Yet another flavor of human weakness...

Let's not worry too much about how I ended up watching WHEEL OF FORTUNE in a Japanese bar with a couple co-workers on a Friday evening. That's not the point. Instead, let us consider this scenario:

Woman #1 spins the wheel and lands on the improbable $1 million wedge. Then she solves the puzzle. But she still has to win the whole game before she can claim the million dollar prize. How would you signal to your competitors that you'll split the million if they let you win?

As a casual and infrequent viewer of this show, I don't have total confidence in this guess, but I think on a good night a contestant might walk away with $20-30,000. It probably shouldn't cost much more than that to buy off your competitors. A million dollars is a big pie to split three ways. A generous person might pay out as much as $100,000 to her competitors. And only a ridiculous greedhead would demand more.

But no, our hapless hero botched her plays later in the game and ended up losing to Woman #2 in a close contest. Woman #2, oblivious to her devastated neighbor, celebrated her $20,000 prize by clapping and jumping. It was a sad spectacle that left me in an abstract state of despair. I haven't quite worked it out yet, but I'm convinced this episode illustrates some deep flaw of human behavior. And Woman #2 deserves to be ostracized from humanity.

And we're all doomed.

Shouldn't it be obvious that the million dollar prize is a game-changer? With a little collusion, the contestants can guarantee themselves a big prize. Otherwise they're competing for the chance at a much smaller one. This should have been worked out in the green room before they even started.

It's kind of like chopping the pot in poker, but not exactly.

National Novel Writing Month

We've both had bad colds, but we're doing okay with NaNoWriMo. Here's my word count widget:

World's Largest Pinata

We saw the World's Largest Pinata while we were walking to the stadium the other day, and we didn't even know it! There was so much other stuff going on that we barely registered this huge thing -- we figured it was a remnant of Cirque de Soleil or something. Apparently it's full of candy, and hasn't broken yet because of "technical difficulties".

Phillies Parade

Where to start...

I took a couple hundred pictures at the Phillies parade, but I won't subject you to all of them.


First, I went down Pine Street to Broad and saw a band playing on the roof of a bus:



I watched the parade go by from the corner of Pine and Broad. It was hard to see because this guy put his tall girlfriend up on his shoulders right in front of me.

This is an idea of what it looked like before they blocked me:



The parade was going from 20th and Market down Broad to the stadiums, where there would be a big rally in Citizens Bank Park. Free tickets for this went really fast online, but a woman standing near me gave her six tickets to some other people near me. I asked if they had any extra, and they gave me all six tickets because they weren't going to go. My cell phone wasn't working, but finally I got in touch with Luke, who had sort of seen the parade when it went by City Hall. We decided we'd try to get over to the stadiums. But of course there were no cabs, and the subway was only running Northbound.

I had always wanted to walk over to the stadium (it's about three miles) but the neighborhoods between here and there are usually not too safe. But we walked with a whole bunch of people up Broad Street behind the parade:



And then we caught up with it:





We went through some back streets and ended up in a huge park where we had a great view of the parade.





Cole Hamels is in the front of this float (wearing black):



Shane Victorino is in the front of this one:



We were back on the move, and we caught up with the parade again at the park:



Here's the Flyin' Hawaiian again, and you can see Brad Lidge (the closer) in the back:



Here you can see Charlie Manuel (the manager) next to Cole Hamels, and the trophy is in the back:





We got into the stadium and bought Cokes and nachos. We had given our extra tickets to two women with two little kids, and it was great to see that they were in there, too. The one kid seemed really happy. From then on, it was a lot of big screen shots of players, the Phanatic, and Harry Kalas (who is a legendary sports announcer).

Each player came into the stadium in a convertible. Pat Burrell brought his dog along. The players' families sat near them in the infield, and some of the kids played in the dirt.

Matt Stairs lives in Bangor in the off season:



"Zombie" Romero used to play for the Red Sox:



Jamie Moyer grew up in the area. He skipped school to go to the parade in 1980 (the last time the Phillies won):



Then we had fireworks and confetti at the same time, which was totally awesome but unphotographable:



Harry's call when they won:

Phillies

I stayed up for the whole game last night (it was rain-delayed an hour and a half, so it didn't even start until 10). Even if we're not at the ballpark, it's really cool to have the World Series so close to us. I ran up to the roof in the bottom of the 9th and caught the whole fireworks show from the stadium. As soon as they won I could hear people yelling and honking their horns.

