Yearly Archives: 2012

Golf and Computers, golf computers, golf equipment, My Bidness Leave a comment

Major Surgery -on a Mac Mini

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My Mac Mini, purchased in 2009, was beginning to choke on simple tasks and be generally slow as molasses, and I was considering retiring it. It was attached to our TV as our media player, but after trying Apple TV, I decided the latter was far superior, especially after the addition of Hulu+ to the mix of iTunes, Netflix, Youtube, Vimeo, MLB, and Photostream.

I had been using my MacBook Pro as my desktop, but found it to be more useful as an actual laptop, so I moved the Mac Mini to my desk but found it to be, well old. If it were a Windows based system, there would be no question where it would be headed -the recycling bin at Best Buy after I tore out the hard drive. But after I investigated the Mini, it turned out to have two problems -the 160 GB hard drive was nearly full and was a lowly 5400 RPM disk. Also, the stock Mini came with 2GB of RAM. The hard drive would need to be upgraded and I found a nice 750GB SATA drive spinning at 7200 RPM which would speed things up nicely and allow me to create a generous Boot Camp partition (lets me run Windows). The RAM was upgradeable to 8GB. Both upgrades ended up totally $150 from Other World Computing which specializes in upgrade packages for older Macs. To answer the obvious question -I declined using an SSD drive because it would be over $200 for a reasonably sized drive, and I wanted to keep costs down.

The instructions for surgery are on the internet -the OWC site’s videos are comprehensive, but start with the caveat that the upgrade should be done by a professional. If you can replace the batteries on a toddler bath toy, you can kick this. The upgrade was very easy and took all of 10 minutes after cloning the original drive to the new one (using Carbon Copy on trial, does need a SATA reader) which took a few hours. Booting up was noticeably quicker and the computer seemed happier after the brain transplant. I also took the opportunity to blow out a lot of accumulated dust in the machine.

After surgery, the “About This Mac” screen shows the new RAM.

The great thing from doing this was setting up Windows 7 in a Boot Camp partition which gives you a clean install of Windows. The Mac Mini is a GREAT Windows 7 machine, and runs very snappy.

One of the things I regret about the move to increasingly hermetic systems like iPad and MacBook Air and the recently released Retina Macbook is the loss of the ability to upgrade the Mac. This Mini is now good for another 3-5 years as long as Apple supports the upgrade to this system. As a Windows machine, it will probably not get Windows 8, but Windows 7 will be supported for the next 7-10 years if Windows XP is to be used as a rubric.

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Mars Rover Landing: Curiosity Lands Early Monday Morning (RECAP)

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This bodes well for America’s well being. At one time, doing really cool stuff was America’s metier. Landing a robotic Chevy by a rocket crane on the 4th planet, in a crater that we chose -how cool is that? It must feel like this to pitch one’s first victory after time spent on the disabled list. Of course, if it had failed, it would be another boondoggle example of government waste that could be better spent as pocket change in the ass pockets of troglodytes who don’t care where Mars is and believe the universe was created in a week.

Why are we there? If you are at all curious, that is reason enough that we are there, but for those troglodytes who are upset about government spending, I can reassure you that landing that Chevy with the American Flag logo painted on the side is as good as planting a flag on the planet. I bet you there is even a hidden flag that can be planted if it came to that. Mars is ours.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

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Highland Park GC

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ImageI was looking for a driving range, and found a 36 hole public golf course instead only 5 minutes from my house. Getting there at 7:30, I was surprised to find that the Blue Course was open -basically first come first serve. I paid my 35 bucks for a cart, and played 18 holes in 2 hours, playing through three groups who were very gracious in letting me fly. 

I played from the tips and had a blast -the greens were slow and I could take dead aim and blast the ball into the cup. 

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William Rose, Teacher of Golf

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When I started this blog, I had in mind what could pan out with mindful attention to golf. Would it improve my life? Would it make me a better man? Would my golf get better? One of the first people I turned to in this endeavor was Mr. William Rose, the emeritus golf professional at the Wakonda Club, and a quick sitdown with him was one of the last things I did at Wakonda before I took off for Ohio.

