Seriously.

2006-08-09T16:52:00.000-07:00

Seriously.

I've been home for several weeks now. My car broke down on the way back from California, conveniently not far from home (several hours to the west), so I've been searching for a new wheel on the internet to replace one that was damaged on the trip. Dealerships were quoting me over $1k, and I managed to find a used rim on ebay for $80. Hot damn.

Other than that, I've been reading, programming, golfing, watching crappy movies... and sleeping. Oh, poker too. My family is doing well, my brother just got engaged and bought a house, and my sister is finally pregnant so at last I'll get to be an Uncle.

I'm getting my passport and plan on hitting Europe soon, possibly with Pat Carter in Nov./Dec. After that I'm planning on heading out to D.C. to settle down for a while and get an actual honest job. We'll see if I stick to that resolution...

2005-12-26T20:18:00.000-08:00

My grandmother just passed away. We had our parish priest baptise her the other day, so that's good. She was agnostic her whole life, as far as I know. Her birthday was tomorrow, how weird. Say a prayer for her soul and our family.

...

2005-12-26T14:01:00.000-08:00

I had a nice long post written out, and blogger ate it. So. To summarize.

Very bored, eating a lot, not playing as much poker as I'd like but have been doing ok, I bought a sweet new laptop, and have otherwise been wasting my time in various unproductive pursuits.

My grandmother made it home to us, but suffered another stroke a few weeks ago. The doctor in the intensive care attempted a sort of passive euthenasia without consulting us, by removing her feeding tube, and we only found out several days after he did this. We had her removed to a private nursing facility. She doesn't seem aware of much, and is living off artificial support. Say a prayer for our family.

Unless something happens, I'll be flying back to LA on January 6th.

wher hehro! (very long / self-absorbed)

2005-11-22T03:41:00.000-08:00

Thought I'd post and let everyone know I'm doing fine. BD and I went down to Commerce on Saturday night, and I caught a free shuttle to LAX in the morning. The flights were fine, and after hanging out with my brothers in Omaha for a while, I got home to Hastings late Sunday night. A solid 15 hour nap had me back on top of my game and ready for... nothing.

My grandmother just got moved to a nursing home from the hospital, and is in stable condition, though the doctor doesn't think she has much time. Blood clots, etc. I don't like hearing about that kind of thing, so I try not to pry. We're trying to move her into our home, but that requires a bunch of busywork setting up in-home 24hr nursing care and such. Until then, I have vast quanities of free time in which to do nothing. I've already seen every movie under the sun, and I've vowed not to watch television, so that leaves poker. I'm attempting to get a years worth of poker under my belt in the next few months, and build myself a nice fat bankroll to spread about Europe in the Spring when Pat Carter and I head down (up?).

Yikes, I haven't posted in a month. And it has been a pretty eventful month I suppose. Seldom Sober and I spent a good solid week in Vegas, where I passed the time as a local pro at the Bellagio and Wynn 15/30 games. Definately one of the more enjoyable trips in my life. A web forum devoted to poker that Seldom and I both post on was having a get together in Vegas that week, so we got to play with some of the best poker players in the world. It was a real treat sitting with some of them and knowing I was holding my own and then some. It was also incredibly enjoyable getting to run over the local pros, who came to hate "those damn kids who always raise preflop." They have a definate edge over the tourists, but were easy pickings for us kids who play more hands in a month than they will play in a year.

There were a few very good local pros who would kill time waiting for bigger games, and they were real characters to. My favorite was a little old asian guy everyone called 'Hustler', since he wore a hat with the word Hustler on it. He could read hands like no one I've ever seen, both from knowing peoples playing styles, and then refining that knowledge by reading their physical tells. He would call out hands cold to me under his breath when we were sitting out, and sure enough. I'd have a few down too, but yikes. The Dragon turned out to be my main nemesis. He was a visiting Swedish pro who wore snappy dark suits and white sneakers, with a black hat with golden dragons embroidered on it and dark sunglasses. Very WPT. He definately knew what he was doing though, and the few battles we got into were usually very interesting. I think I ended up getting the best of him in the long run, but probably due to luck.

Rich and I together probably slept 10-15 hours the six days we were there, and most of that time was spent at the tables. I logged around 100 hours of live poker while there. My earn rate was around $35/hr, and I was running way hotter than that, so you can guess how I did.

A rich millionaire from Florida was sitting at our tables frequently, and we got to know him pretty well. He left the same day that I did, and told me he'd stake me in any big tournament I wanted to play in, and even to stake me in a local $80/$160 game in his hometown. He bragged to everyone at the tables that all of my winnings came from him; quite a stretch, but he did dump a few chips off to me. He was there for the entirety of one of my monster sessions, where I ran up almost 200BBs. I have a few pictures, which I'll post below. A great guy though. So if he's still willing come July, I'm on for the World Series baby. So theoretically I made another $10k on top of my other earnings. Hot damn.

Other than live poker at the Player's Club and Commerce, nothing much else happened. Both of my cars were down at the same time, again. I got them both fixed before I left, when I don't need them anymore. Meh. I took a shot at the Commerce $20/$40 the Wednesday before I left, and yikes. You really have to be callused to the value of your money when playing that game. I dropped over $3k in ten hours before going on a tear and making it back with a little interest. I don't think I'm emotionally ready for those stakes, but the next highest game Commerce spreads feels like a kiddy pool. I guess I'll man up, because it's definately a good game. God bless and help the asians.

I suppose I'll post on here fairly frequently, not that I'll have much to say, but it's six in the morning and I'm finally feeling tired. I'll leave you with one of the better tales from the Vegas trip.

Rich and I had been playing all night at the Wynn, and headed up to the room of one of his friends. Everyone there was crashed out, and we weren't tired, so we headed down to the bar at the sportsbook, and spent the next few hours drinking, chatting with Max the bartender, and playing video poker. Very sleep deprived and drunk, we got it into our heads to go play low limit poker at the Ghetto Castle, so we caught a taxi at six in the morning. There were only three tables running, two 2-6 spread limit games and a $200 max buy-in NL game. Rich sat at the limit, and I bought into the NL game.

Everyone at the table looked at me with obvious delight; an incredibly drunk college boy with a nice stack of chips! Easy monies. I posted in mid-position (a clear tip off that I had no idea how to play), and looked down to see pocket kings. I pretended to squint really hard at them, then grabbed a stack of five dollar chips and hurled them into the middle of the table, glaring at everyone like you might see on the televisions. A quiet looking construction worker in late position thought for a minute before calling, as did the guy on the button. Everyone else folded, and we saw a flop of Kxx (ding ding). I did my squint/glare at the flop (which wasn't entirely faked, things were pretty blurry), then grabbed another stack of reds and threw them out. The MP guy took his sweet time thinking, then called. The guy on the button quickly moved all-in, and I smiled and called. So did construction worker. All of our chips went into the middle, and I turned over my set of kings to see AK from construction worker, and AA from the button. Hiiiya, ship it.

After an hour or so I wasn't really faking anything though, and the waitress cut me off. In Vegas. At the Ghetto Castle. I got. Cut off. From alchohol. WTF kind of a place is this. So I told everyone it was my last hand (since I was UTG and the blinds were coming next). I raised to $30 blind, and got one caller in late position. I looked down to see KJo, and a flop of K10x. I threw out another stack of reds, and lp called. I checked the turn blind, and another blank came off. He bet out $30 or so, and I called. The river came a Q, and I bet out around $50. He thought for a few seconds, then went all-in. I called, and beat his weak kicker king to drag another huge pot. Everyone at the table was glaring at me by this point, so I felt bad and grabbed a huge fistful of $5 chips and started throwing them at everyone at the table. I am such a fag. Thank you kindhearted Ghetto Castle waitress, you probably saved me a great deal of money. We went back to the Wynn and crashed out for a few hours. I got up and took a shower, and then it was back to the tables.

This story also took place the night after my big monster session, of which here are some pictures:

Rich took this picture the night before we left for Vegas at Commerce.

Obviously trying to continue a theme, here at the Wynn halfway through the session...

And here near the end...

Each time I started out with 6 stacks of red. The money in the bottom two photos came from people buying stacks off of me. You can't take money you've won off the table until you leave, so you have to keep it with your chips. Not everyone displays their benjamins as ostentaciously as this though. Can you blame me? Stacking messloads of chips is the greatest joy of live poker.

Boo

2005-10-25T23:28:00.000-07:00

Hoo

Sigh.

...Anyways.

It was the Player's Club, even though it didn't rain. I played my first live hands of Big O and Cr/Lazy Pineapple, hi/lo split style at the $3/$6 dealer's choice table. You thought Omaha was fun, try playing Omaha with five hole cards. I dropped $100 before getting called to the hold'em game, and considered myself lucky at that. gamb00l.

The regulars are very regular, the same crowd is there every time I come. A very odd assortment of retirees, young asians and toughneck white boys (who as I gather are all part of the local boxing scene), middle-aged businessmen, and a few colorful women. The dealers often cycle into the games inbetween downs, or take over hands for friends taking a smoke. It's a nice chance of pace from the Badbeat Jackpot asian madhouse that is Commerce. I only have a few stories from this place so far, it's more tame than the mix of people could lead you to believe... I haven't had my life threatened, nor watched someone attempt to urinate on a dealer. It really doesn't feel like live poker.

Also, you really get to know the playing styles of your opponents when they're so few and regular. One particular asian guy plays fairly straightforward ABC poker, until he's stuck, and then he gamb00ls it up preflop, raising any bet to him on seemingly random hands. I had just seen this guy bust out of the $6/$12 Big O game, and knew he was steaming, when he sat down at my table at the beginning of a kill pot (when the person who won the last pot wins a second time in a row, the stakes are doubled and that player is forced to post a double-sized blind). The kill was on the BB, a new player. Crazian was UTG+1, and I was in MP. UTG limped, Crazian raised, and it was folded to me in MP with KQo. Normally this is a very bad hand to play here against an early position raise, but the players acting after me were not going to call a three-bet in a kill pot without AK, AA KK or QQ, and Crazian had a very wide range of raising hands. So this was one of those few spots where three-betting KQo against an early position raise is clearly superior to folding (and calling the worst of the three). It got folded to the BB kill, who called, as did Crazian. The flop came Q 7 3 rainbow, and it was checked to me. I bet, and both called. The turn was a 9, same story. The river was a 6, again checked to me, and I had an easy bet. The BB called and Crazian folded, the latter tabling pocket tens and everyone at the table started egging me for three-betting KQo. Newbies.

Another guy had absurdly tight raising requirements PF, always QQs, KKs or AAs. I folded JJ to his raise, and sure enough, QQ. That may have been the second time I've folded JJs preflop in a limit game.

Afternooning

2005-10-25T12:19:00.000-07:00

My desire to smoke becomes a near compulsion whilst the neighbors are outside fighting. I feel like a moth drawn to a flame. "Mommy, I want a mullet!" etc.

In other news, my brief career as a poker pro nearly came to a screeching halt earlier this month, and I've been more or less on vacation for the last few weeks awaiting word on a few things. Mustang, sensing weekness, decided to throw a tantrum and blow a headgasket. Bitch.

I should have all my account issues solved soon, then I'll be back to the grind. For now, it's daily trips to the Player's Club when I can't fit golf in. Looks like it might rain soon, so I haven't decided what's on tap for today.

Late night auto-biography

2005-10-04T04:02:00.000-07:00

A boy wandered aimlessly through the tall grasses of the pasture. A storm was building in the west, towering thunderheads darkening the late evening sky. The warm damp air was thick with the buzzing of insects and the muffled rumblings of distant thunder. Scents of wild-flowers and grass born on the westerly breeze took on a slight tinge of ozone, a promise of things to come. Shivering in anticipation, the boy eagerly made his way to the edge of a nearby pond.

The rotted out remains of a great fallen oak tree lay alongside the bank. As the winds began to pick up, he shed his boots and socks, and clambered onto the trunk. Playfully dipping his feet into the water, he stared off into the distance at the looming stormfront. A hazy wall of rain stretched from ground to clouds, all briefly illumined now and again by arcing flashes of lightning. It reminded the boy of a play, in that short time between scenes when the darkened and curtained stage hides the hurried rearrangements of props and settings.

