Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Robin Hood: good guy or common thief?
A friend of mine was telling me I should try to get food stamps and unemployment, and he thinks I am an self-righteous idiot for not wanting them. I consider myself employed.
My reasoning for not taking the handouts is that the stuff is there for people who need it, and if I need it I will take it, but I don't so I won't--and besides if less people used it, less would be taken from taxpayers to pay for it. He claims this is stupid and pointlessly self-righteous and everybody is going to be selfish anyway, so I'm hurting myself for nothing, and besides the Big Brother is just going to keep it anyway and so on...
So then he suggested if I really want to set an example, I should go get food stamps and unemployment and donate it all to charity. Then the money isn't sitting getting interest for "evil fat cats" and it does real good for people. I thought this was an interesting proposition. On the one hand, I am fraudulently siphoning money out of taxpayers pockets. On the other hand, I help people in a way I couldn't otherwise afford to do.
I'm leaning on not doing it for ethical and legal reasons, but I'm curious what people think about it. I mean, after all, Robin Hood was nothing more than an outright crook, right?
-Max
.
My reasoning for not taking the handouts is that the stuff is there for people who need it, and if I need it I will take it, but I don't so I won't--and besides if less people used it, less would be taken from taxpayers to pay for it. He claims this is stupid and pointlessly self-righteous and everybody is going to be selfish anyway, so I'm hurting myself for nothing, and besides the Big Brother is just going to keep it anyway and so on...
So then he suggested if I really want to set an example, I should go get food stamps and unemployment and donate it all to charity. Then the money isn't sitting getting interest for "evil fat cats" and it does real good for people. I thought this was an interesting proposition. On the one hand, I am fraudulently siphoning money out of taxpayers pockets. On the other hand, I help people in a way I couldn't otherwise afford to do.
I'm leaning on not doing it for ethical and legal reasons, but I'm curious what people think about it. I mean, after all, Robin Hood was nothing more than an outright crook, right?
-Max
.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
so tempting to say screw america and disappear...
I am so annoyed with the state of things in this country. There is now irrefutable proof that at least three inmates at Guantanamo Bay were tortured and killed... and 100% innocent. Nobody is being prosecuted for this. Obama the saint wants to “move forward” rather than hold people for their crimes.
The Patriot act was recently renewed with all the shit-all-over-the-Fourth-Amendment parts intact. We have been in Afghanistan twice as long as we were in world war two, and there are less than 100 members of Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, and 15 of the 19 hijackers of 9/11 were Saudi Arabian. I was actually in favor of going into Iraq merely for the purpose of killing Saddam Hussein, who was a truly genocidal and horrible person and who was worth getting into Iraq. But what the fuck are we doing now?
Most Americans don't even realize that the rest of the civilized world treats us as Hagrid's half brother in the Harry Potter books—a big dumb giant who we let alone because he's so powerful, but who doesn't really understand what goes on around him. We are heavily in debt to the rest of the world, and if China and others choose to collect, our illusion of power will dissolve and we will finally suffer the inevitable collapse that I am predicting will happen within the next 500 years. We produce very little, consume very much, and borrow from others in order to do this. We are effectively no different than addicts, and if the world decides to cut us off, even our large military won't be able to save us.
Speaking of saving us, Obama gave a nice speech to Congress about health care and guess how many times he brought up the public option... that's right, zero. Nada. Ben Bernanke and Tim Geithner are still in charge with Obama's full support. Obama better be one hell of a master chess player because it looks a lot like he's in for it, but I guess it's possible I'm being check-mated in a move or two and just don't see it coming. I get it, politics is hard, and everybody is bitching and the shit is hitting the fan and it's impossible to move anything along with all this happening—but that's why you are supposed to bulldoze through all that and get it done. We KNEW that's how it was working and your whole campaign was based on plowing over the stalemate to make real change.
Man I am very close to going stateless. I am so super pissed and don't want to support this country, and maybe no country. It's so easy to disappear too. Most people don't realize how they are being traced or spied upon, but being a security nut, I know (almost) all the ways and how to thwart them. For example, did you know that your passport can be tracked—that's right it has a computer chip and locater inside of it. Did you know that Skype-to-Skype calls are encrypted? Did you know that in March of this year an investigative journalist tried 4 times to get a US passport under a fake name using fake documentation under the names and SSN of real people who were minors (but he claimed an older age on the application) and got it EVERY TIME without suspicion? Did you know you can buy a small laser cutter and etch pictures of fingerprints into a blank PC board and put a special thin gel and oils on that, then super glue that to your fingertips and voila you have new fingerprints that feel similar to your normal skin, all for less than $1000. Did you know I could hop online and buy, for $40, a hardware-based keylogger to stick between your keyboard and computer to get your passwords, no matter what software security or encryption you have? Oh and of course everybody has heard of disposable cell phones and pre-paid credit cards right?
I am in such a fury at the moment. And I could be off the face of the planet within a month... And with poker being my income, and as online poker players are spread far and wide across the globe, I would have no trouble making money and getting to it (transfer money to a player online and meet him in person for the cash). Shit I could live invisible here in Vegas without any problem. Before the internet, this was after all the money laundering capitol of the world! It would be so easy to say fuck it all, and give up on this country, and right now I am very very tempted. I probably wouldn't become stateless though; I'd just move to another country and renounce US citizenship after becoming a citizen there. I'm thinking of going through all the hoops to become a British citizen, renouncing American citizenship, and then living in Vegas as a legal alien, since Britain doesn't tax gambling winnings at all, and has socialized health care. But I'd feel bad for being a leech. If I do something like that, I want to at least still be contributing at least what I take. But boy oh boy do I not want to be contributing to the society that is the USA right now.
Friday, December 4, 2009
Feeling good, doing good
This past month has been going very well both poker-wise and personally. A few bad things happened, most notably the death of my dog last month, and less notably some personal emotional outbursts, but all of that sort of culminated together into me telling myself “okay I have to get my shit in order and get my head in the right place”. I've been exercising for about an hour at least 4 or 5 days of the week, and I've been putting in a lot of hands. I've also been trying to reduce my variance a bit, which has worked well for my confidence, as well as my winrate because I'm guessing that many spots I thought were “close” were actually -EV.
(Quick note: I stopped going to Harrah's for their promotion after about 3 days. Having to play 8-10 hours a day was bad enough, but not being able to take a break or quit when I didn't feel like playing was absolutely horrendous emotionally and financially. I did not realize just how bad it would be, and thought I could tough it out, but boy was I wrong. It was terrible, and I'm not going back! It did at least serve to invigorate me about playing on my computer, and showed me that wasn't nearly as bad as I thought!!!)
Anyway, back to the story... An example of a variance reduction spot is being checked to in position on the river with a marginal hand that I feel is probably best but not certainly best. If I bet, I may get called by worse hands, which is good, but I may also be called by better hands (bad) or raised by both better and worse hands (also bad since I'm not calling). Usually in those spots I have leaned on betting because I feel my opponents aren't good enough to bluff raise with any reasonable frequency, and thus folding to a raise costs me very little because I would have lost anyway. Therefore, if they aren't bluff-raising, my folding to a raise is equal to them simply calling my bet with a better hand. Therefore, if I beat half of their hands which will call a bet, I should bet and get that bit of extra value.
