Screw that love crap. This is what the world needs more of.

(Loads slow. Be patient.)

Thanks, JS!

[First heard about this last night at the prison Mr. Thompson escaped from. The correctional officers were in a pretty good mood.]

“Prison escapee captured in Vegas

LAS VEGAS - An escaped Carson City prison inmate was captured Tuesday in Las Vegas, three days after his story and photo were aired on a national television broadcast.

Jody Kenneth Thompson was arrested Tuesday by members of the U.S. Marshal Service and the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department’s SWAT team.

According to a Marshal Service press release, an anonymous tipster led authorities to an apartment in the 3900 block of Mountain Vista Street. As investigators from both departments closed in on the address, Thompson allegedly fled and ran to a nearby residence where he forced entry and attempted to hide. Thompson was found a short time later and placed under arrest without further incident.

Thompson allegedly mastered a prison break “fueled by love and a free ride,” said District of Nevada Acting United States Marshal Fidencio Rivera.

On the morning of Aug. 25, Thompson and others who were serving their sentences at the Northern Nevada Correctional Center on Snyder Avenue were assigned to load furniture onto a delivery truck going to the Lovelock Correctional Center. At approximately 8:30 a.m. the delivery truck departed NNCC. At approximately 11:30 a.m., Thompson was unaccounted for and believed to have escaped on the truck.

“Ironically he escaped with the assistance of Nevada Department of Corrections employee and love interest Ana Kastner,” Rivera said.

Kastner allegedly smuggled a cell phone into the prison and gave it to Thompson on or about Aug. 13, two weeks prior to his escape. Their alleged romantic relationship and her involvement were discovered during the investigation into Thompson’s escape. She was arrested on Aug. 27.

He was featured on Fox Network’s America’s Most Wanted television program Saturday.”

[Mr. Thompson will still be in the Nevada Maximum Security Prison in Ely long after my grandchildren graduate from college.][And I don’t have any grandchildren.][Yet.]

I play backgammon. A lot of backgammon.

Father figure Ken Ingerson taught me the game in the 1970s, but it was this year that I was bitten by the bug. My place of choice is It’s Your Turn which offers numerous games at reasonable prices. You can play for free but you’re limited to 25 moves a day; you’d be surprised how quickly those 25 moves disappear.

IYT offers eight or nine types of BG, of which I play three:
- Backgammon: this is the regular, traditional game, but with no doubling cube.
- Backgammon Pro: Regular game with doubling cube. First player to five points wins. This is match play, so there can be as many as nine one-point games before a winner is decided.
- Backgammon Pro-9: Regular game with doubling cube. First player to nine points wins. This is also match play, so there can be as many as 17 one-point games before a winner is decided.

You can play in three different environments:
- Regular games, which players can make moves from once every three days to once every 30 days. I always play three-day games because one-month games can take months to complete.
- Ladder games. Players join the game they want with set time limits they want (ex: moves every 28 hour moves to 100-hour moves). Failure to move within the set limit is a forfeit. Players climb the higher in the standings with each win.
- Tournament games. These are elimination tournaments where you play three to four players a round, two games against each player. I justed started tournament play and the highest I’ve ever gotten was the fourth round (13th place out of about 200 players).

Looking at my games right now…
Active regular games: 26. Most of these are plain old BG. (Only 26??? I’m slowing down.)
Active ladder games: 53 matches. Most of those are Backgammon Pro with one or two BG-9
Tournaments: 10 tournaments of almost all regular BG.

Now the big question: Do I win? Of the nearly 1400 BG games and matches I’ve played on IYT, I’ve won nearly 900 times which is two-thirds of games played (895/477/14 draws = 1386 games and matches). Of the three environments, I win about 62% of my regular games, and 70% of my tournament and ladder games.

All of which proves yet again that I need a life.

Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Hey, Navy:

I’m typing this in class, which is pretty much on auto-pilot right now. I design my courses so the students work on assignments either from the book or from handouts. Inmates are a different type of student: my theory is they retain lessons much better when the teacher gets out of the way and lets them discover the material for themselves. After several semesters of prison teaching, I ain’t seen nothing to prove my theory wrong, yet.

