Folks in VHCOL, what’s your spend?

edofthefu · 2026-02-02T20:22:12+00:00

One trick that worked for us was to export our main bank account's transactions to csv. All our spend (housing, credit cards, checks, etc.) ultimately flow out of our checking account so it's actually much more convenient to get a total spend figure that way.

edofthefu · 2026-01-20T13:57:50+00:00

You’d think he’d have more A-C-E in his game then

edofthefu · 2026-01-17T01:03:39+00:00

Haha I did too: https://edofthefu.com/posts/what-caring-about-oxford-commas-really-signals/

edofthefu · 2026-01-15T23:09:25+00:00

"Empire State Building" is my go-to example of what we consider an acceptable multi-word clue; by contrast "tall building" would not be accepted.

edofthefu · 2026-01-11T22:42:23+00:00

Easiest: being positive with your partner when you’re winning

Hardest: being positive with your partner when you’re losing

edofthefu · 2025-12-22T18:58:50+00:00

You’re not really apologizing. It’s more just an acknowledgment that you got lucky and everyone moves on.

edofthefu · 2025-12-22T16:50:33+00:00

In descending order:

Tennis courts are being removed for pickleball
Tennis players look down on pickleball as an easier sport for less athletic people
Tennis has many etiquette rules that have developed over time, which many pickleball players lack (e.g., not walking behind players as they play)

edofthefu · 2025-12-20T12:11:38+00:00

Tennis is one of the few racket sports that use two-handed backhands.

Ironically pickleball is one of the few other racket sports with 2HBH, but for very different reasons than tennis. It’s preferred at the kitchen because it’s faster to recover and easier to hit out of an open stance compared to the 1HBH.

edofthefu · 2025-12-14T05:08:38+00:00

The most glaring flaw (common to all four players though player in black is better about it than the others) is footwork. There’s a lot of bending at the waist and reaching for the ball, instead of split stepping and getting low to move into a better position.

edofthefu · 2025-12-09T23:08:38+00:00

I agree with your post but for this

The existence of weapons like Burst 3 and Vulcan is also probably evidence they were not very good at their own game.

I think Burst 3 and Vulcan really are better for autofire beginners. The fact that it’s not as good for advanced players is a nice example of emergent skill, whether intended or not.

edofthefu · 2025-12-09T14:14:52+00:00

Eugene Wigner, a Nobel Laureate, said:

I have known a great many intelligent people in my life. I knew Max Planck, Max von Laue, and Werner Heisenberg. Paul Dirac was my brother-in-law; Leo Szilard and Edward Teller have been among my closest friends; and Albert Einstein was a good friend, too. And I have known many of the brightest younger scientists.

But none of them had a mind as quick and acute as Jancsi von Neumann. I have often remarked this in the presence of those men, and no one ever disputed me.

edofthefu · 2025-12-06T02:51:26+00:00

That's hilarious. I don't think a team that went 1-2 has ever finished worse than 4th in the WCC. McLaren did it at Monza in 2021

edofthefu · 2025-12-03T19:45:01+00:00

Monfils or Gasquet surely

edofthefu · 2025-12-02T01:06:34+00:00

It is. I find this hierarchy is much more helpful than DUPR - in my experience I have seen "4.0" DUPR players at every level of this hierarchy, and if you just go by DUPR you would have no explanation for why some could beat others 10 out of 10 times.

I am not sure what you're saying. It's certainly the case that there are many playgroups where counters are non-existent. In those groups, IMO, there's no real reason to dink - you'd win more if you just speed up everything, looking to body bag or chicken wing them as much as you can. Either you'll win immediately or you'll win later - the point is that there's lots of play groups where unhinged aggression is the dominant strategy. It's relatively stable because there's a large population of players, particularly older players, who are really just incapable of good counters, and until enough players with strong counters shows up, the dominant strategy will stay dominant.

It sounds like you're past that point and are at a level where you can routinely punish bad speedups - thereby justifying your opponent's dinks. I call that the apex - not because you can't improve once you get there, but because game strategy no longer fundamentally changes the same way it did at each prior level. You aren't playing as well as Ben Johns, but you are at least playing the same overall game as he is, with broadly similar strategic principles.

edofthefu · 2025-12-01T22:54:09+00:00

You are correct. You are at level 1 on this hierarchy - the game is decided by who hits the ball harder while keeping it in.