However, I have been checking back in that spot (and done similar things in other spots) recently to reduce my variance and I have found that I am making more by not betting. This means my bets have been bad, which means I have misrepresented my opponents' range of hands on the river as being weaker than it actually is. With that knowledge I have been double barreling on the turn more often because I know that the range of hands they have when we get to the river is significantly stronger than I felt it was previously. The turn bet costs less and now gives me similar enough information by the river that I can save a big mistake on the last street.
Similarly, I have all but stopped 4-bet bluffing at my current limit but increased my 3-betting by a fair amount, mostly in position. I have found that the response to aggressive 3-betting at the stakes I play is not to raise less often or to 4-bet light, but to call 3-bets more often, and even out of position, which is just fucking terrible.
They are mostly playing to hit because they aren't used to playing 3-bet pots, and certainly not out of position. The most common scenario is for them to check-fold when they miss, or lead into me when they hit. This means I win about three quarters of the 3-bet pots. Add to that the times when a player who calls 3-bets light leads into me on a board they can rarely hit like K25 and then fold to a min-raise and 3-betting becomes insanely profitable.
So I've both reduced my variance and also used the consequences of my new plays to find very profitable spots in other areas that were simply unavailable to me when I was making the higher variance plays. In addition to that I've started playing on a different site than I normally do, which is much softer. I came for the sign-up bonus, but I stayed for the player pool! I expect and am hoping to be bankrolled for taking shots at 200NL within three or four months, at which point I will be able to make a very nice amount of money per month rather than just scraping by.
To illustrate the difference these changes have made, I have taken screen shots from a site which simulates poker outcomes. Prior to this month, let's say my winrate including rake back was about $3.50 per 100 hands, with a standard deviation of $55 per 100 hands. Now, my winrate with rake back is about $5.50 per 100 hands with a standard deviation of $34 per 100 hands. The following graphs illustrate the range of outcomes of 1000 fictional players over a 250,000 hand sample, which is between 4 and 11 months of play for me, depending on how much time I put in. The top graph is the potential outcomes prior to the changes I've been talking about, and the bottom one is with those changes. The thick red line is the average expected value. You see in the first one I could end up after 11 months of play (playing less than I should be if it takes 11 months to play 250K hands!) having made anywhere from $3,500 to $14,000 but in the second one it's between $10,500 and $17,000. That's about a 1/3 slash in the variance, as well as about an increase of $4K in average money made.
Of course it's highly likely that I am also running extremely well, and after reviewing my hands for the month, I'm sure that that is definitely the case, so I'm guessing that my realistic range for this new style over the given time period is between $7K and $15K centering around $9K. Here is my graph for the past month:
I am very hopeful that my luck will continue and that I will be able to move up to 200NL soon and make buttloads of money there. If I can just get there, I will be able to make a reasonable living without playing every second of every day, which will be very VERY nice.
Aside from poker, I am looking forward to going home to Seattle for Christmas and taking a long needed week and a half rest from poker (although my mom is letting me use her laptop and I will probably put in at least a few thousand hands while up there). I really enjoy the holidays and the whole Christmas spirit. While I am an theist and have no delusions about the divinity of Jesus, I do enjoy the fact that there is a designated time where we are supposed to get together with family and be good to one another. I think those reasons are excuse enough for a holiday. (Incidentally, I also think St. Patty's Day is a really well thought out holiday—wear a color you don't normally wear, and get drunk! It's really a perfect holiday—no pretext, just random dress code and lots of drinking.) I'm a big fan of tradition, repetition, and excuses to be with family, have fun, get drunk (though I don't drink much), and donate to charity. Any reason they want to come up with to designate a day to get off work and do these things is fine by me.
Anyway, as I was saying. I like Christmas, and I am looking forward to going to Seattle for a bit. My dad and step mom are in New Zealand, and I am looking forward to vising them there as well, although it will be a few months later. New Zealand sounds like a great place, and I am very excited to see it. (And maybe if I can move up to 1/2 eventually like I am hoping, I will be able to afford my own damn vacations!)
That's it for now...
-Max
.
(Quick note: I stopped going to Harrah's for their promotion after about 3 days. Having to play 8-10 hours a day was bad enough, but not being able to take a break or quit when I didn't feel like playing was absolutely horrendous emotionally and financially. I did not realize just how bad it would be, and thought I could tough it out, but boy was I wrong. It was terrible, and I'm not going back! It did at least serve to invigorate me about playing on my computer, and showed me that wasn't nearly as bad as I thought!!!)
Anyway, back to the story... An example of a variance reduction spot is being checked to in position on the river with a marginal hand that I feel is probably best but not certainly best. If I bet, I may get called by worse hands, which is good, but I may also be called by better hands (bad) or raised by both better and worse hands (also bad since I'm not calling). Usually in those spots I have leaned on betting because I feel my opponents aren't good enough to bluff raise with any reasonable frequency, and thus folding to a raise costs me very little because I would have lost anyway. Therefore, if they aren't bluff-raising, my folding to a raise is equal to them simply calling my bet with a better hand. Therefore, if I beat half of their hands which will call a bet, I should bet and get that bit of extra value.
However, I have been checking back in that spot (and done similar things in other spots) recently to reduce my variance and I have found that I am making more by not betting. This means my bets have been bad, which means I have misrepresented my opponents' range of hands on the river as being weaker than it actually is. With that knowledge I have been double barreling on the turn more often because I know that the range of hands they have when we get to the river is significantly stronger than I felt it was previously. The turn bet costs less and now gives me similar enough information by the river that I can save a big mistake on the last street.
Similarly, I have all but stopped 4-bet bluffing at my current limit but increased my 3-betting by a fair amount, mostly in position. I have found that the response to aggressive 3-betting at the stakes I play is not to raise less often or to 4-bet light, but to call 3-bets more often, and even out of position, which is just fucking terrible.
They are mostly playing to hit because they aren't used to playing 3-bet pots, and certainly not out of position. The most common scenario is for them to check-fold when they miss, or lead into me when they hit. This means I win about three quarters of the 3-bet pots. Add to that the times when a player who calls 3-bets light leads into me on a board they can rarely hit like K25 and then fold to a min-raise and 3-betting becomes insanely profitable.
So I've both reduced my variance and also used the consequences of my new plays to find very profitable spots in other areas that were simply unavailable to me when I was making the higher variance plays. In addition to that I've started playing on a different site than I normally do, which is much softer. I came for the sign-up bonus, but I stayed for the player pool! I expect and am hoping to be bankrolled for taking shots at 200NL within three or four months, at which point I will be able to make a very nice amount of money per month rather than just scraping by.
To illustrate the difference these changes have made, I have taken screen shots from a site which simulates poker outcomes. Prior to this month, let's say my winrate including rake back was about $3.50 per 100 hands, with a standard deviation of $55 per 100 hands. Now, my winrate with rake back is about $5.50 per 100 hands with a standard deviation of $34 per 100 hands. The following graphs illustrate the range of outcomes of 1000 fictional players over a 250,000 hand sample, which is between 4 and 11 months of play for me, depending on how much time I put in. The top graph is the potential outcomes prior to the changes I've been talking about, and the bottom one is with those changes. The thick red line is the average expected value. You see in the first one I could end up after 11 months of play (playing less than I should be if it takes 11 months to play 250K hands!) having made anywhere from $3,500 to $14,000 but in the second one it's between $10,500 and $17,000. That's about a 1/3 slash in the variance, as well as about an increase of $4K in average money made.
