It's 2008!

It always takes a little while for the new year to sink in. Maybe it's the tax-filing process that finally brings it home to me. Or the slow changing of the seasons (why is Jan 1st a new year anyway? it's so arbitrary... we should change the year on a solstice or equinox...). But yeah, it finally seems like a new year. Yea?

I was reading an article Find your Inner Spock and, even though it was a fluff piece, I connected with it.

To hear Finkel tell it, there is only one golden rule to making decisions: a rigorous faith in logic.

"On a deep psychological level you have to know that you can make the right decision 10 times in a row and have it not work out and make the same decision the 11th time," Finkel said. "A lot of people understand that intellectually, but don't have it hard-wired into their systems. You have to have this very deep-seated belief in probability and not looking at results."

It's definitely not an easy thing to do. Once you get kicked in the teeth a couple times, it's hard to smile. There are days when I feel like the whole universe is against me, days when self-doubt handicaps my decisions.

When I first started playing poker, I was naive. Now though, I don't think that I would ever recommend to anyone that they start playing professionally. It's too stressful and emotionally draining. Separating your results from your feelings of self-worth is too difficult.

I'm not saying that I would do things differently. It's not like I want a *job*! It's just that poker has turned into a more challenging job than any field to which the road well traveled would have led.

Atheist's Nightmare

Yeah. I don't think anyone could ever convince me of the value of parochial schools.

Vinegar

I'm really all about vinegar right now. On my list for the next things to be all about: coconut oil and honey. But right now--- vinegar gets my nomination for most amazing natural household product.

You can google it for yourself! (you can tell I'm REALLY excited because of the exclamation mark!)

So yesterday, I was thinking to myself, "what if I need to use a very small amount of vinegar, but would like the vinegar (specifically the acetic acid) to be more concentrated than your normal supermercado shelf stuff?" EVERYbody at one point in their lives asks themselves this exact same question, and yesterday was my day. So I googled it and came up with crap.

It's my experience that the BEST questions in the world are those which Google has no good answers for. The really important stuff like the meaning of life, why are american presidential elections always a lose-lose situation, and how to clean Bailey's out from a laptop computer.

So yesterday, I ran an experiment. Maybe the next poor lost soul who searches Google for this particular answer will have more luck than I.

How-to Concentrate Household Vinegar a.k.a.
Increase concentration of acetic acid in household vinegar a.k.a.
A poor-man's zone-refinement of acetic acid from household vinegar


1) Pour your household vinegar into a container that will fit inside of your household freezer.

2) Place your container containing your household vinegar into your freezer.

3) Check to make sure that your container containing your household vinegar has some "head-room", because you will be freezing it, and it will expand, and unless you would like a lot of household vinegar running wild inside your household freezer you should make sure that the container containing your household vinegar will continue to contain the vinegar once it expands.

4) Wait until the household vinegar freezes completely. This is one of those clear-cut situations where patience is a virtue. I really hate it when someone interrupts my impatient stamping of feet by matter-of-factly stating that "Patience is a virtue". Half of the time, all patience does for you is leave you at the back of a misshapen many-forked semblance of a line with a full bladder. "Cleanliness is next to godliness" and I'll be damned if I'm going to stand in a puddle of my own urine thankyouverymuch.

5) Take the container containing your now-frozen household vinegar out of your household freezer, and wait for it to begin to unfreeze. You can help it along by running it under some water from your kitchen faucet, or singing to it (this patently obvious choice will work just fine, though I prefer something with a little funk).

6) Don't let it unfreeze completely. Unfreezing the vinegar completely will leave it much the same as when you first started, albeit contained (hopefully still) in a different container. The household vinegar closest to the outside of the container containing it should melt first. Pour this first-to-melt household vinegar into another container. Quickly find another container if you don't have one already. You should have thought of this before you took the vinegar out of the freezer, and definitely before singing to it. Duh!

7) The first-to-melt vinegar should have a higher concentration of acetic acid, so you now can use it to do whatever it was that you were hoping and dreaming of for so many more-highly-concentrated-household-vinegar-less days. Congratulations! High fives all around!

Puzzles link help

I haven't posted forever, but I've gotten some complaints that the link doesn't function correctly in my last post, so I'll post a fix to that first:

1) Uninstall all previous versions of Java from your computer. If it's an XP machine:
2) Go to your Control Panel, click Add/Remove programs
3) Find your Java Runtime Environment... there might be more than one
4) Uninstall all instances of Java listed there
5) Restart computer, go to www.java.com. Click on free java download...

