Ragu Spaghettisauce

Format
My camera has a feature where you hold down two buttons for a few seconds, and then it formats the CF card in the camera. This is considered the best way to rid it of the photos on there, as any other way may potentially corrupt it.

I have a massive 8GB card that I use so that I can be seriously lazy and just take a billion photos and then out of those, surely at least one will come out okay.

The other day I processed a few of them on my home PC laptop, zipped them up, and then dumped them back onto the camera's CF card (in the same folder as where it puts photos - perhaps not brilliant of me).

I then later at work put them on that machine to upload some of them when I had some free time.

I then went to format the card and it showed as successful, but it didn't have as many available photos as it should were the card properly formatted.

So I had to take the card out and map it to my Windows system and then delete it there, and then format it - for some reason with the zip files on there (perhaps fine by themselves) having been deleted by the Mac, the camera seemed to not see the Mac ".Trashes" file on there or something.

Fascinating.

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Variance
I'm taking a break from poker for a few days, as the high variance of PLO is making my brain melt. It is probably better for my long term sanity if I take a break. I don't tilt from it, I just sit there trying to wrap my head around how many consecutive times someone can do something retarded (by this, I mean they get their money in as a significant underdog, so at best 2-to-1 odds against them and usually worse for them) and still win when playing me.

I'm getting dumb enough to the point where I'm turning into one of those OMG RIGGED guys.

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BEEP
Last night I went to bed early, and yet still slept until my alarm went off this morning.

One of those things where the less you do, the more tired you are.

Technically I believe one of those is the same as the other I posted recently.

I will upload more soon - don't want to flood Flickr with images.


I'm going to make an effort to get out more with my tripod at night and take shots of stuff around here, it is a lot of fun now that I'm figuring out the basics.

Some days, I have unending faith in humanity and an awe at what gets done in the world.

But then, most days it is pure contempt and disgust and wonder how we will make it, as a race, until the end of the week.

Of those two, the latter really gets nailed home when I see things like Beverly Hills Chihuahua just destroys the box office results. HONEY LOOK, A TALKING DOG! OOPS, ACCIDENTALLY BIT MY FINGERS WHILE TRYING TO SHOVE MORE HOT BUTTERED POPCORN DOWN MY FAT GAPING MAW! OMG THAT DOG IS TALKING TOO! WOOOOO!

Click
I don't have much experience with longer exposure photography, so last night I went with a friend into Boston and took some shots.

Here is one straight out of the camera (hence the odd angle, the tripod was on big uneven stones).

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Money
One of the things coming up on the vote here in MA is to repeal the state income tax. I have very mixed feelings about this, in that I'm pretty strongly libertarian and against income taxes in general, so on the one hand I want to vote for this.

But on the other hand, I'm not sure I can wrap my head around how that much money (over $10B) can just disappear from the local government and not just be forced in another way (property tax, tolls, sales tax, etc).
Repealing the tax doesn't mean that our roads will stop needing repair, debts will go away, and schools/etc magically pay for themselves.

That said, there are things in place that should already cover those, and the fact that they don't shows that things are not being allocated properly. (I haven't looked up to see if it is the case for MA, but in VA when they added the state lottery, a large portion of the funds were to go to the roads and the schools - which seems to nearly always be how they get approval of a lottery, and then down the road the money that actually goes to roads and schools is... like none)

So the issue is whether or not the current way of collecting said money that is certainly needed is efficient or wasteful. Given that it is government and they are spending other people's money, it is nearly assuredly wasteful.
But does negating one source of that income mean that suddenly the waste will go away, or does it mean that it will just be given a chance to go up in other ways (for example, negate the income tax, and then we get higher tolls and property tax, and then down the line when they inevitably add the income tax back in, those tolls and property taxes are much less likely to actually decrease, so you get the worst of both worlds... excellent)?

Instead of voting on something as raw as repealing the income tax, I would much rather we could vote on allocation of our money, or even have a system where you are scheduled to pay $X, and then given the options of where you can put that money into the system.

