Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Odin's Dad's LiveJournal:

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Monday, November 9th, 2009
2:04 am	And now for something completely different. A couple months ago, Dave Barry posted this link in his blog. As a public service, I decided to reproduce the best parts of the page, translated from Russian thanks to my years of experience with the language Google Translate providing me with a first guess. Thank you, yasviridov, for more laughs than one week should ever be allowed to contain! Some of the captions translate better than others, but I've included them all just because the artwork is, well, precious. (Warning: The parts of the post that are NSFW due to partial nudity are hidden behind lj-cuts. Click at your peril.) In one hand, his guitar. In the other, good luck. Ah, romance... ( Romantica ) Give me more, Jorge! Show me passion, show me overwhelming emotion! I'm not taking passport photos here! There we go, much better! On second thought, we'd better not send them and Bilan. (Note to make this one make sense: Bilan is a Russian pop star who has represented them twice in the Eurovision Song Contest.) "My God, what is this?" "It's a record, Mom! We told you like a minute ago." "Oh, right! ...My God, what is this?" "Mom, it's a record, a re-cord!" It must be acknowledged that not everybody appreciates the sound of a saxophone. This picture of Wayne Newton was clearly not his "best of". I could admire this cover for hours. Maybe Uncle Bobo did have to strangle the three nurses, but he didn't have to do it on his niece's birthday and spoil it. There was a time when guitars could sell literally anybody. What is the secret of our family's happiness? Oral sex! Heaven came down right on my hairdo. Is it just me, or does this guy look like Fomenko? The first time, William Tell used his daughter. She hasn't made up her mind whom her heart belongs to—the man in the moustache, or the plush reindeer. Orgies in the Fifties were considerably duller than nowadays. In the Seventies, too. ( Read more... ) Despite the men's best efforts, they still got drafted. After a cup of acorn liqueur, Havtan got very playful. I envy all of you 21st-century-dwellers! "Why don't you have your fins? Aren't you coming to the dance?" The right hand of the woman to the left is particularly frightening for some reason. The new gym teacher was just like the two old ones. The Russian porno perestroika had its forerunners. ( Ergas ) They brought it home, and it turned into—Oh my! ( Furry ) The Bosnian guerrillas really got around. [Ed. note: Even I don't get this one.] Returning from the field, Theodore found a lamb with a broken wing [sic] and brought it with him... This album won a silver medal at the World's Fair of Merchandise for the Colorblind, Zurich, 1961. Borat? ( Borat ) Igor Stravinsky's ballet "Firebird". The bird got old. In the words of the poet Druk: Dear Mother, In this life I am doing fine I have four hooves And an enormous head. They were so poor that they had to paint Satan on a canvas. I think I can safely say that most people know what this means. Although myself, for example, I have no clue what's going on here. The tiger suit was stuffy, but it sure worked with the ladies. "What do you mean, you're fresh out of Beatles?" "We've got tons of 'em! Here's Yellow Submarine!" "I think I'd better take the other one." Take our easy course, and in 12 lessons you can be as cool as this guy with a guitar! "I must draw attention to your son's behaviour. He threw a breadstick in the dining hall. And killed the headmaster with it." He was beginning to feel that his life was going somewhere, and then he saw this... ...and this... ...and this... ...and this... Two steps later, the unsuspecting zombie stumbled into the piano and hurt his knee. "Hey boy! The urinal's a little more to the right!" "Mommy! MOMMY!" "Shh, calm down, calm down sweetie. It was just a nightmare. You were only dreaming that Uncle Bobo escaped from the psych ward." "Excuse me, have you seen my contact lens?" "So here's the offer: In addition to this fabulous 'Kirby' record player, you get a set of stainless steel teeth, and me, completely free! So, do we have a deal?" People of Earth, we mean you no harm. Take us to your leader, or to your barber. Dear Sir: We are sorry, but your sample photos were not accepted. Yes, our film "Brokeback Mountain" is about gay cowboys, but! The Patriarchate of Moscow and the Sailors' Marine Union issued a joint press release criticising the new film "The Last Temptation of The Sailor." Psst! Psst! Don't turn around, Masha. Keep smiling at the camera. But if you can also see these strange creatures, let me know by poking me with your elbow. Not many people know that Tsereteli's first sculpture, "Boy With Weathervane", was made of plasticine. Hey look, he really didn't expect a rattlesnake when he opened the pizza box! Idiots! Where are you staring? The camera's on the other side! That's a theodolite! I'm dedicating my next song to a dear friend who is in the audience tonight. My dentist. I know, okay? Just pretend you're chopping, and afterwards we'll Photoshop in a tree and a beaver biting your foot. "So I said, 'let's buy some vodka!' And you were like, 'if we're going to have some fun, let's get costumes and confetti!' And now look at us!" Carlson, who lives with a hooker, pulls another prank. ( Beep beep ) I had used my first two wishes. What else would I ask for so that I didn't feel sorry? Maybe a dombura player? All right, my dear, I'll do it. But promise me you won't look, I'm shy. Outrageous! A naked girl on a Tchaikovsky cover?! ( Tchaikovsky ) "I would advise against ordering the soup. I dropped a bar of foot soap into the tureen." In the morning, she couldn't believe that she'd swapped all her clothes and furniture for the old phonograph. ( Sounds electronic ) With any other background, fine, it would fade away, but all the same... [Ed. I don't get it either.] Part 2 tomorrow! Current Mood: tired (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, November 7th, 2009
