Nineteenth Golf Game of 2009

Andy and I played 18 holes at The Rookery, near Milton, on Saturday afternoon. We played with two fellows from the DC area who have places in Rehoboth and Lewes and were thinking about retiring here. They had lots of questions about living here.

I tend to consider The Rookery my "home course," but looking back over the past year I see that this has only been my second round there in 2009. That's a shame, it's a challenging course and very well cared-for.

I did not come close to my goal of breaking 100. I had four bad "blow-up" holes that pretty much crushed my round. I can think of specific shots and how they went wrong -- five trying to get to greens and another four or five simply poor putts.

In several cases, I let thick grass or tufts catch my club head and turn it, sending shanks off to the right. In one, I topped a shot and sent it into a pond. My follow-up, from a drop, went right and into a wetland area. My mistake there was not stopping, stepping back, and regrouping before trying again.

On the other hand, I did manage two pars on the back nine, so there's still hope.

I finished at 109, but Andy played very well and scored a 95. The photo above is where his drive landed on the par-3 ninth. He sank the putt for a birdie. And he had three pars as well.

It was a sunny day, but cool. There was a nice breeze blowing. The course was in fine shape, and it wasn't too crowded. The company was pleasant. All in all, that's not a bad way to spend an afternoon.

Me? I'm On Section 25 Time Today!

I've taken the day off from work today, using one of five new days off that we Delaware state employees got with our 2.5 percent pay cut for fiscal year 2010 (which started in July).

Delaware's new governor, Jack Markell, was faced with an historically large projected budget deficit when he took office in January. He had to make some tough calls, including a proposed 8 percent pay cut for state workers and several other less public, but tough, belt-tighteners.

When you add in teachers, state workers are one of the largest voting blocks in the state. and they were not, as a group, very happy with the projected pay cut. I was not pleased, but working close to the budget as I do I also realized that some cuts were required.

The state workers' anger made the legislators nervous. They cut the pay cut back to 2.5 percent and they insisted on giving us something back for the pay we gave up. They came up with the idea of 5 extra days off.

These are not "furlough days," since we're getting paid for them. And they are not really vacation days, because they can't be banked and carried over to the next fiscal year. So what to call them?

As a good bureaucracy, we ended up calling them "Section 25 Days" because they are established in Section 25 of the budget bill.

None of us could take these days until very recently, though, because the legislation is complex. No one can take Section 25 time, for example, if it would cause someone else to have to be paid for overtime. Agencies had to work out how their workers would use the time and have those plans approved by the Office of Management and Budget.

Section 25 days are very special, complicated and much-discussed around the proverbial water cooler.

I am working now to add "Section 25" to state worker slang as a term for breaks taken for no apparent reason.

For example:

"Where's Johnny? He's supposed to be ramble-framping the sturggelblix."

"Oh, he's taking a nap in the parking lot. He's on a Section 25."

It might catch on.

Eighteenth Golf Game of 2009

Andy and I played eighteen holes at Ocean Resorts in Ocean Pines today. I had a simply awful round. I was not hitting the ball well.

I won't use it as an excuse, but the course was in poor shape. It was wet, very wet after a heavy downpour overnight. The wet kept the ground crew from mowing the course at all, so things were long and slow.

My biggest error was not staying in the fairway. The rough was largely thick-grown crabgrass. I couldn't get an iron through that stuff at all and so was not hitting with any distance from the rough. I didn't putt well wither. I finished at 114.

Andy, on the other hand, played very well, particularly on the back 9. He carded a 94 after pars on 4, 8, 17 and 18 and a birdie on 15.

I had just enough good shots to make me eager to get back out and get some revenge on the golf course and on the golf gods.

Going to the Candidates Debate

I went down to the Lewes Presbyterian Church this evening for a debate between the two candidates running in the special election to fill the 37th representative district seat. They are (from left to right) Rob Robinson, Democrat, and Ruth Briggs King, Republican.

I live-tweeted it, though that was a little painful just using my cell phone. Democratic Party twitterer DelDems was also tweeting; I'm guessing DelDems had a better keyboard than I, or maybe more nimble thumbs.

I've tried to use Twitter's advanced search option to create links to just our tweet streams from this evening. It mostly worked... You will have to read from the bottom up. Please pardon my typos.

I came in leaning towards Rob Robinson. I know him a little bit, and I tend to vote Democratic. It is also the case that a friend of mine serves with Robinson on the Georgetown Planning Commission and speaks very highly of him as a worker and as a leader. And Robinson has appeared in court before another friend, who says he is a good lawyer.

Robinson did well tonight. He was comfortable and charming. He was polite, but firm when he needed to be. He showed independence and a thoughtful approach. He has my vote.

Ruth Briggs King wasn't terrible, but I wasn't very impressed. I thought she contradicted herself at times and that she was trying to get in a few digs at Robinson without being obvious. I didn't like that.

Seventeenth Golf Game of 2009

It hardly merits its own post, but obsessive compulsive blogging is nothing if you skimp on the obsession or the compulsion, so let me briefly tell you about 9 holes at the Heritage Inn and Golf Club, at Midway.

Andy and I wanted to play on Sunday morning and thought we'd go back to the Heritage course, largely because of its play-all-day for $10 pricing. That's very tempting, but sometimes you do get just what you pay for.

Andy got me started playing golf. I had taken some indoor lessons as a gym class at Colby College, up in Maine, some 25 years ago, but it wasn't until a few years back that I picked it up as a steady thing. And when I started, we mostly played the Heritage, at that time an executive-length 9-holes with a few long par-4 holes and a respectably challenging par-5. It cost a bit more to play then than it does now, but was still low-priced.

