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MeToday080422

Game 2 of Spurs/Suns series

MeToday080416

More Marz wisdom. Liking the 3 minute format. Helps prevent rambling. I know all of you prolly like that. ;)

Red blend, cims de porrera, solanes. Priorat 2002. Catalonia.

What I'm drinking tonight.

Red blend, cims de porrera, solanes. Priorat 2002. Catalonia.

Sent from my iPhone

Your Tax Dollars Hard at Work

Just a quick blurb (yes the Olympics post is just below if'n you
haven't read it).

Just wanted to share a quote from an Indiana State Senator who has
probably summed up how our governments operate at all levels.

"I think a lot of people figured, 'I'm not going to put myself in the
position of having to explain why I voted against protecting kid from
sexually explicit material. <em>If it's unconstitutional, the courts
will take care of it</em>(emphasis added).'"

Democratic Rep. Matthew Pierce.

Here is the article from the Chicago Tribune:

<a href="http://www.chicagotribue.com/news/nationworld/chi-indiana-bookstoresapr10,1,23463.story?track=rss

">Indiana law focuses on 'sexually explicit materials'</a>

The point is the last part. Legislators not really reading bills put
before them for a vote to see what it says. Just reading the title or
following the herd and voting. The "it's not my problem, let someone
else clean it up" mentality.

And that, my friends, is why our governement is so messed up...both
sides of the aisle do this too often.

L8r,

Marz

Olympics

So the past few days have seen protests in 3 cities (London, Paris,
and San Fransisco) concerning the Olympic Torch. The torch has been
doused, the routes changed, people arrested for trying to do various
things, etc. Our world society has become one that uses anything it
can to protest something.

It used to be the trees, dolphins, and polar bears. Now it's Tibetean
monks. Now don't get me wrong. China is a very oppressive country.
I have a poster of the man who stopped the tanks at Tien An Men Square
as a reminder. And they've been giving Tibet the royal ass reaming
for decades. So it's now that the world suddenly wants to get
rightous on China's ass? Where were they before all of this?

It's the Olympics. Isn't this the one time every four years we put
aside our political, social, and philisophical differences aside and
celebrate athletic competition? It's about the athletes. Not about
monks. And that's what these protesters are doing. They are
bastardizing what should be a celebration.

Of course.....the IOC could have avoided all this by not selecting
Beijing to host the Olympics unless China cleaned up the human rights
issues there first. BUT NO. They had to be all stupid. C'mon you
gits. Did you really think that no one would have a problem with
this? Did you just stick your heads in the ground and hope no one
would notice?

And, of course. The Free Tibet movement should have been screaming at
the top of their lungs before now. Maybe they have and no one was
listening. That's probably the situation. So now they're stirring up
the hornet's nest. Supposedly they will be protesting everywhere the
torch goes.

I've got $100 that says once it gets to China, there won't be any mass
protests. No way will China allow that one. But how many countries
do you think will decided to boycott? If that happens, it will be a
disaster. Remember 1980?

Let me refresh your memory. The US lead a boycott of the Summer
Olympics that were being held in Moscow. It was in response to the
Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. Not only did we
boycott, so did Japan, West Germany, China, and Canada....Hmmmm...did
you catch that? China boycotted the Moscow Olympics. Wouldn't it be
sweet irony if Russia boycotted China's?

But let's re-think this. Why did these countries boycott? An
invasion of another country. it wasn't like the USSR had been in
Afghanistan for decades, they had invaded them in December of 1979.
So this was kind of a knee-jerk reaction. Jimmy Carter gave those
Ruskies until 12:01 AM of 2/20/80 to pull out or else.

But still.....they boycotted the Olympics. Something that's supposed
to be devoid of politics. And wasn't the USSR the "evil empire?" OK,
so Regan hadn't been elected yet to use that phrase. But still, the
Western World still feared them. But the IOC still gave them the
Olympics.

If we have countries boycotting the games again, I'll be pissed.
Using an athlete's life dream to make a political point is just
wrong. What did the athletes do to you? How many of them began their
dream way before Beijing was selected? If they want to boycott it on
their own, then let them. But not their country.

If the world is really serious about ending China's horrible treatment
of Tibet, then they need to impose economic sanctions, not allow
businesses to use Chinese labor to manufacture our goods, stop trade,
etc. Not pussy out and boycott a sporting event. That's like picking
up your marbles and going home like an immature brat.

