Author: Muttrox

A weird night. All kinds of bad beats and weird draws. I’ve forgotten most of the hands, except this one.

Blinds are at 300-600. There are only five players left and play is fairly tight. The blind is raised to 1,600. I have A-9 in the small blind. I call. The flop is A-10-8. I feel good about my hand, a pair of aces with a good kicker. I put 2,800 into the pot. The other guy thinks about it for a while before moving all in. It’s another 4,900 to me. I have about 7,000 left.

The raiser is a tough one to figure. He used to play conservatively. Very value-based. To a large degree, if he raised, you folded. But he’s been studying poker and his game is vastly improved. I know I can’t read him well, but he has been pushing big all night. It’s obvious he’s been stealing pots a lot.

So… I got the pair of Aces. I figure he has an Ace also. What beats my 9 kicker? If his kicker is 8,10,J,Q,K then he has me beat. That’s a lot of cards to beat me. But it’s 4,900 to get roughly 13,000, those are good pot odds. But if I’m wrong I’m basically out of the tournament. And he did raise pre-flop. That’s what convinces me. If he had A-4 or A-5, it’s less likely he would have raised pre-flop. I figure him for A-J. Grudgingly, I fold. He turns over the A-7. Aaauuuggghhh!!!

I ended up playing him in heads up. I got a lot of Aces and face cards. He was disposed of quickly. I won!

I’m $110 richer. I’m also tied for first place in the league standings. I think I’ve finished in the money the last four weeks. That’s a pretty impressive run.

Why does this bother me so much? So what if the American Red Cross messes up basic English?

You had an effect on people’s lives. Not an affect.

For the sake of completeness. $20 profit at a lame Friday night game. Picked the wrong night to host, everyone was out of town.

And Then we Came to The End (Joshua Ferris):When we first starting reading this, we didn’t know what to think of it. The whole book is written in the first person plural. We wondered if they could keep it up, but they did. And we never did find out anything about the protagonist. We thought it was a conceit, and the novelty would soon wear off. It did, but the story was engaging enough to keep our interest. We became immersed in the setting and the style. We saw the book as an examination of the kinds of personal relationships that develop in the workplace, both the intimate and the ones that are impersonal. We give it a thumbs up.

Pretty Monsters (Kelly Link): From the very first page I was drawn into this book. I had read good things about it online and the good things were true. The stories all start in our world. Then the supernatural elements are introduced in way that makes you believe in it. Link has a keen eye for the characters of youth. I was impressed that the protagonists were anywhere from six to thirty and of both genders. I don’t know if Link is male or female, and can’t tell from the writing. That’s a good sign. (But I guessed female, I was right.) Although these are short stories, each one envelops you quickly and completely.

A Long Way Down (Nick Hornby): Nick Hornby writes great books and okay books. Fever Pitch was okay. Slam was okay. All the Way Down was great. Four people coincidentally bump into each other on a night rooftop. The reason they are there? It’s a popular spot to commit suicide, that’s what they’ve each come to do. Hornby takes an inherently depressing subject and makes it work. He doesn’t avoid all the sadness and depression, but manages to find connection and joy in the stories of how these four people got there, what they do after that night, and whether they change or not. His four characters are all very different people. Hornby excels at being able to draw characters from many walks of life. Despite being a book about death you’ll laugh out loud. (Semi-related: Even if you’ve seen the movie, it’s worth reading the book High Fidelity. Just different enough.)

Rough and Tumble (Mark Bavaro): Yes, by that Mark Bavaro. I took it out of the library on a lark. I’m glad I did. I certainly won’t say this measures up to The Grapes of Wrath or anything, but it’s an enjoyable read. It’s a book about an aging tight end for a Super Bowl contender and what really goes in and outside the huddle… I think the author knows what he’s talking about.

Cloud Atlas and Revolution 9… and anything else by (David Mitchell):It’s rare you find an author as engaging as this. Cloud Atlas came highly reccommended, I didn’t know the first thing about it. I hated it at first. One of those horribly stilted gentleman Brit at sea books. Well-written enough I suppose. In the middle of a page the story suddenly ended and a new one started. Obviously a printer error. The new story had nothing to do with anything. Although it was also very good, something about a reprobate musician. It ended in mid-sentence. Extremely annoying until you understand the structure of the book, then it becomes deeply engrossing. I have already Cloud Atlas on a best of list, and it’s one of the books listed in Facebook’s quiz about “bookiness”.

Douchebag name generator.

You Suck at Craigslist

Soccer Mom from hell

Poor Horses

McDonald’s latest product offering

A funny Palin supporter

The international space station, clearly seen against the Sun.

Avoid dry-cleaning bills: Donate your clothes, then buy them back on the cheap.

I doubt more than one of my readers will get this article. But what a find for the person who does, an actual math quine equation. Incredible.

