Tecmo vs The World

Mr. Wooden,

You made me a better person and I can’t thank you enough for it. The world will miss you greatly and I hope they don’t forget your teachings. Rest In Peace.

“You can’t live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you.” – John Wooden

[YouTube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1WOjpegGyA&feature=player_embedded]

[YouTube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFbZckxrTTQ]

So I recently flew on Delta Airlines where they have an In-Flight Trivia game (among other things) on a small, poorly-designed touchscreen monitor attached to the back of every seat (except the last row I’m assuming, but it wouldn’t surprise me if those had them too). After napping for a bit and playing my sweet tower defense game on my phone, I decided to fire up the trivia game. It’s similar to various restaurant trivia games in that it has a wide variety of questions, 4 multiple choice answers, you play against whomever else is concurrently playing, and the quicker you respond the more points you get for a correct answer. Each “round” was 20 questions. The person with the highest score at the end of those 20 questions obviously wins.

I played the game straight up twice and won both times. Then some jerk named Craig signed on and ran really good and I took 2nd in my 3rd and 4th attempts. After playing 4 games, I realized that the winning score at the end was often slightly below 3000 points, with the occasional big score. I had 3500 in one of mine, but that was definitely above the average winning score. This seemed pretty low considering you can get a score of 600 per correct answer if you respond immediately. There are 20 questions so the maximum score one could achieve is 12,000. Of course, the odds of that happening are extremely low.

I began to think about it in terms of EV (expected value). With 4 choices on each question and 20 questions, if you randomly guessed every time you would on average get 5 correct. If you instantly answered every time, you would get 600 points for each correct answer. Therefore, on average, you should end the round with 3,000 points strictly from guessing.

The trick to the game is not only answering correctly, but quickly. If you think or just select your answer slowly, you give up a ton of points. Because of this, I decided that on my 5th game I would instantly select answer A on every single question. If my luck was at least break-even, there’s a good chance I’d win since my EV is 3,000.

Unfortunately, just as my poker results have been this year, I ran way below my EV. A was the correct answer only twice, thus giving me a dreadful score of 1,200. If only I had picked B, C, or D to be my guinea pig answer. Considering A was right only twice, the EV of each of the other answers went up a full 600 points!

Oh well, the experiment died right there, but it was fun either way. I decided to go back to playing the game straight up after that and managed to win my last game

“Adversity is the state in which man mostly easily becomes acquainted with himself, being especially free of admirers then.” -John Wooden

So I’m getting ready to head out to Salt Lake City for the week for some work-related training. I’m not a huge fan of traveling, but I’ve heard some good things about SLC and am looking forward to checking it out. After my recent trip to Seattle, I’ve realized how much Baltimore sucks and that it actually is possible to have a clean city that doesn’t top the charts in murder. I’m hoping to check out some of the scenery and maybe even go skiing one night. I’ll try to post some pictures when I get back.

I’m about to begin work on a video series for Deuces Cracked. I am going to work my butt off to make it the best series I can and I hope to learn a lot from it, and hope others do as well. It should come out next season, which starts at the end of May I think. Be on the lookout

I just started an insane workout program with my girlfriend, Meagan. Literally. It’s called Insanity. Details Here

It’s really freakin’ hard, but I can already tell a difference in my cardio and I’ve only been doing it for a week. I took some before pictures and should there be any noticeable difference at the end, I’ll post the before and after pix

In addition to Insanity, I’m trying to eat better as well. I’m working on taking a lunch so as to have healthy AND cheap meals. I’m also trying to cook more meals for myself at home. I don’t really mind eating healthier (I’m actually a big fan of fruit), but shopping for the food and making the meals and cleaning them up is very, very time consuming. I guess it’s worth it, but that’s definitely the hardest part for me.