He began counting the seconds between each thunder-clap as his father had taught him, and reached six-mississippi before the next rolled over the pond. The ground trembled with its violence, and from behind a nearby clump of brush out sprang a large dog. Balancing on one foot atop the log, the boy gazed curiously at the new animal. He quickly realized it was no dog, but a coyote; lank gray hair covering a rail-thin frame, and long muzzeled head capped with large pointed ears. It caught sight of the boy, and it's muzzle opened wide in a snarl, exposing long sharpened teeth. He stood rooted in shock until the next peal of thunder sent the animal bounding back into the tall grass.

The wind gained in fury, the branches of the trees about the pond whipping against one another. The thunder was coming in quick succession now, and flecks of moisture splattered against his face. He dropped back to the ground, and ran up the trail to the dirt road leading to the farm. The increasing violence of the storm spurred him onwards, the rough gravel giving way grudgingly to soft bare feet as he recklessly flew down the road. Thick sheets of rain lashed down on him, thunder boomed in his ears, stabs of lightning blinded him. The tree-lined drive of his home appeared before him, and he crossed into the soft cool grass of the lawn with a leap. His mother stood framed in the doorway of the porch, lit by soft electric light, and hurriedly beckoned him in.

* * *

In the morning, the boy set back out for the pond to recover his socks and shoes. Though this time with much more care, tredding on bruised and swollen feet. The storm had left little mark in passing, and he found the clearing about the pond much as he had left it, save for one tree that had been struck by lightning, huge splinters of wood jutting from it's ruined trunk and angled towards the fallen remains of it's body.

As he gathered his shoes, idly examinging the new sight, he spotted an animal stuck under one of the tree's branches. He made his way to the ruined tree, and tried lifting the branch. It was large, and heavy enough to have killed the animal it covered. To his amazement, it was a coyote. Probably the same one from last night, he thought, dragging the branch aside. The muzzle was again open, but frozen in a rictus of death. He stared in fascination and disgust at it's swollen tongue, grossly lodged between two great canine teeth, and the slash of blood matted hair where the branch had caved in the coyote's chest.

He was suddenly overcome with an urge to tear out the canine teeth of the animal. A friend at school had a necklace laced with two large age yellowed teeth. He wasn't able to boast having collected the them himself, though. The boy reached into his pocket for his clasp-knife. He flicked the blade open, and squatted down beside the ruined animal. Gently prodding the tounge away from it's teeth, he realized that he had no idea what to do. Not pausing to doubt himself, he plunged the tip of the knife into the animal's gumline. In angry embarrasement, he simply hacked away at the bottom of one tooth, leaving a bloody mess of pulpy tissue under his knife. But the tooth would not come.

Stubbornly grabbing it between his fingers, he pulled and yanked, blinking away a sudden rush of tears and swallowing back a spurt of bile. The tooth came out with a sharp pop, and the boy fell back onto the ground. His eyes wandered from the bloody tooth to the ruined maw of the coyote. Getting slowly to his feet and rubbing his sleeved arm against his eyes, he looked around him at the lush tangle of wildflowers surrounding the pond, and the bright clear summer sky. A cool breeze stirred the tops of the trees and sent rolling waves through the tall grass. He gave one last glance at the ruined animal, and cast the tooth into the pond. He bent down to the water to clean the blood from his hands, then gathered his shoes and quietly made his way back up to the road.

Baby Blue

2005-09-30T05:21:00.000-07:00

The story behind my baby blue constitutes perhaps the most prolonged and bitter trial of my young life. I now begin to realize that I'm only receiving my just reward for jewing a dying man of his prized posession.

It all began in the fall of my Junior year. A buxom young lass of thirty-seven parked on the side of the road caught my eye one night as Breaux and I drove into Santa Paula. The soft glow of a nearby street lamp illuminated her shiny skin, offering a brief hint of silky white leather interior as we passed by. My eyes followed her longingly until a bend in the road took parted us from view. I was smitten. And hopeful, as a black and red "For Sale" sign had been seen adorning the back window.

From there, our courtship was brief and tempestuous. Her owner was loathe to part, but failing health and a need to pay the medical bills sealed the deal at a rather healthy cut to the asking price. A week later I was the proud new owner of a '65 Mustang. And the story should here have ended happily ever after. But woe to man and his vanity. Nothing would do but that I strip this poor innocent of her innards, and build her anew after my own liking.

So Darren and I made a trip to LA to scour the junkyards for a promising new engine. We found and pulled a 302 small block out of a late seventies Ford cruiser, which was quite an experience. We also had to pull out a 451 for Grumbine. Fashioning engine hoists from seat-belts, and disassembling the blocks from the cars took the better part of a day. We later pulled into Hamburger Hamlet on the 5 for dinner, soaked in sweat, our clothes, faces and hands caked in engine grease and dust, and two full engine blocks jutting over the sides of the truck's flatbed. Our waiter got a nice tip, one I'm sure he wasn't expecting.

Finding all the necessary parts for the rebuild was a nightmare. Trips to various junkyards and shops around L.A. became my specialty. By the time summer rolled around, we had managed to rebuild the engine, but hadn't yet placed out the old one. Darren had plans to house-sit the Reyes' ranch outside Sacramento, so we decided to try and finish it there. Now that experience really deserves it's own story. I had planned on spending a week there, and ended up staying for over half the summer. Every conceivable thing that could go wrong did, from escaped cows to prolapsed sheep uteri, the wrong size pushrods and an oversize exhaust manifold, drunken gun-toting mexican neighbors, earwhigs, spray painting a 50k ton earth mover, a messload of cute kittens(!), Mr. and Mrs. Reyes, Mr. Darren's Uncle and leaky fluids on his driveway and toothbrushes, three different starters, a host of igition problems, immodestly ripped clothing, getting lost with Pat Carter in the slums of Sacremento in Darren's broken down rabbit, getting lost in San Fransico in Darren's broken down rabbit on an empty tank of gas. I finally admited defeat and had the Mustang towed back to school (thanks Aaron) while Darren headed home to Washington.

I then spent another two weeks hiding out on campus, trying to finish the car by myself while avoiding Mr. Collins and his questionable insistance that I PAY for such a priveledge. I won't bore with technical details, but I finally got it running on a beautiful Saturday morning. I took Ben Susanka into town to celebrate. That would be a short lived victory. Upon returning to campus, I decided it'd be fun to drop the clutch and do a burnout. Apparently this isn't a good idea when you have an engine putting out over 400 ft./lbs. of torque on a driveline meant for around 150. So after that shot out from under the car and sprayed the Blessed Serra parking lot in gas, I rented a car and drove home to Nebraska.

It took me the first month of Senior year to get it up and running again, and this time it ran for an entire week. I made occasional attempts at fixing it after that, but a new problem always crept up. Bad fuel pump, ignition and idling problems, you name it. Something finally broke that I couldn't figure out, and I had given up on it until tonight. All it took was a $35 distributor gear the size of a walnut. It's replaced now, and I pray that my baby's previous owner will now relent his curse from beyond the grave.

Drunken Spanish Minstrel

2005-09-25T00:24:00.000-07:00

Last night at Heavy J's party, the heavenly muse of OG Light moved me to record this sweet little number on Christo's 8-track. I think the hushed giggling and background partying add a certain character and ambiance sadly lacking in many of today's professional recordings.

And so I now have to have an 8-track recorder. I'm tempted to post the remaining tracks of Chris and I's fresh new demo CD, tentatively entitled "Classical Ass Volume 1: pwning n00bs", but maybe the world isn't ready for our work just yet. This will have to do for now.

In related news, I'm taking lessons from Carlos again. And that's kinda sexy.

You can be my wingman anyday

2005-09-23T02:57:00.000-07:00

Top Gun on the bigscreen, hotness.

Let the Thunder Roll

2005-09-20T13:21:00.000-07:00

To those in the Midwest, a loud bang and a flash in the night is a comforting and welcomed event. At 4 A.M. in the Ojai Valley, to someone in the first stages of sleep, it comes as a sure sign of the Apocolypse.

I figured it was occasion enough for a day off at the golf course. My tee time is in an hour, so I'm off.

Must Be a Full Moon

2005-09-16T14:32:00.000-07:00

Some of us like to write poetry on our blogs, bitterly lament the social ills of our times, perhaps wax philosophical. I like to think of my blog as a catchall for excess mental diarrhea. If you're interested in the geekery of my current job, keep on. Otherwise, go learn how to be a playah.

So I recently moved up limits again, which you might think of as being analagous to a pay raise, except that your new coworkers are far more smelly, nasty and vicious than before, so you're not really sure if you're happy about the whole thing. I really have no idea where these guys come from, but they're all thoroughly insane. And by insane I mean blindly aggressive with regards to the way they play poker. They'll cap any draw on every street, and check-raise bluff the river any chance they get. When they aren't hitting cards, this means you get to make an assload of money. When they do, you sortof vomit a little inside your mouth, and think about buying a nice sturdy roap to hang above the nearest chair.

I mentioned before that a decent poker bankroll should be around 300 times the size of the big bet for that limit. So for $10/$20 limit, you should have a playing bankroll of at least $6k. But your bankroll requirements are also determined by the amount of luck involved in the game you're playing in. Poker players use a statistical tool known as standard deviation to "measure" luck. Standard deviation is simply stated the average range within which your wins and losses will fall for every one hundred hands played. The more aggressive the players are, the more wildly your standard deviation will vary, since your wins and losses will be much higher.

Time for a little math!

Statisticians have come up with formulas for determining the size of a gamblers bankroll for any given game, based on his risk of ruin (chance he'll have bad luck and lose for an extended period of time). With a 5% risk of a ruin, one formula states:

Bankroll = (1.64sigma)^2/4u

where u is the player's hourly winrate.

To determine your hourly winrate though, you need to have played many, many, many hands at your current limit. The formula for this involves the player's standard devation, and determines the players winrate within a certain confidence interval (another fancy statistical term, simply saying that given x, y, and z factors, we can say with 95% confidence that your winrate falls within this particular range, and is not the same thing as saying you have a 95% chance of having that particular winrate).

95% CI = u +/- 1.96*s/sqrt(r)

where u again is your winrate (though not hourly, but in terms of BB/100), s is your standard deviation, and r is the number of hands you've played at a given limit. Most poker players don't understand these concepts, are completely unaware of the amount of luck involved in online hold'em, and thus are dismayed when they hit their first big downswing and lose their entire (and underfunded as we see) bankroll. Granted, many of these players are long term losers, but a winning player who is underbankrolled can go broke just as easily.

So. I have about 7k hands at my current limit over the last week, a standard deviation of 20BB/100, and a current winrate of 5BB/100. Calculating my true winrate within a 95% confidence interval, falls within the range of 0.31 - 9.69BB/100. Which is basically to say that I could be anywhere from a break-even player, to a massive 8BB/100 winner. If I calculate the same standard deviation and winrate over 100000 hands, it lies within 3.76 - 6.24 BB/100. Therefore the higher the standard deviation you have, and the fewer hands you've played, the larger the possible range
your true winrate can fall inside a 95% CI.

This is all a fancy way of saying, poker is gambling, until you've played a very large number of hands. It takes me five months to play 100k hands, and even then, I can only have a very general idea of how much money I can expect to make on an hourly basis. In the meantime, it is necessary to have the bankroll to cover the crazy fluctuations, and the emotional discipline to keep playing well while such things happen.

As an unlucky anonymous gambler recently said, "These swings have chopped off my balls and left me with a camel toe the size of Michigan." In the last two days, I've had the largest run of good luck and bad luck since I've been playing (over 500k hands), mostly due to the increased aggression of higher limit players. For some reason, these things always happen to me on back to back days. Earlier in the summer I lost 130BB and gained it back in two days. This time it was over 150BB.

By now this should make enough sense to you that it resembles a native African villager stricken with Elephantitis.

Thank God for Commerce tonight.

Generic Witty Post Title

2005-09-14T16:31:00.000-07:00

Life has been very weird the last few weeks/month. Long periods of isolation and boredom interspersed with brief moments of diversion. I suppose I'm a fairly introverted person, and enjoy being alone, but only to a point. I have no TV, no phone, no car, no neighbors or friends nearby. I'm one of maybe a few thousand people on earth making a decent living playing a silly game on a computer. Definately not the place I would have imagined myself being five years ago.

