Woohoo! I’m Old

The first memory I have of my life is a pretty simple one. I was bouncing around our little backyard – I think I was swinging myself around this single T-pole (used to hold one’s laundry lines for drying one’s laundry – usually seen in pairs; however there was only one in our backyard…) that we had (I’m pretty sure, if you head on over to my parent’s house today, you’ll still see this pole standing in the backyard … I think it’s green…) – chanting, “I’m gonna be four … I’m gonna be four” in that sing-song style that cute, little children often use. I’m not sure exactly why I was doing this although I’d bet it had something to do with my brother either turning, about to turn, or having just recently turned five. You see, my brother’s a year older than me; however, there’s a 19-day period each year where – strictly in terms of whole numbers – he ends up being two years older than me. Was he (my brother, that is) perhaps teasing me about only being three…? I suppose my mom then informed me that I would soon be turning four and I guess I was so happy about that fact that I decided to run outside and sing it to the world. As everyone already knows, basically by living through those years first-hand, that’s just the way life is. When you’re young, getting older is a good thing. I turn 40 today…

I have absolutely no plans for my birthday. I’m currently at work – most likely be here ‘til six or seven … although I did actually drive to work today so I “could” leave whenever. I usually commute via bus but decided to avoid the hassle today. Of course this means that today is one of the more rare days where I will not be forcing myself to walk the 1.3 miles to and from the bus stop; or, to put it more succinctly, won’t be exercising. That’s not good. I need the exercise. It doesn’t seem to be working (at all, actually) as I’m not getting any of those unexpected surprises that started becoming commonplace when I was living in Germany – little things like needing to purchase jeans that wouldn’t slide off whilst I was walking. Granted, I’ve only been walking everywhere (well, not “everywhere” but most places) for about four months here in California; but I’ve noticed absolutely nothing. There have been a couple people that said I appeared to be losing weight although I attribute those instances to what I was wearing. I get to see the completely unadulterated me in the mirror each and every morning and the image hasn’t changed a bit – even I wouldn’t fuck me and my standards aren’t very high…

But, as is usual with my messed up little mind, I have once again veered off topic. Perhaps that’s just one of the side effects of my advanced age…? Sounds a bit like senility to me… Okay, so what was I talking about again???

Oh yeah, it’s my birthday. It’s my birthday and, other than the spattering of “Happy Birthdays” that I’ve received, it’s just another day; but, to me at least, that really is all it is – just one more day closer to death. Now I do realize that most people, on their birthdays, still try to treat them like they’re something special … even if their “good” years are long behind them. In fact, it’s usually the friends of these poor chumps that try to turn the day into a grand occasion – often at the satirical expense of the “guest of honor” resulting in amusement and hilarity being enjoyed by all in attendance. But I have no worry of that happening. I really don’t have any friends here in California … at least not anymore – I used to think I had one but she’s since clearly made it known that I was mistaken.

No … I know how my day’s going to end up. I’ll be heading back to my apartment after I decide to leave work (where, by the way, I’m doing nothing more than making an appearance – there’s really nothing productive that I can do here as we don’t even have the correct models needed … believe me, I could be just as productive from my apartment…) and spending my evening watching the latest NetFlix DVD that I got – Dr. Katz (Disc 4, Season 3). I’ve got about half of the Smirnoff Ice variety pack that I bought a few days ago as well as close to a full pack of Marlboro Light 100’s (and I thought I had that nasty habit beat a couple months ago…) so I guess good times are just-a-waitin’. Woohoo…

Happy birthday to me … I guess…

bis später,

Coriolis

My 2010 W.S.O.P. Story

I’m back in California; touched down Saturday afternoon; woke up early that morning in my suite at the Rio. I finished my first trip to the World Series of Poker a bit lighter in my net worth however quite a bit more experienced with this game called poker… It was an interesting trip…

Now don’t get me wrong – I did not play the “Main Event” … that doesn’t even begin until early next month. I did, however – as mentioned in my last blog – enter into the WSOP #30 Tournament – a $1500 buy-in, no-limit Hold’em tournament scheduled to run for three days (last Wednesday through Friday). Unfortunately for me, it was over in about 3 hours and 15 minutes. I was eliminated not long after the first break…

I was a bit bummed out; mainly because I had nobody to blame but myself. I’ll be the first to admit that I played my cards (as horrible as they were) poorly and basically bust out of the tournament on some very questionable maneuvers. I ended up losing it all attempting to avoid becoming a rather early short-stack forgetting the well-known adage, “It’s a marathon, not a sprint.” I doubt I’ll be making that mistake again anytime soon…

I arrived in Vegas early Tuesday evening – flew jetBlue from Burbank to Vegas. This was a great idea as flying out of Burbank ended up being so much nicer than flying from LAX. First off, the 45 minute flight only ran me $125 round-trip. Now that’s a bargain! The best part of it, however, was the lack of crowd at the Bob Hope Airport. I’m sure the fact that it was a Tuesday afternoon had a lot to do with the smaller crowds; however every time I’ve flown out of LAX has been a madhouse. Flying out of Burbank actually felt like air travel used to be – simple and easy…

Upon arrival I contacted Sam and let him know I was in town. You see, Sam was there basically for the same reason I was – event #30. He was also staying at the Rio and I figured we could hang out together during this trip – whilst not busy with the tournament that is… He was out having dinner when I arrived so we made plans to meet up a bit later and I hopped on a shuttle for the Rio.

The first thing I did upon arriving at the Rio was get signed-in for the #30 tournament. I needed to get a tournament receipt from one of the official 57 events in order to get the WSOP discount on my suite – brought the price down to $69/night Tuesday through Thursday and $169 for Friday night. I’m actually not sure how much of a savings this is compared to the standard room rates however I do know that it’s $80 less than the pre-entrant rates I was quoted when I booked the room. Whatever the case, I figured it couldn’t hurt. Of course signing up for the tournament required a Harrah’s Total Rewards card … so I guess signing up for the tournament was the second thing I did after obtaining my Total Rewards card (I got the WSOP version).

One thing I’ve got to make perfectly clear to anybody who hasn’t been there – the WSOP is a huge event at the Rio! The entire Convention Way section of the hotel is completely devoted to the World Series. They’ve got tons of tables set up in both the Rio Pavilion and Amazon rooms for the myriad of games always underway, a WSOP store to buy your trinkets and memorabilia, a not-so-spectacular cafeteria for the players to get their much needed nourishment during the oft-time short breaks for food, a “Bad Beat Bar” to help numb the pain when your opponent sucks out on the river and lots of displays of the former year winners and current all-star players. It’s actually quite interesting when you realize that anybody willing to front the buy-in cash can partake in this madness. It’s like being at the Hall of Fame with a ticket to play. Of course I still hadn’t got my ticket … now where, exactly, would one sign up for these games…?

