Author: Muttrox

This article from 2005 is probably still relevant:

STATE and local officials may be hanging their heads about the announcement that London, and not New York City, will be playing host to the 2012 Summer Olympics, but New Yorkers should be breathing a sigh of relief that the Games are now somebody else’s worry

I think there are good reasons to host if you are a second tier city, and can show the world that you are really a first tier city. It will drive long-term growth to your area. It’s brand building. Atlanta’s boom coincides with the Olympics, this is not a coincidence.

On the other hand, Montreal is still paying off the debt from hosting in the 1970s. And Chicago doesn’t need to show the world it’s a great place, everyone knows that Chicago is a great place. What do they get out of it? Nothing.

(Thanks to LilBro for the link.)

The “Barack” in Barack Obama means “blessed”. So does my Hebrew name (“Baruch”).

Just sayin’.

The Pats have just had two straight wins over quality opponents. They are at 3-1 already. Not too shabby.

Brady is looking good. The first game he looked bad, the second game he looked mediocre, now he looks good. Not fantastic, but good. Balls are starting to hit receivers in stride again, Wes Welker is bailing him out again – there’s a lot of reason to think we’re heading nowhere but up.

I am not too impressed by our secondary. For all the effort put into it, it looks about the same as always.

Drive-thru villainy. Odd that his name is so close to Robert Mugabe.

Inmate escapes by dressing as lawyer

The miracle of conception. Truly incredible.

The Kanye meme wins again

The streaker scores

Very cool CSI opening

100 Greatest Hits of YouTube

The vacation stress graph

The money you could be saving

That’s a real thinker.

I don’t think she knows what that word means

10 sports top-10 lists

What flavor could this be?

I think the message is, don’t wear your hat backwards

“Thank you for calling Air Health Care, the airline that works like the health care system…”

More about that marshmallow test from the last links, on why it really is an important experiment.

“The good old days”: Life at a startup, Mozilla

Mature thoughts on getting old

A Truly Shocking Guantanamo Story: Judge Confirms That an Innocent Man Was Tortured to Make False Confessions

We all thought that last weeks game took too long, so we eliminated three of the blinds levels. This moved things along pretty quick. It was the kind of night I like. I didn’t get any lucky draws, and I didn’t get any bad beats. That’s not to say there was no luck, but that every time there was a big hand, it was decided by what the players had before the money was committed. There was only one case where I made the right decision but got screwed by the cards, or made the wrong decision and got bailed out.

Notable hands:

• I have K-2 as the dealer, everyone has folded. I raise to 300, hoping to steal the blinds. The small blind folds, but the big blind calls me. The flop is A-10-10. He checks. I throw in another 400, which he calls. The turn is a blank, we both check. Now that I’ve shown weakness, he bets on the river.
  I don’t think he has an ace. I don’t think he has a 10. This guy knows me, and knows I like to pick up cheap blinds from late position. I think he’s sick of me and he’s pushing back. And the bet of 400 is weird. When he has a winning hand he is never shy about putting in a big bet. 400 into a 1500 pot? I have to call. He turns over K-8. Neither of our kickers play and we chop the pot. I think both of us played that hand well.
• I have K-K. I go over the top on a big raise pre-flop, I’m all in. He calls with A-10. He gets the Ace. Garghdarnit! That was my bad beat of the night. (He had a lot less than me, so I wasn’t knocked out.)
• At 150-300 (and 25 antes) I have A-K. There are two callers before me, I raise it to 1,000. Surprisingly I get four callers. I thought my raises demanded a little more respect. The flop is A-x-x. Check, check, I go all in. Why not? The pot has ~5,000 in it, I’ve only got a few thousand more, it’s an easy decision. Yet, they all think about it, they all speculate what I have, he didn’t pick up the Aces did he, like I am some kind of crazy guy. The last person wanted to pay me to see my cards (I told him he could pay me by calling). They all folded, and I was back to average stack again.
• Down to 7 players. At 200-400 (50 ante), I have A-6 in medium position. I raise it 1,300 on a semi-bluff. I am raised to all-in. Gosh darn it. I know this guy, and he picks up a lot of pots going over the top. I know he is bluffing many times. Nyargh, I can’t call, he got me. I fold.
• The very next hand, I have A-6 of clubs. I put in the same 1,300. And the same guy goes in, but this time he just calls me. The flop is three clubs, I have the nut flush. Naturally I check. He does too. I check the turn. Just as I’d hoped, he makes a stab and bets 3,100. I think about it and go all in, only another 2700. But my acting is terrible. I knew it as soon as I did it, it was so far over the top with the “Why am I doing this!? I don’t want to do this!” body language that he folded instantly. Also, he probably had bupkis, that may have been a factor also. I think I could have gotten some more money out of him though, I didn’t get full value for my hand.
• Down to five players. I have 10-9 suited – what the heck, I limp in. The flop is 10-10-x. I check. The short stack moves all in and I call him. His pocket 5s don’t hold up against my set. In fact, another 10 comes up on the river, so I should say – his full house 10s over 5s don’t hold up against my four of a kind!
• Down to the final three. I get K-K. Play the guy like a fiddle to get him all-in, knock him out.
• I start heads up with a 4-1 advantage. The very first hand I have 10-6 and limp in. The flop is A-8-3. I check, he does also. The turn is a 7. What the hell, I throw in another 2,000. He only 6K or so, so I’m thinking even if he suspects I’m full of it he can’t call me. I’m wrong, he calls me. The turn is a 9. I am about to check when I realize I backed into a straight. Hey, how about that, I got a straight! I get him all in and knock him out. Yay!

