulating to Republicans over the last three years despite having the majority of people in congress. In any event, I'm definitely wondering what the common thread is, here. What's he trying to do, exactly?
There's been a little talk on the radio recently of a comment Mr. Obama made last year that he would rather be a, "really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president." Apparently, he is no longer willing to address that comment with the media. I think it would be difficult to argue that he hasn't been at least good; the Iraq war has been formally ended, Don't Ask Don't Tell has been repealed, Health Care Reform was passed in 2010, Osama Bin Laden has been killed... that's a fairly impressive list, I would think. But there's still a sort of energy around liberals that what's been done hasn't been enough. They'll look at the debt ceiling crisis, the Occupy Wall Street movement, and the still-high unemployment rate and see a presidency that was big on promise, but just not there on certain results.
It's a lot easier to appear as though everything you do is intentional when there's nobody playing defense. That is, that another person's move can't force you to counter-move. You can have a great plan in chess, but someone may be able to play their game in such a way to nullify your plan. When you're campaigning, you don't have to worry about that. If you're making a work of art, you don't have to worry about that (If I didn't mention it before, I think Eternal Sunshine is also completely intentional). If you're a television station, you don't have to do that.
The Stranger today pointed me at a FOX News bit where they substituted in Barack Obama's photo for Mitt Romney. Sometimes it seems hard to believe that all the things they do over there are intentional, because there are a lot of small, "screw-up" type things like misspelling "Obama" as "Osama" early on. However, the sheer multitude of such "screw-ups" suggests to me that it's really not a screw-up at all. If people repeatedly screwed up a thing in a normal workplace, there would be a staff meeting to correct it and it wouldn't happen anymore (or at least with less frequency). The fact that this has happened time and time again tells me that it's being implicitly encouraged.
I really think sometimes that if you watch FOX News, it's really like watching the man behind the curtain do his thing. It's really out there for everyone to see. And then there's the worrying thing: how many people agree with it.
Friday, December 9, 2011
Baseball's Offseason
In sports, you have the regular season, the playoffs (or post-season), and the off-season. Sometimes people call the playoffs the "second season." Perhaps it's time now to talk about the supposed off-season at the third season.
When the Mariners were sort of floating around an even .500 record in June and then went on a streak of 17-consecutive losses (a streak with odds of 1 in 500... if the team was only playing .300 ball), a lot of the talk turned to the off-season. A lot of folks, seeing the struggling Mariners offense that finished last in runs scored in 2011 (and 2010, and third to last in 2009... you get the point), decided that the team needed to target Prince Fielder, heavy hitting--pun intended--first baseman from Milwaukee in order to fix it.
A lot of people like Prince Fielder, and word is the Mariners do, too. That's fine, but Fielder cannot be the entirety of the answer. Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder Matt Kemp actually had the most home runs of any player in the National League. In fact, Matt Kemp nearly won baseball's batting Triple Crown (most home runs, highest batting average, and most runs batted in)! Not only that, but Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw won the Cy Young Award for the best pitcher in the league. The Dodgers went 82-79, just barely above .500. Signing one excellent player doesn't fix a team. Hell, two excellent players doesn't fix a team. The 1996 Mariners had Ken Griffey, Jr. and Alex Rodriguez on the team, who were the two best players in baseball (according for Fangraphs Wins Above Replacement. It's esoteric, but stick with me), and still managed to miss the playoffs.
The real question is if you can sign Prince Fielder and still upgrade the rest of the team to a point where the team as a whole is legitimately good. In the Mariners case, pretty much everything that's not second base and shortstop could use an upgrade. To the M's credit, they should manage some upgrade without lifting a finger; young players at first base and left field should develop into better players, and their center fielder Franklin Gutierrez figures to be healthier in 2012 than in 2011. Ichiro might bounce back, depending on what you think of his skills and his age. That said, I don't think the young players at third base are ready, and development isn't as predictable as we would hope.
Geoff Baker of the Seattle Times posted an entry to his Mariners blog that the team has more money to spend than we think. That article posits that teams could open up their budgets and not be "crippled by big contracts," which is a concern of a lot of people who are (at least somewhat) against the potential Prince Fielder signing. Thing is, most teams don't open up their budgets. The Mariners spent $117M on the 2008 roster that lost 100 games. When you don't get any success out of spending money, you have to wonder why you should spend good money after bad.
The other problem is, well, who's available? A lot of the available players this off-season seem to be more or less average. In certain cases, average is a lot better than what the M's have, but it's also difficult to want to spend a lot of money on an average player when there's a chance you can develop one for a lot cheaper.
