Friday afternoon off is a luxury. And I fully exploited that luxury today. Drove out to ECP, strapped on my 'blades and felt the wind and the sun on my face. First time in a long while, it seems.

ECP is a more fun venue than Bish Park. It's like comparing the open road to a fish bowl. It's just a long stretch from end to end, and by the time you've covered that distance, you feel like it's quite some achievement already.

At ECP, I felt my quads cramping up quite early on my run. Sweat came earlier. My big toes started feeling numb after some time (and are still numb now) and I developed a 1cm wide blister on my right instep. All signs that my 'blades need adjustment for a better fit, or maybe I was pushing myself a bit harder than usual, being alone on the pathways today.

Being alone meant I could move faster, not worrying about anyone being left behind. I could take the slopes and not worry about my companion/s panicking and getting themselves or somebody else hurt halfway down.

But it's also fun to be with people you know, sharing the experience and maybe talking about it later. A shared memory between friends. At one point, I kinda' missed Anthony and his ability to pull people together at the drop of a hat. We've lost our party animal; and every organization needs one. Sigh.

But Amy and HP showed up later with their rented bikes. And about the same time, Vince called and asked if I wanted to go bowling. Hey, better late than never, eh? :)

We've seen the official scoresheet. Vince and I won outright, regardless of our handicap! The second placed team had exactly the same handicap as us, so we are the champs after all.

It might have been a different story if the bowling club members were allowed to partner each other, but as organizers they had to at least give non-bowlers a chance to win too. In that loophole, we had the advantage.

Vince and I are champs on the lanes this year! So happened we were the only 2 staff in competition, everyone else being somehow otherwise occupied, while we both cleared our schedules for this, our event of the year!

So Vince can finally say he has won a bowling tournament after 4? 5? years of on-campus competition.

What can I say? I bowled my usual competition score, averaging 142; Vince likewise, averaging 126, over 3 games each. I was quite amazed to score like I did, considering how many open frames I left per game, and how difficult it was getting strikes on my lanes. This game wasn't anything like our last practice, but I guess it was enough.

Of course, the non-bowling club members' most generous handicap helped our game a lot...

Oh, and we got interviewed by our campus-TV news rivals who wanted us to comment on staff participation in student-organized activities. Hope they caught my good side on camera!

I have made a complete fool of myself in public and my face has never been redder. I'm referring to my entry dated 2 April 2006 (below) confirming once and for all what a tightwad I am. And, oh, how gullible too.

I got myself all worked up over the 'neocharge' levied on loading Neopets pages, ya? Check the date again... yes, I must be the biggest April Fool to fall for a stunt Neopets makes a tradition of year after year. How violently I reacted too! You don't get that much emotion out of me easily, if you know me well enough.

Now to find a paper bag to put over my head...

Since I'm considering doing something potentially unethical with other people's blogs, in my own blog I'm seeking opinions on the matter before I make an irreversible decision.

The point of NY conneXions as conceived in its previous incarnation was to be the nexus of student dialogue and debate. It was, as I understand, meant to be a platform for students to comment on events, people, and items of interest to and about the college. That ideal hasn't changed, but since we linked the journal to the college server and insisted on improving the quality of our reporting (work-in-progress, trust me), and on being fair-but-positive in outlook, it's hard to get away from the idea that we've become the official mouthpiece for the admin rather than a discussion platform for our students.

To remind our students that they have a stake in this journal too, I decided to open up the writing of the Orientation 2 '06 experience to the general student body, asking them to submit the text of or links to their blog entries about it, but to date no one's sent anything for us to publish on the matter.

It's not that they haven't written anything on O2: just Google and a multitude of entries from a number of different bloggers pop up. So here's my problem...

There's such ample material out there, both positive and negative. I'm tempted to just 'kope' text from several J1 bloggers and stick them into the conneXions article just to 'force' contributions. I'll remove the links to the original blogs and we'll just do a little editing to keep the 'contributors' as anonymous as possible, though total anonymity will be impossible to maintain, of course.

I've already put together 4-5 pages worth of contributions and all I need do is upload them, and one way or another, all hell is probably going to break loose.

Do I really want to do that...? Advise, please...!

Call me a skinflint, miser or cheapo nenek, but I have developed a serious aversion towards the Neopets site ever since they started this system that charged users neopoints (NP) for loading pages from their site. Get *free* omelette, pay 10NP; get *free* tombola dip, pay 10NP; get *free* uncertain blessing at Coltzan's Shrine, pay 10NP; you get the idea. Even reloading a previously visited page costs NP. Ridiculous!

There's this complex argument that inflation has gone so high, items have become unaffordable for the casual user, so they need a system that will remove NP from the economy to reduce this runaway inflation. Well, I am a casual user and with this system in place I don't even earn enough interest in my fixed deposit to cover what I usually do on the site in the first place -- which is to get *free* stuff!

Neopets says this system will reduce bandwidth usage on their ever popular site. It certainly has. I don't want to darken their doors again, even if I never feed my Wocky again.

I know it's just virtual money that's being drained, but in order to keep visiting Neopets I have to play the games just to earn NP so I can afford to keep visiting the site. That's not virtual time being wasted, it's MY time.

Sorry, Neopets. It's been fun, but if this system remains in place, it's adios amigo!