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Point Schedule]]> General http://www.playdromelanes.com/blog/index.php?itemid=63 Tue, 8 Nov 2011 02:02:50 -0500 http://www.playdromelanes.com/blog/index.php?itemid=62
The Extras league was processes without us actually having the triplicate sheets in hand. This is not a good way to process the league by anyones standards. So if you see any errors in that league, let us know. Preferably Jim or Fish.

While you are here (and I am bored) I can tell you the night time lane machine has been a bit 'iffy' lately. This was confirmed by a few people who I can actually listen to without them complaining but telling me something constructive. Those bowlers are difficult to find. But I manage to dig them up. Anyway, the machine will be taken apart and checked out on Wednesday. Hopefully we will have the parts we need if that is the case. Usually we do. But you never know.]]> General http://www.playdromelanes.com/blog/index.php?itemid=62 Wed, 12 Oct 2011 01:12:56 -0500 http://www.playdromelanes.com/blog/index.php?itemid=61
Wednesday nights between 9pm and midnight we will have a 'killer' special. $2 games and red pin bowling. This is our best special in many years. We expect to 'pack the house' with open bowling once the word gets out. Some people have no idea what red pin is. I will make up a tutorial on this and have it online and also have a flyer inside the alleys explaining exactly how it works.

While having my morning coffee here at home, I thought up something funny. You can go check it out. These are pictures of our first place teams in the Have-A-Ball league and the Summer Match Point leagues.

Check these teams out!
]]> General http://www.playdromelanes.com/blog/index.php?itemid=61 Sun, 11 Sep 2011 06:02:03 -0500 http://www.playdromelanes.com/blog/index.php?itemid=60
Check out the Flash Videos!]]> General http://www.playdromelanes.com/blog/index.php?itemid=60 Fri, 15 Jul 2011 18:28:54 -0500 http://www.playdromelanes.com/blog/index.php?itemid=59
I have a "test" league uploaded to the site now. But I have to tell you that some of these league have massive amounts of data. So if you are not on a broadband connection or have a less than stellar PC, you might have a problem viewing the fial average sheets. So try this one out and see how it goes. There will be a link on the main page of this site when I have all of the leagues processed and uploaded.

Check out the Petersen Industrial league - GO GO GO!]]> General http://www.playdromelanes.com/blog/index.php?itemid=59 Tue, 24 May 2011 19:37:46 -0500 http://www.playdromelanes.com/blog/index.php?itemid=58
So what can go wrong? Sometimes a league will not be processed due to a league problem that has to be rectified. This can go on for days. We catch errors and have to get in touch with the league secretary before we can process. Or there might be a league rule change (such as the AC Express league) which can be a total disaster. Also we will have leagues who will have bowlers drop out for various reasons. And then the team has vacant bowlers on some teams. Bowlers will move to a different team and drop the team total to (for example) 24 teams to 23 or even 22. This creates a BIG scheduling mess. Also some 'snow days' are added into the mix. Some leagues will come in on a totally different day to do a snow makeup. You can see the 'fun' in this processing a league twice a week and having it make some sense.

What else? Oh yeah, priorities. Normally I will upload all the the leagues that HAVE BEEN processed early on Tuesday and Friday mornings. But if something else happens in those time frames that needs more attention, then the leagues being posted online will take a back seat. For example, we lost lanes 1-8 last week due to a hard drive failure. Fixing those 8 lanes is much more important than gathering up league standings and putting them on the web site. Another instance might be that there is a problem with a lane machine. This is also more of an urgent matter. Or how about this one? Leagues will mysteriously get deleted! Yep, we see this once in a while. I think this is more likely to be human error than anything else. But it happens. I am not there 24/7 (although to some it seems I am), so when a disaster like this happens, it will be fixed when I come back to work. Then there are times when there is a personnel shift change or someone being sick who will normally process leagues. I will not be running up front to process all of the leagues just so they can be put on line.

As you can see there are more than a handful of reasons why leagues don't always make it to the site. I figure that the rate of leagues being posted in a timely manner is about 99.5%. Not bad considering all that has to be done to get it right.