Born and raised in Duluth, Minnesota, Mr. Rose learned to play golf there and after he was demobilized from the Korean War, he joined the professional staff at the Evanston Country Club headed by the recently retired Johnny Revolta. Johnny Revolta, winner of the 1935 PGA Championship along with 25 other titles as a touring pro. Mr. Rose earned his craft from this great teacher and moved to Iowa, taking the position of head golf professional at the Wakonda Club in 1960.

Since that time, Mr. Rose tells me, the club has changed much and not at all. He remembers the club in a very different time when Wakonda was the sun around which everyone’s social and recreational orbits were centered. The pinnacle of that time was when Wakonda Club hosted the US Amateur tournament in 1963, the one where Deane Beman, future PGA Commisioner (the one who Jerry Pate tossed into the water hazard after winning the TPC at the TPC Sawgrass), won. The bridge from #18 tee to the fairway is called the Beman Bridge in honor of that victory.

In the tournament were Billie Joe Patten and Charlie Coe from Augusta National who noticed the work of Mr. Rose’s assistant professional, Mr. Bob Kletcke and recruited him away. Mr. Rose relayed, “They asked me if Bob would be available, I told them he’s packing his bags now.” Mr. Kletcke eventually became the head golf professional at Augusta National Golf Club in 1966. In an interview given to the blog, Carolina Golfer (link), Mr. Kletcke said this:

“I needed to improve my teaching skills so Johnny Revolta, one of the game’s best teachers at the time, got me a job at Wakonda Club in Des Moines, Iowa, where I would study under Bill Rose,” Kletcke offered. ”That turned out to be a wise decision because I learned much from Rose.”

When I was learning piano, I had a thought. What is the lineage of my teacher? If you trace back your teachers to their teachers, could you track the roots back to Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, or Bach? For example, my basic chemistry teacher in college was Dudley Herschbach who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry soon after I finished his Intro to Chemistry course. When I teach my son about atomic valence, he should know that he is one step removed from a Nobel Prize winner. Here, with Mr. Rose is a connection to the broader world of golf beyond Wakonda Club, but I always suspected that Mr. Rose had a great mystical connection to golf.

Teachers talk about greatness to inspire their students, but the great teachers inspire greatness from their students, even from the first moments. I remember in 2005 chipping twenty footers with desultory results when Mr. Rose shouted, “point your club at the hole on the follow through.” I made the next chip into the cup and Mr. Rose shrugged and walked away with his students who were as mystified as I was. At my first lesson with Mr. Rose, he told me to use only half of my energy in swinging the club -that golf shouldn’t be so hard. Within five minutes, I was hitting pure iron shots, two of which hit the pin at 150 yards!

I wrote down whatever I could remember from those lessons, but what stuck was the point about golf not being a hard game unless you made it difficult. The same could be said about life, I suppose.

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If Korea were whole…

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The Olympics make me cry. Watching Gabby Douglas triumph brought tears to my eyes. The Pistorius story  makes me bawl. Every four years, I choke up, and what makes me always choke up is the story of the two Koreas. Looking at the results to date, the South (ROK) has 9/3/5 in gold, silver bronze, giving it a total 17 in medal count. The North, (PRK) has 4/0/1, or 5 total. Combined, that is 13/3/6 or 22 total so far. In terms of golds, it would place Korea 4th behind the UK, and it would tie with France in the total count. This makes me cry and cry watching the clips of Koreans winning. When Rim Jong Sim, North Korean power lifter took gold, I cried -happy at the thought of all the food that she and her family would get. 

While I harbor many dark thoughts about the North -I have stated that justice would be served by lining up all the fat people in North Korea on the wall, I can’t help thinking that reunification would have to involve reconciliation. I look at the example of South Africa, and the miracle that it didn’t descend in to a genocidal hell, and wish something half as good could happen to Korea before the North becomes a province of China. Unfortunately, all the potential Mandelas in the North have been shot or nicely enslaved.

I pray that force of arms won’t be required to rejoin two halves of one body, but with every decade, the memory of wholeness will become more distant. But the games, oh the games! 

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Movies Meet True Crime

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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/29/nyregion/kidnapping-victim-is-found-inside-detectives-garage-in-queens.html?smid=pl-share

Above is link to an article about a 17 year police veteran whose kidnapping victim he is investigating is found in his garage. It inspired this movie script.

