Wakehip's Xanga

Friday, September 29, 2006

Fri, 29 Sep 2006 14:55:53 GMT

Everyone in my office is sick and I'm to blame/the scapegoat.

BLAZING HEADACHE

Wed, 27 Sep 2006 12:35:14 GMT

I've been sick for almost 6 weeks now. Well, to be fair, I was only really sick for 2 weeks, but I can't shake this residual cough. I've tried just about everything. Now my doctor has proscribed me a puffer that people use for asthma attacks. It's a huge pain. One of the other residual effects are blazing headaches; the weather makes them worse too. Fun!

That's about it for now.

New entry!

Fri, 22 Sep 2006 10:27:07 GMT

Exciting, no?

Not much has been going on. I was hired back as an associate at my firm over the summer, so I've been plugging away since then. Its been really slow, which sucks, because I am paid as a percentage of my billable; it's motivating to bill, but it's tough to just go out and find work as a first year associate. So, if the firm doesn't have work to give me, I don't get paid. Things are starting to pick up though as people return from summer vacation and start doing breaking the rules/doing other stupid things/ again.

Vanessa and I had our first year annaversary, which was a bit surreal; technically, we are no longer "newly-weds" and she has lost her "bride" status; both of us had a pretty good freakout about that. We had a good time on our annaversary, despite me being brutally sick with a sinus cold (which I'm still fighting off, 5 weeks to the day later). This cold has lasted so long that I'm becoming used to the symptoms, like they are a part of regular life. Bleh. I need to drink more water.

That's about it really...Oh, I signed up as a prop YET AGAIN, this time with a different group. I was lured in because the pay is sick-good (between %125 and %155 rakeback depending, works out to about $0.30 per hand), and there are no seating rules or minimum number of hands required...which is good, because I probably only play 2-5 hours a week these days. Battlefield 2 takes up most of my electronic entertainment. :P

Anyway, it's an extra $500 a week, which is nice since Vanessa is currently unemployed. She's been looking pretty hard, but nothing has popped up yet. She's still early in her search though, and September is a tough month for finding associate work (since all the first-year associates are starting back this month after articling). Hopefully it's just a matter of time, but she is (and should) be waiting to find something that she really enjoys. This may take some time, which is fine.

All right, that's about it.

A bad hand

Mon, 03 Apr 2006 17:08:51 GMT

Sometimes I sit there playing poker and just watch myself play a hand poorly. Like, I think to myself, "ok wtf are you doing" and then just watch it happen. Here's today's example:

150 bb stacks, PLO on UB. UTG miniraises, two calls, I call on the button with 2456 doublesuited ("dude wtf, pot that"). Blinds call.

A22 flop. Checked to me ("Ok, you are drawing to one out if utg checks that flop"). I bet the pot. ("wtf?") Blinds fold, utg mini-raises, folded back to me ("you are drawing to one out, see?"). I call.

Turn 4. UTG bets 1/2 the pot. ("He's worried that you are going to fold. He's pricing you in. You have one out, fold.") I call.

River 5. He bets 2/3 the pot. ("Nice weakgay full house. You are so beat. FOLD.") I call and lose to AAxx.

OMGIRULEATPOKERWSOP2KPLOEVENTCHAMPION

Sigh.

The Bomb

Mon, 03 Apr 2006 01:23:37 GMT

So yeah. A bomb went off in my neighbourhood today. WTF. Apparently some guy walked into a Tim Horton's coffee shop, went into the bathroom, and blew himself up with a can of gasoline. Somehow he had rigged it up as a home-made bomb. I was out shopping on the street right after it happened, and heard the erie sound of the bombsquad detonating a second package he had left behind out on the street. The coffee shop is (was) right at the corner of Yonge and Bloor; for those of you that don't know Toronto, that's pretty much the centre of mid-town Toronto, right in the middle of Yorkdale, one of the busiest shopping areas of the city. Pretty unbelievable, I guess.

Watching the news now, only the bomber was killed. A mild, temporary relief.

