Welcome to the Hotel California

Idioplicity(Easter in America)

2009-04-12T21:27:00.004-04:00

April 12, 2009....where does one go when one needs basic living supplies(milk, orange juice, chocolate chip muffins)? America, better known as Wal Mart of course. Wal Mart is indicative of all things that we have come to value in this country: unbridled greed, the ubiquitous spread of idiocy(err, simplicity), and the cutthroat business nature that allows a certain store to stay open, no. matter. what. Strolling through the aisles, I didn't find the crowd that I would have expected on this second most holy of Christian holidays in a nation that refuses to define itself as Christian, yet constantly inundates its citizens to live as "Good Catholics/Protestants/Lutherans/Baptists/etc". Instead, I found mostly normal looking people there. No homeless or under sheltered crowd, just average Americans taking a drive to Wal Mart on another Sunday. As Americans, we love the idioplistic. Something so simple that it catches our attention while simultaneously realizing we will be dumber after partaking in the activity. In a culture fueled by people following the actions of other on Twitter and Facebook instead of going out and trying to do something worthwhile themselves, it isn't hard to imagine how idioplism quickly spread like a California wildfire. Hell, I'll admit, there are times even I capitulate to the seemingly unwielding influence of popular culture. After reading several articles on public policy(culminating with one on No Child Left Behind, a subject that always gets my blood pumping), I decided to listen to some music on one of the mothers of all American Idioplism: YouTube. I combed the site for awhile and was able to find the most watched videos of all time. It goes something like this:

10. Jonas Brothers- Burnin Up
9. Jonas Brothers- SOS
8. Chris Brown- Kiss Kiss
7. Britney Spears - Womanizer
6. Miley Cyrus - 7 Things
5. Alicia Keys- No One
4. Leona Lewis- Bleeding Love
3. Rihanna- Don't Stop the Music
2. Chris Brown- With You
1. Avril Lavigne- Girlfriend

And just in case you weren't one of the 118,281,200 people to view this video, let me give you a short sample of the lyrics:

You're so fine, I want you mine, you're so delicious
I think about you all the time, you're so addictive
Don't you know what I can do to make you feel alright?
Alright, alright, alright

Don't pretend, I think you know I'm precious
And so yeah, I'm a hey, hey princess
I can tell you like me too and you know I'm right
I'm right, I'm right, I'm right

She's like so whatever
You could do so much better
I think we should get together now
And that's what everybody's talking about

Now, imagine packaging up that list and those lyrics to your grandparents 50 years ago, April 12, 1959, which is unquestionably the period of American dominance in the world. Could you imagine the looks on their faces when they see that a song named Womanizer and the lyrics "She's like so whatever" dominate the American interface? It's no wonder the rest of the world often looks at us with mocking disdain. We don't have the scholarly nature of the Europeans(most Europeans think of us as complete morons) or the studious nature of the Asians. Yet, somehow, even after all these criticisms the world has looked and looks to us for direction in everything from scientific innovation to implementation and constraints of democracy. I did not write this piece to attack the things that we have done well in the past and I still feel that we do well now. Rather, this is a close examination of the rest of America, the media driven idiocracy that the rest of the world sees us. The point is this: America has always been attracted to simplicity. Technology has now made it possible to transfer ideas instantly, and the sheer nature of the beast is that the ones that don't take much effort to understand will be spread the fastest and most frequently. I'm just not sure when we crossed over from admiration of simplicity to admiration of idiocy. Somewhere in between, idioplicity, may be the best word to describe popular culture of our generation. So shape up America, or we may be the first generation whose grandkids look at us and say, "How were we spawned from such idiots?"

my trip back home and our point of no return

2009-02-23T01:27:00.002-05:00

I have wanted to write about several things that have been on my mind for awhile, but only now as I'm scurrying to review my biology material that I will never more than memorize for tomorrow do I find the time to sit down and type out a new entry.

First, I went home this weekend to Pittsburgh for the second time this semester(the other being for the Super Bowl). I hadn't planned on coming home more than once before spring break, but the Super Bowl is an extenuating circumstance and this last weekend was more to see friends and get away from State College. After a night out on Friday and a dinner with a good friend on Saturday, I realized how much I missed the place. I miss it for a few reasons. First, the people in Pittsburgh are different than people up here. PSU is a melting pot for people from Maryland, Pittsburgh, Philly, New Jersey, New York, and everywhere in between. And the supposed "we think we're better than you" chain seems to run from east to west until it stops in State College, PA. Everywhere you go up here you get this incredibly annoying sense of unbridled arrogance when you tell people that you're from Pittsburgh. Their first thoughts are, people from Pittsburgh are obviously less intelligent than I am. I mean, come on, I was born in New York/New Jersey/Philadelphia, so it is in my DNA that I am smarter, funnier, and most importantly, cooler than them. It isn't until you leave your general metropolitain area that you realize that their are varied attitudes towards life. Growing up there were always kids from certain neighborhoods that would look down on you because they had more money, but never before did I meet people from a geographic region that all thought they were actually inherently better than me. Personally, I feel that confidence is one of the most important traits you can have or acquire. You have to think that you're good at what you do or you'll never convince others of it; but when confidence spills over into arrogance, I think that your head begins getting too inflated for your own good and eventually you will be knocked back down into reality with the rest of us. Okay, enough about that. I was actually just trying to say that I had a really good time in Pittsburgh hanging out with people whose company I greatly enjoy. So enough said.

Next, I would like to address another issue that I have been dealing with recently. Not too long ago, I wrote a post about several really good friends I have met up here. As a matter of fact, the four of us used to hang out all the time for all of last semester and a portion of this semester. Then, something happened. Something that I will not discuss here, but rest assured, really isn't that big of a deal given the context of other things that could have happened. It really just boiled down to a comment that was made that should not have been and one that was apologized for several times over. However, that could have been the end of it, but a certain person allowed the situation to escalate, and took steps to worsen the original commentor's time out with the group and other friends in general. Now, we have reached or almost reached a point of no return which never had to be reached. All could have been resolved easily, and we could have all gone back to being just friends, but that seems highly unlikely at this point. I guess that's the thing about a group of friends that is reliant as much on relationships instead of friendships. When one portion of the group fails, it goes back to being individual friendships instead of having fun with the group. That's all for now.

Until next time,

mh

my religion

2009-02-11T01:17:00.003-05:00

For the first time in my life, last Friday, I attended a fellowship group. I didn't actually attend it. I was sort of dragged there by a friend on the way to the bar. As much of a coincidence as that was, it ended up being an Asian American Christian Fellowship. I don't know about you, but where else would one want to spend a Friday evening? Don't get me wrong, I went to Lutheran Sunday School for ten years, frequently attended church, and hell, I'll say it, I even got involved with the youth group for awhile. But never had I ever non willingly came to a place where people gathered on their own accord to worship God. What was advertised to be "no more than 30 minutes" ended up taking about 2 hours. It wouldn't have been such a problem if the specials at Penn State bars started later, but unfortunately they begin at 10.

Anyways, yesterday in French class, we had a review before our three part exam the rest of the week. As a part of the review, we would pair up and go to the chalkboard in pairs. Since my usual partner was not there that day, I got paired with the girl that usually sits next to him. I don't know about you, but when you become friends with a couple of people in the class, I tend to not pay attention to who else is in the class. Unforunately, this character flaw reared its ugly head as I looked up to find I was partnered with the girl who was the lead singer at the Fellowship. We locked eyes at the same time and realized where we had seen each other before. The subsequent seconds went something like this:

Christian Singer Girl: Oh my God! You were totally at the Fellowship on Friday!
(Fuck)
Me: Yeah, you caught me, I was there. (Fake smile)
CSG: Well, what did you think of it?
Me: The music was great, I liked it a lot.
CSG: Awesome, so will we be seeing you again?
Me: Oh, unfortunately I'm going to Maryland this weekend.
CSG: That's totally okay, I'll just remind you again next week!

So now, I'm sure I'll be constantly reminded about the Fellowship until I finally capitulate one week and go back there. I don't mind people having strong faith in something, because let's face it, life can be really fucked up sometimes and it doesn't hurt to have something to lean on. I just hate the fact that someone who doesn't know anything about me is pushing me to give in so easily to something without fully evaluating my options. After much research, thought, and observation in my life I have come to one conclusion: in some way, shape, or form, something with a sum greater than its parts created everything around us. In short, I see no way that something came from nothing. Golden numbers such as pi, e, and theta don't keep showing up for no reason. The elliptical shape of our galaxy, our graphs of certain numbers, and our fingerprints is, in my view, undoubtedly linked by some sort of design. The point is this: if you come to the conclusion that God certaintly exists through nature or deep rooted faith, I credit you with having made an intelligent choice. However, I don't think it's any of your business to go around spreading that message like a crazed lunatic. May each man or woman come to whatever conclusion they want on their own.

Until next time,

mh

my self evaluation

2009-01-19T22:18:00.002-05:00

New years seem to go faster and faster with every preceding one. Before, I have done some sort of survey that shows what I have accomplished or learned over the span of the year. However, I've decided to just write about certain things because I feel that it is more revealing about how things really are going.

2008 can best be described by one word: change. I watched as an entire nation began to rally around a president for the first time in my lifetime. I saw disturbing anguish, unbridled joy, and all sorts of in betweens. I met some amazing new friends and watched time rip away the old ones that I had. I begun to realize how difficult it is to foster human relationships over long periods of time and distance. Thankfully, I spent most of 2008 as a happy person. For about a month and a half I was bogged down worrying about a girl that ended up not being worth my time. Otherwise, I learned a lot from both school and working as a fund manager over the summer. I had the experience of turning 21, which still lives as the second best weekend I had during my college experience, second only to the syracuse trip we took earlier in the year. All in all, I have to say that 2008 was the best year that I've had in a long time and I'm just beginning to understand what it takes to truly be happy.

I heard somewhere that the most difficult evaluations are the ones that we are all eventually forced to give ourselves. So here goes. I've never really done this myself, but I have a feeling that it's going to be cathartic to do this. First and foremost, I've realized that I need to control my temper. There is a fine line between being passionate about things and letting my temper control my actions. For the most part, I'm able to do this, but there are still some situations that I get into and I allow my emotions to take over and get the best of me. As an aside, I remember a story from my childhood that demonstrates this perfectly. When I was a younger kid, I participated in hitting leagues in indoor cages. During the entire season, we were one of the worst teams in the league. However, when we got into the playoffs we began to hit very well and ended up making it all the way to the championship game. We were winning big until the bottom of the last inning when the other team came back and ended up winning the game. Despite the fact that there was nothing I could have done, I stormed out of there and refused to shake the hands of the other team or the people running the league. As it turns out, a few years later I tried out for a local all star team and one of the people that had run the league was one of the assistant coaches. To make a longer story shorter, I did not make the team, yet learned a lesson as I looked back that people will forget events, but they will never forget how you acted towards them. In essence, I need to learn how to keep myself peaceful enough on the inside that things that are happening outside of my control won't affect my mood. Furthermore, I need to stop worrying about things that are not that significant in the grand scheme of things. I have learned that by concerning yourself with the unimportant you tend to overlook or cause something that ends up being very significant. The most important thing for me is to try to take an unbiased view of things that are happening around me and figure out which of them are important. Finally, I need to learn to let go of things in my past that I can no longer change. This is perhaps the most difficult of the three as I am always left wondering what could have been had I taken a different course of action or not so. In the end though, that only goes so far as everything comes to a head at some point and things that have happened will have ended up the way they were eventually. In conclusion, I just have a few things that I would like to try to improve upon as a person and I will gradually take steps towards acheiving those goals now.

Until next time,

mh

short greetings

2008-12-25T00:31:00.002-05:00

It's Christmas Day, so let me begin with a Merry Christmas to everyone. This is going to be short and sweet because I'm planning on crashing and getting some rest soon, but I was doing some excavating today and I found this. It brought back memories of when I was writing poetry on almost a daily basis and it felt good to sift through some of those old works again. Perhaps I'll get back to writing again some day, but that wouldn't be for some time to come.

Until next time,

mh

spatial relations

2008-12-23T00:34:00.002-05:00

After three days of being back in Pittsburgh, I'm ready to leave again. Not so much in the sense that I hate everything that is Pittsburgh, but more that there is absolutely nothing to do here. Anytime I come back it's the same people, same enviornment, same activities. I need variation in life to keep my curiosity and vivacity in check. On the other hand, driving through the streets of South Baldwin reminds me of my childhood so much that it's something that I need to refresh myself with every once in awhile.

While looking through photo albums over Thanksgiving break, I came across a photo that struck me as particularly interesting. It was the summer of 1992, and we had moved into our first house. I was standing at the front door with a plate of potato salad and a wide grin. Before that summer, we had moved from apartment to apartment until we were finally able to settle on a one story ranch in South Baldwin. Upon first moving in, I vaguely recall thinking to myself that we had so much space in the house that we would never be able to find each other(this is a legitimate concern for a four year old). Most of our childhood before the age of ten are brief flashes of memories and occasional words, smells, and sights that bring us back to something we may have forgotten. We spent ten years in that house, and as I drove by it today I began to posture why I was always so damn happy when we were there.

To jump to an obvious conclusion, I was a child. And all children are smiling and having fun because they aren't burdened by things that we consider significant. If there's one thing you should take from childhood, it's not to let things that really, really don't matter affect you the way that they do when you grow up. However, upon further mental inquiry, I realized that this was not the only reason that I was always happy. It turns out the reason was rather simple. At the time, we lived in a house that is roughly half the size of the one that we live in right now. Quite simply, if there was a problem, there was nowhere to run to. It had to shared. It had to be resolved. Too often in life we seperate ourselves spatially from someone if we have a problem, and that tends to be the worst thing for it. While it is occasionally helpful to talk to someone about it, the best way to ameliorate any situation is to go to the source. Not only this, but success was shared as well. I would never consider my family poor, but there are times that I realize now that our lives were made much....well something with money. We would spend every summer night doing things like catching baseball or chasing after lightning bugs or seeing how fast we could run through the Section 8 housing in my backyard to get to Leland Field. Yet when we moved from the close quarters of the ranch to the two story home we live in now, that simplicity seemed to be compromised. Undoubtedly, some space between people is necessary. To always be in each other's business is annoying and truthfully somewhat frightening to me. Yet we must remember that physical space creates untold rifts between people. Slowly but surely, extra space creates silence, and eventually all we hear are echoes of how things used to be.

Until next time,

mh

friends

2008-12-19T23:59:00.004-05:00

"Happiness only good when shared."

-Emile Hirsch, Into the Wild

It is only now as I sit in a desolate apartment on the last Friday of the semester alone does this simple quote about happiness make sense. The alone time that I have now has allowed me to reflect on all the things that went on during this semester. Despite the fact that I am extremely tired on the count of studying for almost 70 hours this past week for finals, I have found some brainpower to write what will hopefully be a short, yet meaningful post.

As this semester began, I laid on extremely shaky ground. This summer had been one spent mainly hanging out with people that I had not spent a lot of time with in the past(minus bradburn). With my best friend Mike Nayhouse away for all but two weeks of the summer, I was forced to make new friends. I succeeded for the most part and had an amazing time hanging out in Pittsburgh, Ocean City for a week, and Canada for a weekend. However, when I came back to school, I was faced with the prospect of having two new roommates, having two old roommates living in different places, no longer having a girlfriend, and being generally unsure about where I stood school wise. Upon arriving here, I took it upon myself to hang out with Steve and Joey from Apartment 246 during the week that nobody was up here before classes started. A new roommate of mine, Nate, joined us several times and I quickly learned that despite the fact that it was hard to see old roommates leave, change wasn't as bad as I had expected it to be. The first month went almost according to last year: classes during the week and house or frat parties on the weekend. Then something funny happened: I turned 21. The first night that I legally went out was a Thursday at The Saloon. It ended up being an infamous night that I won't soon forgot as almost all the people at Penn State that were close to me at the time were able to make it out. The weekend continued on from there when myself, Mark, Christina(who wasn't able to make it out the night before), PJ, and Kim went back to The Saloon for round two. After an epic night, the weekend culminated with my birthday party which saw dancing on top of tables, passing out under chairs, and other general fun that accompanies a party at 334. In the following weeks, I began to get to know Kim better. I was introduced to her last year when Dave and I attended a party at her old apartment. After going to the bars several times with her after turning 21 I realized that she was a laid back person that was about having fun and keeping people smiling. From there, a couple more weeks passed until I found a solid group of people to go out with on a regular basis. It turns out that group ended up being myself, Kim, Steve, and Kristin. To describe the four of us together is like trying to describe a tornado: a lot of energy and you're never sure exactly where it's going to hit or what the damage will be like. Throughout the semester, we survived seeing exes at bars, pieces of glass in feet, and outright lies told about all of us at one point or another. More importantly though, we survived these things together. Not to discount the importance of my relationship with my family, my friends in Pittsburgh, or my other friends at Penn State, but I will forever associate this semester with the four of us. Each of us brought a different piece of positive attitude that contributed to the whole. Steve was always the person to keep a smile on his face no matter what and always tell you exactly what was on his mind. Kim was always quick to tell stories about how much she loved her kindergarten class and how she would "go Jersey on your ass" if you messed with her. Her humorous sarcasm often carried the conversation and often kept us laughing throughout the night. Kristin was always the one to go out and push all of us to spend our time together in the best fashion. Only once this semester can I remember seeing Kristin without a smile on her face. And me, well I fit in somewhere. I like to think that my awkward dancing and stories about anything and everything helped to lighten the mood as well. I doubt that it is the last time that all of us will be together(considering Kristin and Steve are dating now which is completely awesome for both of them!), but I felt the need to pay homage to our going out group. The other cast of characters that came out with us throughout the semester I have talked about in previous blogs, but I would be amiss to not mention them. Matt Eisel is one of my best friends in the world and would literally do anything for me. He pushes himself to live on the edge every day yet has a way of relating to everyone else that has helped all of us(myself included) grow in character. Ronald Koenig is my other new roommate and there are plenty of good things I can say about the man, yet what strikes me most about Ronald is how much he would do anything for his friends. You can't go wrong with a man like that on your side. Finally, the relationships with the friends I had from Penn State McKeesport have almost uniformely grown stronger throughout the three semesters we have been up here together. I still remember us talking about the Beer Pong Constitution in Winchester's class sophmore year. Despite the fact we never wrote one, we had plenty of other memorable moments and quotes that we will tell about for years to come.

Above all, this semester has taught me that happiness is achieved on a whole new level when it can be shared with a group of close friends. To accept the choices that you have made in life and the person that you are is a form of internal happiness that is hard to match. Yet this pales in comparison to the happiness that you get from being with a group of people or person that are/is imporant to you. Unfortunately, it isn't until the clicking of the keys echo off the walls of a lonely apartment that I realize the friends I have are truly amazing people(mainly for associating with me). I will miss all of my friends that are graduating this semester and those that are going elsewhere to student teach. To the rest of you that will be coming back next semester, I hope that you're ready to do it again. To end with a famous quote, "Lately it occurs to me/ What a long, strange trip it's been."

mh

it's nine o clock on a saturday

2008-12-03T23:22:00.003-05:00

In late August of 2007, three shot glasses clinked together. The harsh scent of Puerto Rican rum proliferated throughout the air as we threw back our first drink. We had just gone sailing with the Captain for the first time. Earlier that day, two years of anticipation had finally culminated with four Pittsburgh kids making the three hour trip east to State College to embrace our home for the next few years.

When we first stepped into the apartment(after walking all the way across the complex and up three flights of stairs), we relished the fresh scent of nothingness. There was no history for any of us here. All at once, all that had become of our past lives was instantly erased as the four of us were thrown together in a foreign place, left only with memories and lessons from yesteryear and each other to get us through. To me, the first day felt like a vacation. I was still sunburned from a week at the beach and the feelings of relaxation and escape reverberated from Ocean City up to State College.

After the last of the parents left and we had eaten enough free food to feed eight of us, we decided that a celebration was in order. The only problem was that we knew absolutely nobody up here. Thankfully, Dave made a call and was able to locate a high school friend(From here on out i won't use actual names, I'll just refer to the three girls as a, b, and c) and we made plans to hang out at our apartment. The next problem was that nobody knew where anything was. After almost an hour of searching, Dave and I left and were able to pick them up on a street that I would later refer to as "Atherton". Introductions followed. A and B were pittsburgh girls, but C was from Minnesota.

"You're from Minnesota? I need to look at my map when I get home to remember where Minnesota is! What the hell are you doing in Pennsylvania by the way?" I remarked.

"I love Penn State" was all she could muster with a smile that could have made the devil change his ways.

I didn't know it at the time, but that smile would get me into a world of trouble later on in the year. That's a story for another day though.

We finally arrived back at the apartment and Mark, our fourth roommate, had taken off to spend time with his girlfriend Christina. That left six virtual strangers with nothing but PilotWings on N64 to play and a half of bottle of Captain Morgan to give somebody the courage to do something. Finally, after convincing C that she needed to take a shot to loosen up, the six of us clinked together shot glasses and drowned our childhoods and uneasy nerves away. After that, conversation flowed freely. We were so excited we found that we didn't even need to turn on the TV to keep ourselves entertained. There was this amazing sense of new excitement mixed with youthful innocence that encapsulated all of us that night. We stayed up late simply talking about what we were going to do that year until A and B disappeared into Eisel's room for the night. I had passed out on the couch and was awoken by laughter from dave and C as they lied on the floor talking and making the most of the night. I quietly slipped into bed with expectations of great things to come.

And they did. Sort of. The first semester seemed to breeze by as we lived every day away from home like it was our last. Then, in the second semester, after returning home from a trip to Syracuse that can most aptly be described as insanity, things changed. Eisel and Mark had serious girlfriends, Dave and I got consumed in what turned out to be incredibly petty drama, and worst of all was that feeling of exuberance died. Even now, the excitement I feel before going out on a weekend or even getting up in the morning is much more subdued than it once was. In the end though, nothing gold can stay. The exciting can only stay the exciting for so long before it's time to settle into a more peaceful sort of happiness; and as the end of the Penn State experience draws to a sorrowful close for some of my closest friends, I encourage you all to remember. Remember that the faces and places have changed, but the feelings never will.

Until next time,

mh

books and books and books and books

2008-12-02T19:52:00.002-05:00

First, I'd like to prefact this post by thanking kim for mentioning me in her last post about books. The idea of the post was to talk about what books you're reading and talk about some of your favorites. So here goes

Books I'm Reading(or just finished reading):
1. Alan Greenspan: The Age of Turbulence - I'll spare everyone the boring economics that Greenspan goes into this book, but essentially he talks about how in both life and economics we learn the most when we discover ourselves in situations we haven't been in before.
2. Jordan Belfort: The Wolf of Wall Street - On the outside, the book looks like a snore for anyone not interested in the world of the stock market. However, Jordan Belfort takes us on the ride of a lifetime as he depicts his meteoric rise to superstardom and the insane rituals that come along with being one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in New York during the 1990's.

My Favorite Books:
1. Ayn Rand: Atlas Shrugged - Don't let the almost eleven hundred pages intimidate you as this is one of the most important works of the 20th century. Rand's Objectivist theory will at the very least give you a fresh perspective on money and how innovation and talent drive the world. I read this in between my freshman and sophmore year of college for a scholarship essay and it opened up a whole new world of thinking for me.
2. S.E. Hinton: The Outsiders - Even though I read this book in ninth grade, the lessons about youth and loyalty have stuck with me to this day. It's a short simple read that everyone should pick up once in their life.
3. Larry Phillips: Zen and the Art of Poker - This book was recommended to me by a friend and after reading it I feel that I began to understand some of the concepts of Zen Buddhism. The book stresses relaxation, patience, and ability to adjust to circumstances as the most important aspects that one can apply to not only poker, but life in general to increase happiness.
4. Jonathan Swift: Gulliver's Travels - Set in four distinct, highly different worlds, this satire traces the adventures of a British sea captain Lemuel Gulliver. I loved this book particularly because it introduced me to the art of satire and how it can be powerful if one wants to send a message indirectly.
5. Oscar Wilde: The Importance of Being Earnest - Definitely the funniest play that i ever read in school. Wilde showed me that adding humor to a play can make it from borderline falling asleep material to incredibly entertaining.

That's just a short list of some of my favorite books that I've read. I can honestly say that I attribute my success in every subject except math to the fact that I was an avid reader as a child and continue to be to this day. The best advice that I could give to any young person is to read anything that you have an interest in. As a college student, I've found that most of my required reading is extremely technical so the pleasure has gone from it in a way. However, I've always made time to lay in bed, relax, and devour a good book.

Until next time,

mh

the destruction of the culture of accountability: a simple economics lesson part two

2008-11-13T23:34:00.002-05:00

Last time we left off with large investment banks trying to pawn off these shitty mortgages to whoever would take them. From here, the Federal Reserve decided to take a number of bold steps beginning in the summer of 2007 to try to fix the situation. The first was to lower the rate that banks could borrow directly from the Federal Reserve. You see, a bank borrowing from the Federal Reserve used to be like a professional sports team holding open tryouts: you know the situation was in incredibly bad shape. The move to lower the rate encouraged a few of the more desperate banks to begin applying for loans from the Fed, yet the stigma involved with doing so was not removed. From there, the Fed proceeded to lower the federal funds rate from 5.75 to 1 percent, which it currently stands at now. The federal funds rate is simply the rate at which banks lend each other money. The reasons that banks would need funds is beyond the scope of this lesson. As this rate is lowered, it encourages people to save less(because they are getting a lower interest rate) and for them to invest and spend more.

After five rate cuts, the Feds realized that these moves were not working as well as they would have expected. From here, they began a series of moves that will be debated by both the financial community and general public for years to come. It began in late 2007 with the establishment of the term auction facility. As a side note, isn't it funny how they use incredibly vague titles to conceal the true nature of the beast? Basically, the term auction facility was used to "auction" off U.S. treasuries in return for the subprime mortgages that these large investment banks had acquired through risky gambles. In essence, the Feds quietly handed out a get out of jail free card to these large institutions through a fancy name and the ability to trade these US treasuries for cash if needed. This was far from the end though. In March, unsatisfied with the 70 billion they had already handed out, the Federal Reserve set up a new term auction facility to continue to hand out free money in exchange for worthless mortgages these companies had gambled on. It would be the equivalent of handing in all your failing grades in college and being able to get your tuition money.

March 16th will also remembered as a historic day. It began seven months of the destruction of the culture of accountability that we hold sacred in this country. It began with the federal involvment in the takeover of Bear Sterns. Essentially, Bear Sterns had run itself out of business by making far too many risky bets in subprime mortgages and was completely bankrupt. In turn, the Feds burned the midnight oil and eventually worked out a deal with JP Morgan in which they would assume a potential 29 billion dollars worth of losses from the subprime mess. Another handout gone wrong. In the next seven months, the Feds helped to bail out AIG, Merrill Lynch, National City, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Lehman Brothers. The defense time after time was that each of them was "too big to fail" or "too important to fail". All of them though? I'll admit that the rescue of Fannie and Freddie was probably necessary and Bear Sterns was possibly justifiable depending on who you talk to. As for the others though, it just seems to me that the Fed was overstepping its bounds by bailing out these companies. We live in a free market, capitalistic society. One of the assumptions of this society is that the companies that are the most productive using the least amount of resources will be the ones that stay in business. My question remains how can we justify that we live in a capitalistic society if we are not willing to accept the reprecussions of a major institution failing? Cries from far and wide said that without bailout packages we would enter another Great Depression. I would argue that the diversity of the financial instruments we have coupled with the lessons we learned from the Great Depression, the recessions of the 1970s, and major advancements in economic theory would have certainly prevented this. Without these packages, we would have certainly fallen into a recession. Workers would have lost their jobs. People ready to retire may have had to work several more years. It would have all come at a price that we will probably never know. And still I beg the question, was it better to destroy the fundamentals of market capitalism, the root of our economy, than to delay a recession for a year? That's all for now.

Until next time,

mh

the death of old dreams and the beginning of new ones

2008-11-10T22:18:00.003-05:00

Time expired this weekend.

Like an eerie dream, the state of Pennsylvania was cast under a shadow of darkness on Saturday and Sunday. Naturally, I'm referring to football. In what seemed to be a juxtaposed nightmare both the Nittany Lions and Steelers had huge games ruined by interceptions on crucial drives. Moving backwards from Sunday, we can quickly examine what happened. The Steelers seemed to have the game in cruise control when they lead 17-14 with 1st and Goal on the 2 yard line. However, instead of using a little creativity, the boys played "typical Steeler football" and ran it straight up the middle three times in a row....only to be stuffed three times in a row. Memo to Mike Tomlin: Jerome Bettis retired two years ago. You aren't the run three times in a row and hope to get the first down kind of team that the Steelers were before acquiring Roethlisberger. And when you get to the goal line you have to have a little moxy and try something. A direct snap, a double reverse, hell even a play action once in awhile would make me feel better about our chances of getting into the end zone. Of course, Ben did throw an interception at the most inopportune time to set Peyton up to lead the winning drive. The reverberations from Iowa City seemed to reach into Pittsburgh that night...

Just one night earlier, Happy Valley fell silent. With one second left the Hawkeyes from the corn capital of the world destroyed a dream. You've heard the story by now. Up two with five minutes left. Driving deep into Iowa territory. And suddenly, Daryll Clark had a horrific Anthony Morelli moment that he may or may not be remembered forever. In what can only be described as one of the worst throws at the worst time, Clark sailed a ball over a Penn State receiver and into the waiting hands of a Hawkeye defender. I could just see the "Iowa shocks the world" headline in tomorrow's papers at that point. And with six seconds left, they did. Let's face it, football isn't life. Not even close. The sun obliged and rose the next morning with the hint of a winter chill. Something died out there in that cold Iowa night. The dream of a generation of Penn State students and alumni of a national championship that began in 2005 when Norwood, Butler, Williams, and Lee began playing together perished with the fall. Now we have to dream of roses and a trip back to California to play USC in a game whose tradition will be talked about for weeks leading up to the game(given Penn State wins out and USC doesn't play for the national championship). Finally, how about the crazy scenario that Pitt's hatred for all things Joe Paterno finally gets to surface in California, given the outside chance USC makes the national title game. Now we're talking crazy!

Moving on to happier things now. Barack Obama got elected. I don't sound more excited about it though because I just knew it was going to happen. The fundamental change that has happened in America over the last twenty five years will likely be named by future historians as something like the Openness Movement. Think about it: one hundred years ago, only white males could vote in this country. Now, we have a president of color about to lead the country. Never in the course of human history has radical, non violent change swept across the country so quickly. For the most part, the right for women and people of color came with much struggle but few deaths in comparison with some of the other major movements in history. It took the English seven hundred years to oust the Royal Family from power. Dynasties from China to Egypt ruled with iron(i guess it was more like bronze at that time) fists for thousands of years in lieu of any change. Yet since becoming a country, America has tried to bring a sense of humanity to the world. It's true, sometimes we overstep our bounds and try to radically push ourselves on other cultures. We truly mean good though; and anyone who says that America and its rise to power has been a mistake should examine how better off we are than people one hundred, two hundred, or even five hundred years ago. Tuesday night was one of those rare moments where you could not only feel that change come to fruition, but you could see it as well. As CNN put up the words "CNN projects Barack Obama as the winner" I had to quietly reflect for a moment. It wasn't just people of color that had come this far and brought about a sense of change. It was all of us.

mh

the precipice: a simple economics lesson part one

2008-10-18T22:13:00.003-04:00

precipice- a situation of great peril

Over the last six months, I have been asked on multiple occassions to explain to people what is going on in the economy. At last, I've decided to give it a shot. This post is probably going to be long and for most of you, boring. However, I feel that if you have any interest in your future in a capitalistic economy, you should at least read a little bit of it. So here goes....

I believe that it is wise to say that problems occuring in recessions stem from problems occuring in past recessions. Economics is defined as the science of attempting to maximize your utility from a limited amount of goods. Naturally, the fact that we have a limited amount of goods brings about the problem of how to best allocate these resources. The simple introduction to our current crisis stems from the last recession that occured at the beginning of the 21st century. That recession was fueled by the overheating of the market due to the introduction of names such as Apple, Microsoft, and IBM to every household in America. For almost five years traders ran these companies' stock prices up to absurd levels. Upon realizing this, a huge technology driven sell off began. That, coupled with the destruction that 9/11 caused our economy, launched the country into a recession. The Fed chairman at the time, Alan Greenspan, decided that the best way to get the economy going again was to lower the federal funds rate(interest rates is misleading, because the fed funds rate is one of many important interest rates). The reason he decided to do that is because there is a very observable correlation between the federal funds rate and investing/saving. When the federal funds rate drops, people tend to save less because they are getting lower returns on their money than they would have beforehand. Therefore, any person acting rationally will move their money from savings to investments because of the decreasing returns from savings. The lowering of the federal funds rate is the easiest way the Federal Reserve can influence the macro, or entire, economy. Greenspan felt that the economy was in such poor shape that he lowered the rates 17 times straight! You might ask why once or twice was enough and there are two basic answers to this. First, the obvious answer is that he has to lower them in small enough percentages that he doesn't bring shock to the market. Imagine what would happen if you were earning 7% on your savings account one day and you wake up the next to be told that it is only earning 1% now. Not only would you be incredibly pissed, but you would be very afraid that the banking system may not survive. The second reason is that it takes time for the economy to respond to the stimulus. Imagine that you get strep throat and require medicine to get rid of it. Although the medicine begins working almost instantly, it takes time for you to see any results from it. The same holds true for interest rates. It is generally believed that it takes about six months for us to see the effects of a single rate cut. However, when we do see them, the results are generally incredibly positive. About a year and a half after 9/11, the American economy began to climb out of the recession thanks in part to those cuts. You have to remember though, these rate cuts began to have very unforseen consequences. For one, mortgage brokers were willing to give anyone with any sort of income a loan to get a house that the brokers knew they would not be able to afford in the future. Why did the brokers do this? It's simple really: they got a commission every time someone signed on the dotted line. The general belief is that most of the dealers knew that what they were doing was wrong, yet they continued to do so. It's one thing to take a stand when you know that what you are doing could legitimately make a difference. However, when you're talking about a couple extra hundred thousand that would have been lost(had these dealers acted prudently), you really aren't talking about that much. With the easy availability of these mortgages, the price of homes skyrocked in a short period of time. In late 2005 all the rage was up and businesses and individuals alike realized that they had been gravely fooled. The Federal Reserve had begun to raise interest rates again, translating into increased payments per month for an individual home owner. As people realized they could not afford the payments, default rates began to rise almost overnight. As businesses realized that these people weren't going to pay, they quickly tried to pawn off these obligations on others. The most common technique was to package these mortgages together and try to sell them to investment banks in the US or to foreigners.

This ends our lesson for today, namely because my head is pounding and the Rays look like they're trying to be the third team to lose to the Sox despite being one game from ending the series. I'll continue the lesson with my next post, but until then, enjoy.

mh

Guest Spot: Lemonade Here!!!

2008-10-07T22:29:00.003-04:00

Don't turn that blog readers, this is a guest spot Hartman has given myself, Bradburn, to do in order to try and get back into that mood for blogging. I decided to retire my old blog and start a new one over the summer. Unfortunately I stopped writing because of the same reason I stopped my first one, life was too repetitive to blog about. So I am hoping with a couple of different column ideas it will really help me get back into the flow of things. This is one of those column ideas that I have called, Lemonade Here!!!

Lemonade Here!!! is my thoughts on mainly Pittsburgh sports, but can be on the sports world outside of Pittsburgh. This originally was an idea for a new blog, but with school I would not have the time to consistently update it as much as I would like to for a sports blog. The name of this column comes from the legendary vendor at the Pirates, Panthers, Penguins, and Steelers games, the Lemonade guy, who is often known as the Cotton Candy guy and as recently as the Pitt-Iowa game the Ice Tea guy. Let the fun begin, Lemonade Here!!!

Pens open season in Sweden

The Penguins opened the 2008-2009 NHL season in Sweden in the NHL's attempt for European expansion. And really what better way to do it then to send the NHL cover boy, Sidney Crosby, over to Sweden. While the Pens may have split the series with the Senators 1-1, it is hard not to think of these games as preseason games still.

