At The Fitness Center
Today was something of a sluggish day at work. I got two more projects passed my way, one of them involving how WebObjects handles parsing a 1.6 Mb (yes, megabyte) HTML file. I think its problem may be that the HTML is malformed, and the same error is repeated throughout the whole file, so the builder has trouble creating and maintaining the tree. How bizarre. I'm still a little amazed that anyone would bother creating such a large HTML file. It seems like a flagrant violation of the whole spirit of the language (to reiterate, HTML is based on three principles: hyperlinks, hyperlinks, and hyperlinks). I'm hoping to run it through a profiler and see what's happening.
Anyway, I spent part of the morning thrashing to prioritize these new projects with my old projects, and basically decided that I need to finish some old projects or I won't make much progress on any of them.
Oh, and my afternoon work was cut short for about an hour by a campus-wide power outage. Pretty funky; all the fire doors closed, and people milled around looking for low-tech things to do. It was especially annoying in that it happened right after lunch, so we couldn't, say, go to lunch until it was over.
John is experienced at working out, and gets a lot of exercise: Uses the weight machines three times a week, his home Stairmaster nearly every day, and played racquetball a few times a week. Tomorrow we're going to go to the center together and he's going to provide his own input on a program I could use on the machines, and also show me how to do some stretching. John says he hasn't convinced any of his friends to do weight training, so he's pretty excited about it.
(John getting excited is kind of funny; he's very low key and sometimes sarcastic about it for a while, and then he one day suddenly explodes and says, "This will be so cool. I'm really looking forward to it." I suspect that he acts like this because he sometimes doubts whether I'm going to start doing things like going to the fitness center. But I need to get around to these things in my own time.)
The woman showing me the machines today was a quite attractive woman named Leslie, who was also quite flirtatious. She also turned out to be quite taken, since she told me she's living with her boyfriend and is just here for the summer, since they're moving to the Northeast in August for him to go to law school. John and Ben were surprised that she'd told me this. John's exact words were, "How'd you learn all this?" Well, she just told me. This isn't the first time some random, attractive woman has told me stuff like this. I've never thought of it as remarkable, but other people (right; other guys) seem to think it is. Maybe I just seem trustworthy or something. Too bad I don't seem to have much of a clue how to use it.
Anyway, I hope to get to the center three times a week from now on, and do both weight training and aerobic stuff. This underscores the "laundry" reason to find a new apartment, since I can only do laundry in my current place between 8:30 am and 8:30 pm, which is almost exactly the 12 hours of the workday when I'm least likely to be able to do laundry. It's quite lame. I didn't realize just how lame when I moved here, since I've had laundry in my apartment for the last five years. Ideally, I'd like to do laundry between 8 and 11 pm. Argh. I guess I'll just have to get creative, somehow. Or buy a whole bunch of sets of exercise outfits.
Also watched Baseball Tonight on ESPN; the Red Sox won again, and are maintaining their first place lead in the AL East. First baseman Brian Daubach is turning into a keeper. Already 27, he may have a John Jaha-like career, meaning he'll be a solid first baseman for four or five years, but likely to find himself pushing aside if the Sox develop a star in that time. Still, as a pickup from the Marlins (who cut him), he's a good deal.
Their other hitting successes are 2B Jose Offerman, who is turning out to be as good as the statheads hoped and much better than the media gurus expected. Also catcher Jason Varitek, who was picked up with Derek Lowe in the Heathcliff Slocumb deal a couple of years ago. Frankly, the Sox fleeced the M's, but what else is new? Varitek has had an undistinguished career since holding out after the amateur draft for more money, but is finally turning into a solid catcher with a little offensive pop. The Sox have few stars with the bat (Nomar and...?), but are getting the job done.
The pitching is where the Sox shine. Pedro Martinez is looking like a shoo-in for the Cy Young, already with ten wins, and therefore with a shot at 30. Bret Saberhagen has been solid, but has spent half the season on the DL. To replace him, the Sox called up Juan Pena, a 22-year-old top prospect who was solid until hitting the DL with tendonitis. To replace him, the Sox activated Brian Rose, who suffered from an injury last year. Rose has been utterly brilliant in his three starts, including shutting down the Yankees twice Often overshadowed by Carl Pavano (gone to Montreal in the Pedro trade), Rose is suddenly looking like a better keeper than Pavano (who is getting shelled this season).
The rest of the rotation (Wakefield, Portugal, Rapp) has been passable, mixing very good games in with poor ones. The bullpen has been acceptable, albeit not outstanding. And the Sox have Jin Ho Cho apparently dominating at Triple-A. Leading the AL in ERA, the Sox may be in the enviable situation of actually being able to trade pitching for hitting this year. There have been rumors of a "big trade" before the All-Star Break, possibly involving Portugal (not a "big trade" kind of pitcher, to my mind, but whatever). The fans seem pretty stumped by what it might be, so we'll see.
Could this be the year? The Sox lose Mo Vaughn and suddenly it all comes together for them? No more carping and players fighting with management? A harmonious team that simply mows down other teams when it encounters them? Hey, they swept a 3-game series from the AL-leading Indians. Sure, it's only June, but Red Sox fans never stop hoping. If the Sox can actually win a series in the postseason, and better yet, see the hated New Yank Yorkies (my new name for them) go down in flames, then it will be a plus season.
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