There's a lot of risk putting a ton of money into one player. If that player gets hurt, doesn't age gracefully, or has any number of other problems, the team is stuck and still has to spend the money. There's basically one team that regularly outspends its mistakes: the Yankees. The Red Sox could fall into this, too, but it's an order of magnitude smaller. The Red Sox' apparent mistakes in spending cost them the playoffs in 2011.
When the Mariners were sort of floating around an even .500 record in June and then went on a streak of 17-consecutive losses (a streak with odds of 1 in 500... if the team was only playing .300 ball), a lot of the talk turned to the off-season. A lot of folks, seeing the struggling Mariners offense that finished last in runs scored in 2011 (and 2010, and third to last in 2009... you get the point), decided that the team needed to target Prince Fielder, heavy hitting--pun intended--first baseman from Milwaukee in order to fix it.
A lot of people like Prince Fielder, and word is the Mariners do, too. That's fine, but Fielder cannot be the entirety of the answer. Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder Matt Kemp actually had the most home runs of any player in the National League. In fact, Matt Kemp nearly won baseball's batting Triple Crown (most home runs, highest batting average, and most runs batted in)! Not only that, but Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw won the Cy Young Award for the best pitcher in the league. The Dodgers went 82-79, just barely above .500. Signing one excellent player doesn't fix a team. Hell, two excellent players doesn't fix a team. The 1996 Mariners had Ken Griffey, Jr. and Alex Rodriguez on the team, who were the two best players in baseball (according for Fangraphs Wins Above Replacement. It's esoteric, but stick with me), and still managed to miss the playoffs.
The real question is if you can sign Prince Fielder and still upgrade the rest of the team to a point where the team as a whole is legitimately good. In the Mariners case, pretty much everything that's not second base and shortstop could use an upgrade. To the M's credit, they should manage some upgrade without lifting a finger; young players at first base and left field should develop into better players, and their center fielder Franklin Gutierrez figures to be healthier in 2012 than in 2011. Ichiro might bounce back, depending on what you think of his skills and his age. That said, I don't think the young players at third base are ready, and development isn't as predictable as we would hope.
Geoff Baker of the Seattle Times posted an entry to his Mariners blog that the team has more money to spend than we think. That article posits that teams could open up their budgets and not be "crippled by big contracts," which is a concern of a lot of people who are (at least somewhat) against the potential Prince Fielder signing. Thing is, most teams don't open up their budgets. The Mariners spent $117M on the 2008 roster that lost 100 games. When you don't get any success out of spending money, you have to wonder why you should spend good money after bad.
The other problem is, well, who's available? A lot of the available players this off-season seem to be more or less average. In certain cases, average is a lot better than what the M's have, but it's also difficult to want to spend a lot of money on an average player when there's a chance you can develop one for a lot cheaper.
There's a lot of risk putting a ton of money into one player. If that player gets hurt, doesn't age gracefully, or has any number of other problems, the team is stuck and still has to spend the money. There's basically one team that regularly outspends its mistakes: the Yankees. The Red Sox could fall into this, too, but it's an order of magnitude smaller. The Red Sox' apparent mistakes in spending cost them the playoffs in 2011.
Friday, December 2, 2011
Bowling Post #1
I've been in a bit of a bowling slump recently. After shooting over 700 four times in the first seven weeks, I haven't done it at all in the last six. Since I've been bowling two leagues, I've been throwing more games, too. Since October 18, my last 700 series, I've been bowling nine times. I've actually managed to be above average four out of those nine times, but three of those were almost exactly my average. Four of the nine times were also particularly bad, an average of more than 10 pins-under-average per game. This was culminated last Wednesday by my shooting 159, 206, and 162, winding up 91 pins under my average series.
The problem is that my standards have been creeping up higher and higher as I go. Tuesday was rough, a 200, 215, and 193, but it was rough because I was throwing good shots that just wouldn't get the pins to fall. Wednesday was rough because I couldn't hardly get the ball to get to the pocket; it was constantly on one side and then the other, making it difficult to adjust for. I only managed 159 in the first game by throwing three strikes in a row in the tenth. I had enough of a roll going on that I pulled a 206 out in the second game, starting with four strikes, and then keeping spares going until the tenth.
There's sort of a Punnet Square of bowling in my brain; on one axis is the quality of bowling, and the other axis is the quality of carry (or you might prefer, "luck"). Good bowling and good carry is how I wind up shooting 700+. Good bowling and bad carry was my Tuesday. It was frustrating, but I knew that I was still doing well. Bad bowling and good carry can lead to average scores but be dissatisfying. Bad bowling with bad carry is how I wind up below 550. Particularly low scores tend to mean that not only am I not throwing strikes, but I'm leaving splits or missing spares.
I used a couple hundred games of bowling data a couple years back and came up with a regression equation to predict bowling scores. Basically, for me, if I have exactly the same number of strikes as opens, I expect to shoot about 164. Every strike that I have beyond that with no opens is worth approximately 9 pins. In order to shoot 200, you need 3.75 strikes and no opens.