The reason I say this is because both games were neutral ice, both games fell in awkward times due to timezone differences, and in reality it was just a team building excerise much like when the Pens have made visits to West Point in the past couple of years.

Sure the Power Play looked terrible, but really is that not to be expected when you lose two of the Pens top PP performers in Gonchar and Whitney, and they are forced to plug in Letang and the unproven Goligoski? I do have to admit though, it was pretty amazing to see five offensemen on the ice during the 5-3 in Game 1 with Crosby and Geno playing thing point. Given time I honestly believe this PP will click and give the Pens more depth when it comes time for playoffs.

Lets face it the Pens always seem to start slow, and I do realize that it is only two games into the season, but this team in much better to start the season this year then the team that started the team last year.

Pitt stuns USF to re-enter Top 25.

Last Thursday, the Pittsburgh Pangthers stunned the South Florida Bulls in what seems to be a weekly tradition in ESPN's Thursday Night Football with the unranked team defeating the ranked team.

It is nice to see Pitt back into the Top 25, but should they have ever left in the first place? In a way the loss to Bowling Green still stings when we could be highly ranked, but in a way, that loss could have been what helped the Panthers win this game and all their other games this year. You have to remember the Panthers are still relatively young, and are finally playing to Wannstache's style of a ground and pound, physical, eat the clock, NFL style of football.

In a wide open Big East this team can truly do some damage and now has the momentum to keep making a run. You figure they start 2-0 now in conference play, with one of the main challenges done with USF. We can only hope Panther fans, that this year will be different then other years under the Stache that our Panthers return to a game in late December/early January and go bowling. And with a weakened Big East, it looks very possible.

Wouldn't it be nice?

I was talking to Hartman the other day after the Pitt victory and the two of us talked about this hypothetical situation, in which will probably not come to fruition. The situation being Pitt goes onto win the Big East, and Penn State goes onto win the Big Ten, with 1 loss. When it comes time for BCS bowl selection, we see a rebirth of an old rivalry that died years ago in Pitt-Penn State.

I say wouldn't it be nice, not because I don't have faith in Pitt winning the Big East, or how Penn State is playing; winning the Big Ten, but let's face folks, the BCS Bowl Selection Commitee would rather go with their usual Big Ten-Pac Ten battle in the Rose Bowl tradition. But in this case what is wrong with renewing an old tradition in the Pitt-Penn State tradition. Think of the hype that could go into this game, the two teams haven't played 2000 and a lot has changed since then. Personally, I would love to see Joe Pa's face when he learns he has to play Pitt and how the grumpy S.O.B would complain, and there would be nothing he could do about it. But that is neither here nor there.

The chances of us seeing the game are pretty slim, but oh wouldn't it be nice? Keep your fingers crossed Penn State and Pitt fans, and maybe, just maybe we can see a return of the Pennsylvania Classic in a BCS bowl game.

I would like to thank Matt, for giving me the oppurtunity to write this column in his blog and I hope you all enjoyed a preview of the Lemonade Here!!! column. If you liked what you read here or would like to see where I am going from here, visit my blog at http://crusher524.wordpress.com/

Thanks,

Bradburn

days gone by

2008-10-07T01:11:00.003-04:00

"No alarms and no surprises."
October 6, 10:51 AM
State College, PA

Despite the fact that I had heard my alarm buzzing almost two and a half hours ago, I decided to ignore it, as is the case on most Mondays and Fridays. I have Introduction to C++ on those days which the university insisted that I take despite the fact that I had proven more than adequate knowledge on several pre-programming tests. However, those were taken three years ago, a time frame which Penn State considers too long ago for me to remember the specifics of it. I've responded by only going to class on quiz or test days due to the fact that I have worked so far ahead in the class that it isn't even worth going to. Therefore, I have been able to successfully expand my days that I don't need an alarm to four from two. Cha-ching.

"You see that guy over there. That's my econometrics professor. Nice guy and all, but if a pin drops he'll hear it and wait at least thirty seconds before restarting class."
October 6, 1:06 P.M.
Driving on Curtin Road

I'm waiting in class now for what seems like ever. Tick, tick, tick. The ruffling of newspapers has the Dutch professor in a silent uproar. I can only imagine what was going on in his head as someone tried to enter my row and accidentally uttered the words "Excuse me" too loudly. He stared at the young man for what seemed like an eternity before looking up and continuing. Econometrics is a nice course and all but it'll probably be something I'll never use, despite being the most important course an Economics major takes. You see, after my freshman year I was in such a rush to get out of Education that I went to the first thing that appealed to me. Economics seemed like a good choice because it was enough to keep me interested and hard enough to the average student to make me feel like somewhat of a badass when I told people my major. Problem is, I really didn't know what the fuck I was getting myself into. Economics is more of a technical discipline in the sense that economists do the boring statistical and graphical work while the finance people sell the product we recommend and make ten to fifteen times what we do. Thankfully(or maybe not so), I've always wanted to be on the financial end of things. I look up and it's almost 2:15. I have successfully daydreamed my way through another class.

"The most fascinating question about our own minds just might be if we can really be sure of anything."
October 6, 2:42 P.M.
Hosler Building

Finally, a class I can pay attention in: Philosophy. As a young daydreamer(way back in my high school days) I often thought about majoring in Philosophy, yet I was led to the conclusion that if I did I would just think about things all day. Considering this is what I usually did all day(I was much less social then than I am now) I decided that I wanted something more people related. Back to today though. For whatever reason, today's lecture seemed to resonate with me a lot more so than usual. Most of the time, I'll listen to my professor for a solid minute and a half and then zone out for five minutes. That's pretty much the way the first month and a half of lectures had gone in that class. However, today was different. Dr. Fisher stepped out of in front of the safe haven of his computer and instantly seemed less like a blabbering fool and more like an average man. No longer did he appear like an arcane philosopher, but rather a human that was trying to get us all to understand that the problems faced in philosophy are intense and sometimes scary, but that they are necessary for us to consider as humans. He fielded questions and even allowed us to give our own opinions on the mind body problem. All in all, a lecture that I could actually relate to.

"Let's go down to the weight room before I punch someone."
October 6, 7:30 P.M.
State College Park

It's funny how girls can bring out the best and the worst in us. In one sense, when you finally meet a girl you like it seems like there's some kind of obstacle in the way to get what you both want. So often we lie in that odd place that neither one wants to risk losing the friendship by venturing into the dating phase, yet both still have this weird attraction to each other. And often times teetering on that fine line leads us to overthink and occasionally overreact to situations.

"I guess he's just trying to find himself. I think we all are really."
October 6, 9:15 P.M.
State College Park

College is one of the rare times in our lives that we can actually learn more about ourselves from other people than we can from just being alone. It's a place that takes acne ridden youngsters and produces freshly minted adults. I can honestly say that I learned about ten times more outside of the classroom last year than I did in it. And believe me, I feel that I made great strides last year in understanding what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. Still though, I think that I made even greater strides in finding out what kind of person I wanted to be and how I could get there. It's just the getting there part that can be aggrevating.

"It's not until late at night that I really start to think about the way that things could have been."
October 7, 1:38 A.M.
State College, PA

As those parting words left a friend's mouth(or IM box), I began to reflect on the way that things could have gone for me in the past. The question that I always get back to is whether things happen as part of a greater plan or if we're able to make that plan ourselves. As I look back, I realize that a lot of things that happened to me weren't fair, but they were necessary. Throughout broken promises and broken hearts I've learned about the dark, dark side of human nature. On the other hand, through strengthened friendships and difficult times I've learned that the Great Balancing Act goes both ways. We just need to hope we're on the right end of the beam that day.

the same old different pittsburgh

2008-06-04T23:43:00.002-04:00

On the way home from Penn State about halfway into the trip(around the Blairsville exit) there lies an overpass like nothing that I've ever seen in my life. It's at the bottom of a lookout on top of the Alleghenies and as soon as you pass through it the scenery changes almost instantly. You go from the serenity of the middle of the state to the hustle and bustle that inevitably surrounds most metropolitan areas. And as I passed under that corridor on May 9th, I knew that my way of life was going to change for the next three and a half months. It's hard to describe to people who aren't from Pittsburgh(or any big city for that matter) what the feeling is like when you get back into the sphere of influence of that city. For me, cruising down the Boulevard of the Allies late on a Friday night after a week of finals that could be amply named as hellish, it meant returning to the place I loved. The old staccato rhythms of Pittsburghese that I didn't notice until having heard eastern, southern, and occassional northern accents brought back to me memories of everything from family picnics to baseball games at Leland Field. It seemed as though I spent the last year of my life constantly redifining my existence. I traveled to Boston, Syracuse, Philadelphia, Erie, New Jersey, and occasionally Pittsburgh for weekend visits. My initial thoughts on coming home were that the stability of sleeping in the same bed for three and a half months would be awesome. However, after the usual coming back to see everyone in the first two weeks, that familiar sense of fleeting loneliness began to set back in. Whether I'm throwing stones into the dirty waters of the Monongahela or throwing chips into a pot I can't win in a vibrant casino in Syracuse, the same brick hits my stomach at night when all sixty television stations look the same and everyone is asleep and it's nothing but me staring into the darkness. Buddhist philosophy says that happiness comes from within, not from without. I truly believe that at the end of the day you have to try to stay positive and happy no matter what is going on in the outside world.

Until next time

mh

sea change

2007-12-13T01:18:00.000-05:00

"Change is the way of life."
-John F. Kennedy

As the semester finally begins to wind down, it comes time for the annual "What did I learn" segment. As many of you know, it was my first semester living away from home. The first month I treated it like a vacation. There was free flying booze, lots of parties, little work to be done and all I could think about was how much this resembled a trip to the beach. However, eventually I woke up and realized that this wasn't a vacation at all. Not only had the difficulty of the work increased, but my reaction to that increase in difficulty wasn't at all sustainable. Even now, I sometimes feel like I'm just wading in the velvet sea of incredibly intelligent people and I'm struggling to make it out of the middle of the pack. My life up to this point has usually revolved around the "big fish in a little pond" metaphor that everyone loves to use. I attended a large high school, but I purposely took easy classes so I would never actually have to challenge myself and be around smart people. Don't ask me why, but I've found that I can barely tolerate the overly intellectual types. Now though, I'm surrounded by them. I used to think that I was a very good writer until I got into my English 50 class this year and realized that every single person in there was a good writer. In my micro and macro economic classes hundreds of people nod their heads when the professor explains a concept. I thought I was the only one who used to do that. After talking to several people who have been around the big college atmosphere much longer than I have, I've realized that there are two ways to get ahead: either do something completely outlandish or be hard working and willing to change things to better yourself.

The conversation started with the discussion over the students who wore the costumes of the Virginia Tech students to Halloween. While it is technically true that this is a matter of free speech, it is also a matter of morality. I completely believe in allowing people to express themselves in ways that they see fitting, but I think that it is important to realize that dancing on the line between morally right and wrong is completely different than overstepping it. A group of us concluded that doing such outlandish things would get a person noticed for five minutes and then carry a tarnished reputation for the rest of your life.

On the other other hand, I think that I've realized that the key to breaking out of the pack up here is to have a completely open mind for things. In the past, I'd often dismiss people's ideas because of the way that they dress or how they acted in public. I'll admit that I still slip up occasionally and think "God damn, that kid is a freak for sure." Part of the growth process is learning to get past your initial impression of someone and try to get to actually know them. In my next year and a half up here I figure that I'll run into many unique characters(as I already have). Even if it's just briefly talking with them or building a solid friendship, I think that we can learn something from everyone. Now whether it is a good quality or terrible one is for each of us to decide for our own. The people are out there and the lessons are waiting to be learned as long as we keep ourselves open to the change that can occur.

Until next time,

mh

on the road

2007-11-29T23:50:00.000-05:00

http://mcgtruckin.blogspot.com/2006/09/cant-find-my-way-home-by-paul-mcguire.html

I've never started with a link before, so hopefully some of you will check that out. It's written by a guy who covers poker for a living, but is also a very talented writer pertaining to other subjects. I'm not sure why that piece resonated with me, but sometimes I feel exactly like that.

The long lapses in posts are indicative of the way that college is going so far: it's dragging by. Penn State is the all consuming beast that first overwhelms you, then gives you glimmers of hope, then finally crushes you in your first semester. The problem is, it's my fifth semester. Admittedly, it is my first away from home and adapting to having to cook three times a day, clean, and do laundry on a frequent basis is a change. I think the thing that is really just sucking the life out of me though is the partying. I party two or three nights a week, but the spillover effects of those nights go into the other days as well. I try to get work done and all I can think about is how desperately I want to put my head down, but when I do, I find that I can't sleep. I think narcolepsy is when you're always tired but you just can't seem to land that one good night of sleep that will bring you back from the brink. I've also come to realize that if I plan on continuing this sort of lifestyle(which I do, because it is mostly fun) I'll have to take better care of my body. At the end of summer, I was in the best physical shape of my life thanks to golfing twice a week, playing basketball a lot, and constantly moving at work. Life here consists of school work, the occasional exercise, and lots of partying. In other words, if you don't make time to go outside and to do things other than work and party, you're going to go insane quickly. There's no motivation to get up if you're just doing the same old boring shit day after day and you can't see the middle of the tunnel let alone the light at the end and you know you're going to end up in a corner somewhere thinking bad thoughts and just wishing you could go home. Point is, getting involved in something outside of class or doing a project non school related is really important, and I've learned that in my first three months up here.

Other than the nights when I contemplate the many uncertainties of life, I lead a pretty happy existence. I have three great rooomates and we all get along really well for the most part. Beyond that, I feel like our little group of ten or so is pretty close and we get together on a weekly basis to hang out, which is nice. Myself, eisel, and dave will usually just hang out in the family room and play mario kart or just talk about anything. My schoolwork started out on a slippy path, but I realized that the key to doing well is simply to keep grinding away at the material that I considered a little difficult at first. It turned out to not be that difficult, it was just higher level thinking and once I adjusted to that the homeworks, quizzes, and exams became easy again. I'm pretty lucky because I've always done well at school, but the amount of effort and studying that I have to put in each week has increased tenfold since high school. My most interesting class is creative writing because the professor is unlike any I've had before and we're on the poetry unit right now. My favorite form of writing has always been poetry, and I think that the class has allowed me to delve into more contemporary poetry whereas in previous English classes the focus was on the classics. Exciting stuff, I know.

My plans for the Christmas break aren't completely set right now, but I do know that I'll be home December 19th and I'll be getting my wisdom teeth out the next day. Depsite the fact that I've heard it can be extremely painful, it will give me a chance to finish On the Road, a book by Jack Kerouac that I've been reading for awhile now. I think if there was an ideal lifestyle for me it would be on the road. I like moving from place to place, seeing the sights, and having been there enough to tell a few good stories but not wrapped up with anything there. While this may seem a somewhat exhaustive and pointless lifestyle, it's one that would suit my adventurous side very well. That being said, I'm hoping that I can squeeze a trip to go to Wheeling sometime during break because of their legalization of table games makes me want to go down and see all the tourists that flock to these things when they first open. Other than that, my schedule is free so I'll be able to see my family and friends, relax, and most importantly hang out with my brother for an extended period of time.

I haven't done this in awhile, so here's a poem I wrote recently. Enjoy

Blue Abounds in Stark Contrast
By: Matt Hartman

After "The Tragedy" by Pablo Picasso

Blue abounds in stark contrast;
Picasso's hand concisely bringing to life
the bowed heads of mother, father, and
Son. He rests his comforting hand upon his father's
leg, a feat not able to be reciprocated.
The three have journeyed to this willowing place
barefoot, praying the white foam forming at the
end of high tide will mitigate their pain.
The water is saltier now as the tides reach the shore,
precipitously pouring into pungent pores.
This water has soothing potential, it is as blue
as a cloud on a youthful day. A darker bluish
purple arrives on three unequivical faces.
The howling winds force all three to hold tightly onto
their raggedy coats as space and time seperate them.
No words need to be said as the
once thick, black bbeard of the father shows streaks of gray
against a peaceful blue backdrop. The tide has settled and we no longer
see where the blue waters have swallowed the ashes:
Blue abounds in stark contrast.

mh

new directions

2007-10-21T12:24:00.000-04:00

For the first time in a really long time, I'm having trouble trying to find a good opening sentence for a post. I guess I'm finally actually excited about writing and I just wanted to start spilling my thoughts onto paper(kinda), but I needed to find a lame beginning to the whole post, so there it is.

First, I would like to address the fact that I haven't been posting with much frequency in the last year. However, starting now, I want to try to spend an hour each day doing nothing but writing. It's something that I used to do when I was a decent writer and I want nothing more than to get back to where I used to be. Besides my last post, the few people that actually read this thing have found my posts to be much less than loqacious. I realized that if I'm ever going to write anything more than the typical laundry list of things that everyone does, I'm actually going to have to be personal about things. I guess for a very long time I haven't wanted to be personal because it made me appear to be more normal. It took a long time for me to actually summon up the courage to write what I have actually been feeling(i.e last post), but a lot of good literature examines the absolute absurdities of the authors that wrote them. Also, I have come to realize that everyone has these little imperfections that most people don't get to see; yet some of the fun in writing is delving into these things. Almost everyone who has read my work who is a more talented writer than me has said that I need to be more personal. The ironic part of that is I used to rip on the people that were the cookie cutter writers. We've all seen them. He or she is the person who can whip out a five paragraph, thesis at the end of the first paragraph and beginning of the last pararaph with no problem whatsoever. And I became that guy. It wasn't from a lack of creativity, but rather from laziness and a certain detachment that I purported in my work. Unfortunately, laziness and detachment from one's work are signs of very obstinate, wish I were dead kind of work that nobody wants to read.

So I've decided that I'm going to try to change for the better. Not only with my writing, but every area of my life. If I can spend each day getting just a little better at everything that's important to me that time will quickly add up. On that note, I've layed out a rough sketch of things that I want to write about during the week:

Happenings in my life- 2 per week
Economic Issues- 2 per week
Entertainment- 1 per week
Sports - 1 per week
Literature-1 per week

It's all tentative, and I'm hoping that I can somehow find a way to rearrange the letters and words enough to post seven days a week. Writing is something that I've been passionate about for a long time; yet I've never taken the time to try to become anything better than an average writer. I'm hoping that writing here daily will help me become better than average.

pomelo golden days

2007-10-18T00:11:00.000-04:00

It is 6:30 in the morning on a Monday in State College, Pennyslvania. It is the happiest place on Earth. The sun is gently creeping over the hills and I'm pondering the meaning of life again. I think it was Alfred Camus that once said that you can't live while searching the meaning of life. Maybe he was Albert. At this point, what's the difference? For the last ten hours I've consumed nothing but alcohol and the occasional snack. To say that I'm not thinking clearly is a vast understatement, as the alcohol has freed my mind in a way that I didn't think usually possible. I guess I'm sitting on the porch looking for inspiration. Not inspiration to write. More like inspiration to be. Be anything.

I go to class at 9 and 10 with a massive hangover that still has me stumbling down Pollock Avenue. I come home and am greeted by two of my roommates and a bad 90's comedy. I sit down for what I say will be a few minutes, but turns into an hour and a half after we put in mario kart and I grab a quick lunch. I'm starting to feel tired again. I think it's all the television, but I can't really be sure. I go to my room to take a nap. At first, I can barely fall asleep as the golden rays from the sun pierce through my bedroom. Fuck, I think. The sun is in the worst position of the day as the rays won't be far enough down for me to sleep for several hours now. I look over at my phone. Still nothing. It's been surprisingly quiet over the last two months. I'm not sure if I like it or not. Finally, after an unknown duration of tossing and turning, I'm able to get some sleep.

I wake and look over at my clock, and it reads 4:08. At first, I think that has to be wrong. I just fell asleep. My class started 33 minutes ago, but I quickly dismiss it as a whatever thing. It's okay to miss one or two classes a week, I think. However, I repute that immediately with the fact that I've never been the kind of person to not show up. It just seems that since I've arrived here, I have not wanted to do any work whatsoever. I'm not sure what it is, but usually I'll find my groove right about now in the semester and I'll get down to doing major work. I pause for a second and glare at the globe in the corner of my tiny room. It's a big fucking world, and I only probably have 80 or 90 years here. What's the use in studying something that millions of people already know? If I have such limited time here, shouldn't I be doing something that I actually want to do? I used to be so sure that economics and finance is what I wanted to do until I learned that in the whole scheme of things, what's the point of improving our economy's efficiency by .00004 %? I go back to the doing what I love thing, and realize something quickly. I have no clue what would actually make me happy.

It's 10:30 at night and I'm out again. Where and with who aren't important. I think the drink of choice is watermelon vodka that tastes like jolly ranchers and a bucket of lemon gin that tastes too much like lemon and not enough like alcohol. As I'm pouring myself another drink, I wonder if this is the night that I snap out of it. Maybe I'll finally get back to the person I used to be. I smile for a second. The truth that I've known for awhile comes back to me now: attitude is anything and everything. If you just get up and say you're going to have a good day, it's pretty much certain that you are going to have one. I realize that I have snapped out of it. I go back to that scene in Pink Floyd's The Wall documentary where Pink finally knocks down the wall. I still see the bricks falling down.

Blogger tournament and a few quick random thoughts

2007-10-03T11:10:00.000-04:00

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker!

This Online Poker Tournament is a No Limit Texas Holdem event exclusive to Bloggers.

Registration code: 2018786

Also, I'd like to post a few random thoughts here since it has been about two months since I have posted here. First, life at Penn State is a lot different than life in Pittsburgh for a number of reasons. The weather here is fabulous. Since I've been here, we have had maybe three or four days of rain. The rest of the days have been sunny and just warm enough. It is weird living on your own at first because usually when you live at home you have to worry mostly about school and work and not too much about doing house work. However, up here, all three are constantly on your mind. In some sense, it makes you stop wasting time if you ever want to actually get anything done. The first month was hectic. There were nights when I would race through all the things I had to do and realize that it was going to take till 3 am to get them all done, and the kicker was that I had to be awake by 7:30 the next morning. By now, I think that I have the situation under control(for the most part). Yesterday was my birthday. At midnight on October 2, I was surprised with not one, but two cakes thanks to Mandi. I gotta give it to her, they were straight up amazing. The next night we had a big group dinner, played apples and apples, then played Mario Kart 64 and had an original NFL Blitz tournament. Yours truly took down the NFL Blitz tournament after being schooled in Mario Kart. All in all, it was a great birthday that I have to thank my roomates, the girls from 212, and some other people for attending/putting together. So now I'm off to eat breakfast and do some last minute creative writing homework before I go to class then to bowling practice tonight.

Until next time,

mh

chapter two

2007-08-04T02:25:00.000-04:00

"There is no security in this world, only opportunity."
-Douglass McArthur

Do you ever get the feeling that things are beginning to turn over? It can be something as subtle as finally have a good day to something as big as seeing a major change in your life. Recently, I feel that I'm coming to the end of a huge chapter in my life. I guess you could entitle it "Chapter 1", but whatever it was, I'm pretty sure it's almost wrapping up. Out of the many things that this chapter of my life has taught me, the most important by far is to never say something can't happen, because anything can happen.

Tuesday I worked until 730 which completed another long string of days without a day off. After playing poker for awhile, I went to eat n park a little bit later on with maura. It was a good time because we got to talk about how messed up this summer has been and how funny our waitress who barely spoke english was. All in all, it was a good night.

Wednesday I woke up late and flew right down to meet sarah for lunch. As I expected, things were awkward at first. I think once we broke the ice once again though, I realized how much I had overreacted to her not picking up my call one night. Admittedly, I do tend to overreact sometimes, but I still don't feel that was the crux of the problem. When it all comes down to it, we had been drifting apart for a month or so before that and I didn't want to have to deal with that at the time. In a way, I feel that giving up this time might have actually been the right decision, but it's not the outcome that kills me the most. It's the what ifs that keep you up at night thinking about how things could have been. Eventually though, you have to just accept that things went down as they did and there's no changing that now. It's sad that some things have to end the way they do, but when she went left and I went right as we exited, I knew that the chances of us see each other again were slim.

Thursday was my second day off in a row, and after a long string of having worked, I got the itch to golf. Immekus, gerner, and myself decided to make an afternoon tee time at seven springs which is nice because it's always good to see a course other than south park. Despite the fact that I opened with a pathetic looking 8 and had a 10 on a par 5, I rallied on the back 9 and shot a 99. The course is definitely tougher than south park, and because we were gambling we were playing no mulligans and play it as it lies. My great back nine helped me to erase some of the accrued debt from red/black with immekus the night before. If you've ever played red/black before, you know how hard it is to go down 30 bets to another guy! We had triples if the flop was all red or black, and quintuples if the whole board was red or black. I got it down to about 15 bets by the end of the night as I had a nice run, but I still had work to do on the golf course the next day. I ended up going +1 on greenies and I gave immekus 10 and beat him by 13. All in all, it was a fun time golfing.

Today, I worked from 12-5, came home, changed, and went down to the waterfront. I stopped into best buy first to check out laptops(as I may try to get one for school) before meeting mark, dave, christina, and mandi at fuddruckers for food. As always, we had a really good time bullshitting and such. Afterwards, we walked around looking for stuff for our apartments, but never really bought anything. At about 10:30, we all decided to call it a night and resume the fun times in about three weeks when we move in.

As I drove down streets run road which the windows down and the very humid breeze blowing against my face, I felt the wheels move like they never had before. The movement was a different type of movement because it was more than transportation of one place to another. The movement was leading me in a new direction, and I finally felt like I had control. All of a sudden, I realized why the wheel is still the most important invention of all time. Not only is it useful on almost every form of transportation that we have, but the shape of the circle is the ultimate symbol of change. You can call me crazy, but I think that I finally figured it out, and it's all so simple now. I don't want to forget about this chapter of my life. For the first 19 years, 10 months, and 2 days of my life, I have been a pittsburgher. It's who I am. It's who I always will be. I have a great deal of pride to have been associated with this city. But the second chapter of my life is calling me. It's time to answer that call.

I know that I've used this poem rather recently, but it's worth repeating. Enjoy

I Dream It Is Afternoon When I Return to Delhi
By: Agha Shahid Ali

At Purana Qila I am alone, waiting
for the bus to Daryaganj. I see it coming,
but my hands are empty.
"Jump on, jump on," someone shouts,
"I've saved this chang for you
for years. Look!"
A hand opens, full of silver rupees.
"Jump on, jump on." The voice doesn't stop.
There's no one I know. A policeman,
handcuffs silver in his hands,
asks for my ticket.

I jump off the running bus,
sweat pouring from my hair.
I run past the Doll Museum, past
headlines on the Times of India
building, PRISONERS BLINDED IN A BIHAR
JAIL, HARIJAN VILLAGES BURNED BY LANDLORDS.
Panting, I stop in Daryaganj,
outside Golcha Cinema.

Sunil is there, lighting
a cigarette, smiling. I say,
"It must be ten years, you haven't changed,
it was your voice on the bus!"
He says, "The film is about to begin,
I've bought an extra ticket for you,"
and we rush inside:

Anarkali is being led away,
her earrings lying on the marble floor.
Any moment she'll be buried alive.
"But this is the end," I turn
toward Sunil. He is nowhere.
The usher taps my shoulder, says
my ticket is ten years old.

Once again my hands are empty.
I am waiting, alone, at Purana Qila.
Bus after empty bus is not stopping
Suddenly, beggar women with children
are everywhere, offering
me money, weeping for me.

mh

one of those days

2007-07-17T01:17:00.000-04:00

"No matter how much skill or experience you have, God, prayer, luck, whatever you want to call it will have a much bigger role in things than you will."
-Scrubs

The last month of my life has seen a lot of ups and downs, as you can probably see if you have read any of my last few posts. I felt like a lot of the things that happened to me in that time period I may have done some things to deserve, but not as bad as it went down. Every time something that I don't think should have happened to me does, I go back to last year when I was watching the Arsenal v Barcelona UEFA final. After Arsenal brilliantly held back the heavy favorite Barcelona(with a man down and a one goal lead) for eighty eight minutes until Barcelona pounded out one goal in regular time and another in stoppage time to break my heart. At full time, Tommy Smyth said a few words that stuck with me: They deserved better, but we don't always get what we deserve. Amen to that Tommy, amen.

In the last few days, I think that I've started to dig my way out of the ditch that I kinda found my way into. First off, Wednesday night I decided that I wanted to play some poker, so I went out to skyview. It was a winning endeavor, and there was one particular hand that I found very interesting. I'm in early position with Ac 9c and I limp for 2. Flop comes down 7c 8s 3c. I bet out about half the pot and get two callers. Turn is the 6d which gives me 8 more outs to hit to win the pot. I bet about the size of the pot, and a guy in the corner with sunglasses and a huge chip stack mucks after thinking about it forever. John the banker insta calls and I'm thinking that I need to hit a card on the river to win the pot. The river comes the 8d, which does nothing for me. John is first to act and he bets enough to send me allin. Granted, I have a decent sized chip stack here, but the lights in my head go off saying that my ace high are good here. I recall three hands that I specifically remember playing with john, and two of them he bluffed me and the third he had a huge hand. I figured he would bet a little bit less, maybe even 75% of the pot instead of an exact pot bet if he wanted action, so after thinking about it for a few minutes, I decided to call. He flipped up 25 for a missed straight draw. It was a great call, but it was one of those where I used experience to put him on a hand and then made a somewhat daring call to take down the pot. That win propelled me to a pretty good night at the tables, which was definitely a good confidence booster. The weekend was kinda shitty in the fact that I had to work early a few days so I had to skip a party on friday night so I could get up for work on time saturday. Saturday night I came home and was absolutely beat, so I just chilled with bradburn for awhile and went out and bought the second season of scrubs. I have to admit, I may be addicted to scrubs. I loved the show when it originally came out, but it seemed to lose its appeal for awhile, but I started watching again at the end of the fifth season and it just has gotten better since then. Far and away the best comedy of this decade. I think when it's all said and done after next year, it'll rank up there with Seinfeld, Cheers, and MASH for legendary comedies. I didn't work Sunday, so I didnt do much throughout the day, but I went out later that night and had a good time with a person I hadn't seen in a long time.

Today, I woke up so late, but I just had a feeling that it was going to be a good day. I spent what was left of the morning cleaning up around the house and then got outside for some running and then basketball later on in the day. I don't know what it is about me and being outside, but it just seems to bring my spirit back. I guess it has something to do with the fact that as a kid I spent every waking moment outside during the summer when I was at the babysitters, but it just refreshes me. I hung out with nayhouse later on and went in the pool and the hot tub and we just bullshitted for most of the night. However, you should never say that it's been a good day until you hit the sheets for good. After getting massacred last night playing online poker, the slaughter continued tonight. Once again, I got my money in good with AA against A10 only to see him flop a ten and turn a ten. The hand after that the same poor excuse for a player sent me allin for my last 1.5k with A6 against my AJ. It didn't take him long to catch up as he flopped three sixes to drown me. The next tournament, we were down to 20 players and I got my money in good again with QQ against 66. Flop was A K 9 which was good for me. Unfortunately, running sixes left me more or less crippled. The next hand I was SB, and it was folded around to me and I moved allin with 44. The BB couldnt have called quicker with AA. Naturally, the aces held and I was wamboozeled. I've decided that the more I play, the more I realize how lucky you have to be just to avoid being unlucky. You have to realize that in the 45 man tournaments that I normally frequent, you have to not only avoid getting outdrawn, but most of the time if you want to cash, you have to win at least one race. That's a 50/50 shot right there. Even if you get your money in good with AK against AQ, you're a 70% favorite. Or an overpair against an underpair, which lends itself to the fact that the underpair will brutally kick your junk 19% of the time. And of course, the mother of them all, when you get it in good with something like AA against AK and that faggot that called a huge third raise with AK slams three kings or a broadway straight on you. It leaves you dejected because you did all that you could, which was get your money in with the best of it and hope that god wasn't pissed today. Lately though, it seems like I do all i can to get my money in with the best of it, yet I keep getting hit in the junk. i guess all I can do is hope that the percentages hold over time, which I'm sure they'll do.

Until next time,
mh

my last respects

2007-07-08T00:09:00.000-04:00

There will be an answer,
Let it be
-The Beatles

As I sit here typing this post, I wish that I had something better to report, but as things have kinda gone lately, I don't have a lot of good news to pass along. The past week has just been a continuation of june which all amounts to a bad stretch.

Tuesday night I got a call from Bethanne and I knew that it could be nothing but bad news. She confirmed my fears by telling me that our bowling coach, Buzzy had passed away earlier that morning. Even though everyone knew that this sad day would come, it was still difficult to comprehend at first. It didn't hit me until later on that night when I really started thinking about it and all I could see was his smiling face with a cup of coffee in his hand telling us that straight and in was the way to play the lanes.

The next day, Nayhouse and I left for Hershey, PA after I was done working at 4. The trip was a mixed bag of sorts because I was obviously excited to get away from a lot of the stuff that was happening at home, but in the end no matter how far away you go, you can't run from your problems. We arrived later that night and got food and to watch some pretty decent fireworks(although they were far away). The next morning we awoke early to catch some breakfast and we got out to the mini golf course with Nayhouse's cousin Sammy. It was fun, but I'm so damn competitive that it kinda ruins the spirit of laid back fun. I said kinda ruins because competition is a drug for me, and it can be the best one to be addicted to if used the right way. Afterwards, we got out to a place called Fairview Golf Course, which was why we came in the first place. The course was a little more difficult than South Park and despite the fact that it rained and looked like we were about to get smashed by the eye of the thunderstorm, I shot 88 and we got out of there just in time as the rains began to fall as we ran off the course. We got dinner at the same place as the night before, and left afterwards. It was a good getaway for awhile and I gotta thank Craig for hanging out with us and hooking us up big time.

I got home just in time to manage five hours of sleep before working one long ass shift Friday morning. For the first two hours, I was barely awake, and after that it was questionable as to whether I ever actually woke up. I stumbled out of there at 2 and slept for awhile before making arrangements with Bradburn to go to Buzzy's funeral. We saw a lot of people there that we knew, and it was great to see how many friends and family Buzzy had. As I made my way through the processional, I wondered what it was going to be like to have to do this for my friends, family, and ultimately what my funeral would be like. As I approached the casket, I noticed how different he looked. Obviously, I expected him to look a little different, but it was obvious the cancer had taken its horrific toll. After going through and paying my last respects, I decided that the way I saw Buzzy that day was never going to be the way I remembered him. I wanted to remember that vibrant fact, not the pale one that I saw there. And I will always remember him as a great man, both on the bowling lanes and off.

Once again, I said that I have more bad news to report. Going to the funeral, I heard that Mr. Stern, my mentor and one of the people that I truly look up to may also be sick. I think Bradburn said it best by commenting, "To lose Buzzy was shocking and terrible, but to lose Mr Stern would just be wrong. Not both of them." I couldn't agree more. If you went through a line of great people, few of them have the honesty, helpfulness, and kindness that Mr Stern. exhitibits every day of his life. Above all, he's a straight shooter and a guy who is always willing to help you, and those are two things that I try to be also.

Today, the sort of rift that I told you going on between Sarah and I finally ended. She texted me at work asking if I was home, and I assumed it was because she wanted to talk about everything, but as always, I was mistaken. That would have been the adult thing to do. Instead, I find out that she just gave all the shit that had of mine to my mom and then left. Seriously, who does that? It's like saying "This is about all I took from our relationship and later our friendship and I'm so kind I'd like you to have it back." Well fuck that. I may have said that her best friends were being annoying one night(which was true for that night, not in general), and she decided that was the last straw. The sad thing is the drastic change in our friendship over the last month. Everything rolled along pretty decently for the last year until she decided that she no longer cared as much as she used to. It's incredibly sad to see, but it's not something that I'm going to go ahead and blame myself for. When I look back, I'll think about the really fun times we had and her idiosyncracies that I loved, not of the person that blew me off countless times or that one day woke up and decided not to care anymore.

What I need to do is to learn to take the best from bad situations. When the dust has cleared, the best you can do is to remember the best of times you had with the person.