While I'm not at all pro tax, I am at least a realist enough to know that police, fire, schools, and roads need to be funded, and so if we are going to be taxed, the smaller local taxes are much more understandable to me than the higher government level taxes where they are used for things I agree so much less with (Iraq being one absolutely massive example).

Generally speaking though, I'm probably just not smart enough for this sort of stuff and overlooking something.

I can remember writing a paper in econ class in college that was very similar to this, basically making an argument against income tax (and most taxes in general) and then pointing out that once you have a tax, it is nearly impossible to get rid of it - one of those "once the genie is out of the bottle, you cannot put it back in" sorts of things, and I believe it was one of those rare papers in college where the professor actually liked it.

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Baseball
Another year passes where my dream of seeing a Red Sox and Cubs World Series is shot down. Just as well, I wouldn't know who to root for. (although it would pretty much still be the Red Sox)

Saw a link to this blog post from Boing Boing about an auction site called Swoopo, and the idea is just brilliant. Anything that takes advantage of people too dumb to figure out that they are too dumb... is pretty awesome in my book. I have a book.
http://theecakescraps.wordpress.com/2008/09/25/pure-profit-a-look-at-swoop/

Incompetence or Purposeful?
We watched the debate on NBC and every time they did a split screen so that both candidates were on screen, Palin was always off center and it was driving me nuts. It seemed like the easiest thing to fix, so it made me wonder I was mistaken as to how easy it would be to fix or if they were doing it on purpose to make her look bad somehow.

It didn't seem to make her look bad so much as NBC's camera crew.

Biden was always centered in his split-screen.

I also wondered if they were given some stage direction for the lights/cameras, and she happened to just mishit her mark, or someone moved her mark - which would seem odd given the podium is a pretty easy target.

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So many
Here's another multiplicity photo I did from last night.

I set one up around the couch, but the fact that the couch cushions distort and then spring back when someone is on/off of them, combined with changing colors/light/shadows, meant that it was a far more complicated compositing job in Photoshop. So I scrapped the first try I had in Photoshop - might give it another go over the weekend.

I'm ambitiously trying to plan out a fight scene and that sort of thing. They are goofy fun.

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Boom
The Daily Show the other night had just got done railing on all of the stupid shit Palin had been saying, and then they were trying to give fair treatment and make fun of Biden as well (easy enough with his "...got on television..." comment, but then they tried to make fun of something he said about guns. He was essentially reassuring voters that he won't let Obama take away their guns, and then talks about his two shotguns and then later refers to a Beretta. The Daily Show tried to rip on that, referring to the Beretta as a handgun and correcting him, saying he looked foolish. But Beretta makes really nice shotguns, so in the end it was just a failed joke on their part.

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Beer Me.

Got home and decided to take some pictures. Clicking on the photo takes you to its Flickr page.



And another (working on a last one in Photoshop now, not sure how well it will come out).

Such colleges
Years ago I posted this photo to Flickr. 12 hours ago someone left a long comment, and they apparently took offense to me referring to someone as a "redneck" in the photo.

Their response is hilariously rambling and full of inconsistencies, it is almost like I wrote it myself.

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Want this, not that
While I still would love a D3, I've updated my want to a more reasonable D700. kthxbye

I live and work in a part of Cambridge (Central Square) that seems to attract a wide range of people. There are the hipsters, the business people, the college kids, the crazy homeless people, and then those uncategorized people who look like they could be homeless or not and you would not argue it. Oh and tourists. But in the area where my office is, it seems heavily weighted towards the "crazy homeless" market.
Someone recently told me there is a methadone clinic around the corner, so that may have something to do with it, and there are a few homeless shelters near here as well.

I walked to Subway to get something to eat today and on the way in dodged a few small children who were blocking the door. It was starting to rain.

