Complexes

I definitely think I have complex issues. Allow me to explain two. And by two, I mean the only two I think I have right now.

The House Complex
So I have this problem where I have way too high expectations for House episodes now. Because the first 5 seasons were so great, and 6 and 7 were decent enough for me to still be in love with the show, I had some high hopes for season 8. And this has worked out in some paradoxical way for me. The previous episode was REALLY GOOD, but I didn't have that "OMG THIS EPISODE WAS SO GOOD" feeling I had after a multitude of House (and even Lost) episodes. Actually, it happened more in Lost, I'd say. Where at the end of the episode, I'd be sitting there slackjawed, not knowing what the hell just happened, yet somehow understanding most of it, and thinking that that was an awesome episode. House doesn't do that anymore. House can be really good for 41 minutes and then have an indie rock montage that makes the entire episode seem solemn and peaceful. The last thing House is is peaceful. So because of all of this awesomeness that previously surrounded House, I've come to expect every episode to be amazing. Except that I don't let any episodes be amazing. So that kinda sucks.

The One Day, One Room Complex
What works out cool about that ^ is that it refers to my blog and a House episode at the same time. But here, I'll be talking about my blog. Rather, my blogging. If you were around me 24/7, you would see that there's always a 30-second span each day where I feel like I haven't blogged in forever. When the reality is I've gone more than a week between blog posts once. Part of this complex could be that maybe I don't have thoughts that I consider necessary to actually blog about. I dunno. I mean I clearly blog enough, if there have been two months in 2011 where I've had fewer than 12 blog posts. So I have no idea what this is. Probably just something else I should get over.

Disabbreviating

You know the thing where you do something to save time/energy/space/whatever, and then explain that you're doing it to save time/energy/space/whatever, and then conjecture you know, if I just did it this way in the first place, I wouldn't have had to write all this out...

Yeah...there needs to be a name for when that happens. That is all.

Red Sox Offseason Update: John Lackey

Welcome, John Lackey, to the Diasuke Matsuzaka Club.

Your credentials span far and wide, but the only requirement for you to join Dice-K is this - you missing an entire season with the Red Sox is actually a good thing. Some people are saying that it's just another starter we won't have in the rotation, but most of us are saying that we don't have to see you lose double-digit games for another year. Your Tommy John surgery will put you out of commission for the 2012 season, which is probably for the better. Unfortunately, you still suck. Let's look at why:

• First off, you're not good at pitching anymore. In your two seasons with Boston, you're 26-23 with a 5.26 ERA. Seriously? You led the league in ERA in 2007, but with the Red Sox, the best ERA you've had in a month is 3.46 in September of 2010. You had zero months with a sub-4.00 ERA in 2011, and went 0-2 with a 9.13 ERA in September of 2011. Thanks.
• Secondly, you relied ENTIRELY on your offense to win your games. When the offense scored six or more runs, you were 11-1. Cool. When the bats gave you fewer than six runs, you were 1-11. No, really. You gave up 56 earned runs in 71 innings in those 13 games the offense scored 0-5 runs. (Even your ERA when the bats lit up was awful - 5.87?? You're telling me the Red Sox give you 6 runs in 6 trips to the plate, and after you finish the bottom of the 6th, it's a 6-4 game? Thanks.)
• Hm, what's next...*scours baseball-reference* Oh, right. Your salary. You got paid $100,000 per inning pitched this year, are getting paid $15 million to do absolutely nothing next year, and the total salary in those three years ($50 million) is almost double what you made with the Angels in seven years (just over $27 million). Thanks.

So yeah...screw you. You can't pitch, not even when you have the best offense in the league, you are extremely overpaid, and you're ugly. I can't wait until I find a clever demeaning nickname for you so you can join Dice-BB as people I almost hope to never see pitch for the Red Sox again. You know what the best part is though? I didn't even have to mention the beer and chicken in the clubhouse during games. You sucked long before we all heard about that. Go have your Tommy John surgery, take a season off, figure out what it means to win in Boston, and then go be good again.

Once again, major props to baseball-reference. Maybe I should just go work for them for the rest of my life. ...Have I already said this? I feel like I have... (Editor's Note: I first praised it as the greatest baseball site ever, and then upgraded to the greatest website on the face of the earth. So no, I have not already said this.)