11:19 pm	Look Ma, I remembered how to use lj-cut! I didn't blog about yesterday's session but I did keep the record, which is appended to this post. I have decided to change my focus for the month. I was doing the Iron Man Challenge thing as more-or-less a reason to keep a schedule. But I've found myself stressing out about, when am I going to get my 50 points in, which takes about two hours of solid cash-game play, during which time I want to be in a good head space. And I'm busier than I was last time I tried this—even working six hours a week, plus commute time, means quite a bit less time on the computer. This is overall a good thing, but it makes achieving my goal more of a burden than a challenge. And another thing is, cash games aren't really my strongest area. Not that I'm bad at them per se, but I feel much more comfortable in tournaments. The strategies are different because the aim is different, and there's also a different feel when the chips on the table are just chips and not dollars. (You may be asking yourself: What do you mean, the aim is different? Poker is poker, right? Well ... the aim in a cash game is simply to make as much money as you can. In a tournament, your chips are not the end in themselves, but the means to a higher end, namely, knocking out your opponents—and conversely, not letting them knock you out. This leads to different decisions being made, different strategies being used, et cetera.) Anyhow, the reason I was playing cash games is because from an hourly perspective, tournaments just don't give you as many Full Tilt Points. So, I'm revising my goals. Instead of aiming for 50 FTPs a day, I'm going to have a daily goal of one good hour on workdays (Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays) and two good hours on other days. Since I have choir on Tuesday evenings as well as work during the day, I'm not going to sweat it if I don't get an hour in on a Tuesday. So how did I do yesterday and today? I got in two average hours yesterday and caught enough bad cards to lose about $25. Today, I got in ... four good hours! When I logged on, I noticed that a razz tournament was starting 20 minutes thenceforth. So I played at a cash game until the tournament started, ending up $6 to the good; not bad for 15 minutes of killing time. It felt good to be playing in a tournament again, and playing well. I got my share of good and bad cards, and had to fight my way out of about three different holes. I set my sights on making the money, and I made a few plays that I'm very proud of which gave me exactly that result. Once I had made the money—albeit with the third-smallest stack—I set my sights on making the final table or going out in a blaze of glory; 9th place paid the same as 12th, so no point running the clock down any longer. I was quite short stacked at this point, and I needed to earn chips. I did this by changing gears. I had been playing very tightly up to that point, folding more hands than my tablemates. But now I loosened right up. By this point in a tournament, stealing the blinds gives one's stack a substantial boost even when nobody plays against you, and I managed to steal several before anybody played back at me. Luckily for me, I actually did have a hand when somebody decided to look me up, and suddenly I was back in the middle of the pack. Once the final table of 8 was decided, my luck went south in a hurry, but I felt that I did as well as I could have with the cards I got tonight. I was in the proverbial zone pretty much the whole time. Note about the rakeback: They moved the payment date from Wednesday to Friday, and each Friday's payment covers the previous Tuesday-to-Monday. So I got a deposit today that amounted to 27% of the 50 cents' rake for the razz tournament I played on the 1st. Hey, they rounded it up, too! With the records I'm keeping here, I should be able to compute on Monday what I'll be getting the following Friday. ( rakeback summary ) ( Friday's session ) ( today's cash game session ) ( today's tournament session ) Current Mood: relaxed (Comment on this)
Thursday, November 5th, 2009
11:19 pm	Session post Not much to report on this one. I won some, I lost some. Didn't get to the 100-FTP mark. It's more obvious when you're losing a hand in razz, so the players don't donate as quickly I guess. I think I should play this one at higher stakes just because the relative risk is lower. Start of session Time: 22:27, 05 Nov 2009 Balance at start of session: $876.26 Full Tilt Points at start of session: 2300.75 Game: Limit Razz Table name: Garbage Stakes: $1/$2 Stack at beginning of session: $50.00 Cash added during session: $0.00 End of session Time: 23:59 Stack at end of session: $49.10 Balance at end of session: $875.36 Full Tilt Points at end of session: 2364.50 Net balance: $-0.90 Bonus Full Tilt Points earned: 24.50 Regular Full Tilt Points earned: 39.25 (Comment on this)
