Abstraction

There’s a battle being fought and you are in the middle of it, whether you like it or not.

Abstraction.

I realized recently that I’ve taken up arms due to a multitude of factors. I would like to say that they are mostly noble, but in truth, it mostly stems from frugality or a lack of options.

I’m no expert on history, but it seems to me that somewhere around the early 20th century, the prevailing notion was an eagerness to embrace a black box approach to duties in life. Why understand how to wash your clothes by hand when you can stick them in this new machine and it will kick out clean clothes at the end? We had a society built on agriculture where as a farmer; you needed to have a complete understanding of how everything worked in order to survive. If your tractor/shed/shower broke, you were SOL unless you could fix it. If you didn’t know how to make Chicken Cordon Bleu, you weren’t ever eating Chicken Cordon Bleu.

That all changed in the latter half of the century. We began hiring out everything, buying everything as an end product, losing our understanding of what goes into making it. Why make a chair from 2X4’s when ikea has one for cheaper and better design that you screw together? Why make a pizza when you can buy a Red Barron for $3? Or better yet, just have it delivered for $10.

The pendulum has swung too far, my friends. And I think it’s swinging back. Cable TV and the internet are the biggest swords we’ve ever had to fight abstraction and we are using them. We are destroying the black boxes that are our cars, houses, food, finances, etc. Breaking them open and seeing what makes them tick. The big secret behind the curtain? This stuff ain’t that complicated.

Try to do a google search to find a contractor that gets 5 out of 5 stars. Or mechanic. Or restaurant.

With the internet, the information is now out there. Want to hang a door? Lowe’s will charge you $300, youtube will charge you nothing.

So the battle now is time. The advantage we have over our forefathers in terms of access to information is negated by the advantage of time that they had. We’ve managed to fill our schedules so tight that even though we know how to change our oil, we have to pay Jiffy Lube $30 to get it done in 30 minutes. It’s not really choice, even. There isn’t an option to do all of the jobs that would be required if we truly took back our lives. So we must decide what is most important to us and choose our battles accordingly. I’ll gladly spend the $30 on an oil change if it will free up an afternoon to information gather on the market or paint a room.

Teach a man to fish…

Oceanside, CA

Oceanside Card Club, Oceanside, CA

I knew when I pulled up to Oceanside Casino that the mental image I had of this place was way off. I had read the reviews online and most had said it was a decent card club compared to the others in the area. However, much like the premise of crappy spring break movies where the “Hotel Paradise” that has great pictures in pamphlet but turns out to be a dump upon arrival, Oceanside Casino was neither Oceanside nor gave me the general welcoming feel of midwest casinos. For starters, it was on a street full of abandoned warehouses and the parking lot had no less than 2 rent a cops patrolling.

But I’m getting a little ahead of myself.

I’m in San Diego for a training conference. I’m here Mon-Fri, but the conference didn’t start until Tuesday. I figured I’d fly in early on Monday, tour the city a bit then be ready for the 8:00 AM start time on Tuesday. I landed and the first thing I did was take a tour of the USS Midway, a decommissioned aircraft carrier. I’d recommend the tour. You definitely get your $18 worth with pretty wide open access to walk around and see what you want to see. And they have about 20 planes/copters on the flight deck that are awe inspiring. After the tour, I got some overpriced sushi, hit some Targets for work stuff, and then headed north of San Diego for Oceanside. Along the way, I stopped at In-N-Out Burger, something I’ve always wanted to do, but never had the chance. Much like seeing a great movie 2 months after everyone else, my judgment is so tainted by all the praise, I’m not sure if I liked it because it was good or if I just wanted to agree with all the reviews I’ve heard. Point of the back story is that I had had a really good day and was in a very good mood.

So back to Oceanside Casino, it’s about 25 minutes north of San Diego (although 45 with all the traffic I hit). Although once I got inside, the scariness of the neighborhood and parking lot melted away. It was just like any other card club I’ve been to. Fairly bright, with low chatter and that ever present sound of thousands of chips being ruffled, splashed, and fidgeted with at dozens of tables.

It was split into 3 rooms, one for Blackjack and Pai Gow and 2 for poker. After going into the wrong poker room, I found out from the floor man that there was a No Limit and Limit room. I’d never seen that before and found it somewhat funny. Kind of like splitting the Looney bin into the insane and really insane. You don’t want the loose cannon NL guys rattling the calmer Limit players with their shouts for “SPADE!” and “QUEEN! ONE TIME!”

