I like to bowl, but let me dispell a few myths right off: My name's not Bud, I don't drive an El Camino, and I don't use personalized scorecards. Actually, stereotypes aside, bowlers are a progressive lot. All over America bowlers who own Commodores, like me, have been waiting for the right opportunity to join the computer revolution. And here it is: Bowling Scorekeeper 64!
This slick little program is menu driven and easy to use. It keeps track of your weekly game scores, the date, daily aver-ages, overall average, and it calculates the average of your first, second, and third games throughout the season. It also records key statistics that will help you analyze your performance, including your highest game, your highest week, your total number of games over 200, and a summary of the entire season's scores.
Using the Program
Bowling Scorekeeper can be run from Menu 64. For best results, copy it to a formatted work disk, and then run it. When you run the program, you may choose to open a previously saved file, start a new file or display the disk directory. The first time you run the program, you will have to set up a new data file, so choose the second option. The program presumes that you bowl three games each night, one night a week.
I set up each season as a separate file, such as RAFAEL91-92. You can have many data files on a single disk, but I prefer to keep each bowler on a separate disk, to ensure accurate recording. Bowling Scorekeeper lets you view data from any file, so you can compare your scores from year to year.
Once you've set up the file, the main menu appears, offering the following options:
Set Up Screen Colors. This option lets you quickly change the screen colors using the function keys.
Add New Bowling Scores. This option lets you add scores to your data file on a weekly basis. After displaying which week number the games will be stored under, the program will ask you for the date. Enter the date as a six-digit number in "mmddyy" format with no spaces. For example, August 7, 1992 would be entered as 080792. The program will then ask you to enter the scores of the three games you bowled that week.
Print Season's Bowling Summary. This option displays statistics from all of the games you bowled during the season. The date, the score for each game, the pin total and average are displayed for each week of the season.
Print Bowling Statistics. This option displays the number of games bowled and not bowled, the number of games over 200, the highest game, the highest series, the total number of pins, the overall season average, and the averages of all your first games, second games and third games throughout the season.
This set of statistics is a potential gold mine. It can help you recognize trends in your bowling habits. For example, if you notice that your third game average is consistently lower than the others, it might indicate fatigue, or maybe that the lanes become dry, causing the ball to hook more. When you figure out the problem, you can figure out a solution and improve your performance.
Save Bowling Data. This option lets you write data to a specific file. Bowling Scorekeeper will not only keep your records accurately and efficiently, it will give you the same kind of insight into your performance that the pros get. Who knows? Maybe this will shoot your team into the championship!
