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http://erik.thesandtrap.com/ - click the "stats" tab.

It's not an earth-shattering feature, but publishing the stats along with the rounds is new, and it should help people coordinate with their instructors, compare themselves to their buddies, etc.

Without giving it a lot of thought, answer this question in your mind:

As relative humidity increases, does air get denser or less dense?

Now think about it for a little while. Do you get the same answer?

Mad Men Yourself lets you put yourself into AMC's Mad Men. Here's me:

I've now watched season two, and my thoughts are about the same as season one: not bad, good, not great. The writing still seams weak to me and it's tough to relate to the characters. I know they're stereotyped to heck and back - and that's part of the charm - but it makes it nearly impossible to really understand them.

And Dick, stop cheating on your wife, you moron. Cripes.

Scorecard 2.1 is now available for download from Cynical Peak's website for both Mac and Windows! Scorecard 2.1 changes the way nine-hole rounds are matched for stats to provide a more accurate picture of your abilities.

In Scorecard 2.0, 9-hole rounds were paired to form an 18-hole round for all stat calculations with the restriction that the rounds had to be played within 14 days of each other. A nine-hole round that did not have a round to pair with was then dropped from the stat calculation.

In Scorecard 2.1, the nine-hole pairing only occurs when viewing "All Holes." If you set the stats to only view the front nine, back nine, par 3, par 4, par 5, or an individual hole number the rounds are no longer paired and no rounds will be dropped. The change provides you with a more accurate representation of your entire game play and it also fixes a few anomalies and bugs that the old system presented in some cases.

For the complete list of changes, click through.

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Earlier today I "played" in the EDGA Mid-Am tournament. The tournament is supposed to be a 36-hole test of golf for anyone aged 25 or more and with a handicap index of 8.0 or lower. It costs $80 to enter, plus cart fees if you choose to drive a cart.

To make a long story short, I drove the ball better than I ever have, I struck the ball virtually as well as ever, and yet I didn't score well. Why?

The six inches of rain we got the prior night and morning of the event had a lot to do with it. I joked during the round that nobody could take relief from casual water because their nearest drop would be in Idaho or something. Try as I might, I couldn't figure out in 18 holes - the event was shortened - how to chip the ball out of a quarter inch of water. I was within sixty yards of four par 4s and managed to par them, and within twenty yards of several par fives and also parred them. It turns out you were better off in the rough, because at least your ball wouldn't be sitting in a puddle.

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I'd like to grill some beer butt chicken - anyone out there have any recommendations on some good recipes to take things up a notch?

Of course, I haven't tried the basic recipe yet - perhaps that's all I need?

So, for some reason, Soundtrack Pro has decided to crap itself. Every time I click on a track, it crashes. 100% of the time. I turned off the "sync with hardware" checkbox, I've trashed the prefs, I've even re-installed.

I was going to upgrade ((I have "Final Cut Pro 5.1 Studio", so I'm eligible for the $499 upgrade to Final Cut Studio 2, though you wouldn't know it looking at Apple's site.)), but the tea leaves say "wait" because the ship time is 1-2 weeks, and I have a feeling we're going to see Final Cut Studio 3 in a little while. I can wait - I just won't record any podcasts for awhile.

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Speed Download does what it does. I think it does it well, which is why I keep it around.

But earlier today I was downloading some things from a site which protects everything with a password. Some files (.wmv files) downloaded within Safari, so they had no problems. Others (.zip files of the promotional JPEGs and TIFFs) went off to Speed Download, without the username and password, which was, naturally, quite complex and needed to be typed in for every download, despite the server name being the same for each file.

Furthermore, I'm starting to doubt Speed Download for two reasons. One, it hasn't seen an update in quite some time, and two, I'm still not entirely sure it's any better than just letting Safari download things itself. It seems to be, but I can't say I've ever really tested it.

For the past few days, I've tried to upgrade a few iTunes songs to iTunes Plus tracks. Each time I try, I'm told this:

Dear Erik,

Your iTunes Plus music upgrade could not be successfully completed because there was a problem with one of the items that was to be upgraded. Please return to your Upgrade My Library page and click Buy and your upgrade should be processed successfully. We are sorry for the inconvenience and appreciate your business.

Sincerely,
iTunes Store Team

What's up with that? No other information is provided - I don't know which of the songs is causing problems. I had one video, so thinking it might be that, I upgraded it separately. That wasn't it.

Additionally, Stanley Cup Finals Game 6 (Pens 2, Dead Wings 1) is screwed up. I was given a video credit, but I'd rather they just fix the video so that it works. The audio and video get out of sync as the video plays, and it's 20 seconds behind when Tyler Kennedy scores the winning goal.

If the idea is to create a nim sum of 0 as this article proposes, then I've yet to find a way to win at this game of Nim.

D'oh. Once I figured out that I could make Marvin go first I won the first time. The nim sum is already 0 when you start the game, so you have to make Marvin upset the balance right away:

111 = 7
101 = 5
011 = 3
001 = 1
---
224

Lookee, they've found that swearing eases pain.

That explains why so many people swear on the golf course.

The wife, father-in-law, and I attended the horse races at Presque Isle downs tonight. I'm pleased to report that we came out ahead by a total of $7.80. We bet $16 on six races - two dollar bets with two double bets - and won $23.80 total.

I was 4-1 (losing the first, sitting out the second, and then winning the next four) while my wife was 3-2, losing her last two. The father in law, well, he didn't win. Anything. 🙂

The races are pretty podunk, but that helps keep it fun. I expected bleachers or some place to sit - there are none. Just a big cement area. You walk in a triangle - first to look at the horses and choose one for the race, then to the betting area, and then to the finish line to root on your horse. Food isn't too expensive if you get hungry, and cameras are allowed - though I wonder if they allow monopods and 300mm f/2.8 lenses…

Does anyone else out there wish they could delete some of Apple's built-in applications from their iPhones? Sure, you can move them aside, but what if you never ever want to see them, and don't want them cluttering up your screens (or created unnecessary screens)?

For example, I can't remember the last time I launched Stocks on purpose.

P.S. John's article about Simplenote drives home another reason: replacement with something better. Why have two notes apps on your phone?

Does anyone know how I might resolve this issue? Perhaps they know the email address of a yahoo.com administrator or something? My attempts to reach Yahoo via some standard email addresses (like admin@) have failed.

Virtually every user who signs up for an account at The Sand Trap's golf forum with an @yahoo.com address fails to see the activation codes. They're either routed to the user's spam folder at Yahoo or, in about half of the cases, the user never sees the email at all.

Outgoing mail from the server is working just fine with all other domains - Yahoo is the only trouble-maker.

We don't send any spam. These are user-requested, one-time emails. The only other emails the site might send are subscription notices (to threads), an email on your birthday, and an email when you get a new private message. The user can turn all of those off. We don't send emails from the admin - even to share non-advertising type information - and we've never sent advertising from a third party.