Coriolis - No Holds Barred...

We’re Screwed…

2020-11-05T15:31:00.000-08:00

It’s the 5^th of November in the year 2020. We’re still in the middle of the latest madness that this year has had in store for us – the election of the next set of morons that we are choosing to ride this nation further into the void that this two and a half century old failed experiment has become. Nothing makes sense anymore. The most overwhelming condition present in modern America is hatred – pure, unbridled hatred. They hate us and we hate them. The two co-existing worlds of the “us” and “them” are now seen as stark photo-negatives of each other. There is no overlap.

The “Blue Wave” seen as both imminent and necessary by the half of this country that still posses a conscience, once again, did not materialize. Although some progress – substantially less than what was needed – came back in the now basically forgotten 2018 mid-terms, we’re currently watching a re-run of the joke that was 2016. It is slightly different this time and might even end up with the correct outcome for the executive office although that won’t matter as the House and Senate don’t appear to be changing colors and we all know how well that worked the last time we had an actual human in the role of POTUS. We are doomed either way.

It is looking like this airing of the shitshow that was 2016 is a special edition, however. This year is a collaboration with an earlier disaster known as 2000. “The 2020 Election – watch as the disappointment of 2016 is mixed in with the pure non-democratic legal shenanigans of 2000. This’ll be the show that nobody can miss! It’s gonna fuck your life up for the foreseeable future.”

This whole mess could have been avoided. This whole mess should have been avoided. I wonder what the world would be like today if the 45^th president’s last name was “Clinton?” That almost happened – the majority of this nation’s population voted for that. What if it was “Sanders?” Could you imagine? Oh, the horrors – every citizen getting treated as a citizen by the government regardless of race, free health care, honest pay for honest work, a functional government using expert advice in decision making – I mean that’s crazy. What are we? Human beings?

I wonder where we would be if we had a former President Gore? There’s a case study to contemplate. I’m not exactly sure what today would look like in that situation although I honestly do believe this country would be in a much better place.

Granted these “what if” scenarios are nothing more than pure speculation. What we are seeing now is the “what happened” scenario and it sucks. Why are so many people – damn near half of this nation – okay with this? I’ve got a theory…

I was noticing in the various exit polls that the problem appears to be with religious, less educated, married, white conservatives. They’re showing in this current election that they’re happy with the way things are. I’m thinking that every one of those adjectives is, in a way, a limitation. If not an explicit limitation of life, a limitation on thinking the least bit progressively. Their situation in life puts them in a social class that, by definition, fears change. Any change this group wants is to go backwards in time and that’s exactly what we’re doing.

I suppose the problem here is that nobody has figured out a way to successfully convince this group that change can be good. If the last four years of seeing a clown-car full of buffoons destroying our once great nation hasn’t snapped that point home, I have no idea what could. Perhaps a civil war? It seems like that’s what these idiots are hoping for.

Oh, and by the way, I do not believe ultra-douche had COVID. It was a stunt to show the cretins that like him that he’s untouchable. Either that or his wealth-care provided him far better treatment than the normal Joe would ever get. He did get tested constantly – I’m sure catching it quickly helped … IF he even had it. Why couldn’t he have died…?

bis später,

Coriolis

Karma’s Return

2020-10-02T18:12:00.001-07:00

Everything is a lie ... everything.

This country – “The Land of the Free,” that’s been implanted in our psyche since forever (considering everybody’s personal forever is equivalent to said person’s existence; and, if you were born in the states – the “united” ones, that is – this false designation has been pounded into your head since you’ve been able to retain thoughts ... but I digress – perhaps there’ll be more on that later...) – is all bullshit. You’re not free. Never have been; never will be. There are some that are, but you aren’t one of ‘em. At best, “they” are letting you exist. We’re all slaves.

I’m sitting here at “work” writing this article. I am not a writer and am not supposed to be writing articles at work – that’s not what they (hmm? ... there’s that “they” again...) pay me for; however, due to bureaucratic circumstances and a plethora of red-tape, I’m currently unable to log-in to the company I’m currently working with’s network. That makes it impossible for me to do any actual work. Not that I have any actual work to do as the work I needed to do was completed prior to my getting locked out of the system – quite lucky for the team I’m working with although it will never be realized by those in charge ... bad work gets noticed; good work is almost always undetectable. As of now though, my fallback routine of “creating” work to do in order to pass the time is not even available. So, I have time to kill.

So, as I was saying, we are all slaves. Was reading this article in The Seattle Times reporting on how many passengers weren’t very happy about long bus rides caused by the “Seattle Squeeze” construction. I haven’t been living here that long and don’t even use public transportation (Meant to and even purchased an Orca card shortly after obtaining my apartment; however, it has never been used. My limited existence consists of being either at my apartment or at work and, since I chose to get an apartment with easy driving access to work, that’s what I do.) so I’m not exactly sure what the scale of the “Seattle Squeeze” is. This one particular paragraph, however, got me thinking...

“Now that my bus commute time has doubled, there is no way for me to spend eight hours on the clock at work, pick up my daughter in West Seattle on time, and avoid the $1/minute late fee the day care charges,” Lynne wrote in an email. She now works through lunch to leave earlier and still ends up doing some work in the evenings at home, she said.

That is so American. Most specifically, the “spend eight hours on the clock at work” sentence. The thing is that we’ve somehow decided that, in order to – I don’t know ... “justify”, perhaps? – that we should be allowed to live, we need to forfeit eight hours of five days each week pretending to be productive. Hell, lately those 40-hour work weeks are often not enough - with the current costs of housing and basic living expenses, many are forced to work multiple jobs just to pay the bills. But it’s all bullshit.

The strangest thing about it is that “they” aren’t in this trap. “They” do basically nothing. “They”, however, have arranged it so that “they” have complete control over distribution of resources to us – the slaves. Have you ever realized that the jobs that actually require somebody to be actively working for eight hours a day are the ones that “they” pay the least for? The “professionals” working the high-pay jobs are working far less than those grinding through minimum-wage jobs day in and day out. I know this – I am a professional. I’m also currently writing this article while on the clock. This, however, is not my job.

Okay, so everything above was written a bit over a year ago. Never bothered completing nor posting this rambling as I do realize that nobody reads my blog anymore. I do, however, find it interesting that the point I was trying to get to last year has basically been proven without any doubt this year – the year that has become analogous to pure madness – 2020.

Early this morning, the douchebag that this country was stupid enough to actually allow obtain the title of POTUS “tweeted” (that’s right, this asshat “tweets”) that he and his wife tested positive for COVID-19. This, my friends, was the best news I’ve heard in a long time. I’ve been wondering what happened to karma – seems like somebody’s been holding her hostage for quite a while now. Looks like she’s making some progress at escaping. I’m all for her returning fully and will welcome her back with open arms when that motherfucker dies. Oh, please let him die!

You see, the “they”s that I was speaking of last year are the only people that modern-day Republicans are willing to recognize as humans and try to help. “They” don’t need any help. The important people have been identified this year – the ones doing the needed work. The ones that made it possible for us to survive this pandemic even when we needed to go into lockdown. The saddest thing about all this is that this country is still not realizing what’s actually important. And why is that? Because about a third of this country is fucking retarded. If you took offense to that statement, I hate to say it but you’re one of those.

These cretins that are currently in charge are masters at creating blatant falsehoods that only a retard would fall for; yet a full one third of this country’s population eats up this bullshit hook, line and sinker. It’s amazing to me. Science – the only reason why we, as a species, have been able to obtain a higher standard of living as opposed to your common dung beetle – is seen by these retards as “fake news” that should be ignored; not only ignored but abhorred. The piece of shit now living in quarantine at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in D.C. did everything he could to make sure that his kin – both figuratively and literally – remained in control of the retards being force-fed the bullshit. Now he very well could die directly because of this. Kismet.

Unfortunately, even if we are lucky enough for the over-sized, orange, baby-man to get his comeuppance and finally stop breathing, it still won’t be enough to solve the problems that he has created. Ideally Pence would quickly succumb to the VID and Pelosi would get the opportunity to pick a replacement for The Notorious RBG. Could you imagine how pissed that would make the tortoise? I can dream, can’t I?

bis später,

Coriolis

Moo

2019-02-28T16:09:00.000-08:00

Just received a phone call from Newark, DE. I knew exactly what it was prior to answering but answered it, anyway … in an attempt to maybe put some “slow” on this latest nuisance that’s been introduced to my life. There was a slight delay after my “Hello” followed by a young lady, an obviously Indian young lady, giving me the standard greeting and asking how my day was going. My response to this was that I knew exactly why she was calling me and that I could save us both some time by informing her that I had just signed on for a contract job and was not available for other work. She then completely ignored everything I just told her and started telling me about some contract work that she was looking to fill.

After patiently listening to her well-rehearsed spiel; I, once again, informed this poor girl that I was not available and won’t be available for a year. This is where things get a bit strange … rather than just giving up, saying something along the lines of, “Sorry to bother you. Best of luck with your new position and have a nice day.” then ending the call, she asks me to hold, puts me on hold and transfers me to her boss.

The boss – another obvious Indian … male, this time – basically begins the whole process again from the start. Luckily for me, he understands (or at least believes) what I am saying when I tell him the same thing I was trying to tell the other lady earlier. This finally ends the call although I’m not getting that wasted time back in my life.

A couple minutes later and I receive an email from the same people I just spoke to. It’s the standard, pre-formatted, “Urgent” requirement for a “Physical Design Engineer @ Sunnyvale, CA / Austin, TX / Hudson, MA.” This one’s from a Vaishali Tyagi with Raas Infotek in Newark, DE. Although it doesn’t explicitly state this, I can – with 100% accuracy – also tell you that this contract job is with HCL (an Indian placement company) for a project that Intel is currently doing. “How do I know that?” you might ask. Well, this is FAR from the first time I’ve seen that exact same email. I’ve probably seen it, or something extremely similar to it, at least 100 times throughout the last year … it never stops. Hell, whilst typing these last couple paragraphs after that initial phone call I spoke of above, I’ve received a call from a number identified as “Collection” from a “landline in Nevada” that was an Indian guy trying to hook me up with the same job and another call from Newark, DE – the number only varies from that original call I spoke of above by the last two digits – that was yet another Indian guy. It never ends…

You know, I could just ignore these calls – and I often do – however, I would much prefer a way to end them. Mind you, this is merely a side-effect of what looking for employment has become these days. It’s that cottage industry of primarily Indian-based, technical placement companies that has arisen by having the ability to constantly parse contract job postings and potential employees from the myriad of internet-based job boards that now exist. I guess one should never forget that, in today’s world, we’re all seen as not much more than heads of cattle to our overlords and, at least in the high-tech industries, it appears that India has taken the lead in guiding the herd to the slaughterhouses. Or maybe that’s just how I see it…?

bis später,

Coriolis

Lather, Rinse ... REPEAT

2019-02-27T21:42:00.000-08:00

I’m sitting in my suite at the Larkspur Landing in a city by the name of Renton, Washington. Renton, Washington? Never heard of the place; although it is now entered in on my Google Maps as my “home.” Don’t think it’ll be too long before that changes – I wrote a check for $500 as a deposit on an apartment up in West Seattle earlier today. I’m not one for wasting time and, the way things are with finding decent housing these days, I figured it best I claimed my stake before it disappeared. All’s that’s left now is the application and – assuming I qualify with said application – delivery of my crap from Nevada. No problem…

Interestingly enough, I’m not even 100% sure that I really have landed the contract job that all this “moving to Seattle” depends on. However, I’m not about to let such a miniscule hitch slow me down. Nope, I’m all-in. I seem to have been dealt a solid “start hand” – it’s that flop that kills ya, though… Curtis, the recruiter that landed me this job, is stopping by my hotel this afternoon to get the contract signed and whatever … maybe I’ll find out more then. Haven’t heard “word one” from Boeing since being told that the PDF I created for the non-employee badge request was deemed sufficient and “preferred” to the FAX option that Curtis was asking me to do. I was also informed that my badge is ready to be picked up although I still have no idea where this would be done nor where I am expecting to be working – an address would be nice … as would a start day and time. Oh well, beggars, choosers – you know what they say…

I suppose this is just a case of déjà vu all over again. Seems to me I’ve done this before. It was a somewhat younger me and, at that time, the whole “not speaking the language of the locals” twist was thrown in as well. I survived – thrived, actually. Things have got to be easier this time. It’s just that, at one time – and not too long ago, mind you – I believed I had put these adventures of jumping blindly into the deep end behind me. An ill-advised detour seems to have brought me a substantial distance back, however. Here we go again…

But hey, on the positive side, I am getting the opportunity to broaden my horizons. I still have little to no idea what this next project will actually be requiring me to do. I’m somewhat sure that it will require at least some of the skills I already know (well, knew at one time … let’s be honest, it’s been a while) although it sounds like the largest portion of work is going to be doing things I’ve never actually done before. I’m thinking this will be mainly a learning experience. Nothing wrong with learning new skills although I better learn quickly – getting paid to learn things just sounds so un-capitalistic to me and we all know that, in this country, capitalism rules.

I do get the opportunity to check out the Seattle lifestyle. The apartment I just claimed seems like an ideal basecamp for such an endeavor as well. It’s located just a short walk from the north end of Alki Beach as well as the Seacrest Ferry Dock. I guess this basically translates to it being pretty much a short walk to downtown Seattle. That could be good, I suppose. I’m kind of hoping that, by its location alone, I will have much more desire to continue my adventures that I so enjoyed back in Santa Monica. I tried walking through the old neighborhood a few times whilst back at the parent’s but that just wasn’t the same. It’s a big plus to actually have something interesting to see. I do hope it doesn’t rain too much…

bis später,

Coriolis

Fly, Fly Away

2019-02-23T10:15:00.000-08:00

It’s a Saturday. I’ve technically got nothing planned for today. Tomorrow I plan to perhaps shave my head and begin the packing process. I’ve got to somehow pack everything I’m going to be needing into a couple checked bags and one carry-on prior to my flight early afternoon on Tuesday. I’ve got a one-way, first-class ticket to Seattle … it comes with two “free” checked bags and one carry-on. I’m planning on using all three.

For you see, things have moved forward a bit since the last chat I had with you. I mentioned the three jobs that I had the most hope of “going somewhere” and have apparently landed the first. Ends up it’s in Seattle. I, on the other hand, am still in Allen Park – a smallish suburb downriver from Detroit, Michigan. This is currently scheduled to change in three days. Although the actual start-date for this year-long contract I am accepting isn’t quite finalized yet – we’re currently “targeting” next Friday, the 1^st of March although that could easily slip a bit – I’ve decided to fly out there a few days early. I’ve booked a room in one of those extended-stay type hotels – booked it through March 15^th, actually – and I am hoping to use the days before I start work to hopefully find an apartment or at least begin the process of apartment procurement. Seems like, these days, this process has the potential to become a bit complicated. Fingers – crossed.

It’s becoming more and more apparent that I’ve gone about this moving process wrong. Although flying to Seattle is, by far, the simplest way to get “me” there; it makes the amount of “stuff” that I can bring quite limited. The problem is that I drove here from California last fall with quite a bit more than I can pack into two checked bags and one carry-on. First and foremost is the car that I drove – there’s no way they’ll let me check a car in on my flight! So, the car stays where she currently is – in storage. That’s just one more monthly bill I’ll need to keep paying until the time comes where I will hopefully be able to get the car shipped to me in Seattle. Either that or I’m thinking I could maybe take a long weekend and fly back to Michigan, load up the car with the other items I wasn’t able to take on my flight, and drive her back to Seattle myself. That, of course, would need to be sometime after winter. Winter, after all, is why I’m not just making that drive now. Driving a sports car with speed-rated, sport tires across the north of this country in the middle of winter just sounds like a stupid thing to attempt … besides, my mom won’t let me. I’m going to now need to be renting a car for quite some time … yet another expense. Oh well, that’s life.

Apart from the car, I’m also going to be needing to leave my guitars – some other bits of miscellanea as well, but the guitars seem quite consequential. I suppose they’re actually no big deal since I haven’t been playing them at all lately due to my fear of making either of my arms (or both) completely un-usable (I wrote about this a bit earlier). Leaving them behind does seem a bit weird to me, though.