I like nights without bad beats. It’s easier to figure out if you’re playing well or not because you can separate decisions from outcomes.

Tonight’s Total: $90

The American Gothic subjects posing with the picture.

For no good reason. I give you, man in rainbow chicken suit going over cliff on bicycle.

Dinosaurs and everything in this sand sculpture.

How to do the Moulin Rouge

“Keep fucking that chicken.”

A very inappropriate CAPTCHA for a dating site

Infinity and recursion

Needs help with Ikea furniture

Matthew McConaughey Cannot Stand Up By Himself

The world record holder for the most Guiness World Records

The world’s saddest dog

The white whale

Frustrated video dater completely loses his cool. Watch until the end.

I don’t know what this is, but I can’t turn it off

The worst cheating in sports history. “This is no run-of-the-mill piece of skulduggery… Rather, it was cheating as a potentially lethal act; as potential murder.”

The $20 millionaire

Oh Rush Limbaugh, you’ve topped yourself now. You want to bring back segregated buses!

The marshmallow test. They made it into cute montage, but it’s a very powerful test. Children who succeed (can wait a long time) do better in life in just about every way. The power to delay gratification is a enormous predictor of long-term success.

These two sides are equal

Woman threatened with $1000 fine for watching the neighbor’s children until the bus came.

We started the next “season”, which will run until around January 1st. We have updated our neighborhood’s game’s format. We are now using deeper stacks, slightly accelerating blind structure, and adding antes. We’ll also be experimenting with 7-2 bonus, cracked ace bonus, and bounties.

The night started poorly. On the third hand I had 9-10 of clubs. The flop was Q-9-6, with two clubs. I semi-bluffed a raise and was called. The turn was a low club, giving me my flush. Long story short – my ten-high flush lost to his jack-high flush and I lost half my stack.

40 minutes later I had pocket 9s. There had been one raiser. Playing short-stacked I needed to move all in. He decided to call. He had A-9, I was ahead 70%-30%. He got his Ace and I was knocked out. What are you going to do. I lost two big hands on unlucky cards. Not grossly unlucky though, just your everyday garden variety moderate bad luck. That’s poker.

I rebought. But one of our rule changes is that you can rebuy for only half the initial stack. I was short-stacked already. (There was never a question I would rebuy. I was the instigator behind bringing in antes, I was damn well going to last long enough to use them!)

Things looked a little better when I had A-A. I raised and got one caller. The flop was J-10-6. I checked, hoping he had a jack. He also checked. The flop was another 6. Now there was a pair on the board and two clubs, I couldn’t wait around. I went all-in. And I must say it was about the best acting I’ve ever done. I paused just the right amount, had my body language just right, I could not have communicated weakness better. He thought I was bluffing, I doubled up.

That was the spark I needed. I made it to the final four. Blinds were at 500-1000 with a 100 ante, the average stack was around 10K.

Under the gun, I had A-8. I should have raised, but I chose to limp. Small blind limped in. The flop was K-8-4. They both checked. I didn’t think anyone had a king, I pushed all-in. The small blind called with 6-4. The turn was a 6. I didn’t even notice he had gotten his second pair and had to be called out when I started raking the pot. Ugh.

