Muttroxia

Once in a while, Mrs. Muttrox and I get ourselves a cheap meal by serving as Mystery Guests. We dine anonymously, answer questions about the meal, and get reimbursed most of the cost. The price is right, and it’s fun. We haven’t done it for a long time, because the surveys are such a pain. Last week we did it for the first time in three years. I whipped through the survey in ten minutes. I thought I had remembered everything that happened, I was ready for anything. Except these.

85. If you stepped away from the table at any point in your dining experience, when you returned, was your napkin neatly folded in front of you?

89. If you paid with a credit card, did the server say your name upon returning your card to you?

Really? Uh… I’m going to pass. One made up answer, coming up.

Some good news and bad news.

Good: I went in determined to play position. I did. When I had position, I used it to bully people into folding. When I was out of position, I didn’t go in with marginal hands. I bet out of position just enough to keep people honest. I showed good discipline.

Bad: Two fatal misreads. The first one was unremarkable. I thought I had someone’s body language figured out and I was wrong. In the second one, I had around 2,300, big blind is 200. I get K-K. I bet 500, I get two callers. The flop is A-x-x. Any ace kills me, otherwise I win. Neither of the two players bet. Neither of them are players who slowplay. I push in 800. One folds, one calls. The turn is another garbage card. This time the other player puts me all in. I don’t think he just got a set or anything like that, there are no straight or flushes out there. He either has the ace or he doesn’t. We have eight players, the odds are good that another ace got dealt. But why no betting? Is he scared that I also have an ace with a higher kicker? If so, then why put me all in? Did he get a second pair with that garbage card? You can see where this is going. I can’t get away from those beautiful kings. I finally call, he has the ace and takes most of my money.

My final stand: I somehow struggle back from the edge of ruin to a fair-sized stack. I get dealt Qc-10c in the big blind. I check the option, three players are in. The flop is Kc-Jd-5c. Both players go all in. At this point, I am definitely far far behind, but folding is the wrong play. I’m getting 2-1 on my money, not even including all the money in the pot so far. I have four to a straight and four to a flush (any Ace, nine, or club.) That’s a lot of outs. And if any of those come up I’ve almost certainly won. I suspect (correctly) that both my opponents have a King or Jack pairing the board. I call. I don’t get my outs and the pair of Jacks take the pot. I can’t complain about that hand, it was still the right play.

Classic poker outing. Many good plays, but two bad reads threw it all away.

Tonight: -$40
Total: -$46

I haven’t done so good with my resolution to read 10 Pulitzer prize winning books this year. With the year 30% over I’ve read two.

• The Shipping News (E. Annie Proulx): I just finished this a couple hours ago. It was good, but not even great. I don’t understand how it won the prize. At first it seemed like a book where everything conceivable goes wrong for the protagonist. That is a particularly loathsome form of narrative. A Man in Full and The Corrections stand out as books to avoid. Fifty pages in, The Shipping News was going down that path. Fortunately, it turned back and made itself into a nice little story. ‘Story’ is an overstatement, since nothing happens of interest. It’s a word portrait of Newfoundland. It could have been half the length or three times as long and it wouldn’t have mattered, since there were no meaningful events to elide or reveal. My advice is to read Elizabeth Gilbert’s Stern Men. It is the same style of story told much better. And it’s funny to boot.
• The Good War: An Oral History of World War Two (Studs Terkel): What a book! I was hooked by the third paragraph. World War Two is a broad topic and Terkel manages to cover most of it. The entire book is recollections by people who were part of the War. Mostly American soldiers, but it also had Germans, Russians, Japanese, scientists, politicians, ordinary citizens. There is no editorial content, just the stories by those who were there. No matter how cynical you are, you can’t walk away from this book without believing they really were “The Greatest Generation”. Both in what they did, and how they did it. How would you have acted in the same circumstances? I can’t recommend this book enough. It will reveal parts of history you never knew about, parts of humanity, and parts of yourself.

  By the way, the correct answer to my previous question about this book (have there been any other “Good War”s?) was: Afghanistan. Afghanistan. We were clearly attacked first and the Taliban were harboring and supporting an international threat in l-Queda. The Taliban were clearly illegitimate and clearly evil, and we got rid of them. We haven’t been so hot on the follow-through but give us credit for the first part. Afghanistan.

Muttroxia gives a stamp of approval to Cabin Pressure: One Man’s Desperate Attempt to Recapture his Youth as a Camp Counselor. It’s a bit like Bill Bryson goes to camp. The odds are you know the author, Josh Wolk. Odds are good you went to high school with him. Odds are good you know he was funny then, and he’s funnier now. It’s the kind of book you read with a small grin on your face that every so often erupts into an actual guffaw. Turns out it’s funny. Funny, that is.

It is very strange to read something semi-autobiographical about someone you knew growing up. I wasn’t good friends with Josh, but we were on each others lists of good people. At least I hope I was on his list. And I also went to camp right on that lake. In fact, my brother is getting married there in two months.

Josh is the second author from my high school class with a recently published novel, Austin Grossman being the first. Oddly, they lived across the street from each other.

The story has legs. The movie version has already been optioned. Josh also has a blog, and it is also funny. But he updates it even less than I do. I win!

Allstate insurance has a full page ad on the back of the business section of today’s New York Times. It has a cartoon of a woman in a business suit chained to a rock. Here’s the first two paragraphs of text:

The number of women over 65 who are still working has increased by more than a third in the past ten years. Why are retirement-age women increasingly chained to their jobs?

Well, women live longer than men, so their retirement savings have to stretch father. Women earn less – 77 cents for every dollar a man earns – so they save less. And they work fewer years – the average woman spends 11 years out of the workforce caring for children or elderly parents.