4:53 pm	Session post Bleah. I found out, when I checked my Iron Man Page, the reason I was done so quickly yesterday. I had been playing during a "Happy Hour" and earning double Full Tilt Points. The snag is, the bonus points don't count toward the Iron Man bonus, so yesterday only 25.75 of my points counted, which isn't 50. Sigh. I didn't make the same mistake today, although I was again playing during Happy Hour for the first 47 minutes of my session. Very different players at the table this time. Tight and passive players, which meant a different strategy. I held my own, but nearly every time I got into a hand with any size of pot, my opponent outdrew me. Even so, I was at break-even after the first hour. Then a couple of loose players joined the game, and everything changed. Unfortunately, I continued to get outdrawn, and it just so happened that I lost about 12 bucks on the hand that gave me my fiftieth non-bonus FTP. Rather than keep playing while annoyed and a little peckish, I decided to call it a session. I probably should have kept at it, because loose players are generally good for the pocketbook. If Odin isn't hogging the puter tonight, I may put in some more time; I feel in decent playing shape. I just need a break for the moment. Also, today is the last day for the "Piece of Ivey" promotion, so it would be nice to have a shot at that. I'm figuring that the loss in today's session was mostly down to cards, and just about cancels out the gain from the two monster hands yesterday. I could have lost more if I hadn't been playing well. And obviously I'm not completely here this second; I forgot to grab my hand statistics for the session. The only thing remarkable about this stats set was the large number of pots I took on third street, a result of the table being so tight early on. It was just very easy to steal the antes. Start of session Time: 16:13, 05 Nov 2009 Balance at start of session: $909.26 Full Tilt Points at start of session: 2224.50 Game: Limit Stud Hi/Lo Table name: Rio Royal Stakes: $1/$2 Stack at beginning of session: $50.00 Cash added during session: $0.00 End of session Time: 17:48 Stack at end of session: $17.00 Balance at end of session: $876.26 Full Tilt Points at end of session: 2300.75 Net balance: $-33.00 Bonus Full Tilt Points earned: 22.50 Regular Full Tilt Points earned: 53.75 Current Mood: satisfied (Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 4th, 2009
4:16 pm	In other news On Sunday's Choral Concert, CBC Radio 2 will be playing one or more songs performed by the Greystone Singers; check the site for times and audio feeds. The song(s) will be from their new CD, which probably includes some pieces from past years in which I sang. If you want an idea what we sound like, go here and click some links (I wasn't at this session). (Comment on this)
3:45 pm	Session post I've decided that the session numbers should go below the fold. Scroll down to the end if you want to read them first. I got my weekly rake rebate today, which reminded me to make this important public service announcement: If you're going to play poker for money on line, sign up for a rakeback program. I signed up through rakerebate.net, who offer 27% rakeback. Basically, for every dollar of "rake" money I pay to Full Tilt Poker, I get 27 cents back the following Wednesday (and presumably RakeRebate gets a chunk as well). This does not suck. There may be other sites offering better deals now, I don't know, do shop around. Also, if you're thinking of signing up at Full Tilt, please tell me beforehand. If I invite you to the site, I get a bonus, and you do too, and it's substantial (up to 100 bucks, depending how much you deposit). And you can get rakeback on top of that. No point giving the bastards more than you have to. Anyhow, on to my Stud Hi/Lo session, in which I made up for my Sunday night/Monday morning fiasco in just two hands. Hand 18 gave me a premium A3/5 to start - excellent for low, and the hidden ace gives it nice disguised high possibilities too. Exactly the kind of hand you want in this game. Four players called, including bingostu, who was playing almost every hand. I paired my ace on 4th street and my 5 on 6th street. Two players folded on 5th and 6th, a third was all in, and bingostu called me down all the way. My "aces up" two pair beat his queens up, and there was no lo, and the pot was worth $48. Thanks, bingostu! (Note, that does not mean that I made $48 on that hand; some of the money was what I put into the pot myself. However, more than half of it was profit.) On Hand 27, I took down another $31 pot by scooping with "the wheel", A2345, an awesome hand if you can get it. Not just the best possible lo, it's also a straight for hi. For the poker novices out there: In Stud hi/lo, half the pot goes to the best hand, as in a normal poker game, but half the pot also goes to the worst hand (provided that it is 8-high or worse). The most important trick to this tricky game, Todd Brunson's "Platinum Rule", is: Don't draw at half the pot. If you have half the pot locked