Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Brad's LiveJournal:

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Friday, October 17th, 2008
12:37 am	m_ I still have to clean out my closet... See, tomorrow some people from Verizon are coming over to install a FIOS hookup and it's apparently coming in through the closet. FIOS would be cool, but I will never be able to take advantage of it. I've decided that my apartment is too small, so I'm moving to a bigger place in November. Hooray for that. But boo for FIOS coming right as I'm leaving. I thought this was worth pointing out. I was looking at Berkshire Hathaway's public holdings and there are just 5 stocks that are up since July 1: 1) Bank of America 2) M&T Bank 3) Suntrust Banks 4) US Bancorp 5) Wells Fargo All banks! WTF! Mr. Buffett did have a couple other non-savings-and-loan-type financials that went down (like Amex), but overall they're in the black in that segment. By contrast, my investments in that sector are now worth less than half of what they once were. (Stupid Fidelity portfolio analyzer telling me I was under invested in the financial sector...) Oh well. Oh, I also wanted to mention my psuedo 7-10 split in bowling. As you may know, a 7-10 split is nearly impossible to convert (in 10-pin bowling, it is easier in candlepin) and you are more likely to bowl a perfect game. Well, I didn't exactly hit the 7-10 split, but that is only because the 6 was also sitting there. I was trying to just brush against the 6 to send it over to tackle the 7 while letting the ball take out the 10. I missed the 6 entirely and just smacked 10 to the back of the lane. It came back and took out the 7. So I managed to only knock down the 7 and 10 without involving any other pins, but do not get official credit for the 7-10 split. (And for those who don't know, I'm in a bowling league that plays once every 2 weeks.) (Comment on this)
Wednesday, October 1st, 2008
1:15 am	Champion of a single eyeball It feels good to figure something out after a long time, no matter how trivial. I just figured something out from 1995. So back in 8th grade I was listening to a song on the radio and I asked my friend if they knew who it was. They said it was Queensryche, which was not correct. I tried looking for the song through some limited channels, but no luck. I had no form of internet or anything, but there was a phone service that you could use to order CDs and they let you listen to samples of tracks over the phone. I listened to a bunch of samples, but I didn't get anywhere. I never heard the song on the radio again. Every few years or so, I would my dilemma would pop into my head (sorry, this is the way my brain works). I'd bring up the internet and try searching on what fragments of the lyrics I thought I remembered. It never worked, mostly because I was getting the lyrics wrong. (We just have to make search engines smart enough to listen to me hum a few bars.) Well, today I had a short moment of clarity and remembered a line from the song. Success. I downloaded the song from zune and I'm good to go. If you're curious, the song is Edie by The Cult. It peaked at #93 on the charts in 1989. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, September 26th, 2008
11:43 pm	No time for distribution I went to the Mariners game last night. Woohoo! 101 losses! It's history in the making, the first ever team to lose over 100 games while paying its players more than $100M. A few of my friends had bought tickets on Wednesday, but I had originally not planned on going. Things changed, so I went to get myself a ticket in the same general area. The stadium has been very empty lately, so I figured we'd be able to find some seats next to each other anyway. While we on our way to the game, we realized that my ticket was actually right next to theirs. Heh. We only used those seats for a couple innings before we moved around anyway. After the game we went to a piano bar. Fun as always. (Comment on this)
Sunday, September 21st, 2008
9:07 pm	neither red nor blue This past weekend I travelled eastward.  I spent most of Saturday hanging out with my brother and we went to the Red Sox game.  This was my only game at Fenway this season.  Oh well, at least I got one in. On Sunday was Jaime and Steve's wedding, which of course was awesome.  This was the main reason for travelling; the other activities being scheduled around this one.  And after the wedding a bunch of us hung out in the hotel bar. On Monday I drove out to upstate New York with my dad to do some fishing.  It was pretty cool, we caught some big-ass salmon.  One of which is currently residing in my freezer.  The bad part of course was that we had to wake up at 3:15am on Tuesday morning.  That's 12:15am pacific time.  Somehow I managed.  I also bought some Saranac beer while I was out in NY and brought it back with me.  They've expanded their lineup a little bit since my college days adding both a brown ale and an imperial IPA.  I have both in my fridge ready to taste. So last night I was tricked into giving a girl my phone number.  I was just buying additional tokens at a beer festival.  At the end of the transaction the girl asked me to write down my phone number.  I thought that was a bit unusual, but I was kind of buzzed so I just did what I was told.  Then I talked to my friends and realized that none of them were asked for their numbers... What!? (Comment on this)
Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008
1:03 am	Eponymous physics The Olympics were cool... but I'm glad they're over.  I spent waaay too much time watching them.  Not that I didn't spend a whole lot of time this weekend watching football, but that is a different problem.  Speaking of football, the Patriots are consistently making interesting roster moves, which is making me very curious to see what their eventual lineup will look like on the field.  But I digress, this post is about the Olympics.  If I were in charge, the first change I would make would be to define new criteria for Olympic sports.  First of all, in all events, there would need to be an objective way to measure the performance of any individual or team.  This gets rid of the following sports: Artistic Gymnastics Diving Rythmic gymnastics Synchronized swimming Trampoline Olympic boxing, unlike professional boxing, has an open scoring system and so it would still be able to qualify.  Yes, all sports have some potential for human error, because there are still people involved to enforce the rules or make some judgement calls.  But there is a difference between when a person gets the call wrong because they observed it wrong, and when the have a different opinion on the quality of a performance.  The goal here would be to eliminate the latter. I would also get rid of things that are just not sports to me: Race walking - Walking is not a sport.  That's why they call it walking and not running. Equestrian - The horse is doing all of the work here, the rider is more like a coach than an athlete.  If there were an olympics for animals, then this could be added to that event. This would of course leave room for a few more sports to be added.  I propose the following: Baseball (since it's being eliminated) Lacrosse Football or Rugby Lumberjack events from the great outdoor games (except for the chainsaw ones) Tug-of-War (was actually an Olympic event at one point) Caber toss Ultimate Frisbee Pie Eating The next major change I would make is to the scoring system.  Counting the number of total medals or gold medals doesn't make any sense.  Some sports, like swimming and track, have a boatload of medals while many team sports only have one.  So some medals should be worth a lot more than others.  So the first thing to do would be to group each event into a category, and give that category a total number of olympic points.  It might look something like this: Basketball: 50 Water Polo: 20 Track - individual sprint events: 50 Decathlon: 50 Kayak: 12 etc. And then you assign each medal a point value so that they some to the total for that category.  This way, the gold in basketball might be worth 25 points, but a bronze in the 200m might only be worth like 1 point.  (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, August 20th, 2008
11:07 pm	half of my college bicycle In the past week I've received a bunch of free shit: - a glass from Mac and Jack's Brewery - a digital photo frame - a hockey game (usually games are $20+ to play in, thanks strange all-star voting results) - a t-shirt - a box of hard alcohol (thanks Saeed and Julie!) I used to have this super power that would let me receive free beer all the time, but it's not working as well as it used to.  I blame the Washington state laws that ban complimentary alcohol.  Either that or I've lost the look that says, "I'd be ever so appreciative of some beer if you have any."  Or maybe it's like the time I lost my super power that let me talk my way out of speeding tickets.  Man, I miss that one. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, August 2nd, 2008
2:43 am	bragging or self-deprecating sarcasm? On Sunday I plan on floating down a river while drinking beer.  To prepare for this, I needed to buy a floatation device of some sort.  I tried Costco since one of my friends was successful there.  Instead I walked away with 2.75 lbs. of blueberries, 2 lbs. of cheese, and 4 lbs. of bacon.  I'm awesome.  (Comment on this)
Thursday, July 31st, 2008
2:00 pm	huh? Manny Ramirez and two minor leaguers for Jason Bay.  Really?  That's the best they could do? I've never believed any of this "Manny is moving" talk that's been happening before every trade deadline of the past 5 years, and I didn't really buy into this one either.  And an hour ago it seemed that the deal was once again dead.  Surprise! (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, July 8th, 2008
10:49 pm	"wicked awesome" is a wicked awesome phrase There have been a decent number of complaints over the number of Red Sox on the All-Star team, 7.  Some people seem to be implying that it's because Terry Francona got to pick some of the roster. No. He picked 6 total players, none of them Red Sox.  Here are my thoughts on the 7 who were picked to go.  Starters - voted in by the fans Kevin Youkilis - He should be one of the least controversial picks.  He's the best at his position at the plate and is well on his way to his second consecutive gold glove.  Justin Morneau is a good choice for backup at this position. Dustin Pedroia - This one is a tough call as a starter, but it's hard to argue that Pedroia isn't playing at an All-Star level.  Ian Kinsler is the best offensively at 2B and he was picked as the backup at this position.  