Ring Around the…


Sun! Have you ever seen a rainbow like this? We experienced a circular rainbow while on vacation in Cancun this past week. I haven’t done any research yet…anyone know why, how or when this occurs? It was unbelievably fascinating!!!

Not a bad shot from my little digital camera either, huh? Of course, I was blind for the next few minutes!

US Open Qualifier

Two friends of mine are playing in a local first round qualifier at Scotch Valley Country Club in Altoona for the US Open today so I’m headed over to watch them. There are 39 players contending for 3 sectional qualifier spots. The sectionals will be held June 5-6.

The two friends are Tom Koehle and RJ Porter. Tom used to be an assistant pro at my club Toftrees and has just taken the head pro’s job at Huntington Country Club which is about 25 miles away. RJ is the guy who I wrote about in some emails to a few of you last year who played against Michelle Wie in an US Mid Amateur qualifier.

I’ll be back later tonight to fill in details of their rounds.

SMOKIN’!!

The 1st BBQ of the season. Pork Butt, smoked 12 hrs., hickory and apple woods. I’ll be making Pulled Pork BBQ Sandwiches.

This is 7am this morning.

Below is a shot of the butts (about 16 lbs, total) after 2 hrs.

I’ll add a shot later of the butts after 12 hrs.

Hmmm-hmmm-good!

Chicago Bandits

A friend of mine will be playing for the Chicago Bandits this summer.

“Who?”, you ask.

“The Chicago Bandits women’s professional fast pitch softball team”, I answer.

UncleLar niece, Missy Beseres (bad photo in the link BTW), was drafted by the Bandits as a pitcher. She’ll join Chicago once her Penn State career end – Penn State is awaiting an invitation to the NCAA tournament expected to come later today.

Missy set a Penn State career record for wins this year – she currently sits at 53 over her four years here. A spot on the Bandits roster opened up when uberbabe Jennie Finch got pregnant. A couple of years ago Finch dethroned Anna Kournikova as ESPN’s Hottest Female Athlete.


Here’s a photo of Jennie in action (I don’t think this is an official Chicago Bandit uniform however).


Here’s a shot of Missy in action (that is an official Penn State uniform).

I suspect that Missy will only be on the roster until Jennie makes it back from her pregnancy (she had a baby boy a week ago). The Bandits have a powerful pitching staff and I’m not sure that Missy has quite reached that level yet.

What amazes me these days is the number of opportunities for women to play professional sports. If Missy makes the squad, she will be the fifth female I personally know who is a professional athlete. The others are Jess Brungo on the Connecticut Sun basketball team, and Syndie Nadeau and Ashley Pedersen who both play professional volleyball in Paris and Barcelona respectively, and Joanna Lohman who has played for both the New York Power and Washington Freedom professional soccer teams along with the US National team. I think it’s wonderful that these girls get an opportunity to continue to excel even beyond college at the highest levels in their chosen sports.

Congrats to Veronica


We just received notification today that Veronica has been accepted to attend IMSA, the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy in Aurora, Illinois, starting in the fall. We are just floating on air after getting this news!

IMSA is a very unique high school in that it is a public high school funded by the state. Each year they accept the top 225 applicants from around the state. The students specialize in math and science and over their three years get to study and research at places like FermiLab, Argonne Lab, the Museum of Science and Industry, etc.. Most graduates go on to study at universities such as Stanford, MIT, Harvard, Northwestern, etc..

If you want to get a better understanding of just how unique IMSA is and how much of an accomplishment this is for Veronica, go to:

http://www.imsa.edu/

Way to go, Veronica!

mWow V – Where’s George?

Have you ever gotten a bill with “Track This Bill – www.wheresgeorge.com” stamped on it? If so, you’ve been in possession of one of the millions of bills that have been logged in by the Great American Dollar Bill Locator community aka “Where’s George?”.

The site was started in December of 1998 as a way of creating a tracking service for following $1 bills as they circulate through the country. The guy that created it did it initially as a kind of a lark but it caught on. As of today, almost 88 million bills have been stamped and entered into the “Where’s George?” database.

The concept is simple. Anyone who gets a bill with a “Where’s George?” stamp can go to the site and look to see where the bill has been. At the site, the possessor of the bill is encourage to reenter the bill with the zip code of its current location. If enough people follow up, you can track the bill as it circulates.

The bills will typically have a stamp on them that looks something like these:



“Where’s George?” is an interesting phenomena. It seems to be reaching just about the right critical mass. It’s still enough of a rarity to run across one of the “Where’s George?” bills that it catches people’s eye. Yet there are enough people registered (i.e. around 150,000) and tracking bills (around 40,000 entries a day) that you can actually get a realistic idea of how bills are moving around.

A cult following has grown with some people devoting considerable time to stamping and tracking bills. A “Where’s George?” badge of honor among aficienados, aka Georgers is to achieve the “50 State Bingo”. If you are an original register of a bill, you get an email notice, considered a “hit”, when someone else reenters the bill. If a bill you have registered gets entered from a new state you are considered to have gotten a “hit” from that state and you add that state to your Bingo list. Once you get hits from all 50 states you have reached the “Where’s George?” hall of fame equivalent, the 50 State Bingo List which now totals 266 members (FYI – people who are on the cusp awaiting one last state to reach their 50 State Bingo are called “49ers”).

To get an idea of to what extent some people will carry this, here’s a list of the “Top Toms”. A “Tom” is someone who enterer $2 bills (Thomas Jefferson’s picture is on the $2 bill). The Top Tom has entered over 31,000 $2 bills into the system!!! That’s a little nuts.

“Where’s George?” seems to perfectly follow the psychological concept of an intermittent reward being the best way of reinforcing behavior (the same concept that makes slot machines so addictive). Typically, one must register dozens of bills before you have enough in the system that you are likely to get a hit from someone entering a found “Where’s George?” bill. However, the rarity of getting a return hit means that when it happens it’s quite rewarding. Georgers are definitely hooked on getting hits from their registered bills. Here’s a guy, John of Lower Merion, who has his own personal website that tracks his hits.

How did I learn all this stuff? Am I a closet Georger? Ans: I don’t think so – although I have registered and tagged a couple of “Where’s George?” bills. I simple learned a lot by reading The Encyclopædia Georgetannica.

Here’s a list of a whole bunch of other “Where’s George?” related websites that you might find interesting.

As silly as this all may seem, there has actually been some real benefit from the project. A German researcher used the “Where’s George?” data to model how people travel. That data helped his research team formulate a mathematical model that could help predict how epidemic diseases spread. Read more here.

So the next time you run across a “Where’s George?” bill, take a few moments and register it to find out where it’s been.

PS. There’s also a “Where’s Willy?” which is an affiliated website that tracks Canadian paper money. The name Willy refers to Sir Wilfrid Laurier – the first French Canadian Prime Minister whose portrait appears on the $5 bill (Canada has moved to using coins rather than bills for $1 and $2 demominations of their currency).

Elliot’s Cross-Country Trek


What a great visit with Elliot and friends Joe and Adam! I haven’t laughed that hard in a long time! They were very interested in learning the dynamics of the Fall family…and engaging themselves in every competition we could dream up (from the proper way to speak to pool and air hockey)! I’m so sorry we had to go away on Saturday. I understand Steve and I missed out on a great day in Chicago.

Gary – you should have a blast on Wednesday!