Now this is curious, because there is a thing called a "Dutch 200," in which a bowler alternates strikes and spares throughout the game. That would be six strikes and six spares. It would, in fact, be the most unlucky distribution of strikes in a game possible. The idea that you should be able to shoot 200 with 3.75 strikes and no opens suggests that in enough distributions of strikes, they come in successive frames. A strike and a spare is only worth 20, but two strikes and a 9-spare would mean 29 to the first strike, then 20 to the second. A game that starts with three strikes and makes 9-spares the rest of the way would end in a 212.
In any event, a 550 series is a 183.3 average, or 1.97 more strikes than opens per game. Considering that I've been throwing strikes at a 52% clip (even including this down sample), that's pretty disappointing. That's 5.72 strikes in a typical game (11 chances). That makes 3.75 opens per game, if I had been throwing that many strikes. That many opens would be damn frustrating. In this case, I haven't been throwing a great deal of strikes, so the opens haven't climbed through the roof, but picking up spares is a lot of "work," in bowling speak. Spares don't give you good games at this level, but they sure keep you out of bad ones.
On a day where I don't strike, opens are really difficult to overcome because I essentially need two strikes in a row to undo the score damage. With 10 frames and a need to get at least 5 strikes to make it to 211 (my Tuesday night average), an open is difficult to overcome, especially when strikes aren't showing up freely.
I can get really frustrated while I'm throwing open frames, but interestingly, it's difficult to tap into at this point. I was remarking the other day that I think I don't tend to act out too emotionally; or at the least, I don't tend to act out with a lot of negative emotion. I still have negative emotion just like anybody else, but I manage it differently, and when bowling goes poorly is the time I typically see it come out. I think that's a post for another time, but it so happens to be the post I was trying to make before all these numbers came out of my keyboard.
The problem is that my standards have been creeping up higher and higher as I go. Tuesday was rough, a 200, 215, and 193, but it was rough because I was throwing good shots that just wouldn't get the pins to fall. Wednesday was rough because I couldn't hardly get the ball to get to the pocket; it was constantly on one side and then the other, making it difficult to adjust for. I only managed 159 in the first game by throwing three strikes in a row in the tenth. I had enough of a roll going on that I pulled a 206 out in the second game, starting with four strikes, and then keeping spares going until the tenth.
There's sort of a Punnet Square of bowling in my brain; on one axis is the quality of bowling, and the other axis is the quality of carry (or you might prefer, "luck"). Good bowling and good carry is how I wind up shooting 700+. Good bowling and bad carry was my Tuesday. It was frustrating, but I knew that I was still doing well. Bad bowling and good carry can lead to average scores but be dissatisfying. Bad bowling with bad carry is how I wind up below 550. Particularly low scores tend to mean that not only am I not throwing strikes, but I'm leaving splits or missing spares.
I used a couple hundred games of bowling data a couple years back and came up with a regression equation to predict bowling scores. Basically, for me, if I have exactly the same number of strikes as opens, I expect to shoot about 164. Every strike that I have beyond that with no opens is worth approximately 9 pins. In order to shoot 200, you need 3.75 strikes and no opens.
Now this is curious, because there is a thing called a "Dutch 200," in which a bowler alternates strikes and spares throughout the game. That would be six strikes and six spares. It would, in fact, be the most unlucky distribution of strikes in a game possible. The idea that you should be able to shoot 200 with 3.75 strikes and no opens suggests that in enough distributions of strikes, they come in successive frames. A strike and a spare is only worth 20, but two strikes and a 9-spare would mean 29 to the first strike, then 20 to the second. A game that starts with three strikes and makes 9-spares the rest of the way would end in a 212.
In any event, a 550 series is a 183.3 average, or 1.97 more strikes than opens per game. Considering that I've been throwing strikes at a 52% clip (even including this down sample), that's pretty disappointing. That's 5.72 strikes in a typical game (11 chances). That makes 3.75 opens per game, if I had been throwing that many strikes. That many opens would be damn frustrating. In this case, I haven't been throwing a great deal of strikes, so the opens haven't climbed through the roof, but picking up spares is a lot of "work," in bowling speak. Spares don't give you good games at this level, but they sure keep you out of bad ones.
On a day where I don't strike, opens are really difficult to overcome because I essentially need two strikes in a row to undo the score damage. With 10 frames and a need to get at least 5 strikes to make it to 211 (my Tuesday night average), an open is difficult to overcome, especially when strikes aren't showing up freely.
