A journal.

I’m going to Houston tonight to catch the Astros at Minute Maid Park.

Craig Biggio is 3 hits away from hitting his 3,000th. If you had to put money down that he’d get there tonight, you’d probably want to bet against him. He’s hitting just .238 this season (although he’s hitting .270 at home), so the prospect of him getting 3 hits tonight is pretty unlikely. But in the last 8 games he’s started, he went 3-for-5 twice, and he said the crowd at Minute Maid gets him a little “giddy” about the prospect of reaching that milestone. Who knows? The day George Brett reached 3,000, he needed 4 hits to get it. Sure enough, he went 4-for-5 that day.

I’ve got a little pang expecting disappointment, though. I won’t let anyone forget that I won the ticket lottery and got 4 seats to Game 5 of the World Series in 2005… but the ‘Stros got swept and it was a huge letdown. This? Well, it was an unexpected invitation that got me in the park. But the possibility of seeing such a rare event is really enticing.

Whether Bigg gets it or not, it should be fun. It’s standing-room-only tonight. I’ll have to fly down there and fly back right after the game, so it’ll be a whirlwind. I’ll be in the car longer than I’ll be in Houston, but it’ll be fun. I’ll have my Astros jersey on and everything.

UPDATE. The game had to be one of the top five Astros games ever. Unbelievable. Biggio went 5-for-6 and got hit #3,000 in the bottom of the 7th.

The whole atmosphere was electric. After he got his first hit, everyone was starting to get excited that he just might do it. Then 2,999 was incredible — we had to wait for the official scorer to rule on the play — and the place just erupted when the scoreboard lit up with “HIT”. Next at-bat, he got #3,000 and the place just went absolutely wild. I got the moment on video on my Treo, which, the quality isn’t that great, but it’s still neat to see it from the stands. It was so loud, the sound got completely garbled.

What an amazing game. 3,000 hits. A walk-off grand slam. Amazing. The only other two games I can think of that rank up there are the Mike Scott no-hitter to clinch the division in 1986, and the 18-inning game against the Braves to win the NLDS in 2005.

A few weeks back, I was doing some research for a presentation at work, when I came across a site called LaLa. It’s got all the Web 2.0 hallmarks — catchy logos, social network-like features, reviews, absolutely requiring Javascript to work. The usual.

But aside from all that, the concept is a good one (and like any legit Web 2.0 site, there’s absolutely no way you’d guess if you had only to look at the site’s name): it’s a networking site for trading CD’s.

You list the CD’s you have to trade. You make a list of the CD’s you want. When there’s a match, through some sort of algorithmic magic, LaLa hooks the Haver up with the Wanter; the Haver mails the CD to the Wanter, and poof — CD trading.

What makes LaLa so great is how it comes out when you compare the process to trading CDs at your local used CD shop. You might get one CD for every two you trade in there. I assume with LaLa, it’s based more on a who-has-it / what’s-available kind of system. So far I’ve sent out seven CDs that I don’t listen to anymore, and I’ve got one in return. I’m thinking of LaLa as a bank where I can go to make a CD withdrawal whenever I want one.

I’ve been fascinated by the economics of the whole mess — not in terms of dollars, but more in terms of how resources are changing hands — but that’s a subject for a different time. Meanwhile, what my experience with LaLa boils down to is this: Today I got a CD in the mail that I’ve actually owned for about 12-13 years, but the first two tracks have been hopelessly scratched from massive overuse in 1997. For the first time in ten years, this afternoon, I was able to listen to the full CD from start to finish without a skip. And I didn’t have to spend $10 for the privilege.

The uncluttering continues. I’ve documented some of my more noteworthy achievements and I will share when I’ve come to a milestone point in the progress.