25 Mar 10 Why Bother?

No matter what you do, in the end, you die. No matter your accomplishments, they will disappear. No matter the fame or infamy of your name, it will fade. No matter the long lived mark on society or human kind you leave behind, you will not be around to enjoy it.

So, why bother?

I can’t answer that question with conviction of thought and emotion. I could speak about the greater good, and judgement day, but in the end, I just don’t care. I’ll be dead anyway, so why bother? Why build lasting relationships, why spend time with loved ones? Sooner or later you will be forgotten.

Did I just depress you? Try living in my head.

Tags: Death

30 Oct 08 Poker recap – Last Saturday

This is a repost from my old poker blog. I will be making these available as I don’t want to lose some of those postings. Hopefully you will enjoy these the second time around.

Well I told everyone that I would give a recap of what happened last Saturday. As I mentioned before it is a ring-game (not a tournament) with a $5 buy-in. Most people buy-in for $10 but I don’t usually feel a need to do that. In any case I felt like the old me. The old me is aggressive most of the time. The old me will push on draws and made hands. The old me was happy when he played because he felt that others were afraid of him (it might not be true that they are afraid of me but the old me though so). Recently however I have been timid. I have been off my game. Last Saturday I was back.

There was really only one hand that I hated how I acted. I was in earlier position than Turd-Head (his name has been changed to protect him from you federal marshals but he really is a turd-head so I hope the nick-name sticks). The flop is A-9-J with 2 hearts. I bet my top pair and get a call from Turd-Head. Now I know what was going through my head and I won’t share it here as Turd-Head will have to pay me for that information but at this point I start putting him on every damn hand but the one he really has. The turn is a blank and I check. Turd-Head checks behind me. The river is a 10 (no flush possibility) and I bet. Turd-Head raises me by putting all of his blue chips in. I ask him how much it is and he says $10 but it turns out it was more like $8.50. The only hand I am really afraid of here is K-Q and I just can’t seem to put him on that. I make the call and sure enough… K-Q is what he has. No doubt he is a Turd-Head but I hated the way I played that hand. I was too timid on the turn and that is the way I have been playing lately. I hate being timid I can’t swing and make knockouts if all I do is jab or block. I played that so badly all the way around.

In the end I was down $2 for the night. I was very happy with pre and post Turd-Head hands. I just really needed to pull my head out of my butt after that hand and I was able to do just that. Unfortunately another oportunity to beat his rear never surfaced before I had to go home.

Good game Turd-Head!

Tags: Hold 'em, Poker, Ring-Game, Tournament, Turd-Head

25 Oct 08 Poker Recap

This is a repost from my old poker blog. I will be making these available as I don’t want to lose some of those postings. Hopefully you will enjoy these the second time around.

This last Saturday I played in a $50 buy-in cash game. I ended up buying in for a total of $80 throughout the night but I walked out with $140 so it was “all good”. The most interesting part about the game was that most of these people play in a bi-weekly game that has a $5 or $10 buy-in so I thought there would be a large amount of “pucker factor” and tighter playing. I could not have been more wrong! The blinds were $0.25 and $0.50. Standard raises were between $2.00 and $3.50. Without exception there was always at least 4 people in to see the flop. It was a lovely game in that regard. Everyone just had to see the flop and they were willing to pay for it. I have never been happier to be in such a game.

The players were awful. A hand in particular caught my attention as an example of how bad the players were:
The button is on Player “X”. Five people limp in. Player “X” makes it $3 to go. As usual most of those that limped called the raise as well. The flop is something like 3-8-A of hearts. Everyone checks to Player “X” who bets $5 (about 1/3 of the pot another regularity at that game). He only gets one caller, Player “A”. The turn is the 10 of hearts (yes four to a flush on board) and Player “A” checks. Player “X” bets $10 (about 1/3 of the pot :rolls eyes:) and Player “A” calls. The river is the 9 of spades and Player “A” checks again. Player “X” bets out $50 and Player “A” goes into “the tank” to think it over. Finally after much pain he says “Well I call but if you have a heart you have me beat” he then flips over A-10 off-suit for 2-pair. Player “X” has an odd expression on his face that says to me he wasn’t even aware that there were 4 to a flush on board. He looks at his cards and flips over 7-9 of diamonds for a middle-pair on the river. Man how I wish I had better cards against these guys!