It didn’t take long before I was directed to the registration room. This, of course, is where I paid my $1500 for a buy-in to the no-limit Hold’em tournament scheduled to begin the next day at noon. I then took the small hike back to the hotel registration and checked into my room with the proper receipt for the price reduction, stopped by my room to unpack – of course unpacking my one little duffle-bag didn’t take long – purchased some needed essentials from the gift shop and headed down to Rio’s standard poker room. I figured it wouldn’t be a bad idea to get some practice in the night before my expensive (for me, anyway … the Main Event’s buy-in is ten grand!) tournament started…

Things went pretty well that first night. I sat down at a $1-$3 no-limit Hold’em table with $300. A little while later, Sam arrived and joined me at the same table. It was your standard small-blind, no-limit ring game – a couple “calling stations” that were getting hit in the face with the deck long enough for them to become large stacked, a number of rocks that basically lived there (talking with the dealers like they were long-time buddies…) and Sam and I – patiently waiting to put a hurt on the calling stations… I ended that roller-coaster ride of a night up $225. My patience paid off as I was able to get large sums from both our targets…

Now to briefly diverge from my story, one more bad aspect about me going to Vegas is the urge it gives me to smoke. You see, I quit smoking “cold turkey” last August. And if you know me well enough, you’re well aware of exactly how difficult an accomplishment that actually was. Suffice it to say that last August was NOT a good month for me (nor have been pretty much every month since, but that’s a whole different rant…). The one good thing that came from then was that I actually did quit smoking. Sure, I’ve had this completely unexplainable issue with sporadic claudication since then (very interesting as smoking is listed as a main cause for that … and I had just recently quit…) and my life has become nothing more than an ever-agonizing struggle to pry my pathetic ass out of bed every morning; but at least I quit smoking! I think I burned through a pack a day in Vegas. I gave what I had left (about ¾ of a pack) to some dude that was smoking outside the airport upon leaving and haven’t smoked any since; however the time spent in Vegas was definitely not healthy for me. It’s just so hard to ignore the cute “cigar, cigarette” girls… Now I get to experience the excitement of going “cold turkey” again … nothing like a good challenge, huh…? Anyway, back to what I was originally talking about…

So that first night was a positive sign of good things to come, right…? Well, not exactly. You see, that was the only time I left that poker room in the black. I ended up playing there quite a bit – basically due to the fact that I wasn’t spending nearly as much time as I had hoped in the main tournament I came to play – but, apart from that first night, it always ended up costing me. I will say this: If you go to Vegas, don’t go alone. Being alone in Vegas with nothing to do can become quite expensive. Heck, being in Vegas at all can become quite expensive; but not having someone else there to be a voice of reason can really cost you. Sure, I suppose if I were a normal functioning male of our species, I could spend my free-time (and what I’m sure would end up being some of my money as well…) hitting on the throngs of beautiful women that seem to flock there basically looking to be bad; but, as anyone who knows me knows, I do not possess the required skills. No … what I end up doing is primarily playing poker; and when I’m done with that (usually signaled by losing all the money I sat down with – sometimes a bit more…) perhaps sitting at a penny-slot smoking a cigarette (and I don’t even smoke…) and partaking of as much free booze as I can. Don’t worry … I tip the beer maids…

The next morning I met up with Sam and his roommates for breakfast before the tourney. I believe, if memory serves me correctly, it was somewhere around 10:30 in the morning when we stopped off at the São Paulo Cafe. We got some breakfast, played a couple rounds of pick-20 Keno (Sam and I), paid our bill and picked up our Keno winnings (easily done as there weren’t any…), then headed out for a smoke prior to the start of the tournament. Sam and I parted ways here as I needed to take a leak (I didn’t need to go into the tournament with yet another distraction…) which was fine – I’d see him at the tournament. He was seated at table #70. I was assigned seat 4 on table #64.

I believe it was something like 20 minutes prior to the tournament start when I headed into the Rio Pavilion. Finding my table was easily accomplished and I was quite eager to get this thing started. I took my seat as soon as the announcement for my tournament was aired and chatted it up a bit with my table’s dealer and the dealer of the table directly next to mine (which just so happened to be table #70 – Sam’s table). Upon speaking with these guys, I quickly realized that the quality of dealers found at the WSOP is pretty much a crap-shoot. From what I was told, somewhere around 1000 dealers are brought in from all across the country for this event although that number steadily declines as the event goes forward. Apparently (now this is from the dealers I was speaking with) the pay basically sucks and Harrah’s has a bad habit of cheating the dealers out of the full 70% of the tips that they’re due. This makes it difficult for out-of-town dealers to justify being there as they need to pay for their stay with a large portion of the income received making any profit earned miniscule. Now I have absolutely no way to verify these claims; however this was basically from the horse’s mouth – although I can’t really say how “gruntled” these guys were… I would, however, experience the divergence of quality that such a system creates, first hand, soon enough…

As I mentioned at the beginning of this story, I didn’t last very long in this tournament. I lost all of my 4500 starting chips (please excuse the photos … I only had my phone with me and the camera on my phone sucks…) in a bit over 3 hours. In this short period of time, however, two rather major dealer errors were made on our table – and not too surprisingly, I was involved in both hands… The first faux pas happened very early. Position 1 went “all in” and I called. I don’t remember what the hands were, and it really doesn’t matter – if you’ve heard one “poker story” you’ve heard ‘em all – but the end result was that I won the pot. The error occurred after the hand when the dealer informed the poor guy in position 1 that my chip-stack had him covered. It didn’t – he actually had 200 chips left after the official count however he was never informed of this. He was already up from the table and out the door long before the floor was called over and an announcement was made for “position 1 on table #64” to “please return to your seat”. Not that it mattered too much as he was seriously short-stacked at that point. It was, however, “a chip and a chair” and we all know how that goes, right…?

Now the second blunder came shortly after the first break in play. I was having my usual luck (and admittedly not playing my “A” game) and was quickly becoming quite short. I needed to make a move soon if I wanted any chance to survive the marathon so I pushed “all in” with top-pair and a king kicker. I was called (interestingly enough by position 1 again … different guy, same seat…) and lost – outkicked by an ace – however this guy’s stack didn’t quite have me covered. Now the blunder occurred when the dealer was counting off the chip differential to see exactly how bad off I was. At the end, he sent 150 chips my way and was about to sweep the rest toward position 1 when the guy sitting at seat 2 said that he thought the dealer miscounted. The dealer ignored his plea and swept the pile. I, on the other hand, did not ignore his claim – I was very interested in discovering whether or not this statement was true. It was then that the guy sitting to my left (position 5) also said that he had doubts about the dealer’s count and I was getting less and less happy.

A strange thing occurred then. Position 1 had no problem with attempting to rectify the situation quickly – fair play is fair play, after all… Since nobody was exactly sure how much the count was off, position 1 offered me 300 chips. Position 2 was saying that he thought the dealer was off by somewhere around 500; however I was more than happy to take the 300 and let the game continue – either way I was very short in the tournament and had little hope of surviving much longer. Position 1 offering 300 as a quick solution seemed fair enough for me. However the dude in position 10 basically had a hissy-fit when I accepted the 300 chips offered. He slammed the table with his fist and made some sort of statement that what we were doing somehow was unfair for him. Bear in mind that this guy wasn’t in the hand, his chip stack wasn’t going to be affected in any way and the only thing that was happening was that I was going from 150 in chips to 450 – still very short at this point in the tournament. He, however, wasn’t going to allow this! The end result was that we wasted more of position 10’s time by calling over the floor and “re-playing” the hand. The result of this was that I ended up coming out of this with 750 chips. I’m sure this made position 10 feel much better about his stupidity…

He didn’t need to worry about me for long though; our table was broken down shortly after that fiasco and we were dispersed to separate tables. I still don’t know why that dude was so adamant about my chip-stack size – and I guess I never will – but he was safely away from me and free to get upset with somebody else from that point. I was moved to my final table and, within minutes, eliminated from the tournament.