Grow some balls world.

L8r,

Marz

Sent from my iPhone

Randomness

So, I'm sitting at the local coffee shop. What was supposed to be a visit of a couple hours has turned into more. Initially I was gonna chill here for a little bit. Eat a scone, have a nice hot chocolate, upload the pics from the weekend, and head back home.

Well, the uploads are taking forever. I was successful with Flickr and Facebook. But MySpace is misbehaving. I got about 30% through the first attempt and it started producing errors. But I didn't realize that at first. Also, the main window of my browser had some other tabs open. It took me awhile, but I figured out that if I went to a different tab, the pics stopped uploading. So now I'm on attempt #2. So far it's working, but damn it's slow. OK, it's 137 pics, but it's only about 15MB of photos. The other two services took less time combined.

I posted a new video (it's below this posting on the blog). I mentioned that there is an Illinois State Senator proposing a law making it illegal for someone to be on a cell phone while in a crosswalk. And he may include music players. Are you kidding me? What an idiot.

So the past 3 decades with walkmans and the like that didn't cause our lawmakers to ban this before? At least with cell phones, most people have another ear free. With music players, both ears are covered and most likely the person is blaring the music. No one sought to protect me from myself all this time; why now?

I call it "thinning the herd." Man I hope I never run for office. I bet I'd get slammed for being insensitive for that comment. Seriously, if you're that stupid to not pay attention to your surroundings, and if a bus hits you, then it was meant to happen.

Also, this almost exact law was proposed 14 months ago in New York by one of their state senators. All I can find are news stories talking about it being proposed. Nothing about it being passed. So that tells me this thing doesn't have legs.

BRB...b-room break.

Did you miss me? :)

So I took this picture of myself a few weeks back. I used my iPhone and took the picture of me wearing my three WLTV (http://tv.winelibrary.com) wristbands. I kind of forgot about it till last week. That's when I decided to use it as my profile pic EVERYWHERE. Originally I was going to take a picture of myself that had elements of my interests. Certain, shirt, hat, scarf, wristbands, background with diploma and pic of a piano, etc. Well, over the weekend I was gonna take that pic. I'm missing my Astros hat. Grrrr.... So I decided to us this one (if you haven't figured out by now, it's the pic to the right).

So I've seen this pic a lot over the past few days. OK, so it's my wallpaper on my iPhone. But, anyway, I don't consider myself a narcissist, but I think it's a damn good picture. The quality isn't the best. The iPhone does OK in good light, but if you're not steady it blurs shots. There is a bit of a blur. It's hard to take self portraits with it because of how you have to hold the thing and press a virtual button on the screen. Anyway...I think it looks like I did some kind of photo shoot.

iPhone. I've had this thing for about 3.5 months. I'm still amazed all the time. Yes it has it's shortcomings, but overall it's exactly what I've wanted for a while. What don't I like about it? Here's the list:

1. No 3G
2. No MMS
3. No Flash
4. Can't tether it to my laptop and use as a modem
5. Can't install apps
6. Can't get push e-mail from work

Those are the big 6. In a couple months, most of that ends. The only thing from that list that my Razr couldn't do at all was push e-mail. It did the rest. Not that it did all of it really great, but it did it. I think I miss having Flash the most. Web surfing does suffer without it. If we can believe Steve Jobs that mobile flash sucks and the full version can't run, then please Apple or Adobe give us a version that is good AND runs.

Oh well, in June, most, if not all of that, will be changed. Can't wait.

Guess that's it for the random thought. MySpace almost done uploading.

L8r,

Marz

Oh and during all this I've been having a great convo with my buddy Rolento on ICQ - can you say Old School IM? Yeah, that's how I roll.

MeToday080407

I'm back with a new MeToday

Headbangers ball

Having nuthin but a good time.

Wrong Place, Wrong Time

So I went to watch 21 yesterday. It a movie loosely based on the book Bringing Down the House. That book describes the MIT 6 - a team of Blackjack players from MIT (and other schools) who would go to Vegas on weekends and play Blackjack. There was an episode of "Breaking Vegas" on the History Channel that also covered this same group. The movie basically takes the main aspects of the story, fills in the rest, and puts it in current times. It's not a true and faithful accounting of the book.