Brian Roberts would be another solid pick at this position, but I might give the nod to Pedroia because of his clutch hitting (statistically, the 2nd most clutch hitter in the AL) and his better glove. Manny Ramirez - This one seems questionable until you look at the crop of AL outfielders this season.  He's not even the worst pick out the starters, that honor goes to Ichiro.  You can (easily) argue that he's not one of the top 3 OF in the AL this season, but he is likely in the top 6.  I might have gone with Jermaine Dye instead. David Ortiz - Well, he's not going to play anyway, so there's not really much to defend here.  Bradley has had the better season, and will be the All-Star starter anyway, so nobody was snubbed here. Pitchers/Reserves - voted in by fellow players Jonathan Papelbon - There are 4 good closers (K-rod, Nathan, Rivera, Soria) that have had comparable seasons to Papelbon, but the all made the All-star game too. Overall, 6 closers made the roster, which is too many IMO.  If we were to drop 2 for starters, Papelbon might be the second one to drop.  However, Jon Lester would very likely be one of the starters to jump onto the All-Star roster in that case, so the net number of Red Sox would be the same. J.D. Drew - He deserves to start.  Offensively he's been the best outfielder in the AL this season, fueled a lot by his phenomenal June.  Jason Varitek - Yeah, this is the crazy one.  Varitek is only not benched because he's really good at scouting opponents and making pitch calls.  In one of the worst seasons of his career, it's a mystery why the players voted him into the All-Star game. One other insteresting point is that the AL roster has 3 players at 3B: ARod, Joe Crede, and Carlos Guillen.  Crede was voted in by the players and Guillen is there to make sure that the Tigers have at least one representative.  If it weren't for those restrictions, I'd argue that Longoria and Lowell would be the next two 3B to make the team. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, June 24th, 2008
12:24 am	3 times before twice Technically it might be 2.5. This is uninteresting to you (and half of me), so I will abruptl.. Oh, did I mention that I switched jobs? Same company, same job title, different division. It was time for a change for me. This happened like a month ago. Also, did you know that R.E.M.'s "Gardening at Night" is about peeing outside? I like the song even better now. This was a short one, sorry. I had intended to write a long post about hybrid electic vehicles, but then I got lazy. (Comment on this)
Saturday, June 14th, 2008
11:47 pm	foot-free treadmill Patience is a funny thing. I was tempted to write rant-style blog post about things that annoy me, but after thinking about it, it kind of annoys me that these things annoy me. I don't want to be the impatient asshole or the guy who gets walked all over. In life, I want to be more patient. In my career, I think it would help to be more of an asshole. Today there were two incidents where I could have been more patient: 1) The person ahead of me at Quiznos took forever to order 6 sandwiches. When I entered the store, she was the only one in line. Soon after, there were a few more of us. The guy behind me eventually just left the store, and I knew I had an annoyed look on my face. Although I didn't do anything, I felt angry at her for not being prepared and for wasting my time. 2) The second was with a security guard at Marymoor park. He wanted me to walk all the way around a concert instead of just walking toward the exit, like I was trying to do. There were no signs or anything saying that this part was closed and other people were walking in the opposite direction along the same path without being harassed (in fact, I was just trying to leave the way I came in). In this case I acted out. I yelled at him and just walked where I needed to go. Like with most thing in life, it's easy for me to get it right in my head, but not nearly as easy to get the rest of my body to believe it and act on it. (Comment on this)
Monday, June 9th, 2008
10:34 pm	like Van Halen, hopefully This past weekend was reunion for a lot of different colleges, including mine. I didn't go to reunion though, I just kind of ended up at my own mini-reunion. I flew to Washington D.C. and arrived on Friday morning. I attempted to get some sleep on the plane, but pretty much failed. Instead I checked into my hotel room early and took a long nap. Then I met up with 2 of my old college roommates, Bob and Tim. First we went to the Nationals game. That makes 13 major league ballparks for me. (I actually thought it was a little higher, but I just re-counted.) Then we went out to a bar called the Brickskeller, which is in the Guinness Book of World Records for having the largest selection of beer (1032 types). On Saturday, I went to Mark Kolba's wedding. It was great to see Mark, as well as several friends from high school who I hadn't seen in quite a while. It was HOT on Saturday, 98 degrees and humid. When I stood outside I was dripping withing a few seconds. The temperate northwest has made me a wimp when it comes to temperature extremes. Luckily for everyone, air conditioning was readily available. After the wedding, we went downtown to a bar a hung out until we were all exhausted. Sunday was a fairly short day for entertainment. I grabbed lunch with a couple friends before heading to the airport. My flight home sucked. I got to Dulles at around 3pm ET. All was going well until I got to JFK in NY for a layover. First, my plane had no