This Saturday was the Stanford football team's Spring Game, the traditional culmination of Spring practice. It was the first in the new stadium, the first with the new coaching staff, and the first in a long while that was actually played as a real game, for almost a full four quarters. It was also my first chance to see the team in action after last year's abomination, so I was looking forward to it. As luck would have it, Frosty was announcing the game, and he needed help up in the pressbox, so I got to join him! What a view!
My job was simple. Keep track of the yard-line, down, and distance, and point out the defenders involved in the play. It was a lot of fun up there, and hopefully I get a chance to do it again during the season.
As for the game itself, the format was great. The 1st-team offense and 2nd-team defense was the Stanford team, and the 2nd-team offense and 1st-team defense was the Cardinal team. Guys looked sloppy and slow, but there was one star who stood out, freshman Tyrone McGraw (below, with the ball). He was the last recruit offered last year, but he was also the fastest, and that speed was on display on his numerous runs around the corner. In the second quarter, he finally broke one 85 yards for a touchdown, helping the Cardinal team to a 21-7 victory.
After the game, we were able to head down to the field to interact with the coaches and players, and seeing some of the beasts up close was awe-inspiring. DTs Sione Fua and Ekom Udofia were especially huge.
And here are my favorite offensive and defensive players, Richard Sherman and Wopamo Osaisai, both of whom will be playing on Sundays, along with the two behemoths above.
We didn't get 90,000 fans like Alabama did for their Spring Game - I'm not even sure we got 3,000 - but it was still a memorable experience. Thanks for the opportunity, Steve!
This past weekend, a high school in Georgia had its first ever integrated prom, in lieu of its traditional segregated dances, one for whites and one for blacks.
Well, not quite in lieu of. The white dance was still held the week prior, and some white students were not allowed by their parents to attend the integrated dance. But hey, it's progress.
And there's more where that came from. Earlier this year, the school also decided to vote for only one homecoming queen, ending the long-standing tradition of - you guessed it - two homecoming queens, one white and one black.
Now, of course I knew that some states were less progressive than others, but damn! This is the type of story I'd expect in the Chappie's April 1 version of the Stanford Daily, alongside such classics as Sailing Team Encounters Black Man. Some of the quotes were downright Onion-worthy:
"The white people have theirs, and the black people have theirs. It's nothing racial at all."
Um, right. Anyone else wanna give it a shot?
"My mommy and daddy -- they don't agree with being with the colored people."
That's more like it.
Sigh. And I was so inspired watching Obama's DNC speech...
On a whim, my coworker Dave decided to sign us up with a few of his friends for bowling lessons. That's right, bowling lessons. Mostly he just wanted a night to hang out and have a couple of beers, but he also found us a great deal at Palo Alto Bowl. For $40, we got four lessons, a custom bowling ball, and a bag...a steal at twice the price!
The lessons consisted mostly of bowling a bunch of games and having the instructor walk around and give tips. I now bowl with a slight spin, which is pretty inconsistent, though during my best stretch, I bowled six strikes in a row, halfway to 300. :)
Tonight was our last lesson, and our first with the new balls, which took some getting used to, though some of us adjusted faster than others. In his first game with his red and black Tornado, Dave bowled his first ever 200, sparing and striking in the tenth for a 201! Talk about clutch. He even got a printout of his historic achievement. Such hubris demanded punishment.
His next game, he was still glowing from his previous score and ended up bowling a pathetic 109, so we stealthily switched his 201 printout with his 109 printout. Near the end of the day, we got one of the alley workers we knew to come by and say he didn't believe that Dave had bowled a 200, so Dave proudly produced the 109 printout and said, "I have the printout to prove it. Who's your daddy! Wait...what the hell?" Our team motto is now, "Who's your Daddy! 109!"
I'm averaging about 150 and usually bowl around that score, which means that when I'm down in SoCal, I'm ready to carry my weight for the ECAR 600 (ECAR being the order in which Eddy, Alan, Russell, and I always bowled, and 600 being the target score we always set for ourselves as a group but rarely hit).
This is my pretty new ball, the black Tornado (selling for $67.99 on bowling.com!). Yes, I know, it's a bit sparkly.
