marching in the Saints victory parade was one of the most unique experiences i've ever had. the sheer amount of people was inconceivable. The energy feeding off of the crowd and off of us was indescribable.

The band and the drumline did a pretty good job too. Rough around the edges, surely, but overall we were very pleased. I heard that we got coverage on CNN. Hopefully that clip will get captured on googletube somewhere.

I posted some pics of the parade on facebook. Some short videos of the band will go on the TUMBAH youtube channel, which is located as user TulaneBand.

Two parades down. Three more to go.

i can't quite believe i'm in year two of new orleans, my second mardi gras.

it's crazy.

so here's a different hand that i played at the casino tonight that helped me turn my $350 loss due to being on the bottom side of set over set twice in one session into a $50ish profit. Again, i'm looking for some help to determine if i played the hand correctly.

Under the gun with a stack of about $450, i see 8d9d. i open for $15 (it's a 1/2 table) because suited diamond connectors are my randomizer (as in, preflop i play diamond connectors down to 4d3d in the same way i would play big pairs). I get three callers, one guy to my right, two to my left. The flop comes 9s10s2d. First to act checks. i catch the person to my left start to check out of turn. thus i put him on a draw and want him out of the pot and hopefully everyone else too, so i put out a continuation bet of $40. Out of turn checker thinks for a while, then puts out what feels like a reluctant call. But then, to my surprise, the remaining two players also call.

Turn comes Ah. First to act checks. I think for a while. If i had been able to isolate with my c-bet, i would have bet out again. But even with the weak call to my left, i don't feel comfortable with my position now with four people still in the pot, two of which just sat down so i don't really know how they play. I weigh my folding equity and decide that *someone* has a made hand (especially with the ace out) and i won't be able to get them to give up, so i eventually decide to concede and check, vaugely representing a big pair that feels uncomfortable that i just got outdrawn by someone playing an ace. If someone bets, and especially if there's a call, i can fold with the impression that i'm making a tough laydown with KK or QQ.

to my surprise, the other two players check.

River card comes 2h. First person checks. Again i think for a little while, as my evaluation of people's hands has shifted yet again. i find it extremely unlikely that anyone flopped 2 pair with the 2, so the 2 on the end effectively does nothing to improve anyone else's hand; if they were sitting on a set and trying to trap me, they had the nuts anyway since there's no possible straight or flush. If they were on a draw, they still missed. If someone had an ace, it makes no sense that they wouldn't take the initiative to bet that ace on the turn. Any other possible made hands fall into the category of uncomfortable; maybe someone has a 10 with a weak kicker or pocket 8s or even pocket jacks, and the turn ace made them too scared to commit more money into the pot.

So i decide right then that I need to take advantage of their lack of initiative, re-represent the strength that i had preflop and flop. Clearly they can't put me on AK or AQ because otherwise i would have bet the turn not checked it, but if they think that i'm trapping with a much stronger hand such as 99 or AA, then maybe they think that i checked the turn to induce a bet so i could check-raise.

By the same token, while i want to try to take down the pot, neither do i want to bluff all of my chips in case i'm running into a monster; i want to be able to back out if someone reraises me and now i'm pot-committed with merely 9s and 2s with an A kicker. So i bet $150, leaving $250ish behind. Two of the stacks have about that much or a little more, so they'd be committing all in. The third stack has me covered.

Everyone folded. One person who was out of the pot was convinced i had either AA or 99 and was trying to trap on the turn. Another who has played with me several times wasn't sure what to put me on after i checked the turn, but felt like i either had AA, KK, or QQ.

So. how did i do with that hand?

one of my old high school friends alerted me to the fact that [the professional standard for spacing at the end of sentences has shifted from double space to single space].

This is an amazingly weird thing for me. It's been an automatic habit for me to do space-space after a period ever since i took typing classes in middle school, and when i first started doing HTML, it bothered me enough that HTML didn't take into account the extra space that i considered adding a hardcode nbsp to the end of my sentences to make it right.

Given that the standard has changed, i feel like i should change along with it and undo the habit of space-spacing after the end of a sentence. That, and i think that it would be a fun challenge. It's a part of my personal life philosophy to challenge habits like that, to find ways to force myself to think about things i wouldn't normally think about.

That, and it gives me extra characters to play with when i'm doing SMS. That's always valuable, right?

