winning?

it can be strange how one reacts to an event. sometimes a person can even surprise themselves. tonight, i bought into a poker game for $80 (i thought the buy in was going to be $100, but that wasn't the case). i work myself up to about $100 in 30 minutes, then look down at pocket kings. i raise with them ($20), and get called by the chip stack that had been running over the table. the first card off the flop was a K, with a Q and a 10 as well. i push hard, get called. the turn was a blank. i look down and notice that no matter what i bet, i wouldn't have much left to play with on the river. at this point, i'm thinking that he has AA, AK, or QQ, the only hands that would justify the preflop call. i push all in, and he calls, flipping over AJ (the nuts).

so be it. i lost $80 in less than an hour. the strange thing about it... i feel pretty damn good. i would have played the hand the same way if i had it to do over again, and i will be back for another game soon. maybe winning is a state of mind... to me, just playing in my first game in almost a year was a victory in itself, despite what the cash tally was at the end of the session. it was good to feel chips that represented something more again.

as far as other news goes... work is work. and that's about it. my cat is still insane, but what did anyone expect. i might find something entertaining to do over the weekend, but i doubt it.

i'm going to go play a game of pool.

Wow.. I'm lazy

You know... it's been a very very long time since I've written anything here. It's not that I've had nothing to say, I think it's more due to my inability to find words and lazyness. Mostly the latter.

So what has happened? Well, Dragon*Con last year was a blast, and I can't wait to go again. I got a kilt, which I find very comfortable. Too bad I can't find more social events to wear it to.

Work has been going rather well. Stressful to say the least. This is the most demanding job I have ever had, and I think the difficulty is only going to continue pressing harder. I wouldn't want it any other way though. I'm working on making the transformation into management, which is a very tough if you want to do it right. My first year at work has dramatically changed my outlook on the concept of project management. At least I feel like I have new goals.

At the end of 06, I managed to recruit a former coworker of mine over to where I'm at. She's a great fit and complements the team well. There are a few others I would love to bring in, but I feel the chances of the cards falling correctly for it are slim to nil.

I went back to Colorado over Christmas. It was as beautiful as ever out there. And if you have never been in a hot air balloon, it's an experience you won't soon forget - absolutely breathtaking.

I spent the last day of 06 with friends enjoying a bit too much to drink. I think that's the way things were meant to be, so I'm happy about it. Looking back on the full year, 2006 was very stressful and challenging, but it was probably the most rewarding year of my life. I learned a lot and made so many close friends.

The most recent event in my life was the removal of my wisdom teeth. It's been very long overdue, and if I had it done several years ago it wouldn't have been nearly so painful. But it's just a dull ache right now, and it will subside in the comming days.

I need to get in shape. I say that so much, but it just doesn't happen. I don't know who reads this, but I'm going to ask for some advice here... how do you maintain dicipline? It seems like such a simple concept, but I get very lax very quickly. So I'm just looking for some pointers. Thanks in advance.

Long story short... I'm back :)

stumble stumble

so the rest of the month plodded along at it's regular pace. leave it to time to be constant. atleast for the most part.

i'm getting to the point that i need to find higher games to really work on my poker skills. free tournaments are getting kinda lazy. as long as i don't run into very bad luck, i seem to just will myself into the top 10.

pool on the other hand leaves me with a lot of room for improvement. i'm getting a little better every time i play, but still have a very long way to go before i would even consider myself half-decent.

work has been work. there isn't much to say there.

sadly, my life is pretty routine and dull right now. i could probably go for mixing it up a bit, as soon as i find the time. i'm quite happy i took the summer off class. i needed it badly.

6 flags trip tomorrow early morning. as long as i actually wake up in the morning, i should be fine.

i'm joining a gym next week. i've talked about it long enough. i've got the cash, so i might as well use it.

my cat is still cute and evil. some things never change.

wow. acutally writing

first, in no order of precedence, i would like to give mad props to the following people:

brad
christie
jeremy
bobbiestan
trey
angela
joe
liz
tim
francis
woody
brian
brittney
amber
the breakroom staff (norris and company)
(i think that's everyone, edits will be made otherwise)

friday was great. i remember most of it. i hope i was sufficiently entertaining. i know i was sufficently entertained.

once again i proved that i can't play twister drunk.

aparently 25-30 or so drinks in 3.5 hours is enough to make me time travel. beats finding a delorean.

i'm currently sitting in an MIIS class. i'm giving it about 30% attention. i'll turn it up as the class gets more difficult. i swear.

the hotel i'm staying at has a swimming pool. i must take advantage of that. i'm still interested in getting into shape. one other than "pear", "grape", "watermellon", or the like.

x-3 was ok. too much deus-ex-mechana for my better tastes, but still decently executed.

the cheesecake factory rocks.

so does the ds-lite.

they are currently talking about programming. i'm 1 of 2 actual programmers in this class. i wonder if he is finding this as elementry as i am.

on a sidenote... vbscript sucks.

i'm out of titles

this is probably a bad time to write. my creativity isn't really up to par (not that par is usually even remotely acceptable). i shall attempt to give the standard update, and i may rant on a bit about something that doesn't particularly matter, such as the inner workings of my mind.

