so in a field of 66 players i placed 8th in the WSOP Bayou Poker Challenge Event Number 6, which was a $300+$40 Pot Limit Omaha tournament.

( some personal analysis and observation )

i wished i could have been more of a contender for top 4 or 5, but i'm still happy that i made the final table and i'm overall happy with my play. We'll see how i do in the HORSE tournament on tuesday.

... and its extensions are in the official SOWPODS dictionary.

crazy.

for the people who don't have me friended on fb or might have passed this by, i found this gem on yt yesterday exhibiting how fucking fantastically bizarre the japanese can be.

i recently obtained clark's album "totem's flare".

I saw clark perform live as an opening act for Plaid in portland sometime back in 2003-4ish. I talked with him for a bit, bought a t-shirt that i no longer know where it is, and bought his album.

since then i've followed him only vaguely, but i did go download his discography since i saw him live, and was amazed first at how each album he puts out is so different, and secondly how much his sound has matured and become his own in the past few years.

and yeah, totem's flare is no different. It's pretty fantastic.

god, he's so fucking good.

food just wouldn't be the same if there were no such things as onions and garlic.

fairly recently, mark and i have become pretty obsessed with table tennis, and it was only sometime in the past two weeks that we discovered that the standard rules for table tennis changed sometime in 2000 or 2001.

growing up, i played a lot of table tennis, and as a result i based a lot of my strategy around the rules that were standard at the time - first person to reach 21, win by 2. Each player gets five serves each. if it reaches 20-20, one person gets one serve, then the next person gets 2, then 2, &c. until someone wins by two.

now, the rules are that players play to 11, win by 2. each player gets two serves each. if it reaches 10-10, each person gets one serve. If the game lasts over 10 minutes, a new rule gets enforced called the Expedite Rule, which changes the serve rule to one each regardless of score, and also makes it so that if the returner is able to keep up a rally past 15 strokes (or somewhere close to there), they automatically win the point.

today mark and i played with the new rules, and the difference is staggering. first off it's much more difficult to set up a sense of expectation about serve patterns since you're only given two serves instead of five. secondly, each individual point carries much more weight, so play automatically becomes much more aggressive. granted, part of the more aggressive play i had to sport in today's session also had to do with the fact that mark bought a much better quality paddle than he had before which carries more spin and allows him a much wider margin of error, so i had to work a lot harder to compensate for his spins and to make my spins and slams stronger and more accurate. but even outside of that, the sensibility of play is much different, has a greater sense of urgency. giving up one of your serve points in the old rules was usually not a big deal since you had four more serves in which to keep the upper hand, but giving up one of your serve points when you only have two is much more critical.

i'm not sure what i think about the new rules. the most unfortunate thing about them for casual play is that, well, it's not condusive for casual play. for competitive play, the sense of urgency and forced aggression makes the game much less forgiving, which isn't necessarily bad, but it's fascinating how diffeent it is. it makes me wonder if this is how hockey players felt when the rules changed the year after the strike.

two big hands happened on saturday which made my $50 profit for the evening turn into $900 in the span of 45 minutes.

( details )

The bayou classic starts on wednesday. i'm thinking i may play in the opening event which is a $200 HE tournament. Then on Sunday i'm going to play the HORSE tourney and tuesday i'm playing the PLO tournament. Hopefully i'll make good on those or if not then on the cash tables that will be hopping during tourney time.

so someone who watched some of my 8-finger charts on youtube said i should take a gander at [keybeatonline], and as a result i've done some modification of a few old stepcharts to fit the 6-note paradigm.

Basically you play these on the keyboard in solo mode. I play using DFGHJK ot DFGJKL. of course nytelyte uses something more like ZSX,L. or some similar nonsense. :)

here's the charts i've done so far, from roughly easiest to hardest:

Forever by Plaid
After Dinner by Plaid
Hiszekeny by Venetian Snares
Non Hoi by Plaid
Squid by deadmau5

so of course because it's a holiday and all, many people have been putting up 'happy thanksgiving' like posts on lj and fb.

yesterday i was experimenting with the whole "reconnect with him/her!" deal that facebook has been touting recently and came to a general conclusion that the only 'friends' that they pop up as someone that you should reconnect with are people that haven't logged into facebook in a couple of weeks. there are plenty of people that i never actually interact with, yet i never get notification that i should try to reconnect with them. it's a way for facebook to underhandedly try to rope more casual users/one time users into being regulars.

i posted a status as such, basically stating this theory. Devon responded with an addendum that was related to the post itself. After that, three other people also commented on the post, but as opposed to saying anything related to the post, they instead wished me a happy thanksgiving.

