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Saturday, 04 April 2009

adventures in videogame baseball

I must really, really suck at videogames. I mean, I struggle just to win games against bad teams on "easy" level. Last month I bought MLB '09: The Show for the PS3, the only PS3 game I have so far. Naturally, I started a season as the NY Mets since they are my team. The first thing I did was drop Duaner Sanchez, who got released in real life. Then I signed Pedro Martinez to my team. Maybe in the real world, no one thinks Pedro can get it done anymore, but in my videogame world, Pedro is still the man. He is my long reliever. I promoted Billy Wagner to the Majors as well even though we all know Billy is injured all season due to his arm surgery. In the game, he is still way better than some of my other relievers. Then I played a few games of spring training to get used to the game, and started the season.
The game makes your players suffer some ridiculous injuries. I lost Oliver Perez for 2 weeks after he pitched just one inning. Then I lost Carlos Beltran for 2 weeks after he got beaned in the hand. Even after getting some of these players back, I still struggle to win against the computer. The peak of my frustration came against the Mets' arch nemesis, the Phillies, against whom I dropped 4 straight games, in all of them I lost leads at the end of games, some of them even going to extra innings. I had a game against the Phillies where the bullpen blew a save, then the game went to extra innings, I had Pedro Martinez in relief at that point, the Mets got the go-ahead run in the 11th inning, and then the Phillies tied it the next frame, then won it in the bottom of the 13th. After a while, I was pissed and decided to start a new season after compiling a 13-15 record. The very first game, I lost David Wright for a month after he got a "finger contusion" sliding back into 2nd. WTF?!? At one point I got so mad I started beaning the other hitters trying to injure them. I discovered that after 3 consecutive beanballs your pitcher gets ejected from the game. However, the batters never charge the mound! The opposing pitchers never "retaliate" by beaning your guy the very next inning! Where is the realism? That is something they seriously need to work into next year's version!
So I started a new season again. I had some ridiculously intense games just on "rookie" level. There was one where I played a game against the Padres that went again into extra innings. Finally it was the bottom of the 14th inning, there was man on first and second with two outs, and the pitcher, Pedro Martinez is due to hit. In that situation you have to use a pinch hitter but if it doesn't work, who's going to pitch the 15th? I still had K-Rod who is only good for 2 innings max. After that I am out of relievers. So I pinch hit with Ramon Castro and he hits a walk off homer to win the game. I felt like a managerial genius at that point. Since then there have been other close games. I like having my players have the most awesome stats possible. The best was when I got Johan Santana to throw a complete game 1-0 shutout. That was what we call "gangsta." My players are leaders in average, stolen bases, complete games, ERA, innings pitched, but they are near the bottom in RBI and HR. Which is why I recently lost 4 games in a row including a sweep at the hands of the Nationals who suck both in real life and in the videogame! I get so mad, almost as bad as when someone kills me on Call of Duty 4! Today I played another extra inning marathon against the hated Phillies, it went to extra innings, and I ended up winning after 14 innings after using up every bench player, my entire bullpen, and two starters who ended up having to pitch in relief!