1. What happened to the number of men over 65 still working? Suppose that has risen by 50%?
2. Who says they are chained to their jobs? Maybe they are living a full rewarding life working part-time.
3. Women used to make a lot less than 77 cents on the dollar. I seem to remember 40 or 50 cents. Seems like they’re doing better, not worse?
4. Nothing in the second paragraph relates to the first. The first is about change over the last ten years. Women live longer, but has that changed in the last ten years? Do they take more time out of the workforce than they used to? Do they make more than they used to?

So the evidence doesn’t relate to the summary, and then the summary is given a pejorative spin that’s unsupported.

Oh, by the way, the main fact? Not so much.

The number of women over 65 who are still working has increased 38 percent since 1980

In 28 years it’s gone up 38%, but Allstate says it’s gone up over a third in the last ten years? Fishy.

Always clear your download history.

Japanese barcodes. I can’t wait until these come to America.

Beach policeman, circa 1922.

Learn to play Go Interactively (I downloaded Igowin to teach myself.)

A blog of Responses to the stupid questions you see in celebrity magazines.

One of the weirder and sadder stories I’ve read in a while.

South Park characters drawn realistically

Let your next of kin know, because you won’t be able to stop watching this. (More variants here)

Pattern identification. I was told if you can get 4 per minute, you’re a genius. I agree. I am not a genius. Addendum: I started on Level 12, I’m not as bad I thought.

The entire Godfather script, drawn as a picture.

Improv Everywhere does a sweet one.

Logic puzzle comic strip: The dragon paradox

The 50 greatest comedy sketches of all time. 66 years later, Who’s on First is still as brilliant as ever.

One of the nice things about Disney World is the name tags. They have the first name, and where they are from. We had a wonderful conversation with a husband-wife team from a town just down the road from where I grew up. It’s nice to see where people are from. In Las Vegas some casinos have their employees do the same thing. It can trigger a conversation and give you a nice instant connection with someone. This is a nice idea for those tourist destinations where both the staff and the customers are from all over.

California Pizza Kitchen just outside Atlanta’s perimeter highway? C’mon. I didn’t need to be informed that Brenda was from Guadalajara. It just doesn’t work. And you know what? 70% of your staff is from Central America. Instead of connecting me to the employees, it reminds me of class differences. Kind of a downer.

And you are California Pizza Kitchen! You are not “CPK”. I will not “Locate a CPK in my area”, or “register with CPK”. Get over yourself.

This is an actual question from a Harris Interactive poll:

78 million baby boomers, now ages 44 to 62, are about to retire and will begin collecting Social Security and Medicare retirement entitlement benefits, putting tremendous strain on the resources available to pay benefits to future generations.

How do you feel about the future of our country’s Social Security program?

Please select all that apply.

– Fearful
– Optimistic
– Frustrated
– Secure
– None of these

For the definition of Social Security, please click here.
For the definition of Medicare, please click here.

Social Security and Medicare are different programs. Both are growing issues for the general budget, but Medicare’s impact is roughly five times larger. To the degree their finances can be independently judged, Social Security is very well-financed, Medicare is not at all. Whether through ignorance or malice, it is common to see factual statements about both of them lumped together as “entitlement spending”, and then conclusions drawn about only Social Security.

In this question, the setup includes Social Security and Medicare and the help links include Social Security and Medicare. But the actual question is only about Social Security. This is dishonest.

I am not looking forward to seeing how this research is used.

The building I work in has doors with electronic locks, you must flick your badge on a reader to get in. Today, one of the doors was broken and would not open at all from the outside. I went around to another door. After my meeting, I tried to go out the first door and found you couldn’t open it from the inside either. I turned to the worker nearest the door.

Me: Hey, is –
Him: I know, it’s broken, it’s been broken all day. We called Facilities already.
Me: OK. Uh, would you like me to –
Him: We had a sign up. Facilities made me take it down.
Me: Wow, you’re good at this! Why did they make you take it down?
Him: They were worried that it revealed a hole in our security to potential robbers.
Me: [dumbfounded] You mean the security problem that the door won’t open at all?
Him: You got it.
Me: What would happen if a robber found that out? Their master plan of stealing a badge to get in this door would fail?
Him: [shrugging] Tell me about it.

(I didn’t see it in the theatres. I caught the last half on TV last night.)

Obi Wan and Darth Vader fight to the death, jumping around the molten mine planet of something-or-other. Darth leaps up, Obi Wan chops off his legs with the light saber. Instead of killing him (everyone else dies when you touch them with a light saber), it slices off his legs. Vader pitifully tries to squirm his way up the hill which is slowly sinking into the molten steel below. Obi Wan pontificates. Vader doesn’t make it. His legs slip into the inferno, and he catches on fire. What does Obi Wan do? Pontificates some more, and then walks away, leaving Vader to a long, horrible demise.

Jedi are the good guys, right?

Me: Have I put you in timeout at all today?
5-year old: No.
Me: Have I put your brother in timeout today?
5-year old: No.
Me: Right. It’s been a good day, hasn’t it? I like days where I don’t get mad at you and you don’t get mad at me.
5-year old, after thinking it over: I don’t care if I get mad at you.

That hurt.

I dominated the first hour. Our starting stacks are $2500 and I had well over $5000 within 30 minutes. Some good hands, and some great bluffs. I didnt play much until we got down to 4 players. I now had about $9000, average stack was $6000. One player had 300. I was counting on at least 3rd place, which would have good for $36, and probably higher than that.

And it all slipped away. I can’t point to any hand I misplayed. Yes, a couple bluffs didn’t play out but they were still good bluffs. Yes, there were a couple bad beats, but nothing outrageous. It simply dripped away. The last hands were unremarkable. Blecchh.

Tonight: -$20
Total since 3/15/08: -$6