20 weeks until Selection Sunday

Maybe I'm getting a little ahead of myself to see what the field will be for the 2012 NCAA College Basketball Tournament, but if anything, it means that college basketball is finally upon us. Midnight Madness has come and gone, exhibitions and scrimmages are underway, and Duke is in the Maui Invitational, FINALLY. Unfortunately, UNC starts the season atop the polls, but come on...they suck. Nah, just kidding. Despite having an eternal contempt for the Tar Heels, I have no shame in admitting that they're good - especially Harrison Barnes. He's fallen into the same category many people placed J.J. Redick in, which is "You're good, so I hate you." Except, you know, people like UNC and not Duke.

This isn't about UNC and Duke though (as much as it could be). This is about college basketball itself. There's a new concept this year, called State of the Game, which is a top-to-bottom examination of the college game and all 300-odd teams in Division I. As well as the game itself. College basketball is loaded with talent every year, but unfortunately, this talent leaves the game after one season to go to the NBA. Maybe the lockout will help things this year, but all hope is lost for those in the 2011 draft class (see: Irving, Kyrie. Shoulda stayed at Duke my man...) who were hoping to play in 82 games with an NBA team this year. And personally, I think they should extend the amount of time players stay in college - sure, there's the occasional amazing talent like Irving, John Wall, LeBron, Kobe, or Dwight Howard who leaves at the earliest date possible, or the Brandon Jennings, who goes and plays professionally internationally instead of going to college, but just imagine if they had four years at school. To be under the tutelage of Hall of Fame coaches like Boeheim, Calhoun, Krzyzewski, Williams, is something that you don't see in the NBA. The longest tenured coach in the pros was Jerry Sloan before he retired this season, who was with the Jazz for 23 seasons. Three of those four college coaches have been with their team for longer than that (the one exception being Williams, who joined UNC in 2003.) The college game offers so much for players, yet so many seem to refuse it for more than one year.

But no matter what happens, college basketball is college basketball, which means it remains the greatest thing on TV. Yes, even better than House. Here are a few marquee Duke games I have my eye on this year:

• March 3rd - UNC @ Duke. Let's be real here, I have to give the first nod to senior night. In what could be a game to decide the regular season ACC Championship, this is any Duke fan's first game to circle on the calendar.
• January 25th - Duke @ Maryland. I always love the Duke/Maryland game in College Park...there's something about Maryland fans at Duke games that I just can't help but laugh at.
• November 15th - Michigan St. vs. Duke. As part of the Champions Classic, Duke, Michigan State, Kentucky, and Kansas will face each other over the next 3 years. Thank you, college basketball gods.

Epiphanie de la nostalgie

Prologue: For the record, I have no idea why the title of this post is in French, I just thought of it in French je pense (I think) so I stuck with it.

Anyway, I just came up with the coolest idea. (And by coolest, I mean like 137th on the list of coolest ideas ever. Just cool enough to talk about.) If you have an iTouch/Phone, listen to music sans headphones and put it under your pillow in the morning if you want to listen to some music. I say morning because when I did that this morning, it reminded me of the mornings in middle school where I'd wake up at 6:30, walk over to my parents' room, and lie on their bed listening to the radio to wait until they were both done showering. If they were running late, Mom would still be in bed, and I remember two songs that were played some morning - Follow Me by Uncle Kracker and Superman (It's Not Easy) by Five For Fighting. With the radio on Magic 106.7 and at low volume, it had this distinct sound to it, which is almost exactly the same sound as listening to music on an iTouch under your pillow. New favorite hobby? Yup.

Leaving out the last word of the

I have a theory. Maybe you're one of those people who take notes during class or a presentation, and when you look back at said notes, don't remember what you meant when you wrote a particular thing down. Which would leave those notes essentially useless to you. However. I postulate that there is a way around this. What if you left out the last word of the sentence? It would force you to figure out what that last word is given the context, and perhaps that would jog your memory from when you took the notes.