Michael Lewis on Goldman Sachs bashing

Where band names came from

Fantastic hole in one

Bobbi McFerrin on the Pentatonic Scale

Silent Bob on strip clubs.

Amazing foul ball catch.

My kind of wedding procession. With bonus web analytics commentary.

Wilt Chamberlain, Andre the Giant, & Arnold Schwarzenegger (on the set of Conan)

Why you never catch the beginning of Shawshank Redemption on TV

In the early going I had Q-Q. The flop was J-x-x. I called an all-in bet. He had J-A and caught the Ace on the river. That was my bad beat for the night, I was glad to get it out of the way early.

I played well tonight. I believe I made good decisions about what hands to play and how aggressively to play them. I stole a couple of blinds. I also did a few follow-up bluffs, which are rare for me. (There’s probably a better term for that – continuation bluff? I mean that I have K-7 and raise pre-flop, the flop has nothing on it for me and I throw out even more money.) I don’t like risking that much on a naked bluff, so pulling off a couple of those was a nice change of pace for me.

On my biggest hand of the night I checked the option in big blind with K-2 suited, for 400. I checked in the dark before the flop. The flop was J-2-2. One player went all in with 2100. Another went all-in with 850. I called with my set of twos. One of them had a Jack, the other had high cards. I knocked them both out. On the next hand I knocked out another short stack player. In two hands I almost tripled my chips.

In 3-handed I had to make a couple tough folds. For example I raised with A-5 and someone went all-in. An Ace is good, but not good enough. With K-4 I decided to do one of the “continuation bluffs”. I pushed all-in on the turn, about 5000 into a pot of 7000. I was unfortunately called and knocked out. Eh, that’s how it goes.

Tonight: 3rd place for $41

I recently realized that I can go to the bathroom at work without touching anything.

• The toilet flushes without me touching it.
• The water is dispensed without me touching it.
• The soap is dispensed without me touching it.
• The paper towels are dispense without me touching anything.

I understand why it’s there. Most people seem to like it. I hate all of it. I hate waving my hands in midair and I look like an ass trying to trigger the electric eye. I feel like Gandalf’s special-needs nephew.

It’s a royal pain if you are doing anything non-standard. Trying to wash my glasses is ridiculous. Grabbing a few paper towels to clean up a spill can’t be done anymore. Maybe you want to see what your.. uh… ‘solid waste’ looks like for some reason. (Hey, guys do it sometimes.) Suppose you want to wash your forearms, you have to be a circus contortionist to trigger the water flow and slide your arms around in the bowl before the stream turns off.

That may be the best book I have ever read.

When I came back to work from vacation the printer was missing. There was a note on the wall where the printer used to be. The same message was sent to me as an email, subject “Where’s the Printer?”.

In order to save cost, time, and energy xxx received permission from xxx and his direct reports to remove three HP 3880 color LaserJet printers from xxx.

The printer’s names are:
Xxx, xxx, and xxx
The larger HP color LaserJet named xxx will be relocated from its present location to the area where printer xxx was located (near the plotter machine) for better floor coverage.

Two high speed (50 pages per minute) HP copiers have been installed on xxx – xxx & xxx. These devices incur the lowest cost per page and boost the easiest user replaceable ink cartridges (no toner dust!). Please also consider using the duplex printing mode to save paper costs.

If you have any questions regarding these printer changes please contact xxx at extension xxx.

Thank you for your cooperation!

Oh, how I love being thanked for my cooperation when I had no choice. And the message leaves me with one basic question. Where is the printer!?

A simpler note would have worked.

Where’s the printer? It’s 12 feet to the left. It’s number xxx

Why are there so many people waiting for kidney transplants? Is it ethical to pay donors (Muttroxia gives a hearty “Yes!”) for their organs?

This very readable article dives into some of the problems and solutions. One of the things I liked about it is it’s sense of moral outrage. This is a solvable problems, and every day it isn’t solved increases human misery that much more.

The ad that Microsoft should be running.

Why I won’t be going to my high school reunion. Fortunately I always got along with everyone at school, but I certainly knew people who could have written almost every word of this.

JK Rowling must register as a potential pedophile. Government gone mad.

She’s not coming back

Asia sounds a lot better now

This must be a violation of the Geneva Conventions. For shame, Home Depot!

Twilight in 4 frames

What is it with the midgets?

State of the nation in Iran (funny)

Insurance Policy

Oh, the irony burns

Biggest hick shows them up in America’s got Talent

Greatest drunk story ever told (NSFW)

Bear cub’s late reaction

Need a good comeback to “Make me a Sandwich”

Going down the stairs the cool way

Deadline

Another great Borat story. Commitment.

American Media in a nutshell

Backseat driver

Shooting clay pigeons. With a bow.