Of course it's highly likely that I am also running extremely well, and after reviewing my hands for the month, I'm sure that that is definitely the case, so I'm guessing that my realistic range for this new style over the given time period is between $7K and $15K centering around $9K. Here is my graph for the past month:
I am very hopeful that my luck will continue and that I will be able to move up to 200NL soon and make buttloads of money there. If I can just get there, I will be able to make a reasonable living without playing every second of every day, which will be very VERY nice.
Aside from poker, I am looking forward to going home to Seattle for Christmas and taking a long needed week and a half rest from poker (although my mom is letting me use her laptop and I will probably put in at least a few thousand hands while up there). I really enjoy the holidays and the whole Christmas spirit. While I am an theist and have no delusions about the divinity of Jesus, I do enjoy the fact that there is a designated time where we are supposed to get together with family and be good to one another. I think those reasons are excuse enough for a holiday. (Incidentally, I also think St. Patty's Day is a really well thought out holiday—wear a color you don't normally wear, and get drunk! It's really a perfect holiday—no pretext, just random dress code and lots of drinking.) I'm a big fan of tradition, repetition, and excuses to be with family, have fun, get drunk (though I don't drink much), and donate to charity. Any reason they want to come up with to designate a day to get off work and do these things is fine by me.
Anyway, as I was saying. I like Christmas, and I am looking forward to going to Seattle for a bit. My dad and step mom are in New Zealand, and I am looking forward to vising them there as well, although it will be a few months later. New Zealand sounds like a great place, and I am very excited to see it. (And maybe if I can move up to 1/2 eventually like I am hoping, I will be able to afford my own damn vacations!)
That's it for now...
-Max
.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
E-mail to Rep. Shadegg
This is an e-mail I sent via the website of Arizona Representative John Shadegg (R), based on the video, which I will post blow the e-mail. The part I am referencing starts at 2:10 in the video. Here's the e-mail:
I recently saw Rep. Shadegg on C-SPAN commenting on it being a mistake to take Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to trial. As stupid as the comments suggesting that the children of various people involved may be kidnapped, I am not concerned about the poor choice of example. I am concerned that you are so afraid of terrorist that you would completely bypass the justice system and rule of law that we as a civilized society have set for ourself. Do we summarily execute mobsters--terrorists inside our borders--because we fear them? No! The fact that you would sacrifice one of the things that makes our country so great--our justice system--because you are afraid, is despicable. How about instead you grow a pair, and learn to uphold the principles on which this country was founded?
I recently saw Rep. Shadegg on C-SPAN commenting on it being a mistake to take Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to trial. As stupid as the comments suggesting that the children of various people involved may be kidnapped, I am not concerned about the poor choice of example. I am concerned that you are so afraid of terrorist that you would completely bypass the justice system and rule of law that we as a civilized society have set for ourself. Do we summarily execute mobsters--terrorists inside our borders--because we fear them? No! The fact that you would sacrifice one of the things that makes our country so great--our justice system--because you are afraid, is despicable. How about instead you grow a pair, and learn to uphold the principles on which this country was founded?
Sunday, November 8, 2009
My e-mail to Fox & Friends
Necessary background: Fox & Friends is Fox News' morning talk show. Fox News is.. well, it's Fox News. The shooter at Fort Hood was a Muslim and a member of the military. They are discussing this with Heraldo. Here is my e-mail I sent to them at friends@foxnews.com. I would recommend watching the video, posted below, in order to understand my e-mail. Also, watch the whole video, it's not just the one guy who says it. They all agree.
To: friends@foxnews.com
Subject: special muslim debriefings
Are you serious? Did you really just say that? What the hell is wrong
with you guys!? That statement is a disgrace and you should feel
ashamed and embarrassed for being such terrible people.
Regards,
Max Weiss
To: friends@foxnews.com
Subject: special muslim debriefings
Are you serious? Did you really just say that? What the hell is wrong
with you guys!? That statement is a disgrace and you should feel
ashamed and embarrassed for being such terrible people.
Regards,
Max Weiss
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Scary moment with my dog
My dog--well, my mom's dog since she's in Seattle and I'm in Vegas--crunched up a glass bowl and ate it. The hospital vet said the meds my mom gave her for fleas probably made her really hungry and the bowl just smelled like food. (She had cooked in it earlier the night before, and the dog knocked it down and ate it while she was at work the next day.)
My dog will be okay--the vet cut her open and dug around her stomach and intestines all night getting the glass out--but I was very scared for a moment. I'm still kind of freaked out about it. I really love that dog; we've had her for about 13 years. Below is the x-ray with what I believe to be accurate labeling. The little white squares are glass shards.
My dog will be okay--the vet cut her open and dug around her stomach and intestines all night getting the glass out--but I was very scared for a moment. I'm still kind of freaked out about it. I really love that dog; we've had her for about 13 years. Below is the x-ray with what I believe to be accurate labeling. The little white squares are glass shards.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
prop player at Harrah's
So I haven't really changed how I've felt since yesterday, but it's not just poker. It's the stagnant state of my life and the barely making enough and the worry and the sitting at my computer all day. Previously I played online because it was less variance and I could make more. But I just found out about a promotion at Harrah's poker room which is complicated to explain, but basically amounts to them paying you $12 an hour to play poker there, as long as you play 125 hours in a month. So I cashed out a good chunk of my money online, and as soon as I get that I am going to take a break form my computer play and just play in the casino 8 hours a day like a full time job. I'll probably play 3/6 limit and short-stack the 1/2 game because I just can't stand variance at the moment. But I mean even if I only make a couple hundred over the entire month, with the promotion, I'll still have 1500 at the end of the month. It has to be in calendar months though, so if I don't get the money soon, I can't do it this month, but still it's something different, and it's guaranteed money, and it's a lot more relaxing and easy mentally than online play. And I get to be around people. This will be a good way to get a break from my routine and make some decent money and think about other things for a bit. And if I run half way decent I may actually take a real vacation afterward. God I need one!!!!!!
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
I'm not suicidal, I'm just venting.
I'm tired. God I'm tired. I'm tired of poker. I'm tired of my life. I'm tired of having to play 10 tables of a goddamned card game 10 hours a day, 7 days a week so I can afford to eat. I hate that I have not been able to save up anything and am stuck here. I hate that I'm even more fucked if I don't keep playing every hour of every goddamned day. I hate that it's STILL better than the shit-paying soul-sucking job that I had to beg my dad to beg our asshole neighbor to give me. I don't want this to be my life, and I hate that I'm grateful for it because it's still better than anything else I can find. I want a break. God how I want to rest. I want a day where I am not fucking terrified of my future and where I don't have to be planted in front of my computer until my eyes fucking bleed. There just doesn't seem to be any relief or way to escape.
I am so tired...
.
I am so tired...
