Bowling to Netfinity

Went bowling last night at the Frederick Brunswick Lanes. A friend brought his own ball, something someone left behind when he bought his house. The holes were a little big on the ball, and it was perhaps a 14lb ball, but it fit reasonably well, and I bowled what I consider to be a fair game with it. My scores were 135, 139, and 125 — and I hadn’t been drinking (I usually bowl better with a few beers in me). I know the scores aren’t actually very good, but I’m no league bowler, I don’t have my own shoes, and I have no idea how these balls work, or what works best for what lanes, or even how to put spin on the ball, like you see on TV. I’m thinking of learning more about the game, and maybe even getting a cheap ball of my own — something that will fit my hand properly. My reasoning is simple … I bowl more than I play squash, for example, and I bought an $80 racquet and court shoes so I could play squash. Not that different. Yeah, I’ve been saying this for years now, and I still haven’t bought a ball.

I’m at 1842. I’m drinking a double espresso. The girls behind the counter (I feel old enough now that they seem like “girls”) are talking about “Lost”, the TV show. They’re getting all giddy about something that happened in last night’s episode — somebody saw somebody’s father, and Sayid said something or other, and now there’s a horse on the island — but who cares? I watched the entire first season at one go (some friend loaned us the DVDs), and I can’t stand the show. Twin Peaks had fewer twists and turns, and was generally more believable. It’s as if someone gave M. Night Shyamalan a television show and said “go crazy with it” — they bet him money that he couldn’t outdo X-files in its weirdness.

I’ll be getting a Netfinity server to play with. A friend of mine scrounged up an older unit with 9GB SCSI drives. Think I’ll make me a Quake server or something. Maybe I can find a way to move my website over to something with a little fault tolerance. I think it’s a dual-processor box, too. More importantly, it’s a rackmount server, and I’ll finally be using up some of the negative space in my enormous server rack. Got to do something with it.