I think that it will be a tough habit to break. Part of that is because philosophically i still approve of and prefer a space-space at the ends of sentences rather than a single one even though i understand the justification behind it. That only makes the challenge more fun for me i think, except if i were to change the settings of my Microsoft Word to auto-detect that as sa grammatical error, because i really dislike the on-the-fly you-made-a-spelling/grammar-error thing that has found its way into most word processing programs and web browsers of today because of how much it distracts me.

But if that's the worst dislike i ever have to deal with, i'd say my life is pretty good. too bad that i know that's not the worst dislike i ever have to deal with.

life is still pretty good, though.

i've developed the use of the word "well" as a singular sentence expression, and it's funny because i've developed it as a speech idea because of one thing and developed it as a written idea because of another.

The speech idea is because of David Tennant. In his tenure as the Doctor on the new Who, he had certain moments where he would state an idea, then say, "well," then amend it, then say "well," then amend it again. Yet another Who influence in my speech patterns, although my use of "fantastic" seems to have waned over the past half year or so, which is disappointing because i rather liked it.

The written idea came from Steven Brust and his use in the Khaavren series. As a quote from the epilog of The Paths of the Dead:

Many English speakers have one or several habitual phrases with which they fill hesitant pauses in their conversation. A few of those phrases retain some slight meaning; others come close to being neutral noise. To approximate the effect of Paarfi as translated by Brust, these should be replaced by "well." Among the phrases thus replaced: you know; let's just say that; could be; I guess; yeah; I suppose; I can see that; if you say so; whatever; maybe so; I've heard that said; you could say that; in that case; if that's how you feel about it; and that may be so, but.

Judging from the different circumstances in which we see it used, "well" is one of those words... that is capable of conveying a broad and subtle range of meaning depending on the inflection the speaker gives them.

"Well" is always followed by a comma. The only exception si when it's used as a one-word sentence, which usage is approximately the equivalent of saying "if you say so" in a dubious tone of voice.

the funny thing is that i think i write "well" more than i say it out loud, but when i write it, i don't use it in that sense when i write it, i use it more as a written form of what Tennant does. But part of the influence of writing it in the first place comes from having read the Paarfi novels so much that seeing it written was very common, particularly in conversations.

which is interesting because it puts my particular use of "well" into the realm that is less equivalent of typical speech and more typical of musical influences. As in, i'm not going to directly take these two pieces of musical ideas from someone else and copy them, rather i'm going to allow my resonance with those ideas to influence how i compose my own ideas that may or may directly relate to those ideas.

well. it's not exactly like that, but something like that anyway.

okay. lunch-like break over. time to get other stuff done.

one of the nice things about facebook becoming more trendy than livejournal is that the remaining users of livejournal seem to use it for the things that i like the most, as in more life or philosophical or thought content rather than quiz results. Sometimes quiz results are fun, but before they would flood my friends page and get in the way of more personal content.

just a thought that came into my head.

yesterday i did my first gig as a judge for an indoor drumline show.

i definitely wasn't as completely prepared for the deal as i could have been in terms of some of the professional details, and it was a little rocky for me with the first group, but as i got more used to what was happening and as i got more encouragement from the other judges that were with me, it became more comfortable. It helped that the other judges were cool people, open and supportive and all that, and one of which is a pseudo-friend of mine.

I'm also glad that the caption i was judging was GE; i'm not sure if my first gig would have been as good if i was a PA judge, but i have a better idea about that now than i did after having seen how Joe approached judging it both with his sheets and his critique comments.

More than that, though, i think that GE is the caption that suits me over the others because of how it deals with big picture ideas. Understanding how all of the musical and visual pieces come together from moment to moment as well as the "effect curve" throughout the show, how well are the kids projecting their performance to the box and getting the most out of their highs and lows. As a big picture person, that's what i feel is my biggest strength when it comes to analysis.

Granted, i don't think i articulate some of those ideas on the fly that well; if i was to do more judging, i think i need to practice making some tapes, because it's tricky for me to articulate complete thoughts when stuff is still happening that i need to pay attention to, particularly when things are happening so loudly that i can't hear my own voice when making comments into the recorder.

it was more fun than i thought it would be. i'm fairly certain that i'd do it again, although in the long term i don't know if i want to make a habit out of it. we'll see what happens.

i was glancing at a row of books i have on my shelf, and there's one that's been in my possession for probably about 14 or 15 years, given to me by Rebecca. it's a bondage erotica book that she got on sale. i want to say that she got it at gene's books, but it may have been at borders. she got it for me for two reasons. one was because she knew i had an interest in that sort of thing. the other was because she was trying to figure out if she had any interest in that sort of thing.