I was inside the store (it is one part 7-11 and one part Subway, and all parts crazy-people) and towards the back when the front door opened with a new customer. She immediately yelled "THIS ISN'T A FUCKING PLAYGROUND" and then elbowed her way back to where I was, muttering and angrily threw down her umbrella onto the tables setup for people to eat their subs (nobody was sitting there). She then went on a mumbling tirade about someone not picking her up, but mostly just swearing, while she pawed through her empty wallet, tossing out what looked to be either old receipts or coupons. MOTHERFUCKINGCOCKSUCKERSSONOFAFUCKINGBITCHISWEARICANTTAKETHISSHITYOUFUCKERS was about all I could make out - a coworker with me she apparently said something about missing a ride.

After about five minutes of cleaning out her purse and ranting to nobody in particular, she then trudged back outside, never buying anything, just gracing us with her appearance.

She was short, overweight, wearing layers of old clothes, and had the matted hair of someone who might be homeless. She reminded me of a witch from a movie like The Princess Bride or something like that, but with a purse, umbrella, and a penchant for swearing.

My first inclination was to want to stare, and I think mostly because she so perfectly represents what I could be after only a few more bad days. Some crazy person ranting on the streets incoherently.

But for now, she's the human version of my LJ (crazy person ranting incoherently... online!).

Later, as we left the Subway and made our way back to the office, my coworker and I passed a pretty young girl carrying a bar stool. She hugged it the way you would hold books to your chest, which made the stool legs jut out in front of her. It was reminiscent of a lion trainer, keeping the lions back. Something about it made me think NO HUGS! and I was chuckling over that when I noticed her leering to the side with a worried look. I followed her gaze and it was the human representation of my LJ, yelling at nobody on the curb (perhaps just traffic in general) and with a wave of her arm insinuated that we were all MOTHERFUCKERS. I can't say I disagreed with her. The rain increased.

As we entered our building and waited for an elevator, a guy who holds some sort of maintenance role in our building (and by that, I think that mostly consists of drinking during the day, so I might inquire about any openings in that job market) was loudly concluding his discussion with someone and said "Well I am certainly not going to put all of my chickens in one basket."

My coworker and I looked at each other with a "I'm pretty sure that's not right" smile and stepped on to the elevator back to a day much more mundane.

(poker)
Over the last 148,107 hands, I've been dealt pocket quads 5 times:
6666: 3 times (the odds of this are... very low, weird)
9999: 1 time
TTTT: 1 time
Was not dealt any this month (32196 hands).
Odds of being dealt pocket quads are 20,824 : 1 (I am currently "overdue")
(I don't have my database from when I played years ago, but in that one I had AAAA and KKKK and actually got those and AAKKds all within about a 10k hand stretch)

1384 pocket sets were dealt, but I haven't gone in and done a query to see which one of those was dealt the most/least (PTO doesn't have an easy way to do it in the UI, and I'm currently too lazy to get into the db another way right now as I am still just using this on the Access db it defaults to).
From a quick test I did, it appears that 3332 was dealt to me the most for that, but I am not 100% sure as that check was not done programmatically and I highly suspect human error.
Odds of being a pocket set are 107 : 1
(My database shows it is extremely close to that rate)

I've been dealt pocket twos more than any other hand, coming in at 3915. Second to that are pocket aces at 3914 (and I've won the most with them, which is as it should be given they have the best win rate). If looking at pocket pairs, then the fewest were dealt of pocket eights at 3527.

Most all other stats that are interesting are around money, and I'm clearly sucking there. I would say the last month has been the best play I've done, and I still am an overall loser this month.
I am going to try and work out some code to show which stats I do well against, on paper, since I already know that basically anyone with a VPIP over 50%, especially as it passes 70%, can't really be long term winners at the game - yet those are the exact people I cannot beat. The people who are below 50% VPIP are far more likely to be long term winners, and those are the people I can beat. The tighter the better (not me, but them).

My all-in luck finally actually hit 50% for a relatively decent sample size of the last 32196 hands, haven't checked it looking at last month with it. So PokerEV seems to feel that in terms of variance for this month, I'm even - and down, therefore showing my losses are from non-showndown pots and lack of skill. Go me.
I haven't checked it for the whole month per site, the above is collectively.

