Ouch.

I was out of town all day yes­ter­day and got back late enough that I did­n’t both­er to check any sports scores. I had had some inti­ma­tion of the rude infor­ma­tion that await­ed me in the San Jose Mer­cury News sports sec­tion (owing to an ill-timed con­so­la­tion call from the Chi Alpha leader at Berke­ley).

So we lost Big Game. Again. And we lost Big Game big. Almost as bad­ly as it has ever been lost (although out­ranked by our 1930 41–0 romp over Cal).

I think the prop­er atti­tude is con­veyed in Mark Pur­dy’s col­umn:

Oh, it could have gone worse for Stan­ford on a windy, blus­tery after­noon. But only if a tree had fall­en on The Tree.

Cal’s 41–6 vic­to­ry Sat­ur­day was so awful, Stan­ford fans spent the sec­ond half leav­ing in droves — in lux­u­ry cars, actu­al­ly, but in drove-like for­ma­tion.

Heh. It’s a game we lost, but it’s only a game.

Of course, had we won I’d be singing an alto­geth­er dif­fer­ent tune about the rel­a­tive impor­tance of squash­ing one’s rivals like bugs. But we did­n’t win, and so I adopt the more ratio­nal atti­tude. 🙂

That Awful Sinking Feeling

This morn­ing around 9:50 I glanced at my cal­en­dar and real­ized that I had a rather impor­tant meet­ing at 10:00. In Sacra­men­to. 125 miles away.

As my stom­ach sank into my socks I began mak­ing those pathet­ic, des­per­ate sounds I am prone to make in such situ­ta­tions, “Urgh. Ack. Jeez. No. Must be a mis­take. Shoot. AARGH!”

That may seem mild, but I assure you that if I was pos­sessed of a more flex­i­ble vocab­u­lary I would have employed every unwhole­some utter­ance at the stereo­typ­i­cal sailor’s dis­pos­al. As it is I prob­a­bly pushed the bound­aries for some­one in my line of work–at least inter­nal­ly.

Any­way, I was out the door in a flash and arrived just in time for lunch.

As it turned out I only missed the infor­ma­tion­al part of the meet­ing and was able to be present for the deci­sion-mak­ing dis­cus­sions.

Which is for­tu­nate, because the world needs more unin­formed peo­ple mak­ing impor­tant deci­sions… 🙂

My Halo 2 Stats

This is too wild: you can check out my Halo 2 stats (updat­ed as I play), down to the details of an indi­vid­ual game.

You will note, by the way, that I am not par­tic­u­lar­ly good com­pared to the lead­ers (but I guess I should­n’t feel too bad since over 300,000 con­tenders have thrown their hat into the ring).

Inci­den­tal­ly, the cam­paign sto­ry­line is absolute­ly mad­den­ing. It’s cool as can be up until about 3/4 of the way through, and then it takes a detour into crazy­town. And the end­ing makes you want to rip your eye­balls from your sock­ets and hurl them at the screen in protest.

Mul­ti­play­er rocks, though.

Ukiah, Here We Come!

We’re going to be at Red­wood Val­ley Assem­bly of God this week­end, so I decid­ed to do some quick research about them.

What I dis­cov­ered floored me: they meet in the old build­ing which Jim Jones (yes, that Jim Jones) used for cult meet­ings.

Both cool and creepy at the same time.

This snip­pet from the church web­site says it best:

What once was a place used for self­ish ambi­tion is now a place of redemp­tion.

I know the pas­tor, but I nev­er thought to google his name before now. I bet he’s got the most fas­ci­nat­ing sto­ries. I real­ly look for­ward to learn­ing more this week­end.

XBox Live

By the way, if any of my pals out there have XBox Live accounts email me your gamertag. We’ll have to play some Halo 2 togeth­er.

Curt Harlow Blogging

A good friend of mine Curt Har­low has begun to blog. Check out http://www.curtharlow.com/. He also has a Xan­ga site which does­n’t seem to have the same con­tent, so you can also check it out (or just sub­scribe to his Xan­ga RSS feed).

Curt, inci­den­tal­ly, is relo­cat­ing from the Chi Alpha cen­tral office in Spring­field, MO to serve as our West Coast overseer/coach/supervisor type. His for­mal title is “West Coast Field Rep­re­sen­ta­tive.”

We can’t wait to have him out here!

Halo 2

At 12:01 am I became a proud Halo 2 own­er.

At least, in the­o­ry I did. I did­n’t actu­al­ly get a copy in my grub­by lit­tle paws until around 1:00 am.

I had pre­paid for the game and it was wait­ing for me in the store with my name on it, I just had to wait in line behind approx­i­mate­ly 200 oth­er peo­ple who also the­o­ret­i­cal­ly owned copies.

Really–there were at least 200 folks there, and I think the real total was clos­er to 250. For­tu­nate­ly most of them were groups of two to four folks who all intend­ed to go home and get their game on right after­wards. There were prob­a­bly 80–90 actu­al game acquisi­tors (is that a word?) ahead of me.

Over­all it took me an hour to make my way to the front of my line.

Nick Hasu­lak (a stu­dent from our min­istry) had bummed a ride off of me to pick up a copy. He had­n’t pre­paid or pre­order or pre­con­sid­ered. He just decid­ed to hop in my car and pur­chase the game for him­self.

Here’s the kick­er: he got his copy before I did in the “VIP” line for ful­ly-paid pre­orders. I guess the store fig­ured that since we had already giv­en them our mon­ey they did­n’t need to wor­ry too much about cus­tomer ser­vice.

I’ll remem­ber that next time I’m tempt­ed to pre­pay.

I’ve now rat­i­fied my geekdom–I stood in line at mid­night for a videogame.

Of course, Halo tran­scends social stra­ta and so at least half the peo­ple stand­ing along­side me looked like they had just stepped out of an Aber­crom­bie and Fitch com­mer­cial… maybe this isn’t the act I’ve been look­ing for to firm­ly estab­lish myself in geek cir­cles.

Any­way, I’ve start­ed play­ing and the game is incred­i­ble. It ful­ly lives up to my expec­ta­tions, at least so far.

If You Can Make It Here, You Can Make It Anywhere

Stan­ford is the sec­ond best uni­ver­si­ty in the world, accord­ing to The Aca­d­e­m­ic Rank­ing of World Uni­ver­si­ties.

Wow. It’s a priv­i­lege to min­is­ter here.

I can’t help point­ing out that Berke­ley is num­ber 4.

Yes…

…we just vot­ed.

Now you go do your part and togeth­er we’ll make some deci­sions about our gov­ern­ment, trust­ing in the Wis­dom of Crowds.

Seriously, How Much?

Bill Sny­der from the Chi Alpha nation­al lead­er­ship team is stay­ing with Paula and I right now. On the way back from pick­ing him up we stopped at the local super­mar­ket so that he could buy some snacks.

He bought one two-liter bot­tle of Diet Coke and a bag of grapes.

$10.02

I looked over and Bill was lit­er­al­ly frozen in shock, hand halfway towards his wal­let, as the price reg­is­tered in his brain.

Prices in the Bay Area real­ly are out of con­trol, but I found that hilar­i­ous. I’m still laugh­ing out loud even as I type this.