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Today didn't go quite as well as we expected, but didn't go any worse, either. I will say this, though: if we didn't have bad luck, we wouldn't have any luck at all. I don't think we've gotten one good break in three rounds.

But some of the luck was our own making.

On the first hole Dave fatted an approach and left himself a difficult pitch that behaved oddly on the green. Couldn't make the par putt to save it, and we're +1 through one again.

On the second we again took what we thought was a good line but put the ball on a hill that sloped up to a volcano bunker. I talked Dave into 7I and the ball was as high as a gap wedge, but landed on the green. Whew! Par. It's on this green that one of our, uhhh, more unusual playing partners began using his wedge to putt. He'd later switch to a hybrid. He'd broken his putter on the first hole, as we'd later discover.

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We start off #10 at the Donald Ross course, and bogey two of the first four holes. After yesterday's 77, we need to come home strong in order to make the cut. There are some 340 players here, and yet the cut is still the top 70 and ties. It may be the toughest cut to make in professional golf. You can miss the cut, for example, and only be four shots or so out of qualifying for the PGA Championship (top 20)!

A birdie on the par-five 15th after a third shot to six feet (above the hole!) helped stem the tide back to +1 for the day until a flared shot well right and into the next hole's fairway bunker led to a bogey at the 17th.

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Round One of the national club pro was supposed to begin at about 2:05. We showed up at about 12:30 to begin warming up only to find that, oof, there was a 100-minute delay due to some threatening weather. We got in some good practice time and then headed back to the hotel. Our mistake. Both of ours, but more mine I suppose. Caddies are supposed to know these things, right? 🙂

Our first round was off #1 at the Pete Dye course. We got off to a poor start - bogey, bogey after hitting the ball too far and into a fairway bunker that NOBODY else probably drove into all week, and then well right on what we had thought was a good line.

We birdied the third nicely, and got back to even par with a near-ace (birdie) at the eighth. On the ninth I was headed to the fairway as the players walk backwards only to look back and see a ball going over my head - what looked like 45° right of the fairway. Dave immediately said "new ball." We never saw the first ball again, and we three-putted for 7.

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Light practice today - lots of short game work, some bunker work, etc. Dave's ball position was changed a little in the bunkers - it had gotten too far back - and we're working on adding a little more "pop" to his stroke coming through the ball with his putter. One of the drills involves me rotating his shoulders forward before he would normally try to - this puts a little lag in the stroke and lets the putter head accelerate into the ball with good pace, the handle ahead, and the putter head rising gently.

We tee off on the Dye course - which I've yet to see - tomorrow afternoon.

Carey and I arrived in French Lick, Indiana last night at about 11. We found our room - a spacious room in the French Lick Resort Hotel (not the far fancier and pricier West Baden Springs Resort Hotel).

French Lick is known for two things, but only one of them recently. The first is of course Larry Bird, and the former basketball player has a little restaurant in town. That's about it, so far as we know.

The second is the nearly $600M the Cook family (of some medical or pharmaceutical supply company) has put into the resort(s) and golf course(s) here.

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Shot with a Canon 7D.

My Vimeo Plus membership is about to expire. For $59, I can't see myself renewing. Heck, at $29 I'm not sure I'd renew.

Like it or not, YouTube has won. It's free, has HD, embeds, and has just enough privacy controls (Vimeo lets you control on which sites your videos can be embedded, YouTube does not) that it's used instead of Vimeo.

What will I lose?

If you do not renew your membership, your account will revert to the feature set available to non-Plus Vimeo members. You will not lose any videos or channels/groups/albums that you created during your Plus membership, no need to worry. However, any videos you have set special embed options for will revert to the normal embed options for basic accounts. Your original source files will no longer be available for download 30 days after your Plus account expires.

Eh. Not worth it. $59's a lot of money. 😛

A few years ago I replaced the piece-of-shit ATI Radeon X1900 XT in my Mac Pro. Lately, following reboots and other things which cause the display to go black (I've not tried sleep), the display will remain black. The white LED is on, the computer boots normally, and the display simply remains dark.

