I joined a couple of popular golf forums in the last year or so, the specific names of them aren't really important. After browsing and posting for a while now, I've seen something that kinda bothers me. Why does it seem like every person lurking about in these online golf forums lies about their game?

I've got no proof that any of them are lying, but the way some of them talk you'd think they should be on tour playing against Tiger every week. It's rather annoying. Take for instance a topic asking "how far do you average off the tee with your driver?". Sure seemed like a lot of people answered somewhere in the 275-300 range. I've heard the average golfer only hits their driver somewhere in the 200-220 range.

And another topic entitled "what percentage of fairways do you hit?". Amazing how many people were in the 75-90% range. Simply Amazing! According to my golf stats software, since 2005 I hit 40% of fairways. A far cry from the 90% some are claiming. Do PGA players even hit 90% of their fairways?

Or a more recent topic about the The Players Championship this past weekend. Talked about how the 17th island green at Sawgrass was 132 yards, so one poster asked "what would you hit from that distance?". Some of the answers just cracked me up. "Oh I'd hit my lob wedge, just so I could get the extra back spin". Of course! Lob wedge! Why didn't I think of that? Who doesn't love that 10 yards of backspin using a club that most amateurs I know hit 50-75 yards tops? But you've got the 140 yard lob wedge shot down pat, right?

I have half a mind to call bullshit on some of these people, but there are two problems with that idea. For one, they might not actually be lying, and there's no way I could prove it anyways. And second, it'd just provide them with some major flame bait. No one likes to be called a liar.

Don't get me wrong, I come across the occasional low-handicapper on the golf course every now and then. We've got a guy in our league that could probably pass for a 7 or 8 handicap. But it's not often I see one. Is it because the area I golf in lacks talented golfers? Or is it because the fact is that the majority of golfers in the world are NOT low-handicappers? Or did I somehow stumble upon the one or two golf forums on the internet where all the supreme golfers of the world have gathered to boast about their great accomplishments?

I dunno, maybe there are more great golfers out there than I realize. Or maybe I'm just jealous.

1 Comments | Post a Comment | Permalink

After thinking about getting one for a few weeks, I finally pulled the trigger a couple days ago and got my first smart phone, the Samsung Ace. I kept finding situations where centralized calendar and contacts would be useful. Or times where access to my email when not in front of a computer was also a need.

Dealing with Sprint to get the new plan deal was slightly less than very painful. One of my co-workers recently joined Sprint from Verizon, and they gave him a great package for the same price I was paying per month for my old phone plan. I've been a loyal Sprint customer for 8-9 years now, and they weren't even coming close for the same price. Essentially, new customers get treated far better than veterans. I found this to be unacceptable.

Two and a half hours on the phone (over a span of two days), and I was able to get the deal I wanted. 500 minutes, nights and weekend minutes that start at 6:00 p.m., unlimited text, data, and web for $29.99 a month. It wasn't a pleasant journey, but the end result is. And what did I take away from all of it? If you need something beyond the standard fare, go straight to their account services (customer retention) department. Their normal customer service reps really can't help you with any out-of-the-box requests. In fact, I'd say they were rather useless in my situation. I'd elaborate on that, but it's just too much to type.

So far I'm impressed with the phone. I especially like the Active Sync capabilities, and how it wirelessly updates your contacts and email inbox without having to do anything extra. If you were like me and used to go through the painful process of "hot sync-ing" a Palm Pilot to a computer, you know what I mean. I'm also pretty psyched about the voice recognition technology. Very cool stuff. 

2 Comments | Post a Comment | Permalink

So tomorrow morning I'm off to Marion Central High School for their annual Career Day. I'll be speaking to them about what it's like to be a web developer in today's business world.

I'm excited, and nervous at the same time. I've done a couple webmaster interviews before, but nothing where I had to speak in front of a group. I have some ideas for talking points, but for the most part I'm gonna wing it.

Should be fun.

0 Comments | Post a Comment | Permalink

I kept thinking that I liked the idea of giving my three blog readers an easier way to interact with the comments. After some thought, I decided to setup a comments RSS feed. Now you won't have to check back to see if someone has responded to one of your comments.