Nothing Gold Can Stay
By: Robert Frost

Nature's first green is gold
Her hardest hue to hold
Her early leaf's a flower
But only so an hour
Then leaf subsides to leaf
So Eden sank to grief
And dawn went down to day
Nothing gold can stay

mh

tao of life

2007-06-30T21:40:00.000-04:00

"In life, it's about finding that middle ground."
-Ryan Key, Yellowcard

I'd like to think that I've been saving lots of material since the last time I posted earlier this month, but the real reason is that I just have not felt like typing a post up. In regards to this blog, that is the main difference between me two years ago and me now: I simply don't want to post every miniscule thing that happens in my life. In reality, the last month has been pretty eventful as well as one of the best learning experiences for me as a person.

To simplify things, I'll just go with the last week of what has happened as that should suffice for the most part. Last Monday I had off so I decided to relax and clean the house up a little bit before going to the movies with bradburn, sarah, kathleen, and ashley. We saw Knocked Up, which was funny, but a little overrated in my book. I had heard that it was the funniest movie of the year, and while that may be true, it definitely wasn't life changing funny like a Borat or Happy Gilmore. I got home at about 11 and went over leigh's for awhile because she had just gotten back from vacation and was having a small gathering at her place. It was good to see her again, but the majority of the rest of the night was spent with sarah and I sending messages back at each other. To say that it ended ugly would be a vast understatement. It was me saying something out of frustration that I felt was true at the time. I think that the main problem there is that sometimes I misinterpret things because what I consider not classy is something that she considers normal. And we'll leave it at that. I arrived home and saw my brother in his normal position, laying on the couch, watching TV. He looked completely normal and I was shocked to hear that after he told me that his team lost his playoff game. When I was 13, if my team lost a game it was sort of an unwritten rule that you didn't talk to me on the way home because I got that upset about losing. Now if it was a playoff game, I was near inconsolible. My parents would tell me it was just a game, but it was always much more than that to me. Some sort of ultra competitive gene is inside of me and it would force me to lay awake at night and think about every little thing that I could have done differently. Despite the long nights that those losses caused, I learned so much from just going through all the things that I could have done better. Maybe it isn't good to think about things as much as I do, but the next time I get in that situation, I'll remember the mistake I made and try not to make it again.

Tuesday and Wednesday I worked at night and then went over Nayhouse's to chill afterwards. It's weird to see how much we have both grown up over the last five years, going from being young teenagers to high school kids to the final transition into becoming somewhat effective members of working society. Nonetheless, the one thing that has remained is that we have stayed good friends(I would say best friends but I'm trying to tone down the homosexuality of this sentence) throughout everything that has gone on, and I doubt that will change. Thursday night I went over to ben's and saw some of his friends, but I had to leave early because of work at 6 the next morning.

That morning I awoke at 5:15 with pains shooting down my back as they had been doing the whole night. Although it prevented me from sleeping well, I was pretty much awake for my whole shift which is something that definitely would not have happened had I not been tossing and turning all night. After sleeping for an hour, I began to make plans to go to the caste fireworks for the night. I walked down with bradburn, ben, and conroy and the next five hours were really a good time and didn't require that too much alcohol be consumed on my part, although that definitely wasn't a bad thing. By the time, I got home around 12:30 at night, I was completely exhausted.

Today was mainly uneventful during the day, mostly consisting of me running a few errands and playing a little basketball until kathleen's graduation party which nayhouse and I went to around 6. For the first thirty minutes, it was a good time. However, I knew that sarah and po would more than likely be coming, but the amount of awkwardness that occurs after two good friends clash can't be measured until you get to the moment where they see each other again. In retrospect, it was probably better that for once I listened to the little voice inside my head telling me not to say what I was thinking. After about thirty minutes, I leaned over to nayhouse and whispered, twenty bucks says I can throw this water bottle into the trash can. I demanded at least three to one since the trash can was a good fifteen feet away, but he countered with that if I made it in the first try we could leave. I agreed, and promptly nailed it from fifteen. We both busted out laughing, thanked kathleen, and went on our way.

I think that the most important lesson that I've learned in the past week is that different people react differently to news. Sometimes you have to accept that a person still cares about something even if they don't show it in the usual fashion. The most important thing to do is to try to keep searching for that perfect balance of everything in life. It's something that I'll be searching for for the rest of my life.

This poem doesn't really go along too well with the theme of this poem, but I like it so much I have to include it

O Captain! My Captain
By: Walt Whitman

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells
Rise up- for you the flag is flung- for you the bugle trills;
For you the bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths- for you the shores a-crowding;
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head;
It is some dream that on the deck,
You've fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won;
Exult, O shores and ring, O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

mh

just a little patience

2007-06-10T23:06:00.000-04:00

Said take it slow, it'll work itself out fine
All we need is just a little patience
-Guns and Roses

The last few days of my life have been fast paced and I'm starting to get a feel for what life will continue to be for the next two years now. Starting Thursday, I haven't gotten more than six hours of sleep per night, yet for whatever reason I wake up in the morning and feel great. Thursday was crazy. I got up around 8 to finish up some paperwork that took me until about 10:30. I left around 10:55 to meet kevin down at Whitehall courts for our tennis game. The plan at the start of the day was to play a grueling five sets of tennis if necessary. The sun was hot as you can expect in June, and it just kept on beating down on our bodies throughout the day. The match finished around 2:15 with me winning 6-4, 6-2, 6-3. I can only imagine how exhausted I would have been if it would have taken all five sets. I came home, briefly ate lunch, then went outside to wash the car. Although I was tired from tennis, it was one of those days where there wasn't a cloud in the sky and you simply couldn't waste it. I shot some hoops and then went down to play street hockey. My hockey game has deteriorated from when I used to play almost everyday in middle and high school, but the exercise is great and seeing everyone from the neighborhood is a good time. I finally made my way home around 5:15 and could do nothing but pass out on the couch from the long hours of sun exposure. I was awoken about 30 minutes later by my dad asking if I wanted to walk a quick round of 9 holes after dinner. Naturally, no matter how tired I am, I can't turn down golf. It was an enjoyable round and we finished just in time to get in the last hole before the sun went down.

I awoke Friday morning very awkwardly. Even though I didn't find my way to bed until about 3:30 the night before, I was up at 9 feeling fully rested. During the day, I just lounged and got things done around the house before we got poured on starting around 5. About 8 I went to pick up sarah and po, and them, myself, bradburn, tom, and rossi convened at my house. We watched movies and then went outside to play basketball(or on my neighbors playground, if your name is sarah or po). The best part of it was that it was raining and it felt so good to play as it was beating down. Eventually, it stopped, nayhouse showed up, and we chatted for awhile on my back porch before leaving around 11:15 to take home sarah and po. It was really good to see them again(I see sarah a lot, but I hadn't seen po since last summer minus one time), but all in all good to have everyone back together. I can't discuss my favorite part of the night, but seeing scotty klein and getting the ice cream at EnP was definitely a fun time. I took nayhouse and bradburn home around 1 and just crashed as soon as I got to my place.

Saturday morning I awoke at something like 7:30 and realized that I had some time on my hands, so I decided to do my last stock report. Eventually, I'll post them somewhere, but for now I'm fine with them just being on my hard drive. I took drew to his game at leland at 2:30 and watched his team narrowly squeak out a win against a decent TJ team. My brother came in to pitch the 6th and 7th and almost pulled a Salomon Torres, but he was able to get a big strikeout with two on and two out to allow his team to win 8-7. We briefly went home, but had to be back at the field at 6:30 for another game. Around game time, my parents met us down there, and we were all there for the joyous occassion of seeing my brother's team beat up and down the diamond by a much better South Park team. However, after the game, a bunch of us went to McCoy's for karaoke night. It was a really fun time, even though that my awful rendition of "Piano Man" was one of the few songs sang that night. At about 10:30, Nayhouse came and got me, and we went to wendy's and back to his house to shoot some pool and take a look at the new pool. It looks primed for what may be the last summer of pool basketball, a tradition that was started many years ago by him and I. To say that I am ready for the summer to truly begin is a definite understatement.

Today, I woke again after a not so great night of sleep to my brother shouting for me to come downstairs. I thought it would be important, but it was actually just him telling me that the Federer Nadal match had started. The match didn't live up to hype as Federer(minus the second set) was completely overwhelmed by the much better clay player, Nadal. After the conclusion of that, I met up with Kevin to play some tennis again. This time, we chose to play three sets. The first was hard fought, going to me 7-5. The next two I won 6-0, 6-0 as kevin admitted he played the worst match of his life after the first set. I came home, did laundry, and played some basketball. The rest of the night was highly uneventful, except for this program on the History Channel that talked about the 10 biggest threats to the future of humanity. It was really weird because you would think that they would be things that we couldn't control, but the top three were nuclear war, disease, and climate change; all three which we are able to do something about. The best quote from the program was something along the lines of "What if we we spent trillions of dollars and were able to finally find out how to deflect an asteriod yet at the same time we couldn't figure out how to stop us from destroying ourselves?" Pretty amazing when you think about it.

Back to the title now, as it is a line from the Guns N Roses song "Patience". Even though I heard a mind numbing rendition done of it by some random guy Saturday night, it is one of those great songs that you have never heard of. The basic message of the song is that no matter what facet of life you are having a problem in, sometimes the best thing to do is to let it fix itself after you've explored all the other options. Of course, Guns N Roses find the perfect words to coincide with the meaning of the song, which I think sets it above other songs that have similar meanings. All in all, just a little tidbit I thought I should share.

Finally, poem time. I tried to find something that would coorespond to the overall message of this post, so here it goes. Enjoy it.

Grandmother's Song
By: Nellie Wong

Grandmothers sing their song
Blinded by the suns' rays
Grandchildren for whome they long
For pomelo-golden days

Blinded by the suns' rays
Gold bracelets, opal rings
For pomelo-golden days
Tiny fingers, ancient things

Gold bracelets, opal rings
Sprinkled with Peking dust
Tiny fingers, ancient things
So young they'll never rust

Sprinkled with Peking dust
To dance in fields of mud
So young they'll never rus
Proud as if of royal blood

To dance in fields of mud
Or peel shrimp for pennies a day
Proud as if of royal blood
Coins and jade to put away

Or peel shrimp for pennies a day
Seaweed washes up the shore
Coins and jade to put away
A camphor chest is home no more

Seaweed washes up the shore
Bound feet struggle to loosen free
A camphor chest is home no more
A foreign tongue is learned at three

Bound feet struggle to loosen free
Grandchildren for whom they long
A foreign tongue is learned at three
Grandmothers sing their song

mh

a fresh start

2007-06-02T01:40:00.000-04:00

"When will those clouds all disappear?"
-The Rolling Stones

The beginning of the summer always brings changes around here, and this year is none different. Times of big change can often lead to overexaggeration of problems, which we tend to make bigger when in reality they are quite small. Nonetheless, the last week has been hectic in almost every area of life.

To begin with, I'm not trading stocks anymore. I'll do it as a hobby, but not as a job anymore. It wasn't so much the stress or anything, but with my imminent move to penn state coming, it feels like a lot of things have to be put on hold. Instead, I've decided to get another job. I'm not going to post it on here yet because I still have to pass a drug test(yeah, ha ha) before I get it so I'm not going to say anything about it. That leads me to an interesting story. About 11:30 this morning I leave to go get the drug test at a place on West Carson St. I follow the directions I got, but somehow I pass it. If you're ever driven on Carson, you know that it's tough to turn around, so I did the dumbest thing possible: go across a bridge. I ended up in the heart of the city and to make a very, very long trek short I visited Northside, Squirrel Hill, Greenfield, Homestead, Squirrel Hill again, Southside, and finally found the damn place at about 1:45. However, when I get there, there is a sign on the door that says that they are in the process of moving across the street for one day only. I can't get a god damn break. The one day out of 365 that they move is the day that I need to get this stupid test done. I got home around 2:30 and things just kept getting worse. I was informed that a person who I consider a mentor of mine has terminal cancer and doesn't have long to live. I'm not going to go into specifics, but it just shook me hard because this person is still quite young. It's days like this that make you really start to believe that there are no guarantees while you're alive, only oppurtunities. I had a lot of time to think things over while playing basketball, and I came to the conclusion that because we have an unknown amount of time here, we can only be ourselves and spend time with people with whom that's good enough for. We never know how long we have, so what is the point of pretending to be someone that you're not? In the end, there is no point to that.

Things started to turn around a little later on tonight when I was playing an old video game with my brother. The game was Quest 64 and it brought back so many good memories. When I played the game, my brother would always be the navigator, the co-pilot so to speak. He was the person that had to put up with all my crap when I couldn't figure something out(I've called him a useless idiot more times than I can remember). Despite that my nature is one of intense passion and extreme competitiveness in everything I do, I realized that nobody should take as much flak as my brother takes. When I've had a terrible day, a day like today, he would usually be the first person that I would go off on. Yes, it is true that he can be really, really annoying at times, but that's just what makes him him. I know that taking him to Eat n Park with my friends later on in the night is no compensation for the many tirades that I gave him, but I figured I could at least do something nice for him. At around 11, a large group of us gathered at the famous spot to have a little late night snack. Conversation was abundant and as always, the night turned out as a success. Later on, a few of us went back to nayhouse's to play pool, but I could see that my brother was getting tired, so we left to go home around 1. I'ts funny how all it takes to turn a shitty day around is the support of a couple of good friends.

I never wanted to make this into some Oprah Winfrey inspirational special blog, but I need to thank all my friends, especially my close ones, for putting up with my shit. They are like my family and I'm very appreciative of them for that. I can act like the white, nerdy, goofy kid that I am around them and they could care less if that doesn't exactly put me in with the cool kids. I'm starting to do some whiny tribute though so it's time to move on.

Finally, I'm going to conclude this with the first poem that I read in my poetry class from last year. This poem combines nature and emotion which are two of my favorite elements in poetry into one long haiku. It pretty much sums up how I'm feeling right now. As always, enjoy.

Hitch Haiku
By: Gary Snyder

They didn't hire him
so he ate his lunch alone
the noon whistle

Cats shut down
deer thread through
men all eating lunch

Frying hotcakes in a dripping shelter
Fu Manchu
Queets Indian Reservation in the rain

A truck went by
three hours ago:
Smoke Creek desert

Jackrabbit eyes all night
breakfast in Elko

Old kanji hid by dirt
on skidroad Jap town walls
down the hill
to the Wobbly hall

Seattle

Spray chips from the cargo-booms
a fresh-chipped wench
spotted with red lead
young fir-
soaking in summer rain

Over the Mindanao Deep

Scrap bass
dumpt off the fantail
falling six miles

Moonlight on the burned-out temple-
wooden horse shit.

Sunday dinner in Ithaca-
the twang of a bowstring

After weeks of watching the roof leak
I fixed it tonight
by moving a single board

Stray white mare
neck rope dangling
forty miles from farms.

Back from the Kaweahs

Sundown, Timber Gap
-sat down-
dark firs.
dirty; cold;
too tired to talk

Cherry blossoms at Hood river
rusty sand near Tuscon
mudflats of Willapa Bay

Pronghorn country

Steering into the sun
glittering jewel-road
shattered obsidian

The mountain walks over the water!
Rain down from the mountain!
high bleat of a
cow elk
over blackberries

A great freight truck
lit like a town
through the dark stony desert

Drinking hot sake
toasting fish on coals
the motorcycle
out parked in the rain.

Switchback

turn, turn
and again, hard-
scrabble
steep travel a-
head.

mh

it's been such a long time

2007-05-21T22:37:00.000-04:00

It really has been a very long time since I've posted up here, and I regret to say that this is one of the few times that I've been able to sit down for half an hour and be able to type up a whole post. Looking back now, I used to be a very frequent poster(up to 5 times a week in some instances), but the majority of the posts would lack flavor. It would just be me going through what we talked about in class that day or what I did over the weekend. I learned a very valuable lesson through an anonymous reader that for a post to be good you have to include your opinions into things. I think this coupled with the fact that I'm a lot busier than I used to be is the reason that I only post a couple of times per month.

I'm going to go as far back as I can remember with this post, so I guess that I'll start Thursday. I'm not exactly sure what I did during the day, probably something along the lines of stocks, but like I said, I can't be sure. Later on, I stopped at walmart to get pop before going over to christina's for a cookout. When I got there, it was her, mark, herold, phil, dave, ashley, kate, and myself. For the rest of the night, people would pop in and out of there. We attempted to cook food, but the major problem with that was the propane in the tank was incredibly low. It didn't help that we are for the most part amateurs and it took us so long to figure that out. Nonetheless, I couldn't have picked better people to eat raw potatoes and burned kolbassi with. We threw football around until it got dark and then went inside to play the always riveting apples and apples. If you've never played before, it's hard to explain. The crux of the game is that a deck of adjectives circles around and on every turn someone flips up a card with an adjective in it and the other players who hold cards with nouns on them try to pick what noun would fit the adjective the best. What made the game best is the fact that I am the smallest part jewish and every time I would pick an adjective either dave, mark, or herold would put something like anne frank or the Holocaust down. I knew it was all good natured so I didn't care too much. After leaving there around 1145, I met some old high school friends at the giant eagle in brentwood. We went back to a house and bullshitted for awhile until it got late. It was nice to see justov and kazour again because I had seen everyone else at one point or another during the school year or this summer. After listening to tom and ferg do ray romano impressions on the way home, I crashed about 4 AM.

Ring, ring, ring! "Fuck" was my initial thought when I woke up at 8 AM the next morning. I immediately turned to my alarm and reset it for 8:30 hoping that I could catch a little more shut eye before the long drive up to penn state. However, after about five minutes of staring at the alarm clock, I decided I was awake enough to go. I hopped into the shower and zipped over to mark's place. We went and got donuts and milk to try to wake us up, and we picked up christina and mandi around 9:30. The drive up was really smooth after we got far enough along 22 because for awhile you hit a light every two or three minutes. After arriving at around 1, we ate at College Pizza, which was being renovated as we ate. After stopping at a penn state store and at the bookstore to check out prices on books for next year, we went to a place that I hear people rave about, but I had not been: The Creamery. It lived up to its hype. If you're ever in State College, you need to go there because you get a really good ice cream cone for $2.50. By the time we left at 4, I was beat. On the way home, mark and christina slept while mandi and I talked about a lot of different subjects. It was a good talk, and we arrived home around 7:30. I was completely beat, but once I got home I decided that I had enough left in the tank to join rossi and bradburn for a short night out. We went to Half Price books and Barnes and Noble at South Hills Village to look for books. The highlight of the journey was the fact that some kid was tripping out on acid and pompously decided to park his ass on the concrete in front of the mall. I mean, he couldn't have passed out in an alley or something? After that, we all watched a couple episodes of Scrubs and went to Eat n Park to finish out the night.

Saturday morning I had some things to do before I went out with the Nayhouse family to the Pirate game for his birthday. We all had a good time minus the fact that the Pirates blew a 7-1 lead after Gorzelanny tossed six quality innings. Despite the fact that they are only five games under .500. it's hard to root for the Pirates. When you have seen your baseball team do nothing but lose, lose, lose, and lose some more for the last 14 years, your support for the team is going to be called into question. Anyways, I came home and slept because I was still really tired from driving all day Friday. I had a ton of work to do Sunday morning, but I got it done surprisingly fast. After finishing up, I went down to the field to catch the second of my brother's games against a team from West Virginia. After a back and forth struggle, they ended up losing 10-7. It was much better than the first game where they lost 23-4 against the same team. Going to those games is hard for me for a couple of reasons. First, I wish that I could be out there so bad. It doesn't matter what sport I'm watching or what level I'm watching it on, if I have played it before I want to be out there with everyone else. I can get enjoyment out of watching sports, but nothing compares to being out there. Also, I'm pretty sure my brother has lost a lot of passion for baseball. I'll admit that I lost passion when I was 13 and 14, but I regained it for my last three seasons. Some of the best memories from my baseball career came from when I was 12 and when I was 16. Not to be cocky, but when I was 12 I was one of the two most dominating pitches in the league. At the end of the season our team went on to win the championship. When I was 16, I played with nayhouse for the Squirrel Hill team. Nothing could match the passion that I had while I was playing for that team and it helped me to forget a lot of the other things that were going on in my life. However, I'm beginning to ramble again, so I'm going to get back on track. After going home, I realized that I hadn't eaten and that there was nothing at my house. Sarah and I agreed to go to Eat n Park for dinner. Truthfully, it was a really enjoyable dinner because it was so laid back between us. Sometimes when we hang out it feels like the tension is really thick in the air, but after awhile you just kinda get past it and learn how to have a really good time. And that's exactly what we did. She dropped me off and I decided to relax for the rest of the night.

When I woke up today at 11, I had the feeling in my gut that it wasn't going to be a productive day. To make a long story short, I was right. I didn't check any of my stocks today after I saw that DNDN(a stock I recommended at my other blog, www.loosethebulls.blogspot.com) was up 15%. I watched a ton of episodes of Scrubs from the first season, and remembered how well that first season resonated with me. At about 4, I went to play basketball at snyder park with a few others. We played until about 6:30 and decided to get pizza afterwards. It was ben, creighton, tomko, and myself. Ben and I told stories while we munched down two larges at Venice Pizza. Afterwards, I continued my day of doing nothing by watching High Stakes Poker for two hours and finally getting on here to type a post for the first time in a long time.

For the first time in a very long time, I can say that this weekend was really, really good. It is one of the few weekends that I will store in my memory forever as me saying that I had an incredible time. It worked out so well because I was able to balance everything so well, from work to housework to friends. I'm going to end this post with something that I haven't done in a long time: a poem.

Villanelle
By: Marilyn Hacker

Every day our bodies seperate,
explode torn and dazed.
Not understanding what we celebrate

we grope through languages and hesitate
and touch each other, speechless and amazed;
and every day our bodies seperate

us further from our planned, deliberate
ironic lives. I am afraid, disphased,
not understanding what we celebrate

when our fused limbs and lips communicate
the unlettered power we have raised.
Every day our bodies seperate

routines are harder to perpetuate.
In wordless darkness we learn wordless praise,
not understanding what we celebrate;

wake to outselves, exhausted, in the late
morning as the wind tears off the haze,
not understanding how we celebrate
our bodies. Every day we seperate.

mh

the bottom of the ninth

2007-05-06T01:32:00.000-04:00

"You want to be like me? Hell newbie, most days I don't want to be like me."
-Dr. Cox, Scrubs

In every sense of the word, he had an unorthodox style for closing games. He would(almost intentionally) get at least two people on base with a maximum of one out before he would turn it up a notch and actually begin to pitch. Of course, I'm referring to Mike "The Cardiac Kid" Williams. His 12 year career included stints with 5 different teams, including my hometown Pirates. Every time Williams would enter a ball game in the ninth inning, you had to strap in your seatbelt, because anything could really happen. Nobody that I knew could understand why Williams would seemingly attempt to put himself in the absolute most dangerous situation to lose the game that was possible. Then, almost miraculously, he would realize that his role as a closer was to not blow the lead and would begin to pitch like Cy Young himself. His style often reminds me of the little kid who you keep telling to not touch the hot stove yet continues to do it because he thinks he won't get burned. The problem is, if you touch a hot stove too many times, you're bound to leave your hand on there for too long.

I woke up today feeling kinda lacksadasical. I spent the better of the day slamming into my head accounting and stat formulas that I'll need to know for the final and ones that I'll more than likely forget the second I stop using them. Accounting has been great for the brief time that we spent on the stock market. I loved that part of the course and it really just confirmed something I knew already, that I wanted to go into the financial part of the business world. Stat has been a watered down version of an educational statistics class that I took in my first semester at PSU. There haven't exactly been any great insights that I've had while taking the class and I expect to have an A in there at the end of the semester. Calculus is always a little bit tricky for me because I remember the basic formulas for doing the work yet I always seem to miss one little thing that costs me a few points per problem. In other words, I need to study a lot and do a lot of practice problems to secure the A. Unfortunately, I only have brief flashes of inspired greatness where I lay out this grandiose plan to teach myself advanced calculus and physics so I won't even have to worry about studying for future exams. Problem is, the process becomes incredibly tedious and my patience begins to wear thin after about five minutes of handling difficult concepts. I have always said that the most trying time in the school year is the last two weeks of the second semester because you are flat out burned by that time. You have to dig really deep for a last hoorah, especially if you've been grinding it out since the end of August till early May.

After cramming things into my brain for several hours, I decided to get Subway and attempting to plan out my night. Although I hate being the person behind things, everything tends to go smoother when I'm the "architect" if you will, of these things. Everyone came over Nayhouse's around 9 and we all relaxed in the hot tub until about 10:15. We all went downstairs afterwards to shoot pool. Once again, everything going fine until I saw something that of course I blew out of proportion, because that seems to be the thing that I do best. It left me in a bad mood, and I left around 11:20 to take her home. Out of all my friends, there are two people that stand above the rest, and they are nayhouse and her. I never argue with nayhouse, so that's what makes our constant fights so difficult for me to swallow. After a few minutes of screaming, I just thought out loud, why are we always fighting? And then it hit me: there is a fundamental difference between two people. I, like a true idiot, believe that love can exist under any circumstances if two people try hard enough to make it work. She sees it much differently. I respect her opinion, but I obviously don't like it. I don't really feel the need to expand upon that, so you can guess what else was said in between.

In the spring of 1999, the Pittsburgh Pirates were in the hunt for first place in the NL Central for the first time in seven years. Fans were beginning to turn out to Three Rivers Stadium again in hopes that this team could turn it around like the Pirate teams from earlier in that decade. I only went to one game that year, and I remember it quite fondly. The Pirates, as always, got off to a shaky start. I believe that Francisco Cordova was pitching that game, and he let up two runs in the first inning. After Cordova settled down, the Bucs battled back with a few hits from Jason Kendall, Al Martin, and Warren Morris(yes, I said it, Warren Morris). Anyways, by the eighth inning, the score was 4-2 in favor of the Pirates. Cordova looked like he was getting into a jam, but got a taylor made double play ball with runners on first and third to preserve the two run lead. In what I believed at the time was a dumb and controversial move, manager Gene Lamont made a not so memorable move: he brought Mike Williams in for the ninth inning. This is a move that we started to see a lot in the last decade and led to the unfortunate(in my opinion) theory that anytime you have a lead by less than three in the ninth inning, you must bring your closer in to finish the game. Williams began the inning by walking the first guy. After getting a strikeout, Williams was struck with bad luck as what seemed like a very routine ground ball was flopped by then first baseman Kevin Young. Kevin Young is best noted for being one of the worst hitters in history that ever earned 2 million dollars in one season. Not only was Young hitting an embarassing .220 at the time, he was also making errors like he was being payed to do it. With runners on first and second, Williams managed to get the next guy to pop out. Then, just as it seemed Williams was going to get out of this with his life and the Pirates were going to be in first place for the first time in seven years, something happened. Williams' patented slider was demolished on the first pitch he threw. I remember watching that ball sail over the right field fence at old Three Rivers thinking that we still had the bottom of the ninth. Unfortunately, the Pirates weren't able to mount any comeback in the bottom half of the ninth and ended up finishing the season in third, despite rumors preseason that they were ready to make a charge for the pennant that year.

I tell you that very long story because I was reminded of it while watching Baseball Tonight sometime recently. They were doing a story about the Pirates and how they had been such a terrible team for so long. They ended up going back to the 1999 season and pegging that game as the game that sent them into decline for the next seven seasons. Anyone with a brain knows that isn't true though. Poor management, inability to keep young talent, and a string of atrocious offseason acquisitions prevented the Pirates from returning to anything resembling glory. Even though there may be a breaking point, we need to examine everything else that built up to that point to know what really went wrong. As they showed the clip of Williams' slider tailing on the outside corner, I realized something: it wasn't that bad of a pitch. Free swinging Sammy Sosa just decided that he was going to go after the first pitch and his steriod enhanced performance allowed him to bury the Pirates that day. It got me to thinking that sometimes when you're in the ninth you can throw a great pitch and still have it get hammered. The thing is though, you can't just give up after you have a rocky outing. Williams showed that by rebounding to finish with twenty or so odd saves that year and the next before retiring. Because the truth of the matter is, in life, you're going to get more than one chance to close down the game in the bottom of the ninth.

mh

south hills bowl and the american dream

2007-04-22T00:19:00.000-04:00

"If you can't handle bowling, how are you going to handle life?"
-Dave Stern

In 11th grade English we were introduced to a new concept on the first day of class. Our teacher, Ms. Hannah, asked the class if any of us knew what the American Dream was. Of course, at that time, we were 16 somethings that didn't know shit about how our great grandparents got here and really could care less, truthfully. After a series of incorrect guesses, Ms. Hannah answered the question for us. The American Dream was your right to pursue your dreams in any way you see fit. The thing that was great about the American Dream was that it was the first time in the history of mankind that people were truly allowed to have freedom. At no other time or place were people free to come and not only be awarded land but have the right to do whatever the hell they wanted with that land. That's what made and still makes America the greatest country in the world: the simple concept of complete freedom that was so revolutionary.

Earlier this week, a tragedy that you all know about occurred. It is not my job here to spit out random facts at you about the background of each person murdered at virginia tech. Instead, I'm going to point how this and the American Dream are related. First, the killer was an immigrant himself, who came here to study English of all things. If George Washington and Thomas Jefferson would have seen how great this revolutionary concept that they embodied was, they would be thrilled with the country that they help to found. The murderer was part of approximately 25 million immigrants that we have in our country today. As many people have noted, having such a black hole type of a country can be dangerous because anybody can come into our country. The thing that makes us so different from other countries is that there is no true "American" look or thought process. What makes this dangerous is that millions of people from many different parts of the spectrum come to this country. Throughout our 240 or so years of existence, we have tried many things to try to prevent certain types of people from entering(literacy tests, mathematics tests, reading tests). However, in the end, the fact remains that American will always be an open society because the danger is a factor in American society, the rewards that are reaped from this society are much greater.

This brings me to my next point. In the 1950's, people were first beginning to categorize the American Dream as millions of WW2 soldiers began to settle into new houses. In a fast growing, yet small town south of Pittsburgh, a bowling alley opened. I can remember reading the article that they always had posted about how South Hills Bowl was the "best bowling center" back in that day because it had automatic pinsetters and a snack bar. My own run in with South Hills did not begin until 2001 when I began bowling in a high school league there. I knew absolutely nobody there, although I quickly made my first and eventual best friend from the bowling team, mike bradburn. Throughout my four years of bowling there in the league to the thousands of hours of practice I put in there, I got to know the people and the place inside and out. I got my first real coaching lesson there(when Dave Stern told me if I worked at it, I could get as good as the current captain of the team). It's where we had our first really good match with justin walter and company. It's the place that spawned so many of my high school friends(mike roth, jesse sopko, alan davis, brian ricobelli, bethanne fritz, maura hilbert, lauren kramer, and the list could go on forever). It was a place that we would go when bradburn and I were seniors(and the four other starters were juniors) would go after matches and food to go hassle our coaches in their adult league. Above all this, there was a bond that formed between all of us, even between the most bitter of enemies. When we went to tournaments and wore that ragged South Hills Bowl shirt you better believe we wore it with pride. We knew we were from a rough place on a hill in a little town called South Baldwin. We were aware that the place had never truly been renovated since its inception in 1952. And, most of all, we knew that it was the only place(other than Dormont Lanes) on this side of the Mississippi that didn't have automatic scoring. Despite all this, for fifty plus years people kept coming back to this place. Eventually, people just got tired of the lanes breaking all the time and having to keep score themselves. In the end, South Hills Bowl created its own downfall because of its intense stubborness and unwillingness to change with the times. Nonetheless, here is a list of 20 things I will miss about South Hills Bowl(in no order):
1. The leaking roof
2. Ryan Obringer
3. Bill Glus' voice over the loudspeaker every Saturday
4. Denny's hatred of life
5. The competitive matches with Justin Walter's team
6. Me calling Mike Niro a daego every week
7. Bradburn's victory dances
8. Soft pretzels and the strike shot every week
9. Mike Roth and the "Kill Yourself" patch
10. The distinct black color your hands would be after bowling
11. Sitting on the pool tables with Bradburn, Jesse, Alan, Bryan, and Lauren on Wednesdays and Fridays
12. Bradburn breaking his finger bowling
13. The 50/50 and Star of the Week, both of which ended this year
14. Throwing Drew Kreigline on top of the vending machine.
15. The constant breaking of the lanes
16. The milkman
17. Maura's tendency to never want to be there
18. Chic Miller telling us if we made 75% more of the spares we missed that we'd win every game
19. The shitty sign on the hill
20. The building itself, with that uniquely ugly blue and white paint.

There you go, there is the list, and this concludes my post.

Until next time,
mh

last call

2007-04-15T01:28:00.000-04:00

"What's my destiny mama?"
-Tom Hanks, Forrest Gump

13 years ago, Tom Hanks immortalized those words in what I consider to be his best film of all time. If you don't recall, he is sitting alongside his mother when he tells her that she is dying and will most likely not be there for much longer. At first, this leaves Forrest incredibly sad, but after he gets over the initial shock, he poses the age old question at the top of your screen. She, as any wise woman replies with "I can't tell you that. You're gonna have to find out for yourself." Gump gets to wondering as there is a long silence afterwards.

It got me to wondering too, how our destiny is exactly determined. I would have to say that we can determine our own destinies to a certain point, but there's sort of a randomness factor that truly guides to what level of preciseness those dreams are carried out. This is when I realize how dangerous it is to lock ourselves into one destiny because things change so rapidly. Me, I've always seen myself making it huge in poker and the business world, two areas that I hope to excel in. But then again, who the hell am I to say that I will be in the right spot at the right time to catch the big break to propel myself to the place i want to be at.

The title and the crux of the post were actually going to be talking about how we are coming down the final stretch in the school year, but as usual, I got sidetracked. As I thought it would happen, I feel myself coming on strong in calc and stats. In accounting, we have a huge test on monday that is worth 25% of my grade and I have yet to pick up the book to study it. Wish me luck with that as I go to study now.

mh

youth

2007-04-03T23:26:00.000-04:00

"When I was young I knew everything."
-The Verve Pipe, The Freshmen

When I was cleaning my room over spring break, I found something interesting. It was a piece of paper dated February 28, 2004. It said something to the effect of "Nayhouse finally came through in the clutch when I needed him to. I couldn't be happier right now." This comment referred to him introducing me to this girl that I thought was really, really cute but one that I had no balls to talk to at the time. I was incredibly happy for about a month after I met her, but those feelings quickly turned sour because I realized that she wasn't interested in me at all. It was my first taste of the unrequitied liking of a girl, an experience that i still remember until now. I turned the piece of paper over and it was marked October 14, 2004. There was a very short message written on it saying "Yeah, thanks a lot for that one." Then there was a smily face after it. This story reminded me of two very important things. First, things can turn from very sour to very good in a short period of time(namely after the month of destruction(march) ends) and vice-versa. The more life experiences that I have I realize that events and people in your life move like a big circle. You cannot control what is going to happen to you that day, you can only control your attitude and how you react to both positives and negatives. However, at the end of the day, happiness usually breeds happiness; and sadness, well sadness. The second thing that this reminded me of was that no matter how much of a psychic you think you are, you can't really predict what is going to happen. Relationships remind me of those "spider holes" in Vietnam where some guy should have been holding up an "Enter With Caution" sign outside of them. I mean, you can peek your head in there, but the only way to fully immerse yourself in the good and bad of relationships is to take a chance and throw yourself into it. Naturally, I'm an optimistic person and looking at this from a different perspective now just changed my view of the whole event.

As for what is going on now, March was a rocky month. March kinda reminds me of the dropping of the bomb in that you can only see the true destruction when the cloud clears out. When the dust settles, you can get a better picture of where everything lies and start to pick up the pieces. Academically, I more than held it together. I'm incredibly proud of myself because when things got bad with work, home, relationships, and friendships I kept the ship on course. I have a 101% in Stat, a 90% in Accounting, and a 86% in Business Calc. I knew that the storm was going to come, and this time I was ready for it. Friendship wise, I've seen a lot of people come and go over the last six months. There have been a few constants and out of the whole period of time I've found a few people that I can truly consider friends. Next year, I'm kind of afraid that a lot of the friendships that I've developed over the last 19 years will fade to nothing. On the other hand, I'll be living with two of my best friends and another friend that I'm sure I'll get to know quickly. I can see those friendships being life long ones. Other than that, I'm not too sure what lies in store for the ones I have right now. Relationship wise, I'm really confused. I can openly say this because I have never not known what to do or what I want, but now I am more confused than ever. Part of the problem is that my wants change really quickly. One day I'll say that I want one thing and the next I won't want that thing anymore. This category is the one that I have yet to figure out. It's easier for me to understand optimization problems than it is to put a reason behind why girls do things. Apparently, there is one though. When I figure women out, I'll let you know.

