life

To play, or not to play

Blog kitt decided around 19:22 on 14 May 2005 to publish this:
Today is a day when I think about retiring from ultimate. A day of incredible frustration, and displays of my personality that I prefer to keep buried, hidden, unexposed.

We were playing at the Ashland Oregon Coed Cramp-Up, a mixed gender ultimate tournament that has been held annually for 12 years.

We lost our first game handily. I'd like to say it was because we didn't warm up properly, play intensely, or gel very well as a team. That statement is certainly true, but it doesn't justify crappy play.

We won our second game fairly handily (13-8) against a team that played a very close game to a rock star team that crushed us in the third round.

Against a team that I became quite pissy at. And that frustrates me.

A lot.

Last weekend, we played at Quincy's MUD Classic. One of our opponents was Donner Party D Pool, a reunion team made up of players from the disbanded stellar mixed team Donner Party.

Now, playing against Donner Party (DP) is the absolute worst ultimate experience... DP does not, and never did, understand the concept of Spirit of the Game™. To them, any call against them is "bad spirit"; any call for them is "good spirit." The same is true for any legitimate call that goes against them, or for them, respectively. They pretend to be "spirited," but when a game is close they become snippy, claiming no calls go their way, if their opponent wasn't so unspirited this game woyld be better. They also try to get away with decidedly cheating play such as claiming a disc caught after bouncing off the ground was still up and in play. All while calling a player inbounds from the opposite side of the field.

Actual conversation between a Donner player and me last weekend. We were standing on the home sideline as two players discussed if another Donner player caught the disc inbounds or not.

    Donner player: How can they call her out of bounds over there? She's clearly inbounds. There are no lines. There's nothing over there to show where out-of-bounds are.

    Me: Except two cones.

He shut up.

So today in our third game, the one against the top team in our pool coming into the tournament, in one point, I'm called first in the string. Meaning, I'll catch the disc from thw pull and put the disc into play for that point.

The disc floats funny and takes a low line out of bounds, landing on the line and bouncing two feet out of bounds. I call brick and ask Kyle Schleifer if he wants to take the disc as the first thrower. There's some noise downfield, and eventyally the question, "You're taking at the line, right?" floats into my consciousness. I reply, "No, I called brick." Another person, this one closer to me, replies to me, "It landed in and rolled out." "No, it landed out. I had best perspective. I was standing right there. It was out." "You looked at the cones first. That guy," he points to a non-player on the sideline, "says it landed in." I turned to this player, while walking back to the stack, and said, "That guy isn't on the field. Best perspective on the field makes the call. I had the best perspective. And I called it out."

The conversation ended at that point, but I was incredibly annoyed. The disc was two feet out of bounds. I was standing over the freaking thing when it landed. I felt like I was playing Donner all over again with the complete lack of respect for the calls of other players.

And with any emotion of irritation, I try to figure out why I'm just so angry about the whole incident. Why, after another game and dinner, am I still obsessively thinking of this on incident? I stood my ground. I was assertive. And now I feel as if I've done something wrong and it sucks.

Deep down, maybe I think I'm becoming one of those pissy Donner players. And that's what I fear the most.

I apologize when I foul someone. I apologize when I even accidently bump my opponents. I don't participate in on-field discussions when I didn't have any perspective on the field. I try to contest and move on if I disagree with calls against me. I take myself out of games when I'm getting too hotheaded, sometimes to the detriment of my team.

But situations like the pull today make me wonder if I'm as nice as I think I am, as I want to be. Did I dig in my heels because I was right, or because I wanted to be right?

Better watch that heart rate

Blog kitt decided around 09:37 on 13 May 2005 to publish this:
As part of running an ultimate league, helping run another league and generally participating in the ultimate community at large, I get a number of emails to the owners of various mailing lists and whatnot.

I also get a lot of virus and spam messages to announcement mailing lists of said leagues. Since the lists are moderated, and I'm that moderator, I reject all the bad emails, protecting the league from all the bad messages.

Other email lists don't do this (femultimate comes to mind), and it's annoying to receive so many spam messages from a women's ultimate list. Erf.

Today I received a posting to the MPUL mailing list from one Aaron Strout (astrout@gmail.com). It wasn't even a reply-all to a posting that went out the various lists (one announcing a hat tournament): he emailed to every address in an email that had been forwarded several times.

Judging by the Subject line, Aaron is on the LPCultimate mailing lists. If Aaron weren't a complete idiot, he would have read his email, which includes instructions on how to be removed from the mailing list. He is obviously a moron who doesn't realize that he should remove his email address from the mailing list, instead of whining to someone else to do it. 