All-in-all it was an entertaining night. I look forward to many more to come!

Tags: Hold 'em, Poker, Ring-Game

13 Oct 08 Market Bounce

So the stock market is up today. It seems all the usual doom-and-gloom prophecies were wrong (again). If you have any money at all, sink it into the market. Just pick a stock. You would be hard pressed to find a loser. I play the motley fool CAPS over on fool.com. It is sort of like the fantasy baseball league of stocks. You pick stocks that you think are going to win or lose, and then based on your picks, your percentage “member rating” goes up or down as a result. Your percentage is based on how well you are beating the other fools. Its a great ride and lots of fun. I was at 50% last Thursday (meaning I was crappier then half and better then half the fools out there). But I made some picks on Friday that I knew would get me back to my high 80% numbers. Today I was supprised to see my member rating at 97.41%! If only I was investing with real money!

Seriuosly, get your money in now. Fools buy low and sell high, and you would be hard pressed to find a lower time.

Tags: Motley Fool, Stock Market

08 Oct 08 Various Musings

I don’t have anything specific to say… but I do have some general ideas floating around up there. I thought I would just put “pen to paper” and see if I could organize them:

• The stock market is sucking. I sooo wish I had a few thousand on me right now. I would sink it all into the market. Everything is so cheap. I bet you could throw a dart at a random stock, buy 10,000 shares and in 6 months be richer for it. In fact, I just thought of random lettering (J,K,L) and came up with a stock called iShares Morningstar Small Value (ETF) whose ticker is JKL. It is currently trading at $56.53. Lets see where it is at in six months. So on April 7th, 2009, we will come back to my bet.
• I bet John McCain is pissed that George W. Bush just cost him a second election. Recent polls have McCain lagging behind whats-his-name. I think the most common reason is that people just can’t stand the idea of another republican in the white house despite the fact that they may like McCain. I would even argue that for as much as people hate Bush, McCain is doing pretty well. But it looks like he won’t win, and he can blame good ol’ G Dub for that .
• Its October. Yeah, I know that is obvious. I bring it up because I love this time of year. The leaves are about to turn, and the air is cool and crisp. Campfires are the rage, and I’ll get to start snuggling with my love for warmth. Unfortunately it also reminds me that winter is coming. I can’t stand how in this state the wind only blows when its winter and freezing. In summer when its hot and sweltering, you can’t find a breeze to save your life.
• I need to get off my rear and get a new certification under my belt. I just completed my CCNP (Cisco Certified Networking Professional) in May, but I haven’t really studied anything since. I feel like I should get my CCDA/CCDP and maybe even the CCNA Security. I don’t know. My long term goal is the forever distant CCIE, but it just seems so insurmountable right now. It makes me think an easier certification might help and get me better pay in the mean time.

Well that is about all I can stand for now. I’ll try and keep my thoughts on track for the next one.

Tags: Certification, Cisco, George W. Bush, John McCain, Stock Market, Weather

06 Oct 08 Why my vote for John McCain is NOT a vote for John McCain

I am a very conservative both socially and fiscally. Yes, I used to be a republican when Bush came to power during his first term. No, I am not a republican anymore thanks to what Bush has done while he has been in power. Just to clear this up as well, “conservative” is NOT synonymous with “republican” any more than “liberal” is synonymous with “democrat“. I guess that makes me an independent but in this country when you say that, everyone seems to assume you are a green party member, which I am not.