For some reason, Java gets all eff'ed up every now and then... I had to do this same reinstall recently with my machine.

Puzzles

I saw these cool puzzles today and had fun solving them. I liked them because they are really difficult until you figure out the right way to look at the problem, and then it only takes a few seconds to solve each one.

Puzzles

DVDs

i saw this funny advert the other day:



i hate renting movies and having to watch previews or anti-piracy crap. i will never buy a DVD that has that crap on it. i don't understand why people accept this on the DVDs that they buy.

so anyway. if you make a "back-up" of one of your DVDs, you can remove all of this stuff. all you need is a computer with a DVD burner, and some blank DVD-R discs. you can buy software, download pirated copies of commercial pirating software (i love the irony), or just use free software.

there's a short guide here at the RipIt4Me site of how to do this for free.

i really don't understand the way the RIAA, MPAA, and USA thinks that things work. in an effort to protect their business models, they CREATE scofflaws. people don't want to be restricted in how they use the MP3s that they purchase online, so rather than buy from iTunes, they download illegally. people don't want stupid adverts on their DVDs, and so they learn how to remove them, and then realize how easy it would be to copy and pirate rented movies. people want to smoke pot, gamble online, etc., but because of the USA, they are driven to do so through unregulated channels, and in the process lose respect for the regulations of the US.

shocking

last night i shocked the crap out of myself.

the buzzer on my apartment door wasn't working correctly, so i climbed up onto my kitchen counter, unscrewed the wall cover and started poking around. the problem was a loose wire.

simple enough. all i had to do was reinsert the wire and then screw the holding clamp back down onto it. the head of my screwdriver was too big though, so i grabbed a kitchen knife and set to work.

everything was going perfectly until i shocked the crap out of myself.

i was painfully balanced on the counter with my old-man knees when the 220 volts of electricity surged through me, and then painfully hit the floor with my ass, at which time i painfully hit my head against the wall, and then twitched a little bit as the feeling gradually returned to the right side of my body and chest. that feeling, in case you wonder, happened to also consist mostly of pain.

so yeah. it was what i might describe as a painful experience for which i won't immediately be circling back through the turnstiles to stand in line for again.

the first thing that came out of my mouth though was nervous laughter (shortly followed by a *little* cursing).

my ass-bone still hurts and i have a lump on the back of my head. on the bright side, my buzzer works (so when the delivery guy from Lindo Jardin is at my door, I'll know), AND hopefully the electricity shorted out any electronic microchips that the f'ing gov'ment might have inserted into my body.

all in all, it was a success.

down with bailey's!

i have finally found my afternoon-coffee replacement for bailey's. after my eye-opening experience last month, i am confident that amaretto is a much safer alternative.

take that "the man"!

i'm feeling a little loopy(er) right now... my brain has been jellied... i was playing in the big PokerStars Sunday tournament for almost 10 hours before busting out... a disappointing finish--- 11th place... oh, i MADE money--- and 11th out of 6637 people isn't bad--- but i wish that i had done better.

poker tournaments are really unsatisfying... it doesn't matter how well i do-- if i don't get first place, i feel like a failure.

a bad day

last last monday, i crawled out of bed early (not more than an hour past noon) with a screaming headache... i eventually found my kitchen, pushed aside some empty wine bottles and found the aspirina... after chewing up a couple, i looked in the living room and remembered what i had left to wait for me.

my laptop, my most expensive material possession, was upside down and still dripping Bailey's onto the couch cushions.

then i rushed into the bathroom to vomit, shower, and go back to bed for another four or five hours.

it was the worst start to a day that i've had in recent memory.

when i re-awoke, i took my computer completely apart and started the long process of trying to repair the damage. of all the things that i can imagine spilling into a notebook computer, i have to think that Bailey's is at least in the top 5. AND it's not something you'll find the folks at Bailey's advertising either. it's evidently a dirty secret over there, those sneaky muthas (they are on my list now, though I'm not yet willing to give up this delicious component of my afternoon coffee).

what saved my butt was the purchase of a Complete Care warranty from Dell, and the fact that one of their support people was willing to change my warranty over to an international one.

within a few days, technicians from Unisys, a company that does hardware support for Dell here in BsAs, arrived at my apartment with a new motherboard and graphics card. after that didn't solve all of my computer's woes, they ordered a new 17" LCD screen and keyboard for me, which they installed last monday (this past monday).

so anyway... i basically have a new computer now, except for the hard-drive, memory, and wireless cards--- and all that it cost me was a little self-respect.