I was supposed to get Lasik surgery a week ago, but since my eye hasn’t fully healed from my last complication I have to wait another month or so. It’s extremely frustrating because I can’t wear contacts (they caused the complication which was the catalyst for getting Lasik) and I hate glasses, especially since the ones I am currently wearing aren’t even my current prescription. And with Lasik pending, it would be stupid to buy new glasses. So I’m just stuck for now and I CAN’T WAIT until I can get the surgery done. It doesn’t help that football season starts this Sunday and it’s really hard to play at my best with glasses on (would also suck if they broke since they are my only pair). Oh well. Nothing to do but wait.

Ok, will post again after I get back from Salt Lake!

Check out this link for more great pictures like this one haha.

I recently held my first of hopefully many home games. It’s a small stakes 8 game mix rotation where our main goals are to learn new games and have fun. I think I have a huge edge in 2-7 Triple Draw just by the fact that I think I’m the only one who actually plays that game haha. It was also probably the toughest table I’ve ever played at live or online. The lineup consisted of a couple of my friends IRL who are good players, TubaSteve, PygmyHero, and BigBagBabar. Not exactly good table selection. You can read more about it on Pygmy’s blog below.

Pygmy Hero’s Blog

I’ve also been spending a lot of time organizing Mount Robusto, among other DC projects. It’s a massive project and a huge undertaking, but I think it’s going to be great once it gets off the ground. For everyone involved, please be patient as we work out the kinks.

In addition to MtR, I’ve been helping plan the content for DC. We worked hard and I for one am really, really happy and excited about this upcoming season. You can’t please everyone, but this season lineup has received great responses so far and I am glad to be partly responsible for it

I’m also working on a super secret project that is going to be ballllllaaaa, but I can’t say any more right now

In other news, I bought Battlefield: Bad Company 2 because my Modern Warfare 2 addiction has finally worn off. I was not pleased and have since returned it for God of War 3. I played it briefly and can already tell that it is going to kick major ass.

I like the idea of ending with a sweet quote so I’m going to go ahead and steal that idea from Bosoxx. Most of them will be from a great man named John Wooden.

“Don’t measure yourself by what you have accomplished, but by what you should have accomplished with your ability.”

So I’m finally at the point where I can just chill and enjoy my home. I’ve only got a few boxes left to go through and everything is pretty much set up. Next Spring/Summer I’ll be looking to upgrade the kitchen, possibly replace the windows, and paint the whole house. But for now, I’m just enjoying my new diggs

My mom and brother drove up from Tennessee to spend Christmas with my girlfriend and me. It was really nice having them drive up here since I’ve been driving to Tennessee on an annual basis pretty much my whole life. The drive isn’t great (7-8 hours), but what really makes it a pain is the fact that you have to dedicate two whole days to driving. That really cuts into vacation time and I’ve had to cut my vacations short by two days every time I drive down there. But anyway, we had a great time and everyone got a lot of great gifts.

Also, my girlfriend organized (and I helped a little, along with each of our families) a successful campaign to “adopt” two families from the House of Ruth – an organization who helps victims of domestic violence. We managed to collect enough gifts to satisfy the whole list of requested gifts for both of the families we adopted.

Since my mom and brother hadn’t been up to Maryland in quite some time (well, they came up for my college graduation in 2005, but we didn’t have much time for site-seeing then), we decided to hit up the Maryland Science Center. They currently have an AMAZING exhibit on Leonardo Da Vinci. That dude pretty much did it all – painting, sculpting, engineering, inventing, etc. He must have invented or improved hundreds of items, including bridges, ball bearings, bullets, machine guns, flywheels, catapults, scuba diving equipment, and even the early makings of the automobile. Basically, your life would suck without him.

After the science center, we hopped on over to The Cheesecake Factory and loaded up on an assortment of cakes – including The Original Cheesecake, Peanut Butter Fudge Ripple Cheesecake, Red Velvet Cheesecake, Godiva Chocolate Cheesecake, and my personal favorite, the Chocolate Tower Truffle Cake. Later on that night, we headed to one of my favorite restaurants – The Olive Grove. No, not The Olive Garden, or the Olive Tree (man, olives are popular). This is the only Olive Grove and it has some of the best Maryland Crab Cakes. The cream of crab soup is amazing as well. Oh, and my mom/bro also brought up food from my favorite restaurant, Ridgewood, a bbq joint in Tennessee. Needless to say, it was a delectable holiday

Ok, without further ado, here are finally some pictures of my new place

Oh, and in the Christmas spirit, here is an AMAZING song that I recently discovered (thanks to Joe Tall). Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

So just this past weekend I received an email from my former long-time neighbor, Ms. Linda. She was my neighbor for roughly 20 years – pretty much my whole life. My dad and I lived next door in the house where I grew from a little boy, to young adolescent, and eventually into a man.