Being that I am NOT a republican and I AM a conservative, I found this election very troubling. I am not going to vote for Obama as he is very liberal in my view, and I *was not* going to vote for McCain as I am an old resident of Arizona and I know his voting record and believe him to be a liberal as well (A.K.A “The Maverick”). I was actually going to write in Ron Paul for president when two curious things happened:

1. Before both candidates had chosen a running mate I was having a political discussion with a co-worker about who I was going to vote for. I was explaining that I thought Obama was a mistake and so was McCain. I told him that the only presidential nominee that I thought was telling the truth and was capable of upholding the constitution was Ron Paul. But during that conversation I did mention that McCain seemed so incredibly old and frail and that the presidency seems to unnaturally add to ones years, that depending on who his running mate was I might actually vote for him knowing (or rather hoping) that he would have a limited run in office and that his VP would become president.
2. McCain picked Palin, someone who seems to be a genuine conservative. Someone who seems to have stood up to the republican party in the past and seemed to have their head on straight. Here was someone who was vastly more conservative than Mr. McCain, and seemed to have the ability to bring some real energy back to the party that once *was* synonymous with conservative.

That was when I realized that McCain had given me just enough to vote for him. Well not for *him* but for his ticket. So congratulations Mr. McCain, you have persuaded me to put a check next to your name when I vote, but I hope it will be your running mate that wins.

Tags: Barack Obama, Conservative, John McCain, Liberal, Ron Paul, Sara Palin, The Constitution, Vote

03 Oct 08 All the Reasons why (new) Metallica Sucks

I bought a car recently. I traded in my ‘05 Kia Sorrento with $550 monthly payments and 17MPG for a much cheaper ‘08 Hyundai Accent with $400 monthly payments (after financing what was left in payments on my Kia) and 34ishMPG to save money. Yes, the average American’s financial belts are tightening… but that is a different post.

My car came with three months free XM Satellite Radio service. I have never used their service so I spent the first few days of car ownership messing around with the XM-Radio more than the car itself. I came across a channel dedicated to Metallica and it plays nothing but their music. At first I was giddy, but then I realized that a station that plays nothing but Metallica music is going to play a *wide variety* of their songs, and I hate anything new they have done. Let me explain…

I was 14 years old in 1988 when Metallica released “…And Justice for All”. Before that time I still had not “decided” the kind of music I really liked. But after listening to this band called Metallica, and hearing what they could do with some distortion and excellent drumming, I found my genre. So, being the metal-head I was I had to get everything Metallica: Kill ‘em All, Ride the Lightning, Master of Puppets, Garage Days. That mixed with my learning the guitar and discovering other legendary bands like Led Zepplin, Pink Floyd, and some marginally decent bands like Megadeth, AC/DC, etc. really made me appreciate the skill that those 4 members of Metallica really had.

Then came the beggining of the end … 1991’s release of “The Black Album”. Up until that time there was really only 1 Metallica song I didn’t really like: “The Thing That Should Not Be” (mostly because it was entirely too repetitive). But with the release of “The Black Album” I had several songs to choose from. I really tried hard to like them all, but I just found some of them hokey or just stupid lyrically if not musically. There was still plenty to like, but it was about 50/50 with this new album. That is about my normal “likeability rating” for other albums, not Metallica. What were these guys thinking? And then I started hearing every preppy in high school and the neighboring college blaring the latetest Metallica songs out of their BMWs and it hit me: My band had sold out. This wasn’t a mistake by them, this was a shift to get them mainstream.