I was seated right away. One of the nice aspects of the poker boom drying up is no more wait times. I remember the days of Foxwoods in CT and Canterbury in MN that an hour wait time to get seated was expected. Anymore, I get seated right away. The dry up also means a lot less dead money, but you take the good with the bad.

I sat down and scanned my table. The usual suspects, really. Most tables have the same array of players. There must be some system to put the types of players at every table.

I instantly dubbed seat 1 as “Tiger Woods’ little brother” as he had a very similar look and stiffness to him compared to Tiger. The first time I heard him speak with that nerdy monotone voice that could have come right from Tiger, I started to wonder if Tiger actually had a brother. TB (Tiger’s Bro) is the player I used to be. Quiet, focused, but with a definite air of superiority. He was there to play his EV+ type game and slowly milk the table. He was the most knowledgeable player at the table and it was going to pay him dividends. I’m not saying that the lowest limit game in a casino isn’t beatable; I’m just saying that experience has taught me that it’s not worth it. And if you underestimate your opponents, you’ll walk out a loser every time. For the stakes you are playing and the rake that the casino takes in on every hand, if you are playing the lowest limits, just try and break even while you enjoy your surroundings.


In seat 2 was TB’s sidekick. He knew what he was doing, but really was along for the ride. He wasn’t into as much as TB and my prediction will have moved onto another hobby while TB will still be hitting the casinos. I couldn’t help but think that he looked a lot like the Dean from Old School. On a side note, the Dean in that movie doesn’t look old enough to be a Dean; so either I’m getting old or that was bad casting.

Seat 4 had a fixture of pretty much every table I’ve sat down at: the quiet, 50 year old blue collar guy who plays too many hands, sucks out just enough to keep him in the game, but never really busts or leaves with a rack of chips. He’ll go on runs and get up a lot, but you’ll look over an hour later and his big stacks have dwindled back down to the felt. But then he’ll put it all in and his (5 8) hole cards will miraculously catch 2 pair on the river and he’ll be around longer. Most people hate this guy because he’ll suck out on them at very inopportune times with very bad cards. They’ll even berate him a bit. I on the other hand like him. He’s usually pretty harmless, scoops pots quietly, and never shows much emotion either way. Plus his play gets the high strung people all fired up, so it’s always fun to watch the fireworks. This particular guy was Hispanic, had a fresh coat of dirt on his fingers showing that he’d probably worked in the field all day, and never said a word the whole time I sat next to him.

As you can guess, it was your hero in seat 5, the lens of which you look at this subculture at through.

In seat 6 was another mainstay: the older cranky Asian woman. She loves to slam her cards down, talk about suck outs (mainly by the guy in seat 4), and generally complain about her luck. I’ve learned to steer clear of this type of player. She’s much wilier than I originally gave her credit for. She too is fun to have at the table. Her typical half English rants and emotions on her sleeve are fun to experience first hand.

Seat 7 and 8 were both dealers at the club. This has always bothered me. Some states allow the dealers to play at the tables. And actually in WA and CA, it seems like you can play while you are working. When I played in WA, the floor sat down and played for awhile when we got down to 5 handed to keep the action going. But I’m against dealers playing in their own casinos even when they aren’t working. To me it feels like the carnival worker jumping the barrier and knocking down the bottles before you do. They work there, so they know all the tricks. If you are dealing to these people for 8 hours, you are bound to pick up on playing styles and even tells. So if I was a regular and a dealer sat down at my table, I’d feel like they had an advantage on me.

Seat 9 was an ex porn producer. He had to be. I swear, if you put him in a movie and said he was the sleazy Hollywood type, the audience would reject him as being too much of a caricature. Toupee, shirt unbuttoned, big chain. Picture Moe Greene and you are pretty much there. He must have told a bad beat story about how he could have won the jackpot if a lady hadn’t folded her suited connectors at least 4 times. And it happened 3 weeks ago. Time to move on, Mo. He even told it to someone that called him on the phone. He had gotten 4 queens and the woman didn’t follow him to the end of the hand, but chose to save her money and fold instead. Well, the river would have given her a straight flush and they would have split the 15,000 bad beat jackpot. (If you have great hand like quads and you lose, the table shares a bad beat jackpot. It’s a lame promotion that casinos run to keep people at the table). One rule about poker is bad beats are like dreams, they might be very impactful to you, but no one else wants to hear about them. They just don’t.

Overall, this was probably the grumpiest card room I’ve ever played in. Could have been just my table, but the players and the dealer were all in a bad mood. TB and his sidekick left about an hour into my session and the eastern European guy who replaced them complained that it was too hot in the room. I looked over shocked as every single casino in the country is set at 60 degrees. He had A) a full sweater made from a lamb and B) a polo over that sweater. Seems to me that he had the solution to his problem, but just wanted to complain.