That's about it for now. For the record, I'm out of here around August 23-25. August is a pretty packed month as I'll be out of town from August 4-11 and then I have packing, shopping, and my brother's birthday to do until I leave. In July I haven't decided when I'm going to Turningstone, but I'll definitely be there. If you play poker seriously and want to go to an actual casino, let me know. It will be around 35$ a night to stay there if anyone is interested. Other than that, I'll be working, playing basketball, playing soccer, and enjoying what could be my last summer of freedom. Alright, I'll try to give more frequent updates(maybe once a week), but I can't promise anything until I get more time(May 8th will be my last final). Until then, enjoy yourselves.

mh

your wish is my command

2007-03-18T22:24:00.000-04:00

"What you see and feel about yourself is the result of every thought you have ever had."
-Rhonda Byrne

I need to begin this post by saying that I have wanted to write a new post for a long time, but as always, it seems that this blog is very low on the priority list. So what has happened since then? Nothing really. Since my last post, no huge discernable events have happened in my life. It has been more like a change going on in my mind which will directly lead to better things.

I'm going to start this post with a story to illustrate the way that I am thinking now. This time last year, I enjoyed playing poker. I was doing so-so, mostly a break even player playing 3/6 limit, 30 dollar SNGs and tournament poker. I was more or less a break even player because I did not yet have the mindset, skill, or experience at either of those three things to be a consistently winning player. Before skyview(where I played mostly back then), I was simply a holdem player who played nothing but tournament holdem and the occasional online cash game. I decided after three winning sessions of 3/6 to take a stab at the 2.50/5 no limit holdem game. It was a big step, but something that I felt needed to be done if I was every going to get past the "grinding" stage of my young career. What I immediately found was that although I was playing against people with much more experience and moxxy than I had, I could still play a defensive game and make money. After seeing good results "grinding" the 2.50/5 game, about a month later I moved up to the 5/5 NL game where the big boys lived. You might not think that there is a big difference between the two games, but trust me when I say this: there is. I was up and down until one night I went in there and envisioned myself having a huge cash score. That night, I had the biggest recorded win in the history of the 5/5 game at skyview simply because I believed that the only thing I could do that night was win money. And that's all that happened. It was like watching Jamie Gold at the world series; people just handed their chips to me.

That story very well illustrates an important point that I often forgot when I sat down at the table: if you believe it can happen, it can happen. I lost that magic over the ensuing weeks at skyview, but I believe that I've rediscovered it thanks to this book that I'm reading. It's called The Secret by Rhonda Byrne, and it really has changed the way that I look at things. The basis of the book is that there exists a law of attraction in the world that governs everything we do. This law of attraction is powered by one thing and one thing only: our thoughts. It argues(quite successfully) that our whole universe was created by the thoughts of people. I can say that I agree with that because everything that was ever invented, built, constructed, ie, had to be thought up by someone first. Everything that we read in our textbooks had to be thought of by someone who then put it into a practical application. Also, the book focuses on the fact that we can get anything we want because we are able to think about what we want to happen in our head. To prove that this has held true, they use the example of the Genie and the three wishes. We have all heard the story, but what we don't know is that the wishes were unlimited in the original version. The Genie simply said: your wish is my command. Now what if we applied this to our lives where we can literally think that anything can happen? Ding ding ding, we also have unlimited wishes! All we need to do is figure out what we want, ask for it, and be unwavering in our support. Remember though, if we waver from our thinking, our wish is our command. If you have doubts that it will happen, of course it won't happen then. My main criticism of the book is that it is very, very repetitive. The author could have took out many of the parts(namely the part about how Jesus, Judah, and Abraham lived like millionaires). Every single page is just a recap of what "The Secret" is and how it applies to many different things. By the end of the book though, you will know "The Secret" and all that it entails.

My spring break was a thing of beauty. I didn't touch an academic book until today when I did a little calculus and got out my accounting book to look up a few things in regards to stocks. I'm done writing though for now. I'll be back with more frequent posts in the coming days. Until then, enjoy yourselves.

mh

order and chaos

2007-02-19T22:34:00.000-05:00

"When you're up here and aloft and all you're really trying to do is figure a word for the exact color of the sky, or count the whitecaps risen in a certain square of sea, or make sense of the almost infinte distance between yourself and the person driving his car on the lonely dead-straight road below, you don't want to engage in the familiar lingering intimations, allusions, narratives, all that compacted striated terra-firma consideration, but instead simply stir with this special velocity that is in itself worth the whole of any voyage, this alternating tug and weightlessness of your constant departure."
-Chang-Rae Lee, Aloft

It's weird having not written something of substance in here for so long, although it seems to be an ever increasing trend over the last few months. I can't really say that I've grown out of the writing stage, but I'm finding less and less time to devote to writing. When summer starts, I'll have a lot more free time so I should be able to update more frequently starting around May.

First, I finished off the book that I've been reading off and on for several weeks, that being Aloft by Chang-Rae Lee. I actually read a write up in Time magazine over a year ago about how good of a book it was and the whole theme of the book struck me as very interesting. The basic theme(according to Time) was about this aging man who seemed to be able to find his peace in life in the skies, yet when he returned down to Earth he couldn't do anything right. That was the essence of the book, yet some of it remains an enigma to me, mainly because I think that it's something that you have to read at least twice to get a really good feel for the story that the author is trying to tell. The real plot of the story shuts on and off, as Lee spends as much time reflecting upon the past of the main character Jerry as he does telling what actually happens to him. I think this is a pretty easy trap to get caught in, but Lee does a good job saving himself by writing pages of interesting plot to coincide with the past exploits of the main character. The book gets really, really good at the end(which I enjoy) and the images at the beginning of the book and end of the book provide stark contrasts and really do renew the faith that at no matter age, we are capable of change.

I hate to keep going back to books, but the title of this post is directly derived from a very good book that I read last year called Building Wealth. If you ever want to read a really, really good book about where the future of money, power, and education lies(how nerdy did that just sound?) pick that one up for sure. In the book, the author says that the key to creating a great society is to preserve a mixture of creative ideas and regimented discipline(chaos and order). The great thing about books is that if you actually apply the good ideas to your life, things will undoubtedly turn around for you. The whole order and chaos thing got me to thinking that if I apply this as a microcosm to everything I do, I probably will find the perfect mix of things. What I mean by this is that if we try different things and take different approaches to situations, we will more easily find a balance that exists. The world looks a lot different to someone who is looking down from the sky as compared to someone who is on the ground looking up towards the sky. And now, I'm officially rambling so I'll move on to the next topic.

The last few days have really reminded me how excited I am to go up to PSU Main and how I am not looking forward to coming back to Pittsburgh anytime soon. By nature, I'm a person who loves to travel, not necessarily be a tourist. As a little kid and even up through middle school my goal in life was to walk around the world and see every country. When I grew a little older, that dream just transformed a little to "I want to see a lot of historic places without having to walk to them." After I graduate from PSU I want to move to New York and trade with the big boys on Wall Street, because to me, that is the zenith of achievement in the business world. Anyone who says I'm not competitive enough obviously doesn't know that I hate to lose at anything. The only thing worse than losing is watching someone give up while they're losing. So there is a little peak into what I'm looking forward to come 6 months from now and beyond that.

I'm going to leave you with a poem that I saw recently, but always reminds me of the book The Outsiders. Enjoy it

Nothing Gold Can Stay
By: Robert Frost

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leafs a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

mh

a better way forward

2007-02-05T20:07:00.000-05:00

Hold onto dreams
For if dreams die
Life is like a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

-Langston Hughes, "Dreams"

It's funny what a long time away from something makes you do. I haven't written in here in about two weeks and I've had a lot happen since then. The problem was, I either felt the time wasn't write to put something down here or things were happening too quickly and usually a quick verbalization of your thoughts when those kind of things happen results in you sounding like an uninformed dumbass(see my posts from 2005 :-) ).

I'll begin with poker, because that seems as ubiquitous in this blog as any other topic that I've covered. As most of you know, I had a huge score about a month back. I believe I even wrote about what happened during that session. Unfortunately, since then I wasn't able to really get anything going. I have come to the realization that I have indeed come a long way in the year and a half that I've really taken poker seriously, but I have a long way to go. Every great pro will tell you with a smile that "they have been broke a million times." Poker is one of the few professions(no, poker is not and will not be my job) where you can rise from obscurity to fame and back into obsurity in a quick span. For me to stay on top and play at a level that I need to in order to win consistently, I'll need to vastly improve my game and learn better emotional discipline. The first comes with experience and the second with maturation, two things that go hand in hand. For now, I think I need a break from that lifestyle. I came to this conclusion as I was flipping through the channels saturday night and saw the first PPT final table on the Discovery Channel and I flew by it thinking "If I watch this, I am going to be so bored!" This is definitely not the right mind set to have if you are going to play anything resembling winning poker. I think that with every hobby that a person dedicates time to they have to have these "soul searching" moments so to speak, especially when times get rough.

In terms of my personal life, things are changing as well. Anyone that has read this for a decent amount of time knows that I don't like to delve too far into things personally, so I'll give you a somewhat rough sketch of what's happening. A very good friend of mine has descended into the "I'm madly in love with my girlfriend" stage that he goes into routinely enough. It upsets me because he more or less neglects every one around him when this kind of thing happens. I have always been one who said that when you meet someone that you really like it is okay to put them ahead of your friends on the depth chart. However, that doesn't mean that you need to completely eliminate everyone else.

Another thing that I've realized about my writing is that I hardly ever write something original. This is because for the most part, I'm scared what people might think when I stop writing like someone else and start being myself. It's easy to rip on a friend to get a few good laughs, but how many friends will actually stand up for another friend when someone starts tearing that person apart? We walk a fine line between jabbing at someone and throwing the knockout punch with our words; and often it's a line that we tend to jump over easily.

The crux of this post, however, I wanted to focus on the title. This weekend, I had some time to think about all the things that I've done in my life so far. The list isn't too full, but I have definitely accomplished some things. As usual, I got to thinking about what the future had in store for me and realized that the time had come to stop dreaming about those things and start actually turning them into reality. Countless times at night I have dreamed about the many things that I want to do in life and now all that's left is to start acting upon those things. I have always envisioned myself making a decent amount of money somewhere in the business world and being a person pretty accustomed to travel. Next, at some point I want everything to slow down and be able to get married and start a family(like every other person in the world). Also, I so badly want to play in a big buyin tournament in the WSOP or WPT. By far this will be the most difficult goal because I want to do by either winning a satellite or building a bankroll high enough to sustain a 10k buyin. At this moment, I realized that in my little fantasies so to speak, I only saw myself holding up the cash. I never saw myself grinding out thousands of hours beforehand to get there or long days at the tournaments(coupled with massive amounts of luck) to get to the final table. In everything else in life- school, work, friendships, I've never seen that there was no clear end to the journey. Coincidentally, I've been pretty successful at all three of these things. On the other hand, with things such as relationships and poker I've always thought that there would be a happy go lucky ride to the top ending in perpetual glamour(moving in together/marriage or winning big in a cash game/in a big tourney). Through 19 years I've come to this conclusion: the things that we do indeed fail because we are looking way too far ahead. Not only that, but sometimes we have to put in a lot of time in these things because although we might like them, we aren't necessarily genetically gifted in these areas. You're going to "go broke" a million times during your lifetime, but the important thing is how quickly you get back in the game.

To conclude, I've selected a poem by Thylias Moss called Tornados. Very fitting to end this post if you ask me.

Tornados
By: Thylias Moss

Truth is, I envy them
not because they dance; I out jitterbug them
as I'm shuttled through and through legs
strong as looms, weaving time. They
do black more justice than I, frenzy
of conductor of philharmonic and electricity, hair
on end, result of the charge when horns and strings release
the pent up Beethoven and Mozart. Ions played

instead of notes. The movement
is not wrath, not hormone swarm because
I saw my first forming above the church a surrogate
steeple. The morning of my first baptism and
salvation already tangible, funnel for the spirit
coming into me without losing a drop, my black
guardian angel come to rescue me before all the words

get out, I looked over Jordan and what did I see coming for
to carry me home. Regardez, it all comes back, even the first
grade French, when the tornado stirs up the past, bewitched spoon
lost in its own spin, like a rouletter wheel that won't
be steered, like the world. They drove me underground,
tornado watches and warnings, atomic bomb drills. Adult
storms so I had to leave the room. Truth is

the tornado is a perfect nappy curl, tightly wound,
spinning wildly whne I try to tamper with its nature, shunning
the hot comb and pressing oil even though if absolutely straight
I'd have the longest hair int he world. Bouffant tornadic
crown taking the royal path on a trip to town, stroll down
Tornado Alley where it intersects Memory Lane. Smoky spirit-
clouds, shadowns searching for what cast them.

mh

staying healthy

2007-01-23T14:03:00.000-05:00

"He who has health has hope, and he who has hope has everything."
-Arabian proverb

Over the past week, I have spent the majority of my time recovering from one sickness or another. Starting about wednesday of last week, I caught a cold that was a lot worse than normal. I'm pretty sure that at one point or another I had a fever, but I truthfully didn't have time to be sick. Wednesday night was poker night as usual and going in I believed I was close to turning things around. I decided to play in the tournament and basically just coasted till about the fifth level where the only notable hand of the night came up. I had Ad 10d, raised 3x BB preflop and got one caller. Flop came Ah 9d 5d. It was a beauty because I had top pair, nut flush draw. I bet out 1/3 of pot and was called. The turn was a 3h, and I decided to get tricky and check it. The other kid bet out, and I moved allin. He thought about it forever and called with Kd Jd, meaning that he was drawing dead because he had the second nut flush draw. Both Nick and I made the final table and when we were down to 7, we were 7th and 6th in chips and only 5 places paid. Nick busted in sixth, but I doubled up with AK against Q9 to put me back in the running. We took a break with three left and I was chip leader, even though blinds were huge. I ended up busting in 3rd when I moved in with A2 and was called by A8, and I failed to improve. I sat down at 1/2 and nothing really happened until I had AA UTG and raised to 12. I got 5 callers which is about 2 too many for aces. Flop was Q 10 2 rainbow. I bet out 30 and get one caller. Turn is a jack, and I'm thinking, fuck, one of the worst cards in the deck to come. I check, and the other guy moves allin. We have about the same stack and I call. He shows Q 10, which means I have 11 outs(24% to win). I whiff and lose a buyin at 1/2 like that. I took creighton home after that and came back to play 2.50/5. That's when the game really started to heat up. I was up about 150 when this hand came up. I have 7c 9c and it is raised to 20 preflop. There are 3 callers in front of me so I decide to call. Flop is 8c 4h 2d. Checked around to the original raiser who bets 30. Folded to me, and I decide to call(either going to make a play on it on the turn if I improve at all or give it up if I whiff). Turn is the second best card to come, the Jc. Now I have 13 outs to hit it on the river. I check, and he bets 55. I raise to 155 and he calls after some hesitation. River is a Ac and I move allin and he calls immediately. I show the winner and he was completely stunned. He said something like "That flop really helped your hand huh?" Not to be speculative, but I'm guessing he had queens, kings, or AK, all of which he could have got away from either when I raised on the turn or bet allin on the river. The next hand I will remember for a long, long time. I have 88 and raise to 20 and get one caller. Flop is Q 10 2 with two spades. I bet and he calls. Turn is a 10, I bet 55 and he raised to 110. I call thinking I have the best hand. River comes a rainbow 3. I check and he makes a huge bet. After some deliberation, I call and he says "Nice call" and shows J9. Ship it! I also made another nice call against that guy with the king high flush and one against john when I had a weak full house. All in all, the night turned out well.

Friday night Nick and I decided to go out to oakridge to play. To sum it up, I played in a 1/2 and dumped a buyin trying to make a play at the pot. In 2/4, I was up about a buyin when I moved allin with AK on a A 8 5 3 board. I was called by KK and the river came the case K to bury me. That was a toughie for sure. I was thinking of playing some more, but I was really not feeling well that night. Saturday I bowled and then went to laser tag later with a few people. Sunday, I was beginning to recover from the cold so I did accounting and calculus homework in the morning and watched the two games at night. The first game was really shocking to be truthful. I thought that once NO made it 16-14 that they were going to come back and win. Chicago's safety was the thing that turned everything around and sent them to Miami. The AFC game was the best game of the year(far and away) and it was really weird to see someone as surehanded as the Patriots blow an 18 point lead and for Brady not to lead another game winning drive when he needed one. At the end of the game, my stomach started to feel a little queasy, but I needed to run to nick's and then skyview to pick something up. When I got there, I decided to play even though I wasn't feeling well at all. At first, it was affecting my decision making. I semi-bluffed off my first buyin at 1/2 with an ace high flush draw. Tom called with a lower flush and I whiffed on the river. From there on, I began to recover as I cracked phil's aces with my kings(flop was KQQ ) and somehow he mucked after I check-raised allin. I had him on aces and was hoping I was making a play at the pot with AK. Good fold there by phil. I ended up getting all of phil's chips anyway when I held 58 and the flop was 3 4 6. This is a great flop for me becuase I make a straight with a 2 or 7 and make the nut straight with the 7. Well, some people are blessed and the 7 came on the turn. Phil bet into me and I moved allin. He quickly called and showed 45. No 8 on the river and I won the pot. When the night was over, I ended up about even and feeling a little better.

Yesterday, I slept till about 1:30 trying to sleep off my sickness. I ate very little all day and went to accounting class from 3-530. Accounting doesn't even feel like a class because it is so enjoyable to me. When I first signed up for it, I thought it was going to be a boring waste of time, but it is actually really relevant to what I want to do. I would say that Calculus is my next favorite class with statistics being last. It's not so much that I don't like statistics but I think it's pretty boring most of the time. Oh well, I'll survive the class for sure.

Right now, I feel at about 90%, probably a positive result of going to bed early last night and this being almost the one week mark for my sickness. But this is going to be the end of the post because I'm tired(up since 730) and I want to play a little online poker before I have class in 20 minutes.

Until next time,

mh

diversification

2007-01-14T01:02:00.000-05:00

"When it is sunny, who the heck needs an umbrella or a raincoat? But when it is raining or stormy diversification is your shelter, your virtual brick house that can't be brought down by the elements."
-Jim Cramer, Sane Investing in an Insane World

I have always said and written that the most difficult times in your life are the times that prepare you for success to come. Seeing that everything moves in a circle, eventually you have to hit the bottom if you ride the high for long enough. That's what happened to me over the course of this week. There were telltale signs all around saying that something like this might happen, but you can never really predict the exact moment that you will begin the long plunge into decline or the time when you've reached the bottom of it and the only place you can go is up. Over the last month, it has been running horrible for me in poker. I can recall booking two winning sessions and close to ten losing sessions. It got so bad last night that when I got home from skyview I wrote down on a piece of paper today's date and a few other numbers that have no significant value to anyone but myself. The treachery began in 3/6 as I decided to have a seat before a 1/2 NL seat opened up. I was down about 50 when this hand came up. I have KK and I'm UTG so I raise it to 6 and get something like 6 callers. In my head I'm thinking, I have to flop a set to win this hand. Bang, the flop is K 6 2 with two spades. I bet and get four callers. Turn is a rainbow 10, I bet, older lady to my left who I've played with before and whom I know plays very, very tight raises to 12, and two folds back to me. I think for a second and raise to 18, and she quickly calls. At this point, I put her on two pair. River is a rainbow 7. I bet and she calls and shows 22 for set over set. It was beautiful to say the least, but against any other player at the table I make more money. When I got moved over to 1/2 finally, I was thinking that it was going to be a good night. I had JJ on my last hand at the 3/6 table and no over cards came on the board and I cashed out up 60. I went to 1/2 and the third hand I'm dealt is AK. I pop it up to 16 and get two callers. Flop comes K 9 6, two spades. I bet 24 and get one caller. Turn is a rainbow 10 comes off. He checks to me and I bet 30, he thinks about it then moves allin. I got up and called out his cards exactly, 78. After talking myself into the call(thinking maybe he had a KQ or KJ and he moved with top pair and a straight draw), he turned up 7d8d, just as I had called. It's good that I know what people have, but at that point I had committed a bunch of chips to the pot and wasn't going to fold(in the case that he did have something like 9 10 or 6 10 in which case I'd be a 7 to 1 dog to win the pot).

After that, I decided that it was best that I not play anymore that night because I wasn't in the right mind frame. When you call out someone's hand then can't lay down top pair to save yourself, you should not be playing. Looking back on it driving home, it was a horrible call(even though it was a little lucky for him to hit a open ender, and here's why. A 10 there looks very innocuous because a spade automatically looks more dangerous than someone hitting an open ender. If I was in his position, I'm not sure I would have called because if a 10s or 6s comes off, you just might be in over your head if the original bettor was semi-bluffing and hit a spade when you just hit your straight.) Either way, the point of this post is not to tell you a bad beat story or how to tell you when not to call, because I've done plenty of that in the past. That night was a very long one for me because I really had to evaluate my position in life. It seemed a lot worse than it actually was. In most areas of life I am much better off than I was a year ago. A year ago, I had a girlfriend who was obviously cheating on me. Now I have one who just threatens to do so if she ever meets jordan staal :-). Even though we fight sometimes, I am happy with her. We have similar personalities which makes things a lot more relaxed than relationships that I've had in the past. It's not like I have to try to be someone else when we hang out, and that's really important to me in a relationship. This time last year I was beginning to make my name known around pittsburgh as a player in the bigger NL games, and this year it appears I will have to re-establish that reputation. Also, you don't find out who a lot of your true friends are until you are in a little bit over your head. One person in particular(who I have helped several times in the past) has agreed to give me a break similar to the one that I gave him over the summer, and hopefully that will help to re-energize my poker career. If not, I figure that I'm young and I can afford taking a chance because I have many, many years to make back that money if I do end up losing it. I've learned from all this down time that one of the most important things in life is to be diversified. If one friend sells you out, have other ones to fall back on. If one poker game is bad, try another one. Or, in a market sense, if one stock begins to depreciate, have faith that your positive positions in other stocks will save it. The golden rule that I've got out of this whole mess is to not put all your eggs, chickens, or whatever it may be into one basket. A truly diversified individual will not only get the most out of the many people he or she meets and the many different things he/she experiences, but that person will also not be crushed if something goes wrong in one area. And that's all I have to say about that.

To conclude this less than epic post, I'll give you some song lyrics since I've been posting a lot of poems lately. If you ever get a chance to listen to this song, take it, because the instrumental is what really makes this song great. Enjoy

Time in a Bottle
By: Jim Croce

If I could save time in a bottle
The first thing that I'd like to do
Is to save every day
Till Eternity passes away
Just to spend them with you

If I could make days last forever
If words could make wishes come true
I'd save every day like a treasure and then,
Again, I would spend them with you

But there never seems to be enough time
To do the things you want to do
Once you find them
I've looked around enough to know
That you're the one I want to go
Through time with

If I had a box just for wishes
And dreams that had never come true
The box would be empty
Except for the memory
Of how they were answered by you

But there never seems to be enough time
To do the things you want to do
Once you find them
I've looked around enough to know
That you're the one I want to go
Through time with.

mh

the national championship gone wrong

2007-01-09T22:24:00.000-05:00

"The question is, do you have the stones to sink a putt when it counts?"
-Dr. Cox, Scrubs

As most of you are aware by now, Monday night proved to be something out of the ordinary. For the first time in several years, a one loss team is the national champion in college football. Then again, the rest of the bowl season was pretty messed up as well: A team that loses one game all year by three points is relegated to the Rose Bowl and then smashed to pieces by a team that just lost to UCLA(ha), a team from Idaho goes undefeated and then beats Oklahoma in the most thrilling bowl game of this century, a Navy team blows a last second lead to Boston College as the kicker from BC(playing in his first year of football ever) nails the longest field goal of his young football career to give the Eagles the win, a subpar Notre Dame team is crushed by LSU and leaves the Rutgers fans wondering why they weren't part of the BCS, and then there was the national championship. I watched the game over mark's house with several other people. From what I could see, it was about a 50/50 split as to who people were rooting for. When Ted Ginn ran back the initial kickoff, all I could think was 'Good, this is the way it's supposed to be.' Beyond that though, Ohio State did nothing right. They were outrun and outmuscled by Florida and the Gator defense did something that almost nobody did to Troy Smith all year: pressure him. Seriously, Smith panicked like the kid in the neighborhood game and was even outran by a defensive lineman. All in all, I was surprised by the outcome(as I was rooting for the Buckeyes). The Big Ten and mid-major colleges were definitely the big losers in this bowl season. Actually, I believe that Penn State(what?) was the only Big 10 team to even win its bowl game(Wisconsin might have won, I'm not sure). PSU looked impressive against Tennesse and Morelli didn't look completely lost out there for once. The Big East looked really impressive(with good wins from Louisville, West Virginia, and yes, Rutgers in the Alamo bowl or whatever god forsaken bowl they were stuck with) and that was good to see because the legitimacy of the Big East was in question after the departure of several schools to the ACC a few years back.

As far as my life goes, I've continued to read Cramer's Sane Investing and he makes a comparison that I knew existed before and that is between stocks and gambling. In the second chapter of his book, he says that as much as nobody wants to admit it, stock trading is like gambling, and I couldn't agree more. I would back this up by saying that in poker as in stocks you need many different tools to be a winning player. If you are focused on playing way too tight and everyone around you is playing tight, you're missing out on free money to steal! Just like in the world of stocks, if you refuse to sell when the stock begins to plummet in the hope that it will rebound, you just may have missed an oppurtunity to make big money. The many comparisons between the two is probably one of the reasons that I find a life in the economic and financial field so appealing. Running a hedge fund is really a fancy way of gambling with other people's money.

In other news, I got a letter Monday from poetry.com saying that I was a semi-finalist in their poetry contest and that as a semi-finalist I would be published in an upcoming book called Immortal Verses. Don't look for it at your neighborhood Border's(because I doubt it's for sale to the public), but still very cool none the less to have a piece of your work published.

That's all for now. I truthfully just felt like writing about college football and jumped off into a little tangent with stocks and poker, but that's okay. Here's a poem to close things off.

We Wear the Mask
By: Paul Laurence Dunbar

We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes, -
This debt we pay to human guile'
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!

mh

vacation

2007-01-07T23:56:00.000-05:00

I decided to take the first week off in january to help to recouperate my body, spirit, and mind. It was the most unproductive week in history, except for the fact that I got caught up on a lot of sleep and played a ton of zelda which I got on tuesday. By that time, I surmised that the week simply wasn't going to be productive at all, so I decided to take one of my four weeks that I normally take off during the year. If I must comment, the new zelda game has been fabulous so far. The people that make Zelda decided to return to the format of a longer game with bigger areas, something that was incredibly successful in Link to the Past(first Zelda game for GameBoy) and Ocarina of Time. I haven't gotten too far in the game yet, but it also appears that they have brought back the game in a 3/5/final boss format, which is a great format if you ask me. The graphics are stunning and the only thing that I don't like about the new game is the increased cinematic time(scenes where you stand there and the action passes you by without you doing anything). It might turn out to be good by the end of the game, but the game feels very Final Fantasy-ish with that.

Besides doing mostly nothing for a week, I did read Jim Cramer's Confessions of a Street Addict which was a Christmas present from my grandparents. Also, they got me Sane Investing in an Insane World. First though, I'll get to my thoughts on Confessions. By no means does the book start slow, as Cramer gives a very brief account of his childhood(notably how his addiction to stocks began in the fourth grade). The thing that I like about the beginning is Cramer doesn't make it out like during his childhood he was already on the course to fame and that with every step he took he grew closer to his destiny: being one of the greatest traders in Wall Street history. The book begins to get very boring in the middle as he describes in detail(in my opinion, too much detail) his early career working as a journalist and finally getting his first big break investing marty perez's money. After crushing the averages for marty for about two years, cramer lands a position at Goldman Sachs, a leading investment company. Next, after learning many good lessons there, he decides to open his own hedge fund with his wife(also a former broker) and with the help of a man named Jeff Berkowitz and other investors. The book doesn't really start getting good until he talks about his record year in 1997 where he smashed every record and handed out huge bonuses to all his employees. However, in 1998 the book turns from a walk in the park to a ten month stint in hell as he painfully describes his inability to read the market. By the beginning of October, he has lost 35% of his company's net worth, and by October 8th, his hell finally ends when the Fed lowers interest rates and the market begins to rebound. By the end of 1998, Cramer and his hedge fund turn a 100 million dollar year in the red to a 6 million dollar gain for the year. In the closing pages of the book, Cramer describes how twenty years in the market has worn down his body and severed ties with his family to the point of him leaving five family vacations in a row to fly back and help the fund. At the end of the book, he begins to reconcile with his family and realizes just how much he has overworked himself and strained his ties with others. All in all, it was an extremely well written book. Cramer doesn't fall into the trap of getting too verbose(as many people writing about their lives do). His humility bleeds through the pages and it turns out to be a quality read when all is said and done.

That is that, that's my life right now. This poem that I'm giving you has a funny title and you should remember that when reading the poem. Enjoy as always.

The Emperor of Ice-Cream
By: Wallace Stevens

Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Take from the dresser of deal.
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

mh

some days

2007-01-03T23:33:00.000-05:00

"Above anything else, I hate losing."
-Jackie Robinson

I think that quote is the perfect prelude to what this post is all about. Some days, you have to recognize that you are simply not meant to win. Today, I was playing poker, and I realized that this was one of these days. In the tournament, I was looking pretty decent when we got down to 4 tables. I had a little less than 20k(a little above the average), and I thought I had a decent chance to at least make the final 2 tables. Then, I get dealt 10 10 in consecutive hands and double up the kid to my direct left two times in a row! The first time he had A9 and hit a nut flush and the other time he had AK and the flop was AKJ, with a K on the turn to trump any of the 6 outs I had left. The last hand I played was against that kid again. Blinds were 600/1200 and I had about 11,000 left when I pushed with AcQc and he called with KK. He ended up making a flush or something and winning it. In cash, I could never get anything going at all. I simply blinded myself down and tried to bluff at a few pots. The only significant pot I can remember getting into was against this huge dude named hans. I had very little money left, and I raised to 12 preflop with 99. He called, and the flop came down A Q 5. I pushed, and he called with KQ to trump me. Nothing terrible there, I just really could not hit a single hand.

This brings me to my next point and that is the fact that I absolutely hate to lose. I might not look like it, but I am one of the most competitive people that you will ever meet. As a younger kid, I can remember two distinct examples of myself being incredibly competitive. First, myself, mike nayhouse, bill schleicher, and another kid were in a winter hitting league together. We were the worst team in the league during the regular season, but we made a spectacular run in the playoffs to make it all the way to the championship. In that game, we were winning by almost 40 points going into the bottom of the last inning. The other team rallied and ended up winning it with two outs. I grabbed my bat, stormed out of the place, and started hitting a couple trees outside in a pure fit of rage. Remember, I was only probably 9, but I refused to shake hands or even talk to anyone on my team. Go to Bianco's and till this day you can still probably hear that story.

The next story also involves baseball. Once again, I was much younger, probably 10 years old now. I was on shane liska's team for summer baseball and we were going up against nayhouse and schleicher's team in a divisional clash. Back then, you could only pitch 3 out of the 6 innings, so I pitched the first three and by the end of that time, we were winning 16-0. I came out, and I think shane came in. Long story short, we blew the 16-0 lead and they came all the way back to tie it 16-16 before the game had to be called for darkness. I walked off of the field in disgust and walked all the way across colewood park before being calm enough to accept a ride home. By the time I was 14, I realized how stupid people look whenever they flip out in pure spats of anger. Actually, not until I watched my baseball coach in pony's tip a garbage can and throw it at the umpire after a "terrible mother fucking call" did I realize how silly it was. My immediate reaction was to laugh, but I was able to hold it in until later. That incident made me care a whole hell of a lot less about things for a few years until I went back to playing on a winning baseball team, that being the squirrel hill city team. Our constant winning brought out the best in me as I really did try hard every single game we played.

Even today, I am incredibly competitive even though I have been retired from baseball for about 1 and a half years now. I definitely miss it, but I've taken that competitive fire and applied it to the classroom. When I care in school, I do nothing but great work. It's helpful in that way, but it also causes me to despise things like group work(unless I feel that everyone is contributing equally). I tend to want to do everything sometimes until I feel that everyone can make a contribution similar to my own.

I hope that everyone had a good New Years. My New Years consisted of spending time with a lot of people that I care about. Every year, we have a party either at our house or one of our family friend's house. This year, the fiesta was moved to our house. Around 945, sarah and kathleen came over and I decided to go with them over to their friend's house to celebrate the new year. The party was a little weird but I was with a good friend and my girlfriend, two people that I truly care about. We watched the ball drop and then watched as some girl from MTV dropped the F bomb before the last set. Oddly enough, I didn't hear a lot about it(unlike past mess ups such as the janet jackson incident). We left later on and it was a new year's well spent. Over the rest of break, I hung out with nayhouse and bradburn a lot and saw a ton of people that I hadn't seen in awhile at pizza hut. Last night, myself, mark, and dave, the future PSU roomates had a good night out. I went to mark's first and we played some video games before going over to dave's place to meet his parents. My impression of his parents was that they are nice people, but they are definitely more strict than my parents. From there, we went to the dollar theatre in west mifflin and saw man of the year, a flick that I've caught twice now at the dollar theatre. Dave was thrilled when he found out that we had only spent $1.50 to see a movie. Afterwards, we got some wendys and just sat in mark's car and talked about everything for two plus hours. It sounds gay, but it was a really enjoyable time. I'm excited to spent the last two years of my college life with these fine gentlemen.

Since I've been claiming for a long time that I have been working on my poems, I'm going to post one of them online for you. Remember go to humblevoice.com if you want to see the rest of my poems and even post some of your work yourself. Hopefully, you'll enjoy.

Truth is
By: Matt Hartman

Truth is,
I don’t want to hear how your useless
metaphors translate into “life lessons” or how
the key to life is “in the calm of a night’s flower”.
NO, I know that I have the key to life
inside of me and I don’t need your allegory of the abstract
to tell me how to live my life.

Don’t worry,
I once searched for ghosts too. As a little boy,
I would frighten myself walking down the desolate street
thinking that I too could see lifeless forms
in white sheets(that was until something real scared me).

I know,
I am guilty of it as well; I think we all want to
believe that we can be scared by the hallucinations of our
mind or that we can find the answers to our problems
from above. We know we are just fooling ourselves, history
has shown we cannot build skyscrapers standing on stilts.

So then,
Instead of conjuring up some grandiose myriad of useless words,
wasting your time trying to come up with the“perfect” symbol,
I recommend writing the first thing that comes to mind;
writing about why the grass grows or why it snows on cloudy days.

mh

2006 in review

2006-12-30T00:24:00.000-05:00

I found this survey that I did in 2004 and I'm going to type it up and give you my answers from 2004 and 2006. Enjoy.

1. What did you do in 04/06 that you'd never done before?
04- Went to the baseball Hall of Fame, knew issues in the election, worked
06- Kept a steady job for over a year, had a decent sized bankroll

2. Did you keep your New Years Resolution?
04- I don't make new years resolutions, because I believe you can change your life at any time.
06- See 04

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
04- No
06- My cousin's girlfriend

4. Did anyone close to you die?
04- No
06- No

5. What places did you visit?
04- Ocean City, Cooperstown
06- Cooperstown, Canton

6. What would you like to have in 05/07 that you lacked in 04/06?
04- A state bowling title
06- More consistency to every aspect of my life

7. What dates from 04/06 will remain etched upon your memory?
04- 6/16, 11/04(I only remember the first one)
06- None really

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
04- Hit several home runs for my Squirrel Hill team
06- Finishing Atlas Shrugged and writing a 12 page scholarship paper on it.