In fact, the MIT 6 was just one team of many teams over the years that made the trek to Vegas to play Blackjack. At times there were as many as 80 members of the team in several states. This didn't happen until there were different incarnations, and that many members was near the end of their run in the late 90s early 2000.

First off. [Disclaimer] I never read the book. I've only watch the History Channel episode, this movie, and I have done some research on the 'net. So, while watching this movie, it brought me back to the days of being a Blackjack dealer at Dave & Buster's. Huh? They had gambling there? No. It was a "Just for Fun" Casino where you "rented" chips to play the game. There was no cash value for the chips; you couldn't exchange them for tickets or prizes.

The only thing we did was put you on the Top 10 Board if you had enough in chips that day. The board was a monthly top 10. Every three months we would invite those people (plus alternates that had dropped off the list to make up for any duplicates) back to play in a free tournament. We would also have a small buffet for them. The tournaments were on Sunday afternoons when we were normally closed.

Originally I started off as a player. D&B had stopped doing karaoke. The week before they did this, I had finished a Beer Tour and one of the things I got was a voucher for $10,000 in chips in the Casino. About a month after getting this voucher, I decided to check it out. I played for 5 straight days. That is, I went in 5 nights in a row to play. I was hooked. I played in the tourneys and the last one I played in I got 2nd (or was it 3rd - don't remember). That was the year-end tourney.

The smallest chip they had was $100 and the largest in the chip tray was $10,000. Then there were the "lammers." Special big value chips. See pic below:



Here are the "House Rules":



A few keepsakes from my time there. Anyway, after about a year or so of playing 3-5 days a week, I was offered a job to deal. I took it. This is how I got into the Restaurant business. So between playing and dealing I really learned all aspects of the game. I learned Basic Strategy and card counting. The exact method detailed in the movie 21 which is a simple plus/minus system where 2-6 are +1, 10-valued cards (10s and face cards) and Aces are -1, and 7-9 are 0.

I would say that I was at my peak between 1995 - 1999 (I started playing in 2004). I could easily count a 6-deck shoe and carry on a conversation (we used 5 decks at D&B, but the boats usually used 6). Of course that is without alcohol. Never drink and gamble when you are playing to win. I learned a lot of this from Ken Uston's book Million Dollar Blackjack. Plus other regulars from Houston.

So watching the movie made me wish I had been part of this at some point. Yes, they had some issues with casino security, but they were fairly successful avoiding too much hassle. I know I "coulda been a contender." Seriously, playing Blackjack at one point was mechanical. And it's a skill that needs constant practice. Even now when I go play, I sometimes forget the subtle nuances of Basic Strategy. I'm not as sharp with counting. This is because I don't live a breathe it every day.

I do miss the fun of it. Even though there was no real money involved. Before I moved to Cincinnati, I was very close to moving to Vegas. My Pit Boss was a former dealer and Pit Boss in Reno. He had connections (maybe even those kind) in Nevada. Not so much that I could walk into any casino and get a job, but I wouldn't have to start at the small casinos.

So why didn't I do it? Fear. Not fear of the unknown. Fear of the known. You see, I have an addictive personality. I find something I like, and I have to immerse myself in it. The latest is wine - and I don't mean drinking it. I mean learning about it. Ok, so there's also retail at work and video creation/editing. But games tend to really bring it out. During this period I also was hooked on BattleTech and Red Planet. Two video games that we had at D&B. And I got scary good at those too.

So, Blackjack is a game to me. Not something to make money on. I enjoy just playing it. When there's no real money involved, I really get into it. There's no stress. There's also the opportunity to "play around." Make stupid moves or try stuff with no consequence. Add being a dealer in Vegas and being able to walk to the casino next door to play after my shift could spell disaster. Or it could be profitable. However, not for long if I got too good.

You see, these guys on teams are going for big money most of the time. Not looking to just earn enough. Money has a way of doing that to people. Greed. Greed kills. And only the most disciplined player (notice I didn't use gambler) can combat greed. Most of the time that player wins the battle against greed. However, even the best can succumb to it. And to me living in Vegas would be the ultimate challenge.

