Good, Hectic Times and more

So, what a day today. I got into work and got crackin' on some silly stuff. There seems to be an unlimited amount of stuff on that front lately. I found a screw in my tire this morning so I ended up leaving work early to get that fixed. While it was getting fixed, I scarfed dinner and did a little bit of grocery shopping. I have two guests staying with me for the next 3 nights and four days. I've also been planning the rest of my vacation which begins on Friday. Thank God for that. On top of all of this, I've got the usual marathon training.

Things should get more fun this week though. I've got a half day of work on Wednesday to catch the Cubs, and I'm off Friday to beat the traffic on my way to sunny Buffalo. Is life perfect, or what? Anyway, I'm really looking forward to the Cubs game and also to getting a little time off of work to just cruise around the east coast with Sandy and Bessie (my Camry) and get away from it all. Life could be worse. With a stop at Foxwoods involved, I can hardly go wrong.

I also just discovered this killer Black Cherry Spritzer in a can at Whole Paycheck (a.k.a Whole Foods). I don't remember what it cost me, but it tastes great! That alone could make a man happy.

With the NBA Draft approaching tomorrow, I was left wondering about something. How the heck is Bogut better than Channing Frye? This makes no sense to me. I saw both of them play and I would take Frye in a heartbeat. On top of that, I'm so not sold on Marvin Williams. That would be a disgrace to the number one pick. With the Bulls having zero picks in either round, I'm very satisfied. The pickin's are slim this year.

It was great to see Mark Prior in his 4th comeback start this season. Go Cubs.

Finally

A poker book I have no interest in buying....

Annie sux.

Weekend in Review

Wow, another week just passed without me posting. I apologize to my readership. I am a bit busy with everything I've got going lately. My posts will probably be about twice a week for a while.

Anyway, wanted to get some stuff down about the weekend. Friday night got off to a good start. I met up with my boy's at Stanley's. Stanley's is the best "home cooking" in Chicago, in my opinion. I love the mac and cheese there (Kraft it isn't) and pretty much the whole menu rocks. It's a bar too so that worked out for all of us meeting. They even have Labatt bottles. It isn't Molson Canadian but it will do. I ended up with the pot roast and the mac and cheese. It was lovely. We had Amir in from North Carolina, Eric in from Bloomington, Leheney in from southern Wisconsin (actually Gurnee), and Rao and his roommate in from the west side. MVP goes to Eric for showing up and not using the lame excuses of his brother about a grandparents anniversary party the next afternoon.

Anyway, after dinner and some bar-hopping, we ended up at Rao's for some poker. We had a 5 man no-limit hold 'em freezeout with a $10 buy-in, winner take all. To be honest, I expected my only opposition in the game to be Leheney. We bounced Amir and Rao out pretty quickly. Rao called my all in with bottom pair and an ace. I had two pair and they held up. I knocked amir out with two pair also when my ten-8 paired on the flop (I was the big blind) and he pushed all in with his queens. We played 3 handed for a while. I was a big chip leader when we got rolling with the three of us. I kept getting my chips all in before the flop as the favorite and not having it hold up. I doubled up Leheney twice and Rao's roommate twice this way. Finally, after voicing his desperation to use the restroom multiple times, the kamikaze all in approach finally did in Leheney. This was much to his relief, I think.

Before we started heads up play, I was about a 5 to 1 chip leader. I offered Rao's roommate a 30-20 split of the money, so that I get home and get some sleep. Now doing a little math, you should see that this is a good deal. This is especially the case if you would be an underdog if the chip counts were equal. Rao's roommate though "wanted to play". That's what we did. I took a couple of unfortunate swings but I made some lay downs when I knew I was beat and basically held the chip lead the whole time. I finally knocked him out when he was short-stacked and I was a slight dog pre-flop with J8. I could afford to gamble though and when I paired up my 8 on the flop, it was curtains and I got home around 1:30. I still can't get over my opponent turning down the deal.

I might have been out a little too late on Friday because Saturday morning was a little rough. Sandy and I were a little behind on getting up to do our 5 miles. After we got going though, it wasn't too bad. After the run, we ran around shopping and looking for a gift for Sandy's mom and what not. After that we hit a graduation party in Glenview. Congrats go to Karen on her Ph. D. once again. That's a Doctor of Philosophy not a Player Hater Degree, just so we're clear. The party was fun, but the goodbyes took no less than 60 minutes. We basically shut the thing down and I was trying to get to Cinderella Man.