I don’t know … it just seems blatantly apparent to me now that I should have just rented a vehicle and driven to Seattle. Sure, this wouldn’t have solved the “car” issue; however, it would have allowed me to bring everything else. Oh well, at least this way I get to avoid a rather long solo drive just prior to tackling the “life restart” issues. I suppose that’s probably good … something tells me that I’ve got some somewhat difficult tasks that I’m going to need to be solving soon… Haven’t I already completed this portion of my life?

bis später,

Coriolis

Breathing...

2019-02-04T11:55:00.000-08:00

So, I’m now basically waiting to “possibly” be hearing more on three job possibilities sometime soon. “Possibly” is the key word there as I’ve been here before – been a consistent state of my life for well over an entire year to be more precise.

Two of my current possibilities are through a couple recruiters; one of which I was able to obtain an interview with the client directly – had the interview exactly one week ago today. I have since heard through correspondence with my recruiter that I was actually one of five that was deemed worthy of an interview and was told, during said interview, that the company was in the process of “staffing up.” I took this, at the time, to mean that they would possibly be hiring more than one engineer which I was actually glad to hear and was hoping to be one of the hires. (Granted, the job’s actually a one-year contract to start, but I can do one year and deal with what comes afterword when it arrives…) I heard from my recruiter now that they have “passed” on three of the interviewees, “hired” one and are currently “still deliberating” about me. It seems they are trying to figure how I would fit in on the current planned projects. Is that good or bad? I don’t know. Hopefully I’ll hear something soon…

The other recruiter-based possibility is for a company that I had been attempting to land a job with through other connections in the past. It is, however, a job that is directly related to the military defense industry and might even require obtaining some sort of security clearance. This time, however, the recruiter that I am using is working with a company that specializes in placing professionals in military related industries. Will this help? I don’t know … but the recruiter seems to be quite professional and has been sending consistent weekly updates since initially contacting me mid-December of last year. It does seem like he’s trying…

The third opportunity that I am considering “active” is with this smaller, third-party, design services company – sounds much like a company I used to work for some 20 years ago. This, actually, is the one I have the most hope for as it seems to be a place that I would be able to quickly get in-step with as far as work goes. Had an initial phone screening – described to me as a “technical discussion” – with an engineer a couple weeks ago that seemed to go rather well. Sent an email to the HR representative that I was initially corresponding with about a week ago and was told to “hang tight” along with an apology for not getting back with me earlier. The “door is not closed” although the process has been paused due to other issues currently being dealt with. What are these other issues? Will they remember me when the “other issues” have been dealt with? Will I even hear anything more from these guys? I have no idea…

You see, that’s just the way it is these days. Those are just the three opportunities that I am currently considering “active.” I’ve got somewhere around 250 other positions that I have applied for at somewhere around 140 other companies throughout this last year and have absolutely no idea where I stand on many of those. I sometimes receive rejection emails, more rarely have some sort of phone interview that goes nowhere and quite often get phone calls and emails from recruiters (almost always from recruiters of Indian decent) for positions that I have already applied for. It’s a bit maddening. As a side note here, those recruiters are always a waste of time … seems to be a new cottage industry created in order to find Indian engineers sponsorship opportunities for H3 or H1b visas. They’re obviously driven by nothing more than volume. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to learn that they actually have quotas that need to be met.

The recruiters that I am working with for the couple active possibilities I wrote of above are, interestingly enough, not of the shotgun-approach, visa-seeking variety. They are both much more professional recruiters working with what at least appear to be solid, well-established job placement corporations for professionals. I’m hoping that not being immediately asked to fill out an obviously standardized questionnaire asking what my “hourly rate,” “date-of-birth,” and “current visa status” is might be a good thing. You see, that’s what you always get from the Indian recruiters. They’ll even go as far as asking for your social security number on some occasions – for reasons that they never are able to explain. It’s all bullshit… I’m hoping that using actual recruiting professionals might have better results.

Of course, if I do land a job soon, all that’s going to do is kick off a process that I’m beginning to wonder whether I’ll be able to successfully accomplish. I’m going to have to move. Now don’t get me wrong here, I want to move – oh yes, I most definitely want to get myself an apartment somewhere and finally complete this goddamn move that I started almost a year ago – but I seem to have lost the ambition required to do anything that has even a hint of challenge to it. When I was younger, I never questioned anything. For quite a few years I moved almost annually to new locations. Hell, since graduating college I’ve moved to somewhere around 20 different addresses in five different states and even lived temporarily in yet one more state and another country. This used to be easy for me. Now, however, the thought of all the things I would need to do keeps me up at night. It just seems like it’s almost undoable.

Oh well, if you’ve been reading my blog, you are well aware that I am the only person to blame for what my life has become. I suppose I’m going to need to “man up” at some time and fix this fucking mess. I sure hope landing a job will give me some direction – assuming I can ever pull that off. I suppose all I can do is keep trying. It’s getting to the point where that’s becoming difficult – this “breathing” thing that I’m continuing to do seems a bit pointless…

bis später,

Coriolis

Sot

2019-01-20T17:42:00.000-08:00

So this happened…

Last Saturday I decided to head on up to Sports Haven – my ‘local bar’ of late. Arrived somewhat early in the afternoon (approximately 3:00pm) and met up with Ron for some coneys and beers. $1 coneys are always seen as a good deal by me and, since Sports Haven has ‘em three days each week and is a rather short walk from my parent’s, I take advantage of the deal on a somewhat regular basis. Invited both Ron and Erik to join me this time.

Ron and I arrived pretty much simultaneously – he even yelled something at me as his car passed me walking although I couldn’t make out what he said and never bothered to find out … I’m sure it was something silly as that’s just the way we are… He was exiting his vehicle as I arrived at the bar.

We entered the bar, grabbed a table and ordered up some coneys and a couple beers. I also got myself an order of fries. And this was the beginning – two coneys, an order of fries and beer #1 for me. I won’t track what the others had as that information is inconsequential to my story. For me, however, it’s two coneys, one order of fries and a beer at this point.

We were sitting there enjoying our food, sipping on our beers and chatting when Erik arrived. He joined us at our table and ordered himself a coney and a beer. I believe this was where I decided to grab myself another coney and beer as well. Not quite sure if this was my second or third beer although it seems to me that it was merely my second. Not sure what time it was when Erik arrived, but I do believe that both Ron and I had already eaten our coneys and consumed our first brews – must have been around 3:30. This now brings my running total up to three coneys, an order of fries and two beers.

The three of us were sitting there contemplating solutions to the various problems we’re currently being faced with in this shitty world that we find ourselves living in … or perhaps we were just reminiscing over previous attempts we made at the same; either way, we were once again ticking away the moments that make up a dull day as we had so many times before. It’s always a blast to get the opportunity to chat with these guys. I’ve known both pretty much my entire life and, regardless of how long the time span is between meetings, the conversation picks up from where we left off effortlessly. Once again, we were at it.

Ron, at some point, received a phone call from his son and invited him to join us. He lives close by and joined the three of us soon thereafter. This was when I ordered my third beer … must have been somewhere around 4:00.

I believe it was about an hour or so that all four of us sat there sharing stories before Erik, Ron and his son needed to leave. Must have been close to 5:00 when they all did just that and I decided to stay at the bar by myself. I had nothing else to do and figured I might as well waste away the rest of the day hanging out at the bar, having a few beers and watching some football or whatever. It’s not like I needed to worry about driving home later or anything – my journey home was known to be merely a 15-minute walk as usual. I go to that bar primarily because it’s only “stumbling distance” from my home avoiding the worry of perhaps drinking a bit too much. No drive, no problem…

I remember basically burning through the remainder of that day. I watched the Chiefs eliminate the Colts and the Rams take out the Cowboys; participated in your typical, bullshit small talk that consistently occurs between patrons in sports bars; ordered up some more fries and had a couple more coneys ($1-a-piece, why not?). I was also, throughout the entire day, drinking beers. I wasn’t really keeping track of how many beers I ordered however there were seven listed on the final tab I paid prior to leaving the bar. It was slightly after 2:00am when I began my walk home – some 11 hours after arriving.

Thinking back on the evening/night later, I do not recall actually doing any “binge” drinking. The seven beers on my tab actually seemed like too many when I received it and I remember saying the same to Coreen, the bartender. Since they were on special (I think they were something like $1.75 each) and I didn’t really want to argue over something so petty, I just paid the tab. She may have accidentally included the three beers I had already paid for from earlier in the day, but who really knows…? I didn’t much care.

As to my condition, I felt fine – a little tipsy, but overall stable. I distinctly remember the walk home as clear as a bell. I remember entering my parent’s house, switching the light in the living room on, brushing my teeth, switching off the light in the living room and going to bed. I remember all of that as being completely normal. I felt completely sober. I wasn’t stumbling or anything. It was approximately 2:20 in the morning…

Next thing I vaguely remember was – oh, I’m not exactly sure how to describe this – “coming to” perhaps … somehow lying slumped in the corner of the bathroom and hearing this scale that my parents have (the electronic speaking type) sounding off that, “Your weight is twenty point zero pounds,” followed shortly by getting assisted up by my father in my bedroom where I apparently fell again. I then headed back to my bed and lied there for some unknown amount of time (not long, though…) before getting up and noticing that my underarm deodorant had been knocked over on my dresser and wondered exactly what happened with that. I don’t remember getting out of bed to begin with, heading into the bathroom nor returning to my bedroom between the two occurrences of “coming to.” Not only that, but I distinctly remember hearing the scale read off a weight of exactly 20.0 pounds exactly one time … it usually states the weight twice followed by a “powering down” announcement. All I heard was one announcement of 20.0 pounds with no notification of powering down – at least that’s all I remember. I’m positive that more was said. I found out later, from speaking with my parents, that all this madness occurred sometime around 6:30am – that’s somewhere around four hours after I went to bed.

I also felt like I had been in a fight or something. I hadn’t … but it was later explained to me, by my parents again, that I had apparently passed out in the bathroom (and the newly bent towel rack in there is a strong sign of where, exactly, that was) as well as in my bedroom where I ended up slumped between a dresser and the door of the closet. My back and upper right arm had a couple somewhat deep scratches and, as I would soon find out, my coccyx (tailbone) got bruised … again. Been noticing that basically for the entire last week although it seems to be getting better now…

So my mom’s pissed now – I did mention the bent towel rack, right…? – and I’m confused. What the hell happened? It’s gotta, at least in some aspect, be related to what I drank the evening before; but I felt fine when I walked home. I’m not just saying that as a joke – I’ve been drunk many times before and do know what being drunk feels like. I was steady as a rock when I left the bar and walked home. Although it is possible that I drank as many as ten beers that day – although I’m thinking the total was closer to seven – that was in the span of eleven hours. Either way that’s less than one beer per hour … and the beers were of the ‘short’ variety – they were on special at $1.75 a piece, so they weren’t large. And why would I be passing out some four hours after going to sleep? I’m still wondering exactly what happened there…

So now I’m thinking that I damn well better stop drinking completely. That’s a bummer … it was nice to go have a few beers as a brief escape from this shit-show that my life has become every once in a while; but after that experience I’m thinking I better quit that. I don’t know, is that possibly a sign of impending alcoholism? Now that’s something I most definitely do not need. Oh well, one more minor pleasure gone. Life just continues to get shittier and shittier…

bis später,

Coriolis

Jukebox Zero

2018-12-09T18:10:00.000-08:00

Decided to kill some time a few days ago by playing some guitar. I have very vague memories of a time when I used to enjoy playing guitar; never was any good, although I have clocked in over 1,000 hours playing “Rocksmith” on my computer. I suppose that must translate to me enjoying the process somewhat. Now I’m sitting here with my upper left arm and shoulder in constant pain. That, you see, is just the way life works for me these days. Nothing ever has any positive results – nothing. Everything I do just adds more to the pile of shit that my life has become.

The thing is, I don’t get it. This is not the first time I’ve had debilitating pain that I’ve been able to trace back to playing guitar; however, the specifics of the sessions that caused the pain are anything but identical. Hell, the pain wasn’t even in the same arm. It’s kind of like life’s telling me that even if I somehow discover something that I might enjoy it’s not going to let that happen. Nope … if it somehow doesn’t end in soul-crushing disappointment, it’s not something that I’ll be allowed to do…

The first time that playing guitar fucked me over was about 3½ years ago when I was living in Nevada. On that occasion, it was triggered by playing my acoustic guitar on my sofa. The result of this – for some reason – was that my right arm became sore early the next day with the pain slowly increasing for a couple days until I was unable to use the arm for anything. I ended up going to a local doctor. Got X-rayed, diagnosed with severe bursitis and prescribed a couple of drugs – one for the swelling (that I don’t remember having) and one for the pain. My parents even flew down to help me although they didn’t arrive for a few days and the issue had pretty much resolved itself by then. I still don’t know what the true issue was as I’ve played my acoustic many times since without incident; all I know was that it was very painful and ended up causing grief to my poor parents as well as me. What I didn’t know was that, although the circumstances vary, this was going to become somewhat of a recurring issue.

According to what I’ve been able to decipher by searching my past postings on Facebook, the next time something similar happened was about a year later. I was neither sitting on my sofa nor playing my acoustic guitar; however, the results were hauntingly familiar. This time I was standing and playing the bass I recently acquired. Upon waking the next morning, the pain began and consistently increased until my arm was useless. Interestingly enough, it was my left arm this time – different arm, same bullshit. Didn’t bother jumping through the hurdles required to see a doctor this time, though … just decided to wait out the pain. For you see, being that this was after making my bone-head decision to become a professional poker player, I no longer had good medical insurance; that’s just the way it is in this capitalistic country – if you’re not either rich or in a current process of trying to become rich, you’re not worth keeping alive. I was relying on the bronze-level, bullshit health insurance I had obtained through healthcare.gov. This makes actually seeing doctors for any non-emergency, life-threatening purposes as difficult and expensive as they can legally get away with. No sense making things worse by actually attempting to obtain any medical help. When I did bother with this the last time, they pretty much proved to be quite useless when all was said and done…

As mentioned above, I have once again started this deja vu … three days ago. This latest run-in began with me playing my Les Paul whilst standing for somewhere between an hour and a half to two hours. The exact amount of time is unknown, although I do know I completed a 90-minute non-stop, random selection of songs as a single set followed by playing a couple songs that I selected afterwards. The pain – my left arm/shoulder this time, same as the last one – started to arrive a couple days ago and has been, as before, consistently increasing in severity since. So, as I stated at the start of this article, I am now sitting with constant pain.

What all this means now is that I apparently can no longer play my guitars unless I’m willing to risk losing the functionality of an arm (or even worse, possibly both arms) for a number of days afterwards … not to mention having to deal with the pain that is also associated with this. So, it now looks like I won’t be playing my guitars to kill time. One more joy gone…

It’s getting to where everything seems to be pointless. I’m trying to land a job (pathetic as that process seems to be going…) so that I can once again be a contributing member of society; however, I’m having a harder and harder time explaining why I’m even bothering. It’s gotten to the point where I actually don’t want to do anything. That can’t be healthy…

bis später,

Coriolis

Mich-again

2018-12-03T15:48:00.000-08:00

I’m back in Michigan. Moved back in with the parents. Last I posted, I had just started and ended my new job back in Santa Clara, California – all on the same day – and was just about to begin the cross-country drive. Not really sure if I was clear enough about the ‘Route 66’ adventure not happening, however that trip did not happen. There was – for a couple days – still a possibility of me driving back down to Santa Monica, meeting up with Craig as he flew in from Michigan and actually completing that adventure; however, it didn’t happen. What ended up happening was me driving straight from Santa Clara (well, Fremont actually…) to Allen Park, Michigan all by myself – a quick, four-day drive down I-80. Other than picking up a speeding ticket (102 in a 75 zone) in Nebraska, the trip was quite uneventful. I arrived at my parent’s house on a Sunday, early in the afternoon … been living here since.

I think I actually am losing my sanity now. Nothing seems to make sense to me lately. It clearly now appears that I should have stuck with that crappy job I successfully landed in Santa Clara. It most definitely would have been a nightmare – as far as jobs go – however it sure would have let me avoid many of the current situations that I find myself dealing with. First and foremost, I would have been employed. I now have the pleasure of attempting to solve my lack of employment issue whilst living in Michigan. This adds quite a bit of complication to a problem that I’ve been working on solving for well over a year already.

