So. last night I ended up going to the hall with XY.  We stayed a little longer than I had hoped, but everyone wanted their turn to try one of the drills I was practicing.  We got home around 11:30, but then I sat on the couch to relax a minute … then fell asleep.  I woke up at 3am to some retarded infomercial.  I staggered on up to bed, only to be awakened 3 short hours later. *sigh* this is not the good night’s rest I had hoped for.  I’m taking off work this afternoon so I can get some practice in – but I think I’ll go home and freshen up a bit before coming back out to the hall.

I’ve already drew up my tournament notebook which looks something like this:

R R+ ! /` ~ x w/l
  • R is rack number
  • R+ is longest run in rack
  • ! is balls made
  • /` is balls missed
  • ~ is safeties
  • x is scratches
  • w/l is obviously win loss

I also have little superscript notes for shots that indicate banks, kicks, combos, caroms, jumps and safety escapes. I think I’ve covered all the data I want, so… as long as I’m diligent about recording the info, it should be fine.  I’ve been doing this by hand the last two really big matchups I’ve had and it’s not too difficult if I do it after each shot.  I only use hash marks, so I don’t have to keep track of the exact balls I made.

I’m also in the process of writing a little app that will allow me to enter this information into a database so I can start doing trend analysis on my game.  The idea is that I will send a txt msg to a specific email account after each game with this info and the app will read that email and store that in the database.  Then I can just run reports at my leisure. Of course, i’m still working on the reading email from code thing – I have to convert someone’s C# to VB to have it integrated with the rest of my website (secured and hidden from public view, of course).

Oh well.  I’m actually glad I started doing this today because it’s kept my brain from worrying too much about the match later this evening.  I wish I had started the coding earlier this morning though, I would’ve like to at least have the email reading thing done before the tournament.