Rebooting a few times seems to fix the problem sometimes, but basically, I think the ATI card is dead again.

There are numerous threads about the quality of this card on Apple's discussion forums (here's one, another, and there are plenty more) as well as on third-party sites. I found some other discussions earlier today that I can't find again. The latter one is particularly interesting.

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A few years ago when Carey and I first began painting the rooms in our house, we picked up a Pelican Paint Bucket from either Lowe's or Home Depot.

The other day we looked at both stores for some more liners only to find out that our bucket has been discontinued or is at least no longer carried. I had to overpay (just a little, free shipping) on Amazon.com (I have Prime now, after all) just to get some liners shipped to me.

The Pelican Paint Bucket is superior to the current offerings. It's got a wide mouth that will fit a little roller. It has ridges to take excess paint off. It has a nice, grippy handle that's easy to slide your hand into yet very secure. And it has a magnet to hold your brush - an incredibly clever feature we use all the time.

Stupid Lowe's and Home Depot.

Just a shout out to a good guy in the Mac world - MacRabbit rocks. I use CSSEdit nearly every day and Espresso is a great tool for web development. Give Jan's products a try and I'm sure you'll be impressed with the style and functionality.

The 10.6.3 update may have fixed the AppleEvents Timing Out bug, but one bug that's still around is the Spaces bug I described here. Essentially, if I use ctrl-1 to ctrl-3 to move between my Spaces, quite often the keyboard will stop accepting input (or the OS will stop accepting input from the keyboard) until the Dock is quit (and automatically re-started).

The Dock application controls Spaces. I've worked around this bug by having an AppleScript in my Script Menu that quits the Dock.

Steve Jobs is almost mind-blowingly, well, Jobsian in his D8 conference. The full 100-minute video is a free download from iTunes.

Installed.

For a major version upgrade, things (the UI, the functionality, etc.) remained surprisingly consistent. A lot of back end tweaks.

Every instance - every single one - of the ligatures in the book "Unplayable: An Inside Account of Tiger's Most Tumultuous Season" for my Kindle has an issue with ligatures. Most commonly this is "fl" - lowercase "F" and an "L" character next to each other (or "fi" - "F" and "I").

As you can see from the screenshot below, when reading a golf book the ligature issue is quite, uhm, noticeable.

I've filed a support request with Amazon. I'll update this blog entry when they respond.

The full article is worth reading, but if you're the type who just wants to skip to the end here you go:

Perfect French Fries - Serves Four

Ingredients

• 2 pounds russet potatoes (about 4 large), peeled and cut into 1/4-inch by 1/4-inch fries (keep potatoes stored in a bowl of water)
• 2 tablespoons distilled white vinegar
• Kosher salt
• 2 quarts peanut oil

Procedure

1. Place potatoes and vinegar in saucepan and add 2 quarts of water and 2 tablespoons of salt. Bring to a boil over high heat. Boil for 10 minutes. Potatoes should be fully tender, but not falling apart. Drain and spread on paper towel-lined rimmed baking sheet. Allow to dry for five minutes.
2. Meanwhile, heat oil in 5-quart Dutch oven or large wok over high heat to 400°F. Add 1/3 of fries to oil (oil temperature should drop to around 360°F). Cook for 50 seconds, agitating occasionally with wire mesh spider, then remove to second paper-towel lined rimmed baking sheet. Repeat with remaining potatoes (working in two more batches), allowing oil to return to 400°F after each addition. Allow potatoes to cool to room temperature, about 30 minutes. Continue with step 3, or for best results, freeze potatoes at least over night, or up to 2 months.
3. Return oil to 400°F over high heat. Fry half of potatoes until crisp and light golden brown, about 3 1/2 minutes, adjusting heat to maintain at around 360°F. Drain in a bowl lined with paper towels and season immediately with kosher salt. Cooked fries can be kept hot and crisp on a wire rack set on a sheet tray in a 200°F oven while second batch is cooked. Serve immediately.