The thing is that backend, digital, ASIC, “place and route” – where my expertise is – is not something that is even done here in the Detroit Metropolitan area. Everything – EVERYTHING – related to electrical engineering around here is directly tied to the auto industry. It’s also 100% analog in nature. There are jobs related to ASICs, however all of them appear to be incorporating ASICs designed elsewhere into PCB circuitry sold to auto manufacturers. I know, “blah blah blah technical crap most people reading this could care less about” – sorry ‘bout that … It’s just so frustrating to me. I was hoping to perhaps find something in engineering that I could do around here, but I can’t. My 20 years of learning more and more about less and less has made me far too specialized. I don’t do analog circuitry – I don’t remember what I “learned” in college some 25 years ago.

My next plan at solving my lack of job issue was to just throw away my experience and change fields completely. Didn’t really have an idea about what I wanted to do nor how I would get into it – still don’t. I applied for a job with Guitar Center as something called an “Operations Associate” as the job posting made it appear that no experience was needed and that training would be provided. Sent my resume along with a cover letter that I typed up explaining that I was trying to change careers as I figured they would wonder why someone with my resume was applying. Never heard anything back from that…

Considered (and am still possibly considering) trying to get some sort of IT job but don’t really know what training I would need. Seems like it’s all very specialized towards what is needed for the specific job one has. Since, I have no specific job, this makes me hesitant to spend any money and time taking a class that may never be useful for me. I don’t know … maybe I’m overthinking things…

I’m currently back to looking for a job in my field – as specialized as it is. Translation – I am looking for a job somewhere other than here. I’ve got a couple leads for contract positions in California and Texas although I have been applying to opportunities anywhere in the country – even applied to several positions in Canada though I have heard nothing back on those. I’m basically back to what I was doing prior to landing the job in Santa Clara. Now, however, I am doing it from Michigan rather than California. Getting pretty much the same results though – had a few phone interviews resulting in me waiting to hear more and many applications sent resulting with no reply at all. Sometimes I get rejection emails, but usually I get nothing. It’s now well over 200 opportunities that I have applied for since deciding to give up on poker.

This decision to move back in with my parents has also introduced several issues that caught me a bit off guard – all related to my car. Granted, some of these issues only exist because of my pride. I do realize that, although I do like my car, it is just a car; however, it is a 2002 Firehawk. It’s a limited edition (only 1501 were built) model with slightly more than 60k miles. It’s rarely (very rarely) been driven in rain and never been driven in snow. Although it was involved in a couple accidents in California, I made sure all repairs were completed by professionals. I’ve done the best I could to take care of this car. Now I’m back in Michigan.

Michigan, as many of you may already be aware, is pretty much the worst place for vehicles. The roads are a freaking mess – more potholes than pavement – and when winter comes around things really become a nightmare. They spray the roads with salt. Salt doesn’t do good things to cars. The whole idea of driving my over-powered, rear-wheel-drive car on the icy, salt-covered roads of southeast Michigan throughout the winter makes me cringe. So … I’ve decided to put my Firehawk in storage. Now I have no car (well, I “have” one … in storage). I’ll be needing to purchase a vehicle if I stay here. So there’s that now…

I was able to obtain a Michigan driver’s license without much hassle; however, was unable to register my car. I did change my car insurance from California to Michigan; unfortunately, I could not complete a Michigan registration due to not having a title for my car. I might “have” a title but, if I do, it would be located in my file cabinet. My file cabinet just so happens to currently be residing in a storage unit somewhere in Nevada along with the rest of my possessions. You see, apart from my car and few select things I decided to take with me to Santa Monica, everything I own was packed in a truck by the movers I hired in Henderson and taken to storage. I’m supposed to get an apartment and give that address to the movers at some point to get my stuff delivered. That’s a bridge I suppose I’ll be jumping off sometime in the future … assuming I ever get myself an apartment and who the hell knows if that’s ever going to happen…? But, as usual, I digress … back to what I was talking about…

Now I’m working on obtaining a duplicate title for my vehicle – no easy task here… My initial guess was to try the California DMV. I filled out a California “Title Application” and sent it, along with a brief letter of explanation as well as a money order for $21 – the duplicate title fee, to the California DMV in Sacramento. I “should” have taken the moment required to look at my current, still valid, California registration prior to doing this. It clearly states that no title was issued for this registration.

Okay, so a bit of an explanation on what I have since discovered is in order here. Apparently, in some states a vehicle can be registered without a title. Not sure exactly which states are included in the complete list, however both California and Nevada allow this. I now know this as I did exactly that in both California (twice, actually) and Nevada. Michigan, however, does not allow this. In Michigan the owner of a vehicle must possess a valid title to said vehicle in order to obtain registration and plates. So that got me to wondering exactly how the hell I was going to get a copy of my title…

After looking into things a bit, I was able to discover that I had paid off my loan for this car back in 2008. I was still “technically” living in Colorado then; although I was “actually” living in California. For you see, I owned a house in Colorado where my car was stored. It was apparently in 2008 that I decided to bring my car with me to California. The reason I believe this is because I was able to discover from the California DMV that the first year my car was registered in California was 2009. Interestingly enough, it was registered without a title… This leads me to believe that I need to be going through the Colorado DMV in an attempt to get a duplicate title. It does appear that it was registered as a Colorado vehicle when the loan was paid off.

I called the Colorado DMV to see if they’d be able to help me with this and basically discovered that, in Colorado, bureaucracy rules. They told me that I needed to fill out and send in a “Record Search Request” (form DR2489a) to see if a title for my vehicle is in their system and then, if it is, I should fill out and send in a “Duplicate Title Request” (form DR2539a) to request a duplicate title be sent to me. I then asked if they might be able to save me some time and let me know if the title was in their records over the phone and was told that they couldn’t do that because there was no way to prove I was who I was claiming to be. What I ended up doing was sending in the “Search Request” followed by the “Title Request” a few days later. The way I figure it is, if the “Title Request” comes back to me requesting some kind of missing information, I should have the information by then from the “Search Request” I filed. If I’m lucky, the information I put in the “Duplicate Title Request” will be sufficient and I’ll get my title…

Oh yeah, and to add to this, I’m also a bit in the dark on whether or not the title – should it be found in the Colorado DMV records – will be in my name. There is still somewhat of a possibility that the lien from the loan was never removed in Colorado. That was supposed to have been done when I registered my car after paying off the loan … but I don’t think I registered the car in Colorado again after the loan was paid off. I suppose the lien may still be on my car’s title. I was able to get a lien release document from the credit union … just in case. I’m still waiting for this mess to sort itself out…

The latest twist in this pathetic story that is my life is that Ray, one of my oldest friends, is basically offering me a job whilst I continue to look for work. Yeah, it’s as strange as it sounds and that’s what’s bothering me the most about it. He’s offering me a chance to work at his company in pretty much a secretarial role as a way for me to earn some money and possibly move out of my parent’s place. I really do appreciate the offer however I don’t think I could do that. If I took the job, I would need to get a vehicle. I suppose that’s not too big a deal, I’m pretty sure I could pick up something half-way decent for a few grand. What happens, however, if I then land one of the jobs I am trying to get? I suppose I could sell the vehicle I purchased, but how much of a pain would that be? Remember now that the jobs I am trying to land all require me to be moving most likely quite far from Michigan.

As for moving out of my parent’s house, I would love to. Once again though, what happens if I land a job? I don’t know … I suppose I could always break the lease of any apartment I got although I would need to once again have my possessions (assuming I ended up getting them delivered from Nevada) moved again to wherever the job I landed was. Getting an apartment of my own would probably be the smart thing to do though as the office for Ray’s company is actually located down in Toledo, Ohio. I don’t think driving daily between Allen Park and Toledo makes too much sense – heck, the gas cost alone would make the whole endeavor somewhat pointless…

Besides, I can’t screw over my buddy like that. I fully realize he’s going out of his way to offer me assistance, but what kind of worker would I be if my main goal was finding work elsewhere? I need to be able to open my schedule for any interviewing that may be required on my job search and I have absolutely no idea how frequently time off would be needed for that. Heck, there’s been four days in the last couple weeks that I would have needed to be away from work for interviews. I’m hoping that my interviewing may soon become even more frequent and who knows if I may be needing to travel somewhere for an interview…? It just seems to me that this whole looking for a job these days is a job of its own. If I agree to work with Ray’s company, I would feel obligated to do that job as well as I could. Right now, I just feel that this job hunt I am currently on would get in the way…

I suppose another option here would be to take the job with Ray as a change in career. It wouldn’t pay even close to what I expect to be able to get should I land a job in my current (“former,” I suppose, when the whole poker bullshit is taken into account) career however that’s assuming I am ever able to actually land a job. I don’t know … seems like the last few phone interviews I had went decently but you never know these days – will they end up like all the other interviews I’ve had this last year? I sure hope not…

Oh well … I’m planning on meeting up with Ray tomorrow down in Toledo. Maybe talking with him will give me some direction…

bis später,

Coriolis

The End of a New Beginning

2018-09-18T17:53:00.000-07:00

Well fuck me … that was quick. Drove the 348 miles from Santa Monica to Fremont a couple days ago. Was planning on making my new home up in the Silicon Valley – somewhere not too far from the job that I got in Santa Clara. I had my concerns – mainly about the cost of living and the fact that I needed to somehow find an apartment after not having any provable steady income for the last damn near five years – but I was determined. Sure, I let myself get low-balled on the salary aspect for this new job (side note here: NEVER, EVER discount your self-worth … NEVER!) and I knew this was going to make things, in general, a bit more difficult. Just how much more didn’t really sink in until I began my stay at the “extended stay” hotel where I am currently sitting and writing up this blog post. You need to be getting paid very well around here if you ever want to feel any sense of security. I so desperately miss the sense of security that I once had…

Showed up yesterday to my new job. Arrived at the building at 10:21am – the recruiter that I was working with to land this job had informed me earlier that I was “scheduled” to begin work at 10:30am. Nobody was there to meet me. The glass doors to the office were locked and the reception area was completely empty as far as any human lifeforms were concerned. There was a note taped to one door instructing somebody (I forget the name, but it wasn’t me…) to ring the doorbell if their card didn’t work so that someone could come let them in. Sure enough, I discovered what appeared to be a doorbell just above one of those magnetic card readers over to the right of these main doors. I rang it.

Not too long after, some guy showed up in the reception area. He looked at me standing there with an expression that demonstrated he was most definitely not expecting to have been seeing me. He did, however, open the doors and I introduced myself and said that I was scheduled to be beginning work there today (well, yesterday, but you get the gist…). I mentioned the name of the recruiter that told me to be there and was instructed to have a seat whilst he attempted to call her. Don’t think he ever spoke with anyone on the phone – if memory serves me correctly … I was in a bit of a state of bewilderment at what was happening and hadn’t really had any decent sleep for the last couple of nights prior to this – however he then escorted me into the main office area and asked me what kind of work I did. Told him I was there to do Digital Place and Route, Physical Design work and I believe I mentioned the names of the engineers that I interviewed with – well, an engineer and a VP of Engineering that I interviewed with. Figured this would help as this guy was also claiming to be a VP of Engineering – not the same one I interviewed with, however. He then began leading me toward the cube-farm area of the physical design engineers and told me to take a seat in any cube. He would try to get ahold of the recruiter I mentioned and send her over.

So, here’s where I really started questioning exactly what I’ve gone and gotten myself into. We walked through the office – aisle after aisle and row after row of empty cubicles containing a vast assortment of random shelving structural pieces, “parts” of computers (mainly monitors, cables and keyboards that all appeared to not have been used in years) and extremely worn office furniture – leather on chairs that, for large swaths, was no longer leather. I walked through this junk yard and settled down on one of the better-looking chairs in one of the many, many available empty cubicles. It was then that this other VP of Engineering gave me the general direction to where I could find coffee or tea while I waited and pretty much disappeared. I found my way to the break room, got myself some tea (would have been coffee, but none was made and I wasn’t about to be so presumptuous as to brew an entire urn of coffee just for me…) and headed back to the cube I claimed to wait. Wasn’t sure exactly what I was waiting for, but my selection of “things to do” seemed to be limited to one – wait…

There was a guy sitting in the cube across from the one I selected. He appeared to be busy with something on his laptop computer. He was obviously not the least bit interested in why I was there and did a great job of just ignoring me completely. Not sure what he was doing – none of my business, I suppose – although I decided to do the “neighborly thing” and introduce myself. I got his name. Don’t remember what it was. It was, as they almost always are in my industry, very very Indian in nature – not that there’s anything wrong with that; I just have a lot of difficulty remembering names in general … Indian names, no chance. Found out that he, too, was there to do Digital PnR work and that was that. He went back to what he was doing on his laptop and we never spoke again. I went back to my doing nothing but waiting … slowly growing more and more concerned about the situation…

I believe I spent approximately a half hour sitting there sipping on my tea, waiting for what’s to come next and sending out an update to my friends on Facebook as sort of a desperate cry for help before I overheard my name being mentioned in a conversation occurring a few cube rows away. I decided to head in that direction to see if maybe somebody involved in it might have a clue as to why I was there. The recruiter I was expecting to meet was part of this conversation as well as a couple other guys. One presented me with a laptop and we all headed back to the cube I was now living in. They asked me if I had been able to access my work email account and I informed them that I had. They then dropped a couple IP addresses which I took note of (having absolutely no idea why I was being told these) and mentioned something about sending an email to a specific address that I also took note of. It was all very cryptic and absolutely nothing was making any sense to me. What were they expecting me to do? I wasn’t given any direction whatsoever. I was then asked if I had read “the” email. What email? The only email I had received prior to starting work was informing me of my work email account. I received no email at my new account as of then.

This was going nowhere. Figured the best thing I could do at this point was to switch on the laptop they gave me (a piece of shit 2012 model with a Windows 7 and an Intel CORE i5 sticker on the palm rest) and basically show them the email I received. This I did. Apparently “the” email was never sent. Hell, I still do not know what “the” email was … perhaps I read it later that day – I really don’t know. It was then that one of the guys (the engineer I had interviewed with about a week earlier) mentioned something about me setting up my VNC and reading emails to get up to speed on where the project was and they all left. Okay … what now…?

Figured I might as well begin by configuring this laptop to my likings. Creating bookmarks for my work email account, maybe doing some interface customization … you know, the standard shit you do when you receive a new computer. I started doing that. That’s when I discovered just how out-of-date this machine actually was. It was originally running Windows 7 as clearly shown by the sticker on the palm rest, however it had been upgraded to Windows 10 at some point. It was actually in mid-update mode as the “Shut down” and “Restart” selections had the familiar “Update and” text appended to both. (Oh yeah, and as a side note, I mentioned to the guy that appeared to be the IT-guy that I was trying to update this machine and got the gut-wrenching response about him basically not liking updates. It always bothers me when IT departments ignore updates to computer equipment … just seems lazy. These updates are usually released for valid reasons. Granted they sometimes cause issues to current procedures in IT, however that doesn’t mean they should just be ignored. But I digress…) I selected the “Update and Restart” followed by checking for the existence of any more updates to the operating system (it was now fully updated) and then ran DELL’s “Support Assist” tool to see if I could fix the driver issue that was being reported and discovered that this machine was actually two firmware versions behind in its BIOS.

I was able to flash one update to the firmware successfully although the driver issue was not resolved. Couldn’t update the BIOS to the later firmware version, though. Something about the computer not having the correct specs – whatever, I left it where it was. I do believe that this was exactly why the machine was reporting the driver issue but didn’t want to waste too much time on my first day at the new job basically doing what should have been done by their IT department years ago. No, I needed to start figuring out how to do some real work. Nobody seemed to want to tell me anything, though. I did receive a few emails related to PuTTY and VNC settings which were not much help other than giving me an initial password and saying I needed to change it. I did accomplish this and figured out how to login to a server (exactly what server it was is anyone’s guess) and start a VNC session that I was able to view on my laptop. Yippee … who cares? Nobody was giving me anything to do…

That was basically the way my entire day went. I was giving myself bullshit, busy-work tasks to complete to be prepared for when I might need to actual do such tasks and basically trying to make heads or tails out of the several group emails that I obtained access to at some point in the day. In time, it became clear to me what this project actually was. It’s an older project that they’re trying to resurrect. That’s never good. Projects die for a reason – often times several reasons. Why did this project die? Why are they trying to restart it? Why does this office look like a freaking junk yard? Why did they give me a six-year-old computer to use? Why didn’t they even supply me with a mouse? Why, on Earth, are they using Office 365 through web browsers rather than installing the “Office apps” on the laptops like all other professional businesses do? What the hell is going on here?!?!?

