News Nits

"All the news that's fit to reprint."

Lots has been going on in the news this week. A plane crashed into the Hudson river, but all 150 people on board were rescued. A rare nit of bad news turned good. I wonder if anyone used their flotation devices? I thought those things were just a joke. Talk about a bailout, the captain of the plane is already being hailed as a hero. Quite an incredible story.

Where are you right now? I can tell you where I am. I am inside. Just after lunch, here in the Twin Cities, it's finally gotten up to -3. It was -18 when I got into school this morning. These are not wind chill readings, these are temperatures. It has been like this all week, and it's insane. Even the DJ's at MPR's the Current are getting more sarcastic and snarky than normal. My administrative assistant who grew up in Fargo assured me that it's no big deal, -20 is when you start to worry about frostbite in under 10 minutes. Hmmm. Tell Canada they can have their air back. I need to go get some more coffee, be right back, or as the kids these days IM, "brb"...

Speaking of coffee, it appears that moderate amounts of coffee are good for your brizzain. This is excellent news, as I was planning on continuing drinking coffee even if that Canadian swimsuit chick begged me not to. Perhaps if she is really nice, I will not drink more than 3 cups a day. If a hallucination convinces you to stop doing the stuff that's causing you to hallucinate, is that like a paradox? Sounds like Marty McFly and Doc need to explain this to me. But until they do, here are some other good articles about foods you should be eating and ways you can protect your heart
(physically, not emotionally). Also, this device will not only improve your posture, but it will make you look more Swedish.

No matter how many pretty speeches O'Bama gives or how big the stimulus packages talk gets, the economy is still a real thing, and it has bitten off a huge chunk of poisonous food that it is now trying to digest and purge from its system anyway possible. Except no one wants to take the hit in that process. Circuit City is liquidating itself, sorry if that sounds disgusting. The financial sector is also taking additional hits as Bank of America and Citigroup stick their chubby little hands out for more money after posting bigger losses. I'm trying not to inject my personal comment here other than for entertainment's sake, but why do these guys deserve a bailout, but not Circuit City or Detroit? Or you and me?

If things get too bad in the economy, we can always sell whatever we've got left, put on our favorite jumpsuit and move here. Just zoom out one click at a time to get a good sense for where it is. I'm sure they've got DSL there, so your subscription and dependence on The Loop and the Lou would not be interrupted.

But News Nits wouldn't leave you high and dry like that before the weekend. So here's a rare reco from TLATL, if you haven't seen Slumdog Millionaire, go on and treat the lady to a really entertaining movie and story. (Don't worry, it's in English.)

"I don't have an English accent because this is what English sounds like when spoken properly." -- James Carr

[Update: Heard about this new Windows Worm -- known as Conficker, Downaddup, or Kido -- over the weekend and it's now popping up in my RSS feeds. Practice safe computing, America!]

Put Your Money Where Your Mouse Is

I like poker. I like playing poker with my friends every few months. I like playing online. I like watching poker on TV (you gotta check that one out). I like listening to poker podcasts. I just like poker.

But I'm not a real player. I play with pretend money online, and no more than maybe 3 times a month. The games with my friends are small stakes (as they should be with friends). Truth is, I like the money I have. I don't have one ounce of the disregard for money that a person needs to play for real.

Tom Dwan does. Tom (or "durrrr" as he is known online) is 22. He's been playing poker seriously for about 5 years (mostly online until he was 21). In those five years he's risen to the play in the highest cash games you can find (this usually No-Limit Texas Hold'em or Pot-Limit Omaha with blinds something like $400-$800). Durrrr reportedly won over $6.5 million online in 2008 alone - this despite losing over $700,000 on ONE HAND a couple months ago. He is not as common a name as Brunson, Ivey, Hellmuth or Negreanu, but he sits at their tables.

And apparently, he thinks he has an edge on them.

He recently issued an open challenge