I am a rock

What does it mean to be conscious? "Experience is information from the inside; physics is information from the outside," says David Chalmers.

See this somewhat once-over-lightly article from the New York Times.

Second Thought, Best Thought

After getting a second opinion from the nursing home's resident doctor, my sister has ~ thank god ~ decided that it is better for my father to remain in hospice care. There will be no amputation; there will be no surgery.

While not something to be actively glad about, this still comes under the heading Doing The Right Thing. I am relieved.

The Return of Mr. WPY

He's back, on Tuesday nights at least. I guess the month long time-out expired.

Last week, we didn't exchange two words. This week, we actually played together for about forty-five minutes in a cash side game.

Still enjoy his company. Still relish the poker interaction. Still find him easy to look at.

I sent a strategy article link via email, no reply. So I guess the communication embargo lives on. (I wonder whose idea that is? she snarked.) Obviously there will be no return to the status quo ante.

Apparently no one but me believes I'm harmless. What's wrong with this picture?

Dookie-Mookie Double Disaster

Played great, got beat. No regrets...

My KK cracked by 27 (flopped 2 pair, go figure) in the Mookie.
My set of Jacks trounced by runner runner straight draw in the Dookie.

Aggravation, yes, but no regrets.

Umm....? No.

So I'm standing at the entrance to the U Street Metro waiting for my friend D. A man riding a bicycle on the sidewalk comes straight toward me, and at the last possible moment swerves to the side, barely missing me, and says:

"Got any spare change?"

You too can participate in the lolcats craze...

Make it here. Tip of the hat to Mikey.

Giving New Meaning to the Word "Stoplight"

If you don't immediately think "transporter" upon reading this teaser of an article in Wired, I despair for your imagination. This kind of thing is precisely why I wish I had some math aptitude, so I could drop everything and be an atomic physicist.

Chasing the River: NOT

After a rocky start that took me down by two-thirds, I built my way back and made it to the final table of the Riverchasers Deep Stack this evening. As always in any tournament, I survived by luck a couple of times, and then three hands in a row at the end I got it in good and lost. Went out seventh. Ça, c'est la poker!

I need to work on the concept of the reraise. I'm sometimes caught off guard by a raise, and don't often have the nerve to pull the trigger on a reraise. This lets people run over me, which I must strive to prevent. I'll work on that in lower stakes games.

I'm starting to recognize some of the usual suspects, which adds a semi-social dimension to the Battle of the Bloggers experience, and that's fun.

One Out of Three Ain't Bad

Okay, so I busted out of the Mookie. Despite getting AK about 8 times, I couldn't make it pay.

And I crapped out of the Dookie early, due to brick after brick dropping on my head in Razz.

BUT, and here's the good news, I placed fourth in the HORSE 4K Guarantee, turning a $4.40 satellite ticket into some real money. And, as I type, I'm still going strong in the Ferguson, which is also a HORSE tournament this evening. I wonder if I may have found my game...

(Oh, and I finally made the money in my home league game, after a very long dry spell. I netted a massive $10, but hey, it's better than a poke in the eye with a stick. I'm still running atrociously bad ~ brutally, odorifically bad ~ overall in the last month or so with that group though.)

[Update: I finished 7th of 569 in the Ferg. That's just sheer stubborness, as it takes hours to play and only really pays out anything substantial for the top three. But hey, I multiplied my buy-in by 12!!!]

Mondays at the Hoy: The Sequel

Another successful outing in the Battle of the Bloggers... made it to the final table and went out fifth, when my AA was cracked by JJ. Of course. That seems to be the theme of these particular games: trounce my AA with a lower pocket pair.

The good news is that this has repaired my FTP bankroll, which was in steep decline after yesterday's doomswitch of thirteen straight losses (a record for me, I think). And that was after I'd successfully satellited into two big games, for buy-ins worth nearly $600. I wish I'd had the cash instead!

Oh well, this is poker, full of swongs.

The Good and The Bad

The Good

The turnaround continues: I won a local home tournament last night and replenished my bankroll. I played a highly disciplined tight-aggressive game, made a few effective bluffs, and got lucky when I needed to. I also cashed fifth in an online 90 person tourney. Extremely pleased about this! I have two more big nights of poker tonight and tomorrow, and I can only hope the trend continues.

The Bad

Some items that are irritating me very, very much at the moment. In the grand scheme of things things, they are trivial. (Compared to my family crises, for example, they are meaningless.) Still:

1. The Whirlpool
   
   For god's sake, woman, can you not read??? See that sign, the sign that says: PLEASE SHOWER BEFORE USING THE WHIRLPOOL. Did you not just work out??? Are you not therefore exuding many substances which it would be better not to share with others? Do you not notice that I am in the whirlpool also? Perhaps it has escaped your attention that other people exist. Oh, the inconvenience to you! Oh the solipsism! No wonder the goddam jacuzzi water is as murky as the Potomac.