I can get really frustrated while I'm throwing open frames, but interestingly, it's difficult to tap into at this point. I was remarking the other day that I think I don't tend to act out too emotionally; or at the least, I don't tend to act out with a lot of negative emotion. I still have negative emotion just like anybody else, but I manage it differently, and when bowling goes poorly is the time I typically see it come out. I think that's a post for another time, but it so happens to be the post I was trying to make before all these numbers came out of my keyboard.
Monday, November 28, 2011
Eternal Sunshine
I re-watched "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" this weekend, and I'm pleased to say that it's still my favorite movie.
If you haven't watched it, maybe you should stop reading this post now.
If you haven't watched it, maybe you should stop reading this post now.
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Well That's Interesting
If I recall correctly, I mentioned in The Haiku Thing a week or two ago that one of the things I like to do at times is revisit stuff that I've done and do it again. I don't think it would go too far to say that blogging is one of those things that I've done in the past and this blog (and its content plan) are a shift, trying to make me do this again.
A tension, however, lies within another recent post (No Days "Off"), in which I really do enjoy keeping myself running and going and doing. I think when I was writing the most in livejournals, I was in high school. High school was marked in part by my regular almost overuse of the Internet in order to interact with people. That is, not a lot of my friends from school lived within walking distance (more like an hour-bus ride at best), and I didn't have a car (or an interest in driving), so I got a lot of my social interactions online.
Aside from that, senior year of high school is probably the time where I got into the method of continually doing things like I try to do now. Between bowling and baseball and getting involved in drama club that year, there really wasn't a whole lot of time left; the rest of it was usually spent at home with the Internet on. So I still did an amount of blogging and instant-messaging to keep up my social.
There was plenty of time when nobody was on, however, and I think I kept myself decently up-to-date with politics and the media. Truly original content is hard. I think it becomes a lot easier to write when you're discussing a think that's out there in the public like the News Of The Day or the most recent Most Outrageous Thing To Happen On TV. To reiterate, it's easier to provide commentary than to provide content.
The way I live right now makes it more difficult to produce commentary, however. I think I'm actually less informed now than I was years ago, but that's because I -- like all other adults -- have things to take care of like finding jobs, paying bills, getting or making food, and planning my next week. When all that's up in the air and I'm running in between things, there's much less time to read the news or pick up a New York Times and see what's happening. I don't feel like an active participant, and I bet a lot of you don't, either.
It may change for me, though, because without full time indefinite employment, I will need to take it easy on spending money. I'll probably travel around less, rein in some spending, and maybe that will get me to think more about what's going on. And maybe I'll find writing a little bit easier with more external things to comment on.
A tension, however, lies within another recent post (No Days "Off"), in which I really do enjoy keeping myself running and going and doing. I think when I was writing the most in livejournals, I was in high school. High school was marked in part by my regular almost overuse of the Internet in order to interact with people. That is, not a lot of my friends from school lived within walking distance (more like an hour-bus ride at best), and I didn't have a car (or an interest in driving), so I got a lot of my social interactions online.
Aside from that, senior year of high school is probably the time where I got into the method of continually doing things like I try to do now. Between bowling and baseball and getting involved in drama club that year, there really wasn't a whole lot of time left; the rest of it was usually spent at home with the Internet on. So I still did an amount of blogging and instant-messaging to keep up my social.
There was plenty of time when nobody was on, however, and I think I kept myself decently up-to-date with politics and the media. Truly original content is hard. I think it becomes a lot easier to write when you're discussing a think that's out there in the public like the News Of The Day or the most recent Most Outrageous Thing To Happen On TV. To reiterate, it's easier to provide commentary than to provide content.
The way I live right now makes it more difficult to produce commentary, however. I think I'm actually less informed now than I was years ago, but that's because I -- like all other adults -- have things to take care of like finding jobs, paying bills, getting or making food, and planning my next week. When all that's up in the air and I'm running in between things, there's much less time to read the news or pick up a New York Times and see what's happening. I don't feel like an active participant, and I bet a lot of you don't, either.
It may change for me, though, because without full time indefinite employment, I will need to take it easy on spending money. I'll probably travel around less, rein in some spending, and maybe that will get me to think more about what's going on. And maybe I'll find writing a little bit easier with more external things to comment on.
Monday, November 21, 2011
Dominion Things
Those of you around Seattle know that I'm a big fan of the card game Dominion. I recently bought a fourth set of the game and just last night had some people over to play it, and there are some strategic thoughts and concepts that I want to discuss about it.
First, for those of you who don't know what the game is, I'll try to explain it fairly succinctly. Dominion is a deck-building card game in which you try to earn the most Victory Points. Victory Points are normally accrued through purchasing cards in the game that are worth 1, 3, or 6 Points. Cards are purchased with Treasure Cards with values of 1, 2, and 3. Cards are put in your discard pile after you play them. As your deck runs out, you take your discard pile, shuffle it, and start drawing again from your new deck. Now the tension within the game is that when you start drawing Victory Point Cards into your hand, they're functionally worthless.