9. What was your biggest failure?
04- Failure to do well at state bowling chamionships or losing in the first round of city playoffs.
06- Losing a lot of my bankroll at one time.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
04- Not really, little things here and there.
06- Nothing until a nasty stomach virus five days ago.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
04- The movie "The Shawshank Redemption"
06- 3 in 1 printer.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
04- Aron Ralston
06- Warren Buffet or Bono

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
04- George Bush
06- Not going to say here.

14. Where did most of your money go?
04- Food
06- Poker and School

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
04- Summer and bowling on tuesdays
06- Summer

16. What song/album will always remind you of 04/06?
04- REO Speedwagon "Roll with the changes"
06- Dashboard Confessional "Don't Wait"

17. Compared to this time last year are you:
happier or sadder?
04/06- Happier

thinner or fatter?
04/06- Thinner

richer or poorer?
04/06- Richer

18. What do you wish you'd done more or?
04- Gone out during the year, used my time better
06- Spend more time outdoors

19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
04- Computer
06- Wasted time

20. How will you be spending Christmas?
04/06- With family

21. Did you fall in love in 04/06?
04- Three times(haha)
06- I think once at the end of the year, but I'm careful how I throw the word "love" around

22.How many romantic relationship in this last year?
04- 2
06- 3

23. What was your favorite TV program
04- Everybody Loves Raymond, poker, the OC
06- Seinfeld, the OC, high stakes poker

24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
04- George Bush
06- One individual

25. What CD did you listen to most often?
04- Mix
06- Either Dashboard Confessional's 'Dusk and Summer' or Ludacris' 'Release Therapy'

26. What was your greatest musical discovery?
04- Ludacris
06- Something Corporate

27. What did you want and get?
04- Better at bowling
06- An ipod

28. What did you want and not get?
04- Left blank
06- A win in a big poker tournament- I was close for about three weeks straight

29. What was your favourite film of the year?
04- Spiderman 2
06- Click

30. What did you do on your birthday and how old were you?
04- Partied and I was 17
06- Went out with friends then with my family later and I was 19

31. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
04- State bowling title
06- A big poker tournament win

32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 04/06z/
04/06- Same as always

33. What kept you sane?
04- Music and friends
06- My friends

34. What political issue stirred you the most?
04- war in Iraq
06- Anti-gambling bill

35. Whom did you miss most?
04/06- Grauated friends

36. Who was the best new person you met?
04- Jason Iampietro or Bethanne
06- Doc or Po

37. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2004.
04- You can't always get what you want.
06- A lot of how you're feeling has to do with your attitude.

38. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.
04- So if you're tired of the same old story/Turn some pages/And let me hear if you are ready/To roll with the changes(REO Speedwagon 'Roll with the changes')
06- Close your eyes, and i will be swimming/Lullaby's fill your room, and i will be singing/Singing to only you/Dont forget ill hold your head/Watch the night sky fading red(Something Corporate 'As You Sleep')

So that's the end of my little survey. Take it yourself if you'd like. All in all, 2006 wasn't a real memorable year other than I solidified a lot of friendships and make some new friends. Looking back, I was in a much better mood most of the time in 2006 than 2003, 2004, or 2005. I'll leave you with the best poem that I read in all of 2006, and hopefully you will enjoy the selection.

I Dream It Is Afternoon When I Return to Delhi
By: Agha Shahid Ali

At Purana Qila I am along, waiting
for the bus to Daryaganj, I see it coming,
but my hands are empty.
"Jump on, jump on," someone shouts,
"I've saved this change for you
for years. Look!"
A hand opens, full of silver rupees.
"Jump on, jump on." The voice doesn't stop.
There's no one I know. A policeman,
handcuffs silver in his hands,
asks for my ticket.

I jump off the running bus,
sweat pouring from my hair.
I run past the Doll Museum, past
headlines on the Times of India
building, Prisoners Blinded in a Bihar
Jail, Harijan Villages Burned by Landlords.
Panting, I stop in Daryaganj,
outside Golcha Cinema.

Sunil is there, lighting
a cigarette, smiling, I say,
"It must be ten years, you haven't changed,
it was your voice on the bus!"
He says, "The film is about to begin,
I've bought an extra ticket for you,"
and we rush inside:

Anarkali is being led away,
her earrings lying on the marble floor.
Any moment she'll be buried alive.
"But this is the end," I turn
towards Sunil. He is nowhere.
The usher taps my shoulder, says
my ticket is ten years old.

Once again my hands are empty.
I am waiting, along, at Purana Qila.
Bus after empty bus is not stopping.
Suddenly, beggar women with children
are everywhere, offering
me money, weeping for me.

mh

the addiction to losing

2006-12-17T00:50:00.000-05:00

After reading a post by my friend Pauly, I feel that I needed to go further into depth about this subject. In his blog, he stated that during his trip to vegas, he started uttering the phrase, "I gotta get unstuck, I gotta get unstuck." This was after he went down something liek 1k in his first hour in Vegas. He concluded with a passage that I'd like to start my post with, and that is a line that Al Pacino's character gives in the movie Two For the Money:

"You're a lemon. Like a bad car. There is something... there is something inherently defective in you, and you, and you, and me, and all of us. We're all lemons. We look like everyone else, but what makes us different is our defect. See, most gamblers, when they go to gamble, they go to win. When we go to gamble, we go to lose. Subconsciously. Me, I never feel better than when they're raking the chips away; not bringing them in. And everyone here knows what I'm talking about. Hell, even when we win it's just a matter of time before we give it all back. But when we lose, that's another story. When we lose, and I'm talking about the kind of loss that makes your asshole pucker to the size of a decimal point - you know what I mean - You've just recreated the worst possible nightmare this side of malignant cancer, for the twentieth goddamn time; and you're standing there and you suddenly realize, Hey, I'm still... here. I'm still breathing. I'm still alive. Us lemons, we fuck shit up all the time on purpose. Because we constantly need to remind ourselves we're alive. Gambling's not your problem. It's this fucked up need to feel something. To convince yourself you exist. That's the problem.You know, the best part of the best drug in the world isn't the high. It's the moment just before you take it. The dice are dancing on the table. Between now and the time they stop, that's the greatest high in the world."

I would like to begin by saying that sometimes I feel like the person that Al Pacino is describing here in his soliloqy. I think that at one point or another, all of us feel like perpetual losers. We all know that day that we dream about when absolutely everything goes wrong and you either just want to be shot repeatedly or curl up into a little ball until the end of your seemingly useless existence on this earth. The problem with this type of losing is that it leads to future losses, even when the circumstances have improved. Gambling is a perfect way to illustrate this. If you go into a poker session and everything goes wrong(take a few beats, run into a few tough situations) and you begin to approach your worst loss of all time, your mindset changes quickly. It is true that when it's all over and done with and you've blown every dollar and coin you own, you realize something: I'm still alive. I can't remember how many times I'd be walking home from a poker game(where'd I had gotten busted) thinking "Well, you lost all your money, but you still have yourself. You're still a smart kid and that's not gonna change no matter if you win a thousand or spend a thousand minutes losing it all." This "fucked up need to feel something" couldn't be worded any better because we have to prove to ourselves that in one way or another we still exist on this little planet. I'd say that another good example is the people from the movie Saw. Jigsaw(the main evil/good, depending on how you interpret it character in Saw) always makes videos to show his victims who haven't been living their lives to the fullest. In these videos, he often refers to the fact that "it takes the prospect of death for most of us to truly begin to live." Not only this, but the fact of the matter is that losing is very multi-dimensional. I mean, losing can happen in so many different ways but in the long run, winning only happens by staying a consistent course.

I always wondered why those teams who were perpetual losers couldn't turn it around eventually. I mean, they practiced just as much as the other teams, but their mindset was always "We are probably going to lose this game. We have accepted that we are a losing team and don't give a shit if we turn it around or not. Hell, losing is fun because it makes us feel good inside." I've ran into more than a few people who have this "losing curse" hanging over their heads. These people are so convinced that they are going to fuck everything up once they meet a new romantic interest, start a new job, or enter a new stage in their life, that they begin to think too much and eventually do fuck it up. I'm kind of going off on a tangent, but the crux of this post revolves around losing and how we can become addicted to it.

I've made it a goal of mine to work on this in 2007, but I'm convinced it's going to be a struggle that's going to take me a long time. I want to become more addicted to success and less so to failure. That's one reason I believe that I'm attracted to school and gambling so much. In school, I was always a consistent winner. I worked hard at it, but I always had a talent for school. If there's one thing that I know how to do, it's how to do well in schoool. Of course, that brings us to gambling. I don't bet horses(minus once), sports, or any other game that I dont' think I have an advantage in. However, poker is different. I've had myriads of success and failure in the game, and most of both wins and losses came in streaks. In 2007, part of my goal is to have more success at gambling, which doesn't necessarily mean making more money doing it. To do well in gambling, you have to make correct decisions, and that's something that I hope I'll be able to do in the New Year.

Until next time,

mh

six hands worth noting

2006-12-14T09:18:00.000-05:00

I haven't posted in awhile, and I'll probably get around to do a real post this weekend, but until then, here's this. Let it be known that the following contains ALL poker related content, so if you don't like poker, oh well.

Hand 1- I'm dealt AK rainbow in the BB, and I raise to 17 and get four callers. Flop comes down A J 9 with two spades. I'm first to act and I move allin. Two folds and then a guy who I'll call for the rest of this "the station" called me instantly. He flipped over Qs2s and smashed the spade on the turn. I still had 7 outs on the river because I had the Ks, but I completely whiffed.

Hand 2- I'm dealt JJ and raise from middle position and just get one caller. The player is tight and pretty solid. The flop comes down 6 7 8, exactly the flop I don't want to see. He bets out from first position and after thinking about it, I muck. He shows QQ.

Hand 3- I'm dealt AK in the SB and bump it up to 20 and get one caller, the station. The flop is 8 9 10, and we both check. A 3 hits the turn, I check, he bets 25, and I call. The river is another 3, I check, he bets 40, and I think about it for awhile. I laugh and say to him "I have AK, and I really think it's good." I made the call and he showed his losing AQ.

Hand 4- I'm dealt 44 in middle position and I just limp. It's about 7 way action to the flop and the flop comes down Jc 9c 4d. Two checks to me and I fire out 20. Two callers. Turn is the Jh, the perfect card. Two checks again and I bet 30. Once again, two callers. River is the 7c, the nirvana card for me. Once again, two checks, and I bet 35. George thinks about it forever and mucks. Then the guy from Hand 2 says "I'm allin." Fuck. I thought about it forever and called. He showed J9 and scooped a huge pot. After thinking about it, I realized that he made a horrible play. With two clubs and a straight draw on the board, he got incredibly fortunate to hit his 4 outer and have myself fill up as well. Just bad luck, that's all.

Hand 5- I have AJ and there is a raise to 7 in front of me. I decide to call. Flop comes down J 10 3. I bet 15, and get raised by tom(who is a pretty solid player) to 35. I call thinking we might have the same hand. The turn comes a 5, and I check and he bets 100. Looking back on it, I should have folded right there. Unfortunately, I went allin and he insta-called with AA. No J on the river, and I'm dead.

Hand 6- Let me preface this by saying this is probably one of the three sickest hands I've ever played in my life. I'm dealt 98 in the SB and tom once again raised to 7 in front of me. I decided to call. Flop came down 9 8 2, a perfect flop. 5 people check to tom who bets 7 again. I raised to 27, and tom went allin. Now if you'll remember correctly, in Hand 5 tom made a HUGE bet with an overpair to the board. I figured he was doing the same thing here and by this time of the night there was no way in hell I was mucking top two. I called, the turn and river came 7 and 6, and tom showed 99 for top set. Just a sick hand.

That's all for now. I can't really say that any of these(minus Hand 1) were terrible beats, but they were all just very unfortunate situations to get into. At this point, there's nothing that I can do about it except suck it up and take a little break from poker.

frank sinatra

2006-12-04T23:56:00.000-05:00

"You gotta love livin' baby, cause dyin' is a pain in the ass."
-Frank Sinatra

I would like to dedicate a post to Frank Sinatra, because to me, he embodies what I strive to be in my life. Sinatra was an easy going man who was committed to providing the best for his children and the rest of his family. He is considered by most musical historians to be one of the four biggest influences in music in the 20th century. All this being said, his style could be summed up with a few words- Carpe Diem. He was quoted many times as saying that he just took what each day gave him and that he wasn't "searching for no secret of life." In my opinion, that's the way to live. Don't overcommit yourself to anything, don't get involved in any entangling engagements, and just live each day to the fullest. If you do that, nobody can say that your stay on earth was a wasted one.

I've begun to write poetry again on a more consistent basis with the opening of a site called Humble Voice. You can find HV on the web at www.humblevoice.com and if you sign up as a member, you can view my poetry under the name "britishroyals". So far, I've posted mostly old work of mine, but the opening has prompted me to continue trying to produce new material.

I'm dumbfounded that this semester is going by as quickly as it has gone. I feel that this has been my most consistent semester as I've done all of my homework(for the most part) and am making time each week to study history, poetry, and math. When I had economics I would basically study that every wednesday before the class, but now with that done I have even more time. I've been using my spare time to either write or play poker, and I can myself improving in each of those disciplines. Last year, it seemed like it took forever for myself to get good at playing poker, but all those struggles have made me into such a better player today.

I'd continue writing, but I need to get to bed so I can get up early enough to finish a speech, and I think I have a borderline migraine so goodnight.

Oh yeah, here's a poem to read. It's surprisingly good if you think about how boring life can be sometimes. Enjoy

Disillusionment at Ten o Clock
By: Wallace Stevens

The houses are haunted
By white night-gowns.
None are green,
Or purple with green rings,
Or green with yellow rings,
Or yellow with blue rings.
None of them are strange,
With socks of lace
And beaded ceintures.
People are not going
To dream of baboons and periwinkles.
Only, here and there, an old sailor,
Drunk and asleep in his boots,
Catches tigers
In red weather.

mh

points for mastery

2006-11-28T04:54:00.000-05:00

"Ahhhhhhh....yes"
-Karl Geisler, APUSH teacher at Baldwin High School

It's funny how things from your past make segway into the present. In a recent speech for my CAS class, I had to do a double take as I walked up to the podium because I instantly felt like I was doing a PFM. I could see the bewildered look on my classmates' faces as they solemnly prepared to try to bullshit an answer they didn't look up in the unfortunate case that they were called for one of the dreaded PFM's. I still remember the first PFM I ever did. I was 15 years old, in 11th grade, and scared shitless because I was told the day before(when we received the questions) that I could be called and should be ready to deliver an answer to any one of 15 questions that I had to prepare for the next day. I think the question had something to do with New Spain, but I can't quite recall the whole thing. I jumped back from that to the speech I was giving last week. The assignment was to find four poems and give your interpretation of each poem. Apparently, I wasn't prepared well enough as I completely froze after I finished reading a selection from Wordsworth. Then, I recalled back four years ago as I was standing in a similar spot, and I learned a valuable lesson: To be a great orator, you have go be a great bullshitter. That's all an articulate person is anyway; someone who can quickly bring up an answer to a question that's being asked on the spot. Therefore, I went into a rant about how Wordsworth took a walking tour with his sister around England and that's where the inspiration for a lot of his poetry came from. After finishing with a selection from Keats, the professor said he was impressed by my "good selection of poetry" and "well prepared, excellent interpretations." Hey, you know what they say, what you don't know can never hurt you.

Thanksgiving break was a pretty enjoyable one for me. For Thanksgiving, I played football from about 12-2, and it felt good to actually be able to tackle someone while playing football. At around 4, I went over to my uncle's house. I can't think of a better place that I'd rather spend my holiday because I get along well with almost all of my relatives. My uncle is always entertaining as we talked about what's been going on, gambling, and a recent trip he took. Apparently, while traveling, he was invited to watch the Michigan/OSU game at....Muhammad Ali's house! That was crazy to hear. Ali is an icon, and as my uncle was telling me about this, he said that even he was doing double takes wandering "Am I really in this guy's house? The same guy that knocked out Joe Frazier, won the heavyweight belt, and redefined the sport of boxing?" Just amazing to say the least. I also got to see my aunt kathy and cousin mary who I really only see twice a year(thanksgiving and christmas), but we left before my other cousin nick showed up with his girlfriend and son. After that, we went over my dad's mom's house to visit the other side of the family. As much as I hate to say it, I'm intrigued at the proposition of living with my grandma and pap for a week whenever my parents go to Mexico. Supposedly, they're going to be staying over my house for at least 3 of the 7 nights, which leave the other 4 open for speculation. Friday, I golfed with my brother, my dad, and my cousin Mike. It was probably the most beautiful day of the whole month and it was definitely an enjoyable time even with my brother getting on my nerves. Later that night, I re-acquainted with two men that I have not seen in a long time: Rob Rossi and Tom Choijnicki. We played pool and went out to EnP afterwards. At EnP, I saw ivana(like usual), but didn't really recognize anyone else other than the throngs of TJ fans celebrating their win at Heinz Field. I can't really say that I root for or against TJ, they're just neutral in my opinion. I think that I would like them a lot more if I didn't hear about some of the illegal activities that their players engage in. Saturday was full of poker and college football. I went deep into ANOTHER MTT, and fell victim to bad luck again in the third hour finishing 54/1275 or so. Later that night, I saw some other people I hadn't seen in awhile and got back in touch with another long lost friend: Captain and Coke. During 11th grade, that was my drink of choice, and the sweetness of the drink brought back the bittersweet memories of that year. I think when all was said and done we all went to EnP again, this time to the one in South Hills Village. Sunday, I watched(unfortunately) the Steelers get run over by the Ravens and the Saints triumph in the Georgia Dome. The Saints are the feel good story of the year, even if it's been a whole year since Katrina. After the game, I went over sarah's to hang out with her and kathleen. We watched reruns of monk before going out to applebee's to eat. Afterwards, we headed over to alyssa's(maybe?) to chill. I had a drink spilled on me, beat grace in floor hockey, and lived one of the funnier moments of the year involving kathleen and this dude from chile. A story to be told in the future to say the least. Finally, we ended off by going over peanut's. Charlie was there and I'm glad to see that they've found each other because they look to me to be very compatible personality wise. When all was said and done, it was a weekend that I couldn't complain about.

I'm going to leave you with the brief words of William Carlos Williams. This is definitely a poem that you have to think about to get, but once you do, it's well worth it. Enjoy.

The Red Wheelbarrow
By: William Carlos Williams

so much depends
upon

the red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

mh

south hills bowl

2006-11-21T05:22:00.000-05:00

"This place is deader than Stephen Hawking's legs."
-Shawn Masten

People say that life goes in circles, and I'm beginning to understand why. While perusing the once cherised lanes of South Hills Bowl on a 24 hour weekend bender, I found something interesting hanging on the delapidated walls of the "shithole on the hill". It seemed to be a very old newspaper article from at least 50 years ago signifying the opening of a place in South Baldwin, PA, that would be known as South Hills Bowl. If I recall correctly, it said something to the effect that they would be the most modern lanes in the whole state with the automatic ball return and automatic pin setters. Oh, how the times have changed. As I was finishing up the article, something at the bottom stuck out at me. It was the picture of a smiling young man with glasses, and I quickly turned to the caption to read that "Bill Glus will be the manager of the newly established South Hills Bowl." I could hardly believe that Bill had been there for all those years and had still managed to keep that quirky smile as he watched the place rise to the top of the tops and sink down into the hellhole that it currently has been for the last five years. Since the turn of the millenium, that place has been on a slipply slide to the bottom, and it almost crashed head first this year by nearly failing to open in early September. No matter how terrible the smoke is in there or how black my hands ever get, that place will always feel like home to me. And one day, when the place is long boarded up or getting its shit ruined by construction equipment, I'll be able to look up at the shithole on the hill and remember all the unforgettable times that I had there.

Other than the all night bowling, there was nothing really great to speak of this weekend. Friday night consisted of me hanging out with kathleen and sarah at jeff's bonfire, and myself, jeff, conroy, and another kid doing a live rendition of Wonderwall by Oasis. God I love that song. Saturday night I spent the night bowling with kevin, nayhouse, and shawn masten, who I hadn't seen in quite some time. It was good to reminisce as I could see that although we had moved our seperate directions since graduation, there was still a bit of the old friendship that was rekindled that night. I spent the rest of the night fitfully sleeping on the floor of kevin and nayhouse's dorm in oakland. We went down to marketplace sunday morning, and later on I traveled out to west mifflin.

In other news, the online poker seems to have hit a rough patch. In just two days, I watched as 25% of the bankroll went off to cyberspace as I simply went card dead for about 36 straight hours. It started saturday when I was down to the last 100 of a 5+.50 tournament on stars. I had an average stack, but just got blinded away to 42nd place. Very disappointing because I felt as if I had a decent chance to final table it. The rest of the weekend consisted of me bubbling in SNG's four or five times and running into a terrible situation in a cash game where I flopped a set of jacks and lost to a flopped straight. I'm known for writing about bad beats, but that was just a bad situation there. There was nothing I could do(I guess I could have mucked when he raised), but obviously it's tough to put your opponent on exactly A 1O on a J Q K rainbow board. I began to recover tonight as I got 5th in a 45 person SNG and tripled cashed in back to back to back SNG's, yet I failed to win either of the two that I got heads up in. It just seems that it's coming down to me getting a little card dead or losing races. You have to win races to win SNG's as you can only expect to get in dominating spots every once in awhile.

To end this post, I'd like to give you a little taste of Claude McKay. I discovered him this year in my poetry class, and out of all the African American authors we have read, he is second only to Langston Hughes(who is probably one of my three favorite poets of all time). That will be a topic for a future post, but until then, enjoy this one.

If We Must Die
By: Claude McKay

If we must die- let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursed lot.
If we must die- oh, let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
Oh, Kinsmen! We must meet the common foe;
Though far outnumbered, let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

mh

the winds of fortune

2006-11-16T00:28:00.000-05:00

"Yet I am of the opinion that it is better to be rash than over-cautious, because fortune is a woman and, if you wish to keep her down, you must beat her and pound her."
-Nicollo Machiavelli, The Prince

Luck is a funny thing. Just when you think that you have a lot of things figured out, something happens that changes your view on things. In my last post, I addressed the fact that I needed to start thinking about situations from different perspectives(using the example of how the Native Americans looked at Europeans stealing their land). Most situations are cut and dry where there is a definite right and wrong thing to do, but for other ones you have to really analyze your options and come to the decision that you think is right. Of course, just when you think that you have your mind made up, luck comes back and rears its ugly head by giving you another option. I actually stumbled upon that quote when I was reading The Prince this afternoon, and I have to say that I agree with what Machiavelli says about luck. He concludes that no matter how hard you try, life comes down to 50% preparation and 50% being in the right spot, at the right time. What we fail to see is that being in the right spot does constitute half of making correct decisions, but being in a perfect situation happens so rarely that we often forgo thinking that we could make a bad situation into a good one. Also, he states that the people that will be the most successful in life are the ones that can quickly adapt to the situation at hand. Once again, I have had many experiences where I failed to change my strategy and most of them ended up not working out so well. All in all, I'm glad that I discovered Machiavelli's work(in a book that I stole from PSUM's library) and it was worth the weeding through a lot of his more boring topics.

In other news, our flag football season is done. To begin with, I'd like to thank everyone that played on the team because it was definitely an enjoyable season. Our game Tuesday was probably the best game that we played all season. It's a shame that the season has to end so early because we are just getting into a groove now. In the first half of the game, we played stingy defense, but they still managed to lead 12-0. After we had a little team meeting at halftime, we had a really good drive to start the second half that ended in a punt pinning them down deep in their own end. The first play of their drive, their QB threw to my man, and I tipped the ball and shane caught the tip and returned it to their 1. Mark ran an option right and Pitch caught a touchdown pass. We missed the extra point, and it was 12-6. On our next offensive drive, they got a safety on us putting them ahead 14-6. However, we struck back once again and Jon intercepted the ball and returned it for a TD for us. 14-12 now. On their next drive, Mark came with a safety blitz and we got a safety to tie the game. On our drive, we had to punt. 51 seconds left now. In what I remember as a flurry, they got the ball down to our 20 with 20 seconds left. I remember running across the field in coverage and timing the possible interception run perfectly. The quarterback bit on the old trap and I had the interception. In all my years, I can count the number of balls that I've dropped that were perfect throws to me on one hand. It was muddy and rainy, but there is no excuse for watching the ball go right through your hands and into the receiver's that you're covering. The good thing was that he fumbled the ball into the end zone and we got the ball at our 10 due to the touchback rule. The bad news was that with 9 seconds left, our season ended as mark was blitzed from all sides and was unable to get rid of the ball. He was safetied, and we lost another close one. It was heartbreaking not because we lost, but the fact that we were huge underdogs starting the season and by the end, we were able to compete with last year's champs. Oh well, we still have one more game to go and we are going to do what we did at the start of the season: have fun.

In regards to the situation that I was describing, I still haven't made up my mind. It's simple, but it's complex. On the surface, it looks like an easy, one step decision, but there are so many other factors that will ultimately play a part in my decision. Enough about that now though.

Song of Myself(Poem 46)
By: Walt Whitman

No I, not any one else can travel that road for you,
You must travel it yourself.

It is not far, it is within reach,
Perhaps you have been on it since you were born and did not know,
Perhaps it is everywhere on water and on land.

Shoulder your duds dear son and I will mine, and let us hasten forth,
Wonderful cities and free nations we shall fetch as we go.

If you tire, give me both burdens, and rest the chuff of your hand on my hip,
And in due time you shall repay the same service to me,
For after we start we never lie by again.

This day before dawn I ascended a hill and looked at the crowded heaven,
And I said to my spirt When we become the enfolders of those orbs, and
the pleasure and knowledge of every thing in them shall we be filled and satisfied then?
And my spirit said No, we but level that lift to pass and continue beyond.

You are also asking me questions and I hear you,
I answer that I cannot answer, you must find out for yourself.

Sit a while dear son,
Here are biscuits to eat and here is milk to drink,
But as soon as you sleep and renew yourself in sweet clothes, I kiss you
with a good-bye kiss and open the gate for your egress hence.

Long enough have you dream'd contemptible dreams,
Now I was the gum from your eyes,
You must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light and of every moment of your life.

Long have you timidly waded holding a plank by the shore,
Now I will you to be a bold swimmer,
To jump off in the midst of the sea, rise again, nod to me, shout, and
laughingly dash with your hair.

mh

postcards to columbus

2006-11-11T23:32:00.000-05:00

Have you ever been in a situation where you needed a second opinion to find what the right thing is to do, but the person that you might ask for help cannot help you because they are involved in the situation?

While you ponder what that may be about, I will briefly update you about my life. Poker feels more like a job now than a hobby, and that's how I wanted it to be. I put in my 20 hours a week and get paid less than minimum wage, but things are beginning to look up. Today, I was in prime position to win a 45 person 6 dollar turbo SNG, but i ran into a tough situation with jacks, and another one with AK. Poker has consumed a lot of my time lately, and it has been for the most part enjoyable.

The control of both the House and Senate by the Democrats is going to spell both good and bad things. First, I think that it will spell a brief backwards turn in the market(which has had its best three consecutive quarters ever) because Democratic policies usually coincide with less laissez faire economics and more government control. Also, the price of gas may be going up because of OPEC's decision to reduce production by 1 million bb a day and the ties that many Republicans in Congress had with oil giants overseas have been cut because of their removal from office. On the good side, the Democrats claim that they will have a less scandalous Congress, but we all remember what happened the last time a Democrat promised us to have a scandal free administration(er, Bill Clinton). I like that the Dems supposedly want to challenge Bush on setting a timetable for leaving Iraq, but it's something that is going to be tough to convince Bush to change his mind on. The way I see it, Bush knows that the Iraq ship is sinking, but he's determined to go down with it. The sad thing is, he is probably going to cost the Republican in 08 a chance to be elected unless his approval rating is higher than its current low of 31%.

I'm looking forward to Thanksgiving break because everyone will be back in town. I have deeply missed some of my friends that left at the end of August for institutions of higher learning. Speaking of higher learning, I'm already done with my microecon class and the rest of the semester is going by so quickly. In all seriousness, where did the whole year go? 2006 was probably the quickest year that I've ever been a part of. Next semester, my classes are going to be a lot more difficult because they will be focused on higher level economic concepts. Obviously, I am excited for it because I love a challenge and typically as things get more difficult, I start giving better performances.

So now that you've had time to think about it, what do you do? How do you make a decision that is going to affect you for at least the rest of this year? Which way do you go, or do you just completely defer on making the decision until later in life? These are all things that I need to think about. The title refers to looking at things in a different light, something that Sherman Alexie does in her poem "Postcards to Columbus". Enjoy it.

Postcards to Columbus
By: Sherman Alexie

Beginning at the front door of the White House, travel west
for 500 years, pass through small towns and house fires, ignore
hitchikers and stranded motorists, until you find yourself
back at the beginning of this journey, this history and country

folded over itself like a Mobius strip, Christopher Columbus
where have you been? Lost between Laramie and San Francisco
or in the reservation HUD house, building a better mousetrap?
Seymour saw you shooting free throws behind the Tribal School

in a thunderstorm. Didn't you know lightning strikes the earth
800 times a second? But, Columbus, how could you ever imagine
how often our lives change? Electricity is lightning pretending
to be permanent and when the Indian child pushes the paper clip

into the electrical outlet, it's applied science, insane economics
of supply and demand, the completion of a 20th century circuit.
Christopher Columbus, you are the most successful real estate agent
who ever lived, sold acres and acres of myth, a house built on stilts

above the river salmon travel by genetic memory. Beneath the burden
of 15,000 years my tribe celebrated this country's 200th birthday
by refusing to speak English and we'll honor the 500th anniversary
of your invasion, Columbus, by driving blindfolded cross-country

naming the first tree we destroy America. We'll make the first guardrail
we crash through our national symbol. Our flag will be a white sheet
stained with blood and piss. Columbus, can you hear me over white noise
of your television set? Can you hear the ghosts of drums approaching?

mh

the return

2006-10-20T00:42:00.000-04:00

First of all, I'd like to welcome back everyone that is currently reading this thing. If you had feigning interest because of my almost two month lay off, I don't blame you one bit. Whenever I wrote my last post, I knew that someday I would return. In the last four or five months before I ended writing up posts, I wasn't updating frequently enough for the weekly updates to mean anything. I felt that my writing was improving by leaps and bounds, but I was just sick of writing. I was especially sick of overanalyzing every detail of my life. I wanted to live my life, not report to other about living my life. There are pros and cons to a blog, and I had discovered that the constant reminder of what I had done over the past two and a half years wasn't always a welcoming thought.

Over the last two months, things are going exactly as I thought they would go. I have enjoyed living life and haven't had too many things to worry about. Nothing earth shattering happened over this period of time, and that was part of the reason that I delayed my return for so long. I experienced sort of a golden age of living in the fact that everyday I woke up, I was happy. I realized something after the failure of my last relationship and that is that you must be completely happy with yourself before you can be happy with anyone else. In the past, I would always say "Well, if I had a girlfriend that cared and loved me, I'd be happy" or "If I had his ability, I would be a happy person." Naturally, I came to realize that I am who I am, and I am ecstatic to say that I have my own unique set of talents and thoughts that make up the essence of myself. I think that this directly led me to rediscover poker after an almost two month layoff with that. As many of you know, I was taking huge hits at the beginning of the summer, but I had learned from years past on how to effectively manage a diminishing bankroll and was able to save myself before completely drowning. I took two months off, and then wandered into a play chip game over at Full Tilt Poker. After about three weeks of dominating the 1k/2k NL game over there(+2.5 million) and the 2500/5k limit game(+550k) I made a conscientious decision to return to skyview. My first session I won playing 1/2 no limit, and I rediscovered that the key to winning in poker is trying to grind away at small pots and then using that money to take shots at big pots. Since my return, I have had 4 winning sessions and 2 losing sessions. I have made huge strides in my online game, as evidenced by my performances over the last week in big tournaments. First, in a $2.50 triple shootout, I got down to three left in round two when I ran into some bad luck when the Rock of Gibraltar flopped top and bottom pair as I was trying to steal with middle pair. I ended up finishing 9/216 in that one. The next day, I almost qualified for Round 3 of the Moneymaker Millionaire. In a field of over 5000, I got 185th place when my flopped flush was rivered by a queen high flush. The day after that, I made it through Round 1 of the EPT Dublin qualifier by playing four solid hours of poker(and of course, minimizing the bad beats) to take top 7/755. In the second round(where top 2 got an all expense paid trip to the EPT event and Dublin) I moved allin early with AK on a K 10 2 flop. A guy to my left made the call with Q 10 and hit running J 9. I was just incredibly disappointed at that point, because I had done so well the day before and was unable to at least put myself into a position where I could have qualified for that event.

Regarding the Internet Gambling Bill, I believe it is the stupidest piece of legislation ever passed. In my opinion, the government has no right to tell its citizens where they can and cannot spend their money. If an American invests in overseas companies, they may be loathed by the government, but once again, the government cannot decide for its citizens where they should spend their money. In my opinion, this bill was passed for three reasons: 1) the government is afraid that these offshort sites where many of the online poker websites are based is sucking in too much American capital, 2)the government isn't getting a share of any of this, or 3) Bill Frist is a complete moron. Of course, I would like to believe that it is 3 for several reasons. Frist says that this is applicable to online poker because it is a game of chance. If poker is truly a game of chance(such as craps or roulette) where both players have an equal chance of winning, I would like to challenge Frist to a little heads up poker in whatever game he chooses. I believe that if I thrashed him around long enough it would get through his head that poker is(in the long run) a game of 90% skill and 10% luck. To me, there is as much luck involved in long run poker as there is in any other sport that is played. On the other hand, I hope that the first two were the real reasons that this bill was passed, because they are both legitimate reasons. However, the government could have taken much less destructive measures and simply charged a sort of an import tax on poker. Obviously, when goods come into our country, there are taxes on them. Do the same thing with poker. Take a small percentage from the rake and every cashout that is processed. If they told me that there would be a 2% tax on the rake of every pot, I would laugh and say "okay, let's get on with the game now". But this isn't how the government is run. Instead of doing things that may help to alleviate the trillions of dollars of debt(remember, the online gaming industry was worth an estimated 80 billion dollars in 2005), it takes destructive action to stop the flow of cash into foreign markets and force the close of many middle-man sites such as FirePay and Neteller. Not only that, but the added pressure of losing customers in the United States has forced PartyPoker and Pacific Poker to suspend all operations to customers in our "great" nation. Was it any coincidence that the stocks of brick and mortar casinos such as Harrah's(which the government makes money off of) skyrocketed after the passing of this law? Instead of completely upheaving the system and leaving hundreds in the poker industry jobless and thousands more confused on the future of online poker, the government felt it needed to change things more to their liking. Not to escape on too much of a tangent, but doesn't this look familiar to what happened in Iraq? Things are running smoothly until the US government steps in. You tell me who's the criminal: the man who creates chaos or the one who stops it?

In the past week, I've felt really drained of everything. It started last Thursday where I pulled an all nighter to finish my game theory speech, and I've yet to recover from that almost a week later. In total, I haven't got more than 7 hours sleep because I have been up late doing homework or trying to find inspiration for the next day. I have found that I need to re-discover the reasons that I am in school each day that I go there and listen to lectures that sound the same and assignments that are a waste of time. This semester, my only challenge is Economics, something that I'll probably be switching my major to because I find it incredibly interesting. Ever since I read Atlas Shrugged, I have had a completely different view of the role of money in society. Despite all the subtle nuances that go along with my life, I have little reason to complain. I can honestly say that I am ready to go up to PSU main next year. I am thoroughly excited to escape this place. In the next 10 months, I'm going to be looking for as many ways to leave Pittsburgh as possible(trips to turningstone, niagra falls, the dominican republic, and ocean city are definitely in order). It's not that I hate pittsburgh, it's simply that I want to get out and see the rest of the world. I have read about what life is like in a real casino, but I've never really been in one. I spoke Spanish and learned about Dominican culture in my Spanish IV class, but I have never been completely diffused into Latino culture. These are all things that I want to accomplish. Also, I'd love to qualify for a big poker tournament online. Whether it be an online tournament or one that takes me halfway around the globe, I want to play in a big tournament before I leave for PSU. My situation with money is fine. As most of you know, I haven't worked a "real job" for about three months now. To be discreete about it, I have other sources of income(not involving the sale of drugs, alcohol, whatever else you might think).

