This has been the busiest week I've ever had at work, by a pretty wide margin:

Monday: 9:30 AM - 12:30 AM (15 hours)
Tuesday: 10 AM - 9:30 PM (11.5 hours)
Wednesday: 10 AM - 11:30 PM (13.5 hours)

That's 40 hours of work in 3 days. That might be normal for a consultant, but certainly not for me.

And yes, I've been working most of those hours.

Weekend update:

-Mejeld, Gower, Sylvia, and Julie Oh visited. So of course we ate a lot:
Dim sum, Zachary's, the place formerly known as Mondo Gelato, Durant Square...

-Mejeld and I spent most of Saturday afternoon talking about fantasy baseball and then playing MVP Baseball. What a great use of his time in the Bay Area.

-I planned to take a nap on Sunday afternoon at 6 PM, but I ended up waking up at 8 AM on Monday morning! That's 14 hours of sleep...

-I'm still at work right now. Ugh...

Random updates:

-Based on user feedback, I got the Samsung instead of the LG phone.
-Actually been busy at work.
-Chongo bowled a 241 on Tuesday. That included a run of 6 consecutive strikes. Crazy!
-Some of my class people are visiting this weekend. Hopefully it won't rain too much.

Cell phone update:

I don't need that many minutes, so I'm getting Verizon's America's Choice 450 plan for $39.99/month because I want nation-wide long distance. So you can call me for free if you have Verizon's IN-network calling.

The key features I wanted in my new phone were the following basics:

1) Folding case
I want some type of flip/slider phone, so that I don't have to lock my phone when I put my phone in my pocket.
2) External display
To see who's calling before I open my phone.
3) Ease-of-use
Easy-to-mute ringer, volume control on side, etc.
4) Voice quality
5) Battery life/talk time
6) Easy-to-read
Important for the keypad in dim lighting, and the display in bright light.

I'm planning to get the LG VX7000 because it did well in the categories above and was the top-performing phone in my price range in reviews by Consumer Reports (very good) and CNET.com (8.0).



By taking advantage of promotions on Amazon.com, I can get paid $25 to buy this phone (and sign up for a 1-year contract with Verizon.)

The other phone I was considering was the Samsung A670 (CR: very good/good, CNET: 7.6), mainly because I'd make $75 after promotions. It did well in my first 5 categories, but not the 6th.



Anyone have either of these phones, or have any final warnings before I get the LG?

I just cancelled my cell phone service with Cingular/AT&T.

They just lost a lot of future revenue, because I would've been willing to stay with them if they gave me a nice deal. I was expecting them to do something to keep me as a customer, but when I called to cancel, they didn't try very hard to keep me.

They should know that it's much harder to gain a new customer than it is to retain a current customer. I guess their customer service people don't know about switching costs.

That's fine with me though. Verizon's better anyway.

NBC's The Office is quickly becoming one of my favorite TV shows.



Now I just gotta watch the BBC Series, which is supposedly even funnier.

I'm sure you're all waiting for more uses of statistics in baseball-related activities, so here we go:

In head-to-head fantasy baseball leagues, each team competes against another team in different statistical categories. If a team wins 8 categories, loses 3 categories, and ties the opponent in 1 category, then that team's record for the week is 8-3-1, for a .708 winning percentage.

Since the results of head-to-head fantasy baseball leagues are affected by the quality of one's opponents, I want to determine how lucky each team in my league has been through week one.

What I need to do first is determine the expected winning percentage each team would have based on how they did in each of 12 categories.

For example, my team had 2 saves in week 1. To calculate my expected winning percentage for that category, I need to know how many other teams had fewer saves, more saves, and the same number of saves.

In this case, 6 teams had fewer saves, 4 teams had more saves, and 1 team had the same number of saves. And so I would’ve beat 6 teams, lost to 4 teams, and tied 1 team in this category. Having an expected record of 6-4-1 in the saves category gives me an expected winning percentage of .591 for this category.

Here are the expected winning percentages of each team for each hitting category:

Player	R	HR	RBI	SB	OBP	SLG
Mejeld Lee (c/o '03)	0.773	0.273	0.636	0.727	0.909	0.182
Dan Kim ('02)	0.545	0.818	0.273	0.818	0.182	0.318
James Kang ('06)	0.455	0.545	0.545	0.364	0.636	0.455
James Song ('03)	0.318	0.364	0.455	0.636	0.364	0.318
Crew Andy ('02)	0.773	0.545	0.091	1.000	0.545	0.636
Jaepil Kim ('02)	0.182	0.545	0.727	0.364	0.000	0.091
Daniel Hahn ('06)	0.636	0.818	0.818	0.045	0.455	0.909
Tommy Lee ('03)	0.091	0.091	0.000	0.364	0.091	0.000
Gee-Won Kim ('03)	0.000	0.818	0.364	0.364	0.818	1.000
Jomo Lee ('02)	1.000	0.091	1.000	0.364	1.000	0.818
Jiehoon Lee ('02)	0.318	0.091	0.182	0.909	0.727	0.545
Stephen Lee ('02)	0.909	1.000	0.909	0.045	0.273	0.727

