Us With Jake

 

I was going through some old files, and I found this picture taken last fall of us with Redskins great Joe Jacoby. Boy, that's one sweaty guy. 

New York, New York

Greetings from Manhattan. It's my first trip back since a 7th grade field trip in 1983, and it's Christina's first visit. (Boy, they don't make field trips like they used to, do they?) Yesterday, we dropped the animals off at the kennel, and then drove up to the Philly area to have lunch with our friends Cheryl and Jon, and their son Noah. Then we drove up to Piscataway, where we spent last night.

This morning we got up and headed to Liberty State Park in New Jersey, where we caught the ferry to Ellis Island and Liberty Island. Ellis Island was OK, but since neither of us felt a real personal connection, we cut short the audio tour when it started to get repetitive and headed to Liberty Island. The one good thing I can say about the weather is that the rain kept things from being too crowded. That's the Statue of Liberty there -- really it is.
There's Christina with the original torch.

After touring the statue -- another World Heritage Site off (or on) our list -- we parked the car at a PATH station, took the train into Manhattan, and caught a cab to our hotel. Our hotel is really nice -- it was completely renovated last year. We've got a flat-screen TV, a mini-fridge...all the mod cons. After a little relaxation, we headed out for some sight-seeing and dinner. There's Christina in Times Square...

...and there she is after our dinner at the Carnegie Deli. She was quite full after half a sandwich...I made a pig of myself and finished mine off. I won't need to eat for days.

On our walk back to the hotel, we saw various NYC icons like the Ed Sullivan Theater, where David Letterman tapes his show.

Renovations

We (and by we I mean mostly Christina) have done a lot of work on the house this year. Now we're at the point where we can relax and enjoy it. See below pictures of our living room and dining room.


I'm reclining in that chair right now!

Hey from the UK

I've flown into London a bunch of times (I have 5 Heathrow stamps in my not-yet 3-year-old passport), but every other time it's been on a transatlantic flight. My flight from Cologne yesterday was on a small plane (regional jet) which came into Heathrow nice and low (it also came in from the East). So we were treated to a nice view of London, which I realized as soon as I heard the camera (or phone or Palm or whatever) of the guy behind me taking pictures. I took a couple myself -- this is what I think is a nice view of the Thames from the north. Can you spot any landmarks?



I can! There, that's the London Eye.

Pictures from a Go Game

Here are some pictures from the Cherry Blossom Tournament taken by my third opponent. (I'm playing black here.)


My opening wasn't too bad...because of my bad experiences having groups killed in the first two games, I took a conservative approach, opting for enclosures rather than approaching my opponent's corners. In general, this is not a bad approach, but in retrospect this was a mistake for me. It's not the way I usually play, so I ended up in an unfamiliar configuration.

I think the second picture shows where things started to go wrong. I haven't really staked out any additional territory. I have broken up White's territory on the left, and I'm starting to make some territory on the top, but in the mean time, White has made some solid territory on the left.

The third picture shows that I have made some territory along the bottom, but not as much as White did on the right.

In the fourth picture, I've conceded too much of the right to White. He's built up a solid territory there that's going to prove the difference in the game.

The fifth picture shows an abortive invasion I made on the right, but it was really too late at this point.

In the end, White had about 80 points on the right, which is about as much as I had in all of my territory combined. We didn't even bother to count the final score. Looking back, I am not as displeased as I was at the time. I did a few nice things in the game. I like the way I broke up the territory on the left, and I did a decent job of building territory -- just not enough.

Final Tally

Well, the NCAA tourney is over, and it's time for one final evaluation of my picks. I ended up with 87 points out of a possible 168, good for #34,429 in the Yahoo! tournament picks. That's the 97% percentile...surprising me by improving from last weekend. I guess picking UCLA to lose the championship game was worth a lot. Too bad I didn't join a real pool this year...

A Splash of Cologne

Greetings from Cologne (or Köln, if you prefer). My flight got in late yesterday, so I didn't have as much time for sightseeing as I had hoped. My main goal was to see the Cologne Cathedral, a World Heritage Site. The parts that you have to pay to see were open until 6 pm yesterday, so I headed over there with about 2 hours to spare. Once I got there, I realized that these parts (the tower and treasury) weren't the impressive parts, and I had no great interest in them. The interior of the cathedral itself was quite impressive, but I couldn't wander around because there were services going on. I'll probably try to stop by today or tomorrow. The cathedral was built to house the bones of the Three Magi. It was started in 1248, but not completed until 1880. Unlike other cathedrals that took a long time to build, they managed to stick to the original Gothic plan.



I sat outside the Cathedral and enjoyed some falafel before going in.





From the conference reception, the cathedral is the dominant sight in the city. Unfortunately, someone decided to build an ugly building in front of it. The Cathedral is the one major pre-war structure. Allegedly, Allied bombers spared it so they could use it as a landmark to find the city. I've heard that story about other sights in other cities that were spared bombing, so I'm a little built skeptical.