The Ring

Wed, 22 Mar 2006 11:35:28 GMT

So Vanessa's ring is not doing so well. Three of the pave stones have fallen out. Birks replaces them free of charge but it takes 6-8 weeks for their design centre to re-insert new diamonds. And she's not exactly happy or willing to give up her engagement ring for two months every time a stone falls out. We are trying to exchange it for a different design, but Birks is giving us static. It will probably work out eventually (nothing like threatening a simplified rules procedure to jump start someone) but it's a pain in the ass in the meantime.

A wee update

Sat, 18 Mar 2006 09:02:02 GMT

Right. So I haven't done this in ages. Spurred on by the blogs of others though, I feel like writing something.

An update! It's only been 15 months. Since then, I've:

1. Graduated law school
2. Got a job in Toronto
3. Got married
4. Got broke

Yeah. Just a few things! Law school, job, yawn. It's a dogs life. But married!

Vanessa and I were married in Toronto on September 2, 2005. We had about 110 people there, including afterthefact. (link on the left) For the girls: Green orchids and hydranjas (sp); light pink bridesmaids dresses. For the boys: Open bar, 1947 Bentley. Married life is great, although an adjustment to make. We get along pretty well though. :)

Yeah, number 4...extended dry run + very poor play = BUSTO. Let me know if you want in on my staking deal! :D I'm currently playing low-limit PLO to try to get my brain clear before stepping it up, and so far it's been a roller coaster. But that's poker.

Okay that's it for now.

Tuesday, December 21, 2004

Tue, 21 Dec 2004 00:26:05 GMT

On The Road. It’s not just a Karouac book, it’s a state of being. I’m finished(1) class for the semester, and now am on route to Toronto. Tomorrow I hop a jet to Vancouver, where I will be until early January. Right now, I’m on a train somewhere in the greater Brockville area. It’s a beautiful sunny day, unless you happen to be outside, in which case it’s miserable because its –26c plus the wind chill. Oh, the fun of being sunburned, windburned, and frostbitten simultaneously.

The plan is to stay at my Dad’s house until Christmas Eve, then to my Mom’s apartment for the night. Then up to Whistler on Boxing Day, then back down on the 30th to meet Vanessa at the airport. She’s coming in for New Year’s, and we will head back to Onhorrible(2) together. I haven’t booked flights yet, but I assume we will be back on or about the 5th of January.

I hope to play a little live poker while I’m in Vancouver, but we will see if that can happen. I’ve got ALL of my Christmas shopping to do when I get home…that will take up at least one full day, although I’ve got some ideas for people. I’ll probably get at least one day in, maybe if I come back down early from Whistler. How long I stay up there depends entirely on what my brother wants to do…my Mom and Kevin are cool, but it’s a little slow with just us.

I’ve got some high hopes for Richmond, hopefully they’ve gotten off their ass and realized that a 200-max game with 3-6 blinds is pretty much full blown idiocy. I play a fair bit of 1k max online, and that has 5-10 blinds…even that is way too close of a ratio. With 3-6 blinds you could easily make it a 1k max buy and still control attrition(3). Ideally of course there would be no max buy, and it might actually play like real NL. 500xBB stacks makes for a really intense game – the skill level goes through the roof. But with a max buy, poor players are really insulated from the good players.

Example: Say you and I are playing in a no-max buy nl game with 1-2 blinds. So we each buy 500 and start playing. You end up getting all-in on the flop after flopping a set against a bad player who flops a draw and wants to gamble. He hits, you lose. So now he’s got 1k, so you re-buy 1k to cover. Eventually the bad player misses his draw, and you make back your 500, plus his original buy.

But in a capped buy-in game, you can only re-buy for 500. Now you’ve got to bust the poor player twice to get his stack, not just once (once to get your chips back, then again to make a profit). The poor player is insulated by his stack size, and your inability to buy to cover. It’s a pain.