The final straw came for me when I decided to ask the engineer I interviewed with where I might be able to get a mouse to use. His response was to basically look for one in all the junk lying around and started going through random drawers in various cubicles looking for a mouse that might be there. Seriously??? This is a professional business??? I think not. He then mentioned that I could ask that IT guy and we both headed over to do this. His response, after looking through the junk on his desk and not finding one – he could put a req. in for a mouse although all purchase requests needed to be okayed and signed off for by this company’s CEO. Holy fucking shit! Really?!? The CEO needs to sign-off on the purchase of a mouse for an engineer? This company IS screwed. That’s when I quit.

No … they weren’t paying me nearly enough to get on that sinking ship. Pathetically enough, I now get to fall back to my original, pre-Santa Clara plan. I’m moving back in with my parents … at least for a little while. Exactly how I’m getting home is still an open issue. Nothing in my world plays out as expected. I am planning to check out of this hotel much earlier than I booked it for – most likely tomorrow. Luckily the manager here is taking pity on me and only charging me for one week (for the three nights I was here) as opposed to the 30-days that is the usual charge for early check-out on a booking scheduled for longer than a month – I had this room booked through the 20^th of October (some 32 days from today). It’s still not cheap and basically just more to add to what this fiasco ended up costing me. Any way you look at it, this latest adventure is nothing more than another huge mistake. I sure hope my luck is better for this long drive I have coming up…

bis später,

Coriolis

A New Beginning

2018-09-12T21:12:00.000-07:00

Looks like the ‘Route 66’ trip is officially off. The one-way ticket from Detroit to Los Angeles that I purchased about a week and a half ago for my buddy won’t be used (I suppose I need to investigate possibly getting a refund on that…). No … I won’t be driving some 2500 miles east, north-east to move back in with my parents in a bit over a week as I have been planning. I will, however, be loading up my car and driving some 300 miles north on Sunday – four days from today. I’ll be heading for a hotel in Santa Clara where I have booked an “extended stay” for a month. For you see, I appear to have landed a job today…

It’s a bit strange. I’ve been trying quite hard to find a job once again doing what I was basically training to do for the first 23 years of my life … been damn near an entire year now. As I mentioned in earlier posts to this blog that nobody reads, I wasn’t having much luck. Primarily due to the four-year hole that I put in my resume – mid-life crisis delusion of grandeur … you know, same-ole same-ole… In fact, just two days ago I was still waiting to receive an email scheduling an initial phone interview with a company down in San Diego. Never received that email and, in fact, never had the phone interview that was scheduled to have happened by no later than yesterday (“3-5 business days” from when I got the initial email notification…). I did, however, receive a phone call yesterday morning from a different company – one of the other 90 or so companies that I had sent applications to. A couple calls yesterday, a few calls today and “Viola!” I got a job.

Now, to be completely honest here, what I currently have is a one-month contract (1099 work) that, if I am able to demonstrate my usefulness, will turn into a full-time job with benefits. Their VP of Engineering just wasn’t sold on hiring me directly full-time because of that damn resume hole; however, I somehow convinced him to let me prove myself. I’m not too worried though, with some 20-years’ experience doing this work prior to my hiatus, I believe it’ll come back to me in no time. I had no problem completing the small contract job I picked up earlier this summer. No, I know what I’m doing. I’m sure I’ll be able to pitch-in…

Why then am I feeling such malaise? That is the question that I am currently trying to figure out. I suppose it’s most likely a combination of things. For starters, I was actually beginning to look forward to doing the ‘Route 66’ trip with my buddy. Spoke to him on the phone today and found out that he, as well, was looking quite forward to the adventure – said he’s been working long hours at a side-job in an effort to get more money for the trip. Made me feel bad to tell him that it was no longer scheduled to be happening.

I was also looking quite forward to moving back to the old stomping grounds. Sure, I would have been moving back in with my parents for some unknown amount of time and, truth be told, that’s actually somewhat pathetic for a man my age; however, it would have given me the opportunity to spend some more time with them while they’re still around – nobody lives forever… That and I would have been able to hang out with many of my old friends on a more frequent basis than I get to when it’s only during trips back home around holidays.

I don’t know, seems to me that what I am doing here is once again letting money become more important than life. We all (well, most of us at least…) seem to do this for a large portion of our lives. For most, though, the choice is a necessity. It costs quite a bit to raise a family these days. I have no family to raise … never even been married. My choice is far more selfish – it’s merely to make sure that I can take care of myself financially after retirement. From all the stories I’ve read in the news, seems to me one can never have enough put aside to survive retirement these days. We’re all just rats in cages destined to be running on our hamster wheels until we drop dead. Jobs of the olden days used to provide people with pensions after they retired – those are, for the most part, gone now … merely ideas that seem to only have been myths to today’s working class. Sure, there’s Social Security – for now – but what’s that get you? Will it be enough to continually let you pay the consistently increasing rent for as long as you need? I doubt it – that’s kind of why IRAs and 401k’s exist – you’re most likely going to need more. And just exactly how much more is anyone’s guess. That pretty much depends on how long you end up living. Usually that’s an unknown…

Oh well, que sera, sera … I emailed the signed contract back for this job. Decision made. Right or wrong, I’m going to be starting work Monday morning. I actually do think it’s most likely what is best.

bis später,

Coriolis

What's Next...?

2018-09-10T15:15:00.000-07:00

And today yet one more twist gets added to my wonderful life … well, not exactly “added” – more along the lines of popping up again. Let me explain…

I received a voice-mail from a buddy of mine who is currently traveling the country. He was checking in to see if I had heard anything more about this possible employment opportunity that I am supposed to be getting a phone interview with sometime in the “next 3-5 business days” as of last Tuesday (today is a Monday, in case you were wondering…). I’ve heard nothing, but that’s not what I’m on about today – that’s basically what I was expecting. Nothing seems to ever work out for me as of late; but I digress… No, the wrinkle that has popped up again is that I received this voice-mail without my phone ever ringing. I was sitting here at my computer messing around with some video files just to basically kill time – killing time is a very common activity for me these days – when “Ping!” a notice pops up on my phone about a new voice-mail being received. “That’s unusual,” I thought. I don’t recall my phone ringing. Sure enough, when I check the voice-mail, it’s the one I mentioned above. Now why would my buddy just leave me a voice-mail instead of just calling me? Seems strange…

Well, it should have seemed strange because my buddy actually did call. My phone never rang although it did allow for him to leave a voice-mail. Good thing it did because, if it hadn’t, I would never have discovered that my damn phone wasn’t working. You see, the first thing I did after listening to the voice-mail was to call back my buddy. All I heard during this attempt to actually make a phone call – with my phone, mind you – was silence. No rings, no voices – pure silence. I thought to myself, “Hmm, that’s weird.” But, wouldn’t you know it, this same exact thing happened to me before. A bit over a week ago, when I was attempting to have a phone call with my other buddy – the one that I am flying out to LAX so that he can ride back with me on ‘Route 66’ in a bit under a couple of weeks from now – I also received a voice-mail sans any incoming call notification. It, of course, was from this other buddy who actually attempted to call me as well. Venturing down that rabbit hole lead me to basically re-enable the “Voice-over-WiFi” feature of my phone and reboot it. After doing this, I was then once again able to both make and receive phone calls. I figured it must have just been weak cell-service that was causing the issue and, as long as my WiFi connection stayed strong, everything should be fine moving forward. Nope. Today proved that theory incorrect…

I made exactly zero changes to the “connections” settings of my phone – a very expensive Samsung Galaxy Note 8 that I purchased less than a year ago through Verizon Mobile. I thought everything was cool. I figured if anybody called me, my phone would ring – seems like perfectly sane expectations as it was working fine a week ago – however, at least once that I now know of, that did not happen. What to do … what to do…?

Ends up, this time, all I needed to do in order to get my phone properly functioning as a phone again was to just reboot it. A simple reboot after making no changes at all to the settings and I was able to make a return call to my buddy. That’s not good. That is, in fact, very bad. What that means is that the issue is not with Verizon – it’s my goddamn phone! I suppose there does exist the possibility that Verizon’s cell service in my area was having issues that they fixed during the time that I was rebooting my phone; however, that wouldn’t explain why the “Voice over WiFi” didn’t just kick-in. My WiFi didn’t go down – I know this because I was at my computer the entire time. Nope, my phone needed to be rebooted in order to be able to once again receive calls. There’s something wrong with my phone and I have no idea what it is.

I also have no idea how long my phone has been in the state it was in. According to the call log, the last call I received (or placed, for that matter) was mid-afternoon some three days ago. That’s actually a bit reassuring as I doubt I would have received any important calls over the weekend – and, if I had, I’m pretty sure they would have left a voice-message. So, now that I know my phone seems to randomly go into a state of not being a phone, I suppose I have to attempt to deal with that. Many people never leave voice-messages these days. That, unfortunately, is a necessity should my phone stop being a “phone” again … and, rest assured, it will. I suppose the best I can do is basically reboot my phone after waking every morning. That should, I’m hoping, make it operational for at least part of each day. Once again, this world of ours has decided to throw a bit more difficulty into my life. What’s gonna be next…?

bis später,

Coriolis

Adulting

2018-09-06T21:43:00.000-07:00

So hey, there’s this guy named Murphy … and he’s got a law named after him. Seems to me that my life – most notably of late – is little more than justification of his law. Case in point – I purchased my buddy a plane ticket to fly out here to Los Angeles last Sunday. The flight wasn’t for last Sunday, but for a couple weeks from now when I am currently planning to drive the old ‘Route 66’ all the way from Santa Monica to Chicago and then continuing on to my parent’s house in Allen Park, Michigan. My buddy also lives in Allen Park, so he was the perfect choice to join me on this adventure. Two days after purchasing the flight for my buddy, I received an email from one of the plethora of jobs I applied to stating that they wanted to conduct a phone interview with me in the next 3-5 business days. The job, should I land it, is of course in San Diego. This adds a bit of a wrinkle to my plans…

I now wonder if I’ll be making the trip back to my parent’s house. I suppose that all depends on how the interview process for this job goes. Two weeks, however, isn’t nearly enough time to “complete” an interview process and actually land a job these days … heck, it’s going to take 3-5 business days just to possibly get the initial phone interview done. Something tells me that, even if everything goes just swimmingly with the interviews, I’m not going to have any concrete job offer in two weeks … although my housing situation is scheduled to become basically void in two weeks – that’s primarily why I am planning to head back to my parent’s house. So, do I drive back to Michigan only to then land a job in San Diego? Seems a bit non-optimal to me…

I suppose, if the interviewing procedure appears to be going well in the next couple of weeks, I theoretically could find some short-term, furnished housing in San Diego and basically move there until I either land the job or not. If I don’t land the job though, I would then find myself in a very awkward living position. I’m sure I would be paying a premium for the furnished housing and any lease that I would need to have signed to live there is also an unknown. Would I need to break it? I would most definitely need to be moving – probably back to Michigan – although I would be lower on funds and less likely to be able to arrange for a buddy to join me on my trip this time … most people do have lives they need to lead and don’t have unlimited free-time…

I don’t know … maybe I’m making a mountain out of a molehill here. To be honest, I’m expecting this upcoming interview to go down in flames. Several other interviews I’ve had this last year – which, by the way, seemed to go just fine – ended up becoming nothing. Why am I thinking this one’ll be any different? I initially thought it was for a position that a former colleague of mine gave me a referral for – it wasn’t. It’s actually for one of the other positions that I applied to at the same company – different location, different hiring manager, no referrals. I’m not giving it high odds of working out. Maybe that’s for the best. The more I think about it, the more heading home and finding a job where I can just eke out a living sounds like the best plan. Granted, I won’t be raking in nearly as high a salary; however, I’m giving up on the whole idea of becoming rich. Who needs the headaches, right…?

I guess I’ll see where this goes in the next couple of weeks. Nothing's ever simple anymore. This adulting thing is anything but what was expected when I was a child.

bis später,

Coriolis

That Was Stupid...

2018-09-01T22:40:00.000-07:00

Well, that’s done. One mid-life crisis completed. Did I learn anything? Perhaps… Was it anything useful? Nope. What it was – and still is – was an idiot (me) throwing away some forty-plus years of life on a completely misguided attempt to become something I’m not and, after trying, don’t ever want to be. The result of this is that I have now become exactly what I now am, nobody.

About a half year ago, I moved into my buddy’s apartment in California. The idea was that I would be able to get back into the career I basically abandoned some five years ago. The horrible job I left and the douche-bag of a boss that forced me out are just side stories that I won’t bother to mention here; the point being that I made the choice then to throw away my 20-years of professional experience. To be honest, I figured that I would be able to use that experience to get back into my field of expertise later if what I was attempting didn’t pan out. Boy was I wrong… Moving back to California was a way to get closer to where most of the jobs doing what I know are located. Granted I’m living in southern California and most of the work for my skillset is up in The Valley (the Silicon one…), however I figured it would be better than having a Nevada address. Turns out it really doesn’t matter. With a four-plus year hole in your resume, you could be living in a company’s actual building and they wouldn’t bother considering you for any open positions they might have. You are un-hirable.

I was, with the help of my buddy, able to pick up a bit of contract work here in the L.A. area. I mistakenly saw that as a positive thing. Made a bit of money and got the opportunity to hone my skills a bit with some technology a bit more advanced than I had on my resume at the time. Turns out I was wrong about that as well. The company I worked with was flaky as they come. I was actually visiting their office once when, on no less than two occasions, they refused to answer the door when people were knocking. I don’t know why they didn’t answer however I saw how tense the employees got when the knocks were heard and distinctly remember the boss telling everyone not to answer the door. As far as my interaction with them went, it was basically them giving me the inputs I needed and me completing the work requested. I constantly attempted to discuss the work with them but was basically ignored and had to figure out everything on my own. There was literally no professional interaction between us other than a bare minimum. A complete month had passed after delivering my work before they told me that we were done and asked me to return the equipment they loaned me (well, I had to inquire several times as to what was happening and whether they wanted their equipment returned before they finally said we were finished) and they never even looked at what I had delivered – I asked… I’m still quite baffled as to what all that was about. It wasn’t anything I could use other than, as mentioned earlier, the pay. Having such a short contract job on my resume after a four-and-a-half-year sabbatical actually looks more suspicious than positive. I successfully completed the contract without issue, however it does still look suspicious…

So, this brings us to today. I have been keeping a detailed spreadsheet on all of the jobs I’ve been applying for in these last nine months – more than 150 different positions with over 90 different companies and recruiters. I’ve had a few interviews that all seemed to go well although they’ve all gone mute. I’ve heard nothing back from any of them even after sending post-interview inquiries. It’s like I never existed. Makes me wonder why they bothered getting in touch with me in the first place…? Was it some kind of sadistic game? Granted a couple of those interviews were with people that didn’t notice the hole in my resume until I was basically forced to point it out to them during the conversation. The tone of the interview consistently changed at that point and I knew I had no chance. 20 years of experience means nothing then…

I am currently trying to move back in with my parents. My savings are most definitely not what they used to be – I will admit that I lost a large chunk playing poker for four years – and there is absolutely no way I could afford an apartment here in sunny Santa Monica without any income. I very much doubt I would be able to obtain a lease. I’m pretty sure they’re expecting a tenant to be able to show steady income no matter how high their credit score may be. No, I need to move back home. Housing is much cheaper in Michigan – free if I move back in with the parents for a while – and my buddy’s kicking me out. Not that I blame him – I never expected to be here this long. Hindsight being what it is, I never should have moved in with my buddy. Sure, as far as Santa Monica rents are concerned, he gave me a great deal (no, I wasn’t living here for free…) and I honestly thought I would be able to land a steady job by now; unfortunately, the world appears to have had other plans for me. All I know is that moving back home directly from Nevada would have been so much easier than what I currently face. What I’m dealing with now is a nightmare…

I’m actually half-way done with my move out of Nevada. I chose a moving company, had them empty out my apartment in Nevada and put my stuff in storage (for a monthly fee that I am currently still paying) until I was able to acquire an apartment in California that they would then deliver my possessions to. It’s all described in the paperwork/emails that I have. I then loaded up my car with a selection of my clothing, a couple of my guitars, my laptop computer and a bunch of things I thought would be useful and drove to my buddy’s. So now I have a few problems. I now need to get myself and all the crap I took to my buddy’s over to my parent’s house in Michigan. I’m also planning on driving my 16-year-old car for this trip. The same car I drove to my buddy’s apartment from Nevada; however, Nevada to California isn’t quite the same as California to Michigan. I’ve done my best in keeping my car as pristine as possible but it is still 16 years old – you never know, right…? And if I load it up with all the crap I drove to California, it’s basically a target for theft anywhere I stop on my trip. And what about the crap I have stored in Nevada (at the moving company that, by the way, was sold to new owners a couple months ago)? Will they be able to deliver to Michigan once I get an apartment there (assuming I’ll be able to get that all figured out…)? Everything is a huge mess now!