up solid, great. If you're drawing to scoop the whole pot, great as well. Otherwise, you're almost always better off folding. Half the pot is a mug's game. I think I'm going to play more of this game; I got my 50 FTP in under an hour, and made quite a bit of money doing it, compared to nearly 2 hours it took me to lose 40 bucks Monday morning. People are even looser in this game, often with bad draws to half the pot. This makes it profitable financially and point-wise. Even with average cards I would have done well today, and I got those two exceptional hands that made the difference between a good session and a great one. Rake rebate deposited 12:57, 04 Nov 2009 Amount of rake rebate: $3.71 Balance before rake rebate: $842.60 Balance after rake rebate: $846.31 Start of session Time: 15:33, 04 Nov 2009 Balance at start of session: $846.31 Full Tilt Points at start of session: 2173.00 Game: Limit Stud Hi/Lo Table name: Rio Royal Stakes: $1/$2 Stack at beginning of session: $50.00 Cash added during session: $0.00 End of session Time: 16:31 Stack at end of session: $112.95 Balance at end of session: $909.26 Full Tilt Points at end of session: 2224.50 Net balance: $62.95 Full Tilt Points earned: 51.50 Statistics for 55 Hands Street Saw Saw/Total Fourth 16 29% Fifth 14 25% Sixth 9 16% Seventh 8 15% Showdown 7 13% Street Won Won/Saw Won/Total Third 1 2% 2% Fourth 0 0% 0% Fifth 2 14% 4% Sixth 0 0% 0% Seventh 1 13% 2% Showdown - Split 3 43% 5% - Scoop 4 57% 7% (Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009
6:12 pm	Session post This one doesn't include hand statistics because it would be long and cumbersome and not terribly informative, given that I was playing 7 different games. Start of session Time: 17:16, 03 Nov 2009 Balance at start of session: $868.60 Full Tilt Points at start of session: 2159.00 Tournament: 115497296 Buy-in: $24+2 ($3,000 guaranteed prize pool) Game(s): 7-game mixed limit Entrants: 119 Places paid: 16 End of session Time: 19:12 Position: 58 Balance at end of session: $842.60 Full Tilt Points at end of session: 2173.00 Net balance: $-26.00 Full Tilt Points earned: 14.00 I like mixed-game tournaments. I play HORSE, which is 5 fixed-limit games, frequently. Full Tilt has just begun offering a 7-game format which includes the HORSE games along with no-limit Texas Hold'em and pot-limit Omaha High. I think I like the format, although my PLO experience is very slim. The guaranteed prize pool was a draw as well, and Full Tilt did have to make good on their guarantee; 125 players was the break-even. That said, they still grossed over $3,000 including the rake. This tournament was all about the cards. I muddled through the first 8 levels, with my stack fluctuating around the average stack size, and then promptly died when I missed my draw on two razz hands in a row. Again, happy with how I played, the cards just didn't come when they would have done me some good. Current Mood: listless (Comment on this)
1:46 am	Session post I'm counting this one under Monday, since I started before midnight (-: Start of session Time: 00:35, 03 Nov 2009 Balance at start of session: $909.00 Full Tilt Points at start of session: 2103.25 Game: Limit Stud Hi Table name: Gold Stakes: $1/$2 Stack at beginning of session: $50.00 Cash added during session: $20.00 End of session Time: 02:39 Stack at end of session: $29.60 Balance at end of session: $868.60 Full Tilt Points at end of session: 2159.00 Net balance: $-40.40 Full Tilt Points earned: 55.75 Statistics for 140 Hands Street Saw Saw/Total Fourth 36 26% Fifth 31 22% Sixth 19 14% Seventh 16 11% Showdown 15 11% Street Won Won/Saw Won/Total Third 6 4% 4% Fourth 3 8% 2% Fifth 4 13% 3% Sixth 3 16% 2% Seventh 0 0% 0% Showdown 5 33% 4% My objective for the session was to play until I earned 50 Full Tilt Points. Since I missed my quota yesterday and the day before, I wanted to make sure I got at least the minimum for today. Generally, I played too loose. I pulled up my stats window after about 50 hands, and noticed that I was playing 26% of my hands to 4th street. That may sound tight to an amateur - folding 3 hands out of 4 before even seeing one additional card - but it's much looser than my target, which was to be below 20%. I was playing too many "trap hands" - low hands with flush or straight potential, for instance, or low pairs without a big kicker. By this time I was down to half my starting stack. I decided it was enough to keep playing with, and soldiered on, vowing to tighten up. I actually did tighten up for a while, although the final stats sheet shows a different story. This basically boils down to about 10 hands in the middle when there were only 4 or 5 of us playing, in which case one has to loosen up quite a bit. Up to that point, I had brought my percentage down to 23%, which meant I was playing below my 20% target for that period. Unfortunately, things were not panning out. The hand that hurt the most was when my starting pair of aces (a premium starting hand in 7-card stud) got stung by a guy who started with a hidden pair of fours (a pretty awful hand unless you manage to hit a third four, which happens about 1 time in 6). I got my two pair, he made his set, and suddenly I was below 20 bucks. I don't like playing that short-stacked, even in a limit game, so I brought another $20 to the table. I resigned myself to a losing session, but at least I'd get my 50 points. I played a few hands past my 50-point limit because I happened to have two very loose players sitting on my right. Once one of them stood up from the table, I promptly followed. I'm not happy with my play, but I did identify a couple leaks (see if you can spot one of them - it's plain as day if you know how to read the statistics). I think the cards were a little unfair to me, but not $40 unfair. I should have lost less than I did. I'm not completely surprised—I don't play my best when I'm tired, and I wouldn't have played at all if I didn't want to get those points. Lesson learned. (Comment on this)
