whazzmaster.com

Spacebee is triumphantly moving into my place this weekend, so my attention will likely be elsewhere.  Cal: it’s good to know that you are no longer suffering from measles, mumps, and/or rubella.  Arlo stayed over at my place on Wednesday night and on Thursday morning we went and had a good game of tennis.  Cal, my shit is off the heezy, you can’t win.  I joined Tennis-league.com (free local tennis ladders) but there’s only one other guy from Madison on there.  I suppose we can have the world series of tennis, but I’d to find some more competition.

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The past two days have been Dude Central at my place. My brother drove up from Racine on Tuesday and that night him, myself, and wwhazz played in the aforementioned poker tourney.

This week was ok, not great. Wwhazz busted out first (he was feeling ‘fuzzy’) and my brother lasted until right after the second break. I went out 16th, just after we broke down to two tables. When we hit four tables, I was chip leader at the table, but from four to two tables my stack stayed exactly the same while everyone else built up mountains of chips. This resulted in me running some plays to try to pick up blinds (not all at once or anything, maybe two plays in 45 minutes). Both times I did it, the blinds woke up with AK and pocket pair, respectively. At the time we hit two tables, I had horrible table image due to no quality showdowns + the bad plays that I had to give up on. So, with the 1000-2000 blinds about to hit me and a stack of ~6500 chips I just pushed with K8 and got called by TT. Say lah vee.

I ventured upon my brother and wwhazz playing the 1-2 NL game. My first hand: KK. I took some money from wwhazz with his AQ, but the rest of the table showed me respect. A couple of hands later I raised it up with JJ (not nearly enough though) and pushed ($65-ish) on the T83 flop. One dude called with his 8T offsuit that he called my raise with, and my bro called with nut flush draw. Brother rivered the flush; good for him. That was it for me. Wwhazz was begging me for booze $$ by the end.

My bro and me also played two rounds of golf: nine holes at university Ridge on Wednesday morning and 18 at Odana Hills this morning (Thursday). Yesterday was pretty fun; even when you’re sucking hind tit at the Ridge, at least it’s beautiful. I beat my brother pretty soundly, but he was having a really off day. We went out later and got him his early birthday present: a fancy new driver… which he used to whip the holy living fuck out of me on the golf course this morning. I four-putted the first hole, and then flung my putter about 100 yards towards the next tee box. I proceeded to play the worst round of my life, yet at some point in the middle I made eagle on a 460 yard par 5. By the back nine I was in a bad mood again, and lost 6 balls on the 15th hole, Joe Pesci-style (”Hit me. [face card] Fuck you. Hit me. [face card] Take that fucking card, and shove it up your ass. Hit me. [face card]”). I feel kinda foolish for acting a fool, but whatever, I fucking four-putted. Ride or die.

This weekend is All Crazy, All The Time. The Sausage Rage is Saturday, and I wouldn’t be surprised if our award for finishing is an ice-pick in the balls. Anything To Fuck You Over: that’s the Milwaukee Brewer’s promotional model. I guess we should have guessed that they wouldn’t take success that well. I mean, they’ve got groups-of-twenty-five-or-more tickets to sell, why should they give a fuck about the people who were buying the tickets and going to the sausage race when only 2000 hobos attended a weekday game?

Sunday my family is going to the game since my dad got the company tickets. I’ll hollar and yell at Barry Bonds for all of you. Afterwards is a family pic-a-nic. Should be fun, whazzmaster.com. HOLLLLARIT.

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Last night was pretty fun.  Spacebee took me out to a sushi/hibachi dinner at Takara to cheer me up after a pretty shitty work week.  We had a grand time watching the chef do flippys with knives, spatulas, and broccoli.  There was only the two of us and one other couple sitting at the grill; after an embarassing 2-for-6 performance catching food in their mouths, spacebee and I went a perfect 2-for-2.

Afterwards we promenaded up State St. and settled in for a night of darts at Monday’s.  Spacebee had to work this morning, though, so we left just as it was getting crowded.  An Ian’s Pizza and a beer at Main Depot later, we were asleep in bed.

Today we’re ArloHorton’n it up to Hortonville for the Bunkster’s graduation party.  Not sure if we’re staying the night yet, so we may come back tonight or tomorrow morning.

Finally, the apartment decluttering is proceeding apace.  I went through all my photos today and got rid of a ton of them.  In doing so I found my WHAZZ Wisconsin license plate and a pack of M-80s.

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Spacebee’s movin’ in at the end of July, and my apartment was full.  Well, not full as in things-spilling-out-of-closets-full.  More like we-can’t-fit-another-human’s-stuff-in-here-full.  So, I hit the ol’ internet and discovered a never ending cornucopia of information on productivity and uncluttering.  Now, my friends, I am on A Roll.