Another case in point about the grumpiness of the room: the two dealers playing at the table got into an argument about 1 of the dealers raising the other’s big blind. Dealer #1, who I hope was on coke for his own sake. If his normal operating speed is the fidgeting and endless verbal diarrhea that he portrayed, his facebook friend list has to be his mom and his mom only. Anyway, Dealer #1 raised Dealer #2’s blind with what turned out to be a completely acceptable hand (AJs for poker nerds). Dealer #2 took offense and implied that #1 had broken some unwritten rule and the 2 argued about it for 5 minutes. Even when #2 got up to leave, #1 got up as well and the argument continued. This goes back to the dealer point I made before (let’s collude and not raise each other’s pots because we’re just there to fleece the locals, right?) as well as how grumpy people were (arguing over a $4 pot for more than 0 seconds).

That’s Oceanside. Would I go back? Compared to the other 2 casinos I went to in San Diego, yes. But that’s another review for another day.

Total Session: 4 hours , +$100.

1 Year?

Has it been like a year since I posted? Awesome.

In an effort to start writing again, I may try and post some reviews of card clubs I hit when I travel. As I've said before, poker tables are a wonderful meld of people, and usually I end up seeing something interesting.

Hijinks

I recently found a deal from Dell on an XBOX that I couldn't pass up. I had been avoiding the next generation for awhile, but prices are finally to a point that it made sense. In the deal, Dell included a game called "Tom Clancy's Endwar." I had heard good things about Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six games, so I was excited to try it. But before I opened it, I looked online for reviews. It received pretty good marks, but I was discouraged to discover that it was a real time strategy game (like Command and Conquer or Starcraft). I have no time for games like that anymore. I don't want to mine for ore, so I can build up an army, then attack with that army only get destroyed and have to start all over. I have maybe 1.5 hours of free time a day, I want instant gratification in that time. Turn on and tune out as they say.

I decided to try and take that game back and exchange for something I wanted, figuring in this day and age, without a receipt it would be tough. I knew there was no chance at Target. They've tightened their returns belt so much lately, that I would be lucky to exchange with a receipt. So I went to Walmart, figuring as a company they have their collective heads so far up their ass, no problem. I bought it to the counter. The Walmart employee called back to the electronics desk and no go. No receipt, they wouldn't even exchange it.

So, like a guy frantically scanning the bar at 2AM for any warm body, I strolled into Kmart. There were 8 cars in the parking lot. I counted. I walked up to the Customer Service counter and said "I'd like to exchange this." She asked me if I had a receipt. I shook my head no and said it was a gift. I actually almost said it was a gift from my great aunt Muriel (reading HP right now) but I didn't want to push it. She nodded and informed me to find the item I wanted to exchange it for. Elated that my ruse might work, I almost ran back to the electronics section, having no idea if Kmart even still had an electronics section. Lucky enough they did. I found the game I wanted.

Unfortunately, I had to have the electronics guy bring the game I picked out up to the customer service counter. Walking with him to the front of the store, I felt like a 7 year old who had convinced his parents to buy him an R rated movie. Worried that the gig would be up once the electronics guy got wind of the current "exchanging without receipt" situation, I did my best to distract him with a question about the future weather. But no matter, he just flirted with the customer service person a bit, dropped the game on the counter and walked away. After completing the exchange, I snickered as I walked out.

I'm a 33 years old father with a career, BTW. Conning stores to get the video games I want should be behind me, but I guess not.

A Common Experience

Most parents will tell you they go through the following scenario in their child's first couple of years:

1. Child gets sick, throwing up or diarrhea.
2. Parent feels awful for child and does all in their power to make them comfortable and help them get better.
3. Some point worry about child's health and calls the nurse line.
4. Nurse on the other end calmly says it's nothing to get too worried about and recommends to give child "Pedialyte" to keep child hydrated.
5. Parent runs to Walgreens at 11:30PM, grabs Pedialyte and buys it. Barely registers that they just paid $6.00 for 48 ounces of fluid. Child's health holds no cost barriers.
6. Pedialyte is offered to child, but they want no part of it. With much crying, some is forced into child.
7. Step 6 is repeated an hour later, then parent gives up and gives child water, which they happily gulp down.
8. Pedialyte is put in fridge for future use.
9. Parent is cleaning fridge out a couple of days later grabs the Pedialyte and notices warning on bottle that says "Use within 24 hours of opening."
10. Parent grumbles as they pour Pedialyte down drain and realize that they paid $6 for a teaspoon of low sugar Gatorade.
11. Repeat process next time child get sick.