our history post-break up was an odd one. immediately after the breakup my memory of our contact is spotty, but there are two memories that stick out in my mind of us having interaction with each other. the first was when she decided to do a graduate degree at oregon state. when she told me about it, it was strange to think of her moving to oregon. it didn't end up mattering; after she first moved there we got together once and only once, so she might as well have been just visiting the west coast rather than living there. i think the reason for that was because we both realized after getting together that one time that our paths had drifted so far apart from each other that the only real common thread we had was our relationship. granted, that was a five+ year relationship, but it was also our first real relationship and thus a naive first-love sort that had started to crumble even after three years once our individual personalities started to evolve and mature.

given the nature of our young love and our subsequent contact being so rare, there are times when i could ask myself if i still love her at all. but i don't because i already know the answer because of the second significant time we had interaction.

i was living at tyler's place, so it was probably about five years ago. i hadn't heard from rebec' since we had gotten together that one time maybe a year before. as i was putting on my shoes to go out somewhere, she called my mobile. i was startled, but i picked up, and it was clear that she was emotionally distressed. long story short (and my exact memory of the situation is hazy), she had gotten in a serious relationship with some guy, but after x amount of years (and i think the long distance of her moving to oregon didn't help), she started to doubt. i think part of it was because she also started to develop feelings for a guy in oregon and that was mucking with her emotions too. she said that it was the first time since us (her and me) that she had felt so confused about the whole situation.

given how emotionally distant we both were to a degree the time we got together in corvallis, i was in a minor state of shock when she dumped all of this on me and at first i wasn't sure what to say. she sensed this and started to retreat and apologize about contacting me, but before she could get into apologizing fully, i had pulled out of it, assessed what it is that she told me, and started giving her advice and telling her what i thought would be best for her, or at least started asking her the sort of questions that she needed to answer for herself to come to the right sort of conclusions.

and it's not the fact that i was helping her from a call out of the blue that is the strongest evidence that i still love her; it's the fact that it was a reflex. that it wasn't even a question in my brain or my heart about it. she called me. she needed me. that's all i needed to know.

granted, that's true of a lot of people in my life, that if they ever called me, i would drop a whole lot to help them. i mean, i love a hell of a lot of people. but the striking thing about this situation was that she chose me to turn to. that out of all of the people she could have called, she called me.

what's funny about the rebec' situation is that i doubt that the people that we now are could ever be more than casual friends, and thus it's probably the right thing that we've talked maybe twice in the past ten years. i wouldn't be surprised if i never heard from her again, especially if she's since developed a relationship with someone else that can be her emotional confidant, someone that's more in tune with the person that she is now rather than what she used to be.

but if she called me, i'd still be there.

which is one of the reasons why i still have the book.

well. that, and there's some damned good stories in it.

so i just got email notification about Apple's new product, the iPad.

never mind that it's essentially a large version of the iPhone. i don't have much of an opinion about the product itself one way or the other.

But the branding is problematic. iPad looks and sounds too similar to iPod. three out of the four letters are the same, and the remaining letter which is different has two letters that when written on actual pen and paper are very similar. if i was a part of branding development/marketing, i probably would have put my hand up and said, "um."

which brings about another funny thought that may or may not be because i'm still recovering from a cold/flu-like thing but is hopefully funny nonetheless that now that e-books are becoming more popular, Apple has to be furious with themselves in retrospect for having already created a product called iBook because now they can't create their own version of a standalone eBook and brand it well without creating more branding confusion.

just some random sickhead thoughts.

i'm not one to talk about sports all that much, but this game warrants some words from me as i currently live in new orleans and there's been a lot of hype about the saints this season.

i don't have any particular hometown loyalty to the saints or anything because the reality of the matter is i don't care about football all that much. That said, i think that the saints have had a pretty phenomenal season overall and are very well deserving of the chance they have at the superbowl.

*that* said, i thought they played a pretty awful game against the vikings and that they were very lucky to win. the number of 3rd downs they failed to convert, the number of times that they could have monopolized on the Vikings turnovers and did a sloppy job of it - and overall, the momentum belonged to the vikings. they outplayed them in offense and defence except that they made all of those almost turnovers and actual turnovers.

never mind that it was probably a better play for farve to continue to run the ball, dive, take the timeout and then go for the field goal attempt. it was fortunate for us that it went down like that, whatever.