2. The Cold Sore
   
   Apparently, it's not enough for one's life to be filled with stress. One must also experience the joyous physical manifestations of stress. Hence, the giant, painful, protruding blister on my bottom lip. Thanks so much, immune system! I do appreciate it.

Beat: Busted in Mookie; Brag: Third in Dookie

I shoved, an attempt with my short stack and pocket sixes to isolate an early position all-in; I was hoping to see a high ace there. To my dismay, the big stack behind me pushed all-in too. Everybody's face up, and I'm looking at 77 and AA. Ooops. Ze timeeng eet ees no goot. An ignominious outage. So much for the big moooove.

I had also signed up for the Dookie, a turbo Razz fest with only 19 players, and managed to alternately brick and luckbox my way to the final three. I lurrrrrve Razz.

Variance: I'm now playing a tournament and pro Michael Craig is at my table. I just folded top two pair preflop. Poker is a cruel game.

Brag: Mondays at the Hoy

Well, finally, a much needed shot in the arm for my confidence. I finished third (of 75, I think) in the Monday Battle of the Bloggers game on FTP. No one would actually talk to me or anything, and the structure was turborific (which is not my preferred style), but I hung in there long enough to cash decently.

I made one clear mistake, and that was at the very end: not calling an all-in on my next-to-last hand. I had an ace, and would have taken it down, putting me way ahead. Instead, in an excess of caution, I folded. It is of such decisions that winners are made, and I'm obviously not there yet.

All-in-all, however, an okay experience; I officially no longer hate poker quite so much.

Until the next round of horrific beats.

Kick me while I'm down...

...why don'tcha?

Man, I am running soooo bad in poker right now. The hand that broke this particular camel's back just now: It's the bubble of a 6-max sit-n-go. I'm on the button with A2 suited. I make a pot-sized raise. Small blind (the shortstack) folds. Big blind (the big stack) calls.

Flop comes KK2. Big blind checks. I figure, hey, I'm golden here. I go all-in; I need this pot and I need to take it now before the big blind can draw out.

Instacall. Of course the big stack has a king for trips.
I mean COME ON.

Hand after hand after hand of the odds running against me. It's really demoralizing. When I run bad, I run really bad. We're now into a month of this nonsense.

Fucking poker. Gah! My life is starting to feel like a bad beat.

I can't sleep

It's 5 AM and I can't sleep.

My father's been moved to a nursing home. His condition has deteriorated to the point where the assisted living facility could no longer cope. My sister says the new place is nice, the staff is great, the food is good and so on. (It ought to be, it's twice as expensive.)

Now my sister is saying that she feels as if my Dad shouldn't be in hospice care. He's never been happier, she says. (What??) She's thinking now that maybe it would be better for him to have a double amputation of his legs rather than let his circulatory problems run their course (which ultimately is blood poisoning from gangrene, not to put too fine a point on it).

"Old people adjust just fine to amputations," she assures me. "He's already confined to a wheelchair anyway."

My mind is reeling. This is a once six-foot-tall man who now weighs 125 pounds. He has emphysema. And probably an undiagnosed cancer (she hasn't wanted to do the tests to find out for sure). He is senile and getting worse. He can no longer really even feed himself.

And she wants to cut off his legs?

Why????

So he can live half a year longer, even more incapacited than he is currently? So that she can feel less guilty about him "rotting inside?" So that he can spend weeks recovering, either in pain or doped to the gills? Or so he can die on the operating table instead?

In what universe is amputation not a physically and psychologically traumatic experience? (And where does the intervention stop? When his hands too become totally numb and suffer circulatory collapse will she favor removing them as well?)

I cannot conceive of it ever being my father's choice, were he in his right mind. Of course if he were in his right mind, we could ask him and get a meaningful answer. But we can't. My sister is my father's health proxy. The decision is up to her. But I am deeply, deeply distressed by this prospect. It is making me nuts even thinking about it.

I am now actively praying for my father's pre-emptive death, frankly, so that he can be spared either of these alternatives. Imagine how happy I am with myself about that. It is unbearable.

I can't sleep.

Sure men were born to lie, and women to believe them!

There's no earthly reason why you should remember me...
If you can imagine it, you can achieve it;
if you can dream it, you can become it.
There is the greatest practical benefit in making a few failures early in life.
The weeping of an heir is laughter in disguise.

[Ed. note: Every now and then I receive a spam email that rises to the level of found poetry. This one struck me as particularly trenchant.]