Free stuff
I'm feeling good tonight, as I just picked up $100 for the focus group, even if it was the most boring one yet. Health care reform with a bunch of folks who fancied themselves policy wonks. Ugh.
Anyway, give thanks to Grubby for this one. A free hour of play at any Gameworks. None anywhere near me of course, but they have locations in the Miami area, Schaumburg, IL, and Auburn Hills, MI. Check out their website for other locations.
I love me the free stuff.
Lighten it up
I feel like I've been a little too serious in my posts today, so here's my attempt at lightening things up a bit.
I logged on to Bodog to play some poker last night. To show you how long it's been since I played any poker, I didn't even have a user name at Bodog yet. Naturally, I stuck with Kenny_Rogers, just because I have a cool Kenny icon that I use for sites that allow you to customize your icon. Bodog does hand histories a bit differently from everyone else, so you mercifully won't be subjected to any of those. They give you a web page with links to the hand histories, and they are laid out in an interesting HTML/table format. Kinda nice to have them pretty already, but also difficult to follow if you're not used to it.
I sat down at a $0.10/$0.25 NL, $25 max buy-in game. I felt comfortable with those stakes, with it being my first time back in a while, I figured I could lose some at those stakes and not worry about the money too much. In about an hour of hit-and-run playing (I played in between making dinner and doing some housecleaning), I was up about $20 or so I'd guess. The fun part was that I very rarely made a bad move, and when I made good moves, the other players bit on them big time. For example, I was dealt pocket Kings in the BB. I raised it up after a couple of limpers, and got only one caller. The flop was all baby cards, rainbow. I bet out a bit, and was called. A King falls on the turn. I check to feign weakness, hoping the other player takes a stab. Indeed he does, betting about 3/4 of the pot. I raise him back, and he calls. The river is inconsequential, and I bet and he folds. An odd fold there, since he had called my big check-raise bet on the turn, and I didn't overbet the river, hoping for a value call.
I actually pulled this move off a couple of times, and was pleased to have people paying off my big hands. I did feel bad though for the one guy who made 10s full of aces, which lost to my jacks full (we both flopped trips).
The interface for Bodog is decent, but not great. I couldn't figure out how to make the table smaller (as I was trying to watch a show streamed from my Tivo while playing). I also had trouble getting it to accept my typed bet amounts, and only moving the (erratic at best) slider allowed me to increase my bets. But the players more than made up for that, and I just sat back and waited for them to fall into my traps. It felt good to be "on" last night after such a long layoff, especially in a no-limit game.
99% of Americans are idiots
Surveys are stupid. Especially when newspapers try to summarize their findings with neat percentages. Meanwhile, you have no real idea of what was being asked and how it was phrased (these things are crucial to actually figuring out what respondents are thinking when they give their answers).
I give you as an example: the results of a "creationism in schools" survey as reported by the New York Times. If you just look at the numbers, at least 42% of Americans are complete morons. That percentage believes that life has always existed in its present form. 18% more believe that evolution was "guided" by a supreme being. Only 26% believe the prevailing scientific teaching that evolution occurred through natural selection.
That's not all. 64% said they were open to the idea of teaching creationism in addition to evolution, while 38% favored replacing evolution with creationism. Look, we're talking about teaching this stuff in a classroom. As this op-ed indicates, intelligent design and creationism theories have literally no scientific evidence to back them up. None. They're just vague statements of opinion. In fact, intelligent design advocates have so far only offered a weak "Evolution doesn't explain everything" argument, while not providing any scientific evidence that their "theory" does explain everything.
I'll close with a quote from the Dan Dennett op-ed linked above (you should read the whole thing, it's a very nice refutal of the ID arguments):
In short, no science. Indeed, no intelligent design hypothesis has even been ventured as a rival explanation of any biological phenomenon. This might seem surprising to people who think that intelligent design competes directly with the hypothesis of non-intelligent design by natural selection. But saying, as intelligent design proponents do, "You haven't explained everything yet," is not a competing hypothesis. Evolutionary biology certainly hasn't explained everything that perplexes biologists. But intelligent design hasn't yet tried to explain anything....
For now, though, the theory they are promoting is exactly what George Gilder, a long-time affiliate of the Discovery Institute, has said it is: "Intelligent design itself does not have any content."
Since there is no content, there is no "controversy" to teach about in biology class. But here is a good topic for a high school course on current events and politics: Is intelligent design a hoax? And if so, how was it perpetrated?
Relevance
I heard an oddly relevant story this morning, listening to NPR on my way to work. They were talking about the Israeli Gaza pullout and where all those people are going to live. One of the places they mentioned is set to have part of the "security barrier" built around it. So why is this relevant? The Israeli-Palestinian conflict was the subject of the last focus group I went to, and I'm going to another one (unrelated subjects) tonight.
The amazing thing was that the spin language and semantics one of the interviewees was spouting was the exact wording that the focus group leader was trying to shovel onto us that night. The guy kept calling it the security "fence" (if you looked at the Banksy pictures I posted about a while back, you'll see it's a wall, not a fence). He also pointed out how areas where the wall had been built had seen dramatic reductions in the number of suicide bombs. Both exactly the talkng points the focus group leader had been testing out on us.
I wonder what talking points they'll come up with tonight.