So I guess I didn’t need the four nights I booked at the Rio. I could have easily flown in the morning of the tournament, dropped $1500 and made it back home in time for supper; but who knew? Ends up I needed to kill two and a half more days in Vegas. It’s a shame there weren’t any poker games to play. Oh wait, what am I talking about – it was the middle of the World Series of Poker – there are constantly games to be played…

One of the best games they had running was this daily Deep-Stack tournament that started at 1:00pm. It was only $200 to buy-in and started you off with 15,000 chips. Other than the large stating chips, the structure was identical to the main event I played with all of the time periods cut in half. It was, at the time, not being capped on number of players and was running through to the wee hours of the next day’s morn. There were over 400 in the Deep-Stack game on the day I played my main event. I would probably have played it after getting knocked out if I hadn’t lasted long enough to miss the buy-in window; however I would now need to wait until Thursday to give the Deep-Stack a shot. I headed back to the regular Rio poker room to waste away the rest of that day…

And waste it away is exactly what I did. I dropped something like $500 playing the $1-$3 no-limit ring game for quite a few hours and then signed up for the nightly turbo tournament that they were running on this set of four or five tables they had set up directly outside of the poker room. The tourney began at 9:00 and, being a turbo tournament, finished something like 3 or 4 hours afterward. It was only $80 to play and I survived to the final two tables. Didn’t make the money, but it was a decent way to eat up the remaining time before hitting the sack. After all, I was planning on playing the Deep-Stack the next day…

I woke the next morning quite early. I believe it was prior to 9:00 when I headed back to the São Paulo Cafe for some breakfast … alone this time. Oh yeah, and if you’re wondering how Sam came out in the tournament, he didn’t make the money either. He did last longer than me – I think it was an hour or two after my elimination when I received his call – but neither of us succeeded in our goal of getting filthy rich by playing a silly game … perhaps next year…? At breakfast, however, my luck seemed to be changing. Since I had time to kill, I picked up a Keno card, marked off three numbers (5,10 and 25) and put $20 down as four $5 rounds. As I was eating my breakfast, I hit all three numbers on the first round; two numbers on rounds 2 and 3; and only hit one on the last draw – I collected $220 for my $20 bet! Not a bad start to the day as I had successfully won my buy-in to the Deep-Stack tournament!

That, unfortunately – apart from the $10 I won at a “Crazy-4 Card Poker” table and the $1.25 I pocketed at the airport playing video poker before my flight home – was the last winnings I would see on this trip. I did decent in the Deep-Stack – lasted 8½ hours getting knocked out just before racing off the black (100’s) chips – but missed the money by less than 70 people – not bad considering 717 people started that tournament… I tried it (the Deep-Stack) again on Friday where they capped the entrants at 200 but only made it 2 hours before being unlucky enough to flop a boat. (Yes, you read that correctly – “unlucky” enough to flop a boat…)

All in all, it was a rather expensive trip for me. I think I’m going to be heading back next year!

bis später,

Coriolis

A Bit of a Funk

So … a bit of an update on that ever-exciting world of online dating. In one word – useless.

I posted a blog article a few weeks ago that basically outlined my initial attempts at using Chemistry.com to perhaps find a date. I have since tried my best to remain positive and hopeful that the procedure outlined would, in time, produce positive results. Unfortunately, I am now realizing that “positive” results was far too optimistic of an expectation. I have basically been getting somewhat sporadic results in general and the number that I would consider “positive” stills remains zero.

Here’s a warning for anybody that thinks these dating sites are packed with honest-to-goodness real people, like yourself, that are interested in meeting someone new – they’re not. What they are filled with is countless fake identities set up as Internet-fishing schemes. Of course I only have my experience on Chemistry.com to go by; however I’m prone to think that things would be similar at the other sites as well.

Although it took quite a while for the scam responses to start arriving – I had been implementing my routine for over a month prior to the onslaught – they are now hitting my account at a rate of several per day. And they all look pretty much the same. It’s always a “lady” giving some sort of extremely general compliment about my profile followed by some seriously stupid explanation as to why she never logs onto the site and that I should email her at her personal email address (which, by the way is always a {random.crap.name}@yahoo.com). Without fail, these accounts end up becoming “no longer available” in a few days as the scams get reported to Chemistry.com which gets me to wondering why they were sent to me as possible matches to begin with…? Perhaps because I was stupid enough to pay the fee required for a six-month membership at Chemistry.com and they want it to appear that I didn’t waste my money. But I’m not fooled – that money was most definitely wasted.

And speaking of wasting money, I headed back to the Commerce Casino yesterday. On Sundays they have this decent little $65 buy-in tournament (with a $50 re-buy option) that I had played once before. I figured that, if nothing else, it would be a nice little warm up for the WSOP tourney that I’m going to be playing later this week at the Rio in Vegas. Now, granted, the scale of these two tournaments has a large delta (WSOP tourney #30 has 60-minute blind levels, is expecting to be seating over 2000 players and is scheduled as a 3-day tournament whereas the Commerce tournament has 20-minute blind levels, far less than 100 players and will easily finish in one afternoon) however my frequency of playing tournaments has gone down quite a bit since leaving Colorado where I used to waste quite a bit of time at the Denver Poker Tour games. Now the one thing I do know is that playing poker tournaments is like most skills where the finer details can fade with extended down-times. Of course the flip-side of that is also true where too much playing can hurt your play (especially in these low-buy-in tournaments – aka “free-rolls”) but I have no worries about that – I needed the practice as a refresher…

Unfortunately I didn’t get too much practice as flopping two-pair got me knocked out of the tournament right at the end of the first round. I thought the other guy was power-betting a flush draw with the two hearts that hit but was a bit shocked to find out that he was on the flush draw with an already made straight – bad play by me… The flush didn’t hit; unfortunately a straight usually beats two pair in most respectable casinos… Oh well, que sera sera … that’s poker. Unfortunately paying that $115 for the tournament (I did the re-buy right away so was unable to continue after my stupid play) ended up being a complete waste. Not only that, but the money I foolishly spent in a couple ring games before made the day a bit more expensive than I was hoping … but I’m just gonna rack all that crap up as the horrible ending of the horrible weekend I had.