Goodwill has been a benefactor of my throwaway spree, as well as the Madison chapter of Freecycle.  I’ve given away a lot, and I’ve thrown away even more.  And it genuinely has helped create a better, more open space to live.  A lot of the stuff that I moved from Wisconsin to California and back has ended up thrown away once I really ask myself hard questions on why I’m keeping it around.

Over the next few weeks we’ll be moving spacebee in slowly but surely, and the only furniture we really have to buy at this point is one or two dressers for the bedroom (I don’t own one currently).  We’re planning on moving a china cabinet in, and that’s pretty much it.  I’m looking forward to an uncluttered space.  I’ll take some pictures once I clear a lot of it out.

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It can make Simpsons versions of you, just in time for the movie to come out. I made these; they kinda suck but not too much.  Make your own.

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Thanks, madd scientist. Thank you. My gadgetlust was at an all-time high when you stepped in with some very cogent reasons not to buy an iPhone now (and perhaps never). From the thread,

i hate flip phones. i needed a new phone. i like the internet, and i don’t hate apple (3 ipods)… so why oh why would i not want to get in line behind rumthumbs, and titty fuck the iphone? because fuck the iphone, that’s why.

it isn’t a phone. it is a mobile device that brilliantly recreates the feel of the desktop internet, namely what has been labled the world wide web and email. it is a mobile mobile computer. it is a stripped down pda in modern terms with highly sensual responsive software. and that is cool and useful to some, but that is what it is. it is a pda that has a phone feature, sort of like the palm treo or motorola Q.

so the things i don’t like about it:
1) has your ipod every died for 2-3 days and you don’t know why and you get all worried that’s it’s really broke this time, and then on the 4th day it works again? well, i don’t want my phone doing that, and the iphone has the same internal sealed battery, so that isn’t cool.

2) 6 steps to make an outgoing call. sure if you get a call you can just hit one button or pinch the earphones… but if you want to make one you have to unlock it, and open the phone application before you can even launch your contacts database.

3) so the only reason you’d want this is if you want the mobile internet…. which is a valid want if you don’t get enough of it the rest of the day… on the AT&T cellular network you are going to get like 1kbsp max which means web pages will load in like a minute. that is lame and unusable. that is why all the other devices scale down the internet to make it quicker. apple ignored this, because content is key, but then they didn’t include a flash codec, which powers most graphic/video websites which is exactly what this phone is supposed to be for… so thats dumb. but to get around all that, they include a wi-fi adapter… so thats good as long as you are always around a wireless network that isn’t encrypted, and i’m sure after these phones are all over the place exploited unencrypted networks that won’t encourage the owners of the networks to lock them down. blah, dumb

what the iphone does is cool, but where it does it there are already better options… maybe phoneless options, but you can get shit done better in better ways.

so i went with the 4 fold attack

1) samsung upstage phone
2) 8gb ipod nano
3) dv1000 hp laptop computer
4) garmin nuvi gps

all are best at their sole function and balanced at rich feature set and small size.

as a tool, i see it as a gimmic, and that is why apple advertised to me on television that this is not intended to be a corporate tool… because corporations like strong tools, not gimmics… it’s cool, and you can do things you couldn’t do before but dreamt would be awesome and now they are real… but ultimately, dumb.

as it evolves from a gimmic to replace a once useful tool (as all gimmics that don’t die do), then i would be glad owning an iphone, but this isn’t an iphone. this is an imnotdonewithityet.

This is a very good analysis of why the iPhone is all hype. I can’t refute any of it, really. I own a laptop and a desktop computer (not counting my work laptop), and there really isn’t a good reason to buy a phone that does the exact same shit. That $500 could better be used paying off my All-Time Most Stupidest Purchase Ever™: my truck.

At some point in the near future (within the next year) I’d like to sell off my custom-made desktop to my parents, and buy a Mac Pro for all my media wants and needs (hell, development too, I love TextMate). I’d have my Sony VAIO Windows XP laptop and a Mac Pro desktop. That’s all I want; the iPhone doesn’t really have a place in that world.

Also, as was expected by anyone who has had to work with AT&T Wireless Cingular AT&T, the activation of iPhone service plans is becoming an incredible headache. Really, should that surprise anyone? Probably the biggest collection of shitheads ever to assemble in one industry, AT&T Wireless Cingular AT&T and Sprint duke it out regularly for who hates their own customers the most. Well, perhaps Charter Communications could step in to make it a Texas Tornado Three-Way Deathmatch. Not sure.

Again, thanks for the perspective Mike. You have the ability to keep a cool head in the face of new technology (except when it comes to Garmins, but I can understand that shit.)
HOLLLAIR

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