Cinderella Man was the money. It was a great movie. I can't say enough good things about it. It really made you understand some things about the Depression. On top of that, it was a tremendous boxing movie. I actually disagreed with Bill Simmons and his review this time around, which is rare. He seemed to want more wide-angle shots in the boxing scenes. The problem with that in my mind, is that you can often see that the boxing is completely fake (i.e. Rocky III) and it distracts from your enjoyment of the movie. I didn't get such feelings with Cinderella. I think that Ron Howard did a great job with it. I expect my man Paul Giamatti to get a nod for best supporting actor for this film, if only to vindicate the travesty of last year when he got passed over for Sideways. If he doesn't get nominated, I'll go nuts.

After Cinderella Man, Sandy and I hit The Yard House in Glenview. It's a personal favorite, not so much for the food (it's generally yummy though), but because of the something like 2 million beers on tap. I had Molson Canadian (my favorite) and I was pleased with that. I couldn't really have more than 1 due to being exhausted all day long.

Sunday rolled around, and we got off to a better start. We were off and running by about 8:45. We had to run 11 miles. About midway through the run, we decided to just run to Evanston. We were heading north along the lake anyway. We ended up getting all the way there and then needing to still run around for a couple miles as we hadn't gone the full 11 yet. I tripped and fell on a sidewalk crack for the first time during training. I'm surprised it took that long. I was fine though. When we quit we were sore, hungry, and thirsty. I had $10 on me and that was all we had to our name. We needed $3.50 to get back to the city on the el, and Sandy wanted to hit an art fair. A quick stop for gatorade and water and we were off to the art fair. My heels were bleeding due to the brilliant decision to wear socks that were too low. My shoes dug right into my achilles. The walk to the art fair was long.

We got back into the city about 2, still not having eaten. We finally went to Ranalli's for a late brunch and then I ended sleeping for 3 plus hours before waking up to watch a stellar episode of the 4400.

I'm tired just recounting all of that. It was a solid weekend though, to say the least. I hope that yours went beautifully also.

The Next Food Network Star?

No, it's definitely not me. Some of you might know though that my buddy Nate and I sent in a video of ourselves for this show on the Food Network where they were looking to find the next star or stars. We had already done some cooking shows so this seemed like a no-brainer. You can find these in my video section or here.

We tried to do something funny and semi-serious with our entry. Our angle was basically two regular guys trying to cook some advanced things with no professional training. Clearly, we didn't get picked to be finalists. They picked a bunch of mostly lame professional chef tapes. Boring.

Anyway, I just found out today that we might have made the bloopers. Nate made me aware of this and I haven't seen any of the episodes myself, but I will definitely be looking out now. One of his coworkers claims to have seen us. If you've seen the show, and you saw some guys setting some rice on fire, that was us. Let me know with a comment, if you've seen it. I'll be looking out for it myself.

Last Night and Overdue Congratulations

First off, I need to fire off some congratulations to Michael T. Leheney and his girl Kimberly. They got engaged two weeks ago before running off to the Dominican Republic for a little vacation. Leheney is my best friend and a guy that I've known since second grade. He's an absolute bad ass and one of the coolest cats you will ever meet. Having him get married and put down roots in Illinois is key. For a while, he was living in Tampa and Charlotte (what the?). We all missed him up here. Now he's back where he belongs with a great girl and a future that's got him wearing Oakleys. I could go on and on with Leheney stories but I will save that for future blogs and a couple of sure to be drunken outings in the next couple of weeks. Congratulations again fruitcake.

So anyway, last night I had to run 3 miles and it was brutal. I ran a little over 5 the day before and felt like a million bucks. Last night I felt like about $0.12. I toughed it out though. Today is an off day from marathon training, so that's a good thing. Since I felt so terrible and my run didn't go so great, I should have gone home and crashed early, right? I should have but I didn't.

I finally got my money out of Neteller and into Paradise Poker so that I can play my heads up limit hold 'em match with Skeebs. Skeebs works with Sandy. Anyway, so I hit the man on aim last night and he didn't respond. He's a busy guy, so it's no surprise. I sat down and played a $10 heads up no limit match on paradise, just to work on my heads up no limit game a little bit. I ended up losing. I don't even remember the hand that I busted out on. It was uneventful. I then switched over to playing some $0.50/$1 limit. I've been really studying my limit game lately, and working hard at it. I hadn't really played, so it was cool to see where I was at. I won about $8.50 in 30 minutes. It felt good to play.