which was a little perplexing, even though in retrospect i understand. it was perplexing because a personal holiday greeting is more suited for my actual wall as opposed to a comment on my post that has nothing to do with thanksgiving. But it's understandable because chances are those people just happened upon my status when glancing at the facebook news feed, and resultingly decided that they wanted to wish me a happy thanksgiving, and the easiest way to do that was to comment on the news feed as opposed to go to my wall and then post it there.

which i think says something about the nature of the facebook beast in general, more proof of how... unthreaded, maybe?... facebook can be. it's not necessarily about creating a conversation or some sort of big-picture form, it's about lots of small one-shot hits and one-shot deals.

which is helping form a strange idea in my head, to create a series of statuses that are actually one status but drawn out over a long period of time. except that no one will really get it unless i make it additive as opposed to replaceative. um.

we'll see.

time to cook food.

x-men origins: wolverine. it was merely okay. the plot was pretty blah, some of the acting was pretty blah, the cameo by daniel negariroueereru was very distracting. the only thing that really saved the film was hugh and the actor that played gambit. i could have done without the romance aspect of the film, and the end trails of the film were really annoying.

gladiator. i went into it with a skeptical impression because i hate russell crowe. it started out higher than my expectations, and then kept getting worse. and worse. and worse. and oh my god worse. what a horrible horrible film. i don't get it. a lot of people liked it. it's perplexing.

batman/sueprman: public enemies - i liked it better the second time i viewed it over the first, but otu of all of the DCAU movies that have come out, it still ranks below all of the others, my favorite being the green lantern one and my second favorite being the wonder woman one. the best thing about the film was the dialog between superman and batman throughout, something that all live-action superhero movies have generally lacked understanding of (great dialogue and characterization). the thing i didn't like about it was the characterization of lex luthor by the end. the thing that makes him the strongest as an antagonist is what makes batman such a strong protagonist - his keen intellect and his ability to quickly adapt his genius to situations that should be completely outside of his context. In this film, he was characterized much differently than that, made errors that the Lex Luthor of the JLU animated series would never do.

a funny anecdote that happened fairly recently:

mark and i had been meaning to go to the west bank to eat at a few of the pho restaurants over there since there's a pretty strong vietnamese community on that side of the river and we heard reports of some outstanding pho places.

Last week, we went to one called Tan Dinh. As we were in the final stages of pho-goodness, an old couple ended up sitting at a table behind me, the male who looked like he was in his 80s, the female who looked like she was in her 70s, according to mark.

I didn't see any of this since they were behind me, but mark told me that when they got their menus, the woman looked absolutely perplexed and was peering at the menu closely and looking more and more confused. Clearly their first time there, and clearly also not familiar with the food. The menu was the sort where the vietnamese name for the dishes was the most prominent, and the contents of the food in english was below the dish name in smaller print and in parentheses.

the waitress came over and asked "do you know what you want to order, do you have any questions about the menu?". The woman, who was still scanning the menu and looking very flustered, asked the waitress, "Do you have any szechuan chicken?"

The waitress blinked at her a little and then said, "no, we don't have anything like that," which made the woman more flustered. She then followed up with, "how about sweet and sour pork?"

Mark relayed the story to me after the fact, and i laughed and said, "i'm not sure if i should think that's funny or if i should be offended."

pretty fantastic.

"so what you're saying is that disabled access is a dalek conspiracy."

-david mitchell to jimmy carr, QI Series F episode 12

2009 has flown by fucking quickly for me. it's also turned out much differently than i had initially anticipated. those two together are fine with me. i'm ready for 2009 to be over.

in my head i've come up with a few reasons why 2008 felt longer than 2009, and i think it has a lot to do with how 2008 was split in half for me. In the first half, i was in oregon working for symantec. suddenly in the seocnd half i was in new orleans. even though at the time that transition happened very quickly, the result of that major life shift made for lots of things happening during that year that was beyond normal sort of events.

in 2009 there were "firsts" involved with me in some ways that make the time stretch out - as in, in one sense, my first Mardi Gras and my first Jazz Fest seem like they happened a long time ago so you'd think that this year would feel slow. but what contrasts that is secondly how quickly the marching band season seemed to go, and firstly how close last christmas seems to me because it was the first time i went back to PA in about a decade. Like, it was a year ago since i saw all of those PA people. angie and vince and megan and jerry and nick and bob and jr and sean and etc. etc. one year. and it seriously feels like mere months ago.