Darren and I have taken to watching Very Weird Movies lately. A few pseudo westerns to start out, the first was Dead Man with Johnny Depp. He plays a city bred accountant or some like that moves to the west to work for a mining company. A weird introduction to the town has him fleeing for his life into the wild, where he meets a crazy outcast Indian who helps him turn from a bookish city slicker into a badass gunslinger. The story makes little sense, and without the hotness of Johnny Depp would have nothing to offer. But the evolution of his character is fun to watch. Then I picked up a movie called West of Heaven, South of Hell with Dwight "The Ugliest Motherfucker Ever" Yoakam, who you may know from such country hits as Streets of Bakersfield and Readin', Writin' and Route 23. Ok, so country music is as ugly as he is. But I enjoyed his acting in Sling Blade and Panic Room, so I thought this might be good. He plays a retired Army hero turned Federal Marshall, and the story centers around a conflict between him and his criminal foster family. Again, the story makes little sense, and the acting and dialogue are very poor, though watching Dwight Yoakam play a sensitive but rugged cowboy was worth it. I'm still confused though, since I found the movie under the Westerns section, not the comedy section.

A few nights ago it was Hiyao Miyazaki's Howl's Floating Castle. Same guy that made Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, and the weirdest movie I've ever seen, My Neighbour Totoro. Lot of the same imagery and characterizations, and enjoyable, but still very asiatic and weird. Then we saw Bob Dylan's Masked and Anoymous. This is one of those movies that demands an immediate and visceral reaction. At face value, it seems like a monumental depiction of self-masturbation by Dylan. Every character has something memorable and loving to say about the music of Jack Fate (Dylan's pseduo-character). And we're talking big name actors. Jeff Bridges, John Goodman (thought this was going to be the Big L 2 for a minute), Luke Wilson, Penelope Cruz, Mickey Rourke, Christian Slater, Chris Penn, Giovanni Ribisi, Cheech Marin, Jessica Lange, Val Kilmer, a few others who I forget at the moment. Admist this blatant hero worship, the movie is rife with dime store philosphies and platitudes. There's also an overarcing political and religious theme centered around the nature of place and the life of the common man. The movie is set in no particular place and time, though we're led to believe the period is slightly in the future, admist a war torn and economically collapsed third world America. Very few white people are seen in the movie save for the main actors, and the locations at times remind you of Mexican border towns, small African villages, asian markets, etc.

It's an easy movie to make fun of, but since it's so blatant, I feel like credit should be shown to the writers, and maybe there's more to the movie than you first notice. There are so many cliche and overused themes that run through the movie, such as the role of alchohol and tobacco, prostitution, and other vices, political oppression, the insignificance of the powerless worker, and the corruption of the powerful, and every character has his moment to wax philosophical over them. But there are also several aspects to the story that receive less obvious attention, and seem to be the real point of the movie. The vagueness of time and place, the implicit connections between the characters and their interactions that are never really explained. So I tend to think it's either an amazingly clever and well made movie, or it's one of the most meaningless piles of drivel ever created. It was certainly painful to watch at points though. And Dylan's music is good, but uh, not as good as he thinks maybe (?)

Someone suggest a good and interesting movie to me. One that makes sense.

Party Pooper

2005-09-01T21:19:00.000-07:00

Playing Poker for a living is already a crappy enough venture. Where else can you work a forty hour week for a loss. I can handle that. But Party Poker today effectively gave us all a pay cut to the tune of ~20% by raising their maximum rake. I won't go into exact numbers, but that's a lot. This also has a huge effect on the entire player base. Anyone playing at or a little below a break-even winrate will now turn into a significant long-term loser, and the crappier players will go broke that much quicker. I suppose Party Poker never learned the old phrase, "You can skin a sheep only once, but sheer him many times." So the immediate effect is bad, the long-term effect will be even worse.

Apparently there was a horrible hurricane? My mother was appalled that I hadn't heard. I get less news now than I ever did on campus. Which wasn't much. I guess this means I'll need to start taking a daily paper of some sort, and ruminate over it with a hot cup of coffee in the morning. But then I'll need a sexy bathrobe and slippers to sport in front of the neighbors.

...

I see where this is going. Staying informed is obviously the first step of a slippery slope towards adult responsibility. Sneaky bastards.

Homestyle

2005-08-31T19:20:00.000-07:00

I've been all moved into my apartment in Ojai for a week now. I'm not sure how long this whole setup will last. Most days I end up feeling like an aged paraplegic, and similarly, thoughts of ending it all occur frequently. Just kidding. But the life of an online poker pro is not high on the list of Generally Fun Things To Do. Sleeping in is a hot bonus though.

Darren is talking of leaving soon for Europe, so things definately feel like they're up in the air. Thoughts of heading back to school in hopes of achieving more gainful employment are sporadically assaulting my glazed conciousness. Until then.

So I just spent five minutes thining of something interesting to say. I'll get back to you on that.

Travelish

2005-08-16T13:52:00.001-07:00

Thursday for L.A. The Summer of Josh reaches it's tantalizing conclusion in the next few days, gross fabrications to follow!

Fellow wine connosieurs can appreciate this tidbit. Our family frequents a nice Italian restaurant in Omaha, where they serve an amazing house chianti. Every table is served with a caraffe, where you can pay by the glass for $4, or buy the whole thing for $20. I was up visting my brother this weekend, and we stopped by so that I could try and buy a few bottles to bring home with me. I had phoned ahead earlier to see if they'd do this, and after consulting the manager, the man I was talking to agreed to sell me a bottle for $30.

This, that, the other, which mainly involved playing Ms. Pacman at an oldschool family arcade, and we finally stopped in to pick it up. The guy in charge had no idea what I was talking about, and twiddled his thumbs for a few minutes until the owner walked in the door. After a hurried and rather secretish conversation, the owner walked behind the bar, grabbed a large jug of wine, and presented it to me with a suspiciously hearty grin.

"I can give it to you for $18, I don't know where he got $30 from!"

Anyone vaguely familiar with the fine Mexican palatte would instantly recognize the label on this tasty vintage. Carlo Rossi, 2005!

Boo

2005-08-16T13:52:00.000-07:00

Hoo

Sigh.

I run g00t

2005-08-10T21:43:00.000-07:00

Getting tired of the emotional roller-coaster that is 6-max, I started playing some ring limit lately to clear off a reload bonus. 8BB/100 in the last two days, whee! Like riding on training wheels after mountain biking with Lance Armstrong.

Immodest Mouse

2005-08-10T00:26:00.000-07:00

Back in the diznay, I was quite the indie music buff. What bored, nerdy white teenager who enjoyed music wasn't? Now for every good indie band, there exist somewhere on the order of five to eighty bazillion shitty bands. Modest Mouse was one such band that I kept running into. The sound was somewhat of a mix between thay of a whale humping and an audio recording of a bathroom stall in a poorly ventilated dive bar during happy hour. Interesting, but on the whole, really not that enjoyable.

Well girl, you've come a long way. They're quite the thing now, and let me tell you, they've entirely sold out to their loyal drunken marine emetologist fan base.

Where did that come from?

...

Oh well, more of what you really came for!

And last, but not etc. etc.,

Someone take the internet away from me :(

'k, bye.

Wanhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!

2005-08-03T23:32:00.000-07:00

I just busted out of a $50 multi-table tournament on Party Poker. Five hours, and I make it to 15th place where I prompty proceed to semi-bluff off all my chips. I raised a fairly tight limper PF with AhJh, and got it heads up. The flop came with two hearts and low cards. He bet out 1/3 the pot, and having watched him play for some time, I was pretty certain he was on a lower pocket pair, and hadn't tripped up. So I called, and the turn came a K. He went all in and had me covered by a small amount. I was getting over 3:1 to draw, and had to wonder if he had a set, and whether I should take the gamble if he didn't. I can't imagine him playing a set like that, since I'm fairly sure it looked like I had either a higher pocket pair or AK. Why would he shove his money in when he had me crushed? So I figured he was making a desperation push with his low pocket pair, hoping I could fold. If I won, I'd have the chip lead, and if I folded, I would be fairly shortstacked, and since I wanted to win, I figured I had to make the call. So I did.

He turned over pocket threes, and it turns out I had all 13 outs, which should've come through %30 of the time, in which case I would have had the commanding chip lead and a great shot at winning. The river was an offsuit brick, and I really don't know how players handle busting out of huge buy-in tournaments; you feel like shitty shit afterwards, even in small tournaments like this.

It was a learning experience though, since this was the second showdown I had gone to in 300 hands. I had made all of my money off stealing the blinds, and bluffing tight players off of hands on the flop. The trick is to be aggressive enough that players don't want to battle you without a real hand, so you make big enough bets to push them off of most of their holdings, but small enough that you can easily get away if they call or raise. This works really well, since you tend to get a lot of action when you make a big hand. I just didn't have anyone play back at my few big hands. This strategy is even more important deep in the tournament, since the blinds are much larger relative to the average stack size, and worth battling for. Stealing the blinds once or twice a round, isolating the low stacks and picking them off, and avoiding confrontations with other big stacks is the way to go. Even though the way I played the last hand tonight wasn't an awful way to play it, I could have dumped the hand on the flop and avoided the whole situation, and stuck to the sure bet of stealing blinds and bullying with my large stack. Live and learn.

So this marks the fourth time I've made it deep into a huge tournament field, and every time but one I've managed to bluff my chips off. The other time I had a huge chip lead over the entire field with 30 left (out of 1500), and got all my money in PF against the second chip lead with pocket kings. He of course had aces, and I lost a great shot at the $13k package offered to the first three places. I've since come to learn how silly that gamble was, since I probably could have logged off and blinded into third place. The other two times I made it to the final table in 800+ fields, and went out in tenth both times on stupid continuation bluffs.

Tournament poker is so much more enjoyable than ring limit and no-limit, and the money can be incredible. I think I'll start playing more, and possibly play tournaments exclusively. Party has great daily tournaments with huge first place prizes ($40k+). Getting into the money on a regular basis is pretty rare though, so you can go months without winning. Which requires a pretty deep bankroll and a lot of patience and commitment. You need all the skills and knowledge that cash games require, and then have to learn the dynamics and strategy requisite to play consistently well in the tournaments. Uhm. So most of you probably didn't understand or care about any of that, so I offer you this:

Many Bothans died to bring you this information. Also, you can't miss this!

Weffalumps and Hoozles

2005-07-31T22:38:00.000-07:00

They say Ambien isn't addictive in the habit forming way, so that aside.. after having taken my little bed buddy an hour earlier, I was still feeling a tad frisky in the early hours of the morning. My thoughts probably went something like, "Dude, this isn't working, let's go play some poker and then golf." I guess the stuff effects everyone a tad different, but for me, taking ambien is a lot like downing a handle of cheap vodka in one swig, then getting socked in the face with a mack truck composed entirely of down pillows. But without the physical effects of a hangover, I'm still unable to remember anything the next day.

I first started taking it during first semester finals last year. It took me a few tries to figure out you're supposed to take the stuff in bed, and not wander around aimlessly in the satanic grips of an ambien high. For example, ala Patty Mac the day after the Theology exam. "Are you alright?" "Huh wuh?" "You were wandering around the dorm last night and fell down the stairs. Came back up ten minutes later grinning and said, 'mission accomplished!' and went to your room." We may never know what happened that night, but I have a few guesses. I plead moral inculpability to two of the possibilites. This is all a fancy way of saying, don't walk around after taking ambien.

To continue, I was somehow coherent enough to aid my new goal of poker and golf to realize I didn't have any clean clothes. I then managed to gather my laundry from the basement and tackle the poorly lit staircase strewn with school boxes in various states of unpacking, and do the deed. I woke up the next day lying on the floor in the upstairs study, my laptop on a chair beside me. I noticed I was still logged into Empire poker, and was sitting away with twice my buy-in, when I heard Mother Dearest yelling my name. She walked into the study holding the battered and soaking remains of my only friend, cell phone.

Thus, I managed to destroy a $250 cell phone and win that exact same amount within the brief window of time alloted me by the ambien devil. My clothes were clean, the sun was up, and feeling well rested, I finished my fated task. Another brief glimpse into the Summer of Josh. If only the people around here played Frisbee Golf.