Movie Script: Heartburn. Act I: Veteran detective (Kurt Russell) assigned a kidnapping finds resonance with this latest case with an un solved kidnapping from his rookie year. His newbie partner (Miley Cyrus) provides Rom-Com relief but goes into survivor mode when her partner is arrested after the kidnapping victim (Charlize Theron) is found in his garage, bound and gagged with his DNA all over her. Act II: Detective Newbie (Cyrus) breaks out her partner from jail and both go rogue, entering the seamy underworld of the kidnapping victim who stages fake underground snuff shows where the audience pays a lot of money to witness the psychosexual torture-murder of an audience member -is it really fake?! Act III: Exoneration becomes a choice given to our rogue detectives by a mysterious figure (Cornel West) who offers redemption versus knowledge -knowledge of the circumstances of what happened to our detective’s un solved cold case who is now revealed to be his daughter (Blake Liveley in flashbacks) in dive bar confession scene between our rogue detectives who then make out and make love. Dramatic climax in a Brooklyn warehouse in DUMBO during one of the underground snuff shows where the newbie detective (now kidnapped) is the audience “volunteer.” Final sword epic fighting scene between the main character, the original kidnapping victim (who is the Venetian-masked torturer in this underground snuff show), and the mysterious figure (Cornel West).

Sent from my iPad

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The Castaways of Gilligan’s Island: The American Pantheon

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I had been looking forward to introducing my ten year old to Gilligan’s Island, and after watching the pilot (available on Amazon Prime), I now understand why this show manages to linger in my conscience long after its many contemporaries have faded away. This show echoes today among the various reality shows and in most ensemble comedies. What is Community, if not Gilligan’s Island transplanted and transmogrified. The appeal is in the crystallization of middle American archetypes of Kennedy-era America into a pantheon. If in an alternative reality, we worshipped a nature-based divinity with seven aspects, we would worship these “Six and One in One.” If you are honest with yourself, you may admit that you already do.

The Six non-Gilligan castaways represent important aspects of the American psyche. The Skipper is the authority figure, having a presumed backstory as a veteran, but lapsed into a pudgy softness that is almost maternal -observe the moobs. He is in fact both parents who are equally ineffectual. The Millionaire is America’s 1%, ascotted, bilious, and lockjawed, he is married to Lovey, who represents America’s fading glory. The Professor is representative of America’s science and technology -he is the space program, modern medicine, and computers, but is sterile -his shirts are white, never soiled or bloodied. Mary Ann is the virginal Girl Next Door -pretty as a daisy, fresh as laundry line-drying on a summer day, and fertile as the Kansas soil that she hails from. Ginger is the encapsulation of American desire. Like Joan Harris née Holloway of Mad Men, she is not blond, but essentially a stand in for America’s fetish for blonds. Ginger is as obvious as an flesh-colored orchid. Mary Ann and Ginger could be a two-faced goddess that could be named Madonna-Whore.

These all face off against the great demon Gilligan, who is trickster, destroyer, and adolescent priapism -he is the baby boomer in early adolescence ready to terrorize his parents and peers. If the censors had not been in the way, Gilligan’s Island in the second season would have seen Mary Ann and Ginger, both pregnant, foraging for clams while Gilligan sipped coconut juice from the Professor’s skull, using the Skipper as his living chair, wearing a vest made from the Millionaire. Lovey would have been the main course in the season one finale. There are no people of color on this show, but Gilligan’s shirt is red, which is a marker, a red flag. For along with being the trickster, destroyer, and phallus rampant, Gilligan is the Other. At best, he is the troublesome minority who amuses with minstrelsy, but at worst, he will come and take your women.

And why would we worship at the altars of such as these? We already do, because each of these characters is a demographic group that consumes and drives the economy. Each of these characters has a store at the mall. Each of these characters has a magazine, a channel on cable, and political candidate shaped for them.

When I tried to explain this to my 10 year old, he said this, “It’s a stupid tv show that makes no sense and is frustrating because of that idiot Gilligan.” Such an innocent. He has so much liberal arts education to learn!