Road Revenge? Or Road Rage?

Everyday driving into the office there is an exit off the interstate that just drives me nuts.  The area I'm talking about is I-10 and Kolb, which is on my way to the IBM office.  I'll be driving north up Kolb Rd and people from the east will be exiting the I-10 and trying to turn north onto Kolb as well.  In their defense, it's a little hard to judge the speed of incoming traffic on Kolb since you can barely see past the top of the hill where I am coming from, and it may appear that cars are coming in slower than they really are.  Nonetheless, people still try and turn right onto the road and into my lane as I'm going near 55 MPH.  This is where the Road Rage/Revenge begins...

I'll be driving straight in the right lane, getting ready to make my eventual right onto IBM Rd.  I clearly have the right of way and should not have to change my speed to allow incoming traffic.  They must yield to me, however, so many do not.  Kolb is a 2-lane road and I feel if you're going to try and turn on Kolb with a fast car coming behind you, you should at least go to the left lane and get out of my way if you can't get to my speed in time.  You'd be surprised how many people don't do this though, they insist on staying in the right lane.  Not only that, they drive fucking shitty ass cars with no acceleration...we're talking 0-60 in like 10 seconds.  At this point I'm always presented with two options:
A) Do I stay in the right lane and slow down to their speed so I can make my eventual right turn?
B) Do I switch to the left lane and pass them, cut them off and make my eventual right turn?

The answer I almost always choose is B.  However, because I'm pissed off at them for cutting me off in the first place, I will usually slow down to almost a complete stop before taking that right turn on IBM Rd.  This forces them to either slow down as well or go around me. :D Here is a map of what everything looks like:

This exit has bothered me so much that I've actually contemplated making a sign that reads "Traffic on Kolb may be faster than it appears. Please yield for existing traffic." and staking it into the ground for all the people trying to make a right onto Kolb.  Anyway, I'm not sure if this classifies as Road Revenge or Road Rage, what do you think?

Leagues!

It was an eventful week for me in the world of extracurricular activities.

Season 4 of After Hours Gaming League officially started this past Sunday.  I returned as captain of the IBM team in their 3rd season, but this year I decided to make cuts to the team whereas in past years we would allow almost anyone to play.  I wanted to field as small a team as possible, to not have to worry about everyone's playtime and playing players of lower skill level.  There is no handicap in the AHGL, so why handicap ourselves?  So this year, I decided to run with only 7 master league players.  Here is a snippet from an introductory e-mail I sent to followers within the IBM company:

This season there are over 50 teams signed up and IBM entered as the #2 preranked team coming in.  Companies are able to enter multiple teams and most have both an A-Team and B-Team, sometimes even a C-Team.  IBM's first match was a doozy, a rematch of Season 2's finals against Epic Medical Systems.  It might've also been IBM's toughest matchup of the regular season with the new Swiss format.  Theoretically, matches should only get easier from here on out.  So a victory over #3 Epic was huge for us, woohoo!  It's gonna be a good season and I'm really eager to try and lead us back to the finals in California!

IBM Basketball League also started up this week, with our first games being held last night.  This was my first year officially taking over as sole commissioner of the league following Dale's retirement from IBM.  Two weeks ago I was pretty concerned there might not be enough players for a full league, as only 38 people had signed up and 56 was the target.  Also, my intentions of recruiting new players around the site were thwarted when I was told to take down fliers that I had put up.  Apparently since IBM is no longer sponsoring the league, we're not allowed to solicit it.  I was pretty depressed about it, but I think next time I will push back and try and talk to the site VP at least.  It just seems silly to me that we have to take down fliers for a league that would only build morale for a company whose morale is in the tank lately.

Unfortunately, my usual core of players (me, Ryan, and Cooper) has been broken up due to Cooper moving to Phoenix and Ryan having a newborn to take care of.  However, I'm loving the new team I drafted.  I invited Evan back as a guest (he was a good replacement when Ryan got injured last year) and I drafted my friend Anthony who brought two guests.  The team is by the quickest in the league and everyone is a baller.  Most teams in IBM league will have a few players who are more liabilities then additions, since some of them are clearly not basketball players but just want to go out and get some exercise.  Here is a look at this season's teams:

If you add up the PPG averages of myself, Evan, Anthony, and Dezi from last year, it would equal 56 PPG.  Add newcomers Ryan and Chris (projected 15 PPG and 4 PPG respectively) and you're looking at well over 70 PPG, LOL.  However, last night we played Team 8 and got off to a really slow start.  Maybe it was rust, maybe it was a drought, or maybe it was getting used to playing with each other, but we only scored 14 points in the first half and found ourselves down 14-24. :/ However, things started to come together both defensively and offensively in the second half, where we outscored them 31-14!  That's more like it!  We ended up winning our first game of the season...and that was without Evan too. :)

So all in all, always excited for leagues to start back up.  I especially look forward to basketball league since I'm in control of it, I know everyone in the league and everyone knows me.  It's just a lot of fun when everything comes together and you know you were a big part of it's success.