In conclusion, I'd like to thank everyone for reading once again. It's good to be writing again, and I thoroughly feel better after putting my words onto the screen. I'll leave you with the words of Robert Pinsky. It's a poem that I discovered in English class this year and one that I definitely enjoy. I hope you will as well

ABC
by: Robert Pinsky

Any body can die, evidently. Few
Go happily, irradiating joy,

Knowledge, love. Many
Need oblivion, painkillers,
Quickest respite.

Sweet time unafflicted,
Various world:

X=your zenith.

mh

any closing remarks?

2006-09-02T00:38:00.000-04:00

Let me explain the title. I feel it's that time to end my blogging career for a few reasons. First, I'm tired of telling people what I do. Your lives are plenty interesting enough. Second, know that this blog doesn't encapsulate my life. Too many people have access to this material for me to tell you all what I really think of everything. But such is the way things are. Finally, I think now is the time to bring everything to an end because I have written here for over two years. Over 150 posts about things that happened in my life.

If I look back at the last two and a half years, I realize that this was truly a period of growth. Simply put, growth is defined by suffering and agony. Nobody can tell you that the late teenage years are a cakewalk, and I'm no exception. I have seen my share of tough times. But I can't really complain, seeing as I saw some of my favorite memories during these times. When I think about my life before these last few years, I think of innocence. I didn't know pain. I didn't know heartbreak. And I sure as hell didn't know suffering. Before this time, I used to think that suffering was watching the pirates lose season after season or losing a close baseball game. Sometimes that isn't fun, but there are things much worse that will happen to you. I cannot describe in words how valuable these last two and a half years have been for me as an individual that will enter the "real" working world sooner than later. For those of you that have read this blog the whole way through(I know there are very few who read from the beginning) I both thank you and apologize to you. Back then, my writing was terrible. It has improved gradually throughout these two years. Also, I apologize for the many posts where reason was bypassed for pure emotion. I've "obliterated" daniel negreanu, shared my uneducated thoughts on youth baseball, and occasionally whined about things. However, for the most part, I have kept an even keel for the majority of my posts. I have got to post some of my poetry. Because of this blog, I have a timeless record of what this period in my life was like. I don't believe that any other time in my life will I meet and say goodbye to so many different people. If you think about, your parents have probably associated with the same people for many years because those people are stagnant individuals. They aren't moving around and their attitudes about each other don't change much. That's the way we'll all be some day, just our boring old lives. So you have to enjoy being young, because I can guess being old is gonna be a bitch. I wouldn't substitute the friendships that I've made and lessons that I've learned for anything. Those things are of true value because in my mind, they are irreplaceable. So for one final time, I'm giving you a blog entry about what happened in my life. Enjoy folks.

In regards to my book, I'm doing so-so on it. I've yet to finish reading it and I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to finish it. Other than that though, it has been a very entertaining book to read. It has consumed my life for the past week and I've only gotten to page 400/1070 on it. I'm not sure what I'm going to do when classes start. Other than that, I haven't really been all that busy with things. This past week was basically one of relaxation(for the most part) because PSU starts a week later than everyone else. Today, I read my book for awhile then went bowling for the first time in a long time. I only threw two games, but I could feel it coming back to me at the end of the second game. We did not throw a third, but I guess that I would have broken 200 had we done so. I'll save you the memories of high school bowling because that would really be going off on a tangent. After that, immekus picked me up and we went over creighton's house. We chilled for awhile and then decided to play a holdem game. I think for the most part, I played the best holdem that I've played in a long time. I ended up getting down to heads up with ieraci and we chopped it up. Side gaming was enjoyable as always. At skyview, the atmosphere is extremely cut throat. It's like nine dudes swarming through the jungle trying to kill each other with machetes. Okay, that was officially the worst metaphor ever. On the other hand, home game side gaming is fun because you're with friends. Everyone knows that for the most part, the money stays within the collection. Nobody is really killing the game everytime that we play, and there is no rake to rape us in the ass. For me, side gaming was up and down. Most of the games that we play are 1 or 2A PLH or PLO. PLH is one of my better games, but I never seem to get dealt anything. In PLO, i need to hit flops because my variety of starting hands is much too liberal. I remember at least twice tonight during side games where I made a bad decision that led to me losing the pot. Oh well, nobody plays perfect right?

So that is that. Take it for what it is. Almost certainly, this is my last post. I'm ready to close the book on one chapter of my life and embark onto the next. I wish everyone the best with whatever they do in life. Do what makes you happy. It is okay to work hard and make lots of money, but don't lose sight of the reason that you're working so hard: your family, your friends, and relaxation. I don't claim to know the secret of life. I barely know how to run my little life and I am just trying to share some of my experiences in life with other people through these words. I will leave you with the immortal words of some of my favorite people and then the lyrics to a song which I discovered rather recently. Other than that, godspeed. Godspeed to whatever you're after in life.

Quotes-

"That's what I love about them high school girls. I get older and they stay the same age."
-Wooderson

"I feel sorry for people who don't drink. When they wake up in the morning, that's as good as they're going to feel all day.”
- Frank Sinatra

“I know the answer! The answer lies within the heart of all mankind! The answer is twelve? I think I'm in the wrong building.”
-Charles M. Schulz

"Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love."
-Charles M. Schulz

"Sometimes I lie awake at night and I ask, "Why me?", then a voice answers "Nothing personal, your name just happened to come up."
-Charles M. Schulz

"Why can't we get all the people together in the world that we really like and then just stay together? I guess that wouldn't work. Someone would leave. Someone always leaves and then we have to say good-bye. I hate good-byes. I know what I need. I need more hellos."
-Charles M. Schulz

"Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught."
-Oscar Wilde

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."
-Oscar Wilde

"It is neither good nor bad, but thinking makes it so.”
-William Shakespeare

"What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Riddle
Five For Fighting

There was a man back in '95
Whose heart ran out of summers
But before he died, I asked him

Wait, what's the sense in life
Come over me, Come over me

He said,

Son why you got to sing that tune
Catch a Dylan song or some eclipse of the moon
Let an angel swing and make you swoon
Then you will see... You will see

Then he said,

Here's a riddle for you
Find the Answer
There's a reason for the world
You and I...

Picked up my kid from school today
Did you learn anything cause in the world today
You can't live in a castle far away
Now talk to me, come talk to me

He said, Dad I'm big but we're smaller than small
In the scheme of things, well we're nothing at all
Still every mother's child sings a lonely song
So play with me, come play with me

And Hey Dad

Here's a riddle for you
Find the Answer
There's a reason for the world
You and I...

I said,

Son for all
I've told you
When you get right down to the
Reason for the world...
Who am I?

There are secrets that we still have left to find
There have been mysteries from the beginning of time
There are answers we're not wise enough to see

He said... You looking for a clue
I Love You free...

The batter swings and the summer flies
As I look into my angel's eyes
A song plays on while the moon is hiding over me
Something comes over me

I guess we're big and I guess we're small
If you think about it man you know we got it all
Cause we're all we got on this bouncing ball
And I love you free
I love you freely

Here's a riddle for you
Find the Answer
There's a reason for the world
You and I...

mh

quite uneventful

2006-08-29T01:42:00.000-04:00

that pretty much describes how my life has been going for the last week or so. Other than saying goodbye to numerous personalities and getting ready to say goodbye to more penn state friends when we start classes, my life has been consumed with one thing: win this essay contest. It wasn't so much that it was a normal essay contest, or I wouldn't be so adament about doing well on it. Rather, it was a challenge from an old English teacher who thought that I could benefit from not only reading the encyclopedia of a book called Atlas Shrugged; but also from being tortured on writing what will turn out to be close to a 10 page essay on it. It concerns me that the more I read this book, the more enjoyment I get out of reading it.

Today was, once again, very boring for the most part. Aside from working all day on reading and beginning to write this thing, I went out to hit golf balls, ran a few errands, and watched high stakes poker on GSN(for the first time in a long time). With this little break in the action, I've been able to keep up with sports for the most part. When school starts and I start working again, my sports knowledge will sink into oblivion, and my brother will constantly harass me about how many useless baseball statistics he knows. At the driving range today, I was absolutely killing the ball. As usual, my irons felt very smooth, and I think I fixed the problem with my driver. I was determined to find the lowest tee there and it didn't take me long to find one that looked like I could do some damage with. After the first few flopped swings with the driver, I realized that the key was to stand far enough away and swing furiously at the ball. And guess what? It works! I was slamming the ball 260 yards, right down the middle every time. It felt so good to get away from that stupid book and swinging a club and sending a ball flying 130 MPH will definitely give you a feeling of condescension. On high stakes poker, I was surprised to see that negreanu was still taking a beating. The problem with his play wasn't that people were getting out on him, it was that he was paying them off when he was obviously beat. One hand in particular sticks out in my mind: The flop was 2 4 6 with 2 diamonds, and negreanu had flopped a nut straight with eli elezra flopping a set of sixes. Negreanu bet, eli raised, and negreanu raised one more time and eli called. At this point, the worst hand that you can put your opponent on is two pair, or a huge pkt pair like kings or aces(which was def. feasible because eli was calling everything that day). The turn came a rainbow 5 and danny bet out 30k, which was called by eli. The river came the dread card, the 2. Negreanu checked, and eli bet 60k. Danny called, and eli showed him the winning full boat. How do you call in this spot? Is this a call that says "well, I know that I'm beat, but I just want to see how bad I got sucked out on so that I can mope about it?" Personally, I've made calls like that, but it just shows you how vulnerable even the greatest professionals are.

Tomorrow will be a smorgesbord(sp?) of activities. In under two hours, I have to drive my dad to the airport for his flight to nashville. Then, I have to get my brother to school, and run to about 6 places after that. That, combined with the fact that I'm only 20% done with this book that I need to read. Oh, and they're showing the main event part 2 tomorrow night. For two hours. Oh well, I might be catching late night reruns of that one.

For old time's sake, we'll put a poem in here. I actually found this somewhere and decided to make a few changes of my own to it. Enjoy.

If God had answered all my prayers
Edited by: Matt Hartman

If God had answered all my prayers
I’d be traveling the world in my own private yacht
Involved in several romantic affairs
With women whose beauty I longingly sought

If God had answered all my prayers
I’d have fame, fortune and beautiful weather
I’d sail along the coast of Spain,
And if inclined, stay there forever

But if God had answered all my prayers
There I’d be, a millionaire
Beneath the sun a world away
From where I met you that rainy day

mh

adios, amigo

2006-08-22T23:44:00.000-04:00

I would like to start out by saying that the title refers to nayhouse. Many of you know him as "the jew", "moses", or "the only jew in baldwin". I have known the kid for about 15 years now, and tomorrow he is leaving to live down in oakland with another friend of mine, kevin ngo. I still remember the first day that I talked to him. I was just a shaggy haired lad who was more interested in going to baseball games to throw rocks at the fence than learn how to play baseball. I'm not going to give you details of every single thing that we did together, because blogger has a limit on its characters. With south baldwin all star baseball we were perenial losers. The two of us were usually two of the better players on the team, but there was little that we could do to help our lacksadisical squad. As teammates on squirrel hill and baldwin supercolt we had much better results. In 2004 our squirrel hill team was ranked #2 in the city of pittsburgh, yet we were bounced from the city playoffs in the first round. I recall all the vivid details of the game we lost 1-0 and how hard it was to say goodbye to people like phil, teddy, buddy, brandon, and shane. His house has been a second home to me, and sometimes even a first home. Throughout the years, I have lost contact with many of the people that I once considered good friends. Even after being a little more than a year removed from high school, I barely talk to anyone that I graduated with. I doubt that I will lose contact with nayhouse though. There is too much history and brotherhood to. Last year was sort of a test year of how I could do without some of my friends not being here. Now, most of my friends will be living somewhere but the south hills. The few remaining people that I will have to hang out with include bradburn, leigh, kloby, immekus, ben, and a few other underclassmen. Everyone else is going away. Change happens. It's an integral part of life, and I've come to know this. But by no means is change easy. Like the REO Speedwagon song said, roll with the changes. Damn right.

mh

rolling along

2006-08-15T01:13:00.000-04:00

That sums up how my days have been going recently. The summer is winding down, and I really cannot complain about how I spent my summer. I hardly wasted any time and enjoyed the people that I spent the summer with. Yesterday, I was watching the history of the nayhouse family on this DVD that his family made, and I realized something. All of those smiling faces in the pictures have passed into the annals of time. I thought about what they would say if they could see those people for one last time. Do times change so much that old friends won't even be able to relate whenever they see each other in the future? How many people will I stop talking to before it is all said and done? Just something to ponder I guess.

Yesterday, I hung out with nayhouse and bradburn for awhile and then my family came over for my brother's birthday party. It is always good to see your family, because you probably only get to see them once a month at most during the year. Later that night, I went over stock's house and had a fun night.

Today, I was pretty lax for the first five hours of my day. I briefly helped sammy's dad in installing our new air conditioner, but he did the brunt of the work. At about 4, I went down ben's to play a slight alteration of baseball. My team lost both games and we decided to play some poker at about 8. The holdem game was frustrating because I couldn't get any cards and the one time I tried to steal the pot, brennan pondered a call for awhile with top pair and finally put it in. In between games, I bs'd with kloby and bradburn for awhile before side gaming started. Side games went something like this: For 2 hours, I dominated the table. In the last 10 minutes, a kid named berg went on one of the most impressive runs that I've seen. The kid played a lot of good poker and took advantage of his good fortune. That's why I love to play poker so much. You can get beat around for 2 hours straight, then come back and have a great run and end up on top for the night. As for me, I ended up dead even for the night. Sometimes getting to even for the night is a victory in itself. The damage could have been much worse, and I was glad that we stopped at midnight. I talked with ben for about an hour, then sprinted 1/2 a mile home in the lightning and pouring rain. Finally, I sat down and decided to do a blog post for the first time in a couple of days.

To end this post, I'd like to address another situation, that being about myself working at ace. Well actually, that would be a lack of myself working there. The relationship ended on terrible terms, and I'm not really going to go into it here, because anyone can read it here. I would just like to say thanks to the one true friend that I made out of the whole year long deal there, and that was mindy. We had a lot of fun there and made it a more lively place, no matter how bad a day either of us was having. People like angie, cara, drew, and larry lattner(who will prob. never read this) also made my long days there bearable. A big thanks to everyone who ever visited me down there in that prison of a work. A special thanks to nayhouse for almost getting kicked out repeatedly.

Until next time,
mh

po

2006-08-10T00:48:00.000-04:00

Po: so when are you writing your next entry?
Po: cuz you better say my name in it
Po: just like make it the title

There you go po, you're famous now. Actually, if you're reading this(which you better, i dedicated a f*cking post to you) you're really cool and it's nice whenever we hang out together.

Anyways, the last few days have been not so exciting, hence no update. Sunday, nayhouse, ben, sarah, kathleen, po, and I went to kennywood. It was definitely worth the discounted rate of seven dollars that we had to pay for it. Actually, it was the most fun that I've had at kennywood for at least a few years. Monday, I attempted to fix my lawnmower and bradburn and I watched the lost episodes of dave chapelle. It's kinda sad to see such a great show go down like that, but it was enjoyable while it lasted. Later on, bradburn, po, ben, sarah, and I hung out in front of sarahs house and talked about a variety of topics. Tuesday, nayhouse and I got up early to play golf. I shot a 43 and he got a 52, which were career bests for both of us. Later on, bradburn, nayhouse and I went out to falconi field to watch the riverhounds scrimmage the columbus crew. It ended in a very indecisive draw, although the riverhounds dominated most of the game. On the way home, we stopped at EnP and nayhouse hit on our waitress(with help from me of course) and ended up getting her number. Just thought I should mention that random event and give him some props. Today, I did some work outside, then helped my mom clean and replace all of the screens in our house. At about 530, my brother, my dad, and I went golfing. I ended up shooting 42, which is a record for me on the front nine of the eighteen at SP. Afterwards, I went to west mifflin to hang out with some old friends. All in all, it's been a decent time since I posted last. I'm sad to see the summer unwinding, but also excited to get back to school.

Until next time,
mh

welcome back, welcome back

2006-08-04T22:24:00.000-04:00

"There's something I noticed this week. You left the game, but the game didn't leave you."
-TM

The week at Cooperstown was thrilling to say the least. I have long records of what happened up there, but I'm going to briefly condense it. Opening ceremonies were cancelled on Saturday because of inclement weather. The tent at the park where everyone eats and hangs out almost blew over. The ceremonies began at 8:30 on Sunday morning. Lou, the founder of Dreams Park, gave his usual speech about life in general. He may be an ignorant guy that clears 5 million a year from this thing, but he is right about a few things. First, life is a lot like baseball. There are up days and down days and the best we can hope for is to somehow end up over .500 when all is said and done. Also, his remarks about having dreams were much appreciated. Basically, he summed it up as saying something to the effect of this: "Even if you strike out, eight batters later the dream is alive again." How true is that? How many times have you made a mistake and then are given a second, third, or fourth chance to fix things? Enough about Lou though. Our team, the West Jefferson Hills Wildcats, qualified for the final 5 out of 96 teams in a team competition called around the horn. It's one of the four skill competitions and the only one where the whole team has to be involved for the team to win. In the finals, we had the lowest time and we got the trophy. It was a great feeling to beat out 95 other teams to get there. Also, greg lost the race around the bases by 2 hundreths of a second. Our first game was at 4:00 pm against Brookfield. They were a team of 11 year olds that put up a pretty decent fight, but we eventually won the game 3-0. The rest of the first round was ups and downs, and eventually we finished 5-2, losing to mudville(AAU team from washington) and south san francisco(where one kid hit 2 homers to kill us). My brother pitched 2 games and was 2-0. He hit about .333 with a walk off grand slam in the last game. I'm not going to go into the details of every game, but you can find them at cooperstowndreamspark.com

In the playoff round, things got interesting. We got two byes and played at 6:00 pm against the utah eagles. We won that game 15-0 and we were ready for the next game. It was to be at 8:00 pm against the st. petersburg stingers from florida. To sum it up, they were the most obnoxious, second class team that I've ever seen. They swore at our coaches, threw at our players, punched our players, and yelled obscurities at our fans. They were supposed to be the #4 team in all of florida, but we gave them a little taste of pittsburgh baseball. In the first inning, greg hit a grand slam. I've never cheered louder in my life. It was cruise control from there on. Greg schneider threw one of the greatest games I have ever seen in my life. It reminded me of how great baseball is. He had 12 K's and no-hit them to shut them up. It's not the way that the game should be played, but it's incredibly satisfying to beat a team that is pompous.

Thursday morning, our run in the tournament ended. We were outclassed by the #1 team in the country, the central florida sun dogs. They were simply a better team, and they were classy about winning as well. It was a final of 11-5, but my brother did have a solo home run over the scoreboard as a last hoorah of sorts. He hit it so far that it went into some desolate marsh in cooperstown. I guess a part of all of us will always be in that field, or that marsh at least.

The rest of the ceremonies were uneventful, just a lot of picture taking and saying goodbyes. I could only smile as we pulled out of dreams park for perhaps the last time ever. The northern Kaatskill mountains dotted the terrain, but the image of those fields will stay in my memory for the rest of time.

I'll leave you with a song by Kenny Rogers. There's a twist to the song, and maybe you'll pick it up.

The Greatest
By: Kenny Rogers

Little boy in a baseball hat stands in the field with his ball and bat
Says, "I am the greatest player of them all"
Puts his bat on his shoulder and he tosses up his ball.
And the ball goes up and the ball comes down,
Swings his bat all the way around
The world so still you can hear the sound, the baseball falls to the ground.
Now the little boy doesn't say a word, picks up his ball he is undeterred.
Says, "I am the greatest that there has ever been"
And he grits his teeth and he tries again.
And the ball goes up and the ball comes down,
Swings his bat all the way around
The world so still you can hear the sound, the baseball falls to the ground.
He makes no excuses he shows no fear
He just closes his eyes and listens to the cheers.
Little boy he adjusts his hat, picks up his ball, stares at his bat
Says "I am the greatest when the game is on the line"
And he gives his all one last time.
And the ball goes up and the moon so bright
Swings his bat with all his might
The world's as still as still can be, the baseball falls
And that's strike three.
Now it's suppertime and his momma calls, little boy starts home with his bat and ball.
Says, "I am the greatest, that is a fact, But even I didn't know I could pitch like that!"
Says, "I am the greatest, that is understood, But even I didn't know I could pitch that good!"

mh

the empire state

2006-07-28T01:22:00.000-04:00

About this time tomorrow, that's where I'll be. I'm leaving for cooperstown later today at about 6:30 in the morning. It's always a good time up there because as I stated in a previous blog post, they really don't have many modern accessories there. I plan on watching a lot of baseball, being outside a lot, and writing during the night. I'll be there from friday until about midday saturday. The schedule of teams that they play looks something like this:

Sunday-
1. West Jefferson Hills Wildcats v South San Francisco Fog
2. WJHW v North Carolina Confederates

Monday-
3. WJHW v Brookfield Bulldogs
4. WJHW v Ridgewood Rebels

Tuesday-
5. WJHW v Northwest Travelers
6. WJHW v Mudville Pilots

Wednesday-
7. WJHW v Hopedale Blue Raiders

So that's what it looks like. South San Fran should be a good team along with North Carolina. The rest of the teams appear(on paper) decently weak. It just sucks that they might start the tourney off 0-2. Other than that, I can't really complain. I'm going on vacation to the utopia of all things baseball.

Until next saturday,
mh

enjoy it while it lasts

2006-07-25T23:33:00.000-04:00

I'm talking about the summer, of course. I don't really remember when I posted last, so I'll just give a brief rundown of last week. On wednesday, I know that for sure I went to skyview. To sum things up, I didn't complete any draws. That's the key to the game: getting there in big pots. I haven't won a big pot there in a ridiculous amount of time, but I'll probably keep trudging on. On thursday I went over to chris lee's for awhile and then went to make a few deposits. My days kind of run together and I want to say that this was the day that we went swimming in nayhouse's pool. On friday I went to my brother's game and they won the championship for the munhall tournament. They beat USC and the team celebrated by going to this diner near my house. It was a great time. Aside from being awoken halfway through my sleep, it was a good night. Saturday was a pretty good day at work and afterwards nayhouse and I decided to go out to ross park mall. The highlight of the trip was this store that sold these really comfortable bean bags that were about 3 times the size of a normal bean bag. After getting wendys, we went back to his house and kathleen and sarah met us back there. Bradburn joined in the fun a little later. The five of us watched some boondog movie for a little while until deciding to shoot pool. It was an enjoyable time. Work on sunday was anything but graceful. It just seems like an uphill struggle and I'm not sure I want to do it anymore. After work, my dad and I played the front nine of the SP 18 hole course. After the ninth hole, we looked at each other and saw the 10th teebox right to our left.
"I mean, it is just right there. Nobody is gonna stop us", I said.
"Didn't have to ask me twice. Let's see how far we can get," my dad said.
And so it was to be. We finished walking 18 holes in 3 minutes, 45 minutes, which has to be close to a record. I ended up shooting 97 which isn't that bad for me on 18 holes. When nayhouse, sarah, and kathleen got back from kennywood the four of us went to eatnpark and stole a menu and got ice cream. On monday, my brother, little bradburn, sammy and I shot videos with little bradburn's phone. They were all funny but the mexican crossing and the black preacher had to be the funniest of the batch. At 6 I went to my brother's game at some field in mt lebo that I had never seen before and watched them get absolutely dominated by this lebo team. Seriously, a lot of the runs that the other team scored were caused by one pretty big error(and a few minor mistakes after that), but all in all they were overmatched. I got a ride over to sarahs and met po and nayhouse there. After taking a tour of the property, we settled in to watch eurotrip. I never saw it before and gave it a B+ for comedy rating. Even though the whole hitler as a youth thing has been re-enacted a bunch of times, it just amuses me every time a new movie puts a scene in there like that. After that, we put in dazed and confused, but it didn't do so well in comparison to eurotrip. About a third of the way through the movie, we got up and played pool. Team baldwin lost game 1 but won game 2. In game 3 I forget what happened but we ended up making the 8 ball on ourselves to end the game. Such a sad way to go down. We played a little more until it was time to go. Nayhouse and I dropped off po and headed back towards home again.

In other news, I'm leaving for cooperstown in 2 days. On friday morning, I'm leaving for dreams park and won't be returning for a week. I'm excited to go becuase the amount of technology there is minimal and you really get to see what things looked like before televisions and computers. Nothing but the paper, baseball, and more baseball. And I'm going to be loving every minute of it.

Until next time,
mh

summertime

2006-07-19T00:24:00.000-04:00

School's out, the nights roll in
Man, just like a long lost friend
You ain't seen in a while
You can't help but smile.
-Kenny Chesney, "Summertime"

The days have been hot, and the nights just as stifling. It's that time of year again, and summer is starting to truly kick in. On friday, nayhouse and I went to the pirate game. Even amidst the impeccably humid night, it was a good game and the pirates came out as victors. To top it all off, nayhouse got to tell this little annoying kid to shut up after the nationals scored two runs. We met up with bradburn and his brother and walked across the clemente bridge to the T station with them. The three of us(minus little bradburn) went back to nayhouse's place and shot pool until about 130. Saturday at work was pretty good. For about an hour, ron's nephew came in and we got to hang out with him. I left at 5 and went straight to nayhouse's grad. party. A lot of people that I hadn't seen in a long time were there. Some of them included matt vu, chas hoffman, ben bradley, sarah, po, and kathleen. We played pool for a little bit and then shot some basketball. Around 8 most of the crowd had cleared and we started a big game of pool basketball. The spontaneity of the game made it one of the most enjoyable moments of the summer. There were indescribable scrambles, great shots, and plenty of injuries to speak of. All in all, it was a great night. I played a quick game of pool but left around 12 to go home. Work on sunday was alright I guess. Drew(not my brother) and I got this big list of things that we're supposed to do every day from now on. I suggested a little burning of the papers after work and he concurred. After that, I went to rachel's grad. party. It was a very enjoyable time that was encapsulated by myself(to the approval of mr. snyder) hitting on two random girls named leah and valerie. We also threw frisbee and then I played smashball with nate and my brother's friends. It was a good workout and I left there around 9 to go to nayhouse's again. Pool basketball activities were planned, but there were a few additions to the lineup from the night before. Returning from the night before were myself, nayhouse, bradburn(effectively named "short stick"), schleicher, kathleen, sarah, and po. It was a fun game, but not as great as the saturday night game. Either way, a chance to relax after a long day of work and running after a frisbee is a good oppurtunity. At about 12, I went to skyview. I was tired and made several stupid calls, but I made a few good bluffs on pots and was able to take down a big one when I hit my straight on the turn and joe's brother made two pair. I cashed out for a little less than a buyin up, and considered it a good night. On monday, I woke up around 12 to play tennis with nayhouse and kevin. I played pretty well and the sweltering heat didn't downgrade my play one bit. Afterwards, I took drew and matt b to snyder and they hit and I hit balls to them. I completed another day of long running by playing some soccer with a couple of people. Later, leigh, bradburn, and I went out to 43 and say it in an immaculate time of day. The sun was just descending on the horizon and it looked spectacular over the gently rolling hills of southern pittsburgh. Even while I was driving, my gaze was often fixated upon that falling sun on the western sky. We decided to end the trip by going to EnP and received a call just after we ordered from kristin that she wanted me to come and get her. I complied and we got back to see that I got a double order of french toast because their computer was screwed up. Nayhouse called at the end of the meal and said that po, sarah, and himself were going back to his house and we were welcome to come over. Before that, the four of us went down to leland while waiting for the return of nayhouse. I saw mr. balzer, my pony coach there.
Bradburn: "Dude, is that the guy that used to hit you batting practice with like five cigarettes in his mouth?"
Me: "Yeah man, he's awesome."
We went to nayhouse's and played pool for awhile before leigh and kristin became restless. They went up to leigh's house and got sparklers and we had a mini bonfire in the jewish guy's backyard. We managed to not burn his house down and the two of them left shortly thereafter. I drove bradburn home and grabbed my suit and prepared for a third straight day of pool basketball. This time it was a mt lebo v baldiwn showdown in myself and nayhouse versus sarah and po. The game ended in a draw and we sat around the pool for awhile telling random stories until leaving around 1230. We dropped off po and sarah and got going towards home. On the way home, we rolled down the windows and listened as the wind whipped past our hair. Life was all good. It was summertime again.

mh

funniest comments part 5

2006-07-17T16:23:00.000-04:00

It's that time of year again. I decided to provide you with this before I leave for cooperstown in a week and a half. Enjoy.

-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+--+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Funniest Comments Part 5
Edited by: Matt Hartman
Copyright 2006

Mark: and whenever that retard struck out.. we were fucked

Nayhouse: all hail the basketball hoop

Immekus: theres 3 rules at skyview, dont slowplay your big pairs, steal pots u think u can steal, and if theres 3 suited cards on the board and rates is in the hand, fold

Leigh: be like hey dumbass ask me out haha

Immekus: im sure she has some stds nowadays

Booter: but I'd be afraid he'd somehow reach through my computer and slap me

Tao: I had not been that excited about a hand in months and I screamed, "Thanks for calling with top pair dipshit!"

nichal10: way to show up friday
JuniorLegend224: om
nichal10: u fuckin bitch
JuniorLegend224: matts not home this is his mom
nichal10: o
JuniorLegend224 signed off at 5:42:51 PM.

Immekus: omg
Immekus: deer in my backyard
Immekus: gunna go fuck with them, afk

Mrhmrh102: dude did u hear
Ben: what
Mrhmrh102: nick got his license
Ben: yeah, i owe him 10 bucks

Nayhouse: cause im kinda hungry for some popcorn and skittles
Mrhmrh102: ok
Nayhouse: maybe i'll bring one of those giant eagle bags with me

Erin: hey guess who called me today lol
Mrhmrh102: who
Erin: mike nayhouse haha
Erin: he called the wrong erin
Mrhmrh102: hahahahahahaha
Mrhmrh102: omg
Mrhmrh102: what an idiot
Erin: it was so funny
Erin: he was like can i come over soon?

Mark: he freakin threw it at an ump
Mark: that's like.. immoral
Mark: not even darryl strawberry would do that

Immekus: im just like whatever exchange info and fuck urself

Dad: Next song right?
Me: Unless you want to hear “a man needs a maid”
Dad: We all know it’s true, but it’s still a bad song

Me: I can’t believe you just flicked a rubber band at me
Berman: I never said I was mature

Random guy: How much does that cost
Me: $1.49
Random guy: Geez, I hope they accept Visa.

Ben: how bout brennan is betting on the horse races on tv now, he calls in the bets

Bradburn: Desperate men do desperate things.

Nayhouse: bocan (the x) 10.43pm (now) : im gonna play bob marley, jammin, cause its about time and i think we all need to smoke one

Nayhouse: i plan to live my life in a clean place
Mrhmrh102: y
Nayhouse: just shows how much of a pussy i am

Bradburn: my mom just said
Bradburn: "Team America isn't very nice"

Immekus: are you black
toyncuen: why do u ask?
Immekus: cause you play like your a black man
Immekus: am i right?
toyncuen: no
Immekus: liar
toyncuen: are u black?Immekus: from the waist down
Immekus: if you catch my drift
Immekus: so i wasnt far off when i said ur black
Immekus: your actually a Mexican

Mark: so yea. if u want to come.. i dont care
Mark: he has no friends so the more the merrier

Nicole: By the end of the night, I’m gonna get hit with something
Nayhouse: Yeah, bradburn’s penis.

Nayhouse: Dude, I bet bradburn is like “I wish Melrose Place was still on.”

John: Nobody ever believes me when I’m drunk.

Nayhouse: i mean shes 4'11''...one drink and shes drunk as all hell prob

Mark: dude.
Mark: dont wanna waste your windshield on a whore.

mh

somewhere in between

2006-07-14T01:08:00.000-04:00

"Now, no matter what the mullah teaches, there is only one sin, only one. And that is theft. When you kill a man, you steal a life. You steal his wife's right to a husband, rob his children of a father. When you tell a lie, you steal someone's right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness. Do you see?"
-Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

I have to first mention what a good book the kite runner is. I finished it about 2 weeks ago and it is the best(and only) book published in english by an afghan author. It's a must read. That quote alludes to a lot of things, but it's pretty self explanatory. These last few weeks have been more confusing than anything. I'm somewhere between closing the door on the past and opening the new one into the future. It's like I keep wanting to go back for one last glance even though nobody is still left there. Everyone has moved on to bigger and brighter things. I know I'll get there eventually, but I'm just somewhere in the middle right now. Yesterday, myself, ben, chris, brennan, and immekus went golfing at seven springs. We ended up getting in 9 and got a raincheck for the other 9. Afterwards, we convened at ben's house for cards with the addition of ieraci, gerner, king, conroy, and a few others. Holdem and side gaming left me about even, but coinflips got me up on the day. I won two in a row against gerner to put me on the plus side. I ended up chopping with nick and brennan, so coinflips helped to win me money in this instance. Next, steve and tom came over and we watched this dvd called the aristocrats. It was okay, as it focused mainly on the joke about the aristocrats. I slept, and woke up around 11. At about 1, I went to play soccer. Around three, I went and hit golf balls, then my dad and I went golfing at SP. I drove the ball well for the most part and hit good iron shots. My putting cost me and I shot a 48. At about 830, leigh and I left to go see the salvatores game at olympia field at mt. washington. That had been the infamous place where our sq. hill city team that was ranked #2 in the city lost to lincoln place in the first round of the '04 city playoffs. The salvatores team followed our lead and lost 11-8, although they fought hard. I dropped off leigh and popped over to nayhouses. After wendys and a little pool, I decided to call it a night. So that's that. I've typed more than my fair share for the night.

Until next time,
mh

tournament recap and the rest of the weekend

2006-07-10T03:33:00.000-04:00

Friday was basically a do nothing day. I left for north versailles about 6, and got there at 630 only to find that the event was moved to skyview. Here's a quick rundown of how the night went:

7:00 PM- I'm playing in a 30 dollar satellite. In the second hand, I find aces, and it has been raised and reraised in front of me. I move allin and am called by pkt 10's. Flop is 10 6 2 to bury me.
7:04 PM- I'm in another satellite and on hand 3 I lose most of my chips when I flop a flush on a A 3 6 board only to watch my opponent with 45s hit a 7s to drown me(I had K2s so he was drawing to the one out)
7:15 PM- I took a long walk and am ready for the tournament that starts at 830.
830- Starting table doesn't look too tough.
845- I'm down to 16k after I missed a double gutted and a flush draw.
910- I'm under 5k after this pot: I have A10 and the flop is 10 6 4. I bet, a guy raises 3k more, and I move allin. He has about 5.5k less than me and we turn up and he shows 10 7. Turn is a 7, and the river doesn't help me.
930- I've chipped back up to about 10k when the table is broken. Thank god.
940- This table is tough. Joe, john the banker, and scholz are all here and all have decent sized chip stacks.
945- I pulled off a huge bluff against joe. On a J 6 4 board I get him to lay down J 10 after I move allin. I had an underpair to the board.
10- I have pkt 3's and the flop is 6 5 3. I bet, a guy raises, and I go allin. He calls and shows K6. Turn and river are blanks and I'm at about 35k.
1030- We're being moved again. I have about 60k in chips.
1035- New table looks kinda tough, kinda soft. Lee and scholz look like the tough players.
1040- And I'm out. Blinds were 1/2 and I had about 55k in front of me. A guy from first position raised to 12k. I looked down and found kings and moved allin. A guy two spots to my left immediatly says allin, and the original raiser folds. He has aces of course, and I'm crushed.