i'm writing this entry in a scattered state of mind because of strange sleep patterns and a weird headspace. it feels pretty scattered, and becoming aware of that has also brought about something else that's odd about the entry in that it feels contrary to the way i used to be, which is to create an arbitrary separation of events based on something that has no real meaning. on principle i still don't do new years resolutions. the principle of which i'm celebrating my birthday has nothing to do with "being a year older". the concept of getting a fresh start to a new year is one i never used to subscribe, yet here i am saying, "i'm ready for 2009 to be over" as if january 1st 2010 is going to create some new sort of momentum all on its own just because it's a new year. which is absolute bollocks. i understand and know better than shite. i take responsibility for my own greatness and failures and etc. and don't want to hide my accomplishments or lack of accomplishments behind something like a calendar year or any sort of time period.

really if i had it my way, i'd rotate the calendar year so that what is currently september is the new january, but that's a separate sort of discussion.

after a fairly unsuccessful poker session that lasted until about 5am, i've been lounging around on my bed with my laptop, mostly playing a lot of prolific.

at some point, mallory decided to hop onto the bed, plop herself down on one of my legs and fall asleep.

i guess i can't really move from this spot for a while.

darn.

here's me playing 20 november on L14 on lowspeed, followed by me playing Indigo Vision N14 on lowspeed.

yay for bemani holidays!

when i worked with the drumline and band at Washington Township High School in new Jersey, there was this one kid who played snare named Sean Neill. He also ended up marching in Surf for a year.

Sean had a baby face and a look that made all of the girls crazy, and he knew it. He was a smart kid, and he knew that too. He knew how to smile and nod at the authority figures even as he was laughing behind their back if he didn't respect them. As a result, he felt like he had the upper hand when it came to authority and structure in general, and had a tendency to run in with the wrong sort of crowd. I mean, kids can be kids, but some of the stories he told me and that i heard about made me uneasy at the time, and probably still would even given my more realistic and relaxed perspective about that stuff.

That side of him, the street and cocky young male side was only one piece of the picture, the other piece being surprisingly naive and genuine and sincere about the people and the things he cared about. What i remember the most about him was how passionate he was about drumming, and how in the right environment and with the right people, he was passionate about people and about life. And with me, he showed that softer side, not only to me, but to the people around him because that was the sort of environment i fostered. I was the conduit that bridged the conflicts between staff and students, clashing personalities, all of that, and i helped people see a side of him and hopefully helped himself see a side of him and a path that was healthy for him and could keep him out of trouble.

When i moved from new jersey to oregon, he was the one kid i was worried about the most for leaving behind. I felt like without me there to be at least some sort of guiding presence, it'd be too tempting for him to continue down an unhealthy emotional path and life path that would eventually bite him in the ass. A few years ago when Devon and i were talking, Devon kind of confirmed this, that Sean wasn't a person who he felt comfortable having in his life anymore, that he got into some pretty fucked up shit.

The truth of that/extent of that isn't something i delved into and i didn't think about too much after until one day fairly recently he found me on facebook and added me as a friend. And the history of the person that he was and who he could have been and who he could be now flooded into me. It was a strange experience; i looked through some of his facebook pictures and said to myself, "i don't know who you are now."

and now i never will.

The memory of that kid that i will always hold is that of his potential, that of his sincerity, the side of him that could find joy in the same things that i found joy in, the side of him that would look at me and try his hardest to make me proud because he saw me as an important guiding force in his life. i know how much i've changed and how much stays the same in my own personality over a decade or more to know that despite what sort of direction his life could have taken that that part *must* have still been there somewhere, and i'll keep that part of his image with me for the rest of my life, and hopefully others will too.

that said, if i had any ability to talk to him right now, i'd kick his leg and tell him that he's a fucking dumbass.

sean, you're a fucking dumbass. but i still love you. fucker. go be at peace or something.

god damn.

what a trip.

will hopefully update about the trip soon. if you're on my fb, you can check out wedding pictures. :)

</bllckquote>

someone find me a 7k video of a iidx song that's pretty scratch heavy (not 'checking you out') that you feel is the best example of the scratches having a clear independent rhythm from what's occurring with the regular keys.

so the tentative plan is this:

nov 6-8 msy to sfo.
nov 8-10 sfo to lax.
nov 10-12 lax to sb.
nov 12 sb to msy

unfortunately my sfo time will be spent mostly on wedding stuff so i can't really stage a visit with you other cool nocal people. i'd stay longer but i'm trying to avoid too many hotel nights.

i will be renting a car for the LA portion since LA is too expansive to see the people i want to see via taxi.

booking flights today and tomorrow, hopefully. yay complicated travel!