Lazy Bastard

12:17 PM

Okay, I'm a lazy bastard. Very lazy. So lazy in fact that I don't do any housework, just sit on the couch and watch TV, and can't even be motivated to update my website. I'm pretty much worthless. Of course, no one reads this anyway; so it's not like it's a big deal.

Summer's almost over and I really haven't got much to show for it. Kind of like the Mariners. I really have finally adopted the Mariners as my team. They've replaced the Mavericks. I'm sure it was only a matter of time. I'm a baseball fan much more than a basketball fan. I just could never get into the Rangers when I lived in Texas. Even thought I was always a fan of the Mets growing up, it's really hard to follow a team seriously unless you see them play A LOT of games. Well, with the Mariners on TV just about every night, I watch a lot of games. We also have three of the best baseball blogs around (USS Mariner, Lookout Landing, Prospect Insider) that I read non stop.

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Long time no see

4:11 PM

Okay, I'm a bad person. It's been forever and one day since my last post. You may have thought I was dead. I was not. I've had other things on my mind.

The NBA playoffs have started. Which means I'm in a constant state of nervousness about my little Mavericks. NBA games literally make me feel like my heart is going to explode. I don't know why I watch.

Baseball season has started so I'm reading and posting on U.S.S. Mariner and Lookout Landing. Unfortunately the Mariners haven't been doing as well as I'd like. And for some reason firemikehargrove.com is still available.

If that wasn't enough, now that we have nice weather, I'm trying to actually do things. Like attending ball games, going to tulip festivals, visiting the zoo, and planting flowers.

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Poker, Shaving, But No Links

1:40 PM

Sorry, I've been lazy. Not so much lazy I guess as I've just had other things on my mind. Hopefully the length of this post will make up for it.

First of all, I finally got all of my poker chips and the carrying case. I can't wait to use them. I'm trying to get together a monthly poker game to play at out house, but I'm having trouble finding the players. I don't want to resort to inviting people I don't know that well, but I may have to. I have a preliminary page set up to show the structure I'm planning on using that you can see here. I've also started playing in the Win Your Way In poker league. The quality of play isn't the best, but it does give me practice playing live and reading people. About the only downside to the league is that their blind schedule is awful. The increments go up way too fast at the end, making the final table a crapshoot at best.

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Spam sucks

1:21 PM

I've been lazy. Well lazy and sick. About the only thing I've done to the site lately is delete comments from spammers. It has gotten ridiculous. Because of that, I'm going to require you to register and login to post a comment. It's the only way to combat this. Sorry for the inconvenience.

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The Poker Bot had me tied up!

12:14 PM

Sorry I haven't updated at all this week. I had intended my next update to be when the poker bot was finished. I figured I'd be done by Monday night for sure. Of course, I was not. In fact, it is still not done. All the major bugs are worked out, and it's playable; but I'm not real happy with the bot's strategy. I also want to implement a learning feature. Because learning would do no good unless he remembered his opponents, I'm going to require you to give a user name when you start your first game. If you'd like to check it out, you can start playing now. You need to have cookies and javascript enabled for it to function properly. Also, don't expect the back button to function properly once you start playing (you can't go back and redo bad decisions). If you run into anything wonky, please email me or leave a message in this thread. Please be specific with the problem as well.

Not much to say really other than that.

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Friday the 13th!

2:39 PM

Well something is wrong with my stomach. Every time I eat something that is more substantial then a cracker I get pains and start to get queasy. Hopefully I'll be better by tomorrow, but I'm not counting on it. Other than that, I've got nothing. Really, I don't. I mean I could talk to you in detail about the consistency of my puke, but who wants to hear that. Okay, some crazy Japanese people might; but I don't cater to them!

About the only think interesting that I have to say is that my Poker Robot lives. I've decided to resurrect the project. The main stumbling block I had before was creating a server that ran the games. I was capable of doing it, but writing all that network code before I could start optimizing the bot hardly seemed fun. So, I decided to create some stipulations. First, I'm not writing a server. I'm going to use the mod_python apache module to tie it in to my website. That's right you'll be able to battle the robot online from anywhere. Next, he's only going to play heads up.

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Jury Duty

2:36 PM

On our return from our Oklahoma trip, I discovered that I had received a letter informing me that I must report for jury duty for the Municipal Court of Seattle. This was not horrible in and of itself. I've always been curious about jury duty and figured in any case that would be drawn out my crazy beliefs would cause the lawyers to disqualify me anyway. So while it was an inconvenience, I wasn't mad. Then of course the unthinkable happens. I received a second summons yesterday for the King County Superior Court. I want to know how I went through 10 years without a summons (having been registered to vote for that long), and then received two in one week? I'm struggling to figure out the exact odds of this, but it has to be somewhere close to winning a lottery. There are at least 1.2 - 1.3 million eligible jurors, and I get picked twice? I figure I should be able to at least postpone the second one however.

I played poker again last night, and in general played pretty well with horrible cards.

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I am a Guitar Legend!

2:05 PM

Sorry it's been so long. A trip to Oklahoma (and the more awful trip back) plus my new found addiction to guitar hero has slowed me down. I resolve to do better starting this week. I don't have much to say except guitar hero rules!

• ESPN - The Sports Guy has defined and discussed many new terms over the years. He's finally come up with a glossary for easy reference
• WSJ - Why are these people so crazy?
• The Carpet Bagger Report - Pat Robertson is fucking loon. The only sad thing about this is that Pat Robertson is on the President's speed dial. The 700 club has more viewers than CNN. Your average evangilical christian can't wait for Israel to become reunited, Jesus to come back, and for all those evil jews to get tortured and killed.
• Wise Technology - Wisconsin gets it right.
• AP - I have a great idea, lets let fith graders make all our laws.

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Travelling for New Year's

2:01 PM

Kathrine and I are getting ready to travel back to Oklahoma. I always feel a little guilty when I go back. I feel like I should be excited, or looking forward to it, or happy to be making the trip. In reality though, it always feels like a chore. There are very few things that I miss there. Sure it's nice to see your family and all, but I'd much rather them come here. Does that make me a bad person. Probably, but I'll just blame it on my Asperger's.

Kathrine and I were planning on going out for sushi tonight. I always enjoy eating sushi right before we head back home for visits. It's not that I can't go a week without eating sushi. It has something to do with the fact that I know I won't be able to get it if I get a craving. Since those cravings can come unannounced, I like to head it off at the pass. I was very excited to try Shiki; however they only have eight tables, and I don't think we'll have the time to wait if it is crowded.

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Deal or No Deal

2:46 PM

It's a slow day. I'm trying fervently to solve the Rubik's Cube. Not a lot of luck with it.

I've also started examining how I can apply game theory to the show Deal or No Deal. Kathrine is tired of me watching the show, but I just can't get enough. If you haven't seen the show, Wikipedia as always will fill you in. Basically the gist of it is, as long as the "banker" offers you less then the arithmetic mean of all the remaining values, the best play will always be to not make a deal. Using that strategy, you would maximize your dollars earned in the long run. The problem is that you don't play over the long run; you only get one shot to play the game. For example: if you have the $750,000 and $1,000,000 case left, most rational people would be willing to gamble on 50-50 odds between them. However only having the $100,000 and $.01 cases left, would make it much harder to gamble.

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