One of my few solaces has abused me like a red-headed stepchild. The new Willy Wonka movie priced me the dual penalty of $6 and the most eye-gougingly boring two hours of my life. I love Johnny Depp, and were I to bat for the other team, I'd be aiming for him or Christian. But gag me with a shitzu, he blew in this. The writing was atrocious, and all of the characters were horribly cast and played. I also love Tim Burton, but this time his infamous brand of cinematography was grafted onto the warty ass of an encephalitic midget. THE HORRIBLE FUCKING OOPMA LOOMPAS!!! I tried to leave after their first pop/rave ode to the gluttonous demise of Augustus Gloop, but my brother had the car keys.

He later brought home a rental copy of Constantine. I hadn't heard of it, but it had Keanu "I know Kung-fu?" Reeves, so why not. I was then treated to two hours of mindless blasphemy. The New York Times can quote this review, "Keanu Reeves plays the jaded demon-slayer Constantine, intent on foiling the plot of the Arch-angel Gabriel to bring Mutu, the bastard son of Satan, into the physical plane of humanity to test the worthiness of mankind before God!" That about says it all.

I suppose I should learn to stay away from anything my brother wants to see. His favorite movie of all time happens to be Joe Dirt.

Hmmm. I've got a room-mate now. I'll be rooming with Darren in Ojai until he leaves for Europe next year. I'll probably leave in a week or two. Which would make this the twilight of the Summer of Josh. Toodles. Oh yeah, if anyone needs to reach me, email me at tacjosh at hotmail, since the phone is down.

Picture Time!

2005-07-26T00:16:00.000-07:00

I finally got around to downloading the pictures from my cellphone. The picture quality is surprisingly good. Sadly, my series on Johny K's belly were destroyed by same. Anyways, I proudly present, La Galerie Magnifique De Josh

Here's the cake P. Wod made for our last seminar. <3 u P. Wod!

I know we've all asked ourselves recently.. why Tim? Why. Parables in the Bible aren't simply to be ignored (think Sampson).

This picture was taken shortly after the Thesis party, but before Alan had gracefully relieved himself in the bushes of the smoker's patio in front of Anne Neumayr and Bernadette Coughlin. The latter upended my spit cup onto Keeler's lap in what I presume to be a preemptive strike. Here the evidence.

Were a straight line originating from PiePie's glasses and traveling down his line-of-sight to be drawn in true John Madden commentary style, it would fall lovingly and tenderly upon the offscreen visage of one Rebecca R. Shapiro. Awwww.

My shrine to section 3 philosophy in the library w/ PiePie.

Fly free Patty Mac! Your Canadian brothers now openly accept your lifestyle.

This has the makings of a hot Carl's Jr. commercial.

Really, who hasn't seen this before. Dirty girls.

Gabe, Jimmy, Koobs, the Kaisers and myself shooting up the Upper Ojai (represent!). Here is Gabe manning up on a clay pigeon.

My home-away-from-home in the last days...

The regulars! Terry, Bob, Pat and Big Al.

Santa and Big Al in the House Rockers debut.

Manning up after finals.

BDun getting all up in my grill.

Die Sarah. Note my striking resemblance to a wet gopher.

The neato MGM Tiger and his mancake handler.

Another shot of the Tiger.

The gang drunken bowling in the early hours of the morning at the Palms.

Pat only minutes later...

And no picture post would be complete without busting out the cute. Christmas Kitty!

And puppy love!

And finally, myself at the moment, ready for some hot bed loving. Toodles!

From the "Bored stupid" Dept.

2005-07-21T10:59:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, sitting in front of a screen for hours on end, you get a little bored. Buttons get accidentaly clicked, and then you have to deal with the consequences. I present to you my latest creation, titled "-1BB EV"

Party Poker 5/10 Hold'em (6 max, 6 handed) converter

Preflop: Hero is Button with 7h, Th.
3 folds, Hero raises, SB calls, BB calls.

Flop: (6 SB) Qh, 7s, As (3 players)
SB checks, BB bets, Hero raises, SB folds, BB calls.

Turn: (5 BB) 5h (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets, BB folds.

Final Pot: 6 BB

The Machinist

2005-07-17T01:45:00.000-07:00

Before Batman Beginnings, Christian Bale did a small indy film called The Machinist. It's about - duh - a machinist. The movie begins in media res, with the hero halfway though a year without sleep. If you're interested in seeing it, you should skip the following. I picked this movie up for a twofold reason: it has Christian Bale, who as I've said is Hot, and it's about insomnia.

I only wish I suffered from the same sort of insomnia that this hero does, and for the sake of illustration, I'll refer to it as Diet-Center Insomnia. They actually had Bale go down to at least 120lbs, maybe less. He looked like a concentration camp prisoner. I've heard of method acting, but damnit to hell, this is sick.

One of the opening scenes, after seeing the hero zombie it up at work, has Trevor Reznik (Bale's character) nodding off on his couch to a copy of Doestoevsky's The Idiot. I love Doestoevsky, so I got a little giddy, thinking that this movie might attempt some sort of Mad Russian plot line with correspondingly twisted characterizations. The Idiot deals with one Prince Myshkin, a sort of ideal of nobility and charity. Myshkin befriends a man he meets on a train taking him to live with the husband of his only living relative, a general in the army. Myshkin and his friend Rhogozin are depicted in stark contrast; Myshkin is often thought an idiot for his quiet and childlike mannerisms, and Rhogozin is your typical clever and wicked Russian. They both meet a girl, and Rhogozin falls in love with her. The story centers around Myshkin trying to save the girl from Rhogozin, and his conflicting love with the daughter of his host. In the end, Rhogozin tries to kill Myshkin, and makes off with Nastassya and murders her. Agalya, the general's daughter, runs away as well, and Myshkin loses his wits. With this in mind, I started looking for any subtle parallels in the movie, which from the getgo is clearly a mystery.

Trevor often spends his nights with a hooker named Stevie. He confides his problems with insomnia to her, and she "comforts" him. She offers to give up her lifestyle for him, and at first he glady accepts. But he also meets a woman who has been serving coffee to him in the early morning hours after work in an airport coffeeshop, and begins to spends time with her and her son.

An accident at work occurs after Trevor first meets a shady character named Ivan. Ivan distracts Trevor, who is helping another guy cut something in a saw-mill. The guy gets stuck, and Trevor is unable to shut the machine off before the other loses his arm. After explaining what happened, he is told that no one named Ivan works there, and the boss assumes Trevor has gone nuts, noting his obvious health problems and lack of attention. Trevor is eventually fired, and he spends the remainder of the movie trying to track down Ivan.

It becomes fairly clear that Ivan is an imaginary character, so I figured the writer was attempting to contrast the real Trevor with this imaginary Ivan fellow, ala Rhogozin. The prostitue could clearly represent Nastassya, and the coffeeshop girl the general's daughter Aglaya. Ok. Trevor finds a picture of Ivan fishing with a buddy from work, and manages to lose it. He later finds it on Stevie's nightstand, and assumes Ivan is her boyfriend. He is disgusted with her, and against all her protests, leaves her after a judicious beating. We never see the coffeeshop girl again, and the movie resolves with Trevor finding Ivan, who he thinks kidnapped and killed the son of coffeeshop girl, and murdering him.

He finally realizes that Ivan and the coffeshop woman aren't real. The latter is the mother of the child he killed in a hit-and-run the year before, the same child he imaginarily befriended and Ivan killed. Realizing the nature of his illness, he turns himself in, and immediately falls asleep on the bench of his prison cell.

Bleh. What a bunch of modern Psychological bullshit. This movie had so much potential, and had me guessing at what was really going on. Unfortunately, what I was guessing was far more interesting and creative than what was intended. The parallels between the movie and The Idiot are clearly there, but fall apart along with the plot in the end. The opening scene with him reading The Idiot is meant to serve as the beginning of his self-imposed fantasy, a way for his intellect to make him realize what he has been supressing. Blah Blah. I really wish someone could capture the characterizations and tragedy of a novel like The Idiot, and produce a decent modern movie. And use Christian Bale. The movie is worth watching for him alone, just don't expect anything brilliant plotwise. I will say that the ending isn't predicatble.

I've now slept three times (I won't say nights, I just went to bed after dinner and got up at midnight) in the last eight days. It's not insomnia.. when I get tired, I sleep well. I just haven't gotten tired very often. Weird. I should probably go back to the doctor, as this might have something to do with the heart issues I've been having. Say a prayer if you're into that kind of thing.

I've been kicking ass on the links though, and my HC is almost back to scratch. I had a lesson the other day from our new Pro, and he noticed a few problems with my swing. Sure enough. I'm getting tempted to spend the next year working on my game and try the amateur Nationwide Tour. What a sweet life. Play golf for five or ten years and earn enough to retire on interest. I wonder if I should be more worried about the moral and social utility of the ways I plan on earning money.

Wave of Mutilation

2005-07-10T00:49:00.000-07:00

I'm killing myself, I'm sure. I've only slept three out of the last seven nights.. a predictable pattern of two day intervals. I'm at a trough right now, and how-do bed, don't mind if I skip the forplay. Before that though, we have pressing concerns. I have yet another new hobby! The ancient and se(a?)cret art of Chinese Paper Folding. My floor is currently littered with the mutilated corpses of many brave 5x5 squares of multi-colored paper, each frozen in a tortured mockery of divers forms of boxes, baskets and small furry woodland creatures. An apt Platonic metaphor can most likely be found somewhere.

On another note, I would go so far as to say that you haven't really lived until you've played a morning round of golf with your brother-in-law, your Club's resident assitant Pro, and two other good old boys, all the while suffering from both sleep deprivation and malnuourishment. I was Tiger Woods for those few fleeting hours. And yes, I took their money, a cool $1.50. We're talking high stakes gambling.

My brother-in-law, the former Vice-Principal for the local Junior High, just got bumped to head Principal, which is pretty sweet (teachers might not get paid shit, but the big wigs do). He's a great guy, and I'm really happy for him. He's also a damn good golfer. Our asst. Pro is not. I don't know what it is about PGA Professionals (not the touring ones), but most of them are dicks. I worked at our club for three years in high-school shagging balls and cleaning clubs, and suffered under the reign of the biggest asshole I've ever met. He was recently ousted by the course members, thank God. Judgment is still out on the new guy. He gave me a pretty cool swing tip while I was on the range, so I'll give him the benefit.

Apparently I'm the point leader in our WSOP keno league with 9th, 4th, 3rd and 1st place finishes, whoo. I don't really care about the poker though, I just like hanging out with the rednecks, drinking and smoking and pretending like I have a life. My brother has caught the bug like so many people, and spends all his time playing play-money online poker. He takes his wins and losses more seriously than I do. I busted him at the last tournament, and he almost cut me. I'm pretty confident that the poker ponds will be well stocked with fish for the next few years. Listening to the grandma next to me berate someone for calling without proper pot odds (when he clearly did), while a guy at another table expounds on the nature of coin-flip races (calling an all-in with J/10s), all the while playing in a sports bar in BF USA... well, I get giddy. God bless the WPT.

Hmmm. So, yeah. I should probably pick up alchoholism. Make things interesting.

I take it back

2005-07-05T17:53:00.000-07:00

A day off was what I needed I guess. Back in the saddle, I won $800 in my first 150 hands, or less than an hour of play. A few statistics, representing the greatest rush I've ever seen, let alone experienced: 80BB in 150 hands, 35% flops seen, 68% flops won if seen, 28% of hands won, 100% showdowns won. Yikes. And I only had one big pair. Just a loose aggressive table paying off my multitude of top pair decent kicker hands, or folding to my bluffs having not seen me showdown a losing hand once. Another session following had me on top of yesterday's loss.

This just manifests more clearly why most decent players aren't making much money in these shorthanded games; they just can't handle the swings. While I've experienced the extremes in two days, much smaller swings happen on a session to session basis (according to your standard deviation, mine being about 20BB/100 right now). A lot of my winnings are coming from good players who are caught in a downswing, and pay me off with losing hands more than they ever would when in control of their game. I experience this too, but to a much lesser degree. Once a player can make the transition to just seeing chips for what they are, they don't mind losing 50-100BB in a day or two as long as they know they played their best. It'll come back in spades. In the end, you're not playing to score a big rush, or dig out of a losing streak. You're playing for the far off in the distance average hourly rate. The more hands you play, the closer your true winnings will reflect that number. You simply have to keep your head, pay attention to every hand and every players betting tendancies, and make the best play you can in every situtation. Pretty easy really. Meh.