Of the limits, it seems PLO50 I am a winning player on PS, and just below breakeven on FTP, largely due to it crushing me with variance right when I started with comically bad all-in luck.
PLO100 I haven't played on FTP due to not much bankroll there, and on PS I'm a loser.
PLO200 I haven't played many hands on yet, but ran like 27bb/100 for the ones I did, lol.

PTO doesn't have anything built in to track 3-bets (at least not that I am aware of), but I am currently looking at my game and have said it before, but I feel that is my current weak area, especially against call stations (they will call any pf raise, but if you 3-bet, even the biggest retards will fold, or if they don't, they play completely predictable on the flop - therefore 3-betting with position, ftw - I haven't really been doing it at all with KKxx, QQxx, JJxx and really only AAxx and rundowns since I don't really want to 3-bet and then get 4-bet with anything other than AAxx and rundowns - but I have seen some of the better players in my db 3-betting really wide and need to better think about which hands to do that with)

Here's to October and hoping that it will be less brutal in terms of variance and somehow make up for the past two months' style of variance.


From previous tests I've done in code, this sample size is still pretty tiny. I think this needs to be somewhere between 500-850k hands before it is worth paying attention to, at least in terms of fun things like rate of hands being dealt with a skew or something.

Technically I think she may be busy
(poker)
I have come to notice that I am going to miss the platinum VIP level at Poker Stars. I currently have just over 9000 points on the month, and there is one day left to get that up to 10k points to qualify on this month.
This is the month I split my tables so that I had 2 on FTP and 2 on PS, but that meant less points.

I changed a few things to make a push, and it should be okay next month, but this month the push didn't work. I did make some level of Iron Man on FTP, but not terribly high. Both of these were likely due to taking about 5 days totally off of poker this month due to being tired/stressed with real life stuff, or going to social gatherings on the weekends.

The last push was last night (not sure I can get 1k in a night in the few hours I play, without playing 6 tables, and I'm not sure that's good for my bankroll - may give it a shot, but it will likely result in coming like 5 points shy, which might be even more frustrating), I gave PLO200 a shot and found it interesting that it was easier than PLO100 and PLO50, in that more people play tight. If others play tight, then I have a firm grasp on their range and I can do the right thing.
But if someone plays every hand they are dealt, I have no clue what they hold if I bet and they call.

So last night was lower variance than usual, especially when combined with not getting cold decked and getting my AAxx hands in position.

There was one guy who was playing a pseudo-shortstack strategy, where he would buy in for 50BB, and then try to get all-in each time he had a A876ss type hand (or JJxx, QQxx, KKxx, AAxx, or any broadway rundown - but all of the times I happened to be in a pot with him, it was the A876ss type). This was often. Three of those times, I had AAxx and happily got in with him, and he seemed to feel this was an error on my part.
I didn't say anything.

Finally he stopped reloading and he, in all caps, said to the table I HATE U. FUK U AND FUK UR MOTHER. I AM COMING BACK LATER TO PLAY HEADS UP. FUK UR MOTHER TO HELL.
Technically he was calling me out with my username as well, so those were targetted not at the table but specifically me. It gave me a nice feeling.

I sort of felt that was the wrong time to point out equity and all that sort of thing, but I was a favorite pre and post on all of those, so I don't really get why he was so pissed.

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Want
I'm pretty sure I've said this before, but I want a Nikon D3. kthxbye

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Adjustments
(poker)
I've adjusted my game so that I am taking even more notes than I already do to try and be more aware of call stations at my tables, and being less aggressive with them on the flop. This has resulted in a dramatic drop in my bad beats and overall variance (which should probably also mean loss of potential money were I to win).
I also try and be less aggressive with people at the table who I have no stats on them until I have collected enough to get a feel for what they are like (whether it is via the HUD or just watching them play).

I had previously cut way back on the hands I play and nearly stopped cold calling totally. Now I'm opening up my range again and cold calling about twice as much on the BTN than I had been (I had stats of about 5% cold calling on the BTN, and now want to only keep it under 11%+), and I'm opening up my range of 3-betting once I have a larger stack, and keeping it where it was with 150BB or less.