But that pass interference call in overtime should have been reviewed by the booth. given the other plays that were reviewed in overtime, it was poor officiating to decide not to review that given its crucial outcome, even if they didn't overturn it, which they should have. that was poor officiating, and could have cost the vikings the game.

obviously i was rooting for the home team by default, but i have to say that a part of me was rooting for the vikings simply because it would have been great for brett. He was battered like crazy out there, and yet he still pulled out some crucial plays. If he was able to win that game at a point when he was feeling like 50% out on the field whilst the Saints and Brees were struggling at their 100%, that would have been a great victory for him personally, and i would have been okay with that.

it'll be interesting to see what happens in the superbowl. I think the Colts should and will win it, and if i were to base my standing on the games that i saw today, i might even prefer it. Or at least if the Saints win, they should have a win that's based on the sort of solid play they had in the regular season and not what they've shown since.

okay. testosterone moment over.

tonight the casino was super busy. one of the busiest times i've seen it since last may.

at one point when i decided to take a food slash not-pay-six-dollars-for-one-of-the-slowest-dealers-in-the-joint break, i passed by an individual who was fairly hick-looking, white half-balding hair, jeans held up by suspenders to support his big gut, and a red t-shirt that was branded like the "drink coca-cola" slogan, but instead it said "eat vagina".

it was *fascinating*.

last night when i was playing cards, someone who had gone out to take a smoke break said that they saw troy aikman playing on a blackjack table. Apparently he was pretty drunk and doing very poorly, but it probably didn't matter to him since he was just playing on a $25 table.

At the time, there was a part of me that was thinking that it would be funny if i went out and got his autograph or took a picture with him or something, but that would have required actually recognizing what he looks like (which i don't), and then i wouldn't really know what to say. 'i'm a big fan of yours'? i think the only situation in which i know anything about his football history is playing Madden on the playstation. at this point i can only say with some degree of certainty that i think he was a qb for the cowboys and that his number was 8.

not that it really matters. i care so little about famous people in general and putting them on any sort of pedestal that doing something like that would have been designed to be a subtle ironic joke on my part that would have been lost on him because he'd be too drunk, and i was running well on the table at the time and didn't want to leave an opportunity to take more of the aggressive people's money.

fun stuff to think about, though.

i can't get cuboy music out of my head.

good thing i like it.

Guy to my immediate right has a few hundred dollars in front of him and he's a pretty loose aggressive player preflop. He raises to $20. i look down at my hand, and i have 9s9h. I call, there are two other callers.

Flop comes 6d7h8h. Initial raiser bets out $40. I call. Person to my left goes all-in for $52. Button calls, initial raiser calls, i call.

Turn comes a 10d. Initial raiser checks. i'm not sure what people are sitting on, but i put the button on a flush draw. he's the only guy i'm really worried about. I decide to bet $175. Button thinks for a long time, then calls. Initial raiser folds. I have $201 behind, button has me covered.

River comes out a black 5. I now have the second nuts, and i'm first to act. I think for a while - at first i was going to check because i was very vaguely scared of the 9J, but i just can't put him on that hand based on the way that he played it. It's possible that he has a 9 and is scared of *my* 9J, so the only way that i can avoid a chop and take the pot down is to shove and hope that he makes the incorrect play and folds his 9 if he has one. So i shove. He thinks for a very long time, trying to get a read on me, all of that. Based on how much he was thinking of it, i rethought his hand - if he had a missed flush draw, he wouldn't have been thinking about it so hard - now i think he has a set or a 9, and after he was thinking about it for longer, i don't put him on a 9 anymore. after a long time of thinking, he decides to call, and says, "if you have a 9, you're good."

so i took down a huge pot. The question is, should i have shoved instead on the turn?

a part of me is thinking 'yes' because let's suppose a H or D comes on the river. That's a scare card in two ways: it's scary for me if i put him on the flush draw and thinks he now made it, but it's also a scary card for *him* if he has a made hand already and that river now convinces him he should fold, so now i don't get the rest of his money into the pot. Granted, that would be fine if he also has a 9 and he folds what would have been a chop, but other scenarios don't play out like that.

i feel like in that hypothetical instance, checking with the intention of calling is the incorrect thing to do - i need to make the decision right then whether or not i'm going to commit my chips or not despite the scare card, and if i do, i'm going to shove. if not, i'm going to check fold. it's stupid to 'wait to see what he does' because it takes away my initiative.

i think i got lucky that the scare card didn't come on the river, and that's what makes me think that pushing on the turn would have been better overall. At the time i bet out $175 on the turn, there was $300ish in the pot. if instead i pushed for my $376, if he has a draw, he correctly folds (which is fine) or incorrectly calls (which is also fine). if he has a made hand, it puts more pressure on him to decide if his made hand is good (which could even include a 9).