As heartbroken as I was, I was still willing to give them another chance. And did they know ever how to disappoint. Load came out in ‘96 and I have to say it was aptly named: it was a load, a load of $%&^!. Metallica reached new lows even in the cover art:

The cover of Load was created by Andres Serrano, and was called Blood and Semen III. Serrano pressed a mixture of his own semen and bovine blood between sheets of plexiglass. [source]

In aquiring XM-Satelite Radio service I decided to give Metallica another shot. Perhaps I had been too judgmental, perhaps I just didn’t get where the band was going at the time, perhaps I had needed 10 years to clear my head and give them another shot. Perhaps I was right the first time…

Metallica has decided to replicate all the things that were detrimental in the Black Album. There it seems that James Hetfield thought he was an honest to goodness singer instead of a heavy metal “singer”. His constant attempts to carry a melody are precisely why his vocals don’t work anymore. His bizarre lyrics haven’t improved since his “Of Wolf And Man” days where yelling “Shape Shift” as a chorus was apparently acceptable. Kirk Hammet still hides behind the Wah Pedal he found during the Black Album and he hasn’t let go of that security blanket. I can hear the bassist now, which is good, but despite Cliff Burton’s writing strengths Metallica never really had strong bass riffs in their music. Lars’ drumming might be the only thing left that is worth anything, but really, who wants to listen to a drummer when you have to put up with all of the other crap Metallica does in their songs?

XM, you can blame Metallica for not being able to snag just one more member. I just might have been willing to shell out the monthly cash if Metallica were still a real heavy metal band. As it is, I guess its back to the iPod for me after my trial subscription runs out.

Tags: Heavy Metal, Metallica, Music, XM Satellite Radio

01 Oct 08 Google’s Chrome – Why do you care?

Jason Spence has written some disparaging remarks about Google’s new browser named “Chrome” recently. Now I am not a “Google fanatic” (despite the theme of my blog) or web browser expert, but I would like to counter Jason’s article because I think he missed what Google was after. Jason seems to feel that Google created their browser to compete with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and as such picked a name for their browser that was less than marketable.

But in order to understand what Google is after, you have to read what they say about their own browser.

We search, chat, email and collaborate in a browser. And in our spare time, we shop, bank, read news and keep in touch with friends — all using a browser.

On the surface, we designed a browser window that is streamlined and simple. To most people, it isn’t the browser that matters. It’s only a tool to run the important stuff — the pages, sites and applications that make up the web.

Under the hood, we were able to build the foundation of a browser that runs today’s complex web applications much better. By keeping each tab in an isolated “sandbox”, we were able to prevent one tab from crashing another and provide improved protection from rogue sites. We improved speed and responsiveness across the board. We also built a more powerful JavaScript engine, V8, to power the next generation of web applications that aren’t even possible in today’s browsers.

Now Jason was right about one thing: Google is trying to compete with Microsoft. But he missed the application they are looking to compete against. Google isn’t out to compete with Microsoft’s IE, Google is going to compte with Microsoft’s Office, Microsoft’s Instant Messaging, and Microsoft’s product line in general. Google is looking to build the browser that is capable if utilizing a web site that publish all of those product lines from the Internet instead of the desktop.

Its a briliant move *if* they can quickly follow that up with that “killer app” online. Google already has Wrightly, but they need to have more of an online presence with a more robust interface if they expect to compete in the application wars, and that is precisely why they build Chrome, to give them that edge.

So Jason, I agree that their name could have used more time in a conference room at Google headquarters before being chosen, and I agree that Google is trying to “stick it” to Microsoft, but I think its about the online application market, not the Internet browser wars.

Tags: Google, Google's Chrome, Jason Spence, Microsoft, Web Browser

28 Sep 08 I moved to a different web host

My many domain names had been hosted with HostMonster for almost two years. I had been pretty happy with their service and price, but a recent lack of up time caused me to look for a new web host. I quickly found BlueHost and signed up with them as their introductory price was hard to beat and their cPanel was exactly the same as HostMonster. Of course, after I bought the service and moved over some domains, I realized that BlueHost and HostMonster are one in the same. They are the exact same company based out of Orem, Utah.

Well, it serves me right I suppose. Switching hosting providers based on money and very little research. At least this year’s hosting will be 30% cheaper.

Tags: BlueHost, HostMonster, Web Host