In the beginning, Ms. Linda’s son, Dan, who was only 3 weeks older than me, was my best friend. We lived right next to each other, thus had ample opportunities to build our relationship. Thanks to Ms. Linda, we were both fortunate enough to go to Wild World -> Adventure World -> Six Flags together on many occasions. We went out to eat all the time, including a great all-you-can-eat place called Horn & Horn.  We’d go to Harriet’s Happiest Halloween, the May Fair, to the movies, the Joppatowne pool, birthday parties, soccer games, the arcade, and yes – even The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle concert together.  That’s right.  I said concert.  Your loss if you missed it.  When Grammer (my grandmother) would come up to stay with my dad and me, she would come along on our adventures as well.  Ms. Linda would even drive Dan and me to and from school everyday.  I can still remember waiting for Dan every morning while Ms. Linda and me would be in the car wondering just how late we would be on that day haha.  Basically, we did everything together.  I could never thank her enough for all of the things she did for us.

Then a certain historical movie started being made.  Ms. Linda was all about this movie and just couldn’t wait for it to come out.  She wanted everyone to go see it with her when it came out.  She wouldn’t stop talking about how great it was going to be and was really excited.  Then the day finally came and it was released in the theaters.  She bought me a ticket and made everyone wait so that I wouldn’t miss it.  Then, for reasons unknown to me to this day, I told her that I didn’t want to go see it.  After the initial shock wore off, everyone else went off to go see it without me.  Unfortunately, by that time every theater was full and Ms. Linda would have to wait even longer to see her movie.  She eventually saw it, and then went back and saw it again, and again, and again haha.  It’s a little known movie, but you may have heard of it.  Titanic.  Needless to say, I still feel bad about that incident to this day.  For whatever reason I really, really didn’t want to see that movie at the time, but that shouldn’t have mattered.  I hope she forgives me and that she understands I was just a stupid kid and didn’t fully realize…well…anything at the time.

As time went on, Dan and I moved into middle school and eventually high school.  We joined different circles and drifted apart (as much as next-door neighbors could).  We still played basketball together every now and then, but we had just grown up a bit and decided to hang with different crews.  I went off to college and with the exception of some sporadic home visits, I never really saw Dan or Ms. Linda too much anymore.  Then, on June 20th, 2006, I received a phone call stating that Dan had passed away – the result of a methadone overdose.   I’m not going to pretend to know anything about Dan’s situation at that time, his group of friends, or anything like that.  I didn’t really know the grown-up Dan, but I did know the kid I grew up with.  I know that whatever happened, he was a good guy.  Sometimes he was a little too concerned with “being cool” and that may have put him in some dangerous situations, but ultimately he just wanted to be loved by his peers and to make them laugh at every opportunity – a goal in which he often succeeded.  I cannot begin to fathom what losing a child is like, but I do know what losing a best friend is like, even if we had drifted apart.  It’s weird.  Even though he wasn’t part of my grown-up life, I still did and still do feel a void with him gone.  It’s almost as if part of my childhood passed away with him.  I guess it’s just one of those things you take for granted and don’t fully realize its importance until it’s gone.  Dan’s bigger brother, Duffy, made an incredible website for him.  You can check it out at Daniel Staib’s Website.

After Dan passed away, I continued on down my own path, forever cautious of how things could turn out.  Just recently I purchased my own home after my dad sold the house I grew up in.  It was a sad day leaving that house.  It had been home to many events in my life and now I would never step foot in it again.  After packing up the last of our things, I said goodbye to my home.  It seems weird to me to miss an inanimate object, but I do.