If you have been looking at the news, you might have seen that around 1,500,000 websites have been hacked to some degree. I can tell you that NONE of the ones I have anything to do with are affected. Why? Simplicity. You can see that our website is very basic. The more bells and whistles you add to the site make it easier to hack or modify. This is the reason you see our site not looking real fancy. Its to the point. You get where you are going quickly. No ads. Not many external links. No BS. You can be assured that when you check our site, you will be safe. Of course there are always some wise guys looking to hack any and everything. But for the most part we are locked down pretty good. ]]> General http://www.playdromelanes.com/blog/index.php?itemid=58 Fri, 1 Apr 2011 16:56:47 -0500 http://www.playdromelanes.com/blog/index.php?itemid=57
So why the change? I call it keeping up with the times. Simply put, if every ball sold in the pro shop was the same every year, then there would be no reason to make any lane conditioning changes. At least I wouldn't. Some 'bowling alleys' will keep changing for no apparent reason.

The balls sold now, and within the last few years, take a lot of oil up off the lane. This is from the balls 'flaring' so much. And with the balls being this way, and more and more people buying these balls, the oil is gone about 8 times quicker than it was just 5 years ago. To explain it would mean you would have to go to the pro shop and ask about track flare. Or me making you a video to better explain.

So whats the big deal? Not much really. In a nutshell the outside boards (around 1-7) are just a bit drier. And boards 8-12 are considerably wetter. This is where most people like to play. Called the track (unlike the track on your ball). And the center of the lane is wetter than you are used to by quite a bit.

My advice to you. First, wipe your ball off before you throw your first ball! You would not believe the amount of people who don't do this. Even before I write this you should have been doing so. Want to know something? Its too much work for some people! I am not lying. They have said it to my face. Sheesh! Fine then, keep bowling crappy. 7 and 10 pin spares. If you are one of those (rightys) who more often than not will miss the 10 pin just to the left by a hair, then you 'should' make more of them. For a 7 pin you will definitely want to play a more direct line. Don't go looking for your ball to do all the work. You will find out, as I mentioned, the middle will be wetter.

But wait? Why so wet in the middle? This applies to the night leagues. Some guys love the oil and will 'wheel the hell' out of the ball and play the lanes how they should be played with a aggressive ball.

Senior day leagues and weekend oil. Boards 5-12 have also been 'juiced up' a bit. With the outside boards a bit drier. The leagues who bowl at 2:30 should see a marked improvement. I don't think adding this extra oil will 'kill' the early morning leagues. This will have to be monitored more closely than the night leagues. People with plastic balls or rubber balls they got back in 1955 might have a problem. What can I say? Its time to let go and get something else. You laugh. People still use balls over 50 years old!

Before I go, I need to mention we had our first senior shoot 703 this season - Rocco Lecce in the A.C. Express league on Tuesday afternoon. This league has been putting up some pretty good scores. This 24 team league has some of the better senior bowlers. I can only hope though that they don't want to get rid of the good bowlers come next season. In case you missed it, you can read the blog posting below about seniors who 'love to hate' bowlers who are better then them. Or worse for that matter.]]> General http://www.playdromelanes.com/blog/index.php?itemid=57 Fri, 12 Nov 2010 02:24:45 -0500 http://www.playdromelanes.com/blog/index.php?itemid=56 General http://www.playdromelanes.com/blog/index.php?itemid=56 Tue, 5 Oct 2010 00:10:02 -0500 http://www.playdromelanes.com/blog/index.php?itemid=55
Lee Krislow shot his in the Corrections league. This was his first one! And he was using a Hammer ball. He tells me he got it in 1998. See? You really don't need a new ball. But don't tell Alan that.

Jay Gallo, Gregg Wildermuth and Curt Pachtinger also had perfect games.

Sandy Davis received an award from the state ladies association recently. Someone (ok, my sister) asked me to take a picture of it and post it on the website. Pretty good scores for just one season - right?

Click here for the picture

Good thing winter is coming. And hopefully with drier weather. Humidity is the worst thing in a bowling alley. Although we don't have it as bad as some other places, a real rainy day can make bowling miserable. Starting in October is when the high scores start to kick in. Everyone is loose and settled in. So now with the rain and muggy days hopefully gone it is time to rack up some numbers and show off a bit.

