I know haven't written much but things have been somewhat ugly in my progress. Well, that's not quite true. I did do a lot, but I've had some setbacks as well. The first of which is poker. From May 6th to May 10th I lost 80% of the profit I had earned since I started this goal back in March. That's a tough week.

tilt is an amazingly tough nut to crack. It's really hard to know when you are just getting unlucky and when you are playing bad. I still don't know for sure but I have noticed that when I lose a lot of money there are some patterns.

1) I tend to try different games, for example if I branch into turbo tournaments or Step tournaments (these are tournaments that don't award cash prizes, but entries into higher buy-in tournaments).

2) I tend to play a lot more than my usual volume.

My regular pattern is to play one "set" of four tournaments simultaneously. This usually takes a little longer than an hour. Ideally I would like to increase this. I would like to be able to play poker, profitably, for several hours a day, but every time I try, my advantage seems to fly out the window. It's possible that this is just variance and I really am just getting unlucky and my seemingly poor performance is simply anecdotal superstition. I might try combating this with a strategy. Tomorrow I think I will try to play three sets during the day with a one hour break in between. Hopefully that will be enough "cool-down" time to let me still play my A-game.

The other unfortunate event is that I hurt my left calf. Not really sure what happened but I started limping. Resting didn't seem to help in fact, it was usually after a rest that it would be at its worst (such as when I woke up in the morning), but if I was walking around for a few minutes i would hardly feel anything. I took last week and this week off from running and it has been better but it's still not 100%. I'll start running again next week, less ambitiously, and we'll see how it goes.

I have been working on a website redesign. Still tweaking the look and feel but I think it'll be a nice change. It's very clean and easily readable.

I have only been to one live baseball game so far. April 28 (lost to florida 4-7)

I *did* got to the Baseball hall of fame on May 2nd. I went with a buddy of mine and honestly, I have to say I had a lot more fun hanging out with him and playing some wiffle ball and HORSE with a basketball hoop we found at the hotel than I did at the museum. It's not that the museum was bad exactly, I'm not sure how I could have made a better one. It just felt a little fake to me. That the heart of baseball is found in a company league or a pickup game than in some corporate sponsored museum. It felt forced and not genuine.

After the hall of fame we went to a casino and I won $150 playing poker, which is nice because I'm broke.

on May 7th I did see a broadway show. I saw Waiting for Godot which was awesome. I'll probably make a separate post about it.

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Here's an interesting study in sample size.

Here is an image of my profit since I started my goal to make $1000 in online poker. As you can see the variance is striking. The end result is that I had a 13.5% ROI over the period and I am over 15% of the way towards my goal. Still, the graph *looks* ugly. Not only are the swings enormous, there doesn't seem to be any positive trend.

This is a chart of all my poker winnings since I started tracking. Much prettier, eh? This chart clearly does exhibit an upward trend, and the period charted by the first graph seems nothing more than an unpleasant break-even stretch. In actuality I have now made more money in poker than at any time since I started tracking. Interestingly enough, my ROI over this period is 12.3% which is less than the goal period charted above.

For those of you interested, I am calculating ROI by average profit/average buy-in (including rake). After I earn another hundred dollars I'll have enough of a roll to move up in buy-ins again. If I can maintain a decent ROI (I'm hoping for about 8%), this graph should have a very healthy spike in the near future.

My other goals are moving along nicely.

On Thursday I went to a passover Seder. Had a great time. Not counting it as a religious service because there wasn't a formal religious leader guiding it. I really do like passover Seders though. Probably the best religious meal I've had the chance to partake in.

On Friday I saw the neo-futurists again. I have to say I wasn't that impressed this time. We got there somewhat late and had to take seats in the back, so the intimacy was missing. Also, some of the players were clearly new to the troupe and we flubbing lines. I'll still see them next time but I'm hoping they get it together. The funniest performance was called "the grapes of wrath" and consisted of one of the players with a bunch of grapes just throwing them at the audience. Silly, but I enjoyed it. There was also a waiting for godot satire I found amusing.

Saturday I went to a dinner party that I made an ice-cream banana fudge pie for. I'm not sure if it counts as an original recipe since the crust and the ice cream were ready-made. If anyone actually reads this and wants the recipe I'll post it and include it in the goal list.

I went to an Easter mass on Sunday. A formal church service is a very surreal experience for me. On the one hand I'm a big fan of symbolism (Easter is especially loaded with pagan symbols of fertility) but the formalism irks me. It's like I'm a big fan of the themes they are trying to empart, but whoever wrote the script needs a good editor because it really doesn't come off right.

For example, I like the notion of greeting and expressing harmony with your neighbor. I'm all for forming genuine communal bonds but that part of the mass is just awkward for me. Relationships and community need to grow. Any attempt to just say "hey there brother!" and assume we're the best of chums makes me feel uncomfortable. I do try to put my best foot forward, but I never come away saying "Man, that guy I shook hands with was awesome. I wonder if he plays Madden?"

The sermon was vaguely interesting. The gist was that when mary came to Jesus' tomb and found it empty the angel that greeted her implored her to not hang around in the empty tomb but seek jesus who had risen. The priest said Easter isn't a time to sit back and say "man it's awesome being saved" but to seek out and challenge your religion. I liked that sentiment. Sort of a carpe diem of religious sentiment.

