How to be a Great Ultimate Player

Jeff Hunn sent this a while ago, I finally refound it and decided to post it. It's a guide on how to improve your Ultimate Frisbee skills.

HOW TO BE A TOTALLY EXCELLENT ULTIMATE PLAYER IN 10 EASY STEPS

1. MAINTAIN A POSITIVE MENTAL ATTITUDE.
This is done by being positive your team will win, positive that all your calls are right and the other teams calls are wrong, and being positive you are a most excellent ultimate player. If for some reason (totally unrelated to your excellent play) your team loses, revert to an attitude of being Positively Mental.

2. MAKE SMART CUTS.
The key here is to clog, clog, clog. This is the only sure-fire way to get the disc. By cutting off all other cuts from your teammates, the person with the disc has no choice but to throw to you. Don't worry if you don't get it on your first cut, keep making sleazy clog-cuts until you do get it. Then huck it.

3. MAKE THE RIGHT CALL.
If you are the player with the best perspective, it's your call. If you are involved in the play, it's your call. If you are not in the play, and no decision is made, it's your call. If you are away from the field in a porta-john, it's your call. Don't let anyone deny you this right!

4. CHOOSE YOUR PASSES CAREFULLY.
After you get the disc, make a few fakes, then gaze deep downfield as if in a trance. Let the count get to eight then huck it. This may take blowing off two or three cuts first. If for some reason you do make a swing pass, immediately make the clog-cut.

5. USE THE RIGHT THROW.
Never throw a straight pass when you could throw an inside-out-cross-field-reverse-spin-inverted-overhead.
Passes like this must be used to confuse the defense and break open the field. If your teammate can't catch whatever it was you just threw, scream something like, "It was right there!" or "The count was on nine!"

6. KNOW YOUR TEAMMATES.
If a less than amazing player on your team gets the disc (i.e. anyone other than you), cut right to them, making sure to clog, and yell, "Take your time!" Hover behind them for a dump. Don't clear out. Ever.

7. KNOW THE OTHER TEAM.
Sit on your sideline in someone else's chair and criticize everything the other team does. By keeping the disparity between yourself and others at large, a Positive Mental Attitude can be easily maintained.

8. STAY VISIBLE.
When you're not drinking the other team's water, or sitting in not-your-chair, position yourself directly in front of anyone watching the game and scream hysterically. Be sure to tell your teammates they're cutting in the wrong direction. Cringe, spit, cuss, break some blood vessels, and generally freak out at any pass longer than 30 yards. While watching the game, be sure to stay just inbounds. YOU have the right to be on the field, but of course, no one else does.

9. NEVER SUB OUT.
Well, obviously.

10. AND NEVER FORGET, YOU ARE A GOD

The Inevitable Return of the Great White Dope

Well, if rumors surrounding Facebook are true I may be making a comeback. For more see here. If they move to open source that significantly limits their ability to data mine, and I would feel more comfortable. It's been nice without it, but I'm completely cut off from most people I know.

In other news, 10 points to anyone who knows where the post title comes from without looking it up online.

Cars, cars, everywhere there's cars, blocking out the scenery, breaking my mind...

As I've noted before, I spend inordinate amount of time on the road. With gas prices going over $4/gallon recently people are changing their driving habits. Out here everything is so far apart that doesn't mean driving less, it means driving slower. Which gets irritating. I've slowed down, I drive 55 max unless I'm on an interstate and accelerate slowly, it netted me another 5mpg. When your commute alone is over 350 miles a week that makes a difference. But I've noticed a lot of people driving excessively slow lately. Take for example a lady doing 30mph on US24, a speed limit 60 road. She was just creating a hazard, a dead deer in the road would have been less trouble because you wouldn't get semis doing 70 and swerving. At least once per day I find someone doing 15mph or more under the speed limit, almost always someone who likes to drive in the middle of the road too. And today, to make my commute take even longer, I got stuck behind 4 buses. My first thought was, "Why are there 4 buses on the same road at the same time, isn't that inefficient?" Yes, Virginia, it is. My second thought was, "Is it a law buses must drive 40mph?"