Wish me luck and there will be updates to come!

Duncan Cam!

Living alone can have its advantages, but it definitely has its cons as well.  One of those cons is not having an extra set of eyes to help watch my biggest asset: my house.  I don't have an advanced security installed in my home and I am obviously not home all the time.  Fortunately, I live in a culdesac at the very end of my street, so burglars are less tempted to go that deep into the neighborhood to break into a house.  Nonetheless, home security is very important and whatever affordable measures can be taken to improve security should be considered!

A couple weekends ago, I was at my sister's house and she told me about a surveillance camera her family uses to monitor their home while they're away.  I looked into getting one for myself and eventually I purchased a HooToo Surveillance Camera off Amazon.com for $70 (my sister's brand is Foscam).  The camera is a great investment!  It has built in wireless which allows me to put it anywhere in the house as long as the Wi-Fi is accessible.  I can then monitor my home from my computer at work or from my phone!  Most of the time, it just serves as a Duncan Cam. :)

Having the camera installed helps give me peace of mind that my home is safe including Duncan. Obviously I can't be staring at it 24-7, but I do keep it open on my second monitor while I'm at work and will check it from my phone when I'm out of town.  Also, during long vacations, I can enable the motion detection sensor to e-mail me if any large movements are detected in the camera's line of sight!  Definitely worth the very affordable price!

I'll say the only drawback is that I see a fluffy Duncan sleeping on the sofa and I just want to squeeze him.  Makes me miss my cat even more when I'm not home... :O

Playoffs!?

My Tuesday pool team (a.k.a. the "Cereal Killers") has been tearing it up in league and tournament play much of last year.  Winter session just ended before the holidays, but this time we didn't finish in 1st place for a change.  As a result, we played in playoffs to determine the second team that would be sent to the Big Money Tournament.

The first round of playoffs was played against "Team Chaos".  I ran a lineup of 4-4-4-5-6 (those are the skill levels of the 5 players for my team).  The first round ended up going to the very last match in winner-take-all fashion.  I saved myself for the end and had to play against a skill level of 5 (I'm a 4 if you've forgotten, which is about average).  I played very well that night...or maybe my opponent didn't play as well as he's expected to.  Whatever the reason, the match was won and we made it to the second and final round of playoffs.

The finals were held these past two weeks of January (as makeup to avoid playing during the holidays).  Entering last night, it was a 4-4 tie in points with the other team "Pog Mo Thoin" holidng the tiebreaker since they won 2 of the first 3 matches.  I put myself up 4th knowing it would draw out their 5 and leave the 3 for the final match, and it was imperative that I win at least 1 game so that I didn't get shutout and give them a 3-0 point victory.  The game was really sloppy and both sides played a bit poorly with the last 3 games of the match all being determined by the 8-ball going in early or scratching on the 8.  Nonetheless, I pulled out a 2-0 win by winning 3 games to his 2!  That left us 6-4 going into the last match.  All was left was for Jake, a skill level 4, to win 2 games before his opponent won 2...  Out of nowhere, Jake shot the best pool anyone's ever seen him play.  He ran out all of the balls in one turn on the first game and handled the next game pretty easily.  So the Cereal Killers won the matchup and will be returning for their 3rd consecutive Big Money appearance! Woohoo!!!  Oh and I guess I get another plaque to add to the wall...

In other news...

Bowling is still going and 10 weeks remain on the schedule.  I'm currently sitting at a 191 average after last week's massive 659 series.  191 is where I started the season and my personal goal is to go up in average.  195+ would be awesome, but I'll be happy with anything 192+.  On that note, I signed up to bowl in the USBC Open Championships this June in Reno.  I'll be going with 7 other IBM League bowlers and it should be a really fun and challenging experience!

AHGL StarCraft 2 Season 4 is beginning soon as well.  While I have been on a break from StarCraft (because I've been working my monk in Diablo III up to paragon level 100 --just 2 levels away as we speak), I will start practicing again soon as the season is set to begin on February 9th.  I haven't decided if this will be my last year as captain for IBM's AHGL team, but all I know is I want to make a strong run at the title in 2014!

Finally, I've been coordinating the IBM Basketball League to start in the middle of February.  The old commissioner, Dale, finally retired from IBM last December, which leaves me as sole commissioner of the league.  However, this is what we prepared for and I'm ready to get things going again for the IBMers!

Hope everyone is enjoying the 2014 year so far!  Continue to Make It Happen, whatever It Happens to be worth Making!