Anyway, so then about 11:30 I jumped over to Party Poker. My man Swartz was playing some no limit over there and I decided to get into this freeroll (it's free to get in, but there are cash prizes) no limit tourney. I used 250 of my "party points". I'm not even really sure how I acquire those, but whatever. This tourney had a $1250 prize pool with something like $262.50 for first and $125 for second. The money started at 30th place with a $12 award. There were 1551 players in the tourney.

I played reasonably tight at the beginning of the tourney. I was up and down all over the place. I got lucky twice. The first time, I had QJ and ended up getting all my chips in from the button trying to steal the blinds. The big blind called me and he barely had me covered. I spiked a Q on the river to double through. Another hand, I had a guy at my table that was the chip leader for the tourney. He was going all in about every 3rd hand. I was in late position with ducks (22) and after he went all in, I called him. I figured I was up against two overcards, and I'd be a slight favorite to double through him. I was also tired when the tourney started, so if I got knocked out it was no big deal. Well, I was right about the two overcards. He had AT. Unfortunately, the small blind (with 3x my chips) also called with pocket aces! I was a big dog. I caught my 2 though and ended up tripling up. You have to get lucky in a tourney like this, and I stand by my call. I had to make a stand. You can't run over me all day. I just refuse to allow it.

As the tourney was winding down and it was getting later and later, I found myself with the chip lead. I sat on it for a while. After a while the chip lead was somewhere around 60k and the average was up around 25k so really the whole tournament field was pretty closely packed together. I ended up getting too involved in a hand with A7 when I was the big blind and losing to AT. I couldn't even really think at this point. A little while later after a few smaller losses, I picked up 33 on the button and raised all in with about 25% of the average stack. The big blind with 5x my chips called me. I was hoping at worst to be in a race again, but he turned over AA leaving me in a bad spot. My luck ran out right there. I finished 39th at about 3:30am. So basically, I played for about four hours, outlasted about 1500 people and made $0, finishing 9 spots out of the money. I did this on a night when I was exhausted from running, sort of sleep-deprived from the week and badly in need of just relaxing and crashing out. I think a normal person would regret this and I did when the alarm went off. Right now though, I feel good about playing and pretty good about my no-limit tourney game. I felt like for the most part I was playing the right way, even though I could barely keep my eyes open. If I was awake and fully-functional, I could have won this thing. It's not like it was the WSOP or anything. It was Party Poker after all, where everyone is nuts. In some ways though, that makes it even harder to battle through.

Alrighty, I'm done for now. Sorry about the length of time between posts. Have a great weekend!

Shuffle Up and Deal

Well, it's here. The 2005 World Series of Poker kicked off today at the Rio. For those of you not in the know on poker, these are the biggest two months of the year for the players. Many who are somewhat in the know also have it a little twisted, thinking that the WSOP is just the $10,000 buy-in main event that was won by Greg Raymer in 2004 and Chris Moneymaker in 2003. While this is the biggest tourney of the year, and the grandaddy of them all, there are actually right around 40 events. There are a variety of games and buy-ins, a seniors event, a women only event, and even a casino employee event. All of these award one of those wonderful bracelets that you could never wear anywhere. I want one in the worst way. I'll put it on my mantle, if I ever get a mantle. The odds are good that the mantle comes long before the bracelet.

Anyway, I have begun my bracelet quest with my own personal poker training regimen. I've targeted next year's world series as my debut. This year, the 1st event, $1500 buy-in no limit hold 'em sold out with over 2000 entries. Last year, this event brough all of 600 people. Poker has expanded to the point where even the early events are drawing mad attention. This could be good for me next year, were I to actually win. The payouts will be much larger for even the smaller events. More likely though, it will be nearly impossible to navigate through these larger fields to bracelet land. Still, I have to try.

This is what's truly great about poker. You can show up with $1500 and play against the best in the world, and even have a chance to win the whole thing. You can't get on NBA floor with Shaq in the NBA Finals for $1500, that's for sure. You can't get an at bat in the World Series. Poker is a level playing field where the only barrier to entry is cash. I can put up $2000 and spend a day playing against Phil Hellmuth, Johnny Chan, and a host of other legends. I heard someone else echo this thought, but I can't remember who it was. It couldn't be more right on though.