I’m not a big fan of life right now. I sure hope things go a bit better in Vegas…

bis später,

Coriolis

Very (Un)Creative

A couple days ago I headed down to Universal City (just a quick trip down the Orange Line followed by a one-stop ride on the Red Line … I actually am making use of the EZ Pass I bought…) for a screening of the latest Shrek creation. I believe it’s titled Shrek 4 – The Quest for More Money, or something similar… Not only did I see the flick, but I also paid the premium needed to experience it in IMAX 3D. I now think that I might have been better off saving my $18 and waiting for the DVD (oh wait, Blu-Ray, of course)…

Not that the movie wasn’t visually awe-inspiring; it was. The storyline (and I do realize this is basically a kid’s flick and, admittedly, I was a bit drunk at the time) however seemed way too “cookie cutter” for me. I’m not going to bore you with any review of the flick – there are plenty of those online already; however I am going to give my two-cents on this latest money-making fad that’s hit theaters everywhere – 3D.

It’s rather interesting as 3D has been around for quite some time now. There was a short-lived fad in the early to mid 1950’s and an attempted comeback in the 1960’s that resulted in something like 50 other movies (mostly of the sexploitation variety) being produced; however 3D never caught on as the standard movie-going experience. Perhaps it was the crudeness of the technology back then (the old red/blue 3D glasses); however I think 3D never became the standard for a much simpler explanation – it’s unnecessary. Now that the technology has advanced and the visual aspect has become much more vibrant, the uselessness of this 3D effect is still there…

Now, just to be fare, I’ll let you know that I am not a “normal” person when it comes to 2D vs. 3D. From birth, I have always been quite near-sighted in my right eye. I’m not exactly sure how old I was when I discovered this; but my first pair of eye-glasses were purchased at age 23

when I needed them in order to obtain a driver’s license in Florida. I had been living in Michigan until then and was always able to pass the eye test by explaining my condition; Florida was different. As my optometrist explained to me, I don’t use both eyes to focus when I look at things. My brain has compensated for my right eye near-sightedness by learning to only use the image from one eye to focus. Although my eyes are open and light is being detected by both, my mind is only “paying attention” to the focused image of one eye. And it’s not always the same eye – I can actually make entire pages of text “jump” between two virtual positions just by concentrating and explicitly selecting which eye to use… It’s hard to explain to “normal” people; unfortunately what ends up happening is that I basically have very poor depth perception. And by “very poor” I think it might be none. So basically, the world in general is 2D to me (not that I don’t understand what depth is, I’ve just never “seen” it) which, I suppose, makes me not the best person to be berating this 3D movie technology; however I doubt my opinion would be any different if my eyesight were normal.

You see, the problem I have with all these movies being shot and shown in 3D is that it gives the producers yet one more reason to ignore what should be the most important part of any movie – the story. I mean isn’t that why we go to the movies to begin with – an escape from our mundane lives with the opportunity to spend a couple hours experiencing the lives of others (real or imaginary)? When did we, as a society, decide that all we need from these exploits was bright, flashy colors in 3D? Whatever happened to the import of the story…?

And what the heck is with this latest trend of remaking old movies? They don’t even bother to change the names anymore. Oh look, The Karate Kid is hitting the theaters on the 11th of June. That’s interesting … maybe I’m going mad but I seem to remember seeing that movie (with a completely different cast) back in 1984. But this new one’s different, right? Basically change the cast, change the setting and re-tell the same story … how very original…

Oh well, I suppose it is what it is. As long as people continue to pay the premiums to go and watch this stuff, they’re going to keep pumping it out. I guess the real problem is the audience’s compliancy with this. Unfortunately it ends up being a classic Catch-22 – you can only see movies that are actually being shown. Heck, I paid $18 a couple days ago basically because I had nothing better to do. I guess that puts me right up there as part of the problem…

bis später,

Coriolis

Computer Love

Online dating, right…? According to the commercials, something like 1 in 5 relationships currently begin there. Of course these commercials are designed to attract more users to the online dating sites (I believe this one was for match.com) so I’m not really sure about the verity of these figures. The truthiness (thank you, Mr. Colbert…), however, seems widely accepted. As I wrote earlier, I’ve recently decided to once again attempt using such services for myself. So far – been at it for a good couple weeks now – it’s going exactly as I expected … haven’t even got any responses yet…

I ended up using Chemistry.com. It wasn’t my first choice – I was going to try eHarmony. Unfortunately, due to unadvertised discriminatory regulations there, I was considered unmatchable. Luckily Chemistry allows us blasphemous scoundrels to partake in their reindeer games. Perhaps, if all goes to plan, I’ll be able to bamboozle oodles and oodles of women into forsaking their flocks and living a more godless lifestyle. Sounds stupid, I know; but I can only guess that’s what eHarmony is afraid of…

So I’m on Chemistry now; and, as mentioned earlier, have yet to even receive a single response from the 60-some “matches” that I bothered to even attempt starting communication with. There were also a bit over 30 “matches” that I have added to my “not reallys” list for various reasons bringing the number of women that the site considered matches for me up to about 95 so far. I currently have 32 “connections” still active which means that I have already been deemed unacceptable by approximately 30 other women; and the site, thus far, has yet to fail at giving me five more matches to peruse daily. Sounds romantic, doesn’t it…?

You see, that’s basically what online dating is. It inevitably turns into nothing more than a progression of the systems used to deal with managing the data. After all, that’s all anybody is to these sites – data. Sure, when you first start using these sites, you take the time to read your matches “own words” essay and carefully review all answers given to the standard questions hoping to find your perfect match. You then add this person to your “connections” list by clicking the “I’m interested” button which gives you the opportunity to start communication with this other person by using one of the “chemistry starters” – 5 applets that attempt to make breaking the ice easier – or sending this person an email.

This is where the routine eventually (d)evolves into a new system that you create. After wasting too much time personalizing your efforts at this point based on the uniqueness of each match only to get no response from any, you realize that you’d probably be better off with more of a shotgun approach. Probability is what probability is and the more lines you throw, the more likely you are to get a nibble. Here’s how I’ve decided to play this:

Every day Chemistry sends me five new “matches” to check out. I (rather quickly) scan through these new possibilities and either add them to my “not reallys” list or click on the “I’m interested” button and add them to my current list of “connections”. After this, I go to my “connections” list and send the exact same “Four-play” (one of the “chemistry starters” apps mentioned earlier) to all of the newly added women. The “Four-play” I’ve decided to use is a list of four movies that I “watch whenever they are on” – 1) Pink Floyd - The Wall, 2) Six Degrees of Separation, 3) SLC Punk!, and 4) Monty Python and The Holy Grail. What this does is sends the women my list of movies and asks them to reply with a list of their own. Although this is a rather impersonal approach, it is merely step one of my system; and, should I get any responses to this, I feel that a list of movies that somebody deems “must watch” is a pretty good indication of how that person thinks. So far, nobody’s sent a reply list at this point…

The lack of response here doesn’t really bother me. It just gives me the opportunity to move ahead to step two of my system for any of the women who haven’t “thrown me in the trash” within two days of receiving my “Four-play”. Chemistry is good for keeping track here as it adds the option of “nudging” someone after two days of them failing to respond. This is where I get more personal – sort of… Each day, after considering the five new matches, I check out my list of “connections” for any that the “nudge her” button has become active. For these lucky ladies, I send an email reminding them that I am waiting for a reply to my “Four-play” as well as telling them a bit more about myself than what they can read in my profile essay. It would be quite time consuming writing unique emails basically saying the same thing over and over again, so I send the same email to all of the girls – the only difference being that I include their name in the “Hi {insert name here},” salutation. What this does is, hopefully, fool the lady into thinking that I went out of my way and wrote a rather in-depth letter to her asking her for more communication or, at the least, a response to my list of movies. Pretty sneaky, huh?