Now that we have a bowling group and our own equipment, we're thinking of joining a weekly league, with shirts and shoes and everything! Sounds ridiculous, I know, but I'm sure it'll be entertaining. I can't wait to report on our thrilling tales of athletic competition.
Andrew and I should write a book (well, maybe a blog) detailing all of the games and leagues that we've come up with together over the years. Usually this amounts to nothing more than a new way to have fun at the dartboard or mini-hoop (Bocce Darts, Dart Dunk Contest, On Fire), or occasionally an innovative fantasy sports league (Survivor Hoops, Markinson Cup). One time it led to the creation of a Hearts tournament (the SHHNHB). I guess we have pretty similar sensibilities when it comes to these things, so we end up bouncing a lot of ideas off of each other and seeing where it takes us.
So naturally, he and I were hashing out a fantasy sports idea a few months ago, and it led to a discussion of an idea for a website, centered around user-created online polls. After further brainstorming, we decided it was worth building, so we quickly laid out the basic navigation, look and feel, and functionality, then Andrew took the reins and hammered it out entirely on his own. The result was Twiigs.com!
Twiigs allows users to create polls, vote on ones created by other users, and host any of them on their own websites and blogs. You can see an example poll in the right nav bar. It happens to be one that I created, but I could have hosted it even if another user had created it. All votes on the poll through my site or the Twiigs site or any other site hosting the poll contribute to its results (though a user has the option to make a poll private, which keeps it unlisted and therefore allows for voting to be restricted to a particular community).
I tried other poll services before, but they all made it difficult or impossible to control the look and feel of the poll to match my site design, and when I voted, they took me to a separate page to view the results, which is a clunky user experience. And when I went back to my blog, the poll looked the same: no results, still awaiting my vote. With Twiigs, the host has style control, and the results display in place of the poll after a user votes. So much better! If you want a more detailed look at the poll, you can click on the "more at twiigs.com" link.
We definitely have some other fun features in the pipeline, but as it is, Andrew has done an amazing job of programming the site, so I hope you all take the time to check it out, play around with the various features, perhaps register a username, and let us know what you think!
I don't get to hang out with my buddy Alan much since his career is in racing, which keeps him based in the Midwest or South, but fortunately the Champ Car series does their spring training in Monterey and has races in Long Beach and San Jose, which gives me three chances a year to see him and the Forsythe team in person. Monterey gave me my first glimpse of Alan as race engineer, but this weekend at Long Beach was the first time I got to see one of his actual races.
There was a great showing of Lo groupies: Eddy, Steph, Russ, Joanne, Jill, Jeff, Jesse, and myself. We watched the race from Alan's hotel, which was located within the track. His room was on the first floor and only showed the pit row exit, so we headed up and found spectacular views on the upper floor stairwells, even better than the ones afforded to those who paid $200 to get up on the roof:
Alan's car in the foreground of the Queen Mary:
We ended up getting booted a couple of times, probably because our views were better than the ones afforded to those who paid $200 to get up on the roof, so we moved around and found other views of the race, and Alan's car:
How did the team do? Well, it's complicated. Their top racer and championship contender, Paul Tracy, broke his back the previous day in warmups and is out for three months, ruining his chances to win a title this year. Their other racer, the one with whom Alan is working to start the season, crashed out in the first ten laps and finished last (not Alan's fault!). But Tracy's replacement had a great run and finished second! All in all, a rough weekend for Forsythe, but a strong finish took some of the edge off.
After the race, we actually headed out to the track for the first time to watch the drifting competition, which apparently measures how fast a car enters each turn and how much distance it covers with its drifts. Whatever, it just looks cool:
It was a great event, made better by a fun group of people and our mad capers through the hotel, as well as our rooting interests in Alan. Let's do it again in San Jose!
A beta of My Maps has come out for Google Maps, which allows you to post locations, draw lines and shapes, and add pictures. Here's the Rome/Vatican City part of our trip to Europe back in '04:
With placeholders for all of the the other parts of the trip, I was able to draw those cool red lines between destinations like in those Indiana Jones maps.
It's still a rough feature, but it's worth playing around with. Hopefully it will get better integration with Picasa soon. Hubert, any connection to this project?