thoughts?

i've created an update for my birthday party.

http://www.darknote.org/birthday2010/

two people now have said something about Mcaffee flipping out when they try to navigate to that page, saying that it's trying to make them download some sort of trojan. The trojan that it alerted them to was one that dealt with corrupt PDF files; i'm not sure what that's about since that page has no PDF files nor attempts to make you download anything. if any more tech-savvy people know anything about this sort of thing, i'd appreciate it. i'm assuming it's a false positive.

so this spring i have nine people in the drumline. four of the people in the drumline are new this spring, although three of them were in last spring just not this past fall.

it's smaller than what i've had in the past, so i had to make the decision to not use any tenors, which is weird since the three people that were in last spring that came back was my entire tenor line. now one of them is playing snare and the other two are playing bass drum.

we had our first real rehearsal yesterday, although it was mainly putting together the harnesses for all of the new people and sight-reading through the music with the ensemble, and yeah. we're small, but the group is good. the people from prior are already starting to develop a rapport with the people from this past season, and the foundations of what we have are pretty solid.

it feels weird not to have a tenor line. it makes some of the tunes where i'm used to hearing the tenor voice sound really empty. but we're going to mount gock drums on the snares for added texture, so that will help.

overall i'm pretty excited. kind of makes me wish the mardi gras season was longer.

i didn't play poker last weekend. too much to do to get ready for teaching. it's probably the first weekend where i haven't played cards in a casino since i've moved down here. maybe the second.

and now it feels like *forever* since i've been to the casino.

it's a drug. fortunate that it's a profitable one.

also, Iorich came out. i went to borders to go pick it up and IT WASN'T THERE.

these people don't understand. i need my brust fix.

i almost bought Turn Coat by Butcher, but i decided i should wait until march when the paperback comes out. better timing anyway; things will be much less busy.

well. sort of.

in a recent discussion on brits_americans, some information came out that gives me this pipedream idea of moving to the UK and starting a drumline revolution.

i still don't know exactly what my future is all about when it comes to career, family, job, &c, but one of the things that i like about the UK public school system in general over what we have in the US is that music theory and religious studies (all religions) are a part of the standard set of scholastic subjects. in general it seems like art music and to a degree new music has always been better supported in europe over the US, and even though i'm not exactly in that field right now, it'd be nice to live somewhere where the basis for my education is given more of its due, and a place where the BBC exists because i do love the BBC.

(as a tangent, however, i seem to remember a conversation i had with a different community about how strikingly different the college experience is in the UK, and the limited understanding i have on that side is makes me like the US model more.)

the question then becomes what is it that i would do for work. i could always do some sort of office job, but i'd prefer not to go back to that unless i know what i'm getting into. i don't have enough of a name/reputation to live off of just being a composer unless i get some sort of residency, and my teaching abilities are diverse, but are still specialized to the context of the marching band/indoor drumline paradigm which doesn't exist in the UK at *all*.

And then there's a part of me that resultingly thinks, "well, maybe you can start it."

would i be the best person to do that when it comes to talent? surely not. but when it comes to vision and doing what needs to be done to at least get it on the ground in a respectable form? it could take me a while, but i could definitely do it.

Of course, the other big hurdle there is that i'd need one or two support staff to help me, and since that stuff doesn't exist in the UK at all, they'd likely have to be US transports. i doubt that any of my friends or colleagues (save maybe erica and aaron) would be willing to move to the UK with me on the grounds of starting the first ever indoor percussion or blast-like group in the country.

but it would be neat, wouldn't it? to maybe put forth some sort of proposals and grants to fund a startup group that plants the seed and then see where it goes.

hmm.

so on the most recent episode of Qi, it's was stated that up until the early 20th century, pink was the associated color with boys and blue was the associated color with girls.

also that up until the 15th century, boys were called "knave girls" and girls were called "gay girls".

one of the panelists asked about the pink vs. blue, what happened to change this to completely the opposite, and there wasn't a good answer, but that as late as 1927 there was evidence of the expectation that newborn baby boys wore pink and newborn baby girls wore blue.

it'd be interesting to research that whole bit to see what it's all about, not only in the context of the changeover, but if it was also regional (since the show is based in the UK and Fry didn't specify, it's unclear whether or not that trend was a regional thing, which maybe could be the answer if american culture did the opposite and then may have influenced the market or something like that).