In order to help you in your quest to get Victory Points, there are ten "Kingdom Cards" dealt before every game. These cards can be purchased and allow you to draw more cards into your hand, or steal Treasure Cards from your opponents' decks, upgrade the value of your own Treasure Cards, give you Treasure points for this turn,
or any number of other Actions. Typically, you can only play one of these per turn, unless the effects of an Action Card allow you to play more Actions. It's how these cards interact that dictates the style of play of each game.
At the beginning of the game, all players are given a deck of 10 cards, seven Copper (worth 1 Treasure each) and three Estates (worth 1 Victory each). Each player takes his/her hand of five cards and you begin. What I want to do now is get into it a little bit here and figure out some math.
Assuming you buy one card each of your first two turns, you will have 12 cards in your deck. That means that any given card has a 41% chance of showing up in your hand. If you buy two cards, the chance that they will BOTH show up in your hand on the third turn is 15%. Suppose you bought a Smithy, which allows you to draw three cards when you play it, and you also bought a Village, which allows you to draw a card and play an additional Action. Fifteen percent is really good for you, then, because you'll end up drawing four more cards into your hand. But if you get the Smithy and not the Village in your hand, it's a bit of a bummer.
After taking your five-card hand, there are seven cards left in your deck. If you draw three cards, the chance of any specific card being within that three is 42%.
That's where I went wrong in the last game we played Sunday night. If you're going to take a Smithy early, you should resist buying other action cards until your deck is large enough that it becomes relatively unlikely that you'll pick up the extra Action Card while drawing three.
The other thing I notice is that a Village card is not all that useful in the early-going of a game. Village cards become more useful when your deck is full of actions, but until then all you get from it is a single card. You recall the odds of two specific cards being in your hand on your third turn being 15%. Trouble is that every time I play Dominion with folks and Village is in play, it gets bought up quickly because it can become a lot more useful later on in the game. I'm going to try to avoid Village the next time it comes up and see if I can make it work.
First, for those of you who don't know what the game is, I'll try to explain it fairly succinctly. Dominion is a deck-building card game in which you try to earn the most Victory Points. Victory Points are normally accrued through purchasing cards in the game that are worth 1, 3, or 6 Points. Cards are purchased with Treasure Cards with values of 1, 2, and 3. Cards are put in your discard pile after you play them. As your deck runs out, you take your discard pile, shuffle it, and start drawing again from your new deck. Now the tension within the game is that when you start drawing Victory Point Cards into your hand, they're functionally worthless.
In order to help you in your quest to get Victory Points, there are ten "Kingdom Cards" dealt before every game. These cards can be purchased and allow you to draw more cards into your hand, or steal Treasure Cards from your opponents' decks, upgrade the value of your own Treasure Cards, give you Treasure points for this turn,
or any number of other Actions. Typically, you can only play one of these per turn, unless the effects of an Action Card allow you to play more Actions. It's how these cards interact that dictates the style of play of each game.
At the beginning of the game, all players are given a deck of 10 cards, seven Copper (worth 1 Treasure each) and three Estates (worth 1 Victory each). Each player takes his/her hand of five cards and you begin. What I want to do now is get into it a little bit here and figure out some math.
Assuming you buy one card each of your first two turns, you will have 12 cards in your deck. That means that any given card has a 41% chance of showing up in your hand. If you buy two cards, the chance that they will BOTH show up in your hand on the third turn is 15%. Suppose you bought a Smithy, which allows you to draw three cards when you play it, and you also bought a Village, which allows you to draw a card and play an additional Action. Fifteen percent is really good for you, then, because you'll end up drawing four more cards into your hand. But if you get the Smithy and not the Village in your hand, it's a bit of a bummer.
After taking your five-card hand, there are seven cards left in your deck. If you draw three cards, the chance of any specific card being within that three is 42%.
That's where I went wrong in the last game we played Sunday night. If you're going to take a Smithy early, you should resist buying other action cards until your deck is large enough that it becomes relatively unlikely that you'll pick up the extra Action Card while drawing three.
The other thing I notice is that a Village card is not all that useful in the early-going of a game. Village cards become more useful when your deck is full of actions, but until then all you get from it is a single card. You recall the odds of two specific cards being in your hand on your third turn being 15%. Trouble is that every time I play Dominion with folks and Village is in play, it gets bought up quickly because it can become a lot more useful later on in the game. I'm going to try to avoid Village the next time it comes up and see if I can make it work.
