Saturday, October 26, 2013

How Far the Team I Was Cheering for Advanced in the Playoffs

So baseball season is nearing the World Series, and this year my home team (well, home when I was a kid) made the playoff hunt. I have my sets of favorites, and I was wondering how, in general, the teams I cheer for have done in the playoffs. Even though there is no direct correlation between my cheering and the team winning or losing, I'm curious to know how my "luck" and the "luck" of my teams has fared:
Looks like if I'm cheering for the team, you have a good chance of winning the division series you're in, but if you're aiming to win the pennant, your chances are less than fifty percent what they should be statistically, and the World Series the same.

Saturday, October 19, 2013

Church Retreats

Each year I attend a convention held by my church. I've done so since I was a baby. I only remember the locations from age five on. I've gone to sites outside the United States six times (to Argentina, Australia, Britain, Canada, and Spain). Here are the states I've been to and how many times:

Saturday, October 12, 2013

What I Did This Weekend

The weekend seemed to fly by, and I didn't--as often seems to happen--accomplish near as much as I would have liked. In fact, I feel like the weekend was to a large extent wasted. Let's break it down then by activity, starting from 5:00 p.m. on Friday until 8:00 a.m. on Monday (63 hours total):
After looking at the chart, I can see that I wasted almost five hours online--not really accomplishing anything, just scouting around (although part of that time was spent looking for jazz music to play in the car on an upcoming trip, so not a complete waste). Still, I can see that I treat the Internet much as I used to treat television--and that in turn is why I rid myself of television. Sometimes I think I might do myself a favor by ridding myself of the Net; the problem is that the Net is much more interactive and useful, so it's not as easily abandoned, given that it's the main way I stay in touch with some people. Still, far too much time is spent essentially doing the equivalent of watching TV, so this is an area where I need to improve.

Saturday, October 5, 2013

More Spam

The spam at work seems to be getting worse. It's not even going into the junk mail folder most of the time anymore, which makes for a lot of wasted time deleting stuff. I read how one company actually did away with e-mail because of how much time it often wasted. Alas, e-mail is probably my favorite way to communicate at work, and possibly anywhere. I don't think I'd like that. Here are the spam totals from a few days in August.