This has so far resulted in much better monetary performance, but still has me a bit confused how some others play. This has resulted in my showdown rate going way up, and my won at showdown rate also going way up (?), which overall has meant fewer hands not going to showdown, and nearly all of those being ones due to me folding.
That's a bit of an exaggeration, but feels very much like a call station after my previous aggressive style - although now I'm even more aggressive in that I check to the players more and then raise them, or just check through and get free cards - betting in the hopes of getting information or people folding is just burning money.

That said, from the extremely small sample at 1/2, it seems to be slightly less the case due to far more tight players, so it is more fun for me to play, as I can feel better about laying a hand down when they indicate they have it - since they do often enough that it should be assumed.
If someone is playing 85% of their hands and has high aggression, their bet could mean anything - but not if they are playing 17% of their hands and have low aggression as well (the former I see at .5/1 and below, the latter I saw more of than usual at 1/2 in my small sample).

Oh well, here's to hoping next month results in an all-in rate closer to 50% luck instead of 16% like the past two combined.

I'm not saying anything new here, but there is a significant portion of the business world who exist solely due to meetings. If they were not in meetings all day, there would be no reason for them to exist at a company.
Yet their role in meetings is irrelevant, so they don't need to be in these meetings.

So you get an issue where you don't need the meetings, but if you stop having them, then these guys would be out of a job.

So it results in them justifying their own existence by scheduling meetings all of the time, during which nothing constructive gets done, and nothing is decided upon other than that we will get XYZ on their side to talk to ABC on our side via email.

I try and bypass this by preemptively pointing out that whoever on their side is person XYZ for the situation, they should email me about it. It saves the days of delay while we try to schedule the meeting. It saves the 30-60 minutes of being on a phone (speakerphone at that), and then we can just get down to discussing in more detail what needs to be done - via email.
If they request something via email, it can be researched and written up, and there is a document trail on that.

In a meeting, someone asks something, and you usually just say "I'll get back to you on that".

Meetings are such a waste of time, but the people who drive them cannot stop driving them, or there is no longer for them to exist.

So my role at meetings is usually to answer all of their questions ahead of time via email, everyone ignores that email, we are in the meeting and it is pointed out that all of the questions are already answered in the email that nobody read, it is agreed that after the meeting the email will be read and the rest of us will follow up via email, then the meeting breaks.
After half of them actually read the email, they want to schedule a meeting to discuss the email, and when I push them to find out what they want to discuss, I then give them a response that resolves any open issues.

That email in turn is not read, a meeting is scheduled, etc.

If the meetings were face to face, over drinks, at a nice location, etc - I would not care - at least it is something.
But doing these during an already busy day, over speakerphone where I usually have no clue what they are saying, with most of the time spent bullshitting and killing the 30-60 mins booked for the meeting is such a huge waste and so boring.

Ahh, management.

brb - got to go setup a meeting to figure out when the next meeting should be - not sure if everyone can make this meeting, so I might need to setup another meeting to discuss why not everyone is available for the meetings

(Back when I worked at the exact replica of Office Space, the very last meeting I attended was a meeting to discuss the fact that we were having too many meetings - the worst part was that nobody in that meeting seemed to see it as fucked up. I just got up and walked out of the meeting and never went to another one after that. Nobody would ever ask me why I wasn't in a meeting either. It pretty much solidified my views on meetings.)

If there is any sort of universal constant in my life, it is how much I fucking can't stand talking to people on speakerphone.

Whatever
This page has a photo of a 12 year old McDonald's burger:
http://bestwellnessconsultant.com/2008/09/23/1996-mcdonalds-hamburger-karen-hanrahan-best-of-mother-earth.aspx

It bothers me that it is completely devoid of context. It is not placed next to a 12 year old variation - no Wendy's burger, no burger this woman made on her own, nothing else - just an example of one. She notes that it preserved itself, but then also shows it is kept in an air tight container.
It is implied that this shouldn't happen, but outside of any context, it has no meaning and we are left to our imagination - likely her point, but one that hurts the scientific side of her point.