On an entirely separate note, I'm beginning to realize that I have many theories on the table right now. (And by many, I mean two. And by two, I mean two, plus every unresolved theory I've ever had ever. And by theory, I mean conjecture. Gotta be Language-of-Math-precise with my word selection here.) Last night when I worked Math Lab for an hour totally supported this, too. A friend of one of the tutors came in, and they were telling me about a Sabermetrics course at Stonehill. Yeah, like baseball sabermetrics. Taught by Su. HOORAY!!!!!!!! Uh so I'm definitely taking this 5000% totally going to do it because it's literally what I want to do with my life. My workplace won't be an office, or cubicle, or whatever...it will be baseball-reference.com. (Editor's Note: On second thought, maybe I should just work for baseball-reference...)

Values Game #4

What is the biggest misconception of you?

I remember saying over the summer that the biggest misconception of me is that I always know the right thing to do or say. That's not to say that I never have the right words, but maybe not all the time. I couldn't really think of anything else to say, and thinking about it now, I can't think of anything else again. I like to think that people are comfortable coming to me looking for advice, and I also like to think that I'm not terrible at giving said advice (there may be a correlation there), but no one has all the answers. If we had all the answers, then there wouldn't be any questions, and that wouldn't be fun.

Memory, Probability, and Blackjack

I want to see if having a photographic memory is more beneficial to winning hands of blackjack than counting cards are. There are many factors that will probably diminish the validity of this investigation, but I don't care. And by not caring, I mean I forget what we called them in AP Stats. Like what to check every time you do an inferential analysis. I hated doing that so much that my memory decided it was no longer relevant. Anyway, let me break down what I'm talking about when I say photographic memory and counting cards.

Photographic Memory: You don't actually need a photographic memory to play along here. I don't have one, but what I do have at my disposal is Microsoft Excel. I set up a spreadsheet with a cell for each possible card (A-K of Hearts, Diamonds, Spades, and Clubs), for a possible 52 cards. Because I can play the game at my own pace and refer to the spreadsheet as often as I like, it's essentially as good as having a photographic memory.

Counting Cards: In the most common system of counting cards, any card with a rank 2-6 is counted as +1, a 7-9 is counted as 0, and 10, J, Q, K, and A are counted as -1. Higher counts mean that low rank cards are coming out of the deck, which means that there are a higher proportion of high cards remaining. This is good for the player, so you can stand on 15 against a dealer's 5 and the dealer has a higher chance of busting.

Note: Counting cards is more generally used to change the player's bet as opposed to changing how the game is played, which is what sparked my interest in this concept. You can bet a little more money when the odds are slightly more in your favor, but what if you use probability to calculate the percentage of cards remaining, and can confidently predict a win in that hand?

Number of Decks: For now, let's assume only one deck of cards. Most games in casinos, on the Internet, on iTouches, whatever, use multiple decks, but for simplicity's sake, let's start with one deck. The deck will also not be shuffled, to help the photographic memory. This is never done in casinos (see: "diminishing the validity..."), but I'm making it so here.

Alright, there are a lot of words there. Too many without numbers. So, here we go.

The first hand I deal myself is an 8 and Ace of Hearts, and the dealer is showing a 10 of Hearts. Basic strategy says to stand, and I will. The dealer shows a 5 of Hearts, has to hit, and receives a 5 of spades. 20. I lose. It was an easy decision by the player, but the luck of the draw puts my first hand in the loss column.

After five hands, half the deck is gone. I've won two (one on a double down), and lost three. I haven't had a borderline decision yet, but I'm slowly getting a better idea of what cards are remaining in the deck. On my eighth hand, I have a decision to make. I was dealt 7 and hit to get 13, and the dealer is showing a 5. At this point, all of the 2's, 5's, 6's, and 10's have been dealt, leaving 12 cards left in the deck. The expected value of the next card that will be dealt is 7.58. To bust, I would need at least a 9, which has a 7/12 chance of happening. The odds are currently stacked against me, so I'll stand. The dealer turns over an 8, totaling 13, and hits, receiving a king. Win. My play was the same as basic strategy, but the photographic memory call was correct as well.