I’ll say this much, “I never thought my life would be what it has become.” I’m basically homeless, jobless and pathetic. Thinking of shipping the guitars to Michigan, flying a buddy out from Michigan, loading up my car (without the guitars it shouldn’t be too bad) and cruising Route 66 with my buddy from Santa Monica to Chicago then driving home from there. Fuck it, might as well make an adventure out of this madness. I’ll deal with the crap in storage sometime later…

bis später,

Coriolis

Warning: Poker Story!

2016-02-12T18:29:00.000-08:00

Playing $2/$5 NL Hold'em with $500 of the $1500 I profited a couple days ago at the same game. Wasted $400 of that profit (and 9 and a half hours of my life) playing the first ever 'DoubleStack' Deepstack Extravaganza tournament ever at the Venetian yesterday. Don't know if I mentioned this before, but I HATE tournaments at the Venetian. Think yesterday may have been my last Venetian tournament - I'll stick with the Wynn...

But I digress ... this story is about my day, today, at the Bellagio. As I said, I went in with $500 - pretty much the least and most I ever bring to play $2/$5 NL at the Bellagio. It's the cap on their game and the most I'm willing to lose in one day so it's become a standard play of mine. I buy 3 stacks of red chips (60 $5 chips) and 2 blacks ($100 chips). I put the blacks in my pocket and sit down with the three red stacks. The idea here is that $300 is plenty to play with; and, if my luck goes as usual and a freaking donkey kicks me early, I can leave with the $200 and not make my day a complete bust. If, however, I’m playing and unable to accumulate any chips but don’t bust; I have extra resources in my pockets. If I’m not winning, I keep my playable chips on the table around $300 by adding a black whenever I drop down to near $200 on the table. I can do this twice to extend my play although each time it’s done, I’m basically risking $100 more for my total daily loss. If I drop to around $250 after the second black chip is in use, I leave. It’s a good system and it has saved me a somewhat substantial amount of money since I’ve been actually sticking to it…

Now granted, today is a Friday. Weekends are dangerous when it comes to these lower-stake poker games. Dangerous, and for some, quite profitable. You see, it’s the weekends when you see all the tourists gambling away the money they’ve earned prior to their much anticipated ‘Vegas Vacation’ where they’ve planned to hit it big in a poker game or two. They’ve done the research. They’ve all read “Super System” and have watched many many hours of poker on their idiot boxes. Rest assured that each and every one of them honestly believes that they are the greatest, most proficient and completely unbeatable poker player ever to walk this Earth. In other words, it’s an absolute plethora of donkeys here in Vegas on a weekend. This, of course, is seen by some professional poker players as candy for the taking; although I, myself, see it as more of a problem. My reasoning for this is that one or two donkeys at your table can be quite profitable - they’re going to make the mistakes you want made and call your huge bets when you trap them. When you get too many donkeys, it becomes more of a challenge to get to the heads-up battle you need to be in where pushing them to make these mistakes is viable. Donkeys have a real bad habit of sticking around regardless of their hand strength. It’s dangerous to push in a huge bet when the possibility exists that more than one donkey will call you. Each call, no matter how improbable the draw is, decreases the odds of your hand holding up. You want to make sure that there’s only one fool calling with his improbable draw against you – that’s how you maximize your chances…

On a Friday, though, things don’t really get too out of control until later in the afternoon. If you get there before noon, you’re usually guaranteed a few hours of play before the madness ensues. I arrived at 11:30am today.

As soon as I arrived, a brand new $2/$5 NL Hold’em table was started. This is exactly how I like to start things off – a new table where nobody is sitting with a huge stack. I’m quite often the only one sitting with less than $500 on the table, but that’s okay – it’s not a problem if I play smart…

I quickly made an assessment of the table. It was about half filled with locals (or at least people I’ve seen before) and the rest were unknowns. Two of the locals I knew were basically “Super System” players (aka betters/gamblers – an over-simplification I admit, however these players often play bets rather than cards…) and I was able to use this knowledge to my advantage early on and quickly turned my $300 stack into a bit over $500. I still had the two reserve black chips in my pocket as well. It was a good start to my day. However, as is far too often the case for me, the cards just went dead. In approximately 2½ hours, I had already resorted to the black chip additions twice. I was getting my second wind though and was able to get my table stack-size back up to a bit under $500. During this 2½ hour period, a new player joined our table. I was paying close attention to this guy as he quickly started showing obvious signs of being a donkey. He was consistently raising pre-flop and betting amounts that were almost always too large for the situation. I rather quickly targeted him for a take-down. All I needed to do was wait for the correct spot and I was sure I could get him to double me up. Hell, he initially sat down with $500 and had to re-buy for another $500 after donking-off his entire stack to the lady sitting next to me. She knew what she was doing as well … that poor donkey should NOT have been sitting at our table…

I got dealt a pair of K’s in the big-blind. After a couple limp-ins, my target raised to $15 (as I said earlier, NOT a surprise – he was always raising pre-flop…) and three other players called his raise. When the bet got to me, I raised to $75 (basically a pot-sized raise) in the hope that my target would re-raise me. I figured my bet would most likely get everyone else out and it did; everybody folded but my target – he just called. He didn’t raise, but that was okay – he called.

Flop comes 4-4-8 rainbow. Now I’m first to act and would usually bet that flop heads-up holding K’s however I’m pretty sure this other guy will bet – donkeys always do. Sure enough, after I check the flop, my opponent makes a huge bet. It wasn’t quite pot-sized but looked to me like about $150. My response to his obvious mistake was to instantly push all-in. Granted, he might be holding a 4 but that seemed quite unlikely to me even for a donkey. I figured he was probably holding a couple face cards or possibly an A-something; either way, I was pretty sure I had him beat and sprung my trap. He appeared a bit shaken by my push and even asked me if I was holding J’s. Of course I responded that we’re not allowed to discuss hand contents and left it at that. I knew I had him now and was just hoping he’d call.

A few more seconds passed and he tossed a chip out signifying a call. I then showed my K’s followed by him showing his Q-8 and doubling me up! Boom, it’s just that easy!

Unfortunately, for me, it’s never that easy … and I mean never. Everything stated above is correct except for the part where this donkey doubled me up. That didn’t happen. Yeah, I showed my K’s and this idiot was holding a Q-8; however the dealer dealt the turn and river. The turn, mind you, was a fuckin’ 8! Once again, I got to play the part of the poor sap feeding the donkeys. This idiot knew I had a pair and even went so far as asking if they were J’s. What did he think – that I made a huge pre-flop bet with a pair lower than 8’s that weren’t 4’s then check-raised him all-in after the flop?!?! Yeah, he probably did think that – that’s what he would have done… And that, after all, is what I was counting on! I wanted him to make a stupid mistake and he did. I wanted him to risk damn near $500 on an 8.603% chance of winning and he did. (Well, to be honest, I wanted him to be drawing dead and call; however I’ll take a 91.397% chance of doubling up any time I can get it…)

I honestly don’t know why my luck is so rotten so often. I’m not playing too many hands – that could account for a seemingly high number of bad beats … but I often go hours at a time without getting involved in any hands at all. I really just cannot understand how often it is that I lose when the odds have been shown to be strongly in my favor. Isn’t that basically the object of the game – to only play the hands that you’re a strong favorite to win? Shouldn’t that, over time, result in more wins than losses? Who’s responsible for this whole “probabilities and statistics” racket and could I please get a word with him? I’m not at all satisfied with the results I’m seeing…

bis später,

Coriolis

Curses!

2015-10-28T19:54:00.000-07:00

Played a tournament today. Wasn’t going to; however I played yesterday (same tournament, two ‘Day 1’s) and was upset enough by my poor play that I figured I pretty much owed it to myself to put things right. You see, yesterday I made the amateur mistake of over-playing a posh A-J in diamonds on an A-5-7 flop (rainbow, one diamond). Guy under the gun bet it rather large and I min-raised it. He quickly pushed all-in and I, like a special-needs student, quickly called. Granted, that was stupid – basically the only hand I beat there was A-10. My opponent proceeded to show his hole cards – A-5. Suffice it to say that I missed my 3-outer on both the turn and river. To add insult to injury, the turn – although not the J I was looking for – was in fact a diamond. This actually brought my number of outs for the river up from 3 to 12 as any diamond would have flushed me. The river was one of the other 32 cards that made my hand a loser. You see that’s what happens to me when I play poorly – I lose! Unfortunately, if the roles had been reversed there, something tells me I still would have lost. Don’t know if it would have been the runner-runner diamonds or a J showing up, but the poker gods would have done one or the other. That’s just the way the “luck” aspect of the game works for me. It’s this damn curse I appear to be carrying around with me.

Now granted, the above hand wasn’t the hand that knocked me out of the tournament yesterday; however it was the hand that crippled me beyond repair. Don’t rightly recall whether this was during level 1 or 2 but I do rightly recall that I was eliminated prior to level 2 completing. There’s really not much worse than getting crippled so early in a tournament. Granted, the blinds are still relatively small, but the path ahead to success is so long that you’re going to have to do something to re-build your stack quickly else blinding-out becomes an issue as the blinds steadily increase. For you see, everyone else sitting at your table notices your situation and they’re most definitely going to make you pay to see anything. You’re forced to rely on pure luck in this situation; and luck and I don’t seem to be getting along these days…

So I headed back this morning (well, noon, actually) to see if I could redeem myself. I was not going to make any bone-head, amateur mistakes today. I was going to play smart and let my skills overcome the issue I’m having with luck. That was the plan… If you continue reading, you’ll discover how well it worked for me. Spoiler alert: it didn’t!

As seems to be standard with me, the hand that crippled me today came early as well. It was in level 2 where the blinds were a mere 100/200. That’s quite small in these “deep stack” tournaments as each player starts the game with 15,000 in chips. As it was only level 2, both me and my nemesis where approximately hovering around that starting stack-size. I was dealt a K-J, posh – both hearts. I was also sitting on the button which, of course, gave me final play for any action post-flop. Everyone else folded around to me so I decided to put a bit of pressure on the blinds and made a standard raise to 600. This, of course, steals the blinds (granted, a mere 300) if neither call; however it also gives me information if either chooses to make the call. Granted, this early, and with the blinds being as small as they are, the information obtained isn’t very meaningful; however you’re pretty certain that your complete garbage hands won’t be making the call. It’s just not worth risking 6 times or 3 times your already forced bet for a chance to win such a small pot. The small blind folded. The big blind called.

So now there’s 1,300 in the pot. I’m sitting with a K-J of hearts and my opponent is sitting with an A-10 of diamonds. Of course I did not know that he was sitting with that hand but, to help clarify the story for you, the reader, I’m going to let you know early what I was up against. It was an A-10 of diamonds.

Flop comes Q of diamonds, 10 of hearts and 5 of hearts. This, of course, gives my opponent second pair with three diamonds to the nut flush. It also gives me an open-ended straight draw with four hearts to the second nut flush. Those are both pretty decent hands. My hand, although behind to the second pair, is actually much better as a drawing hand. There are eight cards that fill my straight (four 9’s and four A’s). The observant reader will see that this number is actually seven being that one of the A’s is in my opponents hand; however, I did not know that and my calculations are being written as I was calculating them during the game. Besides the eight for my straight, there are seven cards that make my flush. There’s actually nine, but the 9 of hearts and A of hearts are already accounted for in the outs for the straight. That gets me to 15 cards that make my hand a winner. Now, if I want to be a bit optimistic, I could also include the three K’s that would give me an over-pair to the board which would increase my number of outs to 18. With and without the K’s I’m looking at a winning draw percentage of 60-72% – better than a coin-toss either way.

My opponent, however, does not know what I am holding and needs to make his decisions based on “his” hand alone. As I said, his hand is also pretty decent. He’s already got a made hand of second pair with the 10’s. He most likely also believes that he’s got outs with the two 10’s that would make him a set as well as the three A’s that would give him 2-pair. Of course we already know that the A’s are bad for him as they fill my straight; however he is not aware of this. He also might be able to see that he’s got a slim chance (approximately 1-in-25) of drawing the runner-runner diamonds to complete his nut flush. As a matter of fact, many players over-value this rarity and play it as if it were destined to happen. These players are correctly designated as the “donkeys.” They can be dangerous at times… He does, however, have the pair of 10’s and decides to bet 1,100 – basically a pot-sized bet.

Now, since I pretty much know where I stand here – even if he flopped a set, I’m still a 3-to-2 advantage at drawing a hand that beats him – I min-raise the bet to 2,200. This should give him some pause with his second pair. I just raised his pot-sized bet on a flop with a Q and two hearts. He thinks about this raise for a minute or so and then calls.

So now the pot’s at 5,700. The turn is then dealt – a 9 of diamonds. Interestingly enough, my opponent decides to check his bet here. Most likely it was because of my raise on the flop. Perhaps he was concerned that I might have hit a straight with that 9 (which, of course, I did – the nut straight) and didn’t want to risk betting his pair of 10’s again even though he was also now looking at a river-draw to the nut flush. Or, as it probably actually was, he was trying to set a trap for me. It’s only a 20% chance to draw the flush; however donkeys are donkeys – why worry about probabilities…?

I bet 3,000. I’m currently holding the nuts. It is impossible for my opponent to be holding a made hand that beats me. I’m concerned by the two diamonds on the board but really can’t fathom anyone calling my flop raise with the intention of drawing a runner-runner flush. I mean that would be just stupid, right…? Besides, even if I am up against a donkey here he’s still a 4-to-1 underdog at hitting a diamond on the river. And heck, to justify a call like that, the pot would need to be 15,000 as opposed to the 8,700 I’ve just made it. Granted, a K on the river could be trouble as well. That would give anyone holding an A-J a “Broadway” which, of course, would actually beat my K-high straight. Either way I’m pretty sure he’s not calling…

Without any thought, whatsoever, he calls my 3,000 chip bet. So the pot has now grown to 11,700 and the river is dealt – a fucking K of diamonds! I mean sweet Jesus, no worse card could have been played. Now I get to worry about both the flush and the “Broadway” beating what was, prior to the river, my nut straight. It’s here that my opponent bets 6,600.

I find this bet interesting as it is the perfect bet to justify his call of my 3,000 on the turn if he were drawing for the flush. It basically gives him his needed 5-to-1 payout on his 1-in-5 odds. It’s also an excellent bluff for the exact same reason. After contemplating this for a bit and concluding that an A-J would not have thrown a pot-sized bet on the flop and that my flop raise and turn bet would have gotten rid of any non-donkey runner-runner draws, I incorrectly make the call. Boom! Just like that, I’m crippled … sitting with less than 1/3 my starting stack as those around me are steadily chipping up.

I was able to survive a bit into level 5; even managed to grow my stack back to near 18,000 for a bit. In the end though, it wasn’t enough. The tilt the above hand put me on was too much for me to get over. I don’t know … seems to me that I’m playing a constant tilt. It’s this damn curse, I tell ya!

bis später,

Coriolis

Hey Car ... Kill Me

2015-10-16T15:29:00.001-07:00

Has this world – or, at least, this country – lost its mind completely? With all this investment that many companies are putting into autonomous (aka “self-driving”) cars these days, I’m going with an answer of “Hell yeah!” Let’s step out of the Jetsons bubble … oh wait, the Jetsons, a cartoon from the 1960’s mind you, aren’t even absurd enough to have George mindlessly abandon all control of his car – a flying one at that – to the unknown whims of said vehicle… I guess we need to step out of the Google bubble to actually discuss the pure absurdity that truly autonomous vehicles would be. I’ll lead the way; come along and join me.