The Life (or lack thereof) of Schroedinger's Cat

I heard what has probably been the best analogy I've ever heard last night. I thought it was so good I would expound on it for all those who didn't hear it.

Have you heard of Schroedinger's Cat? Not Pavlov's Dog, which was an experiment in psychology and behavior modification. Schroedinger, the physicist, worked with quantum mechanics and theory. Schroedinger's Cat is a theoretical experiment in which a cat is placed in a box with a radioactive element, Geiger counter, hammer, and a vial of HCN. If the element undergoes alpha decay the Geiger counter will detect it and drop the hammer on the vial of HCN. The HCN dissociates and makes cyanide and kills the cat. If the element doesn't undergo alpha decay the cat is fine. Until the system is observed the atom exists in both the decayed and undecayed states, and therefore so does the cat (so to speak). So from the time the cat is placed in the box to the time the box is opened the cat is both alive and dead.

That's fascinating on numerous levels in itself. It's hard to conceive, but in quantum theory there is one cat, but it is both alive and dead. To be more accurate, it is described in terms of wave functions. Until the system is observed there are superimposed wave functions for a single object. Once observed the wave form collapses to a single equation.

Now, if we also look to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle we can understand Schroedinger's Cat even better. Heisenberg worked with subatomic particles, and stated in 1927 that the more we know about the position of a particle, the less we know about momentum, and vice versa. Along with that we discover that by observing a system we change it. Combining the two, we get that until the system is observed it is quite possible for the cat to be both alive and dead in our reality, our limited ability to observe the system without changing it decides weather or not the atom decays, and furthermore whether the cat lives or dies.


Moral of the story: We have to observe the system before we can either let the cat live or kill it. In other words, you have to take a chance and try living to know how wonderful or how terrible it can be, but most importantly you decide your own reality.

So now I have an expensive piece of paper, cool.

Well, I've been really busy lately, so I haven't had time to update on my life. I finally walked yesterday, so now I have a diploma in hand. All is states is "Bachelor of Arts" but doesn't say in what field. I find that a bit scary, I could claim to have a BA in particle physics if I wanted. I was a bit perturbed by the "top students" AKA cum laude, magna cum laude, and suma cum laude. They were about 75% El Ed majors, and most weren't overly intelligent. Those people with the easy majors, and their diploma says the same thing as mine.

For the record: this weekend Kelli told me 3 times I could have a Corvette. I wanted to have a written record so she couldn't renig.

In other news I've decided that, in the wrong hands, video games can cause crime. After much research (read: I got GTA: San Andreas a couple weeks ago) I had the urge the other day to run up to a nice car, pull the driver out (because not only does he not lock his doors, he doesn't wear a seat belt and stops when someone runs up to his car), and take off with his car. I've also played Mario Kart and now I want to install launchers on my car that shoot blue turtle shells, even though everyone knows the lightning bolt is far superior.

This will be another busy week, then Samurai's wedding next Saturday, Memorial Day Festivus, and then my intern starts next Tuesday.

So much for plan B

Well, I won't be moving to Goshen. I got beat out in a tie between another candidate they said they wanted equally as much. It came down to the fact he already has a license. Oh, and has 10 years experience. And a masters in chemistry.

It's good to know I was equal with that. But darn.

Stevie B backs down!!!

It's already been an amazing day, Microsoft backed down from their attempted takeover of Yahoo! It started with a buyout bid that undervalued them, then threats of a hostile takeover, then threatening to oust their board and cut their offer (despite a Microsoft stock downward spiral and Yahoo gaining value), and now ends with Stevie B backing away with his tail between his legs. Even if they had acquired Yahoo they would be far from able to compete with Google in any arena. Vista is being labeled the biggest mistake for Microsoft in their history, they're losing customers at an alarming rate (for them). Now this is making them look even weaker. It will be interesting to see where the next couple years takes the tech world.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7382665.stm