Sunday, November 1st, 2009
5:35 pm	Session post Tournament 115198115 Tournament type: single table Razz Sit-n-go Entrants: 8 Buy-in: $5+0.50 Bankroll at beginning of session: $914.50 Started: 17:53, 01 November 2009 Ended/eliminated: 19:01 Position finished: 4 Winnings: $0.00 Full Tilt Points earned: 3.50 Bankroll at end of session: $909.00 Statistics for 106 Hands Street Saw Saw/Total Fourth 30 28% Fifth 15 14% Sixth 9 8% Seventh 7 7% Showdown 7 7% Street Won Won/Saw Won/Total Third 11 10% 10% Fourth 4 13% 4% Fifth 1 7% 1% Sixth 0 0% 0% Seventh 0 0% 0% Showdown 4 57% 4% Comments: Razz is probably my favourite poker game, if only because I spent a month or so a couple years back analysing the living tar out of it. It's relatively simple as poker games go, which misleads people into thinking it's an easy game. Well, it may be a little easier than some, but a little skill still goes a long way. This sit-n-go was pretty ordinary. As is typical at these levels, almost everybody was playing much too loosely. I sat back and only played the quality hands, pounding my opponents whenever I had something. Although I was pretty card dead early on, I still built my stack a little at a time, until I looked up about 40 minutes in and realised I had the chip lead. I held on to it until just before the synchronised break (Full Tilt has hourly breaks for all its tournaments, starting at 5 minutes to the hour), when there were only 4 players left and I caught a couple bad draws. Just after the break I lost half my stack when I drew not-quite-bad-enough-to-fold. This put me on the small stack, but one of the other players then obligingly lost half of his stack. The last hand, I got my chips in very good - all-in with a made 7 versus a 6-draw with one card to go. He made his hand, and that was that. I'm happy with how I played, although I probably could have paid more attention to playing and less to writing this post. ... Odin wants on the computer, so it doesn't look like I'm going to make my 50 FTPs (Full Tilt Points) today. I'm anticipating that I'll be playing a lot more cash games this month, because they tend to offer more FTPs per hour than tournaments. I am also going to play in higher-buyin tournaments; $5 is pretty cheap for my bankroll level. (Comment on this)
2:37 pm	How to not gamble I have a hard time convincing people of the following fact: Poker, played properly, is not gambling. Poker is investing. Very, very high-risk investing, but investing nonetheless. Let me give you an example of the difference. If you're betting double-or-nothing on a fair coin flip, that's gambling. Your expected value is plain old flat zero. If you're betting double-or-nothing that somebody's next baby will be a boy, that's investing. What's the difference? Well, (approximately) 51% of babies are boys, 49% are girls. This is pretty consistent worldwide, under virtually any circumstance (pre-natal sex-screening of various kinds notwithstanding). So, for every fifty bucks you put in, you'd expect (in the long run) to get 51 bucks out. That's an investment with a 2% rate of return. (I don't know what the exact value is, but 2% isn't too far off, and that's what we'll use here.) That said, you wouldn't want to put your life savings on it, because almost half the time you'd end up with zilch. It's a risky investment. In math-geek terms, the mean is positive (1.02, or 2% more than you started with), but the standard deviation is also very high (0.9998). The challenge in any investment is managing risk. It's always possible to lower your risk, but it always comes at the expense of your reward. So the next question is, suppose I have $1000 that I'm using as my investment nest egg. How large a commitment would I be happy making to this investment? To make a long story short, in a double-or-nothing situation, you get the best reward-to-risk ratio when you invest the same percentage as your rate of return. Since this is a 2% rate of return, you would like to invest (up to) $20. The remaining $980 is "invested" in lowering your risk (cash has 0 risk and 0 reward). If you get to make this bet over and over again on different babies, in the long run, your bank account will (slowly) grow. Notice that your mean has decreased substantially. If you invested the whole thousand, your mean would be $1020, but the problem is that 49% of the time, your career as an investor would be over. By only investing 2%, $20, you're not just reducing this risk of ruin, you're actually eliminating it, since even if it's a girl, you still have $980 towards your next investment. This comes at a cost, though - your mean is now a mere $1000.40. What you're actually doing is maximising the median. Suppose you make