She adds:

Do you find this horrifying?

McDonalds fills an empty space in your belly. It does nothing to nourish the cell, it is not a nutritious food.

I don't find it horrifying. I don't find it appetizing, or pleasant, or really any number of other things, certainly not horrifying - I just see it as biased.

I don't at all feel that McDonald's is great, but I also find her statement that it "does nothing to nourish the cell" also equally without value. It very much does nourish the cell. It is nutritious food. You eat it, your body breaks it down, and nutrients are delivered - were you starving and ate these burgers, you would no longer be starving.
That said, there are things that are superior for providing nourishment, but that is not what her statement says. But I believe that is what she means to imply.

Were I to put up a photo of a checker, or a coffee mug and note that eating that does nothing to nourish the cell - this would be completely accurate.
Saying it of a McDonald's burger is inaccurate.

It would be superior to make that statement with context and show how much better other things are at various types of cell nourishment - but to make sweeping generalizations and then back them with odd things out of context, like a burger that has been around for a long time... it doesn't really prove the point that I believe she is trying to make - and more importantly I believe her point is a valid one - I just think she is going about it all wrong.

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Wooo
Beer me.

People getting punched in the face, in slow motion. Who knew that would be completely awesome?
http://edge.famecast.com/actionfigure//AQ_PUNCHES_EDIT.mov

When I was a kid, my father's step-father was murdered.

( I let my mind wander on this point, and by that, I mean there really is no point )

Note to Self:

If an email is over one word in length, nobody will read it.

And if the email is one word in length, half will read it, half will not.

Of the people who read that, 75% of them will misunderstand it, and the rest will immediately forget whatever they read and go back to whatever they are doing.

Therefore, don't send emails. Ever.



FIRE BAD!!!!

tl;dr

This may be old, but I think it is the first I saw it. A quiz as to whether you are looking at someone from a food show, or a porn star.
http://men.style.com/details/features/landing?id=content_4731

One of my profs in college did a piece where he would crop photos of people fighting and hurting each other, with photos of porn, and the viewer was left to decide which was which. He noted that the main difference between pro porn and amateur was that you could more easily tell that it was porn with the pros, and with the amateurs it was harder to tell if they were just people fighting.

I think I'm probably fighting wrong.

Strategy Post
(poker)
( Read more... )

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Skill
Similar to my all-in luck in poker, when it comes to fantasy football/baseball/etc (is there fantasy bowling, because that sounds riveting - I mean, other than the fantasies I have in my head about bowling), I have some sort of innate ability to pick whoever is going to have the most incredible monster day - and bench them just prior to the game.

I can't really say how I do it - but it just happens. I have a gift.

I've even tried Costanza-ing it and for every pick where I think I will bench them, I think "no, if I bench him, he will have a monster game, I'm just that good" - so I then swap and play them instead. But I'm so clever that I even manage to figure that out and still bench the right guy so that I miss out on his monster game.

I hate to come across as cocky, but when it comes to life, I completely suck at it.

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Well, there is that
I've been trying to think of things I'm good at. The list at this point is very short.

Things I'm good at:
1) sleeping

Even that, it would appear I don't do right, in that I think I have sleep apnea.

That said, I can sleep anywhere, at any time.

My wife cannot.

So I was trying to give her some lessons at the only thing left in life that I haven't shown total ineptitude at.
My instructions are pretty basic, but I think they are a winning formula.
Basically...
1) get into bed
2) do nothing at all for 6-12 hours

My wife explained to me that she tried to do this, but her mind wanders and she thinks about everything that needs to be done. I tried to point out that she's failing at step #2, in that she's thinking, when she should really be doing nothing at all.

This leads me to believe that the dumber you are, the less encumbered by thought, and therefore the easier it is to get to sleep.

Me and dogs (yeah yeah, grammar). That's what we have in common. If only I could lick my balls.

There are a few individual comics out there that are favorites of mine - not as in the people who write them, or the series, but individual units. The most notable I think would be "IT'S GOOFY TIME", but I think this one ranks really high up there and couldn't be more accurate.