And with the many truly horrible players playing right now, that far off number keeps getting higher and higher. I have about fifty players in my buddy list at the moment, and every day I see fewer and fewer of them coming back. But new ones keep coming in :) Make your easy money now though, because it's not going to last much longer. I'm so tempted to put my bankroll at risk and start playing mid/high limit ring games, because if you want to make a decent amount at poker in the future, you're going to need to be playing higher limits. Low limit players will get better, and the maniacs will bust, and the current 2-3BB/100 winners will be nearly non-existant. Which means .5-1BB/100 at $50/100 and up will be the best most good players will be able to make. Maybe things won't get that dry, but I'd like to always have Poker open as an option for a little extra spending money (but certainly not a living).

Darren has been taking care of my Mustang while I'm gone, and he and Ryan Hoff have figured out my previously mentioned idling problem. Apparently my carbureatour is a tad too overkill for my little 302, so I need to downgrade. They put Ryan's carb from his '69 'Stang with a similar (though far inferior, haha) engine onto mine, and it ran perfectly. Hopefully this means I'm done troubleshooting the bitch, which I say with nothing but love and affection. This summers earnings are going to cover a few modifications for the poor baby, as well as living expenses until I can find a job, and a new laptop. I quickly realized I couldn't keep paying my brother 10% of my winnings (I should have learned this from my experiences with Keeler :p) for using his laptop. So, a hot new Dell Inspiron 9300 is in the mail and hopefully will get here soon.

So, you've read this far... maybe you're as bored as I am! Well then, keep on my friend, I'm riding a wave of mental diarrhea.

Catherine asked me to post some poetry. I enjoy writing, and have a few short stories I could share, but I don't enjoy reading or writing poetry. Most folks from TAC enjoy both, which is odd. Darren wrote his thesis on the importance of poetry in education (or maybe more generally, in the intellectual life). I should probably read it thorougly, but from what I gathered, his argument went something like this: The imagination presents ideas to the intellect gathered from sense perceptions. Poetry has the greatest effect on the imagination. Therefore our ideas or the ability to think are greatly affected by poetry.

Now that I've started writing this, I'm actually very curious about what he wrote, so maybe I'll make another post after I read it. But for the moment, suffice to say that the only poetry which I've ever read that had any influence on my imagination, was Milton's Paradise Lost. And he was a freaking Puritan. It had the same effect on my imagination that Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progess did when I was a child. Now Bunyan was a Puritan, and Pilgrim's Progress a work of prose, not poetry, but the fanciful allegory it employed is not far from the style employed in some poetry. Which brings me to the briding concept here, in that I hate allegory. So, two Puritans have written two separate works that are my single favorite works of their respective genres, both dealing with a religious subtext.

So, daring to generalize from these observations, I therefore dislike allegory or poetry not dealing with a religious theme, and not written through a puritanical viewpoint. We therefore have the very roots of a deep personal and religious self-loathing! Let me explain.

I have a very active imagination, and love works of fiction, mainly for their ability to depict rich and engaging imagery. I can remember entire stories from my childhood as collections of images and feelings. Re-reading these books, or ones similar, bring back the same moods and images brought about in my childhood. Which is probably the greatest joy most elderly people experience (but that's another topic), and one I too enjoy greatly. Music and movies I enjoyed when I was younger have the same effect. Weather as well. All of these things bring about a certain familiar emotion or frame of mind, I suppose you could say an imposition of the imagination on some present experience. But most novels, music or movies that I read/listen/watch these days fail to impact me at all in this way. Which isn't to say I don't enjoy them, but only in a different way, without much effect on my imagination.

Poetry and allegory are supposed to directly engage the imagination. The previous paragraph is simply to say that I dislike these mediums for that reason. As I've said, they simply don't do anything for me on that level. Most poetry is an attempt of the author to reveal an emotion or experience to the reader through some linguistic form or rhythmical quality. Unless a poet is writing about something that I've experienced myself, I can't really imagine it. And if I can, I find the form of poetry to be too artificial and cumbersome to present such ideas. Why not just come out and say what you're thinking, or if you're trying to depict some type of imagery, use prose? Whatever poetry tries to convey, can be done better through prose is my generaly feeling. So I generally find myself annoyed at any poetry I can relate to. The only exception to this, is Paradise Lost. This is the only example of poetry that I've ever come across that utilized a beautiful and powerful rythm and form. The imagery produced is amazing as well, but simply reading the verse aloud in my head lends a quality that I've never experienced before. The same thing goes for allegory. The Faerie Queen, Gulliver's Travels, The Divine Comedy.. I can only enjoy these stories as stories, and get annoyed whenever the allegorical intention of the author imposes itself. On the other hand, the very story of Pilgrim's Progress is allegory. There is no imposition, no hamfisted attempt at political or religious satire.

To conclude, why are these two works written by Puritans? Does anti-Popery, a hatred of tradition and symbolism, lend itself to these genres? Clearly! Now my life is based on tradition and symbolism, and Popery. Clearly, my experience with poetry and allegory reveals my own puritanical leanings, and hatred of my childhood, hidden to myself until now. My life is a sham, and I can but move to New England, and join myself with my Calvanist brethren. Farewell.

Ick

2005-07-04T01:23:00.000-07:00

Sympathy post. 400 hands, -$1300. Single worst day of poker in my life. I've had bad streaks of cards before, and heard others bitch about them incessantly. But now I know what a bad day is. None of my big pocket pairs held up, or if they did they took the blinds, none of my straight or flush draws came in, every time I hit top pair I'd be outkicked by one, or some guy would river some weird two pair, and that doesn't help when you get AK/AQ/AJ about 50 times. Six-max tables are wild to begin with, and I can't complain, because these are the same guys padding my pockets, but WTF.

I took my brother to War of the Worlds, and wasn't expecting much. Enough said.

I'm sure everyone is excited for the Fourth tomorrow, but as far as I'm concerned, it's just one day I can't play golf on (stupid tournaments). I think I'll throw my computer in the trash can, rent Bridges Over Madison County, get myself a gallon tub of chocolate ice-cream, and just pig out. Because I deserve it girlfriend.

Kittenwar.

2005-07-03T18:13:00.000-07:00

Thanks to boobs (<3 u), I present Kitten War.

I just got back from Kansas City, where my brothers and I attended a KC Royals vs. LA Angels baseball game. I'm not a big baseball fan, but going to live games is fun. That is, only after you're two innings into the game, and have decided in precise detail the exact manner in which the closest 84 people next to you are going to die. I'm not an overly vicious man, but sometimes.. I get ideas. And they're not nice ones. After the final victim in sight was rendered in full stereoscopic 3D Josh Imagination, having fallen over the bleachers into the field after a zinging foul from the man at bat picked off a low-flying pelican who just happened to to crash into the head of the single mother obstructing my view of the aforementioned play as she stood in the isle melodramatizing over her whitetrash brat of a child, only to be run over by the Royal's Mascot Sluggerr, driving hell-bent for glory around the dugout ring in his all-terrain 4x4... only then could I enjoy the game in some sort of fictious peace.

Then I noticed the JumboTron. You really don't know what a redneck is capable of until you've seen about 40 different couples voluntarily succumb to the peer-pressure tactics of the JumboTron Makeout Time camera search. This led to more painful imaginations, and by then it was the bottom of the fourth, and I really didn't even know what the score was. Which left me no recourse but to shell out $7 a cup for lukewarm 20oz Bud Lights until I actually started to enjoy myself in a Christian fashion. Which come to think of it probably doesn't involve jumping up with the rest of my neighbors and drunkenly shouting the lyrics to Big & Rich's 'Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy' during the rally inning.

I did score a Johnsonville Bratwurst which Sluggerr airmailed to me out of his Brat-cannon, so I can't complain. Good times. Good times.

The drive home was fun too. Nothing like a little Interstate Intrigue. For some reason, and this is particular only to my brother's '02 Grand Am, Truckers feel compelled to flash their brights at me exactly 2.3 seconds after my passing. It has always been thus when I drive this car, and I can't figure it out. The taillights are on, the brights off and regular beams on. I guess they simply recognize and salute genius when they see it. Sadly, this time I didn't get pulled over for SUSPECTED INTENTION to Possess and Distribute Controlled Substances, but there's always next time.

If you haven't guessed, yes, I am bored. Man was not meant to live without a job, and I can see why rich people have so many problems. Idle hands are the devil's workshop. I'm thinking of upping my move back time to mid-July, details to come.

Programming

2005-06-22T15:57:00.000-07:00

After rereading Stephen Nealson's awesome tech-thriller Cryptonomicon, I've been inspired to pick up programming again. I've started to touch up and publish my notes and exercises from the book C Progamming Language (the original intent of this site), which you can read here. I have a lot of catching up to do with the whole tech scene(four years in the real world is about 200 in the tech world), but I have a bunch of free time, so why not.

It has been beastly hot out lately, so I've been forced to do all my golfing in the morning. This has required that I abandon my former sleep schedule which found me rolling out of bed at the ass crack of noon, and passing out around 5 a.m. I find it amusing that golf has been able to motivate me to do this, while school never could. But as I see it, truth is eternal, while golf (at the moment) exists only from 7-12 a.m. So there.

At last!

2005-06-19T02:21:00.000-07:00

A good movie! Batman Begins rocks. Fairly clever writing and dialogue, good acting, good action. Christian Bayle is hot. This Batman bucks the traditional style set by Tim Burton and goes for a more realistic feel instead of campy comic book style, which really helps to throw off the bad taste in my mouth from the last few Batman movies. The psychology and origins of Batman are developed and revealed intelligently, and constitute the majority of the movie. The final conflict in the end is fun, but the concept behind it is Really Stupid. **spoiler warning**

Apparently, when every society reaches a peak of decadence and decay, a secret society known as.. drum roll.. the Shadow Society (!) comes along and destroys said culture. The fall of Rome? The SS. Apparently Gotham has reached the point where the death of every citizen serves a greater good than letting the government and police be run by corrupt officials. Said society, after this amazing value judgment, proceeds to spend the next century infilitrating the political infrastructure of Gotham to effect said jugment. After a precipitous stock market crash, their first attempt is foiled by none other than Daddy Wayne. We all know what happens to him. So who will stop their latest attempt? The Bat Man! This is one of the silliest plot threads I've ever seen. A secret society devoted to fighting evil and corruption goes about destroying entire societies. Right. When they could just as easily kill/remove/reform the people who are contributing to decay of the city, given their near limitless amount of time and resources. It's kind of sad that the rest of the movie seems to well thought-out, and then to have this festering lump of dog shit sitting in the proverbial plot corner.

I seen him!

2005-06-17T02:00:00.000-07:00

(Group) Hi Thurgood.
(Thurgood) Hi. I'm here today because I'm addicted...to marijuana.
(Addict) You in here for marijuana? Marijuana? Man, this is some bullshit!
(Bob Saget) Marijuana is not a drug! I used to suck dick for coke!
(Addict) I seen him!
(Bob Saget) Now that's an addiction, man. Have you ever sucked some dick for marijuana?
(Thurgood) No. No, I can't say I have.
(Bob Saget) I didn't think so.

I don't know what it takes to convince a police officer you aren't high on the reefer. Performing two hours of bizarre hand/eye coordination tests, a random car search, an even more random verbal grilling, a full-body patdown, a call-in to the local k9 unit followed by a lengthy rotweiller sniffing tour of my car... obviously these things just don't cut it! Near the end, *I* was ready to hall myself in on the single largest illegal drug bust in Nebraska history.

All attempts at confirming any of his many suspicions having failed, the officer finally let me go with a warning for the original infraction (4 mph over the speed limit), and a rather unconving apology and rationale for why I was made to suffer this monkey dance for the last several hours: (1) I reak of pot (2) my eyes are a "road-map" (OHHHH, bloodshot... clever osifer!) (3) dilated pupils (4) the tip of my tounge appears burnt (a common side effect of that hot roach action) (5) raised taste-buds (I don't know) (6) "Well... I just plain don't like you."

I didn't believe him about the smelling like pot thing, and spent the remainder of the drive home cussing and generally thinking ill of the highway patrol. Then I got home and actually smelled my clothes. He was right. I was driving back from Primos (David Primavera, remember?) b-day party, where I had spuilt some burning citronella from a citronella fueled tiki-torch onto my shirt, and can only imagine that through some kind of combination or addmixture, this lovely odor was yielded. And this was all clearly a gift from God, since I had helped polish off a keg of budlight only hours earlier, and was able to preoccupy the officer with my damned pot smoking hippy guise. I guess the moral of this story is to avoid citronella oil if you plan on being near a cop anytime soon.