Now I am able to head to step three of my system on any responses I get from the step two letters. Step three is to actually send a uniquely written email based on whatever response was received. This is where the actual communication should begin.

I don’t know; seems like a pretty decent system to me. It gives the shallow, materialistic bitches two days to toss me out based merely on my profile and silly little list of movies – there’s one potential future disaster avoided… It lets the women who didn’t automatically dispose of me receive more information even before they responded to my “Four-play” just in case they were wondering whether or how they should respond – I’m thinking that this should improve the quality of any responses received. And most importantly, it ends up being an easily repeatable process for me that should swing the probability aspect a bit more to my favor.

So far it hasn’t worked; but I’ve just begun. Who knows? Maybe I’ll be able to trick some lucky lady into actually falling for me. Is this really where society is headed…?

bis später,

Coriolis

Password:

So you know what pisses me off these days (well, one of the many many things that piss me off these days…)? Sites that put stupid limitations on password creations! God I hate that!!! Don’t these idiots realize that all they're doing is basically making their site less secure that way? Here’s an example to further explain why this is so freakin’ stupid:

We’ll use you, the average computer user, as an example. Now, to begin with, you already have a very secure and easy to remember (at least for you) password that you would basically like to use everywhere. Why? Because you know it and you’re not dumb enough to give it to others. Let’s assume this great password just so happens to be “fucky0u!”. Now the great thing about this password is that it uses eight characters (a minimum requirement on many sites), alphanumeric characters consisting of both alphabetical characters and one number – the “o” is a zero – and, as an added security bonus, you’ve thrown in a “special character” at the end with your “!”. Good password. So, this becomes the password you want to use everywhere. Then you sign on to some sight (Time Warner Cablevision, for example) that makes your password unusable…

You see, Time Warner Cablevision has a rule that no “special characters” can be used in one’s password. You need to ditch the “!” in your password; unfortunately this brings your password down to seven characters and breaks the eight character rule that Time Warner also enforces. Okay, so you add another “u” to the end (or something similar) which now gives you two passwords to remember – “fucky0u!” for all sites except Time Warner Cablevision and “fucky0uu” for the latter. No big deal, but are you actually going to remember this every time you log into this special case site? I doubt it… But, and I’m sure you’re thinking, “So what? It’s only two passwords. Big deal…” Then you log in to a new site that creates a new restriction – they require at least one capital letter…

Okay, fine … now you’ve got three passwords – “fucky0u!”, “fucky0uu” and “Fucky0u!”. It’s becoming harder and harder to remember which version is used for which site; and, since the password restrictions are only told to you whilst you are creating your passwords, there is no reminder as to what version you need to use as you log in. It only gets worse as you create more and more versions based on other site restrictions – for example, some don’t allow any numbers. When taken with the other possible restrictions, this turns our initial, quite secure password into six versions – the three mentioned before as well as “fuckyou!”, “fuckyouu” and “Fuckyou!”.

Add to that the security feature of some sites that allow no more than three log-in attempts with the same username (oh yeah, and usernames are just as bad…) before your account gets locked – sometimes requiring a conversation with somebody speaking in a rather strong Indian accent wherein you are asked to give some very personal information (completely unrelated to the site you are trying to get back into) in order to get your account re-opened. This, of course, leads to a new password (randomly generated) being sent to you that you need to change back to whatever version of your standard password is acceptable to said site when you finally get in. And don’t even get me started on the sites that keep track of past passwords and have restrictions on their re-use…

So, what we’re now forced to do is somehow make note of which site requires exactly which version of our password. Yeah, your browser does a decent job at storing these various passwords automatically for you if you so choose; however it doesn’t work on all sites. It’s also a rather blatant security risk of you are using a laptop computer that you could possibly lose. Not to mention that you aren’t always surfing on the same machine and, from time to time, you need to update your system in a way that obliterates these stored nuggets. So what does the average user do – writes these passwords down somewhere.

Now what we have is a situation where your passwords are automatically entered by your personal browser as well as written down in a wonderful list form that could easily be misplaced or stolen. How, might I ask, is this increasing security…?

bis später,

Coriolis

They ARE Very Sorry

Okay, so I moved to my new apartment. I dropped quite a bit of money in an effort to furnish said apartment and am actually getting close to being done – I still need to get the two bathrooms finished and pick up a few more kitchen needs; however it does appear that I will soon be fully “moved in”… So where do I go from here? What’s next on my silly little agenda that is my life…? I know! I’ll head on over to eHarmony and see if they can find me someone to hang out with – they can match anyone, right? Nope…

The thing is, I was rejected by eHarmony a few years back. I filled out their rather extensive questionnaire with what I believed at the time to be 100% honest answers. The result was a notification that their system could not predict good matches for me. Oh well, whatever… Perhaps I was not being as honest as I should; unfortunately, once you get rejected, you are not allowed to change your answers. I don’t know how long you need to wait before you can try again, but (at least with the email address used for your first attempt) their system is set up to block access to the questionnaire on people that get deemed unmatchable. I basically let it end there and assumed that I had made a mistake with my answers…

Today, however, I logged back on to eHarmony. Apparently, enough time had passed to clear out my old, unmatchable questionnaire and I was once again allowed to give it another shot. Now since I’ve got no reason not to try again, I filled out the questionnaire – this time with the knowledge that my last attempt was unmatchable. I spent quite a bit of time making sure that all of my answers where completely honest. The way I figured it was that, the last time I did this, I did it too quickly and must have made some silly mistake. This time, I was going to get it right. I think it took me somewhere around 2 and a half hours, but I answered all of the questions and this time I know I was 100% honest.

The result: “We’re very sorry, but our matching system cannot predict good matches for you.”

I guess that explains a lot… For one thing, it shows that I was correct in thinking that my answers to the questionnaire a few years back were actually valid. I guess I didn’t make a silly mistake; I actually am unmatchable by eHarmony. But why…?

You see, that’s the rub. They come back and tell you that “ matching system cannot identify high quality compatible matches” based on your responses to their questionnaire; however they give absolutely no explanation as to why this is. They “apologize and regret inability to find good matches” and even provide you with a free “Personality Profile” to let you learn more about yourself and “provide you with valuable insights.” I looked over the Profile provided for me and wasn’t able to find anything that would make me out and out unmatchable. It actually describes me as a pretty well adjusted, rather stable, focused and agreeable man. But then I remembered…

Whilst filling out this questionnaire, I was struck by a few of the qualities it was asking me to rank myself on. There were three in particular that, to me, stuck out like a turd in a punchbowl. They were having me rate the importance of my religious beliefs – after, by the way, I had already chosen “neither religious nor spiritual” on one of the first questions asked. This got me to pondering … “Was my lack of religion the reason I was unable to be matched?”