this investment 100 times in a row. If you invest the whole amount every time, your median is zero, since in order to have anything left, you'd have to win 100 slightly-biased coin flips in a row, which will happen about one time in 10^29, i.e., never. But if you invest 2% every time, your median is $1020.20. This is how much you will have if there are 51 boys and 49 girls among your 100 babies, which will happen about 8% of the time; the probability that there will be more or fewer boys are both approximately 46%. Even if you get astronomically unlucky and wind up with 100 girls in a row (not that I have anything against girls!), you'll still be left with $132.62. The odds of this happening are substantially less than two people picking the same specific atom out of your house. However, you don't want to invest too much. There is a critical value, very close to twice the optimum, and if you invest more than that, your median will become less than your starting amount. So if you went to 5% per investment, for instance, your median after 100 investments would be $975.24, and you're headed in the wrong direction. Now you're gambling again. (Comment on this)
2:27 pm	November 1 Okay, so, my plan for the month. I have decided that I'm going to make an effort to get better at poker. This month, I'm going to work on record keeping, a.k.a. How To Not Lie To Yourself About How Well Or Poorly You've Been Doing. This blog will be the record. So my blog for the coming month is going to have a lot of poker in it, although I'll try to put in enough real-world stuff to keep everyone else from tuning out. I am going to make a post here every time I play a session, with the specifics of what I did. So, what my bankroll was at the start and end of the session, what game I was playing, where I finished if it was a tournament, and so forth. My goal for the month is to make the Silver level in Full Tilt Poker's monthly Iron Man Challenge. This is their regular challenge to reward people for playing a lot at the site. To make Silver, I need to earn 50 Full Tilt Points a day on 25 days in the month, or 100 Points on 20 days, or 200 Points on 15 days. With the bankroll I have, I shall be aiming at one of the first two objectives. (I may elaborate on this later.) My bankroll as of right now, 16:28 Full Tilt Poker time, is $914.50, and I have 2,099.75 Full Tilt Points. (Comment on this)
1:59 pm	My annual post Actually, this is going to be more than an annual post, but LJ has kindly reminded me that it's been 48 weeks (hello again!). I've made a resolution to make a post every day this week. (I was going to go for "every day this month", but I don't know if that's realistic.) Things are actually going brilliantly for me right now. I have a psychiatrist who isn't trying to mother me or dismiss my issues. She also happens to have worked with my new family physician (Dr. Jack retired last year), and I'm in a much better head space than I've been, oh, probably since I got my Master's degree in '02. I am on a new-to-me antidepressant (Celexa) since Effexor had stopped working. I have joined a 40-voice choir that does fun music ("You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" is a staple at our Christmas concert) and gives me a lift when we rehearse every Tuesday. And I have a job. It's only six hours a week, but it's a start, and it's going great. I'm a "tutor" at the university's Math/Stats Help Centre, which is basically a drop-in centre for people having problems with the math in their courses (which range from Calculus to Econ to Chem Eng and sometimes even further afield). It's fun, the math is occasionally interesting, and it's a great mental workout for me thrice a week - and not just the math side of things but the teaching. You don't just have to know the subject, you have to also figure out where the student is at, and then (the challenging bit) how to get them where they need to be (and the really challenging bit) without just doing it all for them. I have cured at least three students of their fear of blackboards, and if I do nothing else this year I'll have accomplished that much. My next post will detail why I plan to post daily over the coming week. (Comment on this)
Monday, November 24th, 2008
8:48 am	Official cry for help It was almost exactly half a lifetime ago that I dropped out of university the first time. I was just shy of 19 then. One of the things I did before dropping out was I went to a counselling group, which is basically where a bunch of people who want help sit around and talk. The first thing the "leader" had us do was each of us say why we were here. With everyone else, it was something very specific, such as, I want to improve my study skills, or I want to stop having to pull all-nighters. Then it got around to me. I said something along the lines of, my life is falling apart because there are things that I'm expected to do that I can't do. (I'm sure I was more specific than that, but that was the gist.) The leader asked me, '"Can't", or "won't"?' I didn't have an answer at that time. Almost exactly half a lifetime on, I'm pretty much sold on "can't". I'm not stupid. Let's be honest, that's an understatement, I have at least a one-in-100,000 mind. That's not bragging, that's just me knowing who I am. Also: I'm a social moron (using the word as an analogy to the former