For starters, when was the last time you eagerly threw down way too much money for the latest, greatest piece of technology; brought said purchase home; eagerly tore through the packaging and were delighted to have this new, “can’t live without” toy work flawlessly as expected upon its first boot? “Never” is the word you’re looking for here; and that’s because in today’s world nothing technologically advanced enough to become a needed life changer is ever really complete. What we always get is, at best, a beta version released to the public in an effort to avoid financial collapse of a company that has already spent multiple times the estimated development cost pulled out of thin air by said company’s marketing department back when the initial idea of the product being developed was nothing more than a brain-fart in some forward-looking engineer’s mind. Any bugs that still exist can be fixed with future software updates. Just look at the amount of updates that are constantly being delivered to your PC’s operating system; your cell phone; your watch! (Well, “your” watch I’m guessing as I have not bought into – nor will ever buy into – the idea that I need to have a doppelganger of my cell phone strapped to my wrist. The effort it takes to slide my existing cell phone from my back pocket isn’t that cumbersome…) And it’s perfectly fine to be running advanced beta versions of software on a computer or phone, but a freaking automobile? I think not!

“It’s a shame that your daughter was killed by your car but I’ve heard that the next update is going to fix that bug. In fact, rumor has it that you’ll also be getting a 10 MPG increase in fuel economy; so that’s good.” Could you imagine…?

I mean just contemplate the seemingly endless variables that we would be relying on programs to be able to deal with. You’ve got a several thousand pound mass capable of reaching speeds greater than 100 MPH traveling on a multitude of surfaces. Inside said mass is you; your friends; maybe even your family. Outside said mass is the world and everything that the freaking world contains. The first thing that needs to be done is that we need to have these vehicles selectively start to ignore things. It’s done by having these vehicles sense things nearby. Yeah, it’s a race to have one company’s vehicle able to sense more than its competitors; however the truth of what’s happening here is that each company is really making a decision as to what their car is going to be ignoring. Let’s hope that all the companies working on these cars choose wisely. Let’s also hope that the devices used to sense things work flawlessly. Oh wait, what am I thinking? I’ve never had to repair any malfunctioning parts on any car I’ve ever owned. They’ve always worked exactly the same as the day I drove them off the lot.

And, in today’s world of ever-growing legal dockets, who do we blame for the accidents that are sure to ensue after literally millions of these soulless beasts are set free upon the roads? Do we go after the owners of these cars? The manufacturers? The governmental entities that were stupid enough to allow this madness to even happen? That’ll be a mess for sure. I foresee customers being forced to sign away legal rights during purchase much like HOAs currently force homebuyers to sign now. People will need to procure the services of a notary public, sit down with their salesman and sign several papers of legalese in order to be allowed to have their new car drive them home. Well hidden in these documents will be multiple statements alleviating both the manufacturer and sales entities from any and all future lawsuits brought forth from the destruction caused by the vehicle being purchased. At least that way nobody will have to worry about company profits getting affected by anything as silly as people getting killed.

If only there were an alternative way to allow people to get from one place to another that didn’t require us to risk our lives on whether or not our car’s software was 100% bug-free, all possible variables were contemplated and covered in the coding of this software and all hardware associated with the correct execution of this code was working flawlessly … if only…

bis später,

Coriolis

It Ain't Easy

2015-09-08T23:19:00.000-07:00

The blog… I used to enjoy writing little articles for this basically unread blog. Haven’t done it for quite some time … a bit over five years to be more precise. Had a bad day at the poker table today and figured I’d share my sorrow. No better way to do that than post it on a blog that nobody reads, right?

First off, a bit of background to explain exactly why I was sitting at a poker table at the Bellagio here on this Tuesday after Labor Day: You see, it was close to a year and a half ago that I decided to do something quite daring; something rather adventurous; something a decent amount of people want to attempt but never actually pull off … something freaking stupid – I moved to Las Vegas (Henderson, actually; although I am only a 15-miute drive from the infamous “strip”…) and became a self-proclaimed professional poker player. There were multiple reasons that contributed to this decision although I really do need to admit that, after all is said and done, it appears to be no more than the mid-life crisis so often heard of but rarely believed. Doesn’t matter much now how this happened – the fact of the matter is this is where I am…

Been doing this for quite some time now. So far it’s not quite working out the way I was

hoping. In fact, it’s just not working at all. I burned completely through my initial poker bankroll about a month ago – completely. Any poker I now play is dipping into “my” money. Yeah, I realize that the bankroll I started with was also my money; however that was accounted for separately from the money I have been using to live off. It – the bankroll – is gone now. This has changed everything. The hours of poker that I now play are miniscule compared to what I was doing with the still intact bankroll. It’s extremely difficult to justify risking money after seeing what became of the bankroll I began with. But it’s poker. I know poker. I’ve read the books, seen the shows (oh, by the way, watching poker on TV is going to do nothing but hurt your actual game … few realize this…) and am quite proficient at calculating hand odds. Hell, I’ve got a Bachelor of Science in engineering. I know probability and statistics. That, unfortunately, just doesn’t seem sufficient to get around this bastard concept known to many as luck. Take today’s play as an example…

I bought into a standard $2/$5 no-limit cash game for $500. Interestingly enough, this is the cap on the $2/$5 game at the Bellagio. It’s also why I play the $2/$5 game at the Bellagio. You see, you can play a $2/$5 NL game pretty much anywhere in Vegas. Even the jackpot houses (basically all casinos except for the main four poker casinos – the Aria, Bellagio, Venetian and Wynn) offer a $2/$5 NL game although it’s rare to see them running apart from weekends at these casinos. The main four always have $2/$5 NL games running. The buy-in cap (maximum amount of money a new player can join a table with) for most $2/$5 NL games is $1000. That even includes the jackpot houses although I never (well, very rarely) play jackpot houses to avoid paying larger rakes to cover jackpots that I’m never going to win – I stick with the main four and play only for the poker winnings. The Aria and Venetian cap their $2/$5 NL games at $1000. The Wynn caps it at $1500. The Bellagio, unexpectedly, caps their game at $500. It’s personal taste, but I prefer playing a game where the rich (and there are a LOT of rich people in Vegas) can’t sit down with a stack advantage just because they’re rich. At the Bellagio, you need to earn your stack advantage.

But, once again, I’ve gotten off track a bit. Back to my poker story…

I sat down at a full table (9 people) with $500 in chips. The table apparently had not been running long as nobody was sitting with much more than $500 in their stack. I took this as a good sign – nobody was going to be able to push me out of a hand by “big stacking” me. (“Big stacking” is what I call it when a very large stack pushes a smaller stack all-in, sometimes holding nothing, counting on the small stack not wanting to go broke. It’s a dangerous play, but you’d be amazed at how often it’s attempted – mainly due to people watching too much poker on TV…) I noticed that the current big stack – had slightly less than $600 – was playing rather loose. That basically explains why he was big stack at that point as loose play can sometimes work to a player’s advantage but rarely brings in more than stealing the blinds. Whatever the case was before I came to this table, I made note of this guy’s play and basically watched him dwindle back down to near $500 before I got into a hand against him. I was sitting on the button and got dealt a Q-8 off-suit. Not a great hand, but not a bad hand either – one hand better than the “Computer Hand” (Q-7) which is, statistically speaking, the weakest hand that has an advantage in heads-up against any other random hand. I was able to limp-in with my hand (nobody raised pre-flop) and see the flop – Q-J-8. The guy that was playing loose then bet $30 and everyone else folded to me. I raised to $60. The loose player thought for about 10 seconds then pushed all-in. This, of course, would put me all-in if I called – a total of $470 counting the $60 I had already bet. After little thought, I called. Yeah, he could have flopped a set if he were holding J’s in the hole; but, due to the play I’d witnessed thus far, I put him on a Q-A. I was wrong, but I was pretty sure he wasn’t holding wired J’s.

The dealer then dealt the turn and river – an A on the turn which scared the crap out of me and some useless river that I don’t even remember. My opponent than shows his hole cards – J-8. I then turn over my cards and double-up my stack. Not a bad start to my day. This all happened within the first 15 minutes of my sitting down. Just like that I am now the table big-stack by around a 2-to-1 margin on all other players. This, unfortunately, is also when things turned on me and my far too often bad luck came roaring back in. That was the last hand I would win today…

I basically lost all of the near $1,000 I was then sitting with in three hands. They weren’t three hands in a row – there were several hands that I didn’t play or just lost minimum bets with – but these three losses are what killed me. All-in-all I was sitting at that table for slightly less than one hour in total so the rapidity of these beats should be apparent. A quick double-up and a complete bust in less than an hour. I swear I’m cursed!

The first hand I’m not really that upset with. I lost this hand with bad play. It came down to me holding a straight & flush draw on the turn. My opponent was betting, so I knew I was behind. I also knew that he was getting low on chips so I pushed all-in. This is pretty much what I was talking about earlier with the “big stacking”. If my opponent lost, he would be out of money. If I lost, it would bring me down to around $650 at that time. Also, considering my outs, there were 9 cards that would make my flush and 6 that would make my straight (that’s 4 cards for the top-end of the straight, 4 cards for the bottom minus the two that would make my flush) giving me 15 outs or approximately a 30% chance of hitting what I was pretty sure would be a winner. It’s what’s known as a semi-bluff. I wanted him to fold, but still had an opportunity to win if he called. He called. I missed.

That was me playing a bit looser than usual. That’s why I call it bad play. The problem there was that I don’t know the financial situation that my opponent lives with. He looked to be retired, and the fact that he was playing poker in the middle of the day on a Tuesday just supports that; but this tells me nothing. When I pushed, I believe he was sitting with about $250 that he could have lost. Who knows, this might be nothing to this guy. If he had lost, he may have just shrugged it off and re-bought for another $500. Guess we’ll never know now… Bottom line here was that I was now sitting with about $650. Still more than I originally bought-in with, but I was a bit upset with myself…

The second hand in this trifecta from hell came shortly afterwards… I was dealt K-8 off-suit. A better hand than the one I doubled up with, but that’s insignificant. The flop gave me an 8 but no K. The other two cards were both non-royalty although I don’t remember what they were precisely. Two of the flopped cards were hearts though. Didn’t help me much as neither of my cards was a heart. One guy bets $30 and I call – it’s now heads-up. Turn comes – insignificant, not a heart. My opponent bets $100 into about a $75 pot – signaling to me that he does not want me to call. I think about this bet for a bit and come to the conclusion that he’s probably semi-bluffing a flush draw making my pair of 8’s likely the best hand. If I am correct, I’m currently sitting as a 4-to-1 advantage against his flush draw so I decide to make a stand and push all-in. This is very similar to the semi-bluff play I mentioned above with the roles reversed. If, however, I was correct in my reasoning; my opponent this time had about 10% less probability of making his hand than I had above. He calls and I discover that I actually was correct – all he had was a flush draw. The river comes – a K! Unfortunately, it was the K of hearts… Boom! Just like that I’m down to $150…

The final hand of the day is the worst yet. I’m dealt a “Big Slick” (A-K) and flop an A-K-4. Dude bets $30, I raise to $100, dude calls. Turn comes – nothing important. I check, dude checks. That’s basically where I screwed up as I should have bet; however I’m pretty sure the end result would have been the same as I wasn’t going to get this guy to fold 2-pair with my measly stack… River’s shown – a 4. I push all-in – a whole $50 or so – and am instantly called. My opponent turns over his A-4 and takes the rest of my money. Now, if you were paying attention there, you would realize that I lost that last hand by having my opponent hit one of only two cards that would save him on the river – a less than 5% chance of happening!

Now if any one of those three hands went my way, my day would have gone completely differently. Most importantly are the first two as winning either of those would have stacked me up quite well. The third was just adding insult to injury. The worst part about this is that, hind-sight being 20/20, I played the last two hands perfectly and just got very unlucky. It’s even arguable as to whether or not I played the first of these three losers correctly although, as I explained above, I think I messed that one up.

All I know is that I completely understand how this damn poker game is often described as the hardest way to make money easily…

bis später,

Coriolis

Woohoo! I’m Old

2010-08-25T15:17:00.000-07:00

The first memory I have of my life is a pretty simple one. I was bouncing around our little backyard – I think I was swinging myself around this single T-pole (used to hold one’s laundry lines for drying one’s laundry – usually seen in pairs; however there was only one in our backyard…) that we had (I’m pretty sure, if you head on over to my parent’s house today, you’ll still see this pole standing in the backyard … I think it’s green…) – chanting, “I’m gonna be four … I’m gonna be four” in that sing-song style that cute, little children often use. I’m not sure exactly why I was doing this although I’d bet it had something to do with my brother either turning, about to turn, or having just recently turned five. You see, my brother’s a year older than me; however, there’s a 19-day period each year where – strictly in terms of whole numbers – he ends up being two years older than me. Was he (my brother, that is) perhaps teasing me about only being three…? I suppose my mom then informed me that I would soon be turning four and I guess I was so happy about that fact that I decided to run outside and sing it to the world. As everyone already knows, basically by living through those years first-hand, that’s just the way life is. When you’re young, getting older is a good thing. I turn 40 today…

I have absolutely no plans for my birthday. I’m currently at work – most likely be here ‘til six or seven … although I did actually drive to work today so I “could” leave whenever. I usually commute via bus but decided to avoid the hassle today. Of course this means that today is one of the more rare days where I will not be forcing myself to walk the 1.3 miles to and from the bus stop; or, to put it more succinctly, won’t be exercising. That’s not good. I need the exercise. It doesn’t seem to be working (at all, actually) as I’m not getting any of those unexpected surprises that started becoming commonplace when I was living in Germany – little things like needing to purchase jeans that wouldn’t slide off whilst I was walking. Granted, I’ve only been walking everywhere (well, not “everywhere” but most places) for about four months here in California; but I’ve noticed absolutely nothing. There have been a couple people that said I appeared to be losing weight although I attribute those instances to what I was wearing. I get to see the completely unadulterated me in the mirror each and every morning and the image hasn’t changed a bit – even I wouldn’t fuck me and my standards aren’t very high…

But, as is usual with my messed up little mind, I have once again veered off topic. Perhaps that’s just one of the side effects of my advanced age…? Sounds a bit like senility to me… Okay, so what was I talking about again???

Oh yeah, it’s my birthday. It’s my birthday and, other than the spattering of “Happy Birthdays” that I’ve received, it’s just another day; but, to me at least, that really is all it is – just one more day closer to death. Now I do realize that most people, on their birthdays, still try to treat them like they’re something special … even if their “good” years are long behind them. In fact, it’s usually the friends of these poor chumps that try to turn the day into a grand occasion – often at the satirical expense of the “guest of honor” resulting in amusement and hilarity being enjoyed by all in attendance. But I have no worry of that happening. I really don’t have any friends here in California … at least not anymore – I used to think I had one but she’s since clearly made it known that I was mistaken.

