The Shrine

I shaved my head!

Anyone know where I can get some free space to post a pic? I really like the way it looks.

I suppose that'll have to do.

One-and-a-half on the sides, four on the top.

Is that you?

Pretty tight.

Well, that smug smirk of satisfaction was gone in three hours when I came in fourth and lost my $5 entrance fee. :) We usually don't play for money. We don't get paid enough to do that regularly.

Big difference from the pic on your old web site.

http://www.imageshack.us is a good site, no need to register, just upload pic and get a URL.

Actually, I think my avatar is enough for now.

You are one pasty pale mother fucker, but then I'd be the pot calling the kettle black, or white...

Oh yeah, Michael Jackson doesn't molest children according to the law apparently.

My work requires me to be indoors much of the time, and as for the rest, I haven't been going out into the neighborhood much because I don't want to run across ghetto gangbanger types.

Both Mental and Kupek IRL just look weird to me. Maybe it's because I'm used to seeing the cartoony avatars.

So has this turned into a "post pictures of yourself" thread?

If so, I guess I may as well finally get in on it this time (don't think I've ever posted pics of myself on here before) since some pretty good ones got taken this weekend at the ultimate tournament I went to.

<a href="http://rima.smugmug.com/gallery/593071/ ... 3">Winding up</a>

<a href="http://rima.smugmug.com/gallery/593071/ ... Pulling</a> (I cropped the other guy out of there to make this shot my new avatar)

<a href="http://rima.smugmug.com/gallery/593071/ ... 86">Boxing out</a>

<a href="http://rima.smugmug.com/gallery/593071/ ... 94">Making the D</a>

<a href="http://rima.smugmug.com/gallery/593071/ ... ">Throwing a flick</a>

<a href="http://home.cwru.edu/~see4/html/poultry ... hilling</a> (I'm in the middle with my legs crossed)

<a href="http://home.cwru.edu/~see4/html/poultry ... >Zoning</a> (This was taken after an 800-mile car trip, 2 nights of bad sleep, four ultimate games, and a really crappy cold shower, which helps explain my expression.)

Interesting. I didn't know you played Ultimate.

I tried it once at Stanford, but I was still pretty unathletic at that point (well, I'm horribly unathletic in general, but then I was just plain bad at everything), and the Stanford Ultimate team is driven by ex-varsity athletes who want to play a sport without the pressure of high-level collegiate competition.

Did you end up picking up your teammates for the trip?

Mental wrote:Interesting. I didn't know you played Ultimate.

I tried it once at Stanford, but I was still pretty unathletic at that point (well, I'm horribly unathletic in general, but then I was just plain bad at everything), and the Stanford Ultimate team is driven by ex-varsity athletes who want to play a sport without the pressure of high-level collegiate competition.

Ultimate is fun. I'm decently good. I'd be better if I played more often and had a bit more stamina. Both would be improved by joining some kind of league.

Do you guys use the non-traditional-toss throws, like the overhead or outside throws?

Flip wrote:Did you end up picking up your teammates for the trip?

Nope, it was decided that we were all trying to do each other a favor when none was really needed. No feelings were hard and a good time was had by all.

Lox wrote:Ultimate is fun. I'm decently good. I'd be better if I played more often and had a bit more stamina. Both would be improved by joining some kind of league.

<a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=maryland ... S:official">
There's probably already a league or weekly pickup happening somewhere near you.</a>

Mental wrote:Interesting. I didn't know you played Ultimate.

I've mentioned it a couple times before, but that was back when you weren't around much.

Anyway, Ultimate is basically my passion in life (even more than gaming). I've been playing since I was 14, I absolutely love it, and am trying to improve myself enough so that I can make a Nationals-caliber team (thus being an elite player myself).

All of my workouts are essentially in order to get/keep myself in shape for disc, I play year-round (outdoor from April to November, and indoor the rest of the year), and I've traveled to tournaments all over the country (the furthest I've been was a tourney in Phoenix this past January).

Mental also wrote:Do you guys use the non-traditional-toss throws, like the overhead or outside throws?

There are three basic throws that everybody ends up learning - the forehand, the backhand, and the hammer.

The forehand and backhand look much like their tennis counterparts - I'm throwing a backhand in the "pull" pictures, and am throwing a forehand <a href="http://rima.smugmug.com/gallery/593071/ ... 9">here</a> and <a href="http://rima.smugmug.com/gallery/593071/ ... 5">here</a>.

The hammer is an overhead throw that is thrown with the disc nearly vertical, and it ends up curving towards the throwing hand (i.e. a righty hammer will curve to the right and vice versa) and flattening out so that it ends up upside down.

There are a bunch of other throws - scoober, thumber, blade, etc. - but you don't see them much outside of playing catch, pickup games, or mega-elite level competition.

Mental also also wrote:...the Stanford Ultimate team is driven by ex-varsity athletes who want to play a sport without the pressure of high-level collegiate competition.

Considering that Stanford is one of the perennial powerhouses in college ultimate (at Nationals this year, the men's team lost to eventual champion Brown in the semis and the women's team won the whole thing), that's not quite the way it is.

A few years ago, college ultimate teams were mostly made up of high school athletes who couldn't get scholarships in their high school sports (mostly soccer/track & field) and guys who didn't go to school for athletics in the first place but who were athletic and wanted to play a sport.

Those types of players still make up the majority of college teams, but these days there's more of a presence of high school athletes who specifically played ultimate in high school and went to a certain college specifically for ultimate (schools like Brown, Stanford, Cal, and Colorado spring to mind), as well as athletes who want to play a sport and not have to deal with all of the BS that comes with playing an officially sanctioned college sport - i.e. having to deal with being part of the athletic department and having your budget, schedule, uniforms et al decided for you. Even at the top schools, ultimate is still a club sport, which means the players have the freedom to run the program however they want to.

Well, the team tryout I attended was back in 1997, and I don't know if the sport was as big yet...I guess my only point was that I was looking for a relaxed atmosphere to try to learn to do something physical, and Stanford Ultimate definitely wasn't it - though they were surprisingly supportive for people who could beat me five ways from sideways.

Well, I did some research, and found out that the Stanford men's ultimate team qualified for Nationals (no easy feat) in the following years:

1984 (Champions)
1985
1986 (Second Place)
1988
1989 (Second Place)
1994 (Second Place)
1995
1996
1997 (Second Place)
1998 (Second Place)
1999
2000
2002 (Champions)
2004
2005

So basically, you were a "pretty unathletic" guy trying to pick up on one of the best teams in the country. I'm not trying to be mean here, but: :lol:!

You probably would have been better served trying to find a group that just played pickup on the weekends or something. Heck, if you did a search like the one I did for Lox, you could probably find the local ultimate association and find any number of pickup games or simple, low-pressure leagues of people just out to have fun.

It's not exactly like that. Stanford Ultimate fielded an "A" and a "B" team that year (they said they had done so previously usually as well), with the "A" team being the competition team and the "B" team for those not as good. They actually said there was so much interest they might have fielded a "C" team that year too, but I didn't stick around lond enough to find out.

Lookin' clean, Mental! Also a little scary. But that's okay! :)

I take to my hair with clippers whenever the urge takes me, usually a number 1 all around. This is grown out a little:

<img src="http://www.midspark.net/shazbot/niasi.jpg" />

It's a lot longer than this at the moment. I look a little dishevelled.

Hopefully the scary isn't because I'm so pale - if so, I need more sun. I hoped it would make me look a little "harder" so I'd fit in my neighborhood a little better.