The deck of cards before I stood on 13

After this hand, there are 6 cards remaining - one 3, 7, J, and K, and two 9's. I get a nine and the king, and the dealer has a 7 showing. Basic strategy leaves me to stand, and the dealer shows a 3 and draws a jack to make 20 and win. In ten hands, I won 3, lost 6, and pushed on one. Pretty boring first deck, but hopefully the next few runthroughs will be interesting.

One hand involved me looking at 15 with a dealer 7 - basic strategy says to hit, but 14 out of the 35 remaining cards would put me over 21 - only 40%. The average of the remaining cards is 6, and the dealer would have to hit as well. I'll take the hit, following basic strategy. Five. Perfect. Stand on 20, and the dealer shows a 4. He hits it, takes a 2, and then a 10. Dealer busts, and I win. Later, I have a hard 17 against a dealer's ace. The proportion of bust cards is 50%, and the average of the remaining cards is 4.8, which would put the dealer around 16, having to hit. I'll take my chances to start, and hit. Five. Twenty two. I'm over, and the dealer shows a 2. If I played basic strategy, I would have ended up with 17, and the dealer 18, and I still would have lost. So far, this isn't really working out so well - there aren't a lot of hands that come up where I'd deviate from basic strategy based on the proportion of cards that would put me over 21, and the average card the dealer could have. I'll keep at it though, and see if I can come up with anything else interesting. If you've made it to this point in the post, give yourself 10 points. Half of this stuff doesn't even make sense to me anymore, but I'll see how it goes in the future. If anything exciting happens, there will be a follow-up blog post. But who knows...I've had a history of carrying out statistical analyses with no helpful result. Guess I'm destined to this. Good thing I love it!

Real Twitter!

Alright so I just typed up an awesome post except Blogger wouldn't let me publish it because the servers were down or some nonsense like that. I've been on the other end of this, where people have told me they typed up a long response to a Facebook message, or typed up a lot of their essay, only to lose it. To which I think how much a simple Ctrl+C or vicious repetition of Ctrl+Z would help. Alas.

I have a real Twitter now. It will serve literally the exact same purpose as my pseudo-Twitter tab, except, you know, be real. If anything, it will be more of an extension into the deepest parts of whatever the hell I think about, and it might actually amount to a few laughs (I hope).

Here is where you can follow me on Twitter! Click...if you dare.

So that's that...I don't know why it took me so much longer to write this the first time. Anywho. In a preview of a blog post in the very upcoming future, I'm going to digress on photographic memories, statistics/chance, and blackjack. As in, does knowing every single card that came before, and being able to calculate the number of remaining cards in the deck really help you? I have no idea how I'm going to answer (or even properly ask) this question, but I'll sure try.

7 things I've done in the last 7 days

Well, it's been 7 days since my previous blog post, and for the record, I still have nothing to write about. So let me tell you some things I did between my previous blog post, and this one.

1. Play electric guitar at school. Granted I've only done that for about 6 minutes, but hey. More than zero. I finally have the electric at school, so be on the lookout for my musings concerning that.

2. Go to Plymouth. Friday I went with Vicki to Plymouth, and we went to the mall to get Vicki some jeggings. On the way out I noticed Lids and a rather appealing Red Sox winter hat. I love me a good winter hat, so I purchased it. And by "purchased it," I mean that I entered in the wrong PIN number twice for my debit card, so Vicki paid for it. Nonetheless, I am plus-one on the swag.

3. See my family. We had a 25th anniversary party for my parents at my grandparents' house, and I almost got them there without ruining the surprise! Our neighbors, who were also going to the party, drove by right as we pulled up to my grandparents' house, and my dad figured something was up. Me, in my childish nervous laughter, confirmed my dad's thought. Good thing Mom was too oblivious to figure it out until she got inside.

4. Went to the Bruins/Lightning game. So far it's our only win of the season (a 4-1 victory), and it was fun to be back watching the Bruins. Nothing like playoff intensity, but it was still fun, and we have some pretty good seats behind Tim Thomas for two periods.

5. Watched a House episode. In particular, the one my blog is named after, "One Day, One Room." I wanted to have an actual post about it, instead of 5th on the list of things I did in seven days. But, it's whatever. Vicki thinks I cried during part of it, but I didn't.

6. Went to Harvard. Majed, Vicki, and I went to see Timm at Harvard, and we hung out, got ice cream, all that fun stuff. I mean that's all I can think of about it, but fun stuff happened, I promise.