clinical sense - I'd figure a social age between 8 and 12 is fair); I can't organise myself; I can't motivate myself outside a particularly narrow range of interests; I am a pathological non-multitasker, to the point where I can get overwhelmed just by being asked to do two things; I'm sure I'm autistic, although I don't have that particular diagnosis (officially I'm bipolar). I am on welfare, trying to look for a job, but every time someone asks me to do one other thing... I am a two-time university dropout who was (according to the nice lady at Graduate Studies) 75% of the way to getting my PhD. I have a wife who is working three jobs because I can't even get one (and even with that we're still on welfare). I am behind on student loan repayments because I can't get up the energy and/or organization to apply for interest relief. My house is a pigsty. I am meeting my mother for lunch today to talk about job-hunting and I'm not even sure I can do it. If I'm not hitting bottom again, it sure as hell feels like I am, which makes the third time this decade alone. I'm not stupid. If anyone thinks I'm here because this is where I want to be, because I'm proud to be dragging myself and my family down, because I love being so ashamed of where I'm at that I'm scared to talk to my own mother about it, because I'm somehow deliberately being difficult, or because I "won't" do it, you can fuck off right now. I've been dealing with that for almost exactly half a lifetime now, if not longer, and it hasn't worked. I'm 38, I'm not stupid, I know what I'm capable of and not capable of. Okay? I need help. I need some kind of help that I haven't gotten yet. Specifically, there are things that society, my mother, my wife, myself, expect me to do, that I simply cannot. These are things that need to be done (get a job, pay bills, answer the phone...). I just can't do them. Yes, can't, not "won't". If I can't do them at 38, having tried to do them for two decades, maybe it's time to stop hitting my head against those particular brick walls. And yes, I've talked to a shrink. She gave me some pills that did nothing but make me gain 40 pounds, and then somehow was surprised when I quit taking them. Then her husband passed away, just over a year ago now, and I'm still on the waiting list to see a new one. Not that I'm expecting much when I do. What do I want? I want to find a job. I'll settle for any job, just to get people (my wife, my mother, my social worker, to a lesser extent myself) off my back. It has to be a job that I can do in Saskatoon. Ideally it would be a job involving math. I want to not have to do anything else while I'm looking for a job, but that just doesn't seem to be happening. I've been trying since September to do it on my own, but obviously that hasn't worked. I want to get my PhD, too, but given the way that ended, I need more time (and likely, a certain few professors to retire) before I can tackle that again. I want this to be the last time I ever hit bottom. I want people to stop expecting me to do things that, over the past two decades, I have firmly established I am not capable of doing. What's my skill set? One-in-100,000 mind; I can write if I'm motivated; I can teach; mad math skillz; I know my way around a computer; I am useless with phones, marginally less so in customer interaction; I need someone else to organize for me. My crazy-ass dream is to somehow have a $10,000 or so bankroll and try making a go of playing poker for a living. Could I do it? I don't know, but I do know I'd like to try. Poker is one of those things that I do get excited about (you kidding? A game that's 90% math? Hello!!!). I've managed to turn a $0 online bankroll into (currently) about $170, but even George Soros couldn't make a living on a $170 investment portfolio in high-risk instruments... Current Mood: drained (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, June 12th, 2008
1:05 am	The sad thing is This is the best anti-Obama argument I've heard so far this year, and probably the best anti-Obama argument anybody's going to make between now and November. (Make sure you read it right through to the last sentence.) Thanks to Justin Webb of the BBC for pointing me at it. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, June 9th, 2008
5:52 pm	Public Service Announcement I just realised just how long it's been since I blogged regularly... ...because I bet you don't know that I now have glasses. Got them in January. My optometrist said, "You don't actually need glasses, but here's uncorrected" - click - "and corrected" - click. Basically, the difference between squinting-hard-enough-to-induce-headaches and crystal-clear. So I said, "How much would that cost?" He said, "For you, nothing." There are times when it pays to be poor. Eye exams are one of those times, provided you're not a fashion slave. The really amazing part was how few people noticed, without me telling, that I got them. Dentists, not so much. Supplementary Health doesn't pay for root canals, so my filling that went too deep turned into my fourth extraction (a first molar, a second molar, two wisdom teeth). Fourth time lucky though, didn't get another dry socket. And I like my new dentistdental therapist, insofar as I've ever actually liked someone drilling into my teeth; he's the first one ever who's managed to completely freeze my jaw on the first shot. (Comment on this)