As for the news around the house, the big story is Uncle Dennis and Aunt-elect Nicki decided to get married in Reno in June instead of Ireland. YM wasn’t surprised and it sounds like your seesters weren’t, either, but they all got passports out of the deal. I don’t know if Lara is taking the semester off, yet, because the main reason she was taking it off no longer applies, but I’m hoping she takes it off. She’s been working real hard and needs a break.

Danielle finished her third manuscript, which I find nothing less than amazing. We’re all going to be related to someone real famous. YM is not enjoying her time in the Hellmouth on King Street (you know how she gets sometimes) but she’s reving up for Christmas. Things are appearing out of storage in the garage, and there are garlands and other Noel things up on the walls. We’re probably getting a tree very soon but I’m thinking that when you get here, we’ll run out and get Charlie Brown tree. Lord knows we’re got enough decorations for two trees.

As for me, life is pretty much the same. I got my annual ear infection so I’m feeling a little light in the head (no smartass remarks, please), and I’m taking antibiotics that are the weight and size of an American quarter. I’ll probably stay home tomorrow and sleep all day. My hearing aid broke and is getting repaired, so my world is pretty quiet right now (except for the usual tennitis). My classes are winding down for the semester and I’m debating with myself whether to teach in the Spring. At one point, I wasn’t, but now I’m told I have three classes. It’s hard to keep up, sometimes.

We got our first serious snowfall of the season and were ‘blessed’ with about an inch on the valley floors. It got so cold, our neighbor’s outdoor sprinkler system blew a valve and water was gushing everywhere, higher than their bedrooms windows, in fact. As Murphy’s Law would have it, they were out of town, naturally. The neighbor around the corner had the tools to shut the water off at their main next to the street. It looks like we caught the fountain in time before it did any damage to their house and foundation, fortunately.

Since I don’t think it’s possible for a letter to get even more boring, I’ll wrap this one up by saying we miss hearing from you and hope you can write/call soon.

All my love,
Air Force

The ballot for the Baseball Hall of Fame class of 2006 was released today and I will be making fearless predictions soon.

Here’s the email I sent a year ago when the ballot for 2005 was released. This is what the Hall would have looked like if I was King of Baseball:

—————————————————-

Below is this year’s Baseball Hall of Fame Ballot. IMHO, Wade Boggs and Ryne Sandberg were sure-locks this year, and everyone else is a toss-up

If I ran the Hall of Fame and my vote was the only one that counted…

- Andre Dawson would get a gimme for the knees he lost playing on AstroTurf for the Expos, a substance that should be banned in the same category as acid rock at a church recital.

- Jim Abbott may not be a baseball HOFer, but he’s a true American hero for inspiring a generation of kids for being better than they thought they were. He’s in.

- Rich Gossage should be in the Hall, like there’s any question, but players with loud nicknames are automatically cool (”GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSE!!!”). Ditto for Chili Davis.

- One guy in the Hall has a disease named after him. Let’s put one in the Hall that has a career-saving operation named after him. Tommy John, come on down.

- The HOF is for career excellence, but I’m partial to a guy who pitched his team to a World Series victory in a series-clinching game. And the game went into extra innings. Jack Morris is in.

- Dale Murphy was (and is) a Christian gentleman in a sport and time that made bad decisions easy things to do. Oh yeah: he was a league MVP, he played hard, and gave the Braves street cred before their current run of excellence. You’re in, Dale.

- Lee Smith was the Mariano Rivera of his time. He’ll lose votes because he bounced around baseball. Not a problem here. You da man, Lee.

- Darryl Strawberry is a tough one because the BBHOF seems to care more about character that the other Hall of Fames. Give me a break. We forgave Lawrence Taylor and put him in the NFL Hall of Fame, and he never met a line of cocaine he didn’t snort. For Heaven’s sake, Ty Cobb is in the BBHOF and his hatred of everyone is legendary. Even so, I’ll take a pass this year. Darryl’s vices and self-denial impacted his teammates and organizations, both on and off the field. My memory will be a little more faded next year.

- And finally: Steve Garvey. There are probably good reasons to vote him in, maybe, but they’ll never convince me. All I can remember him knocking the Cubs out of the NL playoffs in 1984 and running the bases with his fist up high. I get a small amount of satisfaction that he had to do it in a butt-ugly uniform. Even so, he can bite me (I’m not bitter…nooooo….)

Later.