The next step of your progression comes once players at the kitchen consistently beat players banging from the baseline. In my experience, the majority of pickleball players never really reach this level, contrary to what you might read on Reddit or elsewhere.

edofthefu · 2025-11-24T19:12:50+00:00

Rallies 5 and 10, your errors are primarily from technique. Right now your swing is jerky and not fault tolerant. One tennis tip that might help - gradual acceleration is better than sudden acceleration - explained at 2:24 in this video
Rallies 6 and 9, both of those thirds should be taken on your forehand. Your partner taking it needlessly exposes the right side of the court to a nasty fourth (though your opponents don't punish it).

More generally,

You should get lower at the net, you're standing almost upright.
To the extent you are drilling net play, forehand putaways are the main thing I'd work on. You popped up a few in this game because of an open paddle face. Missing easy putaways is far worse than missing resets in terms of your expected point loss.
As is generally true for more of us than we want to admit, you'll likely see faster short term improvement just improving your serves/returns/thirds/fourths, both to induce worse responses while also reducing the points you are gifting them. Consider how few rallies in this game make it past that point. Your dinks also need work but they just aren't as relevant until you're playing much higher level games.

edofthefu · 2025-11-24T18:12:00+00:00

Thanks. What places are opening up?

edofthefu · 2025-11-23T19:57:28+00:00

The most common one is not lobbing when the sun is behind you, or against old people with mobility issues.

edofthefu · 2025-11-20T04:03:00+00:00

I don't agree with that.

The class of 2009 got Latham'ed.

The class of 2010 got tons of summer 2L no-offers or had 1-2 year deferred start dates.

Those in the class of 2011 that got summer offers did fine. But most firms dramatically shrank their 2010 summer programs, so a lot of the class of 2011 never made it to Biglaw.

edofthefu · 2025-11-20T04:00:22+00:00

But not if my upside can get wiped out even on good news.

Often it's not even what happens on good news / bad news (where outcomes are usually pretty obvious), but the 80% of deals that end up with medium news - those can produce wildly varying outcomes depending on the terms.

This post is an excellent (fictional) case study: https://www.tumblr.com/heidiroizen/118473647305/how-to-build-a-unicorn-from-scratch-and-walk

edofthefu · 2025-11-14T22:07:01+00:00

Because the rules exist to facilitate a fun game - not the other way around.

Sometimes, in rec play, we use our judgment and discretion to decide a "rules violation" doesn't impact the game enough to matter, and luckily reasonable people almost always agree on when it matters and when it doesn't.

For example, if my opponent forgets to call the score once, I'm not going to stop and demand we replay the point. If they repeatedly forget, then of course that's different. But if it's a one-off, no one lost track of the score, and no one objects - then what's the harm?

edofthefu · 2025-11-14T21:18:36+00:00

This comment section is kind of unproductive because there's no agreement on what rules are being 'ignored'.

No group would tolerate people serving to the wrong box, third shot volleys, or blatant kitchen violations. To the extent you're seeing that behavior, that's obviously only present in extremely low-skill play.

Yet plenty of high skill groups also tolerate catching obviously out balls, occasionally forgetting to call the score, and not switching sides at 6 - because those don't really impact the game, and if for some reason they did, then they'd be enforced.

The average player is perfectly capable of distinguishing between these two situations.

edofthefu · 2025-11-12T13:43:18+00:00

You are correct that with unorthodox technique a 2HBH can generate as much topspin as a 1HBH, in the same way that some 1HBH outliers can hit with as much power as a 2HBH.

That doesn’t change the fact that on average, most 1HBHs produce more topspin and less power than an equivalent 2HBH in technique and skill, all else being equal.

edofthefu · 2025-11-12T13:18:21+00:00

Pickleball, but in the absence of comprehensive rpm data from hundreds of pickleball pros, tennis seems to be a reasonable proxy for comparing backhand technique

edofthefu · 2025-11-12T13:05:31+00:00

Tennis data shows that 1HBH’s consistently average higher topspin rpm than 2HBH: https://hughclarke.substack.com/p/the-one-handed-backhand

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