7. Did 20 pushups. Vicki wanted a Mac and Cheese bite, and Tim made me do 20 pushups for it. I haven't done pushups in a while...nor am I going to, hopefully.

Uh, so I'm pretty sure I did other fun stuff in the last seven days, but this is all I can think of at the moment. Plus 7 and 7 is pretty cool, too. I dunno. I promise I'll have a cool blog post soon.

Jam Band #2

The Edge
U2

It took a lot longer than I could between my second and first Jam Band posts, but that's because I've been devoid of an electric guitar since school started. Good thing that will come to an end this weekend, where I'll be playing it at home, and then bring it back to school with me.

For this Jam Band post, I'm not really coming up with my own chord progression - I just thought that it would be really awesome to solo to this in some five-minute epic outro. It's the outro to All I Want Is You by U2 (if you read my previous post, you'd know that I'm OBSESSED with this song. For many reasons), which is as simple as

e---0--0-0----2--0---        A: x03330
B---3--2-3----3--3---        Asus2: x03320
G---3--3-3----2--2---        D: x00232
D---3--3-3----0--0---        Dsus2: x00230
A---0--0-0----0--0---
E--------------------

The tuning of All I Want Is You is in G-flat, which means you'd have to tune a half-step down from standard tuning on a guitar. That, or you could just play this wherever, with a capo anywhere. Part of the outro uses a Dsus4 (x00233) which makes the progression sound more like rock and minor pentatonic vamping than a love song, but such is the nature of U2.

Well, that's it for now. Maybe I'll find something else this weekend and post it! Or, maybe it will take me another eight weeks. Who knows.

All I Want Is You

Alright. I was gonna make this a quick post, but decided that I should just get a bunch of stuff down instead. Me and Vicki saw Contagion yesterday, and there was a scene where this song was played. (I'm going to spoil part of the movie, so if you'd be that upset, stop reading. Or don't. Gwyneth Paltrow dies in the first 10 minutes anyway.) Matt Damon was looking at pictures his wife took the day before she died, when she went to Hong Kong for work. He found the camera because he was going to take pictures of his daughter and her boyfriend having their own prom in the living room (because they were healthy enough to finally be together). Matt Damon, who had kept his cool for the entire movie, eventually broke down going through the pictures, and I eventually did too. Yep. I cried during a movie. I have no shame in admitting that, because it was that kind of scene for me. I knew of this U2 song...or rather, had heard it before, and didn't know the title, but I knew I liked the song. When Matt Damon composes himself and goes downstairs to see his daughter, he just smiles, and that's when me and Vicki started laughing at the fact that a B- movie was making me cry.

Well, I've been obsessed with this song since that movie, and have been listening to it nonstop today. I went to songmeanings.com to see what people thought of the lyrics, and as expected, most people attributed it to being a love song. One sentence from a comment caught me by surprise, and has one of the most interesting concepts I've ever thought about:

"How easy it is to envision myself in the most climactic moment of my existence, soaring into the irresistible everafter..."

I've been dealing with fighting my mind thinking about death and what happens when we die lately. When I say lately, I mean for a couple months now...sometimes I can handle it, and sometimes it gets the best of me and I'm left anxious, without answers, and scared. But to think of soaring into the irresistible everafter...that sounds pretty cool. To truly believe in something else, something after, and to desire that transition, is something I wish I could do. I keep telling myself that I'll get there eventually, that I'll figure something out, but that only works for so long. Maybe I finally found something to get me on the right foot.

On top of that, I just remembered a verse from Matthew that was read during the Welcome Mass at the beginning of the school year - "For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it." (Matthew 16:25) I've never been considered religious or anything like that, but every once in a while when I go to mass for a peaceful hour, I come across some gem of a sentence that I'll toss in the Favorite Quotations part of my Facebook profile. Getting back on topic though, it feels like I lose myself when I listen to this song. In the good way. Lose myself in the I-IV progression, the D-flat-6 chord, the syncopated strumming of The Edge, and every single second of the song. I feel at peace now. I want this feeling to stay.

All I Want Is You - U2

Damn, that post felt good.