Sunday, June 8th, 2008
3:44 am	I love, love, love my wife So jls123 came home tonight with two complimentary tickets to a private function she's working tomorrow evening (videocamera). Said function is the Federated Co-operatives Limited Marketing Expo 2008. Glamourous, huh? Well, the evening's entertainment just happens to be the Barenaked Ladies. In unrelated news, jls123 got a foot rub tonight. (A few years ago, at a similar function, I got to do video while my wonderful, superlative wife did the technical directing. Probably the only time in my life I'll ever be on stage with The Guess Who.) Current Mood: cheerful Current Music: "One Week" - see if you can figure out which band. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, May 7th, 2008
8:22 pm	Proud papa moment I know, it's been a few weeks. 41 of them to be precise. If you want to disabuse anybody of the idea that autistics can't have social interaction: Odin just got off the Wii, which we got last week, to call one of his girlfriends. This simultaneously makes me proud and scared as hell. When did he grow up? Current Mood: impressed (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, July 25th, 2007
12:24 am	Boo de France I'm a cycling fan. I don't follow many sports, but cycling is one of them. I don't really know why. But I've been up in the mornings about four times a week this month so I can watch live stages of the Tour de France, and people who know me know what kind of a morning person I am. (If you don't know me: Suffice it to say, I'm not.) If a reason is needed though, I think people should cycle more. For instance, people in Saskatoon. It's not a big city, guys, you don't need to drive your cars for a 15-minute commute that would be 25 minutes on your bike. At least in the summer time. Just do it, people. Gas isn't getting any cheaper, and you aren't getting any fitter. I've kept following the Tour, even last year when it started horribly and ended worse, even this year when the controversy kept coming in dribs and drabs. After what happened in 1998, much less 2006, you'd think cycling would be the cleanest sport in the world by now. If only. Now normally, I don't prejudge. But to anybody who knows anything about cycling, it's pretty plain that Vinokourov doped his blood before the time trial. And I'm calling it now: He did it again, or something, before Stage 15, even though the test results aren't out yet. Now I've seen some pretty short-sighted, selfish things in my time, done some of them myself, but this is hors catégorie. He wasn't even in the running for first place. He was 23rd overall, 28 minutes behind the leader. Now, not only is his own career ruined, but his entire team is out of the Tour. He had two teammates in the top 10, both very much in contention, especially Klöden. Their Tour is over, as is the Tour of 6 other teammates who were out there every day busting their asses to help him out. I think I feel worst of all for everyone on Team Astana who wasn't cheating and still got hurt, whoever they are. So you went down hard in an early stage. So you weren't really able to recover. That's cycling. The important thing was that you got back on your bike—that you hung in when you should have gone to hospital for a week. That's why my cycling-emphatically-non-fan wife was asking me every day, "How did Vinokourov do?" Nobody cared that you weren't winning stages. Nobody cared that you were losing time on the leaders. Nobody cared that you weren't going to win this year's Tour. Nobody but you. We just wanted to see you cross that line on the Champs Elysées next weekend, 20th or 120th, it wouldn't have mattered. You were being jaw-droppingly brave; you still had several Tours ahead of you; you probably would have won most of them, and that's what we all cared about. Last Friday, Alexander, you were a great cyclist. Today, you're just another cheat. And cycling takes yet another black eye. Every pro cyclist in the world is now under suspicion, clean or not, and I'm sure there are still a few clean ones left. I'm guessing that Evans, Leipheimer and Popovych are clean among the (new) top 10, and I'm hoping Rasmussen and Contador are too. Notice that that isn't anywhere near ten names, and I'm not saying the rest of them are doing anything wrong. It's just that I don't know any more. I want them all to be clean. But they aren't. Not all of them; count on it. If I were the best, or even tenth-best, at Professional Anything in the world, you bet your planet I would obey the rules to the letter, even if I knew someone else was cheating and beating me because of it. If only because I'd care about the future of Anything. The future of cycling looks pretty grim today, thanks to a hopefully small cadre of hopelessly pathetic people. And that's sad. Current Mood: disappointed (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, July 14th, 2007
2:02 pm	Perfectly ordinary Wikipedia article of the day See if you can read the Alumni section of this Wikipedia article without bursting out giggling. Current Mood: titillated (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, July 3rd, 2007
6:10 pm	Attention 3jane Winnipeg has a new pizza delivery service. You know you want it. Just for the toppings, or, ahem, lack thereof. Current Mood: mischievous (Comment on this)