Friday, 02 January 2009

My 2008

The year was okay, I thought. Not bad, not great, just okay. Work wise, everything was mostly fine. I passed the one year mark in my practice. I got along with most of my patients, and got into some fights with a few drug seeking psycho's. It was a very conflicted, drama-filled year at the medical office.
After talking about it for months, I was finally able to save enough to get a nice sound system for my home. It's a 5.1 system, using the Onkyo TX-806 receiver, Arcam Muso loudspeakers, and a Velodyne subwoofer. The Onkyo 806 is one badass piece of equipment. Then I got a playstation 3 so I could watch high definition blu-ray movies. The first movies I acquired: Dark City and Men in Black, thanks to Masa, and Dark Knight, which I ordered myself. I don't even own any playstation 3 games. Tomorrow I will do another step long overdue, upgrade my cable to high definition digital. Overall I'd have to say that the sound system was the highlight of the year for me. And I think it's kind of sad to consider getting some high tech toy to be the highlight of your year.
Personally, I found the year to be kind of a downer. In April I went on a date with a woman who was 5 years older than me. Obviously we didn't see each other again after that since she thought I was too young for her. At the time, I was still 29. I didn't go on another date for more than six months, when I started dating "Reese Witherspoon." No I didn't actually date Reese Witherspoon. That's just my codename for her. Things with Reese didn't exactly work out. You know how it is with those Hollywood actresses. If I would pick a theme song for how I felt about her, it would be "Build Me Up Buttercup" by The Foundations. You know, the song they played at the end of "There's Something About Mary." By the time we had gone out for two months and she stopped talking to me, I was thoroughly bummed. If there was something the experience pointed out to me, it was how dry my social life had become. It's like I live in a desert where I never get to meet anyone new, anywhere.
I got a church I go to now, but don't really know anyone there except some Iolani people. I planned on joining a small group this month. I felt I needed to reconnect and hang out more with my Iolani friends. One of my mom's friends thinks I should take up tennis, which I haven't played since junior high and by the way, I suck at tennis. I used to think I was all right, but one day when I was 11 years old in Iolani Summer School, I played a set against Augusto Camara, and he totally kicked my ass. I never got more than two points in a game, and those were due to his errors. Augusto died three years ago. But I'll never forget that he kicked my ass in tennis. Where was I? Oh yeah. There's some other clubs and classes I could do. I guess the point of this is not so much just to get dates, but get out of the house and meet people. My colleague told me I should get on facebook. He said, "I'll bet you a hundred bucks you can get a date through facebook within a year. If my semi-employed, middle aged, loser friends can get a date, you should have no problem." I guess I need to make more friends. Want to be my friend?
Yesterday, it was New Year's Eve. I went again to Lori's house, where I have gone every year except once, since 1996. While I was there, I saw Steph there for the first time in eight years. I used to have this hopeless crush on her after I met her in 1998. We corresponded for a while, then hung out a few times in the summer of 2000. I remember we watched "X Men" and "Me, Myself, and Irene" together, as well as the musical Rent when it came to Blaisdell. I used to really like this girl but it had no future because she lived in Chicago. So I never told her that I liked her. After I left for New York, we lost touch. A few years later, she got married to this tall haole guy from Ohio. When I saw her and sat down next to her, we caught up on the last eight years, and then I just kind of ran out of things to talk to her about. I just wasn't that interested in her life anymore. We didn't really have any common ground other than a history of playing in Symphony together. She was this sort of mystery girl, the girl I never really got to know because she was always literally so far away, and I used to think about her and curse my misfortune and wonder what might have been. All of that just sort of faded away into oblivion and after awhile I just completely forgot about her. It was the same manner in which Marcel Proust's narrator in "In Search of Lost Time" consigns his lover to oblivion and he forgets his love for her. So it was interesting to see her again after so long, looking the same as I remembered her, but a little sad too, because it brought back the memory of the lonely feelings I had when I was in college.
I got home from Lori's house before midnight. I would have gone to bed but knew I couldn't sleep with the fireworks going on. So I played Call of Duty 4, banked my prestige for the third time, and gave it a whirl. And wow, I had the best gaming session online than I'd had all year. I must have played at least 4-5 games with 20 or more kills, positive kill/death ratio. I was on fire. I had this one game where I pulled off a score of 32-4, at one point racking up 17 consecutive kills without dying, and this was at level 13. All I was using was M16 red dot, with stopping power. Holy crap I just freaking dominated that game. The next day I hopped online and I got my butt whooped on COD4. Which leads me to believe that on New Years Eve, I was playing a bunch of noobs, but all the hardcore gamers came on during the day. Why the gamers felt the need to do something else New Years Eve is beyond me.

Monday, 15 December 2008

She Don't Want Nobody Near

She don't want nobody near

But you can't get away from that

They appear and disappear

And they all get a string attached

Pretty soon they got you hanging on a line

Pretty soon they're singing one by one the same old rhyme

They say, "I'm alright, I just can't get home tonight."
I finished reading this book called "How to Get a Date Worth Keeping." It was a recommendation from Connie. I thought it was a pretty good book. I read it in 5 days. I recognized a lot of myself and women I had dated in the past in the book. I don't think I will be able to follow all the advice in the book, but some of the insights were good, I thought.
I think what I realize after reading this is just how much of a bummer my weekends have become in the last few months, without my realizing it. It was a lot different from residency. I had stuff to do on the weekends when I was living in LA. Half the time I was working so I couldn't do anything. But a lot of times I would hang out with Darryl and his friends to watch the latest movies at the Burbank AMC. Saturdays I'd join Darryl and his friends at Curry House in Little Tokyo. At least once a month I would hang out with Bryan Choi from med school, or my sister, or Matto and Jen. For 1 1/2 years I went to church with Matto and Jen and we'd always eat at places like Tofuya and Shakas. And of course there were the conventions like Anime Expo and Comic Con.
I dated a lot of women during residency, too. After being totally dateless during college and medical school, I was finally able to go out on dates. It was like I finally woke up. I guess I was a serial monogamist. I never dated more than one woman at a time. Dr. Cloud says that's bad, you should date lots of women at once. Yeah, great, except I don't meet enough women to even be able to try doing that. Even now, I see the same people at work, on the weekends hang out with the same guys, and see the same people at church on Sunday.
Now on the weekends I hang out with a small group of guys, and all we talk about is basketball and fantasy basketball. I have to listen to endless fart jokes which they still find funny. Fart jokes are not funny. We always do the same thing, hang out at this spot in Ala Moana drinking tea, then go to dinner, then Don Quixote to buy drinks, then play videogames until late at night. We don't even go to movies any more because David has this thing about not going to any movies on opening weekend. I haven't seen a movie since Tropic Thunder.
I guess after talking to Matto I realized I should try joining some clubs and groups in the community. But I won't be like my colleague who joined a crazy amount of things and has endless classes in languages and singing and orchestra that take up all her time outside of work. That sucks. I still want time to watch anime and kill people in Call of Duty 4. Right now I'm watching this show called "Skip Beat" about a girl who got betrayed by a guy she was devoted to, so she lost the ability to love. I should also start hanging out more with the Iolani guys. Ever since Masa moved his work to Pearl City, we stopped hanging out. I still haven't joined a small group at church. They say they're going to start some next month. So I guess that's my plan.