Friday, November 18, 2011
No days "off"
My concept of “the weekend” is pretty well broken. I feel that most people think the weekend is their time to kick back and relax. I spend my weekends trying to jam in all those kinds of things that I couldn’t put together over the course of the workweek. Perhaps the most famous example of this was the last time I went to play Hail to the Chicken in Oregon. I think it was a Tuesday. It might not have been, but whatever. If memory serves me, I was doing a bowling-alley day shift in West Seattle, then had to make a connection at the Storm offices in Interbay, then had to pick up Emily over in the U-District, and then get on I-5 and drive until I got to Salem, Oregon. Then we played Hail to the Chicken for a couple hours, we got back in my car, and drove to Seattle before collapsing asleep quickly because I had to work again the next day. It would be a little over the top to say “those are the kinds of days that I have,” but here’s the thing; I would totally do that again, and I can give you several examples of more recent similar days.
For example, I had weekend days this fall that started with playing in two baseball games on the eastside, then changing clothes in the car and driving into town to work a volleyball match before meeting up with someone to go to the Hurricane Café for a late-night hangout.
There’s something to be said for this kind of life. When things go well, it can be really fun: spending eight hours in a car with the right company is excellent, especially with a two-hour chicken-hailing break. People I know from college are quick to point out how I know everybody, and that’s partly because I really enjoy interacting with different groups of people. I recently met with a couple different groups on the same day when I played flag football with the guys I know because of the Internet and then left to go do play rehearsal with folks I know because of Church. Aside from having the drive to go do these kinds of things, I have to say it’s gotten easier over time now that I can have my calendar in my pocket at all times to stay on top of my ever-increasing and ever-changing commitments.
It is a double-edged sword, however. Sometimes things just don’t end up working out, or meeting commitments can become a stressful experience. Take today, for example. Friday I woke up early to meet a friend of mine to borrow his laptop. Then I worked out for a half an hour, drove to Seattle Pacific and did statistics input for four basketball games all the while hammering out details for my Canadian basketball trip on Saturday, my volunteer sleepover at my Church which I wound an-hour-and-a-half late to (there’s an art show there. The artists have left their things out and I’m sleeping here to prevent theft), watched a woman back her car into the side of mine while attempting a several-point turn (that wasn’t on my calendar), removed a good many objects from my car, and assuming I wake up tomorrow, I will have lived to tell the tale.
I have to admit that I don’t much like the risks of the lifestyle, having to hurry as much as I feel I do, but the rewards are pretty big when everything goes well. There’s also something fun for me to look back at what I’ve done over the course of a day or a week and ask, “How did I do that?” and genuinely mean it. It’s almost as if I get to pretend that I was a superhero or something.
Monday, November 14, 2011
Insiders, Outsiders, and Penn State
As a sports fan, I enjoy reading baseball blogs. That's not what this post is about, so hang on a second. One of the interesting things about sports blogs is that, in general, they do not have the inside access to a team in the way that a beat writer for a local newspaper does. Since the bloggers don't have direct access to players, the good ones typically rely on statistical tools or video breakdowns in order to make their points. Historically, the professionals have dismissed the work of the outsiders. This is one of the key elements of the Moneyball story.
In the last week, you may have read or heard about the incidents at Penn State University. In case you're unfamiliar, a Grand Jury investigation found that a former coach in the football program had been sexually abusing eight young boys over a 15-year period. Certain personnel at the University became aware of this by finding the coach in the act, including a graduate assistant, who reported the incident to the head coach of the football program, Joe Paterno, who in turn reported it to the athletic director. The Grand Jury investigation also showed that nobody from Penn State University reported what they knew to any officials, which by the way is mandatory. The University sanctioned the coach, though the athletic director admitted to the Grand Jury that such sanctions were "unenforceable."
If you want more detail on the case, you can read the wikipedia page or you can read the Grand Jury's Findings of Fact at this link. In the interest of full disclosure, I have not in fact read the Findings in their entirety.
Now back to the point of this post.
In the last week, you may have read or heard about the incidents at Penn State University. In case you're unfamiliar, a Grand Jury investigation found that a former coach in the football program had been sexually abusing eight young boys over a 15-year period. Certain personnel at the University became aware of this by finding the coach in the act, including a graduate assistant, who reported the incident to the head coach of the football program, Joe Paterno, who in turn reported it to the athletic director. The Grand Jury investigation also showed that nobody from Penn State University reported what they knew to any officials, which by the way is mandatory. The University sanctioned the coach, though the athletic director admitted to the Grand Jury that such sanctions were "unenforceable."
If you want more detail on the case, you can read the wikipedia page or you can read the Grand Jury's Findings of Fact at this link. In the interest of full disclosure, I have not in fact read the Findings in their entirety.
Now back to the point of this post.
