January 11th, 2010
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It’s taken me 14 weeks of league, but I FINALLY broke the 600 mark! I finished the night with a 634, which seems to about where I tend to finish if I bowl 600’s. Weird.
So I started the night with my Twisted Fury, shooting 10 and 5 and standing on 20, making my lay down about 15. In plain english, I was standing on the big dot in the middle on the approach which is board 20, aiming at the second arrow on the lane, which is board 10 from the right gutter, wanting the ball to get out to about the first arrow, which is board 5, at the end of the pattern and laying the ball down on the floor at about board 15, which is the third arrow on the floor.
January 4th, 2010
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I’ve been trying for MONTHS to get the very excellent XDebug PHP extension, written and maintained the PHP Jedi Master, Derick Rethans. XDebug offers some serious debugging capabilities to PHP that are second to none. It also offers some excellent profiling tools, which I should really make better use of in development. It’s easy to see why I was so desperate to get it working.
December 25th, 2009
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Okay, almost. The tournament was actually on December 23, but what was I gonna say? Christmas Eve Eve No Tap Tournament? I didn’t think so…
Anyway, we held a no tap tournament at Fugate’s Bowl-a-rama. We didn’t get quite the same turn out as the Thanksgiving day Tournament, but it was a still a good turn out. I think we ended up with about 22 people. That’s more than enough to run a tournament. You can view my Thanksgiving day tournament post for more information about no tap.
December 11th, 2009
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These past 3 months of league have been trying to say the least. I’ve been struggling to put games together, I’ve been struggling to find consistency with my release and I’ve been struggling to consistently shoot spares. Now, I know a good portion of the difficulties have come from the number of changes I made to my game in such a short amount of time. To name a few, in no particular order:
- I’ve increased the height of my backswing, bringing the ball past 120° sometimes (assuming 0° is arm at your side). Most of the PBA Power Players, bring their arm to at least 110°. Some go almost 180°.
- I’ve increased the number of revolutions I put on the ball. This is both a positive and a negative, at least at Fugate’s. The upside is, I can play deeper (further to the left) and be confident that my ball will make the turn back to the pocket. The downside is, if I get in to the friction zone too early, the ball takes off to the left, often with bad results.
- I’ve changed the timing of my footwork. A result of the higher backswing, this is definitely a bad thing. I have discovered recently that my timing is a little late. This means my feet get to the line before the ball does. The outcome of this is often twofold: Loss of leverage (less revolutions) and loss of accuracy, with a tendency to pull the ball to the left.
- I’ve open my shoulders and my hips through the approach. This is a product of the higher backswing and is actually partially responsible for the higher backswing. This just makes it easier to play deeper on the lanes and feed the ball to the right.
December 7th, 2009
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Seeing as I’m originally from a slightly more temperate region of the globe, waking up to find a fresh blanket of snow on the lawn is still both very strange and very exciting. I love that you go to bed seeing what would ordinarily be out your window and wake in the morning to a beautiful scene that is breathtaking and really quite amazing. My only complaint would be that its just too cold!
November 30th, 2009
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This last weekend has been a busy one for us. We found out on Saturday afternoon that the tenants of the house we were wanting to move in to, which incidently belongs to my mother-in-law, would be completely moved out by the end of that day, meaning we could start moving stuff in on Sunday.
November 30th, 2009
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Last night, we bowled in our regular Sunday League trio. Earlier that night, I had stripped and oiled the lanes, and bowled a couple of practice games. The practice games went well. I threw something like 6 in a row in my first one, so I knew I had a good line and good ball to match up on the lanes. It turns out, I’ve had that ball since I first started bowling, I just didn’t know it was the right ball. With all the extra revs and power I’ve picked up over the last year, what was once a ball that skidded to far is now the best ball in my arsenal. At least at Fugate’s. Go figure.
On to league play…
November 27th, 2009
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This Thanksgiving, we held a No-Tap tournament at Fugate’s Bowl-a-rama. This comes less than a week after the passing of Fred Fugate, the owner and proprietor of the Bowling center. It was hard to really get motivated to work on the lanes, knowing that Fred wouldn’t be there and that he had buried just 4 days before.
November 27th, 2009
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For quite sometime now, I’ve been developing all the projects I’ve been working on directly on my machine. This is handy for a number of reasons, the most important of those reasons being that I don’t have to be online while I’m working and I don’t have to upload to any servers.
October 10th, 2009
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On Tuesday, October 6, 2009, we traveled to Lexington, KY for a couple of job interviews, including one for Bankers Life and Casualty Company.
Just a week before, 24 hours after posting my resume to CareerBuilder.com, I was contacted by someone from Bankers saying they had reviewed my resume, were very impressed and invited me to an interview the following Tuesday. Now, I might not have done the job application process in its entirety before, but my assumption was that if I had posted my Resume under the title of “Experienced Senior Web Developer”, then the only people “reviewing” my resume would be those looking for an “Experienced Senior Web Developer.” A pretty safe assumption, wouldn’t you say?