I don't know anyone going to the WSOP this year personally, though I have heard of some friends of friends. Good luck to them. Also, good luck to Daniel Negreanu and Josh Arieh, my two favorite players.

Cigarettes, Corporations, and You

So for two days now, I've seen headlines talking about how cigarette makers are targeting women. They even pondered chocolate flavored cigarettes to get them hooked. Gasp! Could it be? Oh my goodness!

Hello? The cigarette companies make cigarettes. They are trying to get more people to smoke them. This surprises us? I hate to break it to these journalists with the "breaking news" but they aren't targeting just women. They are targeting everyone. They are probably starting with the low-hanging fruit(be it men, women, or children) from a demographics perspective, but that just makes good business sense. If you are a corporation trying to make money for your shareholders in any industry, it generally helps to have more customers. The tobacco industry is no different.

If we are so shocked by this and it is so terrible, then we should make tobacco illegal. If not, we should just shut up about it. The tobacco companies have already paid large fines, been forced to market against themselves, and all sorts of other nonsense that no other industry has endured. This was due to past indiscretions, and I totally understand that. They were negligent and deceptive in the past, but they are far from alone there. No one today should be able to make the argument that cigarettes aren't bad for them. Consequently, I think product differentiation, marketing within the law, and customer acquisition efforts should be allowed to happen without causing headlines.

You don't see these things happenening in the alcohol business do you? Miller Brewing Markets New Cider Beer to Target Women. I didn't see that headline. Did you? I also haven't seen the headline McDonald's targets the obese!. Which kills you faster, being addicted to McDonald's or cigarettes? I don't know but as far as I can tell, it's the same result.

I'm not just picking on McDonald's by any means. There are many corporations with less than ethical aims. In fact, nearly all of them behave in at least some way which is opposed to the beliefs of the majority of the people actually employed there. For example, do you think the majority of Nike employees would put their children to work sewing soccer balls? They definitely wouldn't! They probably don't want to work somewhere that would put someone else's children to work doing this. At the same time, they want the company to do well. They want the stock to rise. They want to get their bonus. The guys at the top want the same thing. In fact, that is what the senior management is there to do. They are there to make sure that the company makes money for the shareholders. These aims often run contrary to other aims like protecting the environment, doing what's right for the health of the population, and doing business in an ethical fashion. In pure capatilism, the goal is to do whatever makes business sense to make profits. That could mean just settling with customers out of court that have diseases caused by your drugs, instead of pulling them off the market. It could involve any number of scenarios similar to these.

The law can intervene to keep this in check, and in many cases it does. If it does not, then the consumer or targeted consumer has to make decisions on where to deploy their dollars. Do you pay $100 for some shoes that were sewn by 10 year olds working 12 hour days for pennies? You might, if you like them and think they are better quality. You definitely might if you don't consider it to be a bad thing for those children to be sewing your shoes or if you just didn't know. That is of course, your choice. I think that you should be able to make that choice for yourself. That's what a free society is. It's up to you. If you want to try to do your best and only purchase from companies with good environmental and labor records, that's great. If you want to do the complete opposite, I think you are a bastard. But still, it's your choice.

Tobacco products aren't illegal. Until they are, that industry should be treated like any other. We shouldn't delude ourselves into thinking that everything they do is wrong. In this case, it's the consumer that really should look themselves in the mirror. If you are a smoker right now, you can hardly blame the "evil" marketing efforts of the tobacco industry. You can't blame McDonald's, Starbucks, or Coca-Cola either, unless they break the law.

Feel free to blame the government for not protecting you, the planet, children, the list goes on and on, but the company isn't to blame. If there is no law to break and no consumer backlash that hits them in the pocketbook, why would they change? Corporations don't have a conscience, and we shouldn't expect them to. Whether that is a completely a whack system or not is a discussion for another day. All I'm saying is, don't let anyone fool you. Anyone that tells you that the goal of their corporation isn't to make as much money as possible, is probably delusional. Tobacco companies are no different. It's just that their greed and negative impact on their customer base and society at large is more transparent. Dig deep enough with any corportation, and you'll find something you don't like or agree with. I promise.