quick thought... i wonder how different the decision making process is from an internal standpoint from person to person. certianly we don't all come to simmilar conclusions the same way. maybe attepting to decypher how another person's decision process works would be akin to reading another language? well, just a thought.

life has been crawling. and i've been enjoying most aspects of it. the last week has been kinda busy though, as far as after work activity, but that's over for a week or two. the only thing that i didn't like about about the last week was how rigid the schedule was. i didn't have any room to just 'shoot from the hip' so to speak, which i feel is when i'm at my best.

it's happening very slowly, perhaps at a rate of 1% a month, but i feel myself getting less tame. my inner rage just keeps building, and it's not a constant by any stretch. some days i don't even notice it, but the times that i do, it's getting more profound. i'm not sure yet if i should fight it or accept it. i tend to feel that things happen for a reason, so i'll stand in the fog for a little while and see what shape it gathers in.

i really need to clean today. really.

time to muse once more

my cat once again sits in the highest point in the room he can safely reach and watches the area like a general planning an invasion. i'm probably the target. i realize that i talk about my cat quite a bit here. if you don't like cats, then bite me. then the cat will bite you. if you are alergic, i have medicine.

last week at work was tedious. nothing wanted to work as advertized. and nothing wanted to not work with any form of consistancy. i feel like taking a drill to a server rack, but i'll hold off for the time being.

classes are over, and i may not be taking any over the summer. it depends on what is going to be happening with training for work. there is a chance that i'll be going to washington (state) for a week in june for MIIS training. i won't get into geeky detail right now. i mean, look how i'm dressed

so, with this new chunk of free time i have found, i shall dedicate more time to keeping my apartment clean, playing poker, and finding ways to inflict mental damage upon myself. any takers? wusses.

life, overall, is ebbing more than flowing. i think it has more to do with the time of year than anything. the heat slows me down, and it seems to slow a lot of other people down too. i'd like to think that it isn't a calm before a storm (so to speak), but i'm not going to place any bets right now. i think i have a bit of growing up to do in the meantime. just not sure in what areas. this is where the commenters come in.

it does sort of make me wonder... should i calm down a bit, be more quiet, and stop being so outlandish? is my spastic energy just a reminant of childishness? alas, i'm not really that sure. i think that overall my demeanor has become more sober over the last year or two, not that i did it willingly, it was more of a reactionary quality. i do want to become a better person though, more for myself than for the concept.

enough of that melodramitc shit. i don't know why anyone reads this. it's not like there is much excitement to be had in my sentences. just grammatical annoyances joined with mangled words. i don't even captialize words.

back in montgomery

the weekend was a welcome retreat from the normalness of my last few weeks. the concert was good, the several shots of jager was also pretty good. i have finals comming up in a few days. then i need to decide if i am going to class over the summer or not. probably so - why stop now.

i'm glad that these text boxes i type in doesn't do auto-grammer crap. i tend to write these things stream-of-conciousness and one's mental dialog has little time to make sure the verb is in the right place or the sentance is not a fragment. as long as you know what i'm saying, mysterious reader. i should really get my cat to be my proofreader. he'd hiss at it, i'm sure.

my cat is currently playing fetch with me. you read that right.

friday musings

well, i'm in pensacola, hanging out with the 'rents for a day or two. it's a nice chane to normal fridays, but i will miss the bowling. the last week has been up and down, but in that smooth tolerable way. the week at work kicked off great, the phrase i used at the end of that day summed it up pretty well "network fall down go boom". but i'm getting stuff done, at least i think so, thus i won't complain too much. i'm starting to get into this whole "project management" thing, and i'm finding it pretty interesting. perhaps that will be the direction i try to push myself over the next few years. it would be fun to go for a certification that requires about 5 years of experience before consideration. class is going well, but how could it not? too damn easy right now. i'm finding it more appropriate to be honest with my teachers now, they seem to respond to that with more respect to puffery, such as when i told my finance teacher that i had no interest in finance. it's not that i consider whathe likes inferior or anything, he asked me my views and interests and i gave them to him. i hope i get one of his classes for my core finance class, i've found his teaching style pretty effective. as far as personal life goes, things have been dragging. i need to get off my ass and do something about that, lest i become on of those people that i complain about. but i guess if a self fufilling prophesy can't be reflective, it isn't much to be said in the first place. so, hell, deal me some cards.

a pointless ponder...

almost everything comes as a duality of some form or another. it can be hard to see both sides of the coin in many cases, simply because the coin is set in such a way that one side is so hidden it takes near-faith to recognize it's existance. this is the conclusion i have come to about personal change. in nearly every aspect, there are 2 sides to look at... what you see yourself as, and what really is. for example, you might think you are ready for a change, but are you in reality? other examples are left to the reader, i don't feel like dragging this out any more than usual. this leads me to one of my personal mantras... a person is not defined by their words, they are defined by their actions. intent can and does come into play, and can make a difference at times, but actions are still the primary measurement.

so... where does that leave me? nowhere in particular. i tend to make a habit out of pondering questions that have no answers. but more on that specific subject later. for now, i must burgle.

back from the abyss

It's been a while. Too long perhaps. So lets get started, shall we?

