Winter Golf, Computer Style

With the 2009 golf season still several months away, and my most recent round having been played almost two months ago now, I'm getting a little stir crazy.

Fortunately, I have the best golf computer game of all time to keep me buzy, and I'm not talking about Tiger Woods.

My Links 2001 still is much more enjoyable to me than any of the Tiger Woods offerings. I love the realism, with a couple minor exceptions, such as the too-long hang times on full shots.

I also enjoy it because, as a golf game should be, the better you get, the harder the game actually is. That is, the "beginner" settings make it intentionally easy to play. Once you learn, you can raise your own bar to the more difficult Pro and Champion levels.

The Tiger Woods series has it backwards, where your player gets better as your own skills improve, and the game then becomes easier to play, far too easy for a golf purist who is looking for an accurate simulation of the real game.

That said, I have heard the recent version(s) of Tiger Woods has/have the option to play a more difficult, "pure" version of the game. I'm not too fond of easy-to-get, straight, 350-yard drives in a video game. I prefer the 275 yard drives of Links golf (longer with the wind and downhill of course).

I'll have to get the Tiger Woods 2009 for the Wii. I'm encouraged by what I've heard, but I will always be bummed that Links is no longer made or being updated.

Making Up Lost Sleep

I saw something on the news the other night that made me feel quite good: You can actually "make up" lost sleep time.

I'll try to find a link. Basically, this dispells the old wives' tale that you can't make up for it.

I used to argue with my ex-wife about this. If I had a week of little sleep (5-6 hours/night for example), I'd try to sleep in on weekends to make it up. Empirical evidence always told me that it worked...I would feel much better having slept in rather than just getting eight hours on those weekends.

She insisted that you couldn't make up the lost sleep. We didn't have Snopes back then, so urban myths and other common held beliefs were left at that. I'm right again.

I was always "right" in our arguments, which is probably why we are divorced. I'm not right as often with my wife now.

Either I've changed, or I married a smarter woman this time.

(False dilemma: it's actually a bit of both.)

Waste Management Part II

My last post about garbage was about why I was "dumping" Waste Management. This time, it's about how I managed to dump my waste.

I imagine I am not alone in this. If you set your garbage on the curb once a week, and if you live long enough, it will probably happen to you at least once: I backed into and knocked over my garbage yesterday morning.

It was actually the recyclables bin. I don't think any neighbors saw it happen, but at least one drove by while I was cleaning it up.

I'm sure they laughed, which is good. If I can make one person's day every day, I've lived a pretty good life.

This makes me tied with my wife now, as we've both backed into the garbage once.

Paperboy Memories

I was looking at a Wikipedia entry of my old high school, which noted some of its most famous alum. (Richard Dean Anderson and Loni Anderson for example.) I'm not there, yet...

Missing from the list was a classmate of mine, and, coincidentally, fellow Alexandria, MN native, Peter Krause. Peter was a terrific guy to have known in junior high and high school, and even work with for a while after high school at the old Har Mar Cinemas 11.

The Wiki entry was for Roseville Area High School. In fact, I and the three others above went to the former Alexander Ramsey High School, back when Roseville had two high schools, the other being Frank B. Kellogg.

Anyway, also missing was probably the most infamous graduate, Ming Sen Shiue, who kidnapped a former teacher of his, as well as her daughter. He also allegedly murdered a young boy, apparently because he had witnessed the kidnapping. A recollection from Shiue's attorney can be found here.

The two would escape from his Roseville home, which was on my paper route. On the afternoon of their escape, there were news reporters and cop cars around the house. This was back when St. Paul had both a morning and afternoon paper. He wasn't a subscriber.

I recall on a previous day, while hanging out at a nearby friend's house, Shiue and friends were running motorcycles (or maybe just one) very loudly. Other than that, at least in the days leading to the escape, the house seemed almost vacant. We would of course learn why.

Shortly after the incident, his mom moved into the house, and became a subscriber. She was a very sweet lady whom I felt very badly for.

Don McLean wrote the hit song "American Pie" about delivering papers with bad news about the Buddy Holly et al plane crash - "the day the music died." That afternoon jn Roseville was my Don McLean moment.

Perhaps someday I'll write a song about it. Or at least a boring blog entry. Wait...

Are you ready for some...Women's Pro Bowling?

Sticking to my promise of finding better things to do than watch the Vikings, on this rare beautiful day in Minnesota in November, I am...watching women's bowling.

It's the fledgling resurrection of women's pro bowling, and I am rooting for it to succeed. There are two bowlers, neither of whom I know anything about, facing off for the title. One is pretty; the other not so much.

Being the predictable pig of a guy that I am, I am cheering for the pretty one.

In my defense, a sex symbol in women's bowling might help it succeed. But I don't think she's quite that pretty.

My real reason for cheering for her is that her style is more of a "stroker," while her opponent is a "cranker," and I appreciate that style more.

I'm not making that up, sicko. Get your mind out of the gutter and Google it.