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    rusty

    Odds & Sods

    Wednesday, September 19, 2007, 02:34 PM EST [General]

    So, aside from being Rain Man smart when it comes to the math necessary to manipulate digital audio, my boss at Regular Work also gets called up to do other projects. A big one last year was to compress the entire New Yorker magazine catalog into a few DVDs. Using math I could not begin to understand, he did just that. Now, we're not talking about just some crappy looking HTML here, you can actually thumb through every page of every New Yorker from 1925 to the present. You can also search by author, image, cartoon, interview, and so on. All that is on eight DVDs for less than a hundred bucks.

    As a result, he got two more jobs of the same type. One was for the entire Rolling Stone catalog (an awesome collection in and of itself), the other was this:

    That's right, every last page of every Playboy ever produced. Oh, happy day. This is the box for the two DVDs that make up every issue of the 1950's. I'm waiting with baited breath for the full collection to arrive here at work. Then I can relive all of those joyous adolescent memories of inheriting/finding/stealing the odd copy and enjoying the trenchant political commentary, off-color jokes and insightful interviews with important people of the day located therein. Oh, and the nudity, that's also a plus. 

    Speaking of off-color:

    That's what my ankle looked like the day after dropping my ball into it. In my last entry I alluded to this incident, which happened during my last trip to the Kegel Training Center. I was there for a full day lesson, which I needed to jump-start my (until now) wayward training regimen. About 10:30AM both Jason Couch and Patrick Allen arrived with a boatload of balls to drill up for the upcoming PBA season. They spent most of the day about fifteen feet away from me testing out balls and talking smack. To add to this distraction, Patrick's cute girlfriend was there as well as this sneaky-hot Scandinavian woman who worked the front desk. (Incidentally, I've come to the conclusion that women are 10-15% hotter when bowling. I'm also inclined to have feelings for female operators at bowling supply houses who can talk competently about differentials and pin distances. I know, I'm not well.)

    These distractions are partially to blame when, just before lunchtime, I broke my wrist too early and chucked one directly into my right ankle. It hurt to be sure, but I was equally embarrassed to have done so in front of the 2003 Player of the Year and/or the three-time Tounament of Champions winner (I couldn't bear to look over when it happened, but I know at least one of them was over there to see it). And we were videotaping my release point at the time, so I could review the carnage frame-by-frame. Not for the faint of heart, to be sure.

    Lucky for me nothing seems broken, just some soreness. It bruised fantastically, however. I normally don't wear flip-flops outside of the house, but in this case the situation warranted it, if nothing else it made grossing people out much easier.

    One other note: the guy I call "coach" also works with Patrick and Jason, and after lunch he went over to Jason to talk about his recent knee surgery rehab. "Coach" was suggesting that Jason keep his trailing leg on the floor to take stress off the surgically-repaired knee on the sliding leg. (Jason tends to end up at the release point with his slide leg straight and his trailing leg up in the air, putting a lot of stress on the right knee. Keeping the trailing leg on the floor would force his other knee to bend at the release and lessen the stress at the finish.) Well, Couch was having none of it and the static in the conversation was palpable to me, even though I was four lanes over. You won't find that inside info in BJI, that's for sure.  

    3.7 (4 Ratings)

    My condolences on the freak ankle injury. Several years ago, I crushed my right ankle & foot in an equally idiotic manner (a golf cart was involved). Amazingly, no bones were broken - but the strains, sprains, bruising, swelling, & deep tissue trauma were major & massive. I couldn't walk without a crutch, then a cane - but I wasn't going to stop bowling, by God! With multiple compression devices on the foot & ankle, and loaded up with over the counter & prescription drugs, I kept bowling in my 3 leagues with a "no step" approach - hobbling up to the foul line - stopping - then swinging my right arm "back & through". In bowling like this for several weeks, I greatly improved my release & targeting, raising my average 13 pins over the previous year! In the many years since then, my best series have been when I was injured, seriously ill, or recovering from medical & surgical procedures. It seems that the healthier I am, the more likely I am to "get in my own way", rather than letting "the ball do the work", etc. Given a choice, though, I would rather be healthy & bowl stupid, than be ill or injured and bowling smarter. Best wishes for a rapid recovery!

    stephen
    September 19, 2007
    03:44 PM EST

    Someday someone will be publishing these stories to DVD...however...if it's in 50 years it's probably not going to be on DVD but some other magical invention by the Japanese where we insert a little card into our brains and upload the information directly into our memory banks. For those interested, I haven't smoked anything today to come up with this fabulous idea, it's just Winter is setting in and it depresses the hell out of me.

    Supern8inak
    September 19, 2007
    05:27 PM EST

    Based on where that injury is located, I have concluded you are left handed. And for this, I must deduct 2 points from my rating scale. Sorry, its just the rules.

    Phenom
    September 27, 2007
    07:18 PM EST