How Do I Rate?

Greetings from Germany! It's my first time here (besides the Frankfurt airport) since '72. I had hoped to post some pictures, but while I brought my camera to the Internet cafe, I appear to have left the cord back in the hotel room. Sigh. Hopefully I'll remember to download the pictures to the laptop tonight so I can upload them tomorrow.

Recently, I told you of my (mis)adventures in the Cherry Blossom Go Tournament, which I entered as a 15 kyu. I said, "My understanding of the ratings is that I will be bumped down from 15 kyu to something worse...17?" Well, the new ratings are out and guess what -- I'm a 17 kyu (closer to 18 than 16). To a certain extent these ratings are nonsensical -- since I lost all my games (and since the score of the game doesn't get reported), for all the rating system knows, I'm really a 35 kyu who resigned all my games. But it takes the (reasonable) assumption that people are probably somewhere near their first guess. So "17 kyu" is the answer to the question of, "What's the most likely rating of someone who enters as a 15 kyu and loses all of his games?" So I have a starting point for next month's tournament, which I hope to enter.

Final Four

Well, well, well. My picks are doing better than I expected. Going into the Final Four, I'm in the 92nd percentile on the Yahoo! picks. My high water mark was actually after Saturday's games, when I was in the 95th percentile. Going into Sunday's games, I had teams alive in both games -- the favorites, in fact. Oh, well. I'm probably only going to fall further unless GMU beats UCLA in the title game. But I feel pretty good, overall. I'll have to check from Germany to see what happens, though...my flight takes off about 20 minutes before tip-off. Maybe the captain will put the game on Channel 9.

Watching the Wheels

My father has a letter to the editor in today's Arizona Daily Star.

Cherry Bomb

All the time I've lived in this area, I had never been to the Cherry Blossom Festival...until Saturday. I still haven't gone to see the cherry blossoms, however. As mentioned previously, I signed up for a go tournament -- the Cherry Blossom Tournament.

After discussions with players at the local club, I entered as a 15 kyu. This seemed a little bit ambitious, as I am only a 21 kyu online. Nevertheless, it seemed better to enter at a better ranking than I deserved, and lose all my games than enter at too weak of a rating and consequently take home a prize.

Well, good thing I felt that way, because I ended the day 0-4. 15 kyu was too ambitious, but not incredibly so. In fact, it looked like I won the last game by 2 points until I reminded my opponent that she got 7.5 points komi (compensation), so she won by 5.5. If I had entered as a 16 kyu, she would have only gotten 0.5 komi, so I would have won by 1.5. So 16 kyu would have had me as 1-3, and 17 kyu would have given me multi-stone handicaps against the same players (or no handicap against weaker players)...

My understanding of the ratings is that I will be bumped down from 15 kyu to something worse...17? I don't know. So I may enter a tournament in May at that level and try to bring my rating back up again. I figure eventually I'll find my level, then each game should be at least an even proposition...better than that if I'm improving. So I guess I'll just wait a week or two for the results to post and see where my ranking ends up.

How'm I doin'?

Well, I posted my tourney picks the other day. After the first weekend, let's evaluate. How am I doing? Surprisingly well, I think.

The easiest gauge of how I'm doing is versus other people picking games at Yahoo! In their Pick 'Em stats, I am in the 76th percentile. That's the top quartile!

I suffered a major setback when Iowa, one of my Final Four picks, went out in the first round, but other than that did decently. I'm doing the best in the Minneapolis bracket, where I picked 10 out of 12 games correctly, including Georgetown's upset of Ohio State. I think I only picked 2 other upsets correctly.

But what matters is that I'm in decent shape going forward. I have a maximum possible points of 155/192. Looking at the top 3 on Yahoo! right now, they have 157, 153 and 181. (None of them had George Mason, either.) So I could be right up there at the end. Probably not, but we'll see.

By the way, one of the top Yahoo! pick sets is entitled, "Jay Hawks? More Like Dumb Hawks". Earlier in the weekend, this was, "Jay Hawks? More Like Gay Hawks", which I believe was against Yahoo!'s terms and conditions. I wonder if Yahoo! changed it themselves, made the user change it, or whether the user just wised up.

Greetings from South Carolina

I'm currently in the Hampton Inn Greenville/Travelers Rest which features this sign:

I'm down here for my annual visit to the SERMON conference. This year it's being held at Furman University. Today after the talks, I walked around the Furman Lake, which is really quite lovely.

Bracketology.

Read 'em and weep.

Go: February in Review

Wow...I haven't been posting much lately. In fact, my "January in Review" post was only two posts ago.

Anyway, despite a brief drop into 25 kyu territory, I ended the month basically up 2 kyu, at 22 kyu. This is pretty much my all-time high, so yay for me.

Highlights of the month were a victory over an American 19-kyu (with me getting 5 stones), a victory over Ben -- then 25 kyu, giving 2 stones, and a victory over a British 24-kyu player in an even game. The last victory was when my opponent ran out of time, but I felt I was getting the better of the game.