Since then, they've chopped up the back third of the property and built town houses, drastically shortening many of the holes. They closed the pro shop; you pay your ten bucks in the hotel lobby. As Andy noted, at this point they basically just keep it mowed. More or less.

So it's in poor shape and our play seemed to reflect the state of the course. We had a few good holes, but neither of us was particularly proud. And it was quite hot. So after nine holes we broke for lunch. After we'd eaten, we decided we'd gotten ten dollars worth of "golf" and called it a day.

Historic Geospatial Data

Two hundred years ago today, John Quincy Adams (a future US President) was on a ship called The Horace, captained by Benjamin Beckford, outward bound from Charlestown, just north of Boston in Massachusetts, to St. Petersburg in Russia. There was a heavy swell and a "gale of wind" out of the west-northwest.

Mr. Adams, who was sailing to Russia to serve as President James Madison's minister plenipotentiary to that nation, spent his time that day reading about Timoleon and Paulus Aemilius (in Plutarch, I think), according to his personal one-line-a-day log.

He gave the ship's position as 52 degrees, 46 minutes north latitude and 34 degrees, 30 minutes west longitude, which put them almost exactly halfway between Newfoundland and Ireland, in the north Atlantic.

Now, two centuries later, the folks at the Massachusetts Historical Society have started a project to publish Adams' log in the closest thing to a modern "line-a-day" log -- twitter. They've begun posting each day's entry to a John Quincy Adams twitter account: JQAdams_MHS.


View John Quincy Adams in a larger map

And they have geo-published those entries, using Adams' recording of the ship's position. Now we have both a regular text update of Adams' days, and we have a daily chart showing his location and basic log entries.

That is in addition to his full diaries from the journey, which are also available, and which contain more detail and thoughts. In fact, the Massachusetts Historical Society has 51 volumes of diaries that President Adams kept throughout his life; he was one of those diarists who left a rich legacy for historians and biographers.

Of course I could draw the comparison between the 19th centuries diarists and 21st century bloggers. But I think that, more than any one technique or technology, it is the practice of daily recording of data, location, thoughts, and activities, that is of value here.

Not every diarist or blogger who writes down their thoughts each day will turn out to be a leader that future generations will want to study. But we do hope that every leader will keep such a record for the future. And we don't know ahead of time who those folks will be. So, it is, I think, a good thing to have at least some part of the population in the habit, just in case one of them turns out to be someone special some day.

Bi-Coastal Reflections

A Californian photo-a-day blogger is vacationing in South Bethany, a few miles down the coast from us here in Lewes. He's posted a very nice photo of a sunrise over the Atlantic (Sunset in Reverse - South Bethany beach, Delaware), with commentary about how odd it is to see the sun come up over the ocean, as opposed to watching it go down.

This is my very first East Coast sunrise at a beach - a thrilling experience to see the sun coming up from the ocean and not at all too early to see (6:13 am). I wonder if there is a green flash right before the sun comes up.

It reminded me of my feelings watching sunsets in Hawaii, and thinking it odd that the sun should disappear into the water like that.

Sixteenth Golf Game of 2009

I took the afternoon off today and met my friend and colleague Sandy Schenck for a round of golf at Old Landing Golf Course.

It was a hot afternoon, but there was a steady breeze to cool us off as well as drifting almost-thunder-heads to cut the sun's heat. Old Landing is also well shaded with trees, so we were fairly comfortable.

The course was in tolerable shape, though the greens had just been sprayed with some sort of pesticide with a strong green hue. It caused grubs to flee to the surface where the local crows were having a feeding frenzy. The grubs themselves, and the holes dug by the crows looking for more, made putting a bit of a challenge on some of the greens.

I started poorly, but settled down somewhat over the first nine and finished with a nice par 3 on the 9th hole for a total of 54.

The second nine holes were a bit better. I scored another par on the 15th and managed a 51 to finish the round at 105.

I find it interesting that I've carded my personal best in two games in a row now.

Sandy played well, he broke 100 with a 99; it included an impressive birdie on the 15th.

A Year's Worth of Automotive Data

I took delivery of my little blue Scion last year on July 23. As I have noted before, I am geek-obsessive over data on this car.

I have been tracking fill-ups and miles at Fuelly, the social network for gas-mileage freaks, and on a Google documents spreadsheet. The Fuelly badge, at right, reflects the long-term average MPG. The table below is my one-year summary, based on the data in my Google spreadsheet.


During the year between delivery on July 23, 2008 and my fill-up on July 24, 2009, I drove a total of 15,827.3 miles. I had 53 fill-ups and averaged 298.63 miles per fill-up. I used 491.67 gallons of gas, an average of 9.28 gallons per fill up. That gas cost me $1,639.62, averaging $30.94 per tank. Over the year, I averaged 32.19 miles per gallon.

Aside form all that data, the little blue scion is a fun little car. It is sporty enough for this old dude, comfortable, and I think practical.

Fifteenth Golf Game of 2009

Just over a week ago, I went out for 18 holes with Andy and Rich at Ocean Resorts Golf Club down in Maryland. This was just a few days after we returned from vacation. But I've been playing vacation blog-post catch-up for so long now I didn't get around to documenting this particular outing until now.

Ocean Resorts is a nice low-cost course in decent shape. It has challenges and fun holes. Andy and I have been there a few times, Most recently back in early July.

I started out badly, but settled down to a so-so front nine. I did better on the back nine managing to par the two par 5 holes on that part of the course. I finished with a 105, which I think ties my personal best. So far.