End of the Biking Season

With the demise of daylight savings time, it pretty much ends the biking season for the year. The early sunsets no longer allow daylight riding in the evenings. Of course, weekends are still available, but with the dropping temperatures, I don't expect to ride a lot between now and the end of the year.

For the second year in a row, the numbers of miles I've ridden has gone down. I may ride a bit more, but I'm not going to top my 2003 distance.

Year	Distance Ridden (miles)
2002	1168
2003	855
2004	700 (so far)

Motorcycle riding was also off for the year. I kind of make 1,000 miles my goal for the amount of miles I ride on my motorcycle, but this year's total was only 410.

Jeff Suppan Baserunning FolliesTM

While it is a bit late to talk about Game 3 of the four-game 2004 World Series, I did want to make a point. You may recall the brain freeze of Cardinal pitcher Jeff Suppan during the third inning of Game 3. He was on third base, when a ball was hit to deep second. The Red Sox were pretty much conceding the run, but Suppan couldn't make up his mind, broke home, went back towards third, stopped, and was eventually picked off.

My intent here isn't to rag on Suppan. These things happen, and it's not like the Cardinals would have won the Series if not for his mistake. He's a pitcher, not a "real" baserunner. Actually, that is my point. I hear National League fans claiming that the American League doesn't play "real" baseball due to the D.H. Maybe that's true. But... it's also true that the chances are that such a sorry display of baserunning would be much less likely to be seen in an American League park. One advantage of "fake" American League baseball is that it tends to keep guys like Suppan off the bases, resulting in fewer "little league" plays in the World Series.

Pumpkin

Baby Photos

People have been complaining lately that they wanted more pictures of the babies, so here you go.

World Series Comment: Bring on Game 7!

As I write this, the Boston Red Sox lead the St. Louis Cardinals in the 2004 World Series, two games to none. While I guess I prefer Boston to win, a part of me prefers that no team that has won its most recent World Series before 1948 win a World Series before the Cleveland Indians do.

Also, it seems to me that there would be a certain poetic irony if the Cardinals would win the Series after falling behind three games to none.

But, what I think I would most like is a long World Series. I like the World Series. So, the way I look at it, the more the better. For that matter, bring back the 9 game Series. "I predict the Indians in 8!" d:-)

OK, maybe going back to a 9-game Series isn't a serious suggestion. But, I'd rather see the Cardinals win at least a few and make things more interesting.

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray (Amazon link) was a selection from the book discussion group of my local public library. I've never seen the 1945 movie or any other production of this story. In the book, as you are probably aware, the portrait of a young man ages, while his appearance remains unchanged.

This was a slightly different representation of Dorian Gray than how he was portrayed in the 2003 Connery flick The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. In that movie, Gray is rather immortal, as any damage done to his body is instantly transferred to the portrait, while he is healed. Needless to say, this is nothing at all like the book. In the book, the focus is on Gray's increasing moral corruption showing up on the picture. While his physical appearance remains unchanging, there is never the assumption that he can't be killed or hurt. In fact, those concerns are a major part of the story.

Another difference between Wilde's work and LXG was that in the mediocre (at best) flick, Gray (or maybe others, I forget) couldn't look at the portrait or he would die, whereas observing the portrait is a major item in Wilde's work.

This wasn't intended to be a comparison/contrast piece between the book and unrelated movies. Anyway, the most interesting parts of the book are not the journeys into Dorian's psyche, but the drawing room conversations involving his friend Lord Henry. If anyone represents the devil in the book, it would definitely be Lord Henry. Although I don't recall his exact quotes, he's the type of character that would say something like, "I hear that Mr. So and So has been spreading vile gossip about me behind my back. Let me assure you that these wild accusations are most certainly and completely true." Henry's advice reminds me of the Weird Al song "Everything You Know Is Wrong". His hedonistic advice is in the end devastating to the young and impressionable Dorian.

As with my recent review of Tolstoy, it's interesting to think that Dorian was written in 1891 or whenever, in the era of my grandparents' grandparents. Some of the sensual descriptions of male beauty make one not surprised to hear of the author's later legal troubles. All-in-all, it's an uneven work. Dorian Gray is enough of a cultural reference that one should be familiar with the concept. It's interesting and entertaining in places. But, in others it is boring and predictable. I certainly wouldn't want to discourage anyone from reading it that might otherwise be interested in the author or the era. I give it two stars out of five.

Roaring 40's Win ILCF Regular Season Title

I'm still amazed at my success, but my CFL fantasy football team's regular season has ended with it in first place. For the sake of posterity, here's the final 2004 ILCF regular season standings:

Standings as of week 18

                     GP   W  L  T Pts   PF   PA  DIFF

Columbus Roaring 40's 18  15  2  1  31  717  427  290

Nepean Killer Bunnies 18  11  6  1  23  718  604  114

Newfoundland Brigade  18  11  7  0  22  657  589   68

Yellowknife Ice Worms 18  10  7  1  21  667  564  103

-----------------------------------------------------------

Richmond Roughriders  18  10  8  0  20  706  625   81

Windsor Border Patrol 18   7  9  2  16  460  577  -117

Steel City Stench     18   3 12  3  9   463  566  -103

Edmonton Marauders    18   1 17  0  2   182  618  -436



Matchups for round 1 of the playoffs (Edmonton players idle)

Yellowknife at Columbus

Newfoundland at Nepean

On to the playoffs!!!