Friday, November 11, 2011
The Haiku Thing
I frequently get re-interested in doing things that I used to do. Apparently I have more interest in maintaining a continuity than the folks behind Red Dwarf did, but then again that's not a hell of a lot. There are two key things I reach back to, and that's the SMILE sign and the haiku thing.
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Creating a Content Plan
If you're reading this, there's a good likelihood that you know I was in a play recently down at Fauntleroy Church. We rehearsed it three or four days a week for about six weeks before putting it on last weekend, and now it's over. On Friday night, we had a little party down at a restaurant close to the church, and I chatted some with the folks who came to the play on opening night and supported us.
One of the people at this party was the woman who is the music director for my church. We got to talking a little bit and she asked what it is that I do for work. I answered that I was temping, but starting to look around for more full-time work.
"Well, what is it that you want to do?" she asked.
One of the people at this party was the woman who is the music director for my church. We got to talking a little bit and she asked what it is that I do for work. I answered that I was temping, but starting to look around for more full-time work.
"Well, what is it that you want to do?" she asked.
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Crosstown Traffic
This week has been eventful because I was made aware of, and then used connections to attain, a new temporary gig! The gig is for a social research company, and my role so far has been to read short written responses to survey questions and code them. The subject of the survey is the difficulty of transportation within the State of Washington. Survey responders were asked "What is the most urgent transportation issue facing your local area/your region/outside your region." I have 40 codes to use to categorize responses, which range from "traffic congestion in Seattle," to "roads," to "I don't want any of my money going to projects in Seattle where I don't use them." The survey had just a couple over 5,000 respondents.
In any event, after taking on two of these questions in the last two-and-a-half days and upon coding some 3,500 responses on Friday I think I have some thoughts about transportation policy that are worth sharing.
Saturday, October 22, 2011
On Energy
I've pretty much grown up with the knowledge that people thought I was a little strange, or weird, or out there. I became used to it but I also take it for granted and forget it from time to time. My friends in high school were called "The Coalition of Nerds," by somebody. I'm not exactly sure who said it, but we took hold of that name for a while. Point to the story, I was attracted to Freaks N Geeks before I was a freshman at Willamette based on the name alone; I was atypical, and I knew it.
My strangeness comes from several areas, but for the most part I'm able to "pass" in regular society. Some of my interests are typical (baseball/sports), but the way in which I'm a fan of them is fairly extreme or geeky (closet of jerseys, regularly reading statistics-oriented blogs). The differentiating characteristic between me and the general population seems to be my energy.
My strangeness comes from several areas, but for the most part I'm able to "pass" in regular society. Some of my interests are typical (baseball/sports), but the way in which I'm a fan of them is fairly extreme or geeky (closet of jerseys, regularly reading statistics-oriented blogs). The differentiating characteristic between me and the general population seems to be my energy.
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Thoughts About Working, Pt. 1
I recently worked a temporary job at a Call Center. After a couple of weeks, I figured out that it really wasn't a type of job that worked for me. I started trying to put together a series of statements relating to work, what I like to do, and what I'm good at in hopes that I could use it to find my next job. I thought I would take a moment and share that list with you and flesh out some of the ideas within it.
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Exploring the Title
I thought for a little while about getting off the old blog at LiveJournal and trying something a little new and different, especially with several of my friends having left the LJ for other places, such as Elliott Bangs' blog or Kira Bohm's new Blogspot and then there's Mary Simpson-Stanton over at Wordpress. The whole "friends page," which was half the reason for LJ in the first place, is becoming a little more sparse and a little more concentrated with webcomic syndications, people I don't know posting in communities and other friends whom I have fallen out of touch with.
There's definitely excitement in starting fresh. I think a lot of us felt that when Google+ opened up at first. A small number of people got on it and were really excited about it and then, well, looked around and noticed how few people were around and went back to Facebook where all the content is. I'm sure we all have people who show up on our News Feed on Facebook who we pass over but still either want to or feel obligated to keep a connection with that we could be free of on a new platform.
In any event, I'm excited to start something new here, but I couldn't just dive in with the "tworsandtwols" moniker that I've been using on everything for the last 5 years or so. Why? Because it's taken by some woman named Meghan in South Carolina. Why did she take it? I have no idea. I vaguely hope it's for the same reason I took it. So now I had to come up with a new title, a new name for my blog.
I wound up at "In Fair Play." Initially I was throwing titles around and I considered it because my baseball success while batting has occurred when I've hit the ball right down the foul line, in fair play, because I've been able to use my speed to get an extra base (or sometimes two).