I'm calling for a full scale investigation of Abbot Laboratories, maker of Pedialyte. It must have at least an 80% share of the Kid's sick drink category, sharing space only with Private Label. It has completely infiltrated the medical system where it's recommended BY NAME by most nurses and doctors. Because of this, its price is astronomical compared to it's ingredients. How can Gatorade sell a similar product, water with electrolytes, (ie: salt and sugar) for $1 for 32oz vs. $6 for 48oz for Pedialyte?

And it's a crappy product that most kids refuse.

What is in Pedialyte that will spoil 24 hours after opening?

Shame on a company for preying on the loose wallets of worried parents.
I want answers. I think this is ripe for an indie documentary.

Yeah vs. Yay

I think we need to establish in email/sms/IM communication on the use of yeah vs. yay. I see much confusion out there.

Here's how I see it:

When expressing joy or celebration and you want to use the word that rhymes with "Hay", "Yay!" should be used. As in, "Yay!, I won the lottery."

When expressing agreement and you want to use the word that rhymes with "wah" (as in baby crying), "Yeah" should be used. As in, "Yeah, I heard that about chuck!"

Am I wrong here?

Hay

I discovered the musician Colin Hay through the actor/writer Zach Braff. I was watching an episode of the show "Scrubs" and Zach's character was constantly followed by a man playing a guitar and singing. I don't really remember why this was happening, only that for some reason the song kind of hit a chord with me. So I looked it up and after some digging found out it was a guy named Colin Hay, former lead singer of the band "Men at Work" from Australia, famous for their 80's hits "Who could it be now" and "Down Under." Zach seems to have a liking for the guy, as he also included a song of his in his movie "Garden State."

I downloaded the song "Overkill" which was on the episode of Scrubs and it became my favorite tune for a good month. As someone who deals with anxiety issues it resonated with me tremendously.

Some of the lyrics:

I can't get to sleep
I think about the implications
Of diving in too deep
And possibly the complications

Especially at night
I worry over situations
I know I'll be alright
Perhaps it's just imagination

Day after day it reappears
Night after night my heartbeat shows the fear
Ghosts appear and fade away

Alone between the sheets
Only brings exasperation
It's time to walk the streets
Smell the desperation

At least there's pretty lights
And though there's little variation
It nullifies the night from overkill... etc."

Colin delivers these strong words in such a matter of fact way that I appreciated. No woe is me, it's just a fact. It became a meaningful song for me. One that I really connected with in a way that I rarely do with music.

I visited Chuck E Cheese last night with my parents, family, and nephews. First time I've been there in quite a while. While taking Riley's coat off, something caught my ear. In amazement, I looked up and saw the animatronic Chuck E Cheese singing a familiar tune. Yes,"Overkill." Not only was I shocked that my personal little indie song was commercialized, I was flabbergasted that it was commercialized in such a venue. Go back and read those lyrics. How did anyone think that that song would be good for a cuddly mouse to sing to 9 year olds? It'd be like showing "Ghost in the Shell" on the TVs there. Sure, it's a cartoon, but not exactly kid stuff.

Chuck E Cheese is a weird place.

Happy Holidays to my Coworkers

Have you ever just forget where you are at and drop a bomb? Without any regard to civilized behavior, I totally unconsciously dropped ass in my cubicle.

Mid-fart, I was like, "What the hell am I doing?"

I then had to evacuate because I realized that if a coworker came to my cube they would have been disgusted. And rightly so.

It's shocking to me sometimes that I am in charge of the upbringing of another human being.

Dichotomy

dichotomy

4: something with seemingly contradictory qualities

I have been often asked by my friends who don’t have children what being a parent is like. I’ve never been really able to explain it outside of saying it’s the difference between having someone tell you about skydiving and experiencing it for yourself.

Recently, I’ve switched that standby response to one of the defined word that is the title of this blog. I’m not the first to hold this sentiment. The phrase “Parenting is the hardest job you’ll ever love” is very popular. But with each passing month, I’m seeing that being a parent is full of contradictory forces.

There are several examples of this:

• Becoming a parent instantly transforms you into simultaneously selfless and self centered person. Bringing a child home puts you into a situation of endless servitude to a relatively unappreciating master. You really give up yourself to toil the days beckoning to their every whim, grabbing moments of peace and sleep when you can. All done for the love of you child. But at the same time, you become enthralled into your own world, most likely with your parenting partner, obsessing about every intellectual advancement, health status, and general mood of your child. Even though children have been learning how to say “Dada” for thousands of years, because it’s your child doing so, it feels like the greatest accomplishment humankind has ever seen. Riley showed understanding of association for the first time the other day, and it’s all I can do to not talk about it constantly.

