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.

Picture 1

One of my favourite error messages. What boggles the mind is that someone programmed this in.
All I did was press the close button to exit Excel.

catharsis

from the moment i first laid eyes on her, something in my head and my heart clicked. the short hair, the unique clothes, the smile, i could go on but i don't know exactly what it was. i would describe her as the type to use black headphones with her iPhone. but of course, she didn't have an iPhone.
when it all turned to shit, i would be miserable for years afterwards. was it worth it? I have never allowed myself to ask that question of me before. deep down i must have known i was too close to it. right now, i would say yes. wholeheartedly worth it.

maybe that's why i find myself in a similar situation with someone else i can't ever have. hopefully the feeling of melancholy will pass. it always does, yet each time always feels different. getting absorbed by work is a terrible solution. it just avoids the issue instead of resolving it.

i don't think this post sounds like me. from tomorrow, i will begin again my 30 day photo challenge. i'm not even gonna lie, most of them will be old photos. but that's ok. they're still ones i took and they're not terribad.


"novelty is brilliant, because it exists as a concept"

bicycle. BICYCLE

i went to ride my bicycle.

I think the entire saddle industry needs a rethink. Either that or i don't know how to sit on one. I only went for about an hour and a half yesterday, and today i must have bruises the size of DVDs on the tops of my inside thighs. I can fortunately undertake all tasks that i would like to do. The only act that causes me great pain is the sitting down on the saddle.

While I'm at it, if anyone here cycles, how do you stop flies flying into your eyes, mouth and nose? I wear (sun)glasses but this doesn't even protect my eyes.

Finally, if the road makes could make roads (at least the edges of the roads) out of not gravel, that would be appreciated.

robots

If you live in england you will have no doubt suffered the mental abuse that is getting a phone call only to answer it and have a robot on the other end say something along the lines of "Have you been missold PPI..."
The worst thing about this is that they put this little pause in before they start the message, so you answer the phone, say hello, and then get abused.
It was like those people who used to make answerphone messages of themselves saying "hello (pause) how are you (pause) i'm not here, please leave a message (beeeeeeeeeeep)"

These tend to occur from unknown numbers. Sadly, I sometimes have to answer unknown numbers as some businesses want to hide who they are. (chickens). When i answer the phone from a number i don't recognise (or unknown/blocked) i now just wait a few seconds to see if it is a human.

yesterday i confused a lady who called me because of this silence. i realised yesterday i have been conditioned to annoy/confuse real people by answering the phone with silence, because i don't want to be tricked into saying hello to a robot. a robot who probably doesn't care.

The robots are winning.

work avoidance

I think i could probably write a book on this.
Ways to avoid work while remaining productive:
1)eating.
this is always acceptable. one needs to eat to live.
2)hot drinks.
as with 1, can also be consumed at a higher frequency than foods.

...

16)go and vote.
all politicians are self serving and detrimental to society. It gets worse the higher up the chain you go. however, due to the fact that some are worse than others, you have to vote for the horrible, egotistical, narcissistic and often mentally challenged folk, to ensure that the worse kind (BNP etc) get a smaller percentage of the votes.
I think it would be great if you could vote negatively. anyway, this is tending to non productive thoughts so they are for another day

...

24)buying computing equipment including wireless mice and keyboards because laptop keyboards and mousepads are built by people who are clearly submental. the keyboard should be as close to the user as possible idiots. not as far as possible.
the f keys should not require extra buttons for them to be pressed.
the mousepad should not be so intrusive that when you use the keyboard you keep accidentally selecting things with the mouse.

...

72) defrosting the freezer.
it has to be done. so why not take a break to do it?

...

141) write a blog post
it's been a while. people might be worried. others might be craving their next fix (MAYBE?). it's essentially important to society that you blog.

monday bingo

every monday morning at work there is a meeting. it holds up to 15 people and lasts up to 90 minutes. my presence is obligatory, yet my presence is completely unnecessary.
yesterday, i went the entire 50 minutes (it was shorted than usual) without uttering a single word. the best part is no one noticed. I wonder how many weeks i can get away with this for. if i do this for long enough, can i then stop turning up without anyone noticing? an interesting social experiment. i honestly believe i could not turn up for a day and no one would notice. in fact, next week i am having a day off, and i wonder if i could pretend i was there all day....

cooking

cooking is quite boring. however, i am learning to cook more. and while the boredom hasn't decreased, my interest in going to restaurants has decreased. paying way over the odds for food i can make just as well seems very -ev. sure, there's the atmosphere, and the going out that have value. but i'd rather spend the money on fun things like holidays, track days, and many other experiences which will be new to me.
i think i'm going to do a track day as soon as i find a decent one near enough to me.
also i want to go to a rifle range.
i don't want to become an expert at any of these things. i just want to try new things. and also it's getting warm outside so going out is now a lovely option of which i must make the most of.

skiiiing

i think the number one attribute you need to be good at skiing is having the part of your brain that processes fear removed.
anyone that does ski racing is especially mentally challenged.

i am, yes, a little bit envious as I am mostly still learning how to stop. or more precisely, being confident that i can that stop when i want to. Of course, didn't stop me doing some parts of black runs on the mountains which are traditionally reserved for those people who have a desire to laugh in the face of death.
i am not one of those people.

