I'm currently listening to Freakonomics, and it's pretty interesting.



It's a book about how incentives affect people, and covers random topics such as:
-The organizational structure of crack dealers
-Collusion in sumo wrestling tournaments
-How teachers cheat for their students on standardized tests
-Discrimination on The Weakest Link
-Why real estate agents don't work hard to get you the best sale price on your home

My company brought on a new hire this week-- a guy who graduated from Cal this past semester with a statistics degree.

And our company has this thing where everyone gets a "mentor" of sorts. Because we're both Cal graduates with statistics degrees, I've been assigned to be his mentor at work.

I find this kinda funny, because I still feel as if I don't know what's going on at work. Regardless, I can now call someone my protege.

But from this point forward, I won't be referring to him as that.

I've learned too many valuable lessons from the episode of Seinfeld where Kenny Banya has a girlfriend who's the mentor of Jerry's girlfriend.

Lesson 1 in taking things out of context: It's fun.

For example, here's a direct quote from an e-mail I just got from Basile:

Man, I loved when she got punched in the face

Sounds insensitive, right?

Well, here's the context:

I e-mailed Basile about Dan The Man's most recent post about the 24 finale. Here's the part of Dan's post that Basile was referring to:

[edit] Removed the spoiler...

And Curtis punched a girl in the face. Closed fist. No hesitation. Right in the nose. I don't know why, but that made me laugh really loud.

OK, the context doesn't really help Basile that much. Haha...

Friday was a long day of attending graduation ceremonies and helping people move.

Basile and I came home on Friday night at 11:30, rested for a few minutes, and then began to start moving some of the boxes that we're storing over the summer.

I left the door to our apartment unlocked, but when we came back from my car, we were unable to open our door. Allen wasn't home at the time, so we were locked out of our apartment, even though we both had our keys.

Here's a timeline of the events that followed:

11:45 PM: We tell the security desk we're locked out of our apartment even though we both have our keys. The guy at the security desk pages the maintenance worker to let him know that we need his assistance. The maintenance worker responds and says he'll come over. In the meantime, another worker heads to our apartment to make sure that there isn't some easy way to open our door. We are told to wait at our door.

12:20 AM: By this time, 2 different people have tried opening our door, but since the problem is related to the door handle and not the lock, we are told to wait for a maintenance person to arrive.

1:30 AM: We wait patiently, but at this point we don't think the maintenance guy is going to show up. So we call Jamie and ask if we can stay over at her apartment for the night. She lets us stay over, and we go to their apartment. I tell the person working at the security desk to call me if the maintenance guy ever shows up.

2:00 AM: We get ready to go to sleep at Jamie, Sarah, and Unjung's apartment, and begin sleeping on their couches. Basile falls asleep.

2:20 AM: I receive a call that the maintenance person has arrived at our door. This is about 1.5 hours after he was initially contacted. He begins working on opening our door, but it takes him half an hour to adjust the door handle so that we can open the door.

3:00 AM: We finally get into the apartment, 3 hours and 15 minutes after we told the security desk about the problem.

The most annoying part about this whole incident was not necessarily that the maintenance person didn't come quickly--it was a Friday night after all--but that we were told to wait in front of our door with the expectation that a maintenance person would arrive at any moment.

And even after all that waiting, the door handle wasn't completely fixed. The next morning, the maintenance person came back and needed almost 3 hours to completely fix our door.

I was asked to post the following picture on my blog. Eileen looks so happy...



(This picture was originally on Brian Hwang's xanga.)

The 3rd episode of Star Wars just came out.

I've never watched any of the Star Wars movies, but I love Star Wars because it brought us the Triumph The Insult Comic Dog bit.

(The one where Triumph makes fun of people waiting in line for Star Wars: Episode 2.)

Amazingly, AHan introduced me to this too, even though I wasn't living with him at the time...

AHan has single-handedly gotten me to start watching the following TV shows:

-24
-Lost
-Grey's Anatomy
-Numbers
-The Office

There are probably more shows, I just can't remember.

I'm not sure if I'm supposed to thank him or complain that I'm watching 5 more hours of TV per week because of him...

On behalf of Peter Choi, here is a little something I plan to post on my league's fantasy baseball message board:

Today's Story Of Zack Greinke Getting Screwed (TSOZGGS), with a personal touch.

Going into Sunday, Jomo and I were tied in wins with one apiece. I had Zack Greinke starting while Jomo had Randy Johnson going.