> F*** OFF YOU F***IN WANKERS...STOP EMAILING ME. I ASKED NICELY TWICE
> NOW TO BE TAKEN OFF THE LIST>>>F*** I HAVE NO IDEA HOW YOU S***HEADS
> GOT MY EMAIL IN THE FIRST PLACE>>>>TAKE ME OFF OR ELSE>
>
> AARON
>
> On 5/12/05, Las Positas Ultimate <lpcultimate@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> > This is the first step to playing more and becoming better.  Hat tournament
> > May 21st in Modesto.  It's pretty beginner friendly and sounds like a good
> > time.
> >
> > Note: forwarded message attached.
> > ________________________________
> > Visit our forum at http://www.lpcultimate.com/forum/ for more info.
> > To visit your group on the web, go to:
> > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lpcultimate/
> >
> > To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
> > lpcultimate-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
> > ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> > From: Matt West <cvul*****@yahoo.com>
> > To: Las Positas Ultimate <lpc*****@yahoo.com>
> > Date: Thu, 12 May 2005 16:43:10 -0700 (PDT)
> > Subject: Fwd: [SFUC] Hat Tourney May 21st
> >
> > ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> > From: "Dan Handler" 
> > To: sfuc, sful, mpul, santacrucial
> > Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2005 11:20:09 -0800
> > Subject: [SFUC] Hat Tourney May 21st
> >  Here's the propaganda from them copied below.  The absolute best part is
> > that you can practice your layouts in the huge pool next to the fields in
> > between rounds.
> >
> >  ULTIMATE FRISBEE
> >  SHOWDOWN ON SUNSET HAT TOURNAMENT III

Moron.

I love his "or else". Might be time to start posting his email address to rec.sport.disc and alt.beastiality. Enjoy the spam, jerk.

Ever read about yourself?

Blog Written with a loving hand by kitt some time around 00:34 on 11 May 2005
I should be working right now. I'm up late specifically so that I can do work, and I'm not doing it. Every since Mom visited middle of last month, I've been in bed nominally by 11:00 pm and up around 7:30 am. Which is pretty good for me, and a far cry from my 2:00 am bedtime and 10:00 am wake up time.

But I have work to do, and I'm not doing it.

Instead, I'm surfing around the 'net, looking at various sites, catching up on reading blogs I've missed recently, and generally having a relaxing time. Maybe I shouldn't be so gung-ho all the time. Maybe I should actually schedule downtime, instead of feeling guilty about it when I do.

At least I'm not watching that accursed television. Damn TiVo to hell, I say. I've watched more television since we got that damned appliance than all the television of the previous 5 years combined.

And I'm not kidding.

At least it was quality television.

Mostly.

But I'm not watching television, or catching up on my magazine a day. I'm surfing and reading Paul's blog.

Paul emailed me this past weekend. I didn't get the email until yesterday because of the tournament at Quincy, but when I read it, I was admittedly a little surprised: Paul, too, has an online journal (blog, if you must).

And he told me where it is.

Hop, skip and a jump, and I'm over reading it. Who can resist such an offer? The ultimate in vanity! A chance to see someone else write about you. What a deal!

Or not.

I think I now find it awkward. I wasn't specfically named in the blog, which is kinda nice, but I can hear his voice, I can see his mannerisms, I can feel his presence when I read his writings, and it's strange.

His journal is much more of a private journal than this one is for me. He doesn't publish it. It's not linked to his name. He doesn't use his friends' names. If I didn't know who he was, the blog would be completely anonymous (unless, of course, I had access to the server logs: then all bets are off).

But I do know who's writing, and it's like peering into another person's vulnerabilities, seeing his weaknesses. You're never supposed to show weaknesses, right? Chest thump, macho this and macho that, king of the world, take no prisoners crap.

Yet, here is a bit of someone's soul showing through. A hint of the self-torture in deciding whether or not to reveal personal thoughts, feelings, self-doubt or emotions that, up until now, have been show to only two other friends, neither of them ex-girlfriends.

It's fascinating, and a little bit uncomfortable to realize that I'm the cause of that internal twisting.

I don't know why I think people don't go through the same thing I go through. I have all the same "Should I put this out there?" doubts and internal struggles. I eventually decided that this is my personal blog, and kitt.hodsden.com will be my more public blog. I'll link to that one. I won't link to this one. You can't find this one through Google, and I'm fighting to get it off Yahoo and MSN (amazing what a $47000 invoice sent to a public company will do). So, my quirks go here, my tutorials go there and I have some segregation. But what goes where, and how do I decide what to say, and what not to say?