pilot, which started to delay things. Then when we finally boarded the plane, there were thunderstorms and we didn't move. We sat on the parked in the plane for 2 and a half freaking hours without moving. Eventually we were cleared to leave, but we had to do so within a few minutes or else we would have been out of compliance of the crew requirements (how much rest they need, etc.) We managed to take off 6 minutes before our hard stop, so at least I didn't get stuck entirely. At least when I got to the Seattle airport, I managed to find somebody to split a cab with (I had called off my ride home, since it was going to be so late) and saved myself a little money. By the time I got home, it was 16 hours since I had first arrived at Dulles. And yes, for those counting, I once again knew somebody on my flight. This always happens to me. This time it was Narisa, a fellow Cornell alum and Seattle resident. I hadn't seen her in at least a year, so it was fitting with the reunion theme of the weekend. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, June 4th, 2008
10:36 pm	8 generations beyond chimpanzee I'm not that upset that the Red Wings won the Stanley Cup, but there are 2 reasons that I'm not that excited for it either. 1) My 2nd cousin plays for the Penguins, it would have been nice to have some sort of distant connection to the cup. 2) The parent company of the Red Wings has trademarked the phase "Hockeytown." What a dick move. They're not even in Canada. Also, there are 3 major cities in the US where hockey is more popular that it is in Detroit: Buffalo, Boston, Minneapolis. (Even as a Boston guy, I would give this title to Buffalo.) (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, June 2nd, 2008
11:44 pm	what are those crystals anyway Gas prices are a hot topic in the media right now. And why not? Gas pretty much costs 4x as much as it did 10 years ago. And we use a lot of it, so we feel the squeeze when the prices are up. Well, I decided to do a little brainstorming to see how we all might be able to save a bit of money on gas. Here are some thoughts (ok, it's just random crap I thought about dis-jointly and glued together into a blog post). What if we forced all of the oil companies to profit less? Hell, make them non-profit organizations! As it turns out, while they're making a bank, it's not really at our expense. At least not when it comes to non state-owned oil companies. If we look at the 6 large oil companies in the world (ExxonMobile, Shell, BP, Chevron, Conoco Phillips, Total S.A) we get the following totals. Revenue: $1,581.8B Net Income: 135.5B Margin: 8.56% So even if 100% of the money you paid at the pump went to these companies (it doesn't), the best you could do is an 8.56% discount on your gas if all of these companies started refunding all of their profit. So instead if paying $4.00/gallon, you'd pay $3.66/gallon. Using less gas seems much more simple. I get a free bus pass through work, so I'm going to try to take the bus a couple of times this week. That will certainly save me money since it's free, but what if I had to pay the fare? During commuting hours I would have to pay the metro one-zone peak fare, which is $1.75 each way or $3.50 round trip. Doesn't seem like it's quite good enough. I'm traveling only about 5 miles each way, so I'd use far less that a gallon of gas each day. So, good for me, good for the environment, but not good for others trying to save money. I've also heard that driving habits can make a difference in how much gas you use. So this Sunday, I decided to conduct an experiment as I drove myself to and from my hockey game. I have a feature in my car where it will tell me my average fuel economy for a trip (or until I reset it). I decided to to drive very conservatively on the way there, and like a jackass (or how I normally drive) on the way back. Here's what I did when driving conservatively: -avoided braking at all costs -accelerated very slowly -stayed within 5mph of the speed limit -closed all of the windows -turned off the climate control -MPG display was on for the entire trip And I did pretty damn well: One the way back I drove with normal characteristics, for me: -Used the brake a decent amount when needed (e.g. accelerating towards stoplights, then braking) -accelerated fairly hard (often breaking 5000rpm) -drove just slow enough to avoid speeding tickets -still had all of the windows closed -climate control was on -headlights were on because it was dark (adds a little extra bias, but this was not that scientific anyway) I didn't do nearly as well: 32.3 mpg vs. 24.8 mpg. So if I just change the way I drive, it's like gas prices dropping from $4.00/gallon to $3.07/gallon. Now if I combine that with carpooling and taking the bus, I could really save some money. (Comment on this)
Monday, May 19th, 2008
11:58 pm	better with banana Tonight was my first hockey game of the summer season. Well, we lost 2-1. A year ago, I wouldn't have thought much of it, but now we're defending champions. We have some new guys and it will take a little while for us to get used to playing together. One particular bright spot is that our new goalie seems to be pretty good. Our old one was good too, but he's been banned from the league for getting too many penalties. The crappiest part of tonight's game was that I broke a skate blade during the game. That sucked. I had to sit on the bench for most of the third period. Also, I have to make sure I take some time this week to hit up the hockey shop. Hopefully they will have the blades I need in stock. (Comment on this)