No … I know how my day’s going to end up. I’ll be heading back to my apartment after I decide to leave work (where, by the way, I’m doing nothing more than making an appearance – there’s really nothing productive that I can do here as we don’t even have the correct models needed … believe me, I could be just as productive from my apartment…) and spending my evening watching the latest NetFlix DVD that I got – Dr. Katz (Disc 4, Season 3). I’ve got about half of the Smirnoff Ice variety pack that I bought a few days ago as well as close to a full pack of Marlboro Light 100’s (and I thought I had that nasty habit beat a couple months ago…) so I guess good times are just-a-waitin’. Woohoo…

Happy birthday to me … I guess…

bis später,

Coriolis

My 2010 W.S.O.P. Story

2010-06-22T15:46:00.000-07:00

I’m back in California; touched down Saturday afternoon; woke up early that morning in my suite at the Rio. I finished my first trip to the World Series of Poker a bit lighter in my net worth however quite a bit more experienced with this game called poker… It was an interesting trip…

Now don’t get me wrong – I did not play the “Main Event” … that doesn’t even begin until early next month. I did, however – as mentioned in my last blog – enter into the WSOP #30 Tournament – a $1500 buy-in, no-limit Hold’em tournament scheduled to run for three days (last Wednesday through Friday). Unfortunately for me, it was over in about 3 hours and 15 minutes. I was eliminated not long after the first break…

I was a bit bummed out; mainly because I had nobody to blame but myself. I’ll be the first to admit that I played my cards (as horrible as they were) poorly and basically bust out of the tournament on some very questionable maneuvers. I ended up losing it all attempting to avoid becoming a rather early short-stack forgetting the well-known adage, “It’s a marathon, not a sprint.” I doubt I’ll be making that mistake again anytime soon…

I arrived in Vegas early Tuesday evening – flew jetBlue from Burbank to Vegas. This was a great idea as flying out of Burbank ended up being so much nicer than flying from LAX. First off, the 45 minute flight only ran me $125 round-trip. Now that’s a bargain! The best part of it, however, was the lack of crowd at the Bob Hope Airport. I’m sure the fact that it was a Tuesday afternoon had a lot to do with the smaller crowds; however every time I’ve flown out of LAX has been a madhouse. Flying out of Burbank actually felt like air travel used to be – simple and easy…

Upon arrival I contacted Sam and let him know I was in town. You see, Sam was there basically for the same reason I was – event #30. He was also staying at the Rio and I figured we could hang out together during this trip – whilst not busy with the tournament that is… He was out having dinner when I arrived so we made plans to meet up a bit later and I hopped on a shuttle for the Rio.

The first thing I did upon arriving at the Rio was get signed-in for the #30 tournament. I needed to get a tournament receipt from one of the official 57 events in order to get the WSOP discount on my suite – brought the price down to $69/night Tuesday through Thursday and $169 for Friday night. I’m actually not sure how much of a savings this is compared to the standard room rates however I do know that it’s $80 less than the pre-entrant rates I was quoted when I booked the room. Whatever the case, I figured it couldn’t hurt. Of course signing up for the tournament required a Harrah’s Total Rewards card … so I guess signing up for the tournament was the second thing I did after obtaining my Total Rewards card (I got the WSOP version).

One thing I’ve got to make perfectly clear to anybody who hasn’t been there – the WSOP is a huge event at the Rio! The entire Convention Way section of the hotel is completely devoted to the World Series. They’ve got tons of tables set up in both the Rio Pavilion and Amazon rooms for the myriad of games always underway, a WSOP store to buy your trinkets and memorabilia, a not-so-spectacular cafeteria for the players to get their much needed nourishment during the oft-time short breaks for food, a “Bad Beat Bar” to help numb the pain when your opponent sucks out on the river and lots of displays of the former year winners and current all-star players. It’s actually quite interesting when you realize that anybody willing to front the buy-in cash can partake in this madness. It’s like being at the Hall of Fame with a ticket to play. Of course I still hadn’t got my ticket … now where, exactly, would one sign up for these games…?

It didn’t take long before I was directed to the registration room. This, of course, is where I paid my $1500 for a buy-in to the no-limit Hold’em tournament scheduled to begin the next day at noon. I then took the small hike back to the hotel registration and checked into my room with the proper receipt for the price reduction, stopped by my room to unpack – of course unpacking my one little duffle-bag didn’t take long – purchased some needed essentials from the gift shop and headed down to Rio’s standard poker room. I figured it wouldn’t be a bad idea to get some practice in the night before my expensive (for me, anyway … the Main Event’s buy-in is ten grand!) tournament started…

Things went pretty well that first night. I sat down at a $1-$3 no-limit Hold’em table with $300. A little while later, Sam arrived and joined me at the same table. It was your standard small-blind, no-limit ring game – a couple “calling stations” that were getting hit in the face with the deck long enough for them to become large stacked, a number of rocks that basically lived there (talking with the dealers like they were long-time buddies…) and Sam and I – patiently waiting to put a hurt on the calling stations… I ended that roller-coaster ride of a night up $225. My patience paid off as I was able to get large sums from both our targets…

Now to briefly diverge from my story, one more bad aspect about me going to Vegas is the urge it gives me to smoke. You see, I quit smoking “cold turkey” last August. And if you know me well enough, you’re well aware of exactly how difficult an accomplishment that actually was. Suffice it to say that last August was NOT a good month for me (nor have been pretty much every month since, but that’s a whole different rant…). The one good thing that came from then was that I actually did quit smoking. Sure, I’ve had this completely unexplainable issue with sporadic claudication since then (very interesting as smoking is listed as a main cause for that … and I had just recently quit…) and my life has become nothing more than an ever-agonizing struggle to pry my pathetic ass out of bed every morning; but at least I quit smoking! I think I burned through a pack a day in Vegas. I gave what I had left (about ¾ of a pack) to some dude that was smoking outside the airport upon leaving and haven’t smoked any since; however the time spent in Vegas was definitely not healthy for me. It’s just so hard to ignore the cute “cigar, cigarette” girls… Now I get to experience the excitement of going “cold turkey” again … nothing like a good challenge, huh…? Anyway, back to what I was originally talking about…

So that first night was a positive sign of good things to come, right…? Well, not exactly. You see, that was the only time I left that poker room in the black. I ended up playing there quite a bit – basically due to the fact that I wasn’t spending nearly as much time as I had hoped in the main tournament I came to play – but, apart from that first night, it always ended up costing me. I will say this: If you go to Vegas, don’t go alone. Being alone in Vegas with nothing to do can become quite expensive. Heck, being in Vegas at all can become quite expensive; but not having someone else there to be a voice of reason can really cost you. Sure, I suppose if I were a normal functioning male of our species, I could spend my free-time (and what I’m sure would end up being some of my money as well…) hitting on the throngs of beautiful women that seem to flock there basically looking to be bad; but, as anyone who knows me knows, I do not possess the required skills. No … what I end up doing is primarily playing poker; and when I’m done with that (usually signaled by losing all the money I sat down with – sometimes a bit more…) perhaps sitting at a penny-slot smoking a cigarette (and I don’t even smoke…) and partaking of as much free booze as I can. Don’t worry … I tip the beer maids…

The next morning I met up with Sam and his roommates for breakfast before the tourney. I believe, if memory serves me correctly, it was somewhere around 10:30 in the morning when we stopped off at the São Paulo Cafe. We got some breakfast, played a couple rounds of pick-20 Keno (Sam and I), paid our bill and picked up our Keno winnings (easily done as there weren’t any…), then headed out for a smoke prior to the start of the tournament. Sam and I parted ways here as I needed to take a leak (I didn’t need to go into the tournament with yet another distraction…) which was fine – I’d see him at the tournament. He was seated at table #70. I was assigned seat 4 on table #64.

I believe it was something like 20 minutes prior to the tournament start when I headed into the Rio Pavilion. Finding my table was easily accomplished and I was quite eager to get this thing started. I took my seat as soon as the announcement for my tournament was aired and chatted it up a bit with my table’s dealer and the dealer of the table directly next to mine (which just so happened to be table #70 – Sam’s table). Upon speaking with these guys, I quickly realized that the quality of dealers found at the WSOP is pretty much a crap-shoot. From what I was told, somewhere around 1000 dealers are brought in from all across the country for this event although that number steadily declines as the event goes forward. Apparently (now this is from the dealers I was speaking with) the pay basically sucks and Harrah’s has a bad habit of cheating the dealers out of the full 70% of the tips that they’re due. This makes it difficult for out-of-town dealers to justify being there as they need to pay for their stay with a large portion of the income received making any profit earned miniscule. Now I have absolutely no way to verify these claims; however this was basically from the horse’s mouth – although I can’t really say how “gruntled” these guys were… I would, however, experience the divergence of quality that such a system creates, first hand, soon enough…

As I mentioned at the beginning of this story, I didn’t last very long in this tournament. I lost all of my 4500 starting chips (please excuse the photos … I only had my phone with me and the camera on my phone sucks…) in a bit over 3 hours. In this short period of time, however, two rather major dealer errors were made on our table – and not too surprisingly, I was involved in both hands… The first faux pas happened very early. Position 1 went “all in” and I called. I don’t remember what the hands were, and it really doesn’t matter – if you’ve heard one “poker story” you’ve heard ‘em all – but the end result was that I won the pot. The error occurred after the hand when the dealer informed the poor guy in position 1 that my chip-stack had him covered. It didn’t – he actually had 200 chips left after the official count however he was never informed of this. He was already up from the table and out the door long before the floor was called over and an announcement was made for “position 1 on table #64” to “please return to your seat”. Not that it mattered too much as he was seriously short-stacked at that point. It was, however, “a chip and a chair” and we all know how that goes, right…?

Now the second blunder came shortly after the first break in play. I was having my usual luck (and admittedly not playing my “A” game) and was quickly becoming quite short. I needed to make a move soon if I wanted any chance to survive the marathon so I pushed “all in” with top-pair and a king kicker. I was called (interestingly enough by position 1 again … different guy, same seat…) and lost – outkicked by an ace – however this guy’s stack didn’t quite have me covered. Now the blunder occurred when the dealer was counting off the chip differential to see exactly how bad off I was. At the end, he sent 150 chips my way and was about to sweep the rest toward position 1 when the guy sitting at seat 2 said that he thought the dealer miscounted. The dealer ignored his plea and swept the pile. I, on the other hand, did not ignore his claim – I was very interested in discovering whether or not this statement was true. It was then that the guy sitting to my left (position 5) also said that he had doubts about the dealer’s count and I was getting less and less happy.

A strange thing occurred then. Position 1 had no problem with attempting to rectify the situation quickly – fair play is fair play, after all… Since nobody was exactly sure how much the count was off, position 1 offered me 300 chips. Position 2 was saying that he thought the dealer was off by somewhere around 500; however I was more than happy to take the 300 and let the game continue – either way I was very short in the tournament and had little hope of surviving much longer. Position 1 offering 300 as a quick solution seemed fair enough for me. However the dude in position 10 basically had a hissy-fit when I accepted the 300 chips offered. He slammed the table with his fist and made some sort of statement that what we were doing somehow was unfair for him. Bear in mind that this guy wasn’t in the hand, his chip stack wasn’t going to be affected in any way and the only thing that was happening was that I was going from 150 in chips to 450 – still very short at this point in the tournament. He, however, wasn’t going to allow this! The end result was that we wasted more of position 10’s time by calling over the floor and “re-playing” the hand. The result of this was that I ended up coming out of this with 750 chips. I’m sure this made position 10 feel much better about his stupidity…

He didn’t need to worry about me for long though; our table was broken down shortly after that fiasco and we were dispersed to separate tables. I still don’t know why that dude was so adamant about my chip-stack size – and I guess I never will – but he was safely away from me and free to get upset with somebody else from that point. I was moved to my final table and, within minutes, eliminated from the tournament.

So I guess I didn’t need the four nights I booked at the Rio. I could have easily flown in the morning of the tournament, dropped $1500 and made it back home in time for supper; but who knew? Ends up I needed to kill two and a half more days in Vegas. It’s a shame there weren’t any poker games to play. Oh wait, what am I talking about – it was the middle of the World Series of Poker – there are constantly games to be played…

One of the best games they had running was this daily Deep-Stack tournament that started at 1:00pm. It was only $200 to buy-in and started you off with 15,000 chips. Other than the large stating chips, the structure was identical to the main event I played with all of the time periods cut in half. It was, at the time, not being capped on number of players and was running through to the wee hours of the next day’s morn. There were over 400 in the Deep-Stack game on the day I played my main event. I would probably have played it after getting knocked out if I hadn’t lasted long enough to miss the buy-in window; however I would now need to wait until Thursday to give the Deep-Stack a shot. I headed back to the regular Rio poker room to waste away the rest of that day…

And waste it away is exactly what I did. I dropped something like $500 playing the $1-$3 no-limit ring game for quite a few hours and then signed up for the nightly turbo tournament that they were running on this set of four or five tables they had set up directly outside of the poker room. The tourney began at 9:00 and, being a turbo tournament, finished something like 3 or 4 hours afterward. It was only $80 to play and I survived to the final two tables. Didn’t make the money, but it was a decent way to eat up the remaining time before hitting the sack. After all, I was planning on playing the Deep-Stack the next day…

I woke the next morning quite early. I believe it was prior to 9:00 when I headed back to the São Paulo Cafe for some breakfast … alone this time. Oh yeah, and if you’re wondering how Sam came out in the tournament, he didn’t make the money either. He did last longer than me – I think it was an hour or two after my elimination when I received his call – but neither of us succeeded in our goal of getting filthy rich by playing a silly game … perhaps next year…? At breakfast, however, my luck seemed to be changing. Since I had time to kill, I picked up a Keno card, marked off three numbers (5,10 and 25) and put $20 down as four $5 rounds. As I was eating my breakfast, I hit all three numbers on the first round; two numbers on rounds 2 and 3; and only hit one on the last draw – I collected $220 for my $20 bet! Not a bad start to the day as I had successfully won my buy-in to the Deep-Stack tournament!

That, unfortunately – apart from the $10 I won at a “Crazy-4 Card Poker” table and the $1.25 I pocketed at the airport playing video poker before my flight home – was the last winnings I would see on this trip. I did decent in the Deep-Stack – lasted 8½ hours getting knocked out just before racing off the black (100’s) chips – but missed the money by less than 70 people – not bad considering 717 people started that tournament… I tried it (the Deep-Stack) again on Friday where they capped the entrants at 200 but only made it 2 hours before being unlucky enough to flop a boat. (Yes, you read that correctly – “unlucky” enough to flop a boat…)

All in all, it was a rather expensive trip for me. I think I’m going to be heading back next year!

bis später,

Coriolis

A Bit of a Funk

2010-06-14T16:00:00.000-07:00

So … a bit of an update on that ever-exciting world of online dating. In one word – useless.

I posted a blog article a few weeks ago that basically outlined my initial attempts at using Chemistry.com to perhaps find a date. I have since tried my best to remain positive and hopeful that the procedure outlined would, in time, produce positive results. Unfortunately, I am now realizing that “positive” results was far too optimistic of an expectation. I have basically been getting somewhat sporadic results in general and the number that I would consider “positive” stills remains zero.

Here’s a warning for anybody that thinks these dating sites are packed with honest-to-goodness real people, like yourself, that are interested in meeting someone new – they’re not. What they are filled with is countless fake identities set up as Internet-fishing schemes. Of course I only have my experience on Chemistry.com to go by; however I’m prone to think that things would be similar at the other sites as well.

Although it took quite a while for the scam responses to start arriving – I had been implementing my routine for over a month prior to the onslaught – they are now hitting my account at a rate of several per day. And they all look pretty much the same. It’s always a “lady” giving some sort of extremely general compliment about my profile followed by some seriously stupid explanation as to why she never logs onto the site and that I should email her at her personal email address (which, by the way is always a {random.crap.name}@yahoo.com). Without fail, these accounts end up becoming “no longer available” in a few days as the scams get reported to Chemistry.com which gets me to wondering why they were sent to me as possible matches to begin with…? Perhaps because I was stupid enough to pay the fee required for a six-month membership at Chemistry.com and they want it to appear that I didn’t waste my money. But I’m not fooled – that money was most definitely wasted.

And speaking of wasting money, I headed back to the Commerce Casino yesterday. On Sundays they have this decent little $65 buy-in tournament (with a $50 re-buy option) that I had played once before. I figured that, if nothing else, it would be a nice little warm up for the WSOP tourney that I’m going to be playing later this week at the Rio in Vegas. Now, granted, the scale of these two tournaments has a large delta (WSOP tourney #30 has 60-minute blind levels, is expecting to be seating over 2000 players and is scheduled as a 3-day tournament whereas the Commerce tournament has 20-minute blind levels, far less than 100 players and will easily finish in one afternoon) however my frequency of playing tournaments has gone down quite a bit since leaving Colorado where I used to waste quite a bit of time at the Denver Poker Tour games. Now the one thing I do know is that playing poker tournaments is like most skills where the finer details can fade with extended down-times. Of course the flip-side of that is also true where too much playing can hurt your play (especially in these low-buy-in tournaments – aka “free-rolls”) but I have no worries about that – I needed the practice as a refresher…

Unfortunately I didn’t get too much practice as flopping two-pair got me knocked out of the tournament right at the end of the first round. I thought the other guy was power-betting a flush draw with the two hearts that hit but was a bit shocked to find out that he was on the flush draw with an already made straight – bad play by me… The flush didn’t hit; unfortunately a straight usually beats two pair in most respectable casinos… Oh well, que sera sera … that’s poker. Unfortunately paying that $115 for the tournament (I did the re-buy right away so was unable to continue after my stupid play) ended up being a complete waste. Not only that, but the money I foolishly spent in a couple ring games before made the day a bit more expensive than I was hoping … but I’m just gonna rack all that crap up as the horrible ending of the horrible weekend I had.

