Category: Uncategorized

This past weekend I decided to bowl an Orlando ABT (Amateur Bowler’s Tour) Tournament at AMF Casselberry Lanes. The qualifying was on Saturday April 4, 2009. I ended at +105 to make it into the semi finals on Sunday.

Unfortunately, due to surrounding circumstances, there were only 21 entrants in this weekend’s tournament. There was the Orlando City Tournament, and a UBA tournament in the area. Never the less I still bowled well and was happy to be one of the 7 semi-finalists. I used a combination of my [bowlingball value=”4444″/], [bowlingball value=”6912″/], [bowlingball value=”6913″/]. I have a very bad habit of relying on handicap pins. I have a mental block, where I feel I can’t win without handicap. I was very worried when I looked at the recap sheets and saw that I was the getting the fewest pins handicap of the group. Because of this tournament I have learned not to rely so heavily on handicap sticks. At the beginning of the first game I saw many of us were seemed to be striking at will. I think 4 of the 7 of us started with three strikes. I used mental imagery and a positive attitude to tell myself that this was a marathon and not a sprint.

The top two semi-finalists moved on to the finals, and I came in second place. The finals consisted of Josh Tabony (a lefty) and myself. Josh was the top seed and had lane choice. I think he made the mistake of wanting to go first, rather than the lane conditions. We both struggled on the right lane, yet his decision to go first had him finish on the right lane. I think this one decision really cost him 1st place. Unfortunately, I didn’t close him out going into the 10th. The game was in his hands. He need a double to win, and ended up leaving the 4-7.

I know that I keep downplaying the win, because there were only 7 semi-finalists. But I am warming up to the fae that I still had to bowl well to win. I did that, and feel that I have gained confidence through this experience. I look forward to bowling more tournaments in the future. I am definitely not doing this to make a living, but more as a fun weekend activity where I have the chance to make a little money.

[bowlingball value=”4444,i150l”/] [bowlingball value=”6912,i150l”/] [bowlingball value=”6913,i150l”/]

The [bowlingball value=”6991″/] is a GREAT bowling ball. Read my review in a previous post.

The new Roto-Grip Rogue Cell is the latest in the Cell Line from Roto-Grip.

Based on the drilling instruction included with the ball, I went with the 5×3, 2″ buffer. This was touted as the Layout Everybody Needs. The pin is 5″ from my PAP, the MB is 3″ from the PAP and the Pin is 2″ off the VAL.

While shooting our video, I was highly impressed with the overall reaction of this bowling ball. Keeping in mind that I am only a 180-190 average bowler, it took very few takes to shoot good video with this bowling ball.

There was another bowler that looked at the ball and was very curious about the coverstock. The Hybrid coverstock is a very nice blend of a solid and a pearlized cover. This gave the ball great length and power to grip it and rip it back to the pocket.

What a great bowling ball. Great job Roto-Grip.

Ok, I have seen many tweets about this last week and finally watched it over on Jeff McCord’s blog. Very funny, insightful, and interesting.

I have been looking around at writing pluggable code. It intrigues me that you can write a system and then extend it for other users. Open Source software is all about the community contributing, and plugins are the latest way to let your community help build your system.

Here are the keys to writing plugins that I have found so far:

Identify all of your API requirements. What are the key points to your system. For wordpress, there are hundreds of such “hooks”.

You will most likely want two (2) hooks at every point that you want developers to change. Pre and Post.

Your code is very simple at this point.

<your code>
<Call Plugins for hook ABC>
ABC
<your code>

If you are going to print something to the screen, you can
<get info to be printed>
<Call plugins to modify info>
print info
<continue…>

I read Chris Corbyn’s “Writing a pluggable system in php” for more information.

The [bowlingball]6295[/bowlingball] is being released tomorrow, Jul 15, 2008.

We did our first video newsletter today. It was quickly thrown together, but was fun.

Check it out at the bowlingball.com blog.

I just read a post on the bowlingball.com blog about the US Junior Amateur Tournament. There was a part in it that I want to know more about.

How did the bonus pins come into play? Did they make a difference in the outcome? How were they earned?

These bonus pins are intriguing, as they just don’t seem fair.

I just read a post from a woman that bowls occasionally with her husband. She uses an [bowlingball]1799[/bowlingball].

It got me thinking about me bowling with my wife and how she really only goes for me. She doesn’t really enjoy it enough to want to improve. Whereas I want her to have a passion for the game like I do. I strive for a 200 average (currently in the 180’s). She is happy if she breaks 100.

Like the blogger says, it seems like a case of yin vs yang.