The feed will get the 20 most recent comments, regardless of which blog entry they were posted to. You can click here to subscribe, or just use the button on the right side that looks like this:

0 Comments | Post a Comment | Permalink

If you're like me, maybe you've run into the following scenario: you've got some code that runs on your intranet and it touches multiple database servers. For the longest time those servers were all SQL Server 2000 databases. But, in the past year or so, some of those databases started to get upgraded to SQL 2005.

For the most part, your code works fine - unless you're creating databases and need the default schema set to dbo, or if you're querying data from certain tables in the master database. Microsoft changed a few things around from 2000 to 2005.

The solution to this is to find some way to tell what version of SQL Server you're hitting. It turns out that this is actually rather easy to do, and can be accomplished with the following query:

SELECT TheVersion = cast(cast(SERVERPROPERTY('productversion') as varchar(4)) as decimal)

If the number returned is 9 or greater, you're on SQL 2005. If it's 8, it's SQL 2000. Cool eh?

1 Comments | Post a Comment | Permalink

It hasn't been a good week for my head/face. Last Thursday I started to notice my left cheek swelling up. After a trip to the doctor the next day, I was told that I had a blocked parotid gland. For you non-medical types that's the saliva gland. It looked like I was storing up nuts for the winter. The doctor even warned that I could experience "excruciating pain" if it got worse. Lucky for me, it didn't.

Then yesterday, I was in the gym locker room getting dressed to work out. I leaned over to tie my shoe and and then went to stand up and caught the top of my head on the bottom corner of the locker door. Surprisingly, it didn't bleed as much as I would have thought, but it hurt like a mo' fo. I am left wondering if this one's gonna leave a visible scar.

Probably won't make me look any tougher.

3 Comments | Post a Comment | Permalink

Notice anything different about the site? Most of you (ok, three of you "regulars") might not think anything looks different. And you'd be half right. But being half right also makes you half wrong.

As part of my learning experience for work, I decided to re-write this site from traditional ASP and convert it to C#.NET. I actually had fun doing it. And I'm looking forward to seeing how efficient this compiled code really is. My guess is we won't notice much of a speed difference. Time will tell.

3 Comments | Post a Comment | Permalink

By Chip Gillar, founder of Grist.org:

"So-called "global warming" is just a secret ploy by wacko tree-huggers to make America energy independent, clean out air and water, improve fuel efficiency of our vehicles, kick-start 21st-century industries, and make our cities safer and more livable. Don't let them get away with it!"

0 Comments | Post a Comment | Permalink

I was looking through my latest issue of Golf Digest, and came across a special advertising section for Callaway Golf. In there they highlighted their new golf balls for '08, the Tour IX. It's a four-piece ball, and up until now I had never seen anything more than a three-piece ball.

Most of the "high-end" golf balls are three piece technology, and they have the hefty price tag to boot. Out of curiousity, I stopped at Dick's yesterday to see that a dozen of these were going for $45, which is about what the three-piece balls are going for at the moment. So the questions are:

• How long until the other companies follow suit and develop their own four piece balls?
• Will four-piece become the top standard? Or is it just a fad?

The good thing is this might drive down the price of the three-piece balls, which seem fine to me. Will I be able to get a box of Pro-V's for less than $40 now? Will the four-piece balls make much of a difference in a 15-handicap's game?

0 Comments | Post a Comment | Permalink

Picked up a new poker table today. It's identical to the one that my buddy Matt has, and I got it for a great price. $64 after coupons at Dick's Sporting Goods. It's a nice little table, seats 8 people comfortably and could probably hold up to 10 if needed. There's nice padding on the outer edge, and cup holders for all.

I also ordered some poker chips the other day, and I hope to be ready to start hosting regularly pretty soon. I still need to get the basement organized and I need to pick up a bar style light to hang over the table as well. It's all in hopes that I can get enough regular guys to host poker at least once a month, maybe slightly more.

Now if I can just find a table light that is decent quality, and won't take too big of a bite out of my wallet. Jodi and I saw a real nice golf-themed one at Clover Home Leisure center earlier today, but that was $600. I'd love to get a nice stained glass light with some sort of poker theme, golf theme, or beer-related theme on it. I'm not sure where to look in Rochester. If anyone has any ideas, they are welcome.

3 Comments | Post a Comment | Permalink