After that, I went over bens and went up a little bit playing side games. On Saturday, work was boring. I went out with bradburn and his family to max and ermas for his birthday after work. It was an enjoyable time. Afterwards, leigh, carly, bradburn, and I drove out to washington, PA, then stopped at EnP. Something bad happened there, and we won't elaborate any further than that. I wish there would have been something that I could have done, but it clearly wouldn't have mattered nor would it have been my place to intervene. So for once, I kept my mouth shut. Today, work was kinda exciting. Naturally, it was not in a good way. We were cutting glass, and when I went to put it back, it shattered into a thousand pieces. I have about five cuts on my hands that were bleeding pretty profusely for awhile there. After work, I went down to leland to play soccer and help cook burgers for the baldwin tournament. My brother's team was playing at 8, and I'm glad that I stayed for it. They were playing Munhall/West Homestead, and they were talking a big game the whole time. My brother's team was leading 10-6 going into the bottom of the seventh. To that time, it had been a spirited game. It reminded me how good a good baseball game is. People pay hundreds, sometimes thousands for games such as the world series and the all star game and they usually see players playing half heartedly(well at least in the latter). If there were five games that I could pick to go back and play in/watch again, none of them would be professional games. Anyways, the other team started smashing the ball in the bottom half of the inning and ended up tying it up. With two outs, the kid for their team that had been shouting and saying things during the game came up to the plate. On the first pitch, he drove it off the right field fence to win the game. A few things suprised me about this game: First, I was shocked that the other team's coach or the umpire wasn't telling his players to stop making blatantly negative remarks about our team. This wasn't like them shouting "you're a slouch". It went more like "F*ck you and your mother, I f*cked her last night anyways." Second, I didn't think I could get excited about baseball anymore. Well, I've been watching the pirates too long because this was definitely worth seeing again. I went to skyview at about 11 pm and got into the 3/6 game. I ended up going down about 1/3 a buyin there before I switched to the 1/2 game.
"Matt, jou have been running bad lately?"
I was jolted out of trance and looked up at doc.
"Yeah doc, a little bit."
"It's part of zee game. It happens to us zall."
Some people just know. Doc is one of those people. He could just see it in my eyes, or maybe the way I was furiously counting and recounting my chips. I didn't see a hand for about 2 hours, and finally I glanced down to see aces. I got 5 callers and the flop was 5 6 9. It's not the worst flop ever, but it's not great with that multitude of players. I bet half the pot and got two callers. Turn was a Q, and I bet a little more. The first gentleman folded, and the other guy said allin after thinking for awhile. I went into the tank and resigned myself to watching him flip over two pair. He showed 7h8h for a made straight.
"Zee, you really are running bad," doc said.
I managed a weak smile as I showed him aces and calmly walked to the door. I just can't get out of this slump. For about 3 months, I've been running terrible at the tables. I haven't booked a really great session in a long, long time. I've never gone through a funk like this. I either take a horrid beat or run into a really bad situation. When I was winning, I felt like I was in control. I was twelve years old again and I was giving the other players the old high heat on a pitcher's count. Now, I'm getting hit around like crazy. There's nothing that I can do to stop them from running me down one way or another. It's really frustrating to know that extenuating circumstances prevent you from achieving success. Oh well, tomorrow is another day.

Good night,
mh

it's about that time

2006-07-06T22:40:00.000-04:00

On Monday, I had to work at 9am, which really sucked because I hate getting up early. I got out of there though at 1 and more or less chilled for the rest of the day. Tuesday was the fourth, and I went over my aunt's house for awhile. The fireworks downtown were great, but I still think caste had them beat. I got home in time to watch the fireworks from boston, and it's something that I'll definitely have to try to get to someday. Yesterday, I did a variety of activities before heading to skyview. In the cash game, I broke dead even. I played shane heads up and went up 1 buyin on him. Today, I played tennis with kevin and nayhouse, then went to bethanne's party. It was interesting to say the least, and I met quite a few people. I also got the chance to see some old friends, which is always nice.

I kept the summary brief because I'm really not in much of a typing mood tonight. My energy is fixated on tomorrow, where I will be playing(for free) in a winner take all, WSOP buyin tournament. If I win, I will obviously take the cash option. It's a juicy tournament and a huge oppurtunity, but I expect the competition to be fierce. As the title suggests, I believe that now is the time that something big is about to happen. Tomorrow and the rest of this weekend could change a lot of things for me. I've prepared for this tournament like no other. I even re-read skylansky's thoughts on advanced strategy for tournaments, and it made me aware of a lot of things that I had been overlooking during tournament play. Tomorrow though, I only have one strategy in mind: Get first, or anything else is a disappointment. At this point, a good showing means nothing. Over the last week I've rediscovered the key to having success in anything is to fail at it many times. You just can't give up on things whenever obstacles are hurdled at you. To have a vision, a goal, and to work hard at achieving that goal are crucial ingredients in success. You have to have an absolute goal in mind and have a certain amount of volition to achieve that. So that is that. All in all, it's a simple thing. Do or do not. Ready?

mh

nobler pursuits

2006-06-29T01:12:00.000-04:00

Yes, that title is confusing. Truthfully, I'm not sure if "nobler" is even a word, but it's definitely catchy, so I think I'm going to keep it.

I'm not really sure when I updated last, so I'll just cover the last two days. Yesterday, I woke up late and watched a little bit of the soccer before going to work. Work went by quickly because we were preparing for the fireworks on friday. Afterwards, I came home and ate quickly and went to nick's house. We played side games for awhile and then played a ten dollar holdem game. I flopped three queens on a QQK board and ben turned a K to send me to the moon. After the game, we played side games for about four more hours. I went up huge. I hit flop after flop after flop. My only downfall was the fact that I couldn't win a coinflip against gerner for my life. We decided to call it a night(card wise) at about 330, and ventured to burger king. The late night crew at burger king can best be described as, well, I don't even know the word. It was immekus, gerner, ben, and myself and we ate and had free flowing conversation for about an hour. As usual, all aspects of life were discussed. Many blogworthy moments, but none that I really care to include. Today, I woke up late once again. Ben called and asked if I wanted to go golfing, so him, Jason, and I went to south park 9 hole course. We walked it and got done about 415. I had a mickelson-esque blow up on holes 5 and 6, but played pretty solid otherwise. My putting from inside five feet really saved me because I couldn't drive worth anything. Once we were done there, I went home and cut the grass and headed off to my brother's baseball game. His team was getting drilled by some pleasant hills team whenever I left in the fifth inning. Nayhouse called me on the way home and I stopped by and we played a little ping pong and watched the pirate game. He looked a little disgruntled, but nobody controls their emotions like him. That's the one quality that he has that I wish I could have more of. I have a decent amount of emotional control, but nobody is like nayhouse. After the game, I headed off to skyview. Everyone was there. Absolutely everyone. We had plenty to play 5/5 and I was pumped when the chips started flying. To sum it up, I got murdered. But some good came out of it. I decided that I'm done playing at skyview for awhile now. I'm tired of cards. I'm tired of losing and even winning. It's a circle, and sometimes you feel that you can beat it, sometimes you can't. Right now, I think it's best if I stayed away for the meantime. I have nobler pursuits, among them continuing my writing, reading more, and getting outside some more.

Until next time,
mh

a long weekend

2006-06-26T03:06:00.000-04:00

Saturday was actually a pretty quick day at work. We were incredibly busy for a saturday in june and that is the key to the day going quickly. If you busy yourself with something, the time goes three times as fast. Everyone had a bet on how many of those cleaning packs we would sell that were on sale, and my guess of 35 was good. We actually sold like 120, but nobody but me guessed that high. I came home and slept for a little while before venturing over to brennan's house. We played a game of holdem then side games, both of which I lost at. In the holdem game, I floated around for awhile until blinds got high and I got my money in with AQ v KJ. My main problem lately in tournaments is not being able to find a rush of cards to take me over the hump to where I can secure a money spot. In side games, I couldn't hit the side of the barn in PLO or PLH. Afterwards, ben, brennan, and I decided to go to the meadows because I wanted to see what the place was like. After going there, I'd have to say that I like the very informal nature of it. You can come and go as you please, and the people who set it up did a great job to provide a very relaxed environment. Brennan showed me what to do, and I picked my first winner in the first race. We ate, chatted, and bet races for about 2.5 h ours before calling it quits. I left up about 30 bucks, which isn't bad for my first time. In the end, I was making some ridiculous bets for certain horses to place, but I still made sure that I came out a winner. Today, I went to work and was in for one of the longest days ever. The day dragged on forever. I came home and left in about an hour's time to go golfing with my dad. I played so-so and shot 49 on the front 9 of SP. I drove okay for the first seven holes, then sucked on the last two. My main problem was giving away too many iron shots and five foot putts. My game has improved dramatically, but I still have a long way to go. Afterwards, I returned home and ate, then left for skyview. To save you from the torture, I played a five hour session and went down an insignificant number. For about 3 hours straight, I had nothing at all to play. My best hand was A3 and I raised and everyone folded. It was a boring session, but definitely a moral victory. I proved to myself that I could cash out after a tenuous session.

Good night,
mh

a turning point

2006-06-24T00:13:00.000-04:00

So tonight I realized something. It's funny how seemingly insignificant things in your life can perhaps drastically change the way you look at things. Tonight, I hung out with bradburn and rossi. We wanted to go to the movies, but the 730 showing was sold out, so we went over to the village for awhile. After wasting time over there, we went into barnes and noble and I went to the back and found the phish cd that I've wanted to get for awhile now. At about 920 we walked over and got tickets to the movie Click. I expected it to be funny, but I didn't expect it to have any sort of serious message to it. Without giving away exact details, I'll try to sum up the moral of the story. Basically, we all have choices to make in our lives. We seemingly have to choose between moving up in the corporate world or spending time with people that make us happy. And this is truly a situation that comes up quite often. Subsequently, with each wrong decision we make, we start down the road towards distancing ourselves from the people we love and truly becoming an asshole. The problem is, we don't see the decisions that we're making as bad. We're almost in a state of delirium, because we think that we are trying to the right thing. Eventually, we realize that we're making poor decisions, but we have reached the point of no return. We eventually wake up 20 years later(the use of a magic controller is not necessary) and realize how bad we have actually done for ourselves. We may have reached the top of the world, but the divides that exist between ourselves and people that we care for have been so great as to eclipse the success that we found in the "real world". As the ending unfolded, I realized something: I'm on that path. I'm on the path to becoming a complete asshole. I had a few big things not go my way in the last year, but the way I reacted to these events was awful. I shut out the people that I cared about, and looked for the most subtle nuances that I could identify as problem spots in people or the way they thought. So I guess I have a lot of making up to do. I've really done myself in regarding some of the things that I have done in the last year or so. Maybe some things can't be fixed, but that's okay. The way I see it, my life isn't anywhere near complete. I'm still a young man, and I have a long time to go. I have a lot of time to fix my piss poor attitude towards life and actually start caring about people. So now is the time. I've realized that there is a chance, while slim as it may be, that I may not wake up tomorrow. As time goes on, those odds increase. In that regard, death is guaranteed in time. The only thing that I can do is try to change the way I live each day, and I plan on doing just that.

mh

75 songs that changed my life

2006-06-23T15:12:00.000-04:00

75. Give a Little Bit- Supertramp
74. Have You Ever Seen the Rain- CCR
73. Number One Spot- Ludacris
72. Dirt Off Your Shoulder- Jay Z
71. Only the Good Die Young- Billy Joel
70. Dani California- Red Hot Chili Peppers
69. Who Are You- The Who
68. Black Hole Sun- Soundgarden
67. Hanging by a Moment- Lifehouse
66. Long Haired Country Boy- Charlie Daniels Band
65. Holiday- Green Day
64. You're Beautiful- James Blunt
63. Bring Em Out- TI
62. Take The Long Way Home- Supertramp
61. Reeling in the Years- Steely Dan
60. Song For America- Kansas
59. Work- Jimmy Eat World
58. Bad Day- Daniel Powter
57. How's It Going to be- Third Eye Blind
56. Here I Go Again on my Own- Whitesnake
55. Toxicity- System of a Down
54. Closing Time- Semisonic
53. Brain Damgae- Pink Floyd
52. Mr. Brightside- The Killers
51. How to Save a Life- The Fray
50. Roll Me Away- Bob Seger
49. Ocean Avenue- Yellowcard
48. Jumper- Third Eye Blind
47. Come Sail Away- Styx
46. The Joker- Steve Miller Band
45. Keep Pushin'- REO Speedwagon
44. You Can't Always Get What You Want- Rolling Stones
43. Carry on Wayward Son- Kansas
42. Heart of Gold- Neil Young
41. Wonderful Tonight- Eric Clapton
40. The Space Between- Dave Matthews Band
39. Sunday Bloody Sunday- U2
38. Can't You See- Marshall Tucker Band
37. Life's Been Good- Joe Walsh
36. Lyin' Eyes- The Eagles
35. Move Along- All American Rejects
34. Mary Jane's Last Dance- Tom Petty
33. The Middle- Jimmy Eat World
32. Money- Pink Floyd
31. Simple Man- Lynryd Skynyrd
30. Yellow- Coldplay
29. Over My Head(Cable Car)- The Fray
28. Thunder Road- Bruce Springstein
27. Wonderwall- Oasis
26. Band on the Run- Paul McCartney
25. Stairway to Heaven- Led Zepplin
24. FreeFallin'- Tom Petty
23. Get Back- Ludacris
22. Only Love Can Break Your Heart- Neil Young
21. Superman- Five For Fighting
20. Hotel California- The Eagles
19. Jet Airliner- Steve Miller Band
18. Deacon Blue- Steely Dan
17. Pride- U2
16. Helena- My Chemical Romance
15. The Wall- Kansas
14. 25 or 6 to 4- Chicago
13. Drops of Jupiter- Train
12. Time- Pink Floyd
11. Wheel in the Sky- Journey
10. Crash Into Me- Dave Matthews Band
9. Pieces- Sum 41
8. New Kid in Town- The Eagles
7. Roll With the Changes- REO Speedwagon
6. Fix You- Coldplay
5. Dust in the Wind- Kansas
4. Time of Your Life- Green Day
3. Let it Be- The Beatles
2. 100 Years- Five For Fighting
1. Wish You Were Here- Pink Floyd

So there's my list. Enjoy it.

mh

the world cup factor

2006-06-21T00:17:00.000-04:00

Today I set out for my usual game of soccer, but noticed that the field at colewood was being occupied by kids I had never seen before. Then, we went up to whitehall and noticed more of the same. It's like an epidemic. Lately, I've noticed that a ton of people are getting soccer games together, and that is definitely a good thing for the sport. As great as most American sports are, most of them promote laziness(in comparison to other world sports) For example, just how much running is actually involved in baseball or football? The latter you could make an argument for, but each side is given three timeouts and time after each play to regroup. You could make the argument that football is more physical than soccer, but many soccer games can be quite nasty. Soccer is the one sport(other than maybe hockey) that requires superb physical fitness from all players. In summary, it's good for a country that is like 55% overweight(although I don't believe that one bit).

This week has been more of the same as the last month. The center of my life is soccer, and I'm loving every minute of it. It's fun because the buildup of the perfect goal is, in my opinion, much better than the constant action of a hockey game. England looked very good in the first half of their game against Sweden, but those Swedes managed a to tie the match in the closing stages with a brilliant goal after the English defense collapsed like their army during ww1.

All in all, I don't have much to report. I started writing again, but as usual, I got sidetracked about 30 minutes in. I hope that I can get back to it tomorrow because the soccer matches don't look that interesting. However, when Thursday comes around, you will see me glued to the TV for two hours in the morning. Let's go USA....and Italy of course.

mh

on the pitch

2006-06-18T01:48:00.000-04:00

My life for the last week has been consumed with soccer. Actually, more like the last month since before the World Cup started, but more recently we have been able to get some games together. On Monday, I was thrilled to be able to watch the US world cup game, but my hopes were soon deflated as the US completely flopped against the Czechs. Tuesday was my last day of work for a week because I have this week off. Wednesday I watched and played more soccer. I then hung out with my buddy mark and a few of his friends. We went back to his place and played mario golf(a classic) and played guitar for awhile. I would have to say that it was a pretty good night, because it is always good to hang out with different people. I have learned that different attitudes are definitely a good thing to experience. It is like a breath of fresh air. After that, I went to skyview and went up a little playing 1/2. Shane wanted to play HU PLO 2/4 but I declined because I was pretty sure he had a pretty big advantage. He probably practices a lot more and my hand selection is extremely liberal preflop in PLO. On Thursday we had our first really decent game of soccer and it was quite a workout. I forgot how much running is truly associated with a decent game of football, but was quickly reminded. I haven't played since the end of the last decade, so it's been awhile. Later that night nayhouse and I chilled and I slept over his house. I had a very weird dream, and what I can remember I'd rather not share. Call me ancient but I really believe that dreams are associated with things to come. All in my past, I've had some weird experiences with dreams. The first and only time that I dreamed I was dead was quite weird, and it was made even more weird because only two days later I awoke to find that my aunt joel had died. I've had people tell me that they have dreamed things about me doing things that actually happened. I don't know though. I'll save my views on dreams for another day, as we must be moving on. Friday was a long day. We played soccer for about 2 hours and then i went out with leigh, carly, and bradburn. I think the mini golf game ended in a tie between carly and I, but it was just an enjoyable time. Later that night, I had an interesting conversation with someone. I'd rather not go into specifics, but let's just say that it is good to have poeple in your life to keep you in check. It's good every once in awhile for someone to stand up to you and tell you that you are wrong. Once again, I appreciate the good(or not so much so) conversation. Today, I didn't have to work so I woke up late and watched the ghana game. It was a shocker, but something that was crucial for the USA. The USA game was actually a good one. For the first 20 minutes, the US had control of the game. They were dominating the middle of the pitch and aggresively pressing the Italian defense; something that they hadn't done against the czechs. Then, the Italians struck in a set piece to make it 1-0 Italy. Once again, my hopes were crushed early in the game. However, this time the US was ready. On a US set piece, the Americans were extremely fortunate to get an Italian own goal to tie the game at 1. After Italy had a player ejected for an extremely dirty play, the US was sitting pretty at halftime. Then comes the bad news. The US had two players ejected in two minutes on two terrible red cards. I mean, these were awful calls. Now the US was fighting for dear life to salvage a result. After beasley made that incredible run and put it in but donovan was called for offsides, I realize how bad the officiating was. In the end, we got a draw out of the game, and I'm too tired to type out what would need to happen for us to advance to the next round. After the game, I played a little soccer then went over nayhouses. A bunch of people came over and shot pool, and then some left and it was bro, nayhouse, schleicher, korbel, and myself left to eat pizza and play cards. Nayhouse's jewish luck was incredible. I've never seen someone more blessed than that kid.

More or less, I'm feeling exhausted right now. A lot of my mental exhaustion has to do with a lot of physical wear and tear on my body right now. Most of the time I can only go for about 14 hours in a row, then I need my sleep. I'm not sure if that is a good thing or not. I mean, I am still relatively young and my body could need rest to continue growing. During high school, I usually felt this way after a long week of work. It is good to feel this exhaustion because it means that I'm going out and making the most out of every day. I believe Steve Jobs said it best once by saying, "I look in the mirror each day and say to myself, 'If this was the last day of my life, is this what I would want to be doing with my day? And so I ask myself that question every day, and if the answer is yes, well then I have done good.'" I would like to type more, but I have nothing else to say. Oh yeah I do, I love not having to work. Haha. Nuff said.

mh

utter contentment

2006-06-12T03:48:00.000-04:00

This weekend was an interesting one for sure. On Friday, I woke up early and my dad and I went to his buddy's house to get ready for the scramble. After bs'ing around there for awhile, his buddy showed up and we headed out to the golf course. We were clearly the underdog going in because we were up against 17 other groups and at least half of them had former amateur players. We started on hole 12, and bogeyed it after a decent effort. As the holes went on, our play steadily improved. Since we figured that we had no chance to win, we decided to have as much fun as possible with the day. Gibby and Pete were downing buds like they were huggies while my dad and i were drinking coors lite. By the ninth hole(which was actually like hole #16 for us) we were about +5 and had no chance of coming in anything but last. I popped up my tee shot, and my dad came up. He muttered something like "here comes a 260 yard drive". I said to him that if he hit it 60 yards we'd be happy. Then he said something that made my day. He said to me, "If I hit as far as you did, I fucking quit." Quite funny. We finished up the round and went to hamilton park for a buffet and for them to hand out prizes. I think it ended up that we won two prizes as a group in the raffle. It really didn't matter though that we only won two prizes or came in 18th place with a +5 score. Gibby said something like "we aren't at work so obviously our day is better." I realized at that moment that most adults hate work as much as kids do. Long ago, they had figured out that work sucked most of the time and that those precious hours that you get to spend with people that you have fun with or care about is the thing that drives you to be able to get through the day. I always wondered how my dad was able to work 15 hours and come home with a smile on his face. I understand why he was smiling, and I'm not sure why it took me so long to figure out something as simple as that. Later on, nayhouse and I went up to the high school to run this race that we had been planning to do for a long time. I bet that I could beat him in a 2 mile race. I was wrong. After six laps I gave up and he won. Subsequently, both of us and bradburn and rossi went to eat n park to celebrate my loss. It was a good time. Saturday at work wasn't bad at all. I don't work with mindy anymore except for saturday mornings and that is disappointing because we always used to find ways to make the days go faster. Nothing exciting happened and I left at five. At about 6, my mom and I went over to my grandma's because we were having a family gathering for my cousin and uncle from florida being in town. It wasn't one that I would soon forget. There are two moments that sharply stick out in my mind. The first is when my cousin came running inside the house saying that he isn't hungry. He is probably my brother's age(12) or a little older. He's known to be a little bit odd and my brother had a good time(supposedly) telling him how weird it was to wear a headband with a japanese cartoon character on it. So he comes inside and my uncle tells him, "either eat your food or I'm gonna punch you in the face." I couldn't hold back the laughter; and when I did, everyone looked at me. I glanced over at my parents and you could see that they were having trouble not laughing at this as well. Who tells their son that they are going to punch him if he doesn't eat the meal? Second, I went outside to catch football with my little brother and left my phone inside. Of course, my uncle dave has to stir up the masses, so he takes my phone and calls mark's phone. Whenever I heard the howling coming from inside, I ran in to see what was going on. All I heard was, "This is matt's uncle...he might have mentioned me to you before." Sounds like something he would say. An enjoyable night to say the least. I came home, played some online poker, and sweated ben's PLO final table finish. This morning, I woke up at 9 AM sharp and got ready for work. Work was so so and afterwards I was finally given the chance to catch up on some rest. How about the World Cup so far? The trinidad and tobago performance was incredibly shocking. I always root for the underdog and I was extremely downtrodden when angola lost to portugal 1-0. After napping for awhile, I went to skyview. They just started a 1/2 NL and I was able to get a seat. For the first 3 hours, I teetered and tottered right around my original buyin. Then, I got lucky and rivered a set against ali. Magically, some draws started to come alive for me. It wasn't so much that I couldn't miss, it was more that I was hitting cards when I needed to hit cards. After six hours, I went up a decent sum for a 1/2 game. I was pretty happy with the way I played because I played well and was lucky to hit some draws to win some big pots.

I think this weekend can best be summed up by saying that I am extremely content with myself right now. In the past, I have allowed my emotions to get the best of me in cases, but adding balance to my life and playing cards for long periods of time has helped me to become a much more patient person. I learned(not just from this weekend) that a lot of outside things are going to hamper your path to success, but that the strength you have inside of you is much greater than that. Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, "What lies behind you and before you are tiny matters compared to what lies within you." That is incredibly true. No matter what is going on on the outside, you will always be you. This weekend has taught me a lot about who I really am as a person. For most of my days, I spend time around people who could be my parents or grandparents. Their lives are incredibly simple and it seems as though they don't have a care in the world. I've realized that they usually don't have a care because they have experienced all of the things as younger people and have come through all these challenges successfully. I'm just going to stop right now because my words are getting sloppy.

Until next time,
mh

don't wake me up

2006-06-07T23:55:00.000-04:00

First of all, I would like to state, as a pretense to anything I write here that I don't believe in curses. Curses are things that are highly exxagerated by the people whom the events happen to. I always believed that if you worked hard and put your utmost effort that you would succeed at it in one way or another. As of late, events have made me a cynic though. You don't really become cynical until you go out there and experience some of the things that life has to throw at you for yourself. In other words, there aren't any "couch" cynics to say.

Yesterday, I was awoken early by my brother saying that he wanted to go down to union field to go to this day camp thing. At 9 AM? Why would anyone ever want to get up at 9 AM? I guess at one point in my life(my pre-teen years) I got up early. I know I'll be getting old whenever I start getting up before four digits appear on the digital alarm clock in my room. I took him there, and came back and watched MTV while eating breakfast. I was disappointed by the music that they play on there to say the least. At about 1, bradburn, ben hreha, and I went out to the practice tee to golf the par 3. Ben and I had side bets, and I was up big after 5 holes, but he pulled four of the greatest holes ever to make a great comeback and end up tying me. Next, we decided to gamble on the batting cages to see who could hit more balls, him being in the 40 mph cage and myself in the 70 mph(since I had a distinct advantage having played for 14 years). We both hit 9 the first time and the second time. In short, we broke dead even for both competitions. After that, we went to the mall and I ate manchu wak's tuesday special, General Tso's for 3.99. I went home and got ready for work after that delicious meal. Work wasn't great because we have this new cashier who doesn't talk and we had to unload an order which took most of the night. I think ben hreha put it best by saying, "why do you still work there?" I really have no answer for that. It's kind of like I'm watching the waves come in from a distance, it's the same thing every day. And I don't even get to watch the sun rise or set. I guess more or less I feel like barry sanders did while playing football. I know a lot involving my job and can do it well, but I do not enjoy it at all. I find it really boring. Like Andy Dufresne said, either get busy living or get busy dying. At this point in my life I feel like I'm just waiting for a bus to come to take me to another place. That's not me at all. If I want to go somewhere, I'll walk there. Alright, this symbolism is getting out of control. After work, bradburn and I went to work at the 1/2 limit tables. When nayhouse finally got back from his gf's house, the three of us decided to go down to eat n park. The table talk was refreshing to say the least. Anytime that you put nayhouse and I in the same vicinity, the conversation is always going to be lively. It's been that way for as long as we have known each other. About 30 minutes after we got there, two gentleman that we know very well strolled in. It was none other than ferg and kozo, both who I hadn't seen in over a year. Apparently, they both work security now. To tell you the truth, I think everyone in baldwin was there. We saw the likes of ryan russman, megan curley, caroline kirkwood, jackie cundra, rikhea, ray benvenuti, shane something, jared waldo, something zovko, and of course the two jokers. Ferg and I could not leave the premise without pulling something of course. We conversed with the waitress and convinced her that it was bradburn's birthday. About ten minutes later, her and a couple other waitresses come out with a "cake" and singing some random EnP song. I can honestly say that it was one of the best nights I've had in quite some time, and it was quintessential to have. This morning, I woke at about 11AM and got breakfast. Actually, no I didn't. Bradburn, hreha, and I walked down to subway in caste and ate there. We saw "tomcat" brennan there and he, hreha, and I made plans to play golf at SP after the meal. All in all, I shot decent off the tee, yet couldn't hit an iron to save my life. I putted well, which is a good sign for friday. I came home and my brother and I hung out for awhile. We ate, and I was off to skyview. After dropping two buyins at 5/5, I began an incredible comeback. I was up about 1.5 buyins and it was three handed between joe, some random guy, and myself. Now you know that this is where it is going to get bad, because it always does. I have J8c and I call a preflop raise to 20 as does joe. The flop is J 8 5 with two hearts. The original bettor bets 30, and I raise to 75. Joe says goodbye and the other guy goes allin for about 220 more. I call instantly and he turns up J7. Well, you already know the ending. He hits running hearts to bury me. A couple hands later after I recovered from that, an even sicker situation would come up. I am dealt 95o and I limp as there is no preflop raise. Flop is 9 5 3 with two hearts again. I bet 20, joe calls, random guy raises to 45, and I jam it to 120. Joe thinks about it forever and folds. The random guy just calls. The turn is a 10d and I bet 50. He comes over the top for 185 more. I called after thinking about it for awhile and he shows, you guessed it, 9 10! I was sick. Absolutely sick. The final hand I don't even want to talk about. I had KQ and pushed allin for about 125 and he called with....Q5. Right on the flop was 5 5 2. I've never been more sick playing poker than those three hands. As I stated earlier, I don't believe in being cursed, but I am playing brilliantly and being punished for it. So tomorrow, when the alarm rings at 6AM, don't bother waking me up. Let me sleep on this one for a change.

mh

shabang

2006-06-06T11:17:00.000-04:00

after 133 posts and almost two years of blogging, I believe my time here is done....well at least for now. I used to post every day but things have gotten quite busy lately and I want to have time to do other things, so I'm discontinuing this blog until further notice. Over the last six months, my post count has rapidly deteriorated and posting has seemed like more of a job than an enjoyment to me. So for now, goodbye

mh

oh yeah

2006-05-29T07:13:00.000-04:00

I found this list of my most played songs on my computer, and found it interesting. Maybe you will too

1. 100 years- Five For Fighting
2. Wish You Were Here- Pink Floyd
3. Holiday- Green Day
4. Pieces- Sum 41
5. The Middle- Jimmy Eat World
6. Intro- Ludacris
7. Superman- Five For Fighting
8. Mr. Brightside- The Killers
9. Jesus of Suburbia- Green Day
10. Wake Me Up When September Ends- Green Day
11. She's a Rebel- Green Day
12. Time- Pink Floyd
13. Get Back- Ludacris
14. Homecoming: The Death of St. Jimmy- Green Day
15. Good Riddance(Time of Your Life)- Green Day
16. Drops of Jupiter- Train
17. Whatsername- Green Day
18. Fix You- Coldplay
19. We're All to Blam- Sum 41
20. American Idiot- Green Day
21. Boulevard of Broken Dreams- Green Day
22. St. Jimmy- Green Day
23. Tuesday's Gone- Lynard Skynard
24. Are We the Waiting- Green Day
25. Give Me Novacaine- Green Day
26. Number One Spot- Ludacris
27. There's No Solution- Sum 41
28. Roll With the Changes- REO Speedwagon
29. Extraordinary Girl- Green Day
30. Work- Jimmy Eat World
31. Comfortably Numb- Pink Floyd
32. The Joker- Steve Miller Band
33. Broadway- The Goo Goo Dolls
34. Take the Money and Run- Steve Miller Band
35. Pride- U2
36. Give a Little Bit- Supertramp
37. Another Brick in the Wall- Pink Floyd
38. Mary Jane's Last Dance- Tom Petty
39. Slide- The Goo Goo Dolls
40. Big Pimpin- Jay Z
41. No Reason- Sum 41
42. Losing a Whole Year- Third Eye Blind
43. Imagine- John Lennon
44. Some Say- Sum 41
45. Purple and White- Mr. Stultz
46. Hanging by a Moment- Lifehouse
47. Brain Damage- Pink Floyd
48. Helena- My Chemical Romance
49. Speed of Sound- Coldplay
50. New Year's Day- U2
51. Black Balloon- The Goo Goo Dolls
52. Letterbomb- Green Day
53. Tear It Up- Young One
54. Hey You- Pink Floyd
55. Heart of Gold- Neil Young
56. Dirt Off Your Shoulder- Jay Z
57. Song for America- Kansas
58. Crash Into Me- Dave Matthews Band
59. New York- JaRule
60. Better Off Without You- The Clarks
61. Encore- Jay Z
62. Rock N' Me- Steve Miller Band
63. Born to Run- Bruce Springstein
64. Simple Man- Lynard Skynard
65. Angels With Dirty Faces- Sum 41
66. Sunday Bloody Sunday- U2
67. Dust in the Wind- Kansas
68. Highway Blues- Marc Seales
69. Thunder Road- Bruce Springstein
70. Harvest- Neil Young
71. Take it Easy- The Eagles
72. Who'll Stop the Rain- CCR
73. Breakfast at Tiffany's- Deep Blue Something
74. Narcolepsy- Third Eye Blind
75. How's It Going To Be- Third Eye Blind
76. Keep on Loving You- REO Speedwagon
77. Basketcase- Green Day
78. Jet Airliner- Steve Miller Band
79. Take the Long Way Home- Supertramp
80. N Dey Say- Nelly
81. All of Nothing- O Town
82. Moment of Clarity- Jay Z
83. With or Without You- U2
84. Hotel California- The Eagles
85. Hold On- Kansas
86. The Next Episode- Dr.Dre
87. Here I Go Again On My Own- Whitesnake
88. Champagne Supernova- Oasis
89. Free Fallin'- Tom Petty
90. Stairway to Heaven- Led Zepplin
91. Lean on Me- Bill Withers
92. Slipping Away- Sum 41
93. Jumper- Third Eye Blind
94. Don't Do Me Like That- Tom Petty
95. The Long and Winding Road- The Beatles
96. Take It On The Run- REO Speedwagon
97. A Message- Coldplay
98. Gimme Three Steps- Lynard Skynard
99. 25 or 6 to 4- Chicago
100. Peaceful Easy Feeling- The Eagles

mh

the trifecta

2006-05-29T06:32:00.000-04:00

This weekend was a weekend that I'll look back on for the rest of my life, perhaps for both good and bad reasons. On friday, bradburn and I hung out and played a little 1/2 limit. The first table we hit was extremely soft and within ten minutes we had doubled up and decided to leave. The second table was a little more difficult but we were also hit with two gutshots on the river that left us down four bets. Eventually, ben hreha came over and we played both .25/.50 NL and an 11 dollar SNG at once. In the SNG, our AKs outdrew KK on the first hand and we were dominating chip leaders going into the final table. That of course ended when we had the following sequence of hands: 55, 55, 88, 10 10, three of four lost, the last being where we went in for about 4k and got called by JJ after some dude appeared he would muck, but called with 3 seconds left on the clock. From there, we organized a live home game. Legends such as gerner, brandon, carmelo, and jeff creighton frequented that game that night. Even nick immekus, fresh off his date with the.....lovely tara joined the game later. We played side games to begin with and I promptly dropped 5 buyins in the first hour. The last pot before we started the holdem tournament was one that will live on in south baldwin history for the rest of time. The game was PLO, and it was gerner, ben, and I to the flop with brandon being allin. Flop was K 6 4 with the K and 6 being clubs. I flopped a club flush and gutshot so both ben and I called gerner's 60 dollar bet. Turn was a 3, and ben went allin for 135. I wanted to call so badly but passed and gerner ended up calling. River was a 7 and my 58 would have got there. Ben scooped the biggest pot in home game history. In the holdem game, I struggled the whole time to break the 2k mark in chips. I ended up going allin in a race situation and I lost it. After playing a little ping pong, we returned to side gaming and I went on an absolute tear for two hours straight. I got out of the hole and ended up going up after gerner and I flipped a coin for a decent amount. I won the first, he won the second, and I won the third meaning I ended up winning. Saturday, I worked from 9-5 and I just kind of chilled and slept for awhile. Gerner came and got me around 11 and we went up and picked up king and headed over to immekuse's house. We played some side games and I started down big again. Then murph showed up and we decided to have a beer pong tournament. After winning my first two games with style, nick and I began to just get stupid. From what I recall we played several heads up games for amounts ranging from 20-50 dollars. I won all of them as he had taken the brute of the beatings in beer pong. I ended up winning the tourny and nick, gerner, and I decided to play side games more. Gerner was the only sober one, yet for some reason he couldn't use it to his advantage. The only thing I remember from that stretch was the last hand where we did the bill murphy paycheck game. The three of us each put up what murph's weekly paycheck was worth and did a game of high card to see who would take down all the money. I won it with a Kh. After several incidents that I will not elaborate on, we headed to dennys. If you want to hear the dennys story, i'll be more than happy to tell it, just not here. I got dropped off at a little past sunrise and crashed until about 11, when I woke up to eat breakfast. After eating, I realized that I was still really tired and I went back to sleep for awhile. I woke up again at 3 and went outside for about 2 hours. It was a really nice day and almost 90 degrees outside. After taking care of a few things, I decided to go to skyview to play poker. This would be the third night of the trifecta, and if I was lucky, I could go 3 for 3 for showing profit. When I got there, they were starting a new 3/6 table and I decided to jump in the action. I won a few dollars before my seat at 1/2 NL opened up. I had planned on playing a monster session(time wise) and did just that. I ended up playing about 9 hours and showed a profit of 1.5 buyins. In the first three hours, I had my aces cracked by sevens and 10d5d, cracked aces with J3(the guy was furious when I hit my two outer on the river), had my nut straight busted on the river by runner runner full house, and cracked kings with sixes. It was a hell of a run to say the least. At about 12 I started hitting a groove that lasted until about 2:30. Then, for about 30 minutes straight I had every single one of my bluffs called down and I was dead even for the night. I battled my way back and at 6 am we were forced out by the cleaning crew. I really think that's about as long as I can play cards because I was just really, really tired and getting pretty bored after that. So that's that. I saw the sun rise the last two days, something that I had only seen twice before this. I guess whenever I got up early for high school I saw it every day, but I usually never payed attention. I will say that I had a great deal of fun this weekend, even if it came at the cost of only getting about 10 hours of sleep for the entirety of the weekend. Alright, I'm about to pass out so I'm off to bed, hoping to sleep until maybe 12(it's 7 am right now) and then I plan on going golfing and then going to nayhouse's for a cookout.