Fast forward to this past weekend and the email that Ms. Linda sent to me.

“Subject: Bad News On House

Body:  The neighbors were at White Marsh .   Yvonne Baldwin was driving by and saw smoke.  She banged on our door and we called the fire dept.  The house was engulfed quickly.  Donald & Mr. Joe were trying to break down the front door to get out the dog.  But they could not.  Paramedics are still working on him.  Sorry but the house is really bad.”

Wow.  Just wow.

I found out later that the dog, a german shepherd, had some internal damage from the smoke, but it looks like he is going to make it.  The newlyweds who purchased the home from my dad have several small children and luckily no one was hurt.  I feel very sorry for them, especially so close to Christmas.  An unattended holiday candle seems to be the culprit.  It must be a horrible feeling to see your brand new house and most of what you own turned to ash.  Fortunately the structure of the house is intact and hopefully the insurance will cover the damage/repairs.

Below is a link to pictures from the fire.

House Fire Pictures

It’s kind of surreal looking at those pictures.  That’s my house.  That’s my home.

Well, it was my home.

Here is what it used to look like…

Before the fire…

So I haven’t updated this in a while (standard), but I thought I’d update a few things in the life of Tecmo.

Owning your own home is both sweet and not. I’m not complaining as it is a great blessing to have the opportunity to own your own home, but man is it a lot of work! I settled in August and planned to have a house-warming party in early October. Then I planned to have that party at the end of October. Then November. New tentative date is mid-December lol. Whenever I buy stuff, I do a good bit a research, read customer reviews, and wait for good sales. Heck, it took me almost a year to decide on my TV! So in the past few months I’ve gone through a lot of research/bargain hunting for couches, dining room tables, office desks, and backyard fences.  I’m happy to say that all of those purchases have been made and I’m really happy with all of them.  My couch and love seat are really comfortable, my fence looks really nice, my desk is finally built for my poker office and I just have to finish setting the electronic stuff up, and my dining room table is pretty sweet.  It’s a square table with 2 chairs and the other two sides are booths!  That’s right – I have a restaurant-style booth in my house!  It’s pretty sick.  Now I just have to finish unpacking some boxes and throw up some decorations on the walls and I’ll finally be at a point where I can just chillax and enjoy my new home  I’ll post pix soon!

My dog, Kali (see previous post for pix), is doing great.  My girlfriend, Meagan, and I have been working with her on different tricks and we took her to take the Canine Good Citizen test (a set of 10 different tests to determine obedience).  On her very first try she passed!  She has ended up costing me a good bit more than I originally thought, but she’s worth it

As far as poker goes, I haven’t been able to play too much with all the grown-up stuffs going on.  Every now and  then I’ll put in a session, but nothing too substantial.  I did have my worst session ever that was 50% running bad and 50% tilt.  Afterwards  I realized my biggest leak is “playing to get even.”  It’s all one big session in poker and it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to play as if each session is the end all be all, but alas, that’s a leak for me.  Because of that, I have instituted a timed session policy.  I’ve done it a couple times so far and really enjoy it.  You play for a predetermined amount of time and stop when it’s over no matter what.  You never play to get even or stop playing too quickly.  You also don’t end up playing until 3:00 am when you have to get up for work the next day haha.

My poker office is nearing completion and I’m really excited to have it all set up.  I’m still doing a little coaching here and there, but mostly I’m trying to get the house stuff done so I can concentrate on working on my game again.  I want to be a 200NL reg in the next couple of months and build up my roll for WSOP ’10.  I can’t wait for the summer.  I think there’s a chance it could be my best Vegas trip yet!  Between hanging out with my normal crew, meeting up w/ some DC peeps, and looking to play a good bit and make some good $, it should be a blast!  Oh yea, and the girlfriend might get to go this time too!

Oh, and as far as DeucesCracked goes, I should have some really cool stuff happening on that front as well.  I can’t say anything just yet, but I’ve got 2 or 3 things that I’m working on w/ them