Serendipitously enough, it also relates to a sort of ethos, as in "in the spirit of fair play." It wouldn't be a stretch to say that this ethos is what made me uncomfortable working for a payday loan company recently. I felt that in order to avoid feeling badly about asking for money from folks who fairly clearly don't have much I had to accept that the company was right and the people were wrong. Now in a legal sense, that's true; the customer used a service provided by the company and did not pay for it. On the other hand, such a read ignores a greater societal problem. I saw a number of profiles for customers who went past due who were working in low-rung service industry positions where they were unlikely to earn a living wage. After a month, I determined that I was supporting the system that causes that to happen more than I was willing to.
Then there's the word "play," itself. I think it's fairly safe to say that I put a high value on play, or having fun. Skip Kenitzer, exercise science professor at Willamette University, gave a Last Lecture called "If It's Not Fun, I'm Not Doing It," and I definitely appreciated his approach. It wound up something along the lines of a cliché I'm sure you've heard "don't do any job you wouldn't do for free." Sometimes I feel like I have been working for free, that the value I've provided has greatly outpaced my pay-rate, but I've been okay with that so long as I am able to do what I want to do when I'm not working and as long as I feel a good level of respect from my coworkers.
Finally, I'm hoping that doing something new, changing a name, starting a new blog, that all of these sort of little changes get me rolling on towards new work and my life in 2012. While I hang out, I hope to follow Ira Glass's advice. If you're not familiar, Ira Glass is the host of This American Life, an excellent radio program you can probably find on your local NPR station. I didn't know much about him or that show until I saw him talk at Willamette in 2006, and it was easily the greatest speaking engagement I had the opportunity to be at. That's no small thing, because I also had the opportunity to hear folks like Cokie Roberts, Colin Powell, Barbara Ehrenreich, Michael Moore, Robert Putnam, Steven Pinker, and Daniel Tosh speak down in Salem.
Back to the point, Ira Glass said this:
There's definitely excitement in starting fresh. I think a lot of us felt that when Google+ opened up at first. A small number of people got on it and were really excited about it and then, well, looked around and noticed how few people were around and went back to Facebook where all the content is. I'm sure we all have people who show up on our News Feed on Facebook who we pass over but still either want to or feel obligated to keep a connection with that we could be free of on a new platform.
In any event, I'm excited to start something new here, but I couldn't just dive in with the "tworsandtwols" moniker that I've been using on everything for the last 5 years or so. Why? Because it's taken by some woman named Meghan in South Carolina. Why did she take it? I have no idea. I vaguely hope it's for the same reason I took it. So now I had to come up with a new title, a new name for my blog.
I wound up at "In Fair Play." Initially I was throwing titles around and I considered it because my baseball success while batting has occurred when I've hit the ball right down the foul line, in fair play, because I've been able to use my speed to get an extra base (or sometimes two).
Serendipitously enough, it also relates to a sort of ethos, as in "in the spirit of fair play." It wouldn't be a stretch to say that this ethos is what made me uncomfortable working for a payday loan company recently. I felt that in order to avoid feeling badly about asking for money from folks who fairly clearly don't have much I had to accept that the company was right and the people were wrong. Now in a legal sense, that's true; the customer used a service provided by the company and did not pay for it. On the other hand, such a read ignores a greater societal problem. I saw a number of profiles for customers who went past due who were working in low-rung service industry positions where they were unlikely to earn a living wage. After a month, I determined that I was supporting the system that causes that to happen more than I was willing to.
Then there's the word "play," itself. I think it's fairly safe to say that I put a high value on play, or having fun. Skip Kenitzer, exercise science professor at Willamette University, gave a Last Lecture called "If It's Not Fun, I'm Not Doing It," and I definitely appreciated his approach. It wound up something along the lines of a cliché I'm sure you've heard "don't do any job you wouldn't do for free." Sometimes I feel like I have been working for free, that the value I've provided has greatly outpaced my pay-rate, but I've been okay with that so long as I am able to do what I want to do when I'm not working and as long as I feel a good level of respect from my coworkers.
Finally, I'm hoping that doing something new, changing a name, starting a new blog, that all of these sort of little changes get me rolling on towards new work and my life in 2012. While I hang out, I hope to follow Ira Glass's advice. If you're not familiar, Ira Glass is the host of This American Life, an excellent radio program you can probably find on your local NPR station. I didn't know much about him or that show until I saw him talk at Willamette in 2006, and it was easily the greatest speaking engagement I had the opportunity to be at. That's no small thing, because I also had the opportunity to hear folks like Cokie Roberts, Colin Powell, Barbara Ehrenreich, Michael Moore, Robert Putnam, Steven Pinker, and Daniel Tosh speak down in Salem.
Back to the point, Ira Glass said this:
“What nobody tells people who are beginners — and I really wish someone had told this to me . . . is that all of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, and it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not.
I still think of this advice from time to time. Just now, since I don't have full-time work, I have some more time to pursue it.But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase. They quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know it’s normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story.It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”
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