.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Universities putting classes free online
Both Harvard and Yale are starting a program of recording all of their classes and putting the videos online for free, because hey isn't education wonderful and everybody should have access to it. I know other universities are starting projects like this as well, but I'm particularly happy about the Harvard and Yale ones because aside from being great schools, their first test classes to put up happen to be two of the most interesting courses I've ever seen. The Harvard one is a study in ethics and morality and the Yale one is an entire class about game theory, and each of them has like 20 hour-long videos... it's an entire semester. Anybody who is interested, here's the links
http://www.justiceharvard.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=9&Itemid=5
http://academicearth.org/courses/game-theory
.
http://www.justiceharvard.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=9&Itemid=5
http://academicearth.org/courses/game-theory
.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Trying to get through God's Debris
The free e-book "God's Debris" by Dilbert creator Scott Adams is potentially the worst book I've ever read, and I'm only half way through it. Each page is filled with at least a dozen logic errors, misunderstandings or misuses of current knowledge, and attempts to merge philosophy and physics to gain some heretofore unknown deeper understanding of the physical universe, all done in crazy Socratic words play that you have to try to decipher before you can even understand what the protagonist is actually saying.
It exemplifies almost all of the errors in thinking that prevail in the world, very nicely wrapped up in one book. Philosophy does not give you insight into physics, without first testing your hypothesis. Word play does not make statements closer to being true. And not personally understanding something does not mean nobody understands it, and it certainly does not make it fundamentally unknowable.
This book bothers me so much because it is widely revered and talked about, and it angers me to see so many people mislead by such blatant errors in reasoning.
It is available here:
http://nowscape.com/godsdebris.pdf
I am strongly considering going over this with a "red pen" and sending it to Scott Adams.
For a movie version of similar errors in reasoning, check out one of the worst bleeping movies ever, entitled "What the Bleep Do We Know". There are a dozen or so scientists interviewed in the movie. They filed a class action lawsuit against the producers claiming the movie gravely misrepresented their views with fanciful editing.
It exemplifies almost all of the errors in thinking that prevail in the world, very nicely wrapped up in one book. Philosophy does not give you insight into physics, without first testing your hypothesis. Word play does not make statements closer to being true. And not personally understanding something does not mean nobody understands it, and it certainly does not make it fundamentally unknowable.
This book bothers me so much because it is widely revered and talked about, and it angers me to see so many people mislead by such blatant errors in reasoning.
It is available here:
http://nowscape.com/godsdebris.pdf
I am strongly considering going over this with a "red pen" and sending it to Scott Adams.
For a movie version of similar errors in reasoning, check out one of the worst bleeping movies ever, entitled "What the Bleep Do We Know". There are a dozen or so scientists interviewed in the movie. They filed a class action lawsuit against the producers claiming the movie gravely misrepresented their views with fanciful editing.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
letter to joe wilson
I'm putting this in the mail tomorrow.....
09 September, 2009
Maximilian Weiss
7140 Mountain Moss Dr.
Las Vegas, NV 89147
(702) 275-7393
MaxWeiss@hotmail.com
The Honorable Joe Wilson
United States House of Representatives
212 Cannon House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515-4002
Re: Outbust at President's Speech
Dear Representative Wilson,
_____I'm sure you know why I am writing, and I am also sure you have already paid many times over for your outburst during President Obama's speech. In watching the speech and the ensuing coverage about your remarks, I found that everybody was upset about the way in which you conveyed your views and not about the nature of those views.
_____Politically and socially, I lean far towards the liberal end of the spectrum; however, I have many conservative friends and have gained a great deal of insight from them as to why they believe what they believe and how they have come to those conclusions. I also don't think there is a giant corporate conspiracy or that every congressman is a shill or any other such nonsense that a lot of “hardcore” liberals believe (although I can understand the viewpoint, judging by the sheer amount of money many congressman are paid by various lobbyists). I tend to believe that most of the people in public service are there because they want to make a positive difference in the world; they want to do what they believe is right and will help the people they represent, if not the country and world at large.
_____I have watched with annoyance the town hall meetings regarding health insurance reform and I have heard many bad arguments for it and against it, although I do believe there are far more solid arguments for it than against. And I have watched with surprise as more and more people start to believe not just the opinions of influential media personalities but many clear lies from both sides—but I took some comfort in knowing that the people who actually made the decisions on this bill had only this as their top priority. The average American has many other things on his plate to think about before investigating the actual text of the health care bills in consideration.
_____But this is your job.
_____The purpose of your being in Congress is to know the gist of the bill and the important points (if you are unable to read the entire bill itself) and decide whether or not this is something that should be considered for the good of the country and its people.
_____It disturbs me greatly to see with such clarity how much disrespect you show to your job and to your constituents. If you disagree with the need for health insurance reform, that's fine—there are many good arguments to be made about the efficiency of the market, the cost of government bureaucracy, and the over-taxing of the American worker (although I would be the first to point out the flaws in such arguments and the need for reform). I understand that reasonable people can differ and I understand the difficult nature of your job—half the people you represent will be upset at your decisions no matter what you do. Despite that, I expect you to do what you feel is right. I expect as a representative of the people that you would take the time to be able to discern between facts and fiction—or to at least have somebody in your employ who reads the bill and can discern them for you.
_____This is what disheartens me so much: not that you had an outburst—when you care about something it is only natural to speak up about it—but that you are so passionately against reform as an idea that you refuse to know what is true and what is false, that you don't even take the time to consider the viewpoints of the people who disagree. At the very least, reading the bill and seeing what is in it, seeing what the other side would like to have happen would give you an insight as to why they want reform, which would better allow you to explain your own views.
_____It is natural for a man with your responsibility you to have a differing opinion. It is unconscionable for a man with your responsibility to be unable to discern fact from fiction. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe there is another provision I don't know about which refutes Section 246 entitled “No Federal Payment For Undocumented Aliens.” I've read most of the bill, and I don't think I am wrong. I hope you read the bill too, before you vote on it. If you don't have a copy, it's available as a PDF file at the House of Representative's website:
http://docs.house.gov/edlabor/AAHCA-BillText-071409.pdf
_____I understand that you and I will always disagree about many issues, and I know I am not a constituent of South Carolina, so my concerns hold less weight the those of the people to whom you are accountable. It is my hope that you will take this letter as an example of the way a concerned (and liberal) South Carolinian might feel and that you will take steps to ensure that in the future you are knowledgeable enough about the issues which affect your constituents to make an informed decision.
Sincerely,
Maximilian Weiss
_____
_____
_____
The Honorable Joe Wilson
United States House of Representatives
212 Cannon House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515-4002
Re: Outbust at President's Speech
Dear Representative Wilson,
_____I'm sure you know why I am writing, and I am also sure you have already paid many times over for your outburst during President Obama's speech. In watching the speech and the ensuing coverage about your remarks, I found that everybody was upset about the way in which you conveyed your views and not about the nature of those views.
_____Politically and socially, I lean far towards the liberal end of the spectrum; however, I have many conservative friends and have gained a great deal of insight from them as to why they believe what they believe and how they have come to those conclusions. I also don't think there is a giant corporate conspiracy or that every congressman is a shill or any other such nonsense that a lot of “hardcore” liberals believe (although I can understand the viewpoint, judging by the sheer amount of money many congressman are paid by various lobbyists). I tend to believe that most of the people in public service are there because they want to make a positive difference in the world; they want to do what they believe is right and will help the people they represent, if not the country and world at large.