Until next time,
mh

for the second year in a row....

2006-05-24T12:10:00.000-04:00

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker!

This Online Poker Tournament is a No Limit Texas Holdem event exclusive to Bloggers.

Registration code: 7330476

^

I'm playing in that thing

filling in the blanks

2006-05-22T01:19:00.000-04:00

I saw this once somewhere, and I liked the idea, so here it goes.

Friday night, I decided that I wanted to see ___________ so I went and saw it with ________ and _______. It was a good time for the most part except for the fact that it was crowded. I really ________ the movie. When it was over, we decided that we could ________________ or __________. I was tired, so I just dropped off _______ and ________ and went to bed. I couldn't really sleep well, mostly because I was thinking about _________. I'm not really sure why, but I was. I woke up saturday morning and went to work early. I was actually excited to see ______ at work for the first time in awhile. I still don't like working with ______ but that is part of it I guess. _______ told me that his niece was graduating and said he was going to get messed up there. I love this blank thing. I ate at subway and saw ________ there who I absolutely hate. Seriously, turn your hat around and learn how to play baseball. I didn't see __________ at the bakery and my day went downhill. After work, ________ came over my house and we ___________ and then got _________ to eat. The fries were much too salty though for the meal to be good. Later _______ and ________ picked us up and we went to try to catch ________ at 8:00. Once it was sold out at lowes, we went over to starbucks but I stayed behind and played ms pacman. The joystick was messed up and I kept crashing into the enemies. _______ said that starbucks kept ____________. People should really ___________ less and ___________ more, because I tasted the drink and it tasted good to me. Oh well, we went to southland 9 and caught the 10:00 showing. During the movie, _________ abandoned me(kinda) and __________ seemed like a really long movie. I got to bed around 1:15 and woke up the next day at 9:00. Work went by so fast because we were busy and __________ and __________ are always fun to work with. I can't believe ________ is quitting, but I understand why. If I ______________________________ , I would too. After that, I came home and relaxed and watch the cavs lose. Then _________ told me that __________________________. I really didn't mind, because _____________________________ and I respect ________ a lot. I hope they have fun. I ____________ after my _______ left _____________. Also, I ate ___________ and ______________ and they were good. I then fell asleep and was awoken by my brother telling me had 4 rbi's and got the win in his game. At about 9, I went to _________ to play cards. I ended up losing ___________ for the night in a 1/2 game. The best hands I saw were fives once and deuces once. I had AQ and AJ, and every time I made a play at a pot, _______________________________! Quite frustrating to say the least. At the end, I made a stupid call for ___ dollars against a guy who looked like his name would be carlos gonzalez or something like that. He was making bluffs all day and finally woke up with AK against my A5. Then I moved allin with 22 and got called down by scholz's KK(his 14th big pocket pair of the night) _________________________ to say the least. I rode home thinking __________________________ or my ____ bankroll is going to start taking a real beating.

Okay, that was refreshing. Tomorrow I'm going to try to get some reading done and a few things need done around the house.

Until next time,
mh

i hate you blogger

2006-05-17T23:13:00.000-04:00

yes, you swallowed my post for the second time in as many days....

As you may have heard, my phone is currently in four pieces and after taking it down to the sprint store and them telling me that i can either pay 125 bux and extend my contract with them for another 2 years or pay 150 dollars to get out of the contract now. She also said that I could continue paying my bill until december but i wouldn't have a phone to make any calls. When she said that, I almost smacked her but just decided to walk out. How fucking stupid do you think I am? Or should I be asking how stupid are you?

Recently, things have just been going downhill again. It's just stupid stuff. I really thought that I was beginning to unslump myself. While watching one of the news stations one night about a week and a half ago a lady was talking to a caller that said that she had missed out on the real estate boom and lost probably 500k in the whole deal. The lady who was giving her advice told her to realize that there is nothing that she could do about it. Instead of telling yourself that you have the worst luck and that you are always in the wrong place at the wrong time, say to yourself that you have to take command of the situation. That has been my philosophy lately, and it had been working up until the last three days. I worked 24 hours in three days at work and felt good when it was all done. I felt like I had accomplished something and was able to achieve a lot of things when that stint was done. Then the last two days have been like watching the dominoes collapse again. Yesterday my phone breaks and i get a piece of metal driven partially through my forehead at work. If it had hit closer to my brain, I probably would have been decapitated. I got away with some lost blood and a small scar. Perhaps that's the way that you have to look at things. As bad as it was, it could have been worse. Maybe we had good luck to not have things have been worse. Today I was playing basketball and drove to the hoop, pulled up, and glided into the wet grass. From there, I lost my footing and gleefully rolled five feet until my back met the iron post that we have in our backyard. What are the chances, seriously? I can't really say anything though, after that I scored 27 straight points and we won the game. Tonight was an interesting night at skyview. A lot of good young players were there. I just got eaten alive and I don't even want to think about it. I had three big suckouts where I could have gotten even by winning just one of them. I'll give you two examples. I had Kh Jh and flop is 7h 8h Kd. I bet out 50 and get called. Turn is 9s and I bet 100 and get raised allin. I call immediately and he turns over 10 J. No heart on the river and I lose another big pot to the turn. Last hand and I have AQ and it is raised in front of me preflop by shane. I raise allin and get two callers. Flop is q 10 10 and to make a long story short my AQ lost to AJ and A10. I was just so sick. Sunday I'll give you another situation. I have aces UTG and i raise to 12 in a 1/2 NL game and some guy(we'll call him idiofaggot for the rest of this section) raised to 45. I called idiofag's raise and the flop was 9 8 6. I fired 100 into the pot so that he would only get 2:1 on a straight draw. He called, and the turn was gin, a 2. I bet another 100 and he raised allin. I called, and he flipped over 62! I was sickened. Idiofag hit a 6 on the river to hit a boat. I was just shocked after that pot. I don't think I remembered my name until I got home. I'm done boring you with bad beat stories. I always hated people who whined and complained about their luck. I actually got joy out of listening to how bad their lives had been running lately. Now I'm that stupid idiot complaining about how much my life sucks. But now I'm done with that. I'm taking control of the situation and burning away all the little kid, bitchy, whiny shit from my brain and going to start taking it and keeping my mouth shut like i used to. I know it's coming, but it isn't going to all be bad.

Until next time,
mh

tragedy strikes

2006-05-16T13:33:00.000-04:00

today, while playing floor hockey, i rolled on my side and forgot that my phone was in there. Fucking piece of japanese sprint shit broke into four pieces. Come on, seriously. How do you break on the first time that you get rolled over. I'd post more but I'm headed out to best buy so they can tell me that my warranty isn't good anymore. I'll be putting up a longer post probably later tonight about what's been going on lately.

mh

on the rise

2006-05-01T23:35:00.000-04:00

After almost two months of being stuck in a lethargic state of mind, I think I'm starting to rise again. Being a person who likes to reflect back upon things, I took into consideration what 2006 has been like so far. It has really been a losing battle in a lot of aspects of poker(minus poker). Poker is the only thing that seems to have gone right up until this point. Starting about half way through january it's just been domino theory; the domino collapsing after the one before it making a bigger thud. Not to use too many bad analogies/cliches but when you dig a deep hole, you need a big ladder to get out. I wouldn't really call it depression because depression, in my opinion, is when one specific event is holding you down. Lethargy is when you wake up refreshed and hear that another bad thing has happened to you or someone close to you. I can't really complain though, no "knockout" punches yet. Just a bunch of little jabs that wore me down. Like the buddha said, suffering is universal. Perhaps the only thing you have in common with Tiger Woods, Prince Charles, or George Bush is that at one point or another you will experience suffering. Bad streches are a part of life, but so are good streches.

This weekend was nothing great to speak of. Last weekend I found that routes 51, 43 and 70 all connect as nayhouse and I proceeded on our longest road trip yet. It was a good one though. I love being lost in the middle of nowhere. Nobody knows your name and you're in a place that you've never been in before. That sunday I played in a 1/2 game that I think I ended up winning something like 7o dollars after 5 hours. When you factor in that the smoke inhalation probably takes a day off your life for every hour you're in there, -EV(expected value) is attained. It was actually a fun game to play in and I seem to make friends with foreign players faster than Americans. It really is the truth that foreigners are less concerned with money than Americans are. I feel like "one of them" at the table. I play poker not for the money, but because I really like the game. It's one of the few arenas where good strategy and versatility are quintessential elements to being a winning player.

This weekend I hung out with leigh, bradburn, carly, and eventually christine. The four of us went mini golfing and beside the fact that I was doing horrible and it was rather cold, it was enjoyable. Apparently bets were supposed to be made but nobody would be me anything. Speaking of bets, if you haven't checked out Pauly's blog yet, do so. He's one of the funniest and best writers out there and his latest post about glass eyes had me going good. The link for his site is taopoker.blogspot.com. On saturday, I had to work from 9-5. Once again, nothing really to speak of except nayhouse almost getting thrown out of the store in one of the funnier moments of 2006. That night, I was able to study for history for about three hours and then nayhouse and I shot pool and discussed the finer aspects of life. Personally, I think I'm better than him at pool yet he continues to kick my ass in every game we play. Oh well, I tilt for 5 minutes and then tell some story to get off tilt. On sunday, I had a very long six hours at work, but it was worth it. I went to the freeroll at skyview and there were so many people there. I got entered in the 20 dollar survivor pool plus the 300 for first place. I looked at my starting table and didn't see many threats to speak of. On the third hand I attempted a bluff and got called down by second pair. About fifteen hands in I moved my last 5600 in with 33 and got called by AJ and...AJ. In this spot, 33 is good about 60% of the time. The flop was K Q 2 rainbow and I was jus thinking about what I was going to do with those 17k chips I was about to get. Well, I didn't have to think too hard as a J spiked on the turn and there was no 2 outer on the river to save me. What really sent me tilting was the lady who said that she started with the best hand and ended with the best hand. So yes, I tilted in a freeroll. I sat down at a 30 dollar satellite for awhile because there were no NL games that had started yet. My bad fortune continued when I had QJ and the flop came 9 10 Q and I pushed allin and got called by 10 J. Of course, an 8 came on the river and we chopped. The same kid called two hands later a hand in which I had AA on a K 10 9 board and he had K J. A queen promptly came up to end my day there. I sat down at a 1/2 NL game a little later and on the first hand I had K 8 in the SB. Flop was K 8 5 and I bet the pot and got two calls. Turn was 6 which was fine by me. I bet 1.5 times the pot and a solid kid who I had played with before smooth called. The river came a 4 and he promptly bet out about half the size of the pot. I looked him and said "6 7 eh". I reluctantly called and he showed 6 7. Even after that hit, I ended up coming back to almost even before moving to 5/5. One big hand for me happened against afif where I had QJ. Flop was Q 4 2 and I bet out 2/3 the pot. He called immediately and the turn came a 2. I bet the pot and again he called. The river was a K and I checked. He bet half the pot and I called. He flipped over AK and I could only shake my head. I continued to play very good and after a rebuy I was up about one buyin and it was about 10 PM. Then something happened. I proceeded to play the worst 30 minutes of poker in my life. I was just playing like an absolute amateur. I can't explain what happened other than I had a complete mental lapse for half an hour. I was playing so bad I felt like asking my tablemates what hand beat what. At 10:30 I ran out of there with my original buyin which left me down about 50 on the night.

Today I woke up extra early so I could finish my last minute history studying. I felt pretty good going into the final. When I looked at it at first, I saw that it exposed some of my glaring weaknesses. First, it talked about chapters in the Thurow book that I hadn't reviewed. And one of the seven essays was about Nixon and the silent majority, something that I know about but didn't review thoroughly. There were several other questions where an educated guess was the best I was going to do(who cares about the key elements of the social rules revolution anyways?). I came home and spent the better part of the day outside getting things done and playing about 2 hours of basketball. I went to study for geography and got through chapter 9 and fell asleep. I'm really glad that I didn't actually read that book, because I was getting tired just reviewing it. I woke up and was joyed to see that ortiz hit that 3 run homer to seal the game for the red sox. In a way I kind of feel bad for johnny damon when 40,000 crazed boston fans were shouting his name at the end of the game. You could see in his eyes that he missed playing in front of the drunk fenway fans and perhaps he was somewhat regretful that he went to new york. I'm sorry, but I hate the yankees. I spent the rest of the night sorting some things out and now I'm here unable to sleep because of the nap I took earlier.

After going back and reading through Pauly's blog again, I realized something: his post about being honest with yourself seemed to glare right at me. Lately, I did not want to admit that something was wrong. Unless you're honest with yourself in all aspects of life, you cannot begin to advance yourself as a human being. You can wear a mask for awhile, but eventually people will begin to see through that mask. It's just a matter of time before the weaknesses in your life that you have denied exist before begin to show through. To quote him almost exactly, he says that "we must strive to find the good things that we do and to address the things that we do poorly." I've been trying to think of things that I do good in my life. If I put my mind to it I have a lot of creativity. I can make people laugh. I can be an articulate and convincing speaker if it's something that I care about. I have trouble taking a lot of things seriously. I sometimes reflect on people's bad characteristics rather than the good ones that they exhibit. Sometimes, there is a lack of control of emotions on my part and that can spill over to parts of my life that I don't want it to.

So there you go. This has to be one of my longer posts so I hope you enjoy it.

new poem today. It's just a segment of a work by marvell since the original version is much longer. Enjoy.

To His Coy Mistress(segmented)
By: Andrew Marvell

But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long preserv'd virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust.
The grave's a fine and private place,
But none I think do there embrace.

Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may;
And now, like am'rous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour,
Than languish in his slow-chapp'd power.
Let us roll all our strength, and all
Our sweetness, up into one ball;
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life.
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.

mh

side blog 5: poker, girls, and the "real world"

2006-04-22T01:43:00.000-04:00

I have nothing really to update because I took a break from the usual friday activities this week to go out and have a little fun playing cards. Basically, a bunch of people were busy and I wanted a change from the norm. I played 1/2 NL and ended up winning a peanut of a margin after about 5 hours.

However, I'd like to use the rest of this space to discuss how poker relates to life. I think understanding your purpose in life is very difficult to do, so you have to make comparisons to things that are more understandable(ie sports, books, famous people). I've really never liked trying to describe a part of life with something else because it always feels that something is lost in the translation. So the rest of this will be devoted to how poker almost perfectly mirrors love. Let's start at the beginning. Sometimes you look down and see a hand that you know is going to be great; you just get a feeling about this one. You know that going into it that you're going to get what you want out of this one. Problem is, these hands come around so rarely that you really have to relish in the moment whenever you find yourself in the middle of one of these. Most of the hands you look down at you just don't see anything you like. Then you'll come along a hand that's pretty borderline, but you decide to throw in a look and see how it developes. Almost parallel to love, you decide to see if anything materializes after the flop. If you have something like two small suited connectors and the flop comes down A K Q then you know that you've totally missed everything. It's somewhat like seeing a girl that you think you'll like and going out and having just an awful date. I mean, you saw potential at the start, but nothing happened. You totally missed everything and it's easy to get away from. You smile as you muck the hand, thinking briefly about what could have been. Then there are those flops that leave you guessing. You might flop a two way straight draw or a three or four flush and you really have to start thinking about how far you want to go with this one. When you decide to make the call and it materializes, the feeling is priceless. You know that you were behind and you cracked a better hand with some help. Sort of like when you go out with a girl and you notice that the date didn't go bad, but either one likes the other one more. Then, out of nowhere, they both decide that they like each other and all that began well ends well. However, when you don't hit these hands, it can be frustrating and can leave you not wanting to play those cards again. Finally, there are those hands that I'll simply refer to as "tilt causers". You just have an eerie feeling that you're going to get your teeth kicked in until they bleed. You flop two pair and you're up against a set. You know that after the money is in you need a miracle to get out of this one or you're going to fall faster than the iraqi air force during the first gulf war. You have a great date with a girl, you become interested, and then she plays it off like she's interested. Then, you realize that you've overcommitted yourself and that your bottom two pair don't look all that great anymore. Maybe you learn your lesson to take your time the next go around, but mostly you just leave with the sour feeling in your mouth. Maybe you thought you had something great and you got cheated on and didn't find out about it until all the chips were in the middle. Perhaps in the future you're lucky enough to go through this situation in the future and if you've learned your lesson, you can avoid getting burned. I think norman chad said it best once when he said: "great poker players make huge laydowns and that preserves their life in the future of the game. If they don't make these laydowns, they're out and amongst the railbirds." How true norman, how true.

mh

running bad

2006-04-20T19:41:00.000-04:00

monday- I went to both psychology and history and both were worth going to. I passed my psychology test with an 80% or something like that which is good. After that, I was able to come home because PEPP was cancelled for spring break. I don't really remember exactly what I did, but I'm sure it involved playing basketball. Yeah, actually, I went outside and fixed my golf bag and cleaned off all my clubs.
tuesday- I didn't go to geography class because my alarm clock didn't go off again. I think I need to invest in a new one seeing that that's the second time it broke in the past week. I went to economics and it was a waste as always. In our softball game for our team, we lost 11-9 because we only had 9 guys and we left the bases loaded to end the game. That sucked really bad because we were down 11-4 going into the last inning and we rallied really good to make a game of it. In CI we just watched a presentation. Work was nothing new, except for an interesting situation that came up.
wednesday- I didn't go to psychology because I didn't feel like going. I've just been in one of those moods for the last month where I have no desire to learn. I think I'm starting to come out of it, but man have I burned some bridges this semester. It happens once a year where I have a time in the year that I'm completely unmotivated and I just do(or don't do) stupid thing after stupid thing. A recession of sorts for me. I came home, and played some more basketball and won my first game of the year. It only took about three weeks but I got the job done finally. Later on, I went to play cards. I was in the tournament and was up to about 18k until some guy called a huge bluff of mine which took me down to around 9k. A little later in the tournament, the guy UTG raised to 3000 and I went allin with AQ because I sensed weakness. It was folded around to chuck who looked down and splashed his chips into the pot faster than I've ever seen. I hate that guy, all he plays are good hands. The first guy who raised folded. The flop was Q 7 2 with two hearts which gave me a queen or a backdoor flush possibility. Neither hit. I wallowed for awhile about my unluckiness of having chuck wake up with aces and probably doubling up in that situation(the guy said he folded eights and my AQ would have been good on that board). I really, really wanted to make the final table, and not even for monetary purposes at all. That's nice and all, but the experience is much more valuable than any monetary compensation I could recieve for my efforts. I walked over to the 5/5 game and it was just getting started. I was teetering right around my original buyin for the better part of 2 hours when I lost with queens versus sevens(i had queens, he went allin and I called and then he promply flopped a set on a 7 3 2 board). I never improved and was stuck one buyin. I rebought, and got involved in a hand that I'll just collectively call, "The Hand". I have 10c8c and the flop is 2c 6d 9c. The pot is around 450 because some guy moved allin and I was getting the right odds to call. Essie bets out 150 and I think for awhile about it. I figure, I'm getting 4:1 on what I think is a 13 out situation(nine clubs, four sevens) so I call and phil calls behind me. The turn came with the nirvana card, the 7c. I couldn't believe it. I pushed my last 50 in and phil folded and essie called. We turned up our hands, I had a straight and a flush, essie had a set of sixes, and edmund, the guy who was allin before, had a higher flush. Then the second nirvana card hit...the 10c! It was a thousand dollar card, and very satisying becuase I really don't like either essie or edmund. From there on in, everything was downhill though. It was sickening to say the least. I had jacks once and on a 7 3 2 board(look familiar) a guy went allin with A7 and hit a set of sevens on the river. I had AK on a K 8 2 board and some guy had pocket kings and I lost a ton of money there. I attempted a huge semi-bluff on a 2 6 8 board when I had a flush draw. The turn came a J rainbow and I bet out 200 and the guy called. The river was a blank, and he showed J8. He said himself if he didn't make two pair on the turn that he was folding. I must have flopped top pair five times and been raised another hundred after I bet on the flop. Everything that could go wrong was going wrong. I ended up cashing down a little for my third consecutive losing session.
today- hit geography and economics with the one-two punch and was excited to leave econ 15 minutes early. I got down to the field for our playoff softball game earlier than ever and I was able to warm up a little bit. We were playing the team that beat us 11-9 the last game and we knew it would be a good game because we had such a close one last time. After five innings, the score was tied 0-0. With two outs in the top of the sixth, a ball was hit to our third basemen, a former baseball player. There were runners on first and second at the time, but he had no play at third because he had to charge to get the ball. He came in, set his feet, and then threw the ball about fifteen feet above my head. That left the bases loaded and another kid for their team who didn't have a hit all game singled up the middle to score two. We had a small rally in the bottom of the inning but ended up losing 2-0. I can't really be mad as I was 3-4 and played pretty good defense. Plus, it's only intramural softball. There's always next year. In CI our group did our presentation and we did a good job I think. Afterwards, we went to PEPP and I was kind of excited to see the kids again(first time in 2.5 weeks) and although the building was really stuffy a lot of work got done. I'm going to be sad to see them go next week because next week is the last week of PEPP. It's funny how you get that feeling at the end of something. I'll always remember Mr. Bartlett, my eighth grade history teacher telling us about how most presidents said they hated their job until a few weeks before they were done when they had to drag them kicking and screaming down Pennsylvania Avenue to get rid of them. I've often regretted the things that I didn't think I would miss a lot, things like summer picnics with the family, running in my babysitter's yard, or Squirrel Hill Baseball. Now that they're gone, I wish I could have them back more than anything. Most of them represent simplicity, a thing that I try to strive for in my life. Anyways, I came home and got my ass kicked in basketball yet again and then had steaks for dinner. Later on, I did something that I hadn't done in a long time, that being writing. I think I'm starting to come out of this early spring slump and I'm ready for summer.

mh

the weekend so far

2006-04-16T03:26:00.000-04:00

friday- Began early with myself and nayhouse going out to breakfast at about 6:15. Eat n park was above average as always. Then, we hit up south park 9 hole golf course and we were the second people to tee off all day. For the first six holes, it was a beautiful morning. You couldn't have asked for a cooler, more relaxing start to the day. I was playing one of the better rounds of my life up until that point. I wasn't hitting the driver particularly well but I was getting up and down and still putting like a maniac but getting the job done. Then on hole 7 a small version of Hurrican Katrina began bringing winds and some severe downpour. We were able to quickly finish up the round and I ended up shooting 50 after choking on hole 9. The rain is no excuse to take four strokes when you're on the fringe. After that, I drove nayhouse home and went to my morning classes. Later, I came home and chilled but started feeling kind of shitty a little bit later in the day. I ended up not going to the pirate game because I didn't feel like going and I think that even if I did feel like going I might not have made it through the game. I started feeling better after a long nap and nayhouse came over for awhile. I forget what we did, but I went over hrehas. Everyone from the original "crew" was there. It was weird to have such a good crowd there. Well, I can't say that everyone was there. King and stock were elsewhere, but the side games were good. After gerner and immekus left, I was stuck about 100 but myself, ben, and kloby decided to continue the games. From that point on, I won probably 90% of the pots and could not miss. It was a sweet feeling to hit flop after flop after flop. In omaha one time, I flopped three pair and turned a fourth pair. Not that it counts for anything, but it was great to see. There was this one ridiculous pot where I had queens full of threes, ben had threes full of queens, and kloby hit trip threes. It was probably a 300 dollar pot and I scooped it with both of them drawing dead on the river. I ended up going up for the night, which is always good. More importantly, I had a lot of fun playing, especially when it got to three handed. You can always replace money. You can never replace good times; had or never had.
saturday- I woke up for work and went in at 9. We were pretty steadily busy all day and it was a rather quick 8 hours, although my legs were pretty sore at the end there. After napping for a few minutes, I called up nayhouse and I picked him up. We went outside my house and shot basketball. At the beginning, we couldn't hit shit. For the first half hour I think we were collectively shooting about 10% from the field. Then we began what will become a great tradition. Nayhouse took the ball, stood at the foul line, and before shooting, asked a question to the basketball hoop. Seriously, who is fucked up enough to talk to an inanimate object and say if he makes it the answer to his question is "yes' and if he misses, it is "no". That would be nayhouse for you. It actually turned out to be a pretty fun game, and suprisingly, most of the answers that it gave would hold the future of the night. We ate wendy's and then ventured off to last year's stomping grounds, mt lebo. Driving down mt lebo blvd reminds me of going to see erin and sarah last year. A somewhat eerie feeling to say the least. This time though, it was with a new group of people, all underclassmen. The only person I recognized from last year was sarah and the rest were new. We hung out outside sarah's house until about 11:15 and then I drove a couple of people home. Afterwards, nayhouse, leigh, and myself went to eat n park to grab a quick bite to eat. I drove them both home and stupidly decided to go to play poker. I never learn my lesson; I can legitimately say that I'm one of the most stubborn persons most of you will ever meet. I really don't know what went wrong, I got sucked out on twice, ran into big hands probably 5 times, and a kid made a great call once that I laud him for. All around, in the last week, I've dropped almost 25% of my bankroll. I've learned two important lessons though. Those would be to not play when you're in a bad mood and not to play when tired. Both can affect your game in big ways. I'm taking at least two weeks to redevelope my fundamentals and hopefully get in a better state of mind about things. It's funny how some things affect you and how some don't. That said, I think it's true that nothing really affects you a lot until you start thinking about it. One of my favorite quotes from maybe Rousseau is "there is nothing good or bad in this world, but thinking that makes it so." Amen to that. Tomorrow, I'm sleeping in for the first time in months and then going to my uncle's house for Easter. It should be fun, and I'm excited that there's no PEPP on monday and only 3 more total sessions after that. Also, we only have two more weeks of actual classes and then finals week. Thank god, because I am completely ready to stop thinking about school. At least for the time being.

Tonight, we'll do lyrics. I always liked this song, but once you really look at the lyrics, you realize how much of a classic that this song is.

New Kid In Town
By: The Eagles

There's talk on the street; it sounds so familiar
Great expectations, everybody's watching you
People you meet, they all seem to know you
Even your old friends treat you like you're something new

Johnny come lately, the new kid in town
Everybody loves you, so don't let them down

You look in her eyes; the music begins to play
opeless romantics, here we go again
But after awhile, you're lookin' the other way
It's those restless hearts that never mend

Johnny come lately, the new kid in town
Will she still love you when you're not around?
There's so many things you should have told her,
but night after night you're willing to hold her,
Just hold her, tears on your shoulder

There's talk on the street, it's there to
Remind you, that it doesn't really matter which side you're on.
You're walking away and they're talking behind you
They will never forget you 'til somebody new comes along
Where you been lately? There's a new kid in town
Everybody loves him, don't they?
Now he's holding her, and you're still around
Oh, my, my There's a new kid in town
Ooh, hoo
just another new kid in town.

Until next time,
mh

it's gonna be a good day

2006-04-13T10:16:00.000-04:00

So my first class geography got cancelled becuase it is so nice outside. It's an exciting start to the day. I woke up today and felt somewhat refreshed, even though I only got six hours of sleep. If you've read my blog before or been around me for awhile, you'll know that I don't stay in bad moods for too long. Usually just a night and that's all. The release that I get whenever I write also helps with everything. So that's all.

Today, I still have a quiz in economics and then we have a softball game at 12 that I'm excited for. After that, I'll be hanging out with nayhouse for awhile either going golfing or bowling, depending on the weather. And later on I'm going to the penguin game with leigh and kristin. Should be a fun one.

Until next time,
mh

the sky turned yellow

2006-04-12T23:59:00.000-04:00

It's the truth. Tonight, I saw more consecutive lightning bolts than I've ever seen in my life. It was just insane, just one after the other.

To begin with, I will give you a quick rundown of the weekend.
friday- I went to both of my classes and then came home and relaxed for awhile. Later, I hung out with bradburn and leigh and we went to eat n park and these two girls started talking to me when we were in line and bradburn mentioned a little later that he thought they were hot. However, he never went and talked to them. He's a good guy and a good friend but it makes me kinda mad to see that. Anyways, the night ended early and I got a decent night's sleep.
saturday- Work was good for the first half of the day. In the second half I had to build a wheelbarrow without using saw horses. English translation= I build a wheelbarrow on the unsteadiness of a raised platform. It was not fun to say the least because every time i would get the carriage bolt through the base and the wedge, I would have to quickly grab the bolt with my other hand so it wouldn't fall out of place. Such a pain in the ass. After work, I went over nayhouse's and hung out with him and schleicher for awhile. I finally killed that flat beer that he had for awhile. God was that nasty. Later, I went over hrehas for some side game action. The rest of the night I won't disclose because, well, you'll have to read about it in my book or something.
sunday- Work was alright, same old same old. After work, I played basketball and watched lefty win the Masters. A good tournament indeed. Later that night, nayhouse came over and we struggled endlessly trying to get my links to work on dreamweaver with the SSH client.
monday- class, then i went golfing. I can truly say that I enjoyed playing the round even though I shot a dismal 51.
tuesday- class, class, softball game(which we won), class, nothing, work, homework
today- class, class, gym, home, basketball, food, then cards later. Cards were terrible. I was just in a bad state of mind for about the last hour. I flopped two flushes where higher flushes were flopped. My kings ran into aces, my jacks into kings, and my tens into kings. Needless to say, I played well enough for awhile to almost get back to even before I took some tough shots. Nothing I could do really, just a series of unfortunate events. As I was walking to the car, I began to get into one of those reflective moods. Maybe the humidity and nonstop lightning had to do with it. I realized how exhausted I am. Exhausted from work. Exhausted from school. Exhausted from life in general. The bad thing is, I can't even point to one thing that it is. It's just a combination of things that are hitting me at the same time. At the start of 11th grade, I was still a really motivated kid. I loved to learn, play sports, and do all sorts of other things. Then I met a girl that I really, truly liked. She didn't like me though. It took me so long to accept the fact that it simply wasn't going to happen. I had to go away to a different city for a week and a half for that to be finished with. My senior year, I began to get a little of it back. I looked back on how stupid it was to be affected by this so much that I barely did well enough on the APUSH test to get a "passing" grade. Man would I have liked to taken that test again in a different state of mind. Senior year, I had nothing to really complain about for the first half of the year. Until about march, I had two different girlfriends that I was happy with. Happy enough to be motivated to do work. Then something bad happened. I was single and found out the girl I liked the year before claimed that she liked me. Nothing good could come of the situation and by april I liked her again. This lasted until about graduation, whence I realized I had to give it up for good now. It was hard, and I was back to being unmotivated again. Needless to say, I got back together with an old friend from the past and I was motivated again. I did well my first college semester, getting a 3.73. I was motivated enough to learn the material, but sometimes it still felt like something was missing. By february of this year, I was single again but a generally happy person. Then I had a month where I was affected by a fever then a terrible cough that I collectively call bronchitis, but I doubt it was actually that. I met a new girl who I genuiely like but am not sure of what the situation will be like. I'm really tired of going to work becuase it is boring and they are really knit-picky about doing things their way. God forbid I try not to conform and actually learn something for myself. In school, I've lost my curiosity. That's a terrible thing. A curious person will do well in school because he or she is intrinsicly motivated to do the work and use the knowledge to improve his or her life. That's just not me right now. I'm scratching, barely surviving, and hoping to make it through the semester. I could blame some of it on sickness, but it's something that I like to call exhaustiveness. I'd rather sit here or play golf or do ANYTHING but open those books. For god's sake, I have a geography paper due in 9 hours that I haven't started. In psychology, I don't read the book or look up the daily doubles and still pass the exams. In history, I use my knowledge of the subject to get 107/100 on exams. Economics I actually have put a lot of effort into and I see myself understanding a lot of the concepts. In CI I haven't done a PEPP journal in a month, updated my website, or started my presentation. It seems like there's a mountain to move and I really could care less if it gets moved or not. It isn't a good thing to just breeze by. It's college, and you're there to learn things, not memorize/not care about them. I've seriously been considering taking a semester off and hiking the appalachain trail. It looks like the shit, and I love hiking and the outdoors in general. I think that it would be a great way to clear my mind and refocus myself for the rest of college and beyond. I'm 18 years old and I feel that I'm having a mid-school crisis or something like that. The thunder is getting closer to my house now too and I can hear it. Perhaps an omen of some sort. So now that you've heard the story of my life, I'll stop bitching and whining about it. I live in the best country on the best planet in the universe(notice no "best municipality" or "best city" in there lol). I really don't have anything to complain about except my lack of motivation, which is alarming to say the least.

Tonight we will conclude with one of my favorite songs of all time.

Let It Be
By: The Beatles

When I find myself in times of trouble, mother Mary comes to me,
speaking words of wisdom, let it be.
And in my hour of darkness she is standing right in front of me,
speaking words of wisdom, let it be.

Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be.
Whisper words of wisdom, let it be.

And when the broken hearted people living in the world agree,
there will be an answer, let it be.
For though they may be parted there is still a chance that they will see,
there will be an answer. let it be.

Let it be, let it be, .....

And when the night is cloudy, there is still a light, that shines on me,
shine until tomorrow, let it be.
I wake up to the sound of music, mother Mary comes to me,
speaking words of wisdom, let it be.

mh

funniest comments part 4

2006-04-06T19:32:00.000-04:00

I'd tell you more about what's been going on in my life, but I have a website to make tonight. Whenever I'm done, I'll post the link here and you all can check it out. For now, Funniest Comments 4.

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Funniest Comments 4
Edited by: Matt Hartman
Copyright 2006

Mark: extraordinary girl?
Mark: she do it for u?
Me: no, it's a green day song off of american idiot

Me: I like American History
Anna: I like sleeping

Nayhouse: if(gay == true) {
faggot = guy;
}

Nayhouse: i can bring it up 2 ur house or something and me u can drink them in front of bradbrun

Danielle: Hey Matt your girlfriend is stupid.
Danielle: She went into the library and asked where the books were.

Nayhouse: yea i still cant believe that cop pulled up behind us
Me: yeah
Me: he must have had a bullshit detector

Nayhouse: oh yea, ur so called god has send a message through the half jew to u
Me: which is
Nayhouse: he hates you
Me: yeah, he lets me know all the time

Magu: why don't u do us all a favor and play hide and go f-u-c-k yourself

Bradburn [7:35 PM]: we could go see Brokeback Mountain, jk

Anna: i was the only lucky one that made it out

Nurundrome: If people did reading marathons as often as they do film marathons, or if they read a chapter of a book instead of watching a rerun of a sitcom, then D students would be B students and the creativity of hichschoolers wouldn't only occur when they were high.

John Juanda: u should do as i did, right click his name and MUTE him

(A random guy has just been moved from my table to the other 5/5 NL table at Skyview)
Sonny: Cuz, what’s he like?
Rates: He’s a chevy
Rates: Like a rock cuz.

Random Lady: We have to get going because he has to get rid of the virus on the computer from all the porn he’s been lookin at.
Random Kid: I didn’t look at any porn.
(20 seconds later)
Random Kid: I have to go fix the computer from all the porn I’ve been lookin at.

Bradburn: I’m keeping my options open

Leigh: I love Sidney Crosby
Me: Sidney Crosby sucks dick
Leigh: You would know.

Me: geoff went up at least 1k last night
Immekus: good for geoff, he might be able to upgrade to a 3 bedroom apartment now

Dave: Alright Larry, time to go home.
Larry: Let’s get the hell out of here.

The following was printed on an Ace Hardware Flyer:
Are you ready for the 3rd Annual Bag Sale? NO!

Leigh: i look sweet as hell on paper tho

Larry: We’ve been sniffing way too much fertilizer today

Dave: i throw on some sublime and drink and make out with anyone

mh