It was nice to see some of my friends (miller, nubsbit and bridgette came down), and not so nice to see most of Primos. His friends remind me of my old friends, who as I've said I can do without ever seeing again for the most part. After a visit from the cops for public disturbance, and $80 missing from Primos little brother, I was ready to see them go.

Other than that, it's been pretty much same old for the last few weeks. Last Thursday my brother and I went to the local keno/sports bar to play in a freeroll poker tournament, and yes, smoke and drink (it feels weird smoking inside and not being in the hilltop :p). Seventy or so players, and my brother and I both made it to the final table. At that point the average stack size was three or four big-blinds (when it should be fifteen to twenty), so it became an all-in fest. My AK/o didn't hold up, and my brothers last few chips were blinded off with his K3/o, giving us ninth and eight place respectively. Everyone who makes it to the final table in one of these weekly tournaments gets a certain number of points, and all participating Nebraska keno bars host a yearly tournament for the point leaders, with a first place prize of a trip to Vegas and a buy-in to the world series. Not bad for nothing, but good luck getting there on skill.

My golf game is progressing nicely, and I'll hopefully be back at scratch in a few weeks. Poker is going well, I'm starting to get back into practicing my guitar, and even programming a little. Anything to fill up all this free time. I'm actually getting a little sick of not having any obligations or responsibilities.

yikes

2005-06-08T23:35:00.000-07:00

I just saw this post on twoplustwo.com, and this has to be the biggest pot in the history of limit poker.

Preflop: Hero is MP1 with J, J.
UTG folds, UTG+1 calls, Hero raises, MP2 calls, MP3 3-bets, CO calls, Button calls, SB folds, BB caps, UTG+1 calls, Hero calls, MP2 calls, MP3 calls, CO calls, Button calls.

Flop: (28.50 SB) 8, 5, J (7 players)
BB bets, UTG+1 calls, Hero raises, MP2 calls, MP3 3-bets, CO calls, Button caps, BB calls, UTG+1 calls, Hero calls, MP2 calls, MP3 calls, CO calls.

Turn: (28.25 BB) 6 (7 players)
BB checks, UTG+1 checks, Hero bets, MP2 calls, MP3 raises, CO calls, Button 3-bets, BB calls, UTG+1 calls, Hero caps, MP2 calls, MP3 calls, CO calls, Button calls, BB calls, UTG+1 calls.

River: (56.25 BB) 8 (7 players)
BB checks, UTG+1 checks, Hero bets, MP2 calls, MP3 calls, CO folds, Button raises, BB calls, UTG+1 folds, Hero 3-bets, MP2 calls, MP3 calls, Button calls, BB calls.

Final Pot: 71.25 BB

Results below:
BB has Kh Ks (two pair, kings and eights).
Hero has Jd Jc (full house, jacks full of eights).
MP2 has Qh 8h (three of a kind, eights).
MP3 has Ah As (two pair, aces and eights).
Button has 9h Js (two pair, jacks and eights).
Outcome: Hero wins 71.25 BB.

Puts mine to shame..

various and sundry

2005-06-08T23:02:00.000-07:00

Text based games are cool. I grew up on the old infocom text adventures on my Apple II, Zork etc. I found a neat remake of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy at http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/hitchhikers/game_andrew.shtml.

I also found out that I'm leaving about a grand a month on the poker table by not using rakeback affiliates. They basically make a deal with big online poker sites to get them more players, the poker sites offering them a small percentage of the new players rake. The affiliate then offers the player most of that rake back. So without any playing, they get 5-10% of the rake from their players, who get 20-30% of their own rake back. Since I generally pay about $3500 in rake a month playing low-limit, that turns out to be about $900. This is freaking sweet. If you can make 1.5BB/100 at 5/10 6max, and get in 30k hands a month, that's almost 2 grand a month in rakeback, and $4500 in winnings. That's over 6 grand a month playing low limit poker, or about 70 grand a year. Hot damn.

My cell phone charger should be getting in tomorrow from boxwave.com, so I can finally check my messages and see what I've been missing in the last few weeks. It's been nice being completely cut off, but I'm getting bored. I can't wait to get back to SoCal. Especially after watching the Iron Chef last night, in which Japan's leading sushi chef battled Iron Chef Sakai. I miss my sushi :(

Also, with regards to my heart thingy, I had an echo-cardiogram taken on Monday. I get the results tomorrow, but my doctor is telling me that he thinks I won't be able to drink alchohol or smoke ever again, as well as no red meats. Please let this be lies...

House of Flying Daggers

2005-06-06T02:46:00.000-07:00

I just got done watching this movie. I'm always impressed with Japanese martial arts love stories, but more with the former aspect than the latter. While American action movies make gross attempts at depicting realistic violence, and fail completely to engage the belief and imagination of the viewer, movies such as HoFD and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon achieve an opposite effect. They blur distinction between dancing and fighting, and allow you to momentarily forget what limitations are placed on the motions of the human body. It's like ballet for men! I fail to appreciate the gracefulness and beauty involved in most forms of dancing, but I'm in awe at some of the choreography involved here. And yes, it does seem unbalanced to only find wonder in the movement of the human person when violent intent is presupposed.

The love stories are always disturbing too. I don't tend to engage myself with much interest in most Hollywood love stories, but these can be gut-wrenching. Zhang Ziyi is the central love interest in most of the movies I'm thinking of, which might be why I'm so effected (ahem). There's always some conflict involved, either between the two opposing lovers or the priority of some other obligation or desire. And there is never any resolution of the conflict at the end of the movies, which is what is most disturbing. I suppose asian audiences can appreciate this, but I end up pissed off at the seemingly nihilistic conclusion to the story I've just invested so much attention and emotion in. I also tend to think that it's hard to understand and appreciate things like this due to a culture gap. Eastern religion and philosophy does seem to contain something like nihilism, so westerners are probably missing something.

I was looking for a quick read the other night, and grabbed James and the Giant Peach from my old collection of kid's books. Rhold Dhal is one messed up guy. I love his imagery, but he's pretty sadistic. I can see why Tim Burton likes him so much. The flow and quality of writing also surprised me. I suppose when an author intends his work to be read aloud, it allows him to write more simply and naturally. I'm curious if great writers like Tolstoy and Dickens imagined what their prose would sound like as they wrote. I imagine they'd feel somewhat embarrased and stuffy reading their works to a group of children. Not to find fault, it's just a random thought.

Jackpot

2005-06-04T23:10:00.000-07:00

This is the second biggest pot I've ever won.. pretty crazy:

Preflop: Hero is MP3 with Jc, Js. UTG+1 posts blind.
1 fold, UTG+1 (poster) raises, 2 folds, MP2 calls, Hero 3-bets, 1 fold, Button calls, 1 fold, BB calls, UTG+1 caps, MP2 calls, Hero calls, Button calls, BB calls.

Flop: (20.50 SB) 6s, Td, Jd (5 players)
BB checks, UTG+1 bets, MP2 raises, Hero 3-bets, Button calls, BB calls, UTG+1 calls, MP2 caps, Hero calls, Button calls, BB calls, UTG+1 calls.

Turn: (20.25 BB) 4h (5 players)
BB bets, UTG+1 calls, MP2 raises, Hero 3-bets, Button folds, BB caps, UTG+1 folds, MP2 calls, Hero calls.

River: (33.25 BB) 3c (3 players)
BB bets, MP2 raises, Hero 3-bets, BB caps, MP2 calls, Hero calls.

Final Pot: 45.25 BB

Results:

BB has 4s Ts (two pair, tens and fours).
MP2 has 9c 9s (one pair, nines).
Hero has Jc Js (three of a kind, jacks).

Outcome: Hero wins 45.25 BB.

Oops

2005-06-02T18:36:00.000-07:00

I've seen and made a lot of weird mistakes playing poker online.. accidently clicking the fold button when I had the nuts in a $100 pot, accidentally calling a capped raise preflop in late position with 2/8o only to flop quads, etc. I think I just topped myself. Most serious players use PokerTracker and statistcal overlay programs like Playerview or GT+, which give you immediate information about every player at your table. I had played at a table earlier in the day, and went to play just now. I had GT+ load up the stats for the table after sitting for a few hands, and did my thing. In general you can get a pretty good idea of what kind of hands a player has from these stats, based on how many hands they've played and how aggressively they've played them. I'm able to isolate weak players at a glance, know who to value bet against and who not to bluff, etc.

Over several rounds I had layed down some good hands to what the stats claimed were tight, passive players. I finally went to showdown with one guy, only to see that he had rivered a full-house with J/2o from UTG. I've never met a player who played %20 of his hands play this hand in early position, catch a deuce on the flop, and continue against a raise to catch a runner-runner full house. Then I noticed he had my name and stats. Apparently I had sat down at the same exact table (out of hundreds) and was looking at the stats of that earlier table. That cost me a few.

In other news, I went to the doctor today for a physical. Based on some oddities in my bloodwork and some circulation problems I've been having, the physician decided to run an EKG on me. They place a bunch of little sticky tabs all over your upper body, and connect the tabs to a computer which registers the electrical activity or somesuch of your heart. I don't quite know what the problem is, but something weird registered. I've got to go to the hospital on Monday for another test. The doctor thought a heart condition known as haemocrhomatosis might explain all of my symptoms. Basically, the blood contains too much iron, which deposits in the heart and causes all kinds of problems. My bloodwork revealed that I have an excess of hemoglobin in my blood, and some kind of enzyme buildup in my liver, which apparently are symptoms. We'll see, but say a prayer (if anyone is reading this...)

Twilight Zone

2005-05-31T00:22:00.000-07:00

Understand that I live in a town of some 20,000 simple country folk, one of many small such towns in Nebraska. Hastings is divided into two parishes, the one I belong to comprising most of the town proper, where St. Michael's parish on the west side of town is much smaller and is made up mostly of farmers and countryfolk. After a late night on Saturday (more later), I failed to wake up for the 11 a.m. Corpus Christi mass. I checked on the internet hoping to find a later mass somewhere nearby so I wouldn't have to go to the evening Spanish (a.k.a, mariachi) mass. No problem, St. Michaels has a 2:oo p.m.! It's important to note that this is my first mass since I've been back in town, and I've yet to unpack my shoes. So, I'm ashamed to say, I wore flip-flops to church. I figured I could come in a bit late and sit in the back, no one would notice.

It turns out that this mass was the ordination mass for a new parish priest, though I didn't know it at the time. I sat down in the back as planned, said my prayers, and idly started people watching (bad!). Double take. Is that Mr. Kelly? Yes.. and his wife and children. Well that's a bit odd. Uhm. Is that Mr. and Mrs. Dillon in front of me? What the... I look across the back of the church and see Dr. McArthur and Mr. Nieto. I start thinking back to my Frued and Jung readings and wonder what kind of psychosis is manifesting itself from out my twisted psyche. Then I notice that the celebrant priest looks like an older, fatter Mr. Kelly. Oh!

This was by far the weirdest mass I've ever been too (per accidens that is), and like the title of this post might suggest, I felt like I was in the twilight zone for the first five or ten minutes of mass. Mr. Decaen's brother is one of my parish priests, and he was cocelebrating. So my thoughts during mass moved from somewhat pious and focused to startled and distracted in wonder that so many TAC graduates and tutors (at least seven, I couldn't see who was sitting on the other half of the church) were collected in such a random place, and that had I not slept in I would never have known. Then I realized I was wearing flip-flops, and didn't want to make an ass of myself in front of these people. So I booked it as quickly as I could after mass. I also had to meet my family soon after, so I somewhat legitimized this flight to myself. Still, I feel like an ass for not staying a bit and congratulating Father Kelly and saying hello to everyone. It's very cool, but very odd that two of TAC's fifty-odd active priests are in my hometown in the middle of nowhere. Maybe a touch overkill?

As to Saturday night. I knew seeing old friends would be bad, but I really didn't realize how stupid and vulgar most people our age are. Even in the good old midwest. I hope I can avoid hanging out with them again while I'm here, but we'll see. It impressed on me very clearly that home is and never will be home again. I can't imagine not living near an active and intelligent community of Catholics again. And I really don't want to stay here any longer than I have to, which means that I'll probably be moving back to SoCal a.s.a.p. I was looking at the USC website, and discovered that they have one of the only bachelor programs devoted solely to classical guitar performance. The professors in this department are all accomplished masters, and I'd love to get in it. I'm not sure yet what the tuition is, how many of my TAC credits will carry over, and they take students on an audition basis, so I'm not sure how likely an option this will turn out to be. But I'm looking into it.