_____I have watched with annoyance the town hall meetings regarding health insurance reform and I have heard many bad arguments for it and against it, although I do believe there are far more solid arguments for it than against. And I have watched with surprise as more and more people start to believe not just the opinions of influential media personalities but many clear lies from both sides—but I took some comfort in knowing that the people who actually made the decisions on this bill had only this as their top priority. The average American has many other things on his plate to think about before investigating the actual text of the health care bills in consideration.
_____But this is your job.
_____The purpose of your being in Congress is to know the gist of the bill and the important points (if you are unable to read the entire bill itself) and decide whether or not this is something that should be considered for the good of the country and its people.
_____It disturbs me greatly to see with such clarity how much disrespect you show to your job and to your constituents. If you disagree with the need for health insurance reform, that's fine—there are many good arguments to be made about the efficiency of the market, the cost of government bureaucracy, and the over-taxing of the American worker (although I would be the first to point out the flaws in such arguments and the need for reform). I understand that reasonable people can differ and I understand the difficult nature of your job—half the people you represent will be upset at your decisions no matter what you do. Despite that, I expect you to do what you feel is right. I expect as a representative of the people that you would take the time to be able to discern between facts and fiction—or to at least have somebody in your employ who reads the bill and can discern them for you.
_____This is what disheartens me so much: not that you had an outburst—when you care about something it is only natural to speak up about it—but that you are so passionately against reform as an idea that you refuse to know what is true and what is false, that you don't even take the time to consider the viewpoints of the people who disagree. At the very least, reading the bill and seeing what is in it, seeing what the other side would like to have happen would give you an insight as to why they want reform, which would better allow you to explain your own views.
_____It is natural for a man with your responsibility you to have a differing opinion. It is unconscionable for a man with your responsibility to be unable to discern fact from fiction. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe there is another provision I don't know about which refutes Section 246 entitled “No Federal Payment For Undocumented Aliens.” I've read most of the bill, and I don't think I am wrong. I hope you read the bill too, before you vote on it. If you don't have a copy, it's available as a PDF file at the House of Representative's website:
http://docs.house.gov/edlabor/AAHCA-BillText-071409.pdf
_____I understand that you and I will always disagree about many issues, and I know I am not a constituent of South Carolina, so my concerns hold less weight the those of the people to whom you are accountable. It is my hope that you will take this letter as an example of the way a concerned (and liberal) South Carolinian might feel and that you will take steps to ensure that in the future you are knowledgeable enough about the issues which affect your constituents to make an informed decision.
Sincerely,
Maximilian Weiss
_____
_____
_____
Monday, September 7, 2009
It appears I spoker too soon
My computer stopped running, and apparently it's a problem with the decryption process in the boot-up part of the hard drive, which means there's just nothing I can do. So I've spent the morning copying all the relevant data from that drive (via my second hard drive) and as soon as I get my poker in for the day, I will start fresh. Somewhat annoying but oh well. My data isn't lost at least.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
I don't think I'm bipolar, but this started really depressed and ended much happier.
Well three people so far have asked me why I haven't been updating my blog. Since more people than I thought (zero) read it and are interested, and more to the point, since I enjoy rambling about myself--it makes me feel better--I guess I should add another entry.
The past few months have been a struggle. The initial thrill of being back in Las Vegas has not worn off per se, but it has been replaced by a lot of frantic worry about how I'm going to survive month by month. For those who don't play poker, let me just say that 50NL (aka $0.25/$0.50 no limit, the limit I'm playing) is not the limit at which one should be trying to derive a living wage. I feel like I have to play constantly just to keep up with my very modest expenses. And the past two months, I have not been running particularly well, and I'm sure I wasn't playing my best through a portion of them either.
July was the most swingy month I've ever had, and I was only up about $300 until the last day, which was a nice 700 days, bringing me to $1000 for the month plus another $600 in rake back. August ended firmly at that same original $300 but didn't end on any 700 dollar rallies, so with rakeback, I made a whopping $800. Amazingly, that's still enough to cover most of my monthly expenses, but I did get a speeding ticket ($200) and since my last oil change my car has seemed to get about half as many miles per gallon as it did previously. On top of that, I had to spend a very big (well big for me, right now) chunk of money that I wasn't planning on.
So all in all, I'm sitting on about $4200 of my original $6K I brought down to Vegas. Now that's not the end of the world certainly, I was down to $4700 a few months ago, but managed to pull back and make my expenses and get back up, but it feels like a constant struggle. Whereas before I used to feel like I was just staying afloat, after the past few months, I now feel like I'm slowly sinking.
I was officially "depressed" for a while when I was in Seattle, and in the past few weeks, I've felt myself trying to slip back into that state, where I just don't do anything, don't WANT to do anything, and just let the shit hit the fan. For some reason, I assume it's because I'm down in Vegas and at least attempting to make it on my own, whenever that happens, after a day or two I am revitalized and do any chores I've been putting off, make sure I'm shaved (which if you know me, you know I don't like to shave very often), and I go for a drive or short walk or something--something to get out in the sunlight mainly--and am reinvigorated to give poker my best shot and keep looking up.
And that has been working for now, but I have lately been worried about slipping into it and not pulling myself back up. I also have not been going out as much over the past few months as I would have liked; I have not met any new friends, and I have rarely attended the two poker discussion groups that I very much enjoy. It's been kind of lonely lately.
Also, my friend Jon is very unhappy with his job and has gotten fewer hours, and seems fairly unhappy with his overall situation, which is understandable, and which makes me feel all the worse for not knowing how to help him. I have no money to help him with, and I don't know really how to lend any kind of emotional support other than to say that sucks, dude. Another close friend has also been going through a lot of rough shit--it seems like he's always in trouble or about to be in trouble and on the brink--and I don't know what to do for him either. So in addition to my problems, I have two of my closest friends who have it worse, which makes me feel both bad for them and mad at myself for feeling the way I do about my situation. It's just that however it may compare to their situations, for me this is the scariest situation I personally have ever been in. So I'm just constantly terrified and ashamed of feeling that way.
Oh, and I just saw that the public option has officially been taken out of all potential health care bills, meaning and any health insurance reform is -- well, literally no change at all. Nice.
Wow, I am feeling fantastic at the moment. Letting all my anxiety out is a small part of it, but the bigger part of why I'm so happy right this second (as opposed to what I was feeling last paragraph) is because in between typing these, my computer got fixed. Let me explain. I got a nice fast new computer a few months ago as a birthday present for myself, but also because my old one just wasn't cutting it--PokerTracker and my on-screen HUD, and all my anti-virus and other shit in the background, take a lot of CPU usage and I just needed a new computer. Anyway, getting back on track, in my fancy new computer is another virtual computer, running a whole other operating system. And on that virtual computer is Deep Freeze, a $40 program which creates an image of your computer at one point in time, and puts it back that way when you restart it, no exceptions. (You can turn it off, so that on the next boot it doesn't do that.) So if I'm every worried about a file, I just move it to my virtual computer and run it with impunity. Well that certainly works, but I'm a bit of a security nut and I thought, well I might as well have that Deep Freeze program on my main computer and just have it turned off, then if I have a program which requires my main operating system (Windows 7 RC1) or I just don't feel like taking the time to boot up my virtual drive (minutes, versus the 20 second start-from-scratch of Windows 7) I can just do that too. Extra options are always nice. So I open it, and it tells me, sorry I don't work on Windows 7. I of course immediately go online and look at how to hack it to work. And I find out how. I simply run it in "compatibility mode" of Windows Vista. Vista and 7 have basically the same core operating system structure, which is way different from XP.