It's a pretty pessimistic city, especially about sports, but people are cautiously excited now. On my walk home from work I see a Phillies sign in a window, colored and signed by a kid, maybe in school or daycare. The city workers are all wearing Phillies hats. "Fightin' Phils" towels hang in upstairs windows.

The other day I heard a kid telling his mom, "You be Ryan Howard and I'll be Jimmy Rollins, and I'll pitch to you..."
The mom said, "But Jimmy Rollins isn't a pitcher."
"Oh, who's the pitcher?" the kid said.
"Cole Hamels."
"Okay, I'll be Cole Hamels, and you be Ryan Howard..."

The Homebrew Experience (Take 1, continued...)

Got up at 6:30 this morning for baseball and discovered my fermentation vessel was foaming over. Luckily I caught it in time to prevent a big mess. I rigged up a hose to allow the overflow to spill into a bucket, and I think I was able to clean out the airlock lock (basically an "S" shaped plastic vessel that allows gas to escape the tank while keeping contaminants out) well enough to salvage it.

We won both games today (2/5, 2 RBI, BB) which puts us at 2-4 on the season so far. Beautiful day, 70° and sunny. Public transportation to some of these fields is a nightmare (I hate you SEPTA!), but today it turned out to be worth the hassle.

So now I'm home again and have resolved the first homebrew crisis. The sanitized airlock is back in place and bubbling away quite rhythmically. I think I'll take a nap before the Sox play tonight.

The Homebrew Experience (Take 1)

Just finished cleaning up after brewing my first batch of beer. The recipe kit came from Home Sweet Homebrew: "Dark Star Brown Ale." The specific gravity is supposed to be somewhere around 1.040-1.045, but my brew came out to 1.026. I think I added too much water filling up the fermenting vessel. Oh well, we'll see in a few weeks when it's done.

Dodgers just swept the Cubs in the NLDS. Hopefully the Phillies can finish up in Milwaukee tomorrow. I like a Dodgers/Phillies matchup...that'll be fun.

ALDS Game 2: D Matsuzaka vs. E Santana

I forgot Daisuke is pitching tonight so we don't have any sushi for the game.

Dunkin' Donuts "Uphill Battle" spot makes its Treeboat television premiere.

I'm hoping the early lead prompts Daisuke to work in the strike zone a little more than he usually does. Except with Vladdy at bat. Just roll the ball to the plate on the ground and let him swing at that.

Whoops. Torii Hunter just wrecked his knee in protest of a close play at first. That's embarrassing.

back on track?

Hello all,

Sorry I haven't updated in so long. Also sorry to make you switch to this new site, but I like this blog service a lot better. Last time I tried to update on WordPress (a few months ago) I couldn't get it to post pictures. So, this will be the blog's new home, and maybe I'll be able to update it more often.

To catch up, let's do an update in pictures, roughly one for every month I've been absent. I last posted in January at the other address. Apparently I took no interesting pictures in February, but here's one from March:


We saw the Sixers play the Celtics. The Celtics won.

In April the city was really beautiful with all the trees flowering (again I took hardly any pictures this year). This was in Washington Square:




In May we went to the baseball exhibit at the National Constitution Center and saw a bunch of traveling stuff from Cooperstown (including Mike Lowell's hat from last year's World Series):


Also Travis and Kayla came to visit us:


June was really eventful. My mom came to visit, but I apparently took no pictures when she was here.

We went to Bonnaroo again:


We saw the Red Sox play the Phillies:


I saw Day One of the women's gymnastics Olympic Trials:


And we went to my grad school friend's wedding in North Carolina. It was a beautiful drive, and I picked up a new state (West Virginia) that I'd never been to before. This is in Tennessee:


In July I went to the writers' conference in Washington, and it was as beautiful as usual, maybe even more so:


Then Shannon came to visit for a few days. And now we're looking forward to coming home at the end of August. Luke is still playing baseball, but I'll let him talk about that if he wants to.