The problem with karma is that there is no measuring stick. You don't know when things have balanced back out, or even how things measure up relative to each other. The best you have to go on is your intuition, and it can be skewed by hope or expectation. The truly unfortunate thing is that there is no solution to this issue - you can only do the best you can to moderate it. It does make me wonder though... is a person more akin to overvalueing a good action or undervalueing a bad one?

I have no significant complaints about life right now. Things are going pseudo-smoothly (very smoothly if you remove my mind from the equation) with no real expectation of turblance in the near future. I'm still trying to learn how to wake up early on a consistant basis, but that's a relatively minor complaint. I've also got to get out of debt, but compared to some of the things in the past, that too is rather minor.

Most of the things in life involve choice. You see a set of options, you choose a subset to perform. Thus, the concept of free will. A thought that just occured to me though, is that you have no choice in emotion. You feel what you feel, you cannot nearly as well dictate it. Given, some things may be governable to some degree, but the more powerful the emotion, the less control you have over it at a concious level. A person never asks for emotions, they are given to them.

I'm going to stop with that now. I feel like i'm tapping a bomb with a hammer, and that is just silly.

You know, I wonder if anyone actually reads this.

Then again, I wonder if it should matter.

welcome to another week

may i take your order? i'm bored as hell and desperately hoping to make something that moderatly resembles a post. i'm also wondering if i should play poker wednesday. really not too sure about that.

... one hour later ...

i'm feeling too easily distacted right now. kinda sad if i do say so myself.

another week, another pointless post

so i think it will be. but there really is no telling with me. i don't actually think about these before i start typing, so they tend to come off as a stream of conciousness exersize. thus all the misspellings. like that one.

purchaces for the week have included an air purifier, a new vacuum cleaner, a 512mb flash drive, and the payment of several bills. i'm sure i bought something else, but not sure what. i saw a tv at best buy marked down to 1400, and it took every ounce of my willpower to not snag it. i'm pathetic. but you knew that. that's why you came here.

work has been... well... work. it's where i do things for other people, and they give me money for it. kinda like being a hooker. reference tool song if you please. back already? good, let's go on.

it's good to know that i'll be in town for the next several months without having to worry about work sending me off somewhere. it's a fun distraction, but i think i need to rest and i also need to focus on matters more local (atleast more local than d.c.). so much to figure out, so little time. but there are no real answers, just real questions.

i think i'm going to get some piece of exercise equipment in the next week or so. first i must clean out a space for it. probably reorginize my bedroom a bit. not very hard, not much in there. i've got to remember to take a bunch of stuff to the cleaners tomorrow before work. but that requires waking up, something that i find difficult to do (it will probably be the death of me, but don't quote me on that).

i'm debating on what i'm going to do tomorrow night. the options are pretty clear cut... i either play pool and drink, or go play poker. either would be fun. hmmm... i just don't know. i won at the poker game tuesday night and i'm kinda wary about pressing my luck again. then again, i'm a chump. so i've been told. and have demonstrated.

wow... i was right. this post was pointless. i owe everyone that reads this 2 minutes of their life back.

notes

-cabin fever is one of the most stupid movies i've ever seen. i love it.

-march is going to be interesting. one way or another.

-my sleep schedule is off whack, and i have about 12 hours to fix it.

-i need to bite the bullet and buy a washer/dryer.

-i feel an introspective phase comming. prepare for some long boring posts over the next few weeks.

-i have no reason to feel glum, but i do. i looked up the word 'glum' after writing the first sentance, just to make sure it was actually a word. it just felt right.

-i think the further up a hill you climb, the more steep it gets. i wonder if it ever gets to the point where i'll walk upside down? we will see.

-dragoncon will still rock.

home again

i'm back in montgomery, and the cat is once again trying to kill me. yesterday could best be summed up as a surreal adventure. we walked in 4 different states (virginia, maryland, georgia, and alabama), and flew over several others. i pursuaded a luggage cart to go down 2 flights of stairs at the airport. finding dinner at 11pm in atalanta is tough. i eliminated an item off a checklist that i've had there for several months, only to be replaced by a few more things which will hopefully not take sevreal months to take care of. we saw the first actual rain for the entire trip right when we got back to montgomery. i know there was more. i'm just worn the hell out right now. perhaps another post later.

and all i can think is... when is lunch?

at about 11:45pm last night, we decided that we were too drunk to sucessfully order food. we had already tried to about 3 different times, but the plan just wasn't comming together. on the other hand, we were sober enough to watch 2 episodes of salad fingers. it would be discovered later that trail mix is not a vaild form of currency for a soft drink. so i was told atleast. what is one to do when they have spare trail mix and want a tasty coke? perhaps find the store run by forest creatures?

well, the instructer is giving us more assignments. this program is rather elementry.

oh, and for the record bobbiestan, i am currently wearing my 'agent rum and fruit juices' suit.