So I do that--well, I THOUGHT I did that. Just as I was rebooting as per the instructions of Deep Freeze, I thought "hmmm, I think I ran it for compatibility with XP not Vista, gee I hope that doesn't cause any problems". So it reboots, and just as the Windows screen appears it shuts down. I hit the power button, my computer turns on, Gateway BIOS appears, Windows logo appears for a moment, then boom. Off. No loading for me!
It was at that instant I realized how much I depend on my computer. I felt lobotomized. I instantly felt faint and almost puked. My entire life is on this fucking thing. And I have no way to get at it.
Oh and did I mention the entire hard disk is encrypted?
I'm good with computers, but I'm not a professional computer repair guy or anything, and I don't have the money to have a spare computer lying around, so I have no way to get at my hard drive to get at my shit, let alone maybe attempt a repair. But waitaminute! (Yes, one word, waitaminute.) I DO have an extra computer. My old computer which I never got around to taking to a computer recycle place. It's in my closet. So last night, I jacked out the hard drive from that and stuck it in my new computer along side my current fucked-up drive, reinstalled Windows 7 on that drive, reinstalled the encryption software on this second hard drive (via my external drive which has my most important backups), decrypted my main hard drive, and looked up how to repair it online.
Who knew that a program designed to undo every single thing done to a computer would try to change a few system files? And who knew that telling it it was a different operating system than it actually was would be bad? Uhhh..... right, moving on.
So I found a nice techie website detailing how to import the registry of another hard drive onto your current registry for editing (they call registry files "hives") and I found a nice hackers website detailing how to delete Deep Freeze from somebody's system manually when it's off and the computer is mounted as a drive on your computer. So I found about 40 registry entires telling my fucked-up computer how to try to load Deep Freeze (even in safe mode, by the way... which made me all the sicker when I originally tried to boot in safe mode--the last line before the crash was "loading... DeepFrz.sys") and deleted or altered them ala the website, and went in and manually deleted the applications that were loaded as the "services" of Deep Freeze. (Services are applications that run in the background that the task manager doesn't list and which tell you computer how to communicate with various parts of itself--you probably have 70 running in the background and don't even know it.) Of course I have irreparably fucked up my system by this point, so I pop in my Windows installation disk and tell it to do repairs and whatnot. It can't because the memory is fucked. So I ask it nicely to repair my memory, then do the startup repairs.
And lo and behold I turn it back on and it boots up! To my normal startup screen! All the way! Without fail! I've restarted about 4 times now just to make sure, but I'm starting to feel good about it.
An hour ago, I started typing this blog entry from a Notepad file on my second hard drive with my "normal" hard drive mounted as a virtual drive running repairs. And at that time, I was pretty ecstatic to be able to simply get at the file structure of my computer so that I could retrieve current backups of all my stuff. That might be a few days process to wipe everything and start from scratch, but at least my data was still intact.
But now, it looks as if everything is perfect! Well my hard drive isn't encrypted at the moment, but basically, I'm back where I was a day and a half ago and I'm THRILLED to death about it.
I'm torn now. Because I really love my computer and I think technology in general is pretty awesome, but at the same time it really felt like the end of the world when my computer crashed, and it made me realize how much I rely on this stupid fucking machine. My dad once marveled at how much time he has to spend nowadays to simply keep his computer from getting FUBARed and was very pissed that the state of the world was such that he had to fuck with his computer for so much of his life just to not be left behind.
I'm fairly intuitive with computers, and I know how to take preventative measures to prevent my stuff from getting fucked up to begin with, but after one little mistake of selecting "XP-SP3" instead of "Vista" for compatibility mode, I can certainly understand his point. And I'm much more aware of the cons of being so technology oriented. (e.g. Why go to a bar and hang out with friends IRL --in real life-- when you can just read Jimmy's Facebook comment about a bar he was at and IM him about it right now, and chat on Skype with 3 other people, all in different countries, who went to a bar recently...)
So the lessons I've learned recently are:
--I need to ghost my drive; I'm just too invested in my computer to ever have anything happen to it ever.
--I need to get out more and stop being so invested in my computer.
Additionally, I need to try to get back on track with all the good stuff I mention in ever blog but never do--exercising, getting out more, making new friends, eating right, having a more balanced life, et cetera. Whether or not I fail down here, doing those things won't hurt, and they'll help pick me up from my bouts of depression, and make it more likely I'll succeed by being a happier more balanced person who doesn't play poker so fucking depressed!
I'm obviously in one of my rejuvenating happy moods at the moment with my computer being fixed and all, and I hope it keeps up. The past week has been just fucking miserable and my computer crash was kind of the straw that broke the camel's back. I was in bed about to cry, mourning in my failure down here. But fuck that. That's gone. All I have to do is make some decent money this money, and you know what I'm going to go hiking at Red Rock too. It's a pretty hike damnit.
40 buy-ins. That's what, 80K hands if I'm running slightly bad for the month. I can do that. No problem. Easy.
Also, everybody should get their news from The Young Turks. Excellent show.
http://www.youtube.com/user/TheYoungTurks
The past few months have been a struggle. The initial thrill of being back in Las Vegas has not worn off per se, but it has been replaced by a lot of frantic worry about how I'm going to survive month by month. For those who don't play poker, let me just say that 50NL (aka $0.25/$0.50 no limit, the limit I'm playing) is not the limit at which one should be trying to derive a living wage. I feel like I have to play constantly just to keep up with my very modest expenses. And the past two months, I have not been running particularly well, and I'm sure I wasn't playing my best through a portion of them either.
July was the most swingy month I've ever had, and I was only up about $300 until the last day, which was a nice 700 days, bringing me to $1000 for the month plus another $600 in rake back. August ended firmly at that same original $300 but didn't end on any 700 dollar rallies, so with rakeback, I made a whopping $800. Amazingly, that's still enough to cover most of my monthly expenses, but I did get a speeding ticket ($200) and since my last oil change my car has seemed to get about half as many miles per gallon as it did previously. On top of that, I had to spend a very big (well big for me, right now) chunk of money that I wasn't planning on.
So all in all, I'm sitting on about $4200 of my original $6K I brought down to Vegas. Now that's not the end of the world certainly, I was down to $4700 a few months ago, but managed to pull back and make my expenses and get back up, but it feels like a constant struggle. Whereas before I used to feel like I was just staying afloat, after the past few months, I now feel like I'm slowly sinking.