Super Bowl odds
My early Super Bowl prediction is New England against Minnesota, with New England winning. Again. I was checking out the preseason Super Bowl odds on Bodog last night, and saw that NE, Philly, Indy are all 6/1 favorites to win the Super Bowl this year.. Who else do you think could win it all this year? I'll include the full odds later on, but the Lions are 33/1 while the Broncos are 35/1. In what universe are the Lions more likely to win than the Broncos? I guess it's a sign of how weak the NFC is overall compared to the AFC. I could also see taking a flyer on the Ravens or Panthers at 15/1 each.
I also checked out the over/under season wins odds, just for the heck of it. Not a lot of attractive action there. Best ones I saw were the Packers over 8 wins +110, and the Bills over 8.5 wins +110. I would think that both teams should go 9-7 at least this year.
Full Super Bowl Odds:
Arizona Cardinals 35/1
Atlanta Falcons 16/1
Baltimore Ravens 15/1
Buffalo Bills 35/1
Carolina Panthers 15/1
Chicago Bears 55/1
Cincinnati Bengals 38/1
Cleveland Browns 130/1
Dallas Cowboys 22/1
Denver Broncos 35/1
Detroit Lions 33/1
Green Bay Packers 35/1
Houston Texans 60/1
Indianapolis Colts 6/1
Jacksonville Jaguars 25/1
Kansas City Chiefs 20/1
Miami Dolphins 75/1
Minnesota Vikings 14/1
New England Patriots 6/1
New Orleans Saints 55/1
New York Giants 60/1
New York Jets 23/1
Oakland Raiders 28/1
Philadelphia Eagles 6/1
Pittsburgh Steelers 15/1
San Diego Chargers 25/1
San Francisco 49ers 180/1
Seattle Seahawks 28/1
St Louis Rams 40/1
Tampa Bay Buccaneers 50/1
Tennessee Titans 65/1
Washington Redskins 40/1
Barista newbie
Since I was feeling pretty bored last night, I decided to treat myself to a Starbucks Frappucino. It was already 9pm, but they were open till 9:30, so I just made it in time. There was no one in there, just one couple waiting for their drinks, and a cashier and a barista. I ordered up my Frap, and went over to wait. And wait.
It was actually amusing, since I wasn't in a rush or anything. The barista must have been a new guy. He had already screwed up the couple's order, and was busy fixing it while at the same time trying to get mine ready. They had ordered, I think, the Java Chip Frap, and he was busy pouring it out and starting over. Unfortunately for him, right after me came a rush. He was backed up 5-6 orders by the time he was done making our drinks. Poor guy. He kept having to check the ingredient board to make sure he was putting the right things in too. You would have thought that cashier girl would help him at some point, but no. She just kept yelling out the orders.
Thankfully, Starbucks has good quality control on their ingredients, and the Caramel Frap was delicious, as always.
Damn you Apple!
I've been really tempted to get one of them cool Mac Minis. So tiny, yet functional. It just feels like it would be so much more fun than my crummy old PC. Alas, I just don't have $500 to plunk down on it (although I did just make $8 in 15 minutes of poker just now). But now Apple has an offer: try it for 30 days, and if you don't like it, send it back for a refund. Now there's a tempting offer...
Lacking Luster
I'm lacking anything to look forward to tonight when I go home. I've got some more house cleaning to do, but not much else. I suppose there's always the WSOP on ESPN, or the Nats against the Braves, but neither really excites me. I think it's probably because the rest of the week gets more interesting after today.
Tomorrow: Pharmaceutical focus group. Pays $100 cash money. Cha-ching!
Thursday: John arrives around 3pm. Planning on heading downtown for a cask-conditioned ale happy hour and dinner at Capital City Brewing Company. Lisa and family arrive later that night.
Saturday: Nationals game vs. Philadelphia.
Sunday: Ellie's 2nd birthday party.
But tonight? Gotta find something to fight the boredom. Maybe I'll go rent a movie or something. Even the prospect of playing some poker isn't exciting. How sad is that?
Making Lisa proud
I got a lot of stuff done yesterday, which is a bit surprising, since I usually slack off big time when Lisa is away. I mowed the lawn after dinner, which didn't help as much as I thought it would, as far as the heat goes. Still ended up dripping with sweat. I called the town to arrange for a special trash pickup. We've got a bunch of branches and various crap that we need to get rid of, hopefully they'll take it before the party on Sunday. And, I paid some bills and such. Not too shabby for a night's work. And I still had time to watch the season finale of "The 4400" (talk about a strange turn of events, nice cliffhanger!) and the season premiere of "Prison Break" (interesting, I'll probably watch it, at least until something more interesting comes along. I kinda just want to see how everything ties together in his escape plan).
This morning, I found time to get Lisa's dry cleaning and get myself a haircut. I really need to find a new place to get my hair cut. It just seems like the place I've been going to is too inconsistent. One person does the sides and back good, but leaves the top and front too long, another person does the opposite. And it's the luck of the draw who will actually be there at 8am, when I like to go, to avoid the crowds.
I've got a few more things to do tonight, as far as cleaning up and such goes, but it should be more relaxing.
Mr. Irrelevant
The last non-kicker taken in our fantasy football draft was Maurice Clarett. Same guy who took Culpepper and McNabb. He just happens to be the first casualty, as he is being cut by the Broncos. At least he has that college education to fall back on.
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Down Low Glow Lighting Kit - Single Tube - Envy(green)