I should get on the senior leagues a bit. Meaning pay more attention to them. Some guy last week in the day leagues shot a 668 series. And there is another with a 198 average. Now get this. I might have mentioned it before. The leagues prefer these high average bowlers NOT bowl in the league! Isn't that crazy talk? Seems that if you are a crummy bowler in the senior leagues, nobody wants you on their team. And if you are a real good bowler, nobody wants to bowl against you. As incredible as this may seem, this is how it goes in some cases. People. Listen up. Its handicapped leagues! But you can imagine the thinking going on. Even though it might be distorted thinking. If you have a low average bowler on your team (say the average is 85), then you get discouraged if your team loses. Then if you bowl against a team who has a guy averaging 198 or shoots 200 games a lot, you don't like it because he is good. GOOD. Plain and simple. He is better than you. Handicap is the name of the game. Simple math will tell anyone that no matter what the averages are, the handicap will always play in to who wins or loses. I hope I made this clear. If not then there is no hope.]]> General http://www.playdromelanes.com/blog/index.php?itemid=55 Fri, 1 Oct 2010 22:19:06 -0500 http://www.playdromelanes.com/blog/index.php?itemid=54
The summer was pretty good. Scores were through the roof again. Thanks to the Match Point league and the Doubles which produced most of the high scores. I will have them all lumped in one section from the main web page soon. I lost a good portion of last winters 'Scores On The Screens'. But I have all the summer ones. Whoops! We did have Emil Dudas set a house record, even if it was for just the summer. He ended up averaging 245. At one point near the end of the season he was 249.97. Whew!

I figure I will post the winter standing sheets early Friday mornings. Or maybe at other times during the week. But don't count on anything except the early Friday morning updates.

The webcam project is way back on the back burner. It was running pretty good. But the laptop 'croaked'. It was a crummy laptop someone had given me. I still have it. Just no time to fix the backlight inverter. Maybe some day. I also have very limited internet access at 'the alleys'. So most of the updates you see her I do from home - and for free. It is very rare anything you see here done by me costs the alleys anything. So my updates are pretty much done when I get around to it. You can see my position on this.

We are in the middle of some lane construction. Back end work for better pin action and things like that. I expect (as always) for some pretty high scores. We can always do better I say. This year is no exception. The lane machine (the old silver one) is still holding its own. Yes, the one you see me lugging around between 5 and 6 PM. Soon it will be 11 years old. Showing some wear and tear in spots. But for the most part it runs trouble free. One day it will die. I figure crack in half. LOL!! But no, really, I think we can get another 5 years out of it. As long as someone keeps making replacement parts for it, we will keep using it. I have seen a lot of lane machines in my day. This one is by far the best. Puts down a consistent shot 99% of the time. Sure, things will go wrong now and then. But the machine just wont quit. We stuffed a $1000 keypad in it a few months ago. And just recently I changed the oil pump. Used pump mind you. Those go for around 400 bucks. But we have a new one in stock ready to go if needed. I also tweaked up the oil pattern about a month ago. This was just to keep us 'legit' in case the USBC guys come in and make sure there is enough oil - the 3 unit rule. So what was changed? Not much. And only maybe 3 or 4 people noticed it. Just a 'smidge' more oil on the outside boards. And when I say a smidge, that is exactly what it is. Three units of oil isn't much. Just sounds cool and technical I guess.
I can explain it. Try this. Take your finger and wipe it on your forehead. Then rub your finger on the table or whatever. The smidge of oil you see is pretty much 3 units of oil. It looks exactly like that! So in other words, the USBC says you can/t have a dry lane in any one spot the machine puts down oil. Has to be 3 units of oil. In comparison, we have that much on the outside boards, but in the middle of the lane there is over 50 units. I have seen us put down even more than that. I think the 2005-2006 the lanes were really soaked in the middle.

OK. That is enough bowling tech mumbo jumbo. I know a lot of you like to hear about it. Maybe I will whip out some more later. I might even toss our oil pattern out on the website. Doing so might help you or confuse you. Overload possibly. My theory is that the best customer is an informed customer.

This also brings me to something else I have planned. Kind of like the show you might see on the History Channel - How Do They Do It? I think it would be cool to go over some of the things we do that I get questioned about now and then. This would be in a video format. Things such as how the lane machine(s) work. How you get pins respotted. How the scoring system works. Or maybe some league processing info. We will see how that goes. I have a ton of web space to use. Might as well make use of it.

Thats all for now. I'll try to keep the blog going. Mostly when the mood hits me :)

]]> General http://www.playdromelanes.com/blog/index.php?itemid=54 Fri, 17 Sep 2010 01:51:23 -0500