I was officially "depressed" for a while when I was in Seattle, and in the past few weeks, I've felt myself trying to slip back into that state, where I just don't do anything, don't WANT to do anything, and just let the shit hit the fan. For some reason, I assume it's because I'm down in Vegas and at least attempting to make it on my own, whenever that happens, after a day or two I am revitalized and do any chores I've been putting off, make sure I'm shaved (which if you know me, you know I don't like to shave very often), and I go for a drive or short walk or something--something to get out in the sunlight mainly--and am reinvigorated to give poker my best shot and keep looking up.
And that has been working for now, but I have lately been worried about slipping into it and not pulling myself back up. I also have not been going out as much over the past few months as I would have liked; I have not met any new friends, and I have rarely attended the two poker discussion groups that I very much enjoy. It's been kind of lonely lately.
Also, my friend Jon is very unhappy with his job and has gotten fewer hours, and seems fairly unhappy with his overall situation, which is understandable, and which makes me feel all the worse for not knowing how to help him. I have no money to help him with, and I don't know really how to lend any kind of emotional support other than to say that sucks, dude. Another close friend has also been going through a lot of rough shit--it seems like he's always in trouble or about to be in trouble and on the brink--and I don't know what to do for him either. So in addition to my problems, I have two of my closest friends who have it worse, which makes me feel both bad for them and mad at myself for feeling the way I do about my situation. It's just that however it may compare to their situations, for me this is the scariest situation I personally have ever been in. So I'm just constantly terrified and ashamed of feeling that way.
Oh, and I just saw that the public option has officially been taken out of all potential health care bills, meaning and any health insurance reform is -- well, literally no change at all. Nice.
Wow, I am feeling fantastic at the moment. Letting all my anxiety out is a small part of it, but the bigger part of why I'm so happy right this second (as opposed to what I was feeling last paragraph) is because in between typing these, my computer got fixed. Let me explain. I got a nice fast new computer a few months ago as a birthday present for myself, but also because my old one just wasn't cutting it--PokerTracker and my on-screen HUD, and all my anti-virus and other shit in the background, take a lot of CPU usage and I just needed a new computer. Anyway, getting back on track, in my fancy new computer is another virtual computer, running a whole other operating system. And on that virtual computer is Deep Freeze, a $40 program which creates an image of your computer at one point in time, and puts it back that way when you restart it, no exceptions. (You can turn it off, so that on the next boot it doesn't do that.) So if I'm every worried about a file, I just move it to my virtual computer and run it with impunity. Well that certainly works, but I'm a bit of a security nut and I thought, well I might as well have that Deep Freeze program on my main computer and just have it turned off, then if I have a program which requires my main operating system (Windows 7 RC1) or I just don't feel like taking the time to boot up my virtual drive (minutes, versus the 20 second start-from-scratch of Windows 7) I can just do that too. Extra options are always nice. So I open it, and it tells me, sorry I don't work on Windows 7. I of course immediately go online and look at how to hack it to work. And I find out how. I simply run it in "compatibility mode" of Windows Vista. Vista and 7 have basically the same core operating system structure, which is way different from XP.
So I do that--well, I THOUGHT I did that. Just as I was rebooting as per the instructions of Deep Freeze, I thought "hmmm, I think I ran it for compatibility with XP not Vista, gee I hope that doesn't cause any problems". So it reboots, and just as the Windows screen appears it shuts down. I hit the power button, my computer turns on, Gateway BIOS appears, Windows logo appears for a moment, then boom. Off. No loading for me!
It was at that instant I realized how much I depend on my computer. I felt lobotomized. I instantly felt faint and almost puked. My entire life is on this fucking thing. And I have no way to get at it.
Oh and did I mention the entire hard disk is encrypted?
I'm good with computers, but I'm not a professional computer repair guy or anything, and I don't have the money to have a spare computer lying around, so I have no way to get at my hard drive to get at my shit, let alone maybe attempt a repair. But waitaminute! (Yes, one word, waitaminute.) I DO have an extra computer. My old computer which I never got around to taking to a computer recycle place. It's in my closet. So last night, I jacked out the hard drive from that and stuck it in my new computer along side my current fucked-up drive, reinstalled Windows 7 on that drive, reinstalled the encryption software on this second hard drive (via my external drive which has my most important backups), decrypted my main hard drive, and looked up how to repair it online.
Who knew that a program designed to undo every single thing done to a computer would try to change a few system files? And who knew that telling it it was a different operating system than it actually was would be bad? Uhhh..... right, moving on.
So I found a nice techie website detailing how to import the registry of another hard drive onto your current registry for editing (they call registry files "hives") and I found a nice hackers website detailing how to delete Deep Freeze from somebody's system manually when it's off and the computer is mounted as a drive on your computer. So I found about 40 registry entires telling my fucked-up computer how to try to load Deep Freeze (even in safe mode, by the way... which made me all the sicker when I originally tried to boot in safe mode--the last line before the crash was "loading... DeepFrz.sys") and deleted or altered them ala the website, and went in and manually deleted the applications that were loaded as the "services" of Deep Freeze. (Services are applications that run in the background that the task manager doesn't list and which tell you computer how to communicate with various parts of itself--you probably have 70 running in the background and don't even know it.) Of course I have irreparably fucked up my system by this point, so I pop in my Windows installation disk and tell it to do repairs and whatnot. It can't because the memory is fucked. So I ask it nicely to repair my memory, then do the startup repairs.
And lo and behold I turn it back on and it boots up! To my normal startup screen! All the way! Without fail! I've restarted about 4 times now just to make sure, but I'm starting to feel good about it.
An hour ago, I started typing this blog entry from a Notepad file on my second hard drive with my "normal" hard drive mounted as a virtual drive running repairs. And at that time, I was pretty ecstatic to be able to simply get at the file structure of my computer so that I could retrieve current backups of all my stuff. That might be a few days process to wipe everything and start from scratch, but at least my data was still intact.
But now, it looks as if everything is perfect! Well my hard drive isn't encrypted at the moment, but basically, I'm back where I was a day and a half ago and I'm THRILLED to death about it.
I'm torn now. Because I really love my computer and I think technology in general is pretty awesome, but at the same time it really felt like the end of the world when my computer crashed, and it made me realize how much I rely on this stupid fucking machine. My dad once marveled at how much time he has to spend nowadays to simply keep his computer from getting FUBARed and was very pissed that the state of the world was such that he had to fuck with his computer for so much of his life just to not be left behind.
I'm fairly intuitive with computers, and I know how to take preventative measures to prevent my stuff from getting fucked up to begin with, but after one little mistake of selecting "XP-SP3" instead of "Vista" for compatibility mode, I can certainly understand his point. And I'm much more aware of the cons of being so technology oriented. (e.g. Why go to a bar and hang out with friends IRL --in real life-- when you can just read Jimmy's Facebook comment about a bar he was at and IM him about it right now, and chat on Skype with 3 other people, all in different countries, who went to a bar recently...)
So the lessons I've learned recently are:
--I need to ghost my drive; I'm just too invested in my computer to ever have anything happen to it ever.
--I need to get out more and stop being so invested in my computer.
Additionally, I need to try to get back on track with all the good stuff I mention in ever blog but never do--exercising, getting out more, making new friends, eating right, having a more balanced life, et cetera. Whether or not I fail down here, doing those things won't hurt, and they'll help pick me up from my bouts of depression, and make it more likely I'll succeed by being a happier more balanced person who doesn't play poker so fucking depressed!