I would have just gone back and changed my answers for those religious-based questions as a test; however, as I stated above, one is not allowed to change any answers once one has been deemed unmatchable. That, however, didn’t stop me from starting over from scratch with a different email address; and in today’s technical society, who doesn’t have multiple email addresses that they can use, right? So that’s what I did. I started again from scratch with my work email address and changed my name and location. I answered everything as identical to the last time as I could remember except for the religious aspect – there I decided to become a rather devout Christian from the “Church-of-Christ” cult.

The result this time: I was suddenly extremely matchable and given seven pages of matches with 20 women on each. Now remember, this is for the exact same person (me) with the only difference in responses being that I was now lying about my religious beliefs.

Now I’m not really sure how mad I should be about this. It’s just one more blatant example of how religious people can be such narrow-minded, self-righteous pieces of shit. I mean, think about it; why would somebody bother setting up an online matchmaker service and automatically ban non-religious people from using it? It’s not like any atheists are going to join that site in an attempt to pull theists away from their mindless flocks. Maybe we (the atheists) are just looking to find a date as well. But I guess they’re just using that intolerance that their religion has taught them so well…

bis später,

Coriolis

There Really Oughtn’t

I hate people.

Okay, so that statement might be taken the wrong way by many – oh wait, that statement most definitely will be taken the wrong way. Whatever… The fact of the matter is that I, for one, have basically reached the end of my line when it comes to the myriad of idiots in our society these days. And I’m not about to claim that I am smarter than everyone else – far from it! What I am wondering is exactly how have we (the “normal” people) let the admittedly few douche-bags of society have so much power? Or perhaps – as usually seems to be the case – I’m wrong here. I doubt it, but I suppose it’s possible. Hear me out on this…

As I’m sure many of you already know, Penn and Teller have this wonderful show on Showtime named, aptly enough, “Bullshit!” Seeing as I decided long ago not to spend money on any of your premium cable channel offerings (it just seemed like a waste of money to me), it wasn’t until late last year that I stumbled on this show using the rather recently introduced “Instant View” feature on Netflix. Once I discovered it though, I was hooked. Finally! Somebody out there is asking the correct questions and basically showing these scam artists for what they are. Unfortunately, the more I watched, the more I realized what the actual problem is – your average Joe Schmo (at least the one’s living in America today) is more than willing to throw away any and all common sense for the opportunity to believe pretty much anything. If the bullshit were true, life would seem better; therefore people relish the idea of taking blind faith in the bullshit. Whatever happened to demanding proof? Have we honestly turned into a society where belief in ideas has become more important than the search for truth?

And what the fuck is with this latest rash of husbands going to rehab for “sex addiction”? Come on … sex addiction?! Are you kidding me?? There is no such thing as sex addiction. What’s next? We’re going to be treating people for oxygen addiction or food addiction (oh wait, that second one already exists…)? I hate to say it, but if the male of our species weren’t “addicted” to sex, you and I (and pretty much the entire human population) probably wouldn’t be here. The problem is not that these guys have an addiction; it’s that they have a penis. Personally, I consider these guys weak. I’ve written about this before and my opinion remains unchanged. Society attempting to justify infidelity as a disease, however, is pure bullshit.

But that’s what we’re looking for, right? – A way to justify our actions without having to actually legitimize them. That way we can do whatever we want and pass any consequences onto somebody else. For these “sex addicts”, it’s not their fault – they’re the real victims here. I guess if they did the impossible and didn’t sleep around on their wives they might have had to suffer blue balls for a bit. Sure, they could easily alleviate this on their own (it’s called masturbation and man has been doing it since man has been…); but I guess that’s too much to ask of these alpha males. No … it’s far better to give them a pass and let them do what they do so well – it’s not like they’ve promised not to do it… Marriage, after all, is such a dated concept.

Then there’s this new fad (and “fad” is how I would best describe it) where peer groups and, even more disturbingly, school officials are being blamed for teenage suicides. Now I understand how somebody committing suicide always has a devastating effect on those that loved them; however when was it decided that the best way to deal with these tragedies was to find somebody else to blame? We’ve all been teenagers. We all know what teenagers need to go through. For those that forgot, it’s called “growing up”. Each of us had our own unique experiences during this period and each of us found ways to cope. Unfortunately, this journey is more difficult for some; but that’s life. Holding friends (or enemies) and teachers responsible when a teenager fails to cope accomplishes nothing more than passing the feeling of failure (because I’m sure that’s what the parents feel) onto somebody else.

So what we end up with is kids being punished for being kids and adults being punished for not being able to see the future. And how, exactly, should we punish these (what should I call them?) “accomplices” for the extremely vague crime that they are supposedly guilty of? Throw ‘em in jail, perhaps? Oh, I know, let’s make the school pay millions of dollars to the kid’s parents – that’s almost as good as a resurrection I suppose… After all, the kid would still be alive if the school did its job … right?

But that’s not exactly what I’m on about and before I get too far off subject, let me return. The point I am eager to get out there is that people need to stop taking often asinine claims as truth based purely on faith. And yes, I include all religions in this basket as well. We are currently living in the most scientifically advanced era that this blue-green sphere we have chosen to call Earth has ever seen. Why, I ask, are so many people almost eager to ignore basically everything we’ve learned to get us here? Fear of the unknown is no excuse to act like a lemming…

I watched the latest episode of South Park last night – the “Medicinal Fried Chicken” episode – and almost died laughing. That show always does a wonderful job of pointing out the absurdity of our culture, usually in an even more absurd way – men purposely contracting prostate cancer in order to legally purchase weed … classic… This is yet one more example of what I am getting at. I’ve been to Amsterdam. I lived for nine months in Germany where (and I doubt many of you are aware of this) it is perfectly okay to posses up to 10g of marijuana for your personal use. They understand the dangers (or lack there of) associated with letting people smoke grass if they so choose. However here, in the “land of the free”, you’re not allowed to – although, in more and more states, this restriction is only being placed on healthy people. Now how stupid is that…?

And it all goes back to somebody, somewhere, insisting that some fact existed (smoking marijuana is a “gateway drug” for instance – that always cracks me up…) supporting whatever agenda (usually religious – always about controlling others…) they want to push. What this oftentimes results in is a loss of freedom and it’s looking more and more like nobody cares. The anti-smokers out there have basically outlawed smoking (any and all, not just pot) in pretty much any public area (if this hasn’t hit where you live yet, just wait – it will) using lies. They blatantly over-exaggerate the effects of breathing secondhand smoke to make it seem like this nuisance to them is life threatening for all. It’s not and nobody is insisting that anybody stay in an uncomfortable environment – I’m sure nobody would miss these tight-ass, presumptuous kill-joys if they decided to leave the bar… But making it illegal for all to smoke … isn’t that going a bit too far…?

I don’t know … perhaps I’m missing something here. Did I miss the meeting where it was decided that everybody should stop considering others and just assume that whatever belief system they’ve decided to subscribe to is the only valid viewpoint that exists, even when this system is based on nothing more than pure faith? As Penn Jillette so often puts it, “When somebody says ‘there ought to be a law,’ there probably oughtn’t.”

bis später,

Coriolis

Public Transportation in L.A.!?