Otherwise, I'm having a good time golfing all day and catching up on some fiction reading. Right now I'm on Jules Verne's Mystery Island. Robinson Crusoe, the Swiss Family Robinson and Shipwrecked were some of my favorite childhood books, and this is supposed to be the exemplar from which all such books fall away. I'm sure we've all wondered at one time or another what it would be like if all technology and invention was stripped from us, and were left to rebuild by ourselves. This book satisfies that curiousity as well as your good old fascination with being stranded on a desert island. One of the members of this modest society just happens to be a brilliant engineer and natural scientist, who of course is able to recognize all minerals, flora, and fauna. Verne goes into great detail about all of these things, and how the basic inventions we take for granted can be coaxed from nature. Good practical book to read in case you ever end up crashing in a FedEx plane or somesuch.

I gots me a liberal arts edumacation!

2005-05-26T23:22:00.000-07:00

I'm typing this from the seclusion of my basement hideaway in the family compound. Free wireless high-speed internet on bleeding edge Mac and PC laptops. Thanks bro. Well, not free exactly. He's taking a capped 10% cut of my winnings. Anyways, my Ambien should start hitting here in a bit, just a reminder to muhself to check this thing out at a later date and make sure I don’t run too crack-addled.

I'm finally starting to recover from the last several years. Looking back at the latter half of my time at TAC I realize what a zombie I've been. I really didn't give a flying fuck what anyone thought about me, including my tutors. This fact was evidenced in several aberrant behaviors such as: inattention to personal hygiene and dress, grossly immature social interaction, lack of intellectual curiosity and work ethic... the lazy slob you all know and love. But I wasn’t like that before I came to TAC, or even during the first few years. I have a few thoughts on what brought these changes about, none I’d like to share. Regardless, it feels now as if I’m looking back on a past life with incomplete memories shrouded in the mists of long ages. Not at what should be fresh and happy memories ending little less than a week ago. I’d like to talk more about my memories, and what importance they seem to play in my life, but maybe I can avoid that for now.

In exciting life news!
* I nearly get arrested for DUI on the Friday before Graduation
* Instead I’m unceremoniously ditched by the popo on the side of the 150 in my shorts at 3 a.m.
* Ten minutes later a screeching rice ball full of cholos corners me with their brights for five seconds before speeding off. Repeat for the next 30 minutes as I go Vietnam style all up in the UO. I’m eventually Silver Bullet evaced by Donzilla, the last man standing on that fateful night. This was a fun little adventure that taught me to not even think of fucking around with Californias stygian penalty system for drunk driving. I also owe someone a huge debt, and am thankful for this person’s friendship.

On to Vegas baby. Pat, Tim, Alan, Andrea and I all managed to squeeze into the posh confines of a Wynn’s Casino Five Star resort handicapped room. While most resort rooms have limited and to be rather blunt, ineffectual means of bathroom ingress and egress, our room sports a state-of-the-art tram-line connected by ceiling tracks. The pleasant journey begins as you attach yourself to the Apparatus near the balcony, and proceeds by unveiling the sumptuous furnishings and light fixtures beneath you. As you progress down the track, watch out, for we appear to be heading straight into the bathroom wall! But no, gentle guest, simply open the recessing doors and prepare yourself for the intricate pleasures of the modern comfort station (bathroom!). Passing from the second queen bed below you and floating through the opened doors, pause and disgorge yourself from the Apparatus if you care to take a refreshing bath below. But look, the water jets are placed at the top of the tub, simulating a waterfall. How deliciously expensive! No? Oh... perhaps you’d like us to leave as your next stop appears to be over the toilet. I’ll just turn on the Plasma Screen TV mounted above the bathtub and easily viewable from your perspective by watching the mirrors reflection. And happy day it’s The Chappelle Show featuring R. Kelly! Good luck my friend, and remember to use the Emergency Roll only in times of Emergency. And to you, fellow guests, remember that like all priceless jewelery, paintings, and Mayan god statues, the Wynn Guest Snackbar located inside each room is equipped with individual motion sensors! Mistakenly touch that bag of Cookie Dough Nibblers and you own it.

So, we had a sweet room for cheap. The gambling was good, nobody lost too much and we all got our monies worth out of free boo. I continued a trend that has developed since the first time I went to vegas (on my fourth trip now). I always do really well at the Bellagio poker room. I’ve never had a losing session there, and am up over a grand there. On the other hand, in the Ghetto Castle, I’m down a lot in the $100 min/max NL game. Every time, I build up a nice respectable stack, two or three hundred dollars, and get all my money in with a made hand only to be drawn out on by a 1,2 or 3 outer. My last buy-in ever at the Ghetto Castle (thus have I decreed) was expended when I find 45s on the button. A fairly tight predictable player raised UTG to $10 (AK... he bets lower with high pocket pairs). He gets a caller, and it comes to me. I figure we might get one of the blinds in, everyone involved has a nice stack behind them... let’s gamble. I call, the BB calls, and we’re off. I’m staring at the PF raiser as the flop comes down, he makes the obvious I just hit my ak eye movement, and then I look down to see a board of A23 (suits don’t matter). He bets $20, the other guy folds and I want to massage him into getting all of his money in, so I reraise to $40. Coming from me, this could look like me with a high pocket pair or weaker ace trying to find out where I’m at. I’m hoping he tells me by going all in. He does. I call. Turn, K. River, A. FUCKING NOT AGAIN THIS IS ABSURD. Every time I’ve sat down at a NL table in a casino this is what has happened. I’m down about 4gs from being drawn out on the turn or river every single time I’m allin and ahead. So, maybe I’m good at NL, maybe not, I just can’t stand losing a whole nights work in one hand when a huge favorite. Give me the Bellagio 8/16 or 15/30 please!
Pat, Keeler, Andrea and I spent our last night next to each other at two 1-3 spread limit tables. We had some good times, and some interesting characters at the table. There was even a mexican guy I’d played with at Commerce before. We made eye contact, but I don’t know if he placed who I was. He was still a crazy loose aggressive fish just as I’d remembered.
Wednesday night we hit The Orleans bowling alley. One dollar games after midnight. Shite. We played for four hours or so, drinking and smoking ourselves silly. The lanes were so greasy, you’d have to wipe the excess on your ball off so you didn’t get it on your clothes. I think I broke 100 once or twice. Teehee. Alan scored a 220 or so straight bowling and hammered. Congrats. Jackass.
And of course, no Vegas adventure is complete without a random car dying event in the desert. We got a tow from stateline to Vegas, hung around a Pepboys for several hours until they were near to closing, then purchased a new battery, alternator, and tools to do the swap. Thankfully, our streetlight operation went well and we were back on the road

This, that and the other and I’m back home for the next few months. For unexplained reasons, my summer work application at TAC was denied. Wonder why. I’ve set up a tight regimen for myself of sleep, golf, poker, movies, books, and more sleep. My senses must be filled at all times with anything other than my family. God bless them, but they’re already driving me insane. It’s nice living at home for free for a while, but really, once you’re left the nest, you’re gone. It’s prison after that. I’m still looking into bachelor programs for music theory/performance. I’m not sure if I want to pursue classical guitar professionally, but it seems like the only realistic thing on the burner. Barring any unforseen difficulties, I should be moving back up in middle or late July. Unless I can get my golf handcap back down to scratch by the time I leave. If so, I’m off to the tour! And now I’m really feeling loopy, so goodnight.

Senioritis

2005-04-25T22:24:00.000-07:00

I had my thesis defense last Tuesday. In keeping with my whole approach to the affair, I waited until the last moment to prepare, and put the finishing touches on my praesis (sp?) only minutes before the actual defense. I'm a true intellectual procrastinator. While I may not have been as ready as I could have been, I felt very relaxed. This was pretty much necessary, as I was about to spend the next hour doing something I had spent the last four years trying not to do; talk in a classroom. It went well for the most part, though I found Dr. McArthur to be non-sensical at best. He kept bringing up what I thought were objections or problems with what I was saying, but after he verbally fumbled around for several minutes and I tried asking him to clarify his question, he'd start all over again. Wash, rinse, repeat for the next half-hour, and you have the bulk of my defense. It was wholly unsatisfying. It's clear that most of the tutors barely glance over the theses they are attacking. Instead, they try and get a grasp of your position, and rely on their previous knowledge of the subject matter to try and test you. McArthur had a different understanding of the operation of the practical intellect in moral matters, and since I was under the assumption that he had read and uderstood my position, I think my failure to realize this led to most of the problems we had.

McArthur was holding that in moral matters, since our intellect judges about universal propositions, and can only act upon one judgment at a time in the practical syllogism formed in moral action, it must through a fault made in grasping the particular in some action that the incontinent man acts. Otherwise, he held, the incontinent man would not differ from the intemperate man, for he would not be acting against some judgment from reason, but from some other universal proposition. This is the problem we struggled with for the majority of the time he talked. When I finally realized what he was saying, I was shocked, because this is such a basic misunderstanding of Aristotle's position. Aristotle holds that the practical intellect judges concerning universal propositions relating to moral action, and presents these propositions in the formulation of the practical syllogism. When the continent man acts, he has two universal propositions in his intellect. One proposition comes from judgment in accord with right reason, the other is a proposition presented by the desiring part of the soul. It's clear that this proposition is taken from what St. Thomas refers to as the Formes of Sin, or the law of the members. It is not a proposition formed by the reason, but the appetitive part of the soul does present the intellect with this desire in the form of a proposition. The continent man rejects the influence of his passions and holds to the judgment of his reason, and acts through a practical syllogism in which this universal judgment of reason forms the major premise. In the incontinent man, the will allows desire to win out over reason, and such a man acts through the universal proposition from desire. In either case, though moral actions are concerned with particulars, the particular to be acted upon remains the same. So the intoncintent man does NOT differ as McArthur wanted to say by mistaking the universal in the particular. He seemed shocked when I made the distinction between the two universal propositions involved in the moral operation of the incontinent man. Weird. Like I said, the whole affair was unsatisfying, when the majority of the discussion was spent trying to resolve such a basic misunderstanding.

Pat C., Gabe, Claire and I hit the Hill Top afterwards. We've been there more or less everynight for the last few weeks celebrating our "circumcisions" - Big Al's coinage - and this night was a capper. After my second or third pitcher, and who knows how many free double shots of Crowne (with a dash of coke, you rock Big Al), I found myself staring at one of the barflies across from me.

Setting: lots of loud background chatter, swimming lights and a rosy glow surrounding a group of college kids smoking and drinking inside the Hill Top. Camera pans, focusing in on a young man perched atop a bar stool with elbows resting on the counter, a cigarette hanging from lips parted in laughter, engaging in conversation with someone off the screen. Over time the crowd slowly lessens, the laughter begins to fade, and the hero slowly starts aging as the cigarette cherry burns lower. His hairline starts receeding, his waistline expands and he becomes less animated and aware of his surroundings, which are slowly changing as time progresses into the future - but really, how much do bars change? The rosy glow and laughter of the opening scene eventually fade into a dull background murmor arising out of the shadows, and the camera focuses in on our now wrinkled and balding hero sullenly staring into the bottom of a whiskey glass, the last few puffs of his cigarette wreathing his gnarled features in obscurity. If you want to be whole circle about the thing, at the end we have a new hero plop down on the bar, laughing with his friends as he lights up a cigarette and accidentally elbows the old hero in the ribs, causing him to drop the now spent butt. Fin. Cue new age hippie music!

Bob is really the inspiration for this little idea. Bob is a fifty-something cowboy from up north, and he remembers. Or so he kept assuring us. For several hours good old Bob felt moved to share his years of wisdom with Gabe and I. The best place to find loose women in these parts of California: "Up ways near Bakersfield... Crystal Palace. You come through those swinging doors, tip the hat, and 'yes ma'am'." He gave us some tips on good hikes around the area, ideas on investment (always silver) and property managment, and even a place to stay if we ever come up north. When Gabe finally let him know we were Catholic, his frequent comments on laying the loose women stopped coming. He later mentioned he had a rosary in his truck. The discussion never really turned religious, but it did seem like something resembling a conscience was awakened in him for a time. This coming from a man currently supporting three lady interests and a wife he no longer lives with. It's amazing how responsive all of these old barflies are to Catholicism and us TAC students in particular. I've got a lot of stories and memories now from talking with guys like Bob, and while these characters are really interesting, they're also incredibly depressing. Hence the hero in my little story. You pray for these people and hope something good comes to them in the end, but you don't expect it.