But the desire is still there. But the desire is more to play the game, not to gamble. I'm good. Real good. I mean scary good. Or at least I was about 8 years ago. You watch the movie and the main character, Ben, is me. Except I didn't go to MIT. It's simple math. Really. All it takes is concentration. Right now, I'm better than your average basic strategy player.

And don't play against me as a dealer. OK, that seems obvious since the dealer already has an advantage. However, in a non-casino environment, I'm a bully as a dealer. I want to beat you. OK, if I'm trying to teach you I don't want to beat you. However, if you're a good player, I'll try to get you to do things you shouldn't do. Most casino dealers want you to win. The more you win, the more fun you have, means more tips for them. The best dealers still beat you, but they make that fun.

Remember I mentioned counting as a player. I could do it as a dealer. Told you I was scary good. Literally, I would sometimes actually count. It was so ingrained in me that at one point during this period, I knew I was subconsciously counting (playing or dealing). Now I couldn't just rattle of the count, but my brain was able to just watch and determine if a shoe was hot or cold.

Not that the count could predict this, but at times I would call card and suit of the next card. Not all the time. I wouldn't just guess at every card coming out. Anyone could do that and be right occasionally. No, I would do it on rare occasions and be right about the value more than 2/3 of the time, and be right about the suit almost 50%. If it wasn't the next card, typically it was within 3 cards. That's the brain working a deeper count. Now? I couldn't do it.

Oh, and the dealers you see on "boats" and even in some land-based casinos. Their technique sucks. At least the movie either used real dealers or they trained people to deal with proper technique. That's dealing cards, cutting "cheques" (what chips are called), calling out large amounts being brought in (color going out/coming in), and unusual play.

Unusual play is critical in that it can signal a card counter. As a card counter, you don't want to draw attention to yourself. Card counting is not illegal anywhere in the U.S. And it's not illegal most anywhere else. What is illegal is using a device to assist you. The famous shoe computers and various other computers to give players an advantage. And sometimes some unpleasant burns when they got too hot - the equipment, not the player. It's not illegal to think....yet.

However, a casino has the right to not let you play. They typically will tell you your game is "too strong" and give you the option to play any other game in the casino or leave. If you are stupid, you create a scene and then they ban you. Just like any business, they have the right to refuse service. Once you are banned there plan on having issues everywhere else. A company called Griffin Investigations keeps a book of known card counters. Once you get in that book, you're screwed. So if the nice Pit Boss with those nice security guards come up to you and ask you to leave, then leave.

Ahhh, the casino life. It was fun. I've included a couple pictures from my final day as Pit Boss in Cincinnati. They are of the July tournament in 1998. One is of me as Pit Boss, and the other is me dealing the Final Table. And as always, if you want to bankroll me, the deal is I keep half of the winnings and am never responsible for the losses. Go see the movie too.

It's April 1st

So it's April 1st and the forecast is for it to be cold today. WTF?
This is not gonna work for me today. I think I need to call off from
work today.

You see, growing up in Texas spoils one during the 6 months of the
year when it rarely gets below 40 for a high. And normally by March
it's rare to be below 60 for a high. Well it's April folks and the
high today is supposed to be about 40 and drop to the 20s tonight.

Screw that. I've been holding in the frustration of cold weather for
a month. I've lived in Chicago for 7 years now and this was the
coldest winter I've experienced. And it's not a perception thing.
That's the truth. This was the coldest winter in at least a decade
and the 7th coldest on record.

Now don't get me wrong. I really like living here. I just don't care
for the length of when it's cold. The cold itself isn't the
problem. Nor the snow. I like snow. A lot. Of course I don't have
to shovel it either. I'm just not a fan of having to wear a winter
coat in April.

Someday I will leave Chicago for warmer climes. And when I do I'll
probably need to be reminded of this when it's 100 degrees with 100%
humidity. Oh wait, I already did that in Houston for 6 years and
that's why air conditioning was invented.

So now I'm just waiting on laundry before I go to work (you didn't
actually think I was going to call off?) and brave the cold. Luckily
it's supposed to get a bit warmer later this week. Might be in the
50s by the weekend. That's probably still too cold for me to go to
the Cubs/Astros game at Wrigley Field.

I'll leave on this thought. What happened to Global Warming?
Seriously. Now they call it Climate Change. I think "they" are going
to go back to the theory the Earth is cooling in a few years and want
a generic phrase that can explain either one.

L8r,

Marz