it's all very well pushing the limits in poker to see and learn where the boundaries are. the worst that will happen is you'll lose a few hundred big blinds. not quite as easy to do when the consequences change to falling off a mountain. or flying head first into big trees.

after 4 days of avoiding death i almost began to enjoy it and wanted to go a bit faster. sadly, it was hometime.

maybe i'll go again soon...

tyred

i am currently tired pretty much all the time.
not sleeping doesn't really help. i seem to get about 5 hours a day, waking up ever earlier. i'm sure i read once that humans naturally move to a 25 hour cycle. i seem to be on a 23 hour cycle, waking up an hour before my alarm each day, and then going to bed slightly earlier the next night.
i'm on holiday next week and plan to reset this through the copious ingestion of alcoholic beverages.

i still haven't played any poker for a long while. busy setting up a company which hopefully can lead to retirement in 5 years time. a company that actually does useful work. eventually (couple of years time) for improving education is the plan. early stages for now, and hopefully can discuss it in more detail in some months time when things are happening.

right now, have many other things to worry about including, women, money, moving flat, not being able to afford to buy a house ever, and learning many more things like how to use access properly, as well as c++ and other languages, such as the language of wimmen.

anon

one thing that was important to me when starting this blog was the anonymity. i like the idea of being able to type freely without any real fear of consequences. however, something has always prevented me from making full use of this and as far as i can tell it's the idea of one day losing said anonymity.

i could for example, have spoken of how the first girl i ever loved crushed my heart and how it took far too long to get over. to the point that my next proper girlfriend had no idea that i still thought about her. (except i think she did).

or i could have written about how i had to move back home after running out of money making from both PhD studies and poker. I still don't have a full idea of where the money went!

hopefully i shall become less afraid in future.

things they don't teach you

how to walk properly
how to talk properly
how to stand properly
how to sit properly
how to iron.

i've seen lots of surveys* which ask about why people get married. i'm sure they're always devised by men. there's always the standard answers like sex, money, love etc. but the real reason men marry women, which they conveniently ignore as they don't want to let the secret out, is because ironing a shirt is a ridiculous experience. men make shirts, and wear shirts and sometimes even wash shirts. but only soldiers iron shirts because they get threatened with a gun to the face.


*surveys in the loosest sense of the word. i'm sure they just ask about 20 people in the street and make up a bunch more. i've never been asked about any survey ever. although, if they did try to ask me i would politely inform them i have no time for them.

**this was in my drafts folder but i thought i'd already posted it. apologies if i have. but only minor apologies as it made me laugh a little and hopefully you too.

i literally have no idea how people blog every day. is there that much to talk about?

that may have felt like the title was going to be all, but i do actually have something to write today! not much though, don't get too excited.

i was in the gym today and they have the tv on with subtitles. the news was on and talking about matthew something famous about his new film coming out where he had ot play a guy who got aids. they talked about his method acting and his many months spent getting into the role. subtitles made it funny because they spoke about how "he had to lose £47" for the role. all i could think was i would accept many millions of points in exchange for £47.
i can't tell if it's automated or they have a fast typist doing subtitles. i think it's people as they correct some mistakes that are made...

in other work related news, i think i've said this before, but it seems to be contagious and more and more people at work keep saying yourself instead of you.
most people i can tolerate but when people try to sound clever but only succeed in making themselves sound moronic, i can't help but want to avoid them at all costs.

now, i need to go to the shops. haven't been for weeks. i have literally no idea what or how i've been eating.

breaking bad

i watched season 1 of this when it first came out. i didn't like it. at all. i didn't realise that years later i would be ostracised for making this decision. So i have since started finishing it thanks to netflix. netflix is amazing. breaking bad is not. mainly because i just don't care about the characters at all. there were 2 i liked in all of the show. the rest were just annoying, insignificant, or worse: inconsistent.
from about season 3 it became more watchable. however, i just don't understand the hype. sorry.

!

dunno how my daily posting attempt went so tits up so quickly. though i think alcohol probably (definitely) had something to do with it. and not just out drinking, i also made the bestest mojito's i'd ever made. i went for applegate rum in the shops. i think it was the pretty bottle which attracted me. and it turned out the rum is rather good too.

you'd think after about 5 days i'd have something to say. i don't. not really. i think i'm just gonna do this here brief post and try to get back on it tomorrow.

books

i have once again started reading. libraries are pretty awesome. but i see so many books i want to read that i run out of time. i try to read one good book and one entertainment book at the same time. for entertainment i been reading the jack reacher books. they're pretty easy to read and also quite good. the latest proper book i'm reading is "thinking fast and slow". it's pretty slow going as i need to spend time digesting what's in the book. so i think i'm gonna buy it. i've noticed lots of the ideas about how you think is built upon my jared tenlder's "the mental game of poker".

off to do some reading now before sleep. i think it's quite terrible how i've become less and less nocturnal. i liked waking up late. the sacrifices one makes to have a job in order to live in a tiny flat with lovely food eh? i think i need to start doing more to be able to enjoy a better quality of life. (and on that note, maybe i'll play 5 minutes of gta before reading...)