There’s an unexpected – or at least “previously unknown to me” – advantage to the location of my new apartment (the one I’m moving to in a couple of weeks). It seems that it is located easily within walking distance of the LA Metro “Orange Line”. What this translates to is that, theoretically, I should now be able to get around Los Angeles without needing to put Precious (my ’02 Trans-Am Firehawk for those just joining this discussion…) at risk on the mean streets that are the freeways of the L.A. Metropolitan Area. This, as anyone who’s had the privilege to partake in this madness knows, is a good thing … a very good thing…

All I now need to do is figure out the system. I think I’ve made quite a bit of progress in the last few days by investigating the Metro.net website (we’re between tapeouts here at work which gives me plenty of free time…); although I am still a bit confused – mainly with the fares, passes, and this thing known as “TAP”. I’ve even been able to (at least I think…) find two bus lines that I could basically take to work. If I’m correct with my research, then I do believe I’m going to once again become a frequent user of public transportation as I so easily was able to do during the time I spent in Europe. Now granted, this depends greatly on whether or not I have successfully cracked the Enigma code that is the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Here’s what I’ve surmised thus far…

The two lines that I should be able to use to commute to and fro work are the LA County Metro Local line 161 and the aptly named Commuter Express line 422. Both lines (as well as a few other intermediate local Metro lines) were presented to me via the Metro Trip Planner tool. All I did was enter my apartment address as the start point and my work address as the destination. This got me the 161 line. The 422 line was discovered after messing around with the day and time settings a bit and increasing the maximum walking distance. It soon started looking like the Commuter Express (line 422) was my best bet as the travel time was somewhere on the order of half that reported for the 161 line. I decided to check out the maps and timetables for these routes to see why this was, exactly…

I was able to find both a map and timetable for the Metro Local 161 line directly on the Metro website. The 422 line, however, was mysteriously absent. The reason for this is because the Commuter Express lines are actually part of the LADOT (The City of Los Angeles Department of Transportation) system as opposed to the LACMTA system covered by the Metro.net site. The trip planner found on the Metro.net site includes connections utilizing the LDOT (Commuter Express lines – perhaps DASH lines too although I haven’t checked this yet…) routes as well. It’s very convenient although a bit more explanation might be helpful to us newbies there… I was able, in time, to find the map and schedule for the 422 route through the LADOT website.

These two routes differ in a couple key areas. Although the Commuter Express 422 route is actually a somewhat quicker trip (it has fewer stops than the local 161 route), it has the disadvantage of having a much more restricted service schedule. It only travels from the San Fernando Valley (where my new apartment is) to Westlake Village (the location of my work) on weekdays between the hours of ~6:00am until ~8:30am and the return trip utilizing this route would need to be done between ~2:15pm and ~6:45pm. Buses basically run every 20 minutes within these hours and this route is not available on weekends.

By contrast, the Metro Local 161 route (although the trip could take up to an hour) is usable throughout the day from about 5:45am until approximately 8:30pm for my commute each and every day – weekend and holiday service is a bit more limited, however it is available. The main problem with this route is that the buses are far less frequent – runs are scheduled with as few as one run per hour at times. I do however believe that I should be able to figure out an optimal routine utilizing these two routes in time. If only I could figure out the fare issues…

You see, that’s currently what I’m trying to make sense of. It’s rather obvious that I could pay for each trip with cash (exact change only) and keep track of any transfer fees I would need to purchase; however carrying the amount of coins this would require would quickly become a nuisance. What I’m looking to do is purchase some sort of monthly pass that would allow me to use the public transportation systems easily. When I was in Braunschweig, this was easy to do – I purchased a monthly pass at the train station that allowed me to take any bus or tram in the city without hassle. I was even able to figure this out without speaking any German – the system was very user-friendly. Here in L.A. – where I speak one of the common languages rather fluently – it’s quite a bit more complicated … or at least it currently appears so to me…

So I’m pretty sure that what I need to get for my standard work commute is an EZ Transit Pass (“Good for travel on Metro bus, Metro Rail and many additional carriers”) and one EZ Premium Stamp (in order to travel between the “San Fernando Valley” and “Thousand Oaks / Agoura Hills” zones on the 422 Commuter Express line); but what the heck is all this nonsense about a TAP card? Apparently “all Metro passes are now sold on TAP” which is “a durable plastic card you can use again and again.” That’s great for the Metro passes; but what about the EZ Transit Pass? Since this pass appears to be equivalent to a Metro Monthly Pass with additional features (allows travel on additional carriers outside of the Metro system – LADOT, to be more precise…), am I correct in thinking that this card can be used in lieu of a TAP card for intra-Metro travel? I suppose I should call somebody and ask about this…

Whatever the case, it now looks like I’ll have something to occupy myself with once I move into my next apartment. I suppose this is good as my standard routine of doing basically nothing during my free time has become excruciatingly boring. Add to that the sure excitement I’m bound to experience with the myriad of tasks that need to be completed upon my move – furnishing the apartment and such – and it looks like an absolute flurry of activity is soon to be heading my way. Who knows? Maybe I can turn all this into something positive…? The ability to get out and about whilst avoiding the need to drive in the L.A. gridlock sounds like a nice start to me.

bis später,

Coriolis

Once Bitten, Twice Shy

I’ve decided to find a bit more appropriate housing for myself next month. Not that I haven’t been enjoying the ability I’ve had of late to easily increase my overall net worth; I think, however, it’s due time for me to start living like the soon to be 40 year old man that I am. And what that means is that I really need to be moving out of the room I currently reside in and moving into an apartment – a place of my own. I’ve already found the place and am scheduled to be moving to the valley (the San Fernando Valley, that is … like, totally…) on the 10th of April.

I know, “big deal,” right? Well I guess it isn’t. It’s just the next adventure that this rather dull, increasingly lonely life that I lead has in store for me. As for the myriad of details associated with this move go, I’m beginning to wonder if I can cope. It all just seems like way too much hassle for yet one more thing that, to be completely honest, I really don’t “want” to do. But I’ve learned that life – at least my life – really doesn’t give a shit whether the tasks it throws at me are things I want, it’s going to bombard me with ‘em anyway. I suppose that feeling of control over my life that I once had after returning from Germany a few years back was only an illusion. I guess this next move could be seen as a desperate attempt to once again rein in my out of control life; to regain control and return to creating my life rather than just living it. I just hope I can survive…

The funny, somewhat interesting, rather pathetic and quite sad thing is that this is far from the first time I’ve traveled down this road. Hell, since becoming a college grad, I’ve “lived” (for a minimum of seven months) at 12 different “permanent” addresses in 9 different cities, 5 separate states and 2 unique countries. Granted there are many out there that these figures seem somewhat minuscule; however, for a guy who’s initial plan was to get married and live somewhere (perhaps with a family, perhaps just as a couple) happily ever after, it’s approximately 11 addresses too many. For god’s sake, I OWN a house in Colorado! I own a house and have once again begun the process of moving. Will it ever end…?