The next hand I had K-10. The flop was A-K-x. I put in a raise. He went all-in. I had to call (it was 1600 more to a 8K pot). He did indeed have the Ace. But wait, the turn is another king, I have trips! And the river is… another ace!? His full house of Aces over Kings beat my full house of Kings over Aces. That was a fun way to go out. You couldn’t complain about that last ace since he had been ahead from the start.

Summary:

I had a lot of good starting hands, but mild bad luck in hitting hands with them.
You wouldn’t know it from this summary but I played aggressively the whole night. That was good. I stole blinds all over the place.
But I didn’t play aggressively in a few key hands at the end, and it cost me. Checking the A-8 was a big mistake.

Tonight: -$40

The downside of having Vonage is that when the internet goes down, so does the phone. Lightning hit our neighbors house, fried our system. We’re mostly back, but still have no phone service.

Poker is off this week, and I wanted to get this up before the Kanye jokes got old.

Kanye, cut it out. No really! Stop it! Okay, that’s over the line. Even Obama thinks you’re a jackass.

11 interesting musical yearbook photos

How many people are in space right now?

Make a commercial in two weeks with a zero budget. You get what you pay for.

375 days of exercise.

Obama cue cards

Dickipedia

He thinks he can do better.

The rock that made men laugh

Lehman Brothers might have been saved if Warren Buffet had been able to figure out his voice mail.

The man who invented exercise. He’s 100 years old, he discovered the link between exercise and long healthy life.

Never read Powerpoint slides aloud. Nothing is worse than a presenter back the slides out loud to the audience.

• It is patronizing. I can read. I’ve been doing it for a while. I don’t need your help.
• It shows your lack of expertise.If all you can do is read aloud it says that you literally don’t know anything that isn’t on the screen already. You might not even have written the content, you may just be a hired monkey reciting words other people wrote.
• I can read faster than you can talk. Not just me. Everyone can. You read about five times faster than you speak. By the time you’re halfway through the slide your audience has already read the whole thing and has drifted off to a better place.
• No one is listening to you. Because they’ve already read your slide.
• You remove some of the only good things about Powerpoint. Words are in different fonts, they can be animated, they are in lists, they are set off or indented, they are bolded or italicized, etc. All of this is lost when you read aloud.

What’s a better way?

Some people are naturally visual learners (I am one of these). Some people are naturally auditory learners. Some people are naturally tactile learners. In a presentation you are involving the first two. You want to make sure that people from both groups come away understanding what you said. But simply presenting the same words in the same order won’t do it. Ideally, your words and the presentation should complement each other. No one learns exclusively in one mode, they simply prefer one over the other. Everyone learns best by getting elements of all styles.

When you are speaking, you should speak around what is on the screen. Say it in a different way. Emphasize a different portion. Explain how the last slide led to this one. Show how this is leading to the next portion. Pick out the highlights. Go more in depth on certain items. Make a joke or two.

When this is done, all kinds of learners are engaged in your content. The visuals enhance the auditory and vice-versa. The visual learners get what they need but have it reinforced by what they are hearing. The auditory learners get what they need but have it anchored by what is on the screen. Each gives context and depth to the other.

All of this is ruined if you simply read aloud. So don’t do it!

I am so glad the NFL is back. I hate baseball and golf, so my summers seem long. I am forced to be with my family playing in the pool and watching them grow up… yuck!

Tonight the Patriots season begins. Hopes are high. Expectations are high. I will settle for nothing less than getting to the Super Bowl. Anything less than that is a failure.

This is a good way to start the season. Beating the snot out of the Bills on national TV is always fun.

Fantasy Football:

Once again, it looks as though I am primed to take the league by storm. I kept my top five from last year. I still I had a lot of talent that I couldn’t hold on to (you can only keep five), but I was able to convert them into draft picks, which were converted into decent players. Pre-season projection have me sitting on top of the league, but maybe not quite as dominant as last year. Here’s my team:

Name Position Team
Drew Brees QB NO
Philip Rivers QB SD
Frank Gore RB SF
Michael Turner RB ATL
Greg Jennings WR GB
Terrell Owens WR BUF
Roy Williams WR DAL
Kerry Collins QB TEN
Brady Quinn QB CLE
Darren Sproles RB SD
Tony Gonzalez TE ATL
Dustin Keller TE NYJ
Torry Holt WR JAC
Lance Moore WR NO

I have had a bad feeling about Michael Turner. I think he’ll be okay, but not as good as last year. The Falcons have a tougher schedule and teams are ready for him. Hopefully yesterday’s game will be the exception.

Week 1 is not quite yet over, but I have the high score before Philip Rivers and Terrell Owens take the field. Go me!