Here's the current roster, which got us through most of the season:

---

QB:	Marcus Crandell, Cal Casey Printers, BC Ricky Ray, ??
OL:	Ottawa
RB:	Antonio Warren, BC Scott Deibert, Cal
RC:	Chris Brazzell, BC Frank Cutolo, BC Winston October, Edm Tony Miles, Tor Mike Morreale, Ham Albert Connell, Cal Denis Montana, Cal
DL:	Brent Johnson, BC Clinton Wayne, Ott Roger Dunbrack, Ott
DB:	Almondo Curry, Mtl George White, Cal
LB:	John Grace, Cal
K:	Paul McCallum, Sask Sandro Sciortino, Ott
P:	Paul McCallum, Sask Sandro Sciortino, Ott
KR:	Winston October, Edm Chris Brazzell, BC

Due Date

Today is the original due date for C and I. I guess this means that my other kids and I can now say that they are "zero" and not "negative one".

The Death of Ivan Ilych by Leo Tolstoy

I last (and first) attempted to read Tolstoy when I was in high school and bought a paperback copy of War and Peace mostly in an attempt to impress a girl. I've been asked whether or not I was successful. Well, I don't think I made it past page 50 or so of about 1500 pages, so you can use your own judgment to answer this question.

But today's review is on The Death of Ivan Ilych. (Here's the Amazon.com link for a slightly different collection.) This is a much shorter story than W&P. I'm not sure what the distinction is between a (long) short story, a novella, and a short novel, but it's in there somewhere, and I made it through the whole thing.

The subject of Ivan should be clear enough from the title. It begins with the title character's funeral, but then backtracks to cover his entire life, including the illness that ended it. The whole gamut of emotions is expressed by ol' Leo, including lots and lots of despair. Tolstoy was masterful in his writing. At times I found myself amazed at how "modern" it sounded for being written in eighteen hundred something-something or whenever.

While I can't say that it was a life-changing experience for me, I can say that this story has the potential to alter how you look at life and death. Thus, it's a weighty and consequential work that will make you think, rather than just being a piece of fluff. Just being potentially life-changing is enough for me to give it my highest rating: five stars out of five.


My copy of Ivan also included the story Master and Man. In this story, a wealthy rural Russian businessman and one of his servants set out (by horse and sledge) on a trip to close the deal on the purchase of a forest. In the middle of winter. In Russia. In a snowstorm. Can you guess what happens next?

Once again, Tolstoy very believably explores the thoughts of men as they approach death. While this story doesn't quite have the impact of Ivan, it's worth reading if you ever find it. Three stars out of five.

I still don't have any plans to pick up War and Peace any time soon.

Wait Till Next Year: A Memoir by Doris Kearns Goodwin

Wait Till Next Year (Amazon.com link) tells the story of the author's childhood in Rockville Centre, New York in the 1950s. Despite the book not being very long (257 quick pages, including a good deal of photographs), the author goes into detail in at least the following areas:

• Her family, including its history, joys, and tragedies.
  
• Her friends, neighbors, and community, including the inevitable decline in community as the decade wore on,
• Her experiences in school and the Roman Catholic Church,
• Her increasing understanding of events of national significance,
• And, last, but not least, what it was like to grow up as a Brooklyn Dodgers fan and the how baseball was and can be a uniting force in families and communities. (As a aside, I was planning on adding a link to a cool Brooklyn Dodgers web site, but I couldn't find one on the first page of Google results.)

One thing I find striking is how much more unsupervised her childhood was compared to those of my children, while my childhood was probably somewhere in-between. Getting into the reasons for this would be a topic for another blog entry.

Back to the book: I found it to be a very good read. If you're not a baseball fan, don't be scared by the apparent baseball theme of the book -- baseball certainly isn't the main point. I suppose I could consider that to be a negative, but I won't. I enjoyed it and would recommend it to just about anyone who would think it might be interesting. Four stars out of five.

Zych For President

The brother of a friend of mine is running for President. Of the United States of America. Check it out.

If I've met him, I'm sure it was only briefly, like at my friend's wedding or something. But, hey, I'd vote for him! "We've Done Worse".

You're Never Too Old To Make a Semicolon Mistake

Not that this will be interesting to many people, but today I noticed that I had made the following C++ mistake. I wrote:

if ( !foo );
{
// ...
}

It was detected early enough in the cycle. Sure, it's legal code, but it would be nice if the compiler would give warnings in cases like this.

(If you'd like, insert your own joke here about the importance of semicolon screening.)

2000 Election Again (or How Big is Your House?)

The law that set the size of the US House of Representatives at 435 was passed in 1941. There is nothing magical about the number 435. If you asked Congresscritters in 1941 what they thought the size of the House might be in 2001, perhaps many would have thought that it would have been larger.

Since Gore won the popular vote in the 2000 election, anyone giving a bit of thought to the makeup of the electoral college would realize that a larger House of Representatives would have resulted in a Gore electoral victory. But how large would such a House need to be?

You can find the answer at this link at thirty-thousand.org.

The answer is 492.

Hold on, this is where it gets interesting. House sizes of 491 and 597 result in an electoral tie. But for sizes between these two numbers, the result flip-flops (to use a term from the 2004 election) several times between favouring Bush and Gore, with a few electoral ties as well.

Gore wins with a House size greater than 597. Except for 655, which would have resulted in a tie.

According to the thirty-thousand.org site mentioned above,

The winner of the 2000 presidential election was determined in 1941 when the House size was fixed at 435. Had the House size been set at 500 in 1941 (and not been changed since) then Gore would have won the 2000 election!