the golfing range

i went to one this morning and they seem to have replaced the plastic tees with automated plastic tees. this is an amazing example of trying to implement technology for no reason and failing miserable. you're supposed to load a bunch of balls into it so it can replenish automatically for you. i couldn't work out how to do it anything other than one at a time which makes it equivalent to a non automated tee.
except this was worse. when you do a practice shot, and just stroke the ground at the right level, the tee things you hit the ball and so tries to replenish the ball. this takes much longer than you want, and so you need to throw in another practice swing.
this could get you stuck in an infinite loop if you're not careful.

golf, as a game, is a curiously lonely one. made bizarre by the slave you employ to carry your clubs because walking for a few hours is tiring enough without the added strain of hitting a ball maybe 80 times.
to be fair, if i could afford it, i would have a butler do things for me that i could not be bothered to do.

homicidal drivers

i gone done did a bit of cycling recently. i quite enjoy it.
however, it can be very scary. i find driving scary enough. people don't seem to realise the kinetic energy possessed by a two tonne metal object travelling at 30 miles per hour, let alone at 70 miles per hour. while it's scary in a car, when you're on a bike, you know that you don't have much protection. instead of an engine built to take an impact, you have clothes. these don't work in quite the same way. many drivers seem rather persistent in their attempts to bring about an untimely demise for their fellow road user.
i thing i have noticed is that there are an equal proportion of terrible drivers to terrible cyclists. many cyclists are as suicidal as drivers are homicidal.

this all got me to thinking. drivers that don't indicate.
for years i thought they were just super selfish people who weren't really aware of the existence of others. but they must know that there are other people on the roads. and if that is the case, then i can only conclude they really don't care at all about themselves. it's like they've given up on life and are just letting it slide. to me that's pretty scary to share a road with.

what else is scary is my 1tb drive is almost full. what on earth do i have that takes up 1tb?!

sharing thoughts

i find it easier to share my thoughts online sometimes. in real life i'd usually keep them to myself.
i wonder why.
it's like it's easier to care about people you don't care about. there's nothing invested in them. when someone you care about annoys you, doing things you know annoy you, that's much more annoying than when people you don't care about annoy you in the same way. or maybe that's just me.

when i think about it, it's really the wrong way round.

whatever it is i'm afraid of with people in the real world, i think it's bad for me to behave how i do. that will be something i will focus on for the rest of the days of my life. it's way outside my comfort zone but i'll give it a go. things like my hopes and dreams. i wonder what it's like to share them.

i never go for the big stuff, cos even the small stuff people disregard or laugh at me. like when i said i don't want a job. i want to work for myself, set up lots of streams of passive income. they call me unrealistic etc. i wanted a job for about 12 months for experience and money, and i know working for someone else is not what i want long term. maybe later down the road teaching is one of the few things i could see myself doing which involves working for someone else. but that's because teachers can actually make a difference.
i think i wrote this as a draft about two years ago.
since i had a job for the last couple of years before i was finally in a position to tell them to leave me alone and work for myself.
i tried the talking more openly to the people i think i'm closest too. that didn't work so well. i think i need a better approach. it turns out that people who say they want the best for you, often want you to do what is best for them, while they convince you it's best for you.

my head hurts.

as yakshi has been too lazy to finish his work out art (the final chapters of quincy), i have begun to reread the five part trilogy of the hitch-hikers guide to the galaxy. i like books.

i did a poker!

i finally managed to rock up to a casino, the ol' vic on edgware road in london town for a game of the poker. not many people turned up for a 1 rebuy if you bust tournament. It started off well as the table was short handed so i won a bunch of pots against people stuck in 2004. an old man KEPT limp reraising monsters and no one else seemed to notice. one dude would only play AQ+. just before the final table, i was a couple of seats around from him so i just kept raising his big blind. 4 occasions i had the chance. 2 he shoved on me (over 25bb). i lolled and folded both times. both times he showed KK. i saw him get kk 5 times in the tournament and he played them just as badly every time he was given a chance.

i remembered how boring live poker was, and also how easy. of course i bubbled the first tournament i played in years. i lost AK vs 77 for the chip lead and then when i finally got a chance to shove 6bb i got k9 called by j7. i flop 2 pair and lost to a straight.
maybe i shouldn't have called with my ak earlier. the raiser was an average to bad player. he opened to 6bb, playing 12bb. i had about 25bb. i figured him for a pair because it's still 2004 and decided a race to become chip leader could gain me a great chance to win. he who dares, eh?

it's a bit of a turbo because live play is so super slow. i spent my time trying to guess everyones hand in every pot, but there aren't even that many showdowns. it's quite scary how loose some people play. they can play almost anything based, i think, primarily on how bored they are at the instant that they have to decide whether to call or fold (no raising allowed, it's 2004!). so guess the hand becomes quite the eye opener when you expect sets+ and see top pair no kicker win.

possibly worth going back. i just don't have the time for poker at the moment, so maybe ssnl online is the way forwards for now. i haven't logged in to pokerstars in so long i think they may have forgotten about me. i do miss making the money at poker. tax free and it was pretty steady for a few years. if i can just sort out my anger management issues, i think i'll be ok...

funnily enough, i think reading bringing down teh house (after all, it is 2004, isn't it?) made me excited to go to a casino and play a beatable game. amazingly, i found out about another card room, which charges a rake on it's tournaments of up to 40%. FORTY PER CENT. LOL @ anyone who plays there. seriously, it's a £25 + £10 tournament. i had to work out the % rake twelve times and then use a calculator because i could not believe that it was so high. it did make me realise that 100% rake just means the rake is the same as the entry. maybe rake should be calculated as a true percentage, eg 50+5 is 9% not 10% and 25+10 is 29% not 40%. either way, you have to be insane to play there. which makes playing there surely profitable if you're not insane? i think i've just discovered a catch 22 (it is 1961 isn't it?).

why i quit my job

diabetes charities.
helping people who couldn't help themselves to another piece of cake.

i mean that only as a joke. that's obviously wrong as type I is genetic.

what is not a joke, however, is the following tale. set in one of the largest UK companies who supported a diabetes charity for a year. within the company (i did a bit of work there) all the charity raising initiatives for years up till then had involved cake sales, and tuck shops, and more cake sales.
in fact, everything revolved around selling sugary items to people and taking the proceeds for charity. Thankfully, diabetes (the charity) came to town. I naively assumed that now, things would change and charity raising would involve other things, perhaps involving exercise.

i was wrong.

the cake sales, chocolate sales, fizzy drink sales continued unabated. the irony of selling diabetes inducing goods to people who sit around in an office all day was lost on them. i saw them merely giving money to a charity via the method of increasing the amount of work the charity will need to do in future. yes, it was as though the charity was on a recruitment drive, although of course they wouldn't have approved. in fact, for one day, the charity came to the office and gave away free fruit to people at lunchtime. sadly, they literally (as in the original meaning of literally, not the new definition of literally which is literally defined as figuratively) couldn't give it away. I took a few pieces, instead of buying them from the canteen that day. almost no one else went to take some. i told the people sat around me and none could be bothered to go for a walk to get a delicious free food.
the irony was further compounded when a fellow member of staff pointed out, that if someone had diabetes, they would not be able to contribute to the charity since it was all sugary goods that were being sold to raise money.

the worst part was that apart from about 5 people, no one could appreciate all this irony. and that is why i quit working there.