Lowlights were losses to a pair of Germans (on the same day)...one a 16 kyu who beat me despite giving me 7 stones, and one a 25 kyu who beat me with my giving a 2-stone handicap.

I dropped to 0-5 in the Dragon Tourney 2006 with a loss in an even game to a Dutch 19-kyu player. (I was actually 0-4 at the end of January, not 0-3 as I reported.) That leaves 3 games to go. Two of my opponents haven't moved in over a month, which is annoying. The other game should finish up pretty soon.

For the month, I was 9-5 in 19x19 games. I was 8-8 in 13x13 games and 0-1 in my lone 9x9 game.

In the real world, I've signed up for a tournament in a couple of weeks -- but it looks like I should save that for a later post.

Call Me Diamond Jon?

In my continuing quest to achieve "elite" status with Hilton, I finally made it to diamond level. This has a few advantages over my previous gold level. I get a 50% bonus on points (as opposed to 25%), better treatment at European Hiltons (so I hear), and perhaps most importantly, no blackout dates on award stays.

Hilton recently implemented a "rolling" qualification method for their elite levels. It boils down to a requirement of posting 60 or more nights in 13 months. A key here is the word "posting." If you stay on the last day of a month, your stay won't post until the following month. But because Hilton gives you 13 months instead of 12, you can't really complain to them.

I ended up posting 60 nights between February 2005 and this month. I added it up, and that comes from 19 nights in the UK, 14 nights in San Diego, 10 nights in Minnesota, 6 nights in Paris, 6 nights in San Juan, 2 nights in South Carolina, and one night each in Louisiana, New York, and Maryland.

Maryland? Yes, Maryland. I knew I needed one last night to qualify for Diamond, so last weekend, Ben, Martin and I braved the snowstorm for an evening of gaming at the Embassy Suites BWI. A week later, the stay posted, and voila, I was diamond.

I don't expect to see much difference in upcoming stays -- the 50% point bonus will be nice, but right now I've got Hilton points coming out of my ears. The lack of blackout dates will be very handy when Christina and I plan our next vacation -- I will just need to secure free plane tickets, and then away we go. And I'm looking forward to seeing if the new status scores me some upgrades when I go to Europe in April.

Go: January in Review

To pace myself on my Go updates, and because the rating graphs naturally break into month, I'm switching to monthly updates of my Go ranking. I started January in the low 22 kyu range, briefly dropped to 25 kyu, before bouncing back to low 23 kyu. Actually, that bounceback happened on Feb. 1, so I'm not sure how this graph is drawn. Not counting that last win, I was 8-12 in rated games in January, which accounted for the rating drop. My best two wins were a very close win on an even game versus a French 21-kyu player, and a 9-handicap game versus an American 13-kyu player. The 13-kyu player actually resigned the game after making a mistake, but suggested I was playing much better than my rank. Of course, that would not explain my worst loss, an even game versus a Belgian 25-kyu.

I'm 0-3 in the Dragon Tourney, which is unfortunate. I hope not to get completely shut out, which I think would be good, given that I am the lowest ranked player in my pool.

All in all, the drop of a kyu or so in January wasn't too bad. I had climbed fairly rapidly at the end of last year, and I'm happy to see I'm still hanging out in the low twenties. My goal is to maintain this and make a push for the teens (aka DDK). Once that happens, I get to change my description for "beginner" to "advanced beginner".

I have a bunch of Go books to read right now that look really helpful. I've discovered, however, that when I'm casting about for something to read, it's easier to pick up a science fiction book than one of the Go books, which are almost like textbooks. So I'll probably slow down on the science fiction and turn more to the Go books.

Comment

Well, a couple of weeks after I turned off comments on new posts, I received my first comment in quite some time. This has inspired me to return comments, at least for now. I have the comments set up as moderated, so I shouldn't have the problems I had before with spam or obscenities.

Live from Del Mar

Christina has a new post describing our trip-in-progress.

The F-Car

Greetings from San Diego, where we're driving around in a surprisingly nice Ford Fusion. The Ford Fusion runs really quietly, has leather seats, and even comes with a V-6. But that's not the car that inspired this post.

The car in question was some sort of Pontiac. When Avis dropped us off at our car (no going to the counter for me!), I went to the driver's side to locate the trunk release. I noticed a rather significant scratch running along most of the length of the car. My first thought was to make sure the damage was noted on the rental agreement. My second thought was, "Hey, that's a word..." The F-word, in fact.

We scooted to the counter and indicated that I wasn't looking to make quite so bold of a statement when I showed up for the meetings tomorrow. The counter guy was very shocked and expressed his opinion that people who damage cars should be treated like horse thieves. OK. Anyway, I have no complaints with the car we ended up with. In past years, I've gotten a convertible, but it's a little cold for it this time of year. The sun roof does just as well.