Quick Thoughts 6/28

• Need a good laugh?  Here’s a link to Journey’s “Separate Ways” video.  This is a great song, but the video is one of the lamest ever made.  It’s off the charts on the unintentional comedy scale.  I watched it last night and was practically crying because I was laughing so hard.  In the past, I’d paid the most attention to Steve Perry, but if you watch the rest of the band it makes it so much funnier.  For crying out loud, they are playing “air instruments” in an empty shipyard!  No wonder people make fun of Journey.
• So I guess I’m on a Journey kick.  Last night I was watching an episode of the Family Guy, and the guys started singing “Don’t Stop Believin’” while doing karaoke at the Drunken Clam.  Great scene.
• Speaking of Journey, they are coming to the Target Center with Def Leppard on July 18.  I can’t believe there are still tickets available.

 

Cubs/Twins Recap

Well there really isn’t much good to say about the games I went to Friday and Saturday night.  It can be summed up by saying the Cubs were atrocious.  I do have some thoughts on the games though.

• I kept holding a thread of hope for the Cubs’ season, but that thread is completely cut now.  No matter how good Derek Lee is when he returns, he’s not going to fix all the problems with this team.
• In Saturday’s game, the Cubs had runners on first and second with no outs.  They didn’t end up scoring a single run in that inning, or the rest of the game for that matter.  There’s no way that would have happened to a good team.
• Mark Prior did look better in his start this weekend at least.  Of course, after giving up six runs in the first inning of his first start, anything will look better. 
• At least one third of the people at Metrodome this weekend were Cubs fans.  Too bad the Cubs didn’t give us much to cheer about.  A few times there were some sections starting a “Let’s go Cubbies *clap clap – clapclapclap* cheer, but it didn’t help much.
• You know the game is boring when “the wave” generates more cheers than the game itself.  (It made it around the dome a full two times.)
• I was impressed with Phil Nevin, and I think he was a decent acquisition for the Cubs.  On Friday he was really crushing the ball.  He had a solo HR and hit two other balls to the warning track.  I think they would have been home runs in Wrigley.  On Saturday, he was 3–4, with a trio of base hits. 
• The Twins’ closer, Joe Nathan is pretty cool.  His intro song when he came into the game Saturday night was “Stand Up and Shout” from the movie Rock Star.  That’s a great stadium type anthem, and was probably another one of my favorite moments of the game Saturday.  “Stand up and shoooooooooooooooouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut!”

Can this be true?

Yesterday at work we had a pretty heated debate over whether .999~ (repeating) is equal to 1.  I can’t believe that in all of my years of math, I had never heard of this argument before.  Basically, there are a couple “proofs” for this, which seem to make sense to me and verify the legitimacy of this statement.  Somehow though, there is just something about it that doesn’t seem right.  Here’s one proof.

           .999~ = 1

So let’s set x = .999~:

           x = .999~

Multiply both sides by 10:

          10x = 9.999~

Subtract x from both sides:

          10x – x = 9.999~ – x

          9x = 9.999~ – x

Substitute .999~ in for x on the right side, which was our original declaration:

          9x = 9.999~ – .999~

          9x = 9

          x = 1

But we said initially that x was equal to .999~!

I know that I have a lot of good math people that read my blog, so I’d be interested in hearing your opinion on this.  This whole discussion started after someone came across this blog entry on the topic.  There are tons of comments there arguing both sides.  It just seems to me that .999~ will never quite get to 1, but these arguments for it really do make sense to me.  I just still can’t believe that yesterday was the first time I ever heard this.

Quick Thoughts 6/20

• While listening to my “Kahn’s Favorites” playlist this morning, I had a song transition that may never have been heard before in the history of the world.  After Metallica’s “Enter Sandman,” the next song that started playing was “Unchained Melody” by the Righteous Brothers.  I never know what I’m going to get when listening to that playlist.
• The slumping Cubs come to Minnesota this weekend for a three game series.  I’ll be at the Friday and Saturday games, and riding on a charter bus to both games.  Friday’s probables are Prior/Santana, and Saturday’s are TBA for the Cubs, but a guy named Boof Bonser for the Twins.  I think that’s now my favorite name in pro sports.  Derek Lee is still on the DL, Michael Barrett has started serving his ten game suspension, Wood is still hurt, and Prior just isn’t himself after his first start of the year.  After a couple teasing years of decent baseball, it looks like the old lovable loser Cubs are back. 
• Steer clear of Fiesta Cancun restaurant in Clear Lake, IA.  While the food was good at the time, four of the five of us that ate there ended up with some mild food poisoning.
• The patio set that we bought about two weeks ago at Menards went on pretty major sale this week.  Fortunately, it was less than 14 days, so I was able to get a price adjustment of $140!  The only downside was that they gave me store credit instead of an actual refund.
• It’s Rochesterfest this week.  Time for the annual treasure hunt.

Quick Thoughts 6/16

• I trapped bunny number three for the year this morning.  It wasn’t the one I was after, but rather a small, fairly young one.  Hopefully I’ll get the big one over the weekend.  In the meantime, the fence around the garden is doing its job quite nicely.
• I’m singing this Sunday in a men’s quartet at church.  One is a fun one, “Climbin’ Up the Mountain,” that actually features the bass, which is me.  I have a recording of this on one of the CHS Acappella Choir tapes from high school.  One of the senior quartets sang it my junior year. 
• There’s a black bear roaming around the Rochester area.  It was in southeast Rochester the other night, and now it’s in Zumbrota.  If that’s the same bear, like the DNR believes it is, it has covered quite a bit of area in a couple of days.  Zumbrota is almost 30 miles away!  Don’t be leaving food and garbage outside now.

 

Quick Thoughts 6/14

Yikes, it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything.  Here’s a dose of “Quick Thoughts” to get you caught up.

• School’s out for summer, so that means Holly is home now during the week.  It also means that there is less traffic on the road during my morning commute.
• We went to see The DaVinci Code last weekend.  It was decent; definitely better than what the critics are saying, but to me it’s kind of like an M. Night Shyamalan movie.  Once you know the plot, it’s just not as powerful.  I’d give the movie a solid B though.
• We had over three inches of rain at our house over the weekend.  Looks like it’s going to be over 90 degrees this coming weekend.  That should make the corn grow.
• After a bye week, we have another softball game tonight.  The bye came at the right time, because I tweaked my hamstring the week before.  Hopefully it’s all healed up now.  We’ll find out tonight.
• Is it football season yet?
• I watched an episode of Mega Disasters last night about the New Madrid fault in Missouri.  I remember hearing in elementary school about the major earthquake that happened here in the early 1800’s, but really I’d totally forgotten about it.  There were three earthquakes of at least magnitude 8.0 in a three month span there.  The shocks from them were felt on the east coast and caused church bells to ring in Boston!  These earthquakes caused geysers of sand to erupt, formed new lakes, and caused the Mississippi River to flow backwards for a time.  They think that this fault has a major quake every 300–500 years, and it’s been about 200 years since the last major one.  The cities of Memphis and St. Louis would be hit the hardest, and they said if the same quakes that hit in 1811 and 1812 were to happen today, it would be the worst disaster in the history of the United States.  That’s pretty scary stuff, especially when you consider that most people don’t even know there’s a threat of earthquakes there.

Quick Thoughts 6/5

• It’s hard to believe that I’ve been married seven years today, but it’s true.  Time flies when you’re having fun.
• We spent the weekend back in Iowa, watching the Quad City airshow from the farm, and going to Jason’s second wedding reception.  Here are some pictures from the weekend.