Here are the expected winning percentages of each team for each pitching category:

Player	IP	W	SV	K	ERA	WHIP
Mejeld Lee (c/o '03)	0.727	0.773	0.773	0.364	0.273	0.091
Dan Kim ('02)	0.318	0.500	0.136	0.864	1.000	0.727
James Kang ('06)	1.000	0.909	0.136	1.000	0.727	1.000
James Song ('03)	0.182	0.045	0.773	0.091	0.000	0.000
Crew Andy ('02)	0.000	0.045	1.000	0.000	0.636	0.818
Jaepil Kim ('02)	0.909	0.500	0.909	0.864	0.545	0.636
Daniel Hahn ('06)	0.636	0.773	0.136	0.545	0.455	0.318
Tommy Lee ('03)	0.455	0.227	0.591	0.636	0.091	0.182
Gee-Won Kim ('03)	0.091	0.500	0.591	0.455	0.909	0.909
Jomo Lee ('02)	0.318	0.500	0.409	0.273	0.818	0.455
Jiehoon Lee ('02)	0.545	0.227	0.136	0.182	0.364	0.545
Stephen Lee ('02)	0.818	1.000	0.409	0.727	0.182	0.318

A player's overall expected winning percentage is the mean of the 12 expected winning percentages by category.

Comparing the overall expected winning percentages with each team's actual winning percentage gives us a chart that includes the following:

Luck: W% - E(W%)
Actual winning percentage: W%
Overall expected winning percentage: E(W%)

Player	W% - E(W%)	W%	E(W%)
Mejeld Lee (c/o '03)	0.291	0.833	0.542
Dan Kim ('02)	0.166	0.708	0.542
James Kang ('06)	0.060	0.708	0.648
James Song ('03)	-0.003	0.292	0.295
Crew Andy ('02)	-0.008	0.500	0.508
Jaepil Kim ('02)	-0.023	0.500	0.523
Daniel Hahn ('06)	-0.045	0.500	0.545
Tommy Lee ('03)	-0.068	0.167	0.235
Gee-Won Kim ('03)	-0.068	0.500	0.568
Jomo Lee ('02)	-0.087	0.500	0.587
Jiehoon Lee ('02)	-0.106	0.292	0.398
Stephen Lee ('02)	-0.110	0.500	0.610

Positive luck totals indicate lucky teams.

Looking at the luck column, we see that Mejeld and Dan The Man were helped out significantly by playing teams who had bad weeks. Meanwhile, Jiehoon and Stephen had the unluckiest teams.

Highlights from my Philly trip with A-Han:

Massive quantities of cheesesteak.

Here are my cheesesteak rankings:
1) Dalessandro's (little known place that JongMin took us to)
2) Pat's
3) Geno's

Meeting up with people from all over the East Coast.

Special thanks to JongMin for being our personal tour guide, and EECS Daniel, for letting us stay at their place. We also met up with Nicole, Jiehoon (who came from DC), Hayeun (NY), Hanie (NY), and Sunny (Maryland).

The ING Direct cafe.

I don't think I could make this up if I tried. It didn't look like they sold any food-- they just had informational stuff about ING Direct. Talk about random.

Random t-shirt places.

We were thinking about getting Basile an "I eat poop" t-shirt, but it was $25, which is way too much to spend on Basile. Hayeun should've got the "Pale is the new tan" t-shirt.

Almost missing our flight back.

We got to the airport about 45 minutes before our flight, but there was a massive line to get past the security point. Fortunately, the workers there checked to see what time our flight was, and moved us up in the line.

I'm off to Philly!

The Vegas sportsbooks are pretty annoying.

They published that they'd take bets on baseball season win totals until April 15th, but then they took down those betting opportunities last night. So I didn't get to take full advantage of my betting scheme...

At least I profited from another sports investment:
I won $110 on a $5 investment because I won my office's tournament pool.

Today was baseball's opening day, meaning that people around the country were much less productive at work.

Of course, Mejeld and I were 2 of them. Our fantasy baseball league message board reads like an IM conversation (note the times of our message posts):

Mejeld 3:32 PM:
Tommy, I am sure your joy of Dunn's 2-run game tying homerun was ruined by Looper's INF next to his name. 0 IP 3 ERs and 2 HRs allowed, summing his total for the day: 5 IP & 16.20 ERA for the day...

Mejeld 4:21 PM:
Derek freaking Lee just hit a 3 run jack...sweet!

Tommy, you are dead this week.

Tommy 4:26 PM:
Mejeld, I was going to go ahead and follow your tradition of picking up the player who had the best game of Opening Day.

But unfortunately, Dmitri Young was already taken. So I settled for Calvin Pickering, who only had 1 homerun.

Mejeld 4:35 PM:
tommy you need to get an AIM just for baseball season bro...

i want to pick up Nady or Floyd...hahahaha

Tommy 4:46 PM:
Mejeld, aren't you contractually obligated to pick up Nady since he went to Cal when we were freshmen?