Anyway, even if they haven’t adjusted their NL game structure, I’ll happily play in the limit games. In their rigidity, they have screwed themselves. The 30-60 and 50-100 have a 4 and 5 dollar rake instead of a time-payment system. This essentially means that the rake is tiny compared with most games at that limit. Also, the players are –horrific-. Honestly, I am %90 sure afterthefact could make money in the 30-60 game there. Not to slam afterthefact, he’s getting better all the time, I’m just making a point. Anyway I’m looking forward to that, and to seeing a few cardroom friends such as Chad and Ivan that I rarely get a chance(4) to see. And it would be nice to bank some bones. :)

(1) well, I’m still writing a paper, but it’s due tomorrow and I’ve got 15 pages, so I’m obstensably done.
(2) “Onhorrible” is what a few friends of mine at Queens, also from the west coast, have begun calling Ontario.
(3) What I’m speaking about here is a basic problem of probability for winning players, losing players, and the casino. It’s a bit complicated, but the essence is this: Particular games have a much higher statistical variance than other games for good players. Games that engage a high degree of skill tend to have very low variance for good players. Limit holdem is considered a high-variance game because poor play is not heavily punished (small, structured betting) like it is in NL holdem (small mistakes can compound and cost a bad player their entire stack). What this means is that in no max buy NL, it becomes much more likely that poor players will be sent to the rail quickly. As money changes hands, the game shrinks and eventually breaks, so long as money is going in one direction (from bad players to good players). Obviously, casinos want to avoid this at all costs, because if no one is playing, no one is paying rake. By capping the buy-in, you limit the danger of breaking poor players, and breaking the game – more money ends in the hands of the casino than with a no-cap buy-in game. This idea is one of the reasons PartyPoker is brilliant – but more on that another time.
(4) Chad, and others like him that I know from cardplaying, tend to be…well you wouldn’t want to introduce your sister to them, to say the least. We have a good time playing cards and bullshitting and whatnot, but what they do outside of that is their own business, and I don’t want to know what that business is. You dig?

Thursday, November 25, 2004

Thu, 25 Nov 2004 03:18:55 GMT

The days are going by too quickly. Occationally I'm filled with a long quiet mourning of things gone by. I don't miss the past. I miss time.

Law school is finally coming to a close. I'm holding on to it closely, knowing that time will take it away from me. But I don't like it; it's passing is a symbol of the passing of time. When it's gone, three years have slipped by.

I've been listening to Godspeed you black emperor. It's pretty dark stuff, but it works well at 3 am. The opening three lines:

The car's on fire, and there is no driver at the wheel
And the sewers are all muddy with a thousand lonely suicides
And a dark wind blows

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I've decided to get myself a journal. Well, journals. One for cooking; one for walking around with. Too many good cooking ideas come in and out of my head for me to remember, which usually leads to a degree of disapointment when I attempt re-creation. For walking around, I need a journal...a diary, a note pad, an apointment callender, a phone book, all in one. (hint, hint, christmas ideas...)

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My favourate time to walk around in Kingston is 3:30 am, between October 7th and November 15th. Exactly 3:30 am. Why? Well, let me tell you!

Between those dates, the weather gets cold and wet, but not too cold to make the nights painful. Also, it doesn't really rain that hard or long here...just sort of rains for a bit, then quits. So the roads are wet, but it's not raining.

The leaves have started to fall, so the ground is covered with them in the throws of their final decay. It smells fantastic, and is soft underfoot, even on the streets.

3:30 am is the best time, because it's totally silent. The bars have long closed, and the vast majority of whackos have passed out. But the street lights are still on, so it's quiet and bright and dark at the same time. And by quiet, I mean perfectly quiet -- not silent, just still and soft. No sharpness to the natural sound in the air.

That's what I'm going to miss about Kingston the most.

Wednesday, August 25, 2004

Wed, 25 Aug 2004 05:11:06 GMT

My my, I am getting very lazy at updating this. Oh well, better seldom than never.

...And much has happened! I have a job, and I've been to Hawaii.

I got interviews in Toronto. I got an offer from one of them. I accepted it. End of story. ;)

Seriously though, I'm happy where I accepted. Smallish firm, downtown Toronto, and the people seem cool. We will see!

I went to Hawaii for my brother's grad. I went to the Big Island and almost fell into a volcano. I'm glad to be alive. I don't think I'll travel under my parent's wing for a while...it can be pretty stressful, and we have different definitions of 'vacation.' Mine does not include 15-hour hikes to flowing lava fields. Their definition does. End of story. :) It was fun though, after the fact. I'll post some pictures in a bit.

Anyway, I'm out. I'll write again when I've got energy.