Last night I went to A Salt and Battery and had Fish and Chips. The food was pretty good, but overpriced. Probably the best part was talking about how they had fried mars bars and how unappetizing they seemed. A British guy who was there said that there was a translation error there and that a British mars bar was much closer to an American 3 musketeers bar. I exclaimed that this changed everything and he nodded sagely, but after he left I realized I like both candy bars about the same (i.e. not at all) and that a deep fried 3 musketeers sounded just as disgusting as the fried mars bar.

After that my companions and I jumped into a cab to make it to a movie theater to see Sugar (review to come). The cab driver was named Malik and was from Pakistan. Really a funny guy. At one point he asked me to navigate the cab and since I never drive I had no idea how to go. Eventually I said he should go down a street that was actually a one way in the other direction. When I gave up he laughed in a "haha now we know who the cab driver is!" sort of way.

Dan said it was an awesome Columbo interaction, which is true except that I admitted I had no idea where I was going to start with. It would be like a guy meeting up with Columbo and saying "Lieutenant, I killed the guy...arrest me" and Columbo responding ""Oh no no sir, I'm certain of your innocence. I was just wondering whether you could help me clear up one thing ..."

Still it was a fun cab ride. You gotta love new york. Tonight I'm seeing a live concert of Flight of the Conchords. reports to come!

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I finally saw this film last week. I have to admit I was hesitant because I found the sequel incredibly disappointing. The third installment, however, impressed me a great deal. So much so that I think it might have topped the original.

The first film, to me at least, seemed something of a "Wizard of Oz" allegory. The protagonist finds himself in a strange world where he has a bizarre influence. As the plot progresses he seeks some external satisfaction and, at the conclusion, finds out that he had had the key to that satisfaction all along. In the first film, he finds "home" with Marie.

The third film is much darker, but echoes the themes of the first in a superb style. Instead of overtly despicable villains cloaked in shadowy conspiracies the antagonists are misguided patriots guilty of little more than rationalizing unethical behavior a few times too many. Likewise Bourne himself is no longer an innocent victim, but in fact the main instigator for turning his previous self into a monstrous assassin.

The end result is a surprisingly adult theme for a modern action movie. Ultimately, any attempt to find responsibility for our identity in the world is futile, as we create ourselves. Put another way, The Bourne trilogy is an elaborate drama of self-discovery. Bourne only gains the perspective to apprehend and reject his previous identity with the help of amnesia. The ending of the film recapitulates the beginning of the first, with a symbolic baptism and rebirth of the protagonist. No longer is he David Webb or Jason Bourne, but something entirely new.

I would like to mention the precise and well-wrought camera work in this film. Though I usually dislike the quick-cuts prevalent in so many action films today, I thought the director did a fantastic job of generally letting his camerawork embellish the plot instead of substituting for it. That said, the Tangier sequence was far too muddled and confusing. It's still very much a worthwhile film.

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I just can't stop watching this. I am simply awed at the human capacity to create beauty.

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Just came back from a second look weekend at Case Western. I had a spectacular time. They packed a lot of stuff into a day and a half.

When I first walked into the saturday night reception I was greeted with eight current medical students playing in a string ensemble. They had a fantastic buffet and free drinks. They also had a chocolate fondue waterfall. The goal was to impress and they certainly succeeded! Throughout the reception they had something like a talent show where different students and staff of the med school took the stage. Among the performances was a Dave Matthews cover band, some amazing drum solos, a jazz band and (my favorite) a fully choreographed dance routine to Michael Jackson's Thriller.

There was an after-party which I went to but left somewhat early (we had to get up at 7am for the next day). I'm glad I left when I did because I was definetely tired/hung over but the applicants who stayed later were in much worse shape. The staff took it in stride though. They said it was good we got used to it now.

The day was good, we had a lot of lecture presentations about the school, student life and a surprisingly fascinating talk about health care disparity. I say it was surprising because I'm used to these talks being very vague about the problem and its solutions, but this presenter had some very impressive data, and he wasn't really interested in blame since that doesn't solve the problem. That talk was probably my favorite.

We also got an introduction to the academic societies. It's a little bizarre but Case is actually a lot like Hogwarts in that it has four academic houses that the students are placed into when they arrive. Each society has its own study lounge and faculty adviser. Mature students are encouraged to help the younger ones etc. I'm not sure if there are any quiddich matches or something equivalent but I wouldn't be surprised.

Then they gave us a tour of the neighborhoods around the med school and Cleveland (including the rock and roll hall of fame and the west market). For dinner we had the chance to eat at the home of an alumni. My group got to eat with a pediatrician and her husband who worked for Cleveland County. they were a remarkably nice couple and the food was delicious.

We finished the night at a disco bowling alley/bar. bowling was one of my 101 goals and I did accomplish it by bowling a game. Unfortunately I was utterly terrible and only managed to score 60 points. Still I accomplished it and had a good time.

Since I had some time at the airport I also built a spreadsheet to organize and pay off my loans, but after I got home I found some more elegant techniques on spreadsheets I found on the web (only to be expected), so I'm probably going to rework it some before I say that goal is finished.

Oh, and poker is going better. I'm up $22 now. :P

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