I'm obviously in one of my rejuvenating happy moods at the moment with my computer being fixed and all, and I hope it keeps up. The past week has been just fucking miserable and my computer crash was kind of the straw that broke the camel's back. I was in bed about to cry, mourning in my failure down here. But fuck that. That's gone. All I have to do is make some decent money this money, and you know what I'm going to go hiking at Red Rock too. It's a pretty hike damnit.
40 buy-ins. That's what, 80K hands if I'm running slightly bad for the month. I can do that. No problem. Easy.
Also, everybody should get their news from The Young Turks. Excellent show.
http://www.youtube.com/user/TheYoungTurks
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
In Vegas for a month now
I've moved back to Las Vegas, and am living in a room of a house me and some friends are renting. I was very thrilled at the $300 a month price for us, although I was even more jealous of a kid I met at a casino who is renting one room of a 2 bedroom 2 bath condo with a friend of his and their total rent is $500, which means that his cost is $250 a month; cheaper than mine! (I got his contact info and told him to call me if he ever needed a new roommate...) At least the sour economy doesn't hurt kids like us (who would be broke anyway) nearly as much as many other people who are losing jobs they've had for a while and count on.
I've been playing a lot of cards, but since I have so little starting capital, I can't afford to play very high stakes (1/2 NL live, 4-8 tables of 50NL online), so I've been playing as often as I can, both online and in casinos, getting a ton of rakeback online, and using my live casino food comps for double cheeseburgers I can stick in my fridge! I also live right next to a Walmart Supercenter, which is fantastic because I can get cheap groceries and prescription drugs (Walmart sells generic prescriptions for $5 now...)
I've been running a bit poor (or maybe I've been playing worse than my best--it's often hard to tell...) but since my expenses are so low, I've been able to keep up. But that's a problem, because I am trying to do much better than my expenses, so that within a few months, I can start taking shots at 2/5 live and 100NL and 200NL online, where I can actually make real money, as opposed to scraping-by money. After all, the lease on this house is only a year, and I'm not going to be able to live this cheaply forever!
I've also been eating a little healthier and exercising every now and then, but that's just not good enough. I undo any good I do on those days with all the crap I eat and laziness on the other days. And I also know that getting in a set routine of healthy living will not only help me physically, it will make me happier and help me focus at cards better, so it is something I really should be doing every day. It's very important to me, and I have no excuse!
I also learned an interesting fact about happiness--happiness is nurtured far better when people are constrained. That is, when you are in a specific situation, whether or not you originally liked it, if you cannot change it or do anything different, you are much more likely to learn to accept it and manufacture happiness about it. If you have choices, you are more likely to be unhappy because you will always be wondering about the other choices you did not pick.
The practical application of this knowledge is for me to get in a set schedule of exercising, and always eating healthy, and playing poker on a specific schedule. Setting up a routine for everything in my life will not only allow me to get them done, it will take away the daily and hourly CHOICE of whether or not to do those things. I won't have to feel bad when I am not exercising or playing cards, because I know that I have a good schedule that I am sticking to, whereas at the moment, I always feel guilty when I am not being healthy or trying to make money.
That's what's happening right now, I'm sure I'll have more updates in the future...
I've been playing a lot of cards, but since I have so little starting capital, I can't afford to play very high stakes (1/2 NL live, 4-8 tables of 50NL online), so I've been playing as often as I can, both online and in casinos, getting a ton of rakeback online, and using my live casino food comps for double cheeseburgers I can stick in my fridge! I also live right next to a Walmart Supercenter, which is fantastic because I can get cheap groceries and prescription drugs (Walmart sells generic prescriptions for $5 now...)
I've been running a bit poor (or maybe I've been playing worse than my best--it's often hard to tell...) but since my expenses are so low, I've been able to keep up. But that's a problem, because I am trying to do much better than my expenses, so that within a few months, I can start taking shots at 2/5 live and 100NL and 200NL online, where I can actually make real money, as opposed to scraping-by money. After all, the lease on this house is only a year, and I'm not going to be able to live this cheaply forever!
I've also been eating a little healthier and exercising every now and then, but that's just not good enough. I undo any good I do on those days with all the crap I eat and laziness on the other days. And I also know that getting in a set routine of healthy living will not only help me physically, it will make me happier and help me focus at cards better, so it is something I really should be doing every day. It's very important to me, and I have no excuse!
I also learned an interesting fact about happiness--happiness is nurtured far better when people are constrained. That is, when you are in a specific situation, whether or not you originally liked it, if you cannot change it or do anything different, you are much more likely to learn to accept it and manufacture happiness about it. If you have choices, you are more likely to be unhappy because you will always be wondering about the other choices you did not pick.
The practical application of this knowledge is for me to get in a set schedule of exercising, and always eating healthy, and playing poker on a specific schedule. Setting up a routine for everything in my life will not only allow me to get them done, it will take away the daily and hourly CHOICE of whether or not to do those things. I won't have to feel bad when I am not exercising or playing cards, because I know that I have a good schedule that I am sticking to, whereas at the moment, I always feel guilty when I am not being healthy or trying to make money.
That's what's happening right now, I'm sure I'll have more updates in the future...
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Friday, January 9, 2009
playing a lot
Been playing a lot since the new year. Going to more computer classes, and reading my dad and step mom's blog about their trip through New Zealand. It's a beautiful place, and the continue to post pictures they take while they're there, so I know that the pictures and fake--that's actually what they see. It's quite amazing. Their blog:
http://nznomads.blogspot.com/
I've been playing a lot and working with my coach on not fucking up so much. It aptly put it "Your biggest problem is you don't want to ever be out-played, God forbid somebody outplay you!" which I didn't realize and has been making me make some awful call downs. So while I've been playing, I've just buckled down, played nitty, and increased my blue line at the expense of my red line. But you know what, if a negative red line makes me over 5ptbb and $600 a week at 50PL I'll learn to live with it! (As you can see my few forays into 50NL haven't gone nearly as well!) I also started 16-tabling (the most Full Tilt allows) without a hud just to kind of see what happens, and so far it's been good. I'm not sure if I'll keep doing it, especially since I can now comfortably 8-table and give my full attention to each table, hud and all. But if I'm scrambling to make Iron Man points 40 minutes before the end of the day, I at least have an option!
-Max
.
http://nznomads.blogspot.com/
I've been playing a lot and working with my coach on not fucking up so much. It aptly put it "Your biggest problem is you don't want to ever be out-played, God forbid somebody outplay you!" which I didn't realize and has been making me make some awful call downs. So while I've been playing, I've just buckled down, played nitty, and increased my blue line at the expense of my red line. But you know what, if a negative red line makes me over 5ptbb and $600 a week at 50PL I'll learn to live with it! (As you can see my few forays into 50NL haven't gone nearly as well!) I also started 16-tabling (the most Full Tilt allows) without a hud just to kind of see what happens, and so far it's been good. I'm not sure if I'll keep doing it, especially since I can now comfortably 8-table and give my full attention to each table, hud and all. But if I'm scrambling to make Iron Man points 40 minutes before the end of the day, I at least have an option!
-Max
.
Thursday, January 1, 2009
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