High Rolling

So much to write about!

First, class is officially over for the summer. I get a few weeks off until fall starts up, although, at the moment I'm not signed up for any classes. I'm quite sure that even with my 2 week absence I'm going to get an A in this class. Teacher liked my work and as always I was very talkative in class. Just can't keep my trap shut. I'm planning to post soon on some more of what we learned, which I think many here will find interesting and some may even find useful. More to come, what a tease!

Second, trip to San Francisco is complete. Out the door at 5:30 am Tuesday and back by 2 pm Wednesday. Now that is a quick trip! Too bad, because the weather was absolutely perfect in NorCal, sunny, about 70 degrees and a slight breeze. Some day, when I win the lottery, I will figure out a way to live there. The purpose of the trip was to meet with a longtime client of mine in preparation for a big project this fall. The meeting was fine, as usual. Afterwards, we went to this very high-fallutin' (sp?) Italian joint called Prima in Walnut Creek, CA, a town that was very Napervillian in nature. While the place was nice and it had all sorts of esoteric food on the menu, I found the food to be pretty below average. I had quail for dinner and, wait for it, it tasted like chicken. Should have gone for the squid pasta, oh well. I have to confess that it was not the ideal way to spend All-Star Tuesday (with MLB's all star game going on), at dinner with 9 women. Sheesh! I didn't even get to swing by the In N Out Burger during the trip!

After dinner, my colleague and I head to our hotel, Le Meridien (is everything in SF so snooty?). My colleague, quite into nice hotels and such, picked the joint. I don't really care where I sleep as long as there aren't any bugs. Anyhow, we get there, and she checks in. I step up next and apparently all the regular rooms are gone, she got the last one. Turns out they have to stick me in a hospitality suite. As you can tell from the pictures above, the hospitality suite is absolutely sick! I could have hosted a small Central American country in that thing. 3 rooms, gigantic screen TVs, an enormous, fully stocked bar. It was insane! And, party machine that I am, I managed to stay awake in this palacial room for all of about 30 minutes. The next morning, as I'm checking out, the dude working the counter told me the nightly rate for that room is actually $1200 per. Holy smokes!

One thing about travelling from the midwest to Cali is that the flights are LONG. Since I didn't have any schoolwork to do, I thought it would be a great time to catch up on some pleasure reading. I actually managed to finish two entire books between the two flights.

First up was a book called Freakonomics, written by a guy at University of Chicago named Steven Leavitt, and a NY Times writer named Stephen Dubner (BT, I just googled the dude and found he is an App St grad!). This book is basically about Leavitt's brilliance. And I really mean it. The guy is incredibly smart and creative. Basically, he takes data and uses it to answer all sorts of bizarre questions (and others that aren't quite so bizarre). For example, an entire chapter (probably the worst part of the book by the way) is spent looking at first names for children and evaluating whether or not Afrocentric first names harm the child's future in terms of limited opportunities (the authors conclude they do not). Much more interesting is the writing on match-fixing in Sumo, the inner business workings of a crack dealing operation and the link between Roe v Wade and the drop in crime rate. Readers here will likely appreciate the section on real estate agents and the difference between how they sell their own homes vs their client homes. Required reading for anyone using a realtor to sell a home. This book is very well-written, very interesting and highly recommended. I hope there is a sequel - the authors set up a blog to continue discussing the issues in the book and others they feel like bringing up. I'll have to check it out.

The other was a baseball book that I was highly anticipating reading. It's called Getting In the Game: Inside Baseball's Winter Meetings by baseball play by play voice Josh Lewin. As loyal readers know, I'm a big baseball fan and at one time even pursued broadcasting as a career. So I was very interested in hearing about the process of people trying to break through and land in the bigs. The book purports to follow the trek of three job-seekers as they attempt to land a job. While it does that to some degree, it is also muddled with a large amount of diversions, including history of the names of minor league teams, a whole chapter on mascots and other completely unrelated topics such as bat manufacturers, etc. These topics are quite interesting but are really off topic and dilute the ability to tell the story. Additionally, it's about people trying to break into Minor League Baseball, not the majors. Beyond this, Lewin's writing is just awful. He needed to find a co-author, someone with the ability to smooth out the story. Instead, we are left with a number of cliche'd comments and Lewin's attempt at delivering witty one-liners that almost always come across as forced and ultra-cheesy. It's too bad, because this topic had great potential. This is not recommended reading. The good news is it only took me about 3 hours to chew through it.

Next up is an extremely lengthy bio on Neil Young. In the early going, it's really good. I'm looking forward to finishing it.

Song lyric of the day: "She's super-freaking, yow!" Rick James, beotch!

Until next time.

Ace