I’m not a big fan of life right now. I sure hope things go a bit better in Vegas…

bis später,

Coriolis

Very (Un)Creative

2010-05-24T15:32:00.000-07:00

A couple days ago I headed down to Universal City (just a quick trip down the Orange Line followed by a one-stop ride on the Red Line … I actually am making use of the EZ Pass I bought…) for a screening of the latest Shrek creation. I believe it’s titled Shrek 4 – The Quest for More Money, or something similar… Not only did I see the flick, but I also paid the premium needed to experience it in IMAX 3D. I now think that I might have been better off saving my $18 and waiting for the DVD (oh wait, Blu-Ray, of course)…

Not that the movie wasn’t visually awe-inspiring; it was. The storyline (and I do realize this is basically a kid’s flick and, admittedly, I was a bit drunk at the time) however seemed way too “cookie cutter” for me. I’m not going to bore you with any review of the flick – there are plenty of those online already; however I am going to give my two-cents on this latest money-making fad that’s hit theaters everywhere – 3D.

It’s rather interesting as 3D has been around for quite some time now. There was a short-lived fad in the early to mid 1950’s and an attempted comeback in the 1960’s that resulted in something like 50 other movies (mostly of the sexploitation variety) being produced; however 3D never caught on as the standard movie-going experience. Perhaps it was the crudeness of the technology back then (the old red/blue 3D glasses); however I think 3D never became the standard for a much simpler explanation – it’s unnecessary. Now that the technology has advanced and the visual aspect has become much more vibrant, the uselessness of this 3D effect is still there…

Now, just to be fare, I’ll let you know that I am not a “normal” person when it comes to 2D vs. 3D. From birth, I have always been quite near-sighted in my right eye. I’m not exactly sure how old I was when I discovered this; but my first pair of eye-glasses were purchased at age 23

when I needed them in order to obtain a driver’s license in Florida. I had been living in Michigan until then and was always able to pass the eye test by explaining my condition; Florida was different. As my optometrist explained to me, I don’t use both eyes to focus when I look at things. My brain has compensated for my right eye near-sightedness by learning to only use the image from one eye to focus. Although my eyes are open and light is being detected by both, my mind is only “paying attention” to the focused image of one eye. And it’s not always the same eye – I can actually make entire pages of text “jump” between two virtual positions just by concentrating and explicitly selecting which eye to use… It’s hard to explain to “normal” people; unfortunately what ends up happening is that I basically have very poor depth perception. And by “very poor” I think it might be none. So basically, the world in general is 2D to me (not that I don’t understand what depth is, I’ve just never “seen” it) which, I suppose, makes me not the best person to be berating this 3D movie technology; however I doubt my opinion would be any different if my eyesight were normal.

You see, the problem I have with all these movies being shot and shown in 3D is that it gives the producers yet one more reason to ignore what should be the most important part of any movie – the story. I mean isn’t that why we go to the movies to begin with – an escape from our mundane lives with the opportunity to spend a couple hours experiencing the lives of others (real or imaginary)? When did we, as a society, decide that all we need from these exploits was bright, flashy colors in 3D? Whatever happened to the import of the story…?

And what the heck is with this latest trend of remaking old movies? They don’t even bother to change the names anymore. Oh look, The Karate Kid is hitting the theaters on the 11th of June. That’s interesting … maybe I’m going mad but I seem to remember seeing that movie (with a completely different cast) back in 1984. But this new one’s different, right? Basically change the cast, change the setting and re-tell the same story … how very original…

Oh well, I suppose it is what it is. As long as people continue to pay the premiums to go and watch this stuff, they’re going to keep pumping it out. I guess the real problem is the audience’s compliancy with this. Unfortunately it ends up being a classic Catch-22 – you can only see movies that are actually being shown. Heck, I paid $18 a couple days ago basically because I had nothing better to do. I guess that puts me right up there as part of the problem…

bis später,

Coriolis

Computer Love

2010-05-20T16:28:00.000-07:00

Online dating, right…? According to the commercials, something like 1 in 5 relationships currently begin there. Of course these commercials are designed to attract more users to the online dating sites (I believe this one was for match.com) so I’m not really sure about the verity of these figures. The truthiness (thank you, Mr. Colbert…), however, seems widely accepted. As I wrote earlier, I’ve recently decided to once again attempt using such services for myself. So far – been at it for a good couple weeks now – it’s going exactly as I expected … haven’t even got any responses yet…

I ended up using Chemistry.com. It wasn’t my first choice – I was going to try eHarmony. Unfortunately, due to unadvertised discriminatory regulations there, I was considered unmatchable. Luckily Chemistry allows us blasphemous scoundrels to partake in their reindeer games. Perhaps, if all goes to plan, I’ll be able to bamboozle oodles and oodles of women into forsaking their flocks and living a more godless lifestyle. Sounds stupid, I know; but I can only guess that’s what eHarmony is afraid of…

So I’m on Chemistry now; and, as mentioned earlier, have yet to even receive a single response from the 60-some “matches” that I bothered to even attempt starting communication with. There were also a bit over 30 “matches” that I have added to my “not reallys” list for various reasons bringing the number of women that the site considered matches for me up to about 95 so far. I currently have 32 “connections” still active which means that I have already been deemed unacceptable by approximately 30 other women; and the site, thus far, has yet to fail at giving me five more matches to peruse daily. Sounds romantic, doesn’t it…?

You see, that’s basically what online dating is. It inevitably turns into nothing more than a progression of the systems used to deal with managing the data. After all, that’s all anybody is to these sites – data. Sure, when you first start using these sites, you take the time to read your matches “own words” essay and carefully review all answers given to the standard questions hoping to find your perfect match. You then add this person to your “connections” list by clicking the “I’m interested” button which gives you the opportunity to start communication with this other person by using one of the “chemistry starters” – 5 applets that attempt to make breaking the ice easier – or sending this person an email.

This is where the routine eventually (d)evolves into a new system that you create. After wasting too much time personalizing your efforts at this point based on the uniqueness of each match only to get no response from any, you realize that you’d probably be better off with more of a shotgun approach. Probability is what probability is and the more lines you throw, the more likely you are to get a nibble. Here’s how I’ve decided to play this:

Every day Chemistry sends me five new “matches” to check out. I (rather quickly) scan through these new possibilities and either add them to my “not reallys” list or click on the “I’m interested” button and add them to my current list of “connections”. After this, I go to my “connections” list and send the exact same “Four-play” (one of the “chemistry starters” apps mentioned earlier) to all of the newly added women. The “Four-play” I’ve decided to use is a list of four movies that I “watch whenever they are on” – 1) Pink Floyd - The Wall, 2) Six Degrees of Separation, 3) SLC Punk!, and 4) Monty Python and The Holy Grail. What this does is sends the women my list of movies and asks them to reply with a list of their own. Although this is a rather impersonal approach, it is merely step one of my system; and, should I get any responses to this, I feel that a list of movies that somebody deems “must watch” is a pretty good indication of how that person thinks. So far, nobody’s sent a reply list at this point…

The lack of response here doesn’t really bother me. It just gives me the opportunity to move ahead to step two of my system for any of the women who haven’t “thrown me in the trash” within two days of receiving my “Four-play”. Chemistry is good for keeping track here as it adds the option of “nudging” someone after two days of them failing to respond. This is where I get more personal – sort of… Each day, after considering the five new matches, I check out my list of “connections” for any that the “nudge her” button has become active. For these lucky ladies, I send an email reminding them that I am waiting for a reply to my “Four-play” as well as telling them a bit more about myself than what they can read in my profile essay. It would be quite time consuming writing unique emails basically saying the same thing over and over again, so I send the same email to all of the girls – the only difference being that I include their name in the “Hi {insert name here},” salutation. What this does is, hopefully, fool the lady into thinking that I went out of my way and wrote a rather in-depth letter to her asking her for more communication or, at the least, a response to my list of movies. Pretty sneaky, huh?

Now I am able to head to step three of my system on any responses I get from the step two letters. Step three is to actually send a uniquely written email based on whatever response was received. This is where the actual communication should begin.

I don’t know; seems like a pretty decent system to me. It gives the shallow, materialistic bitches two days to toss me out based merely on my profile and silly little list of movies – there’s one potential future disaster avoided… It lets the women who didn’t automatically dispose of me receive more information even before they responded to my “Four-play” just in case they were wondering whether or how they should respond – I’m thinking that this should improve the quality of any responses received. And most importantly, it ends up being an easily repeatable process for me that should swing the probability aspect a bit more to my favor.

So far it hasn’t worked; but I’ve just begun. Who knows? Maybe I’ll be able to trick some lucky lady into actually falling for me. Is this really where society is headed…?

bis später,

Coriolis

Password:

2010-05-10T11:50:00.000-07:00

So you know what pisses me off these days (well, one of the many many things that piss me off these days…)? Sites that put stupid limitations on password creations! God I hate that!!! Don’t these idiots realize that all they're doing is basically making their site less secure that way? Here’s an example to further explain why this is so freakin’ stupid:

We’ll use you, the average computer user, as an example. Now, to begin with, you already have a very secure and easy to remember (at least for you) password that you would basically like to use everywhere. Why? Because you know it and you’re not dumb enough to give it to others. Let’s assume this great password just so happens to be “fucky0u!”. Now the great thing about this password is that it uses eight characters (a minimum requirement on many sites), alphanumeric characters consisting of both alphabetical characters and one number – the “o” is a zero – and, as an added security bonus, you’ve thrown in a “special character” at the end with your “!”. Good password. So, this becomes the password you want to use everywhere. Then you sign on to some sight (Time Warner Cablevision, for example) that makes your password unusable…

You see, Time Warner Cablevision has a rule that no “special characters” can be used in one’s password. You need to ditch the “!” in your password; unfortunately this brings your password down to seven characters and breaks the eight character rule that Time Warner also enforces. Okay, so you add another “u” to the end (or something similar) which now gives you two passwords to remember – “fucky0u!” for all sites except Time Warner Cablevision and “fucky0uu” for the latter. No big deal, but are you actually going to remember this every time you log into this special case site? I doubt it… But, and I’m sure you’re thinking, “So what? It’s only two passwords. Big deal…” Then you log in to a new site that creates a new restriction – they require at least one capital letter…

Okay, fine … now you’ve got three passwords – “fucky0u!”, “fucky0uu” and “Fucky0u!”. It’s becoming harder and harder to remember which version is used for which site; and, since the password restrictions are only told to you whilst you are creating your passwords, there is no reminder as to what version you need to use as you log in. It only gets worse as you create more and more versions based on other site restrictions – for example, some don’t allow any numbers. When taken with the other possible restrictions, this turns our initial, quite secure password into six versions – the three mentioned before as well as “fuckyou!”, “fuckyouu” and “Fuckyou!”.

Add to that the security feature of some sites that allow no more than three log-in attempts with the same username (oh yeah, and usernames are just as bad…) before your account gets locked – sometimes requiring a conversation with somebody speaking in a rather strong Indian accent wherein you are asked to give some very personal information (completely unrelated to the site you are trying to get back into) in order to get your account re-opened. This, of course, leads to a new password (randomly generated) being sent to you that you need to change back to whatever version of your standard password is acceptable to said site when you finally get in. And don’t even get me started on the sites that keep track of past passwords and have restrictions on their re-use…

So, what we’re now forced to do is somehow make note of which site requires exactly which version of our password. Yeah, your browser does a decent job at storing these various passwords automatically for you if you so choose; however it doesn’t work on all sites. It’s also a rather blatant security risk of you are using a laptop computer that you could possibly lose. Not to mention that you aren’t always surfing on the same machine and, from time to time, you need to update your system in a way that obliterates these stored nuggets. So what does the average user do – writes these passwords down somewhere.

Now what we have is a situation where your passwords are automatically entered by your personal browser as well as written down in a wonderful list form that could easily be misplaced or stolen. How, might I ask, is this increasing security…?

bis später,

Coriolis

They ARE Very Sorry

2010-04-23T17:07:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I moved to my new apartment. I dropped quite a bit of money in an effort to furnish said apartment and am actually getting close to being done – I still need to get the two bathrooms finished and pick up a few more kitchen needs; however it does appear that I will soon be fully “moved in”… So where do I go from here? What’s next on my silly little agenda that is my life…? I know! I’ll head on over to eHarmony and see if they can find me someone to hang out with – they can match anyone, right? Nope…

The thing is, I was rejected by eHarmony a few years back. I filled out their rather extensive questionnaire with what I believed at the time to be 100% honest answers. The result was a notification that their system could not predict good matches for me. Oh well, whatever… Perhaps I was not being as honest as I should; unfortunately, once you get rejected, you are not allowed to change your answers. I don’t know how long you need to wait before you can try again, but (at least with the email address used for your first attempt) their system is set up to block access to the questionnaire on people that get deemed unmatchable. I basically let it end there and assumed that I had made a mistake with my answers…

Today, however, I logged back on to eHarmony. Apparently, enough time had passed to clear out my old, unmatchable questionnaire and I was once again allowed to give it another shot. Now since I’ve got no reason not to try again, I filled out the questionnaire – this time with the knowledge that my last attempt was unmatchable. I spent quite a bit of time making sure that all of my answers where completely honest. The way I figured it was that, the last time I did this, I did it too quickly and must have made some silly mistake. This time, I was going to get it right. I think it took me somewhere around 2 and a half hours, but I answered all of the questions and this time I know I was 100% honest.

The result: “We’re very sorry, but our matching system cannot predict good matches for you.”

I guess that explains a lot… For one thing, it shows that I was correct in thinking that my answers to the questionnaire a few years back were actually valid. I guess I didn’t make a silly mistake; I actually am unmatchable by eHarmony. But why…?

You see, that’s the rub. They come back and tell you that “ matching system cannot identify high quality compatible matches” based on your responses to their questionnaire; however they give absolutely no explanation as to why this is. They “apologize and regret inability to find good matches” and even provide you with a free “Personality Profile” to let you learn more about yourself and “provide you with valuable insights.” I looked over the Profile provided for me and wasn’t able to find anything that would make me out and out unmatchable. It actually describes me as a pretty well adjusted, rather stable, focused and agreeable man. But then I remembered…

Whilst filling out this questionnaire, I was struck by a few of the qualities it was asking me to rank myself on. There were three in particular that, to me, stuck out like a turd in a punchbowl. They were having me rate the importance of my religious beliefs – after, by the way, I had already chosen “neither religious nor spiritual” on one of the first questions asked. This got me to pondering … “Was my lack of religion the reason I was unable to be matched?”

I would have just gone back and changed my answers for those religious-based questions as a test; however, as I stated above, one is not allowed to change any answers once one has been deemed unmatchable. That, however, didn’t stop me from starting over from scratch with a different email address; and in today’s technical society, who doesn’t have multiple email addresses that they can use, right? So that’s what I did. I started again from scratch with my work email address and changed my name and location. I answered everything as identical to the last time as I could remember except for the religious aspect – there I decided to become a rather devout Christian from the “Church-of-Christ” cult.

The result this time: I was suddenly extremely matchable and given seven pages of matches with 20 women on each. Now remember, this is for the exact same person (me) with the only difference in responses being that I was now lying about my religious beliefs.

Now I’m not really sure how mad I should be about this. It’s just one more blatant example of how religious people can be such narrow-minded, self-righteous pieces of shit. I mean, think about it; why would somebody bother setting up an online matchmaker service and automatically ban non-religious people from using it? It’s not like any atheists are going to join that site in an attempt to pull theists away from their mindless flocks. Maybe we (the atheists) are just looking to find a date as well. But I guess they’re just using that intolerance that their religion has taught them so well…

bis später,

Coriolis