Thursday, May 1st, 2008
10:36 pm	My Everything Did I tell you my ladder story yet? Well, I was on 520 in Redmond and there was a small white truck 2 cars ahead of me. It had 3 ladders on it's roof. After a couple seconds, it had 1 ladder on it's roof and I had to swerve to dodge the other 2. Ta da. Do you ever think that people lie about their commute times? Maybe they feel stupid about their choice of residence and don't want us to realize they made a bad decision. Or perhaps they are not lying and are instead just wrong. Personally, I'm very meticulous about keeping track of how long it takes me to get places. For example, today it took me 19 minutes to get from the 148th Ave. Exit to I-405 S on 520 W. For those of you not in the Seattle area, this is a distance of a little over 2 miles. I have enough data in my head to know that people are often wrong when they tell me how long it usually takes them to get to or from work. Perhaps people just are using the good times instead of reporting the average. When I eventually move (I seriously need more space for my junk), I want a place with a shorter commute time than I already have. There's just that small problem of affordability of places that close to work. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, April 24th, 2008
11:51 pm	thrift and guilt This week is sandwiched between 2 puzzle events for me. This past weekend I helped staff a trial-run of the intern game. And this next weekend is SNAP 3, which I'm hoping will be fun. I liked SNAP 2, but I might be a bit biased since my team won. I didn't realize that Sunset Bowl shut down a couple weeks ago. http://www.sunsetbowl.com/ I had only been there twice. One of the times was during an all night puzzle event back in 2005. I thought it was hilarious that there was a 24 hour bowling alley. I guess the demand for late night sillyness is just not as high as it used to be. Speaking of bowling, my bowling team is doing pretty well. I'm not entirely sure how the playoffs work, but I think that we're in the semifinals tomorrow. It's too bad I hurt my shoulder tonight... (Comment on this)
Sunday, April 13th, 2008
12:29 pm	Throwing things at other things I have lots of quick comments about sports. First off, congrats to Kansas. I'm happy for my Jayhawk-affiliated friends who might be reading this entry. It was an exciting game to watch, except for the fact that there is a 'bug' in the sports bar I was at. They had one small (say 13") CRT above the bar that was on a standard definition signal, while the rest of the place was filled with 50+" high-def sets. The problem was that the SDTV signal was about 5 seconds ahead of the others. So you could hear the 2 guys watching that TV cheer slightly before something good happened. That was pretty annoying down the stretch. Also, congrats to the Monarchs, my hockey team. We won our division championship this past Monday. The game was too close for comfort, and we allowed the other team to score on a 6-on-5 with 4.5 seconds left. Ouch. We were in control during overtime, but couldn't puch a shot through. So it went to a shootout where we won 2-0. If we had lost, we would have had one more game anyway since it was double elimination and we hadn't lost yet. It turns out I get to go to the all-star game, so I will get a bonus game anyway. The Bruins have not been so lucky in hockey. Why did they have to get Montreal in the first round? For those of you who do not know, Boston went 0-8 against Montreal in the regular season. If you erase those 8 games from the record, the Bruins are actually better against the rest of the league than the Habs. Ugh. They're down 2-0, but I'm hoping they can turn it around tonight. Of course, I will not be able to watch the Bruins game on TV tonight. I'm going to the Sonics game. This is their last home game of the season and perhaps their last home game ever. I'm a Celtics fan, but I'm still sad to see them leave. Their move would demote Seattle to a 2-team city, like Buffalo or Cincinnati. I'm not cool with that. Maybe eventually Seattle will get a bigger Arena and can then attract a basketball and hockey team. But that looks to be at least 5-years out. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, April 3rd, 2008
10:20 pm	Cause I just can't seem to drink you off my mind I enjoy the finer beers in life. Not that I consider myself a snob. There is a time and a place for Bud Light, but this weekend I'd like to continue with some of the nicer stuff. The decision now is how best to enjoy tomorrow night. I have a few ideas, some of which are possible. Uber? I want to check it out, as well as a few other pubs in the Green Lake area. But I'm not sure how I'd get home, or get there for that matter. I'm already in love with this baseball season. It's such a convenient distraction. I've already been watching Sox games over my Slingbox. Best. Investment. Ever. Hockey? I just really hope the Bruins win tomorrow. That should get them in the playoffs. My team is already in the championship game. We just need to win one before we lose two. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, March 31st, 2008
2:56 pm	better than twinkies Somebody take a snapshot of the MLB standings. The Devil Rays are in first place. (Comment on this)