So obviously I didn’t have high hopes for the wins category because Greinke pitches for the Royals and Johnson pitches for the Yankees. But still…

I’m now convinced the Royals have some sick pleasure in torturing Greinke. For the first time this year, the Royals won a game that Greinke started.

But of course, they scored the game-winning runs in the bottom of the 7th, meaning Greinke didn't get the win only because he didn't get the last out of the 7th inning.

(He pitched 6.2 innings and was relieved during the top of the 7th after giving up only 1 run.)

Meanwhile, Randy Johnson gave up 4 runs in 6 innings to what is currently the worst offense in baseball. But the Yankees scored the game-winning runs in the top of the 7th and Johnson got the win.

For the week, I had 47.1 IP, a 2.66 ERA, and 1 win.
Jomo had 39 IP, a 5.54 ERA, and 2 wins.

But back to Greinke… it’s a given that Greinke has the worst run support in baseball. His run support is 0.58 runs/game.

This is more than 1.50 runs worse than the guy who has the 2nd worst run support, Esteban Loaiza (and of course, I own him too.)

So here are the updated Zack Greinke Getting Screwed (ZGGS) stats:

Runs the KC Royals have scored while Zack Greinke has been pitching in his first 8 starts (a span of 46.2 innings): 4.

Leads the KC Royals have given Zack Greinke in his starts: 3 (all 1-0 leads)

In 2005, Greinke has an 0-4 W-L record and a 3.09 ERA.
For his career, Greinke is 8-15 with a 3.76 ERA.

Come back, Dave Chapelle...

Who else can create so much joy out of topics such as doo-doo butter, mud butt, and Rick James?

Sammo is thinking about switching to Sprint because he can get a discount from work. So he wants me to run a quick survey for him:

Anyone have comments about Sprint's cell phone service in the Bay Area?

Today at work was our annual team-building event, so we went to Scandia Family Fun Center in Rohnert Park (where Sammy Sohn lived while he was in the Bay Area).

Our activities included:
Miniature golfing
Go-kart racing
Bumper boats
Batting cages
Arcade

The bumper boats were pretty sweet. Each boat had a spray nozzle that you could point at whoever you wanted to get wet (even spectators).

I got drenched by my co-workers. Fortunately it was sunny today, so I got dry pretty quickly.

My manager at work used to collect baseball cards, and he recently bought a price guide to check out the value of his collection.

He let me look through it. After doing so, I determined there are 3 cards that make up about half the monetary value of my collection of 5,000 cards.

1994 Alex Rodriguez Rookie Card $80



Too bad it's not close to being in mint condition...

1995 Vladimir Guerrero Rookie Card $80



This was the pride and joy of my collection even before Vlad became a Los Angeles Angel of Anaheim.

1995 Andruw Jones Rookie Card $40



Sadly, I think the Andruw Jones rookie card is worth more than the 4,000 baseball cards I have from 1990-1992.

Apparently, rookie cards of star players are the only cards that seem to retain their value. All of the other flashy cards don't hold up over time.

I guess I'm just glad I didn't invest in Darryl Strawberry, Eric Davis, or Jose Canseco cards...

The British magazine Restaurant published their fourth annual ranking of the World's 50 Best Restaurants.

Amazingly, the Bay Area has 3 of them:

3) French Laundry, Yountville (north of Napa)
13) Chez Panisse, Berkeley
38) Manresa, Los Gatos (south of San Jose)

We have a new timesheet system at work, and we now receive an e-mail with the following:



Warning!

It appears that you have not submitted a timesheet for the week 30-APR-05 to 06-MAY-2005. Please complete your timesheet and remember to click "Review" and then "Submit". Your cooperation in submitting your timesheet promptly is extremely important and your assistance is greatly appreciated. If you have any questions, please email HRMS_Payroll.

I think we'd all be OK with this, except that we get this message 2 hours before timesheets are due!

Wow. Sometimes life at work really does feel like the movie Office Space.

So I haven't blogged too much this past week.

But I have an explanation... I've been doing most of my writing on my fantasy baseball league's message board. I've written 2,140 words in my 9 message posts since Monday.

That's the equivalent of writing a 7 page essay. And who says you don't write once you're done with school?

Apparently I'm a "cell phone pack rat".

That's what Allen called me when he noticed that I spent 3 hours entering in over 100 numbers into my new cell phone. I know it's a waste of time to put in numbers for people I never call, but I figure it could come in handy some day.

Plus, I was watching TV while doing it, so it wasn't too painful.