Because some of the personal tragedies are actually very funny after the fact.

I should be asleep now.

The Second Level of Hell has a special place for me

Blog Posted by kitt at 09:18 on 10 May 2005
Apparently, the second level of Dante's Hell has a place waiting for me. Well, at least according to the Dante's Inferno Hell Test.

My introduction to my new home:

Second Level of Hell

You have come to a place mute of all light, where the wind bellows as the sea does in a tempest. This is the realm where the lustful spend eternity. Here, sinners are blown around endlessly by the unforgiving winds of unquenchable desire as punishment for their transgressions. The infernal hurricane that never rests hurtles the spirits onward in its rapine, whirling them round, and smiting, it molests them. You have betrayed reason at the behest of your appetite for pleasure, and so here you are doomed to remain. Cleopatra and Helen of Troy are two that share in your fate.

Fun. Can I put up curtains and paint the place yellow? Pretty please?

The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Second Level of Hell!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

LevelScore
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)Moderate
Level 2 (Lustful)High
Level 3 (Gluttonous)Moderate
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)Low
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)Low
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)High
Level 7 (Violent)Moderate
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)Moderate
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)Low

Just one teesy little problem with this test (okay, lots of problems, but one that annoys me in particular).

We can be forgiven for our sins, according to every Christian religious text I've read. The questionaire asks, "Have you ever done ...?" I answered truthfully, but some of the questionable actions I did when I was 5 or 10 years old. I fail to believe that a god, even the Christian God, would add punishment to actions done at such an age, especially when since then, forgiveness was asked for.

But such is the conundrum of religion.

And a small part of my difficulties with it.

Tournaments and breasts

Blog Yeah, kitt finished writing this at 23:36 on 7 May 2005
So, what is it with tournament and my breasts? Every tournament I seem to go to (certainly for the last 5 years) seems to coincide with my breasts being swollen. I don't get it. Either I'm swollen the weekend before and don't menstruate until a week after the tournament, or they balloon up on Tuesday and hurt hurt hurt on Saturday morning.

Argh!

Why can't I go back to 16 and my first, 21 with my second and 23 for my third? A life without menstruations, swollen breasts, mood swings (not that those ever happen, right?) is a pleasant life indeed.

Of course, losing 20 pounds is one way to get there, but not a pleasant road to travel.

In the meantime, I need to make sure my hucks don't slap my right breast first.

Smack!

What's around here to eat?

Blog Instead of being asleep at 20:44 on 6 May 2005, kitt created this:
On the way up to Quincy for a tournament this weekend, we stopped to eat at an In-n-Out restaurant. At some point, I needed to use the restroom.

In the restroom, where two women had pushed passed me to enter before I did, and where an In-n-Out employee was standing, I overheard them:

Woman #1: I'm so hungry. I'm starving.

Woman #2: Me, too. Where do you want to eat?

Woman #1: Uhn, I don't know. What's around here?

Woman #2: I don't know. There must be somethin'.

And my thoughts? Not kind, to be sure.

Is it okay to be afraid of the ball?

Blog Yeah, kitt finished writing this at 21:08 on 5 May 2005
I was at the (ASA) gym today. In the slow pitch alley was a gaggle of little kids and a few dads teaching them how to hit.

Now, whenever you have a gaggle of anything, you can rest assured that 90% of your gaggle is not paying a lick of attention to what the leaders of said gaggle wants them to be paying attention to.

At one point, one of the dads pulled a boy aside (and, yes, it was the kid in the back - the one goofing off the most), and starts to coach the kid.

At first I'm thinking, "Dude, he's just spent the last 20 minutes cutting up, what makes you think he's going to pay attention to you now?" But whatever. So the dad was still ccoaching the kid when I walked by a few minutes later. What do I hear?

"It's okay to be afraid of the ball."

What the? It's not okay to be afraid of the ball! If you're afraid of the ball, you can never hit it.

But I did start thinking, maybe I'm wrong. Did I miss something? Is it really okay to be afraid of the ball?

Or maybe it's about choosing what to be afraid of?

It'll be the topic of my next Letter to my Children, to be sure.

I talked to Kris about this later, and he totally agrees with my initial impression, for many reasons.

  1. Fear causes you to tense up.
  2. Fear causes you to focus in the wrong place.
  3. Fear gives your opponent an advantage.

Kris said, "Sure it might hurt, but bruises heal."

And then revealed to me, "At one point, I think I led teams in hit being by the pitch."