• The evolution of your relationship with your child is counter intuitive. When you bring your child home from the hospital, it is at the point where they need you most, yet you know them least and at their least interesting. As a newborn, you cannot put your child down for more than 30 seconds awake and 2 hours sleeping. Also as a newborn, they have almost zero interaction, making them generally pretty boring. As your child grows, so does your relationship with them. They become more and more interesting and you love them more and more just as they need you less and less. In fact, the ultimate twist of fate is that (from what I hear), once your child turns 18 and finally becomes an adult and a complete human being who you’d want to hang out with is the exact moment they move away. That seems like a cruel joke.

• Currently, Jessica and I are very stringent about Riley getting a meat, vegetable, fruit, and bread with milk for every dinner she eats. Often the fruit and vegetables are organic. We then have a Tombstone pizza and soda for our own meal. Maybe that’s more of being hypocritical, but the need for us eating a frozen pizza is created by the act of spending so much time preparing her food.

• I think most parents wouldn’t trade anything in the world for their experiences with their kids. But they also have concurrent occasional longing for a responsibility free lifestyle. It’s a weird mindset to have.

• New parents have this interesting trait in which you are completely bewildered at what the hell we are doing, but at the same time are very opinionated about child rearing. It’s a weird mix of ignorance and arrogance. You have no idea if it’s okay that your child hasn’t pooped in 3 days. You try to be a sponge of information from doctors, families, and friends of what is normal and what’s not normal. Babies do a lot of weird things that you have zero idea on whether you should be worried about. At the same time, ask any parent their opinion on something as trivial as Juice and suddenly everyone is a nutritionalist, able to tell you the exact study that links early juice consumption with decreased algebra test scores later in life.

I’m sure there are plenty of more examples. I haven’t even touched on the contradiction of telling your kids to not do all the things you did growing up. Regardless, “it’s a world of dichotomy” will be my standard response to “what’s being a dad like” moving forward.

Evian Naive

I don’t think the movie Reality Bites has aged very well. Or at the very least, it has transformed with time. It has moved from an edgy indie-ish movie to more of a snapshot of the Gen Xers during the 90’s. HIV tests and homosexuality have moved from progressive topics to mainstream ones. I bring it up not to critique the movie, but to point out one scene that’s always stuck with me. Winona Ryder’s asks the idealist/slacker character played by Ethan Hawke his thoughts on the meaning of life, to which he replies:

“There's no point to any of this. It's all just a... a random lottery of meaningless tragedy and a series of near escapes. So I take pleasure in the details. You know... a quarter-pounder with cheese, those are good, the sky about ten minutes before it starts to rain, the moment where your laughter becomes a cackle... and I sit back and I smoke my Camel Straights and I ride my own melt.”


I’ve always wondered what the details I take pleasure in are. So here’s my best effort.

I enjoy that small 3-5 day period of time where you are really into a song and have finally memorized the lyrics so you can sing along with it, but you aren’t sick of it yet.

I like that feeling you get when you have a beer at about 5 in the afternoon on an empty stomach and the alcohol goes straight to your head. That burst of chattiness and energy it gives you before the depressant characteristics take hold.

The sound of Jessica’s laugh.

To that point, I’ll admit against my general modest image, I love that moment where you say the exact right thing at the exact right time. To be the guy who says what everyone was thinking, but was able to put it into words first and bring down the house. Sure, I’m shy, but we all like to be the star performer from time to time.

I enjoy the gentle hum of a baseball game while driving at night during the summer. It takes me back to laying in the back of the van on the way home from Grandma’s or more recently on my 3 hour trips to visit Jessica when she lived in Mankato and I lived in Eau Claire.

That rush you get when you make a boat on the turn and see that third diamond fall on the river, knowing full well your opponent just got there and is about to push all of his chips into your nut hand. God, that’s nice.

I miss that feeling you used to get when you would hand in a project or paper that you had stayed up all night working on. That feeling of complete accomplishment coupled with extreme exhaustion, knowing full well you deserved to go home and flop into bed and wake up when you wanted to.

I like having coffee with a donut.

Looks like I picked the wrong year to invest

I remember entering a online contest in 1999 where you tried to predict where the market would end the Millennium at. I guessed 10,571. I lost because I was too low. Sad that we made it back there 8 years later.