Oh well … as it currently stands, I’ve got quite a bit that I need to do in order to successfully accomplish this latest move. That’s the worst part about all these moves – they seem to be getting more and more complicated as time goes by. My first half-dozen or so moves were actually pretty simple – I didn’t own much and all that was required was to get my small amount of possessions transported to my new address then arrange for television and internet service to be furnished. It doesn’t get much simpler than that. All my moves were repeats of this same process until I finally bit the bullet and bought a house in ’01. That was, theoretically, supposed to be my last move. I’ve already moved three times since…

My plan has been to keep the house in Colorado, live on the cheap wherever I end up needing to go and, after the stars finally re-align themselves making it possible for me to live in Colorado again, move back into my house. Seemed like a good plan to me when I first decided to implement it some three and a half years ago; however I am now realizing that this plan is flawed in some very fundamental ways.

I attempted to address one of these weaknesses – the problem of property upkeep – by fool heartedly letting my buddy Todd live in my house (rent-free, mind you…) whilst I was living and working in California. The mess that is property upkeep of a house that one is not living in had become evident to me upon my return from Germany. For some reason (ignorance, I suppose) I was under the impression that leaving my house empty during the time I was away in Germany (and subsequently the time I spent with the family afterword – a total of about one full year) would not be an issue. I was wrong about this (check out my earlier post, Smoking Marathon, for more) and actually feel a bit silly about my initial naivety. The obviousness of the stupidity of such an impression is very clear to me now…

But I digress … having Todd actually living in my house would avoid this problem – or so I thought. I figured that we could help each other out – Todd needed a place to live and I could use somebody to take care of my house. This, of course, ended badly as anybody who’s ever been foolish enough to believe a living situation similar to this wouldn’t end badly has assuredly learned. Never, and I do mean never, let anybody live in your house rent free. All it’s going to do is give said person a false feeling of entitlement and, once this has set in, you can forget about your wishes having any import. Once Todd started taking advantage of his side of our deal with little to no concern for the upkeep of my house, I was forced to kick him out. It’s a long story involving alcohol, misguided machismo, some extremely poorly rationalized statements and the Longmont Police; however the end result was that I was forced to kick Todd out. This of course meant that my house was once again abandoned. I needed to do something about that…

So now I own a rental property in Colorado (okay … I actually own a mortgage to a rental property in Colorado to be more precise). My former abode of dwelling is still sitting atop this property however somebody else’s family is living in it. PML (Property Management of Longmont) has been tasked with this property’s maintenance and upkeep and any and all repair costs are passed on for me to pay as well as a small percentage of the rent that goes to PML as a maintenance fee. It’s a pretty good arraignment so far even though I am, at best, only able to recoup approximately 2/3 of my mortgage payment each month – sometimes much less depending on repair costs… Bottom line is that I am dropping a decent amount of money each month already – long before I factor in the cost of housing for me out here in California. If the housing market ever gets back on its feet again, I should however be able to make back the difference (and then some, hopefully…) with the equity I am retaining. I suppose only time will tell on this gambit…

Getting back to the main point of this article, this mortgage ownership that I have has thrown a bit of a monkey-wrench into my usual new rental procedure. It’s actually simplified some things quite a bit as I ended up basically tossing out a large majority of my possessions after asking Todd to leave. And by a “large portion”, I do in fact mean a large portion. Of all my possessions that I had in my house, exactly one 5’x9’ storage unit of stuff is left – my home entertainment system (sans television set), a half-stack, my guitar, a few boxes of clothing and a file cabinet of primarily financial documents. This storage unit (located in a Public Storage in Longmont), along with the stuff I am living with here in California, is everything I now own. In other words, I am now going to need to do some shopping just to furnish the new, two-bedroom, two-bath apartment I am moving to next month. I am also going to need to arrange shipment of the stuff I have stored in Longmont. I’m beginning to wonder if it’s worth the hassle…

I don’t know, perhaps I’m just suffering your standard buyer’s remorse. It wasn’t until rather recent that I was finally able to get myself out from under a substantial amount of credit card debt. I’m very proud to now be able to announce that I am completely, 100% credit-card debt free! Getting here has taught me what I would consider a very valuable lesson – live within your means and do not, under any circumstances, buy shit on credit. I’ve made a complete U-turn when it comes to spending and now only buy things AFTER I have saved up enough money to purchase them. The absolute best way to use credit cards is actually to NOT use them. It almost seems too simple now – why would I want to pay more for something than it actually costs? That is exactly what you are doing when you charge something and keep any balance on your card at the end of the month. Now I realize that my readers are smart people and I’m not telling you anything you did not already know; however it was shocking to see the financial condition that the younger me was able to get myself into. I’m trying my best not to let history repeat itself here…

Now my current situation is great for me, financially. Living where I do (basically a room in a boarding house) is cheap. Very cheap when you consider it’s located in Thousand Oaks. So whipty-doo, I can increase my net worth. However in doing so, I have basically put my life (admittedly dull as it is…) on hold. I wake up, spend a rather large portion of my day at work, spend the remainder of the day in my little room, go to bed and repeat. Weekends are very similar except that, often times, the work portion can be removed. And yeah, I know what you’re thinking, “What’s stopping me from doing more?” You obviously have never lived in Thousand Oaks…

There’s this site name Walk Score where you can enter any address and see how walkable it would be to live there. It basically gives you listings of nearby attractions and how close they are to the address entered. It also gives you a score from 1-100 that rates your address. My boarding house rates 29 out of 100 – “Car-Dependent”. By contrast, the apartment complex I am moving to in Woodland Hills gets a score of 80 – “Very Walkablke”. The way I see it, having the ability to walk places might get me out more. Not to mention that the walking would give me some exercise – something that I have let slip seriously since moving to T.O. Will this pan out in the end? I don’t know, but I’m willing to try…

Apart from the location of my new place, there’s also the much more prudent aspect that it will be MY place. I will once again be able to go grocery shopping. Not that I can’t buy groceries now; however I’m basically limited to one shelf in the fridge to store my groceries. I have been told that I could use the kitchen for cooking; but the whole communal-living aspect of it all is very uncomfortable for me. I’ve done the “living in a frat house” thing long ago; I think I’m past that now…

Also, assuming I am able to get the place furnished correctly, I will no longer feel that I should be spending all of my time at home cramped up in my bedroom. No, far from it, I will be able to watch television in my living room, hang out on one of the two balconies that look out at the pool and communal area of the complex, heck … I can even head down to the gym and get a decent workout. Anyway you look at it, having a place of my own again should make me feel a bit more normal.

But it all comes at a cost and that’s what I’m having a hard time justifying to myself. Don’t get me wrong, I currently can afford it – rather easily, actually. That being said, this apartment will be costing me 3.5-4 times what I am currently paying for room and board. It’s not chicken feed… Even if the unforeseen happens (say I lose my job before the 12-month lease is done), I currently have enough cash in the bank to cover the rent; but then all that work I did at obtaining this savings would have been for naught. It wouldn’t be good, but I just need to consider that it would be survivable. After all, what’s the use of earning this money if you’re going to sacrifice your life in order to keep it, right? I think my attempt at shocking my life back into existence is long overdue. Here goes nothing…

bis später,

Coriolis