"You have to look at what's going on. Is the pitcher trying to hurt you, or is he trying to get you out? If he can get you out with intimidation, that's a huge win. You can't let him have that advantage."

Yeah.

No intimidation! Come on, ball!

My problem with technology

Blog Yeah, kitt finished writing this at 00:29 on 5 May 2005
So my problem with technology is that not only is it pervasive, it is also disconnected.

Huh?

Okay, so, this site is a nice little collection of things in some way important to me. It complements my "professional" site quite well, hiding my charming personality quirks from the rest of the world in this small space I've carved out.

I can add content to this site by sitting down at a web-enabled computer, calling up the site, navigating to the add-content page and strart typing.

And that happens once in a long while, let me tell you.

In reality, I'm probably anywhere else than in front of a web-enabled computer when I think of something I want to write about.

So, take for example when I'm at the gym, walking on the treadmill, and come up with a brilliant (or not so brilliant) idea for a post. Well, crap, now what do I do?

Yep. What any other geek would do: pull out the Treo and start typing.

You think I'm kidding.

Okay, so, now I have a great post all ready to enter.

Except that it's on my Palm and not where it ultimately needs to be.

And what are the chances I forget to copy this entire rant over to my site?

Pretty high.

I have the same problem with my laptop when I'm working offline, which happens more frequently than I would have predicted.

So, the problem I have is not to get my thoughts out of my head, but rather to get them some place central where I can find them, remember them, laugh at them, enjoy them again.

And even more importantly, many years from now, realize how far we've come in merging technologies.

Intimidating oneself

Blog Yeah, kitt finished writing this at 11:44 on 2 May 2005
This past weekend, Kris, Ben and Kyle ran in the Wildflower Triathalon. I went to support them, carry their crap, run errands, and cheer them on. When we were leaving, as I walked up a flight of stairs a triathalon participant caught my eye at the top of the stairs.

She was a fit black woman with her triathalon number pinned to her jersey. About my height with a bright smile on her face, she carried herself like a tired athlete who conquered the course and walked away victorious.

Crossing the net and projecting incredible athletic feats and daring accomplishments, I made a note of her number intending to look it up today.

And so I did.

I went to the Wildflower 2005 website, and tried to look up the triathlete's information by her bib number, 8579. Turns out, the search form worked only by event, first name, last name, gender and age group. Well, I knew her gender and guessed her event was the Olympic distance triathalon. There were over 3100 women participants, and the results displayed 50 athletes to a page.

Ugh.

So, I guessed her age between 18 and 30, because of her bib number (which were allocated based on age), giving me 647 participants to look through. She wasn't on those pages, so I looked in 31 to 40. She wasn't there. Good lord woman, how old are you?

41.

Turns out, the woman is Retha Howard. She completed the triathalon in just under 4 hours: 3:52:07. She lives in San Francisco and trains with the Embarcadero YMCA. She ran a 9:52/mile pace in the 10k, and rode a 38:26/mile pace in the 40k ride. She spent 9:41 in transistions (contrasting to the Kris-Ben-Kyle transistion times of about 2:10).

Putting this all into perspective now, Lora Bowman did the triathalon in 3:44:04. Cat Rondeau, uber athlete, did it in 3:13:39. I'm closer to Lora, and apparently Retha.

Lessons learned?

I'm still projecting every other person out there to be better, stronger, faster than I am. I'm still intimidating myself when I don't need to be. I'm still not objective when it comes guessing anything about someone else: abilities, age, etc.

As much confidence as I project, apparently I haven't internalized nearly enough.

What do you call this?

Blog Yeah, kitt finished writing this at 10:32 on 28 April 2005
Mike and I have been trying to come up with a name for our new company. Mike is a little reluctant to starty a new company, having started to before and knowing the perils of possible friendship loss by going into business with a friend (that and I suspect things are going well for him, too, so why rock the boat?). We have the obvious ideas of permutatuons on our names - miki, mikitt, guho, mikiguho, gullsden, hodsull (my mother's current favorite). In pondering these, we have to wonder: what makes a good name? What name will inspire companies to talk to us, but allow us to be approachable for the small guy, too?

And there is also the concern mentioned above: how do you ensure a friendship when business is involved?

Mike and I get along really well. I enjoy his company and greatly enjoy working with him. Our skill-sets are similar enough that I don't feel overwhelmed, but different enough that we can still learn new things from each other.

When I was at VA, I didn't really think I could find a better group of people to work with. Ever. Now, well now I'm not so sure. Working with Mike and Doyle is a good time.

Now if only we could figure out what to name the company.

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