Late Night Boredom

2005-04-04T05:19:00.000-07:00

People keep asking me what I plan on doing after I graduate. I ask the same thing of my friends. It's natural. People we care for and have spent the better part of four years in close contact with will soon cease to be a part of our daily lives, and we want to know the why where and how.

I've never actually sat down and said to myself, "This would be a feasible and rational way to spend the rest of my life, I think I'll figure out how to go about it." I have interests and hobbies which could conceivably turn into professional sources of income, but I don't bank on any of them. In the short term, I know I have the knowledge and talent to make money playing poker. I know people who do it, and it doesn't seem to be an enviable way to live in the long run. I would like to play professional golf, and before I came to this place, I was sporting a scratch handicap or better, so that might be promising. I'm in love with the classical guitar, and can definately see myself living my life as a teacher/performer. Both of these options would require a large amount of efffort and determination, both are virtues I currently lack. And poker is geared for the unambitious and lazy, so you can see my natural inclination. Anyone who is intelligent enough to spend the time learing poker theory and gaining enough experience to understand and beat the game would be able and much better off in pursuing a more lucrative and rewarding profession. So let's pray it's only short-term if I get involved with this at all.

It's interesting how a good poker player must disconect himself from the value of his money. Short term results are truly meaningless, and even the best poker players can lose terrifying amounts of money in a single night. I had been lucky in my previous visits to Commerce Casino in L.A., but on Friday managed to drop about a third of the money I've made there recently back to the fishies. But it doesn't really bother me. I have all of my poker money set aside, and I don't really think of it as spending money. It is money though, and you have to respect it while you're playing at a table, or you won't hold on to it for long. This disconnect therefore bridges a fine line between being too careful and anxious with your poker chips, and not caring enough so that you start gambling instead of playing.

An example, and this is really a common one. I had busted out of the $9/$18 limit game I started in after four or five hours of subpar play and bad cards, and sat down in the $100 min/max No-Limit game. There were two or three fairly new inexperienced players, several solid and aggressive players, and the rest were your typical low limit poker player (i.e., they know the rules and have a decent familiarity with the game, but are generally far too loose and passive). I was up several buy-ins when I found pocket eights in early position. I called the $3 blind, and five other players called for a flop of 3 8 Q rainbow suited. Hot damn! I checked, knowing several aggressive players in the hand were likely to bet, giving me a good opportunity to build a nice pot before going all-in and shutting out all of the absurd draws that people chase. Sure enough, solid aggressive asian #1 raises it to $40, a loose and aggressive player reraises it $80, and it comes back to me. I'm only behind to pocket queens, and really, that's a 1000:1 chance that two pocket pairs would trip up on the flop. So I reraise all-in, making any overpairs or gutshot straight/flush draws call improperly. Aggressive asian reraises all-in over my all-in, and the other guy calls. It's now something like an $800 pot with my share being around $700. The turn comes a 10, and with all our cards now exposed AggAsian is sporting a disgusting queen-high straight with J 9, and the other player two pair with Q 9. I now have three threes, three tens, and one eight to help me improve. That's 7 out of 46 cards to help me, a little better than 6:1 against happening. And of course it doesn't happen and I'm now out of two games.

I grab Nick K. and we go smoke, and it's somewhere around 3 A.M. He's barely keeping his head above the water in the $1/$2 game, having most of his many high pocket pairs cracked by the crazies. The smoking crowd outside the entrance to Commerce Casino at three in the morning only heightens the bizarre nature of how we've chosen to spend our Friday night. I listen to Nick describe his bad beats and think, "If you only knew." He heads back to his table, and I decided to play some low limit seven-card stud. Whoo! I managed to gamble away $50 over the next several hours to a few old asian ladies and an elderly man who looked like the late George Burns dressed to pimp. An interesting situation occured when the two forty-somethings at the table who had been flirting for the last hour or so decided to head to the ladies car for some wink-wink nudge-nudge after Mr. lost his last few chips. Ms. (or [not his] Mrs.?) left her stack of chips and they giggled their way from the table. Mr. returned a good hour later with a big fat grin spread across his sweaty red face, and somehow managed to claim Ms. stack of chips. Of course Ms. shows up five minutes later, and where the fuck is my money you fucks and fuck this and that and fuck. The floor man escorted her away and I assume this to be the first time in history that a sweaty balding forty-something man got some and walked away with more more than he started.

At 5 A.M. carts of food began wheeling to different players and I found out that Commerce offers a $2 "Full House" breakfast during this hour. A plate of greasy grade D eggs and bacon after a long night of bad beats and Red Bull is not something I'd care to try again. And after all this we only have a three hour drive to look forward to!

Not surprisingly, I had one of the more random experiences of my life around midnight. A small, middle-aged asian guy sitting to my right was watching CNN's coverage of the Pope's decline. I asked him if he was Catholic. Whoops. Yes, he is a "catholic" and how dare the Vatican make the Pope serve for life. Our presidents only serve for four years, but these Popes and their life long terms! Outrageous. He said alot more, but I could really only understand that much. I made a vague defence of the Pope inbetween throwing money to the other players, but I don't think he was buying it :(

On another note, my three year and six-figure project is coming to a close (hopefully) tomorrow, as Darren and I put some final fixes on the Mustang. It has given me so many headaches and problems that I wrote the damn thing off for several months and have only recently found the desire to fix it. I got it up and running after fiddling with some wiring and replacing several parts. It now runs, but the beast will not idle. It takes after its owner: too lazy to even do the minimal. We think we've narrowed it down to a timing problem, and if this isn't it, I'm driving it into the creek.

And it's now five in the morning again, but I have no "Full House" breakfast. I fold(?)

yawn

2005-03-26T02:30:00.000-08:00

So, yeah. I'm not programming anymore, I'm home for Easter break, and I have no PC to play poker on. So I'm breaking this bad boy out!

But really, I haven't played poker for two solid days and I'm freaking. I guess it is an addiction. Friends and family keep asking me what my plans are for life after TAC. "You seen rounders? Eh? That's me, baby!" Most of my friends wouldn't care if I told them that, but I clearly can't say it to my family. But at what point do I tell them I'm making a living playing poker? I suppose I'll deal with it when I've actually been "unemployed" for several months, and am not living on the streets *kock on wood*.

It's interesting reading forums like http://www.twoplustwo.com, and reading over posts by mid-limit ($15-$30 through $30-$60) players. They really don't seem to have any better of a grasp of poker theory than I do, and in most cases less. They've just been playing a long time, have moved up the limits, and found through trial and error a winning approach. They understand the basics of pot odds and position, but many of their plays indicate fairly large flaws in their playing style. Most of these flaws involve over-agression on the later streets in hold'em, and not properly taking into account the playing style of their opponents. The number of hands they're able to play an hour online allows them to overcome these faults, and maintain a livable BB per hour rate (1-2BB/100 for most players averaging 150-200 hands/hr
A moderately successful player on Party Poker who plays four tables of $15-30 at a time and manages 200 hands an hour at 1 BB/100, thus has an hourly expectation of $60/hr. There are guys who are making +3BB/100 at these games, and clearly making upwards of $200/hr. Contrast this with a live professional, playing say $20-40, and making 3BB/100. A fast mid-limit table probably averages 33 hands in an hour. So a decent live professional makes little more than $40. The best live professionals can utilize their ability to read their opponents for strength, and make +2BB/hr. So a very good professional can make around $80 an hour at $20/40. Little more than a fairly average online player can make at $15-30. Live players only start having an advantage at stakes around $50-100, where they can make over $100/hr. But even a player at an average $300-600 table only rates to make around $200/hr. (acc. to Gambling Theories and Concepts by Mason Malmuth).

Why then aren't more people playing and making a living online? Because most poker players can only sustain a BB/100 rate this high under optimal conditions. Tilt and boredom are such huge factors that most people who are prone to these at the table turn from moderate winners to (sometimes big) losers. Boredom is the doom of most live players, and tilt of most online players. Internet poker allows for many more hands an hour, and when playing four tables at a time at a faster individual table rate of any real casino table, there is little problem with getting bored and playing borderline hands. But most internet games are far more aggressive than live brick-and-mortar games. This leads to far greater variance. I just read about a very successful live player who recently switched from $30-6o to four tabling $15-30 online. He lost $10k in his first few days. That's over 300BB. A pro should normally maintain around a 300BB bankroll. Yet when he went for help on the website I mentioned earlier, he learned that even the top internet professionals experience swings this large. For the most part, internet poker is far more aggressive than live poker, and hence a winning player must play many more marginal situations which then adds greatly to their short term variance.

When internet players win, they seem to play decently. When they start losing significant amounts of money like they're bound and supposed to, they self-destruct and stop playing winning poker (winning poker in the long-term sense of the word). Eventually they hit a hot streak of cards, and bounce back, but they lose far more than they should. This happens on a much smaller occasion to these players on a daily basis as well. Say they have three winning hands rivered by inside straights or flush draws on different tables at the same time. They get pissed off, and obviously aren't able to judge properly in the following hands. They don't pay attention to player reads or positions, and play borderline hands. Winning online professionals are able to ignore these beats and downswings and maintain their best game at all times.

printf("Hello World!\n");

2004-07-14T14:51:00.000-07:00

In olden times, I dabbled in all things computer related. One of my passing pursuits was running a FreeBSD unix server out of my dorm. I learned enough of the c and perl programming languages to script everything and keep it running. Having recently acquired the habit of rational thought, I'm thinking programming is a pursuit worthy of the liberated intellect. So I'm relearning c (in a more formal fashion this time), working through the C Programming Lanugage, second edition to be exact, by Kerner and Ritchie, the language's progenitors. To help myself and to serve as a resource for others working through the book, I'm going to post my solutions to the book's exercises.

I'd like to talk more later about why I think programming is a worthy pursuit for the free mind.

Also, being my first post, a few words about this blog. To begin with, I hate the word. I don't know what the hell it means or where it comes from, the advent of this online revolution in personal publishing having originated shortly after my digital exile at TAC. In my day (we're talking the World War I era of the internet, where AOL and Compuserve lost to the internet), we called these things homepages. A less absurd, perhaps more indicitive label. But then again, these days it appears the internet is in the ambiguous and socially awkward days of Vietnam (I know it's not, Walter, and fuck you Donnie), so go blog, I'm no conscientious objector.

What do I want with a blog? It seems these days we spend less time talking with our friends in person about our lives, and more sharing it on the internet with total strangers. I'm cool with that. There're more important things to talk about in person. And people who don't really have anything to say I can duely and easily ignore. So I guess friends and innocent well-wishers can keep a tab on me here. Further, a public medium is neat for writing. It holds you accountable (to yourself mainly) for your writing. For those responsible enough to care. Instead of self-indulging in meaningles poetry scribbled on a post-it-note by your bedside at two in the morning after a bad date, or maintaining a running dialogue with your more inane self in a daily diary, you know that potential others might be reading your more personal thoughts. Now I guess many people fail to realize that your petty and worthless personal thoughts should only be shared with others along with a nice dose of embarrasment. Or.. they don't care. Probably both.

That's that.

Seriously.

Seriously.

...

wher hehro! (very long / self-absorbed)

Boo

Afternooning

Late night auto-biography

Baby Blue

Drunken Spanish Minstrel

You can be my wingman anyday

Let the Thunder Roll

Must Be a Full Moon

Generic Witty Post Title

Party Pooper

Homestyle

Travelish

Boo

I run g00t

Immodest Mouse

Wanhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!

Weffalumps and Hoozles

Picture Time!

From the "Bored stupid" Dept.

The Machinist

Wave of Mutilation

I take it back

Ick

Kittenwar.

Programming

At last!

I seen him!

yikes

various and sundry

House of Flying Daggers

Jackpot

Oops

Twilight Zone

I gots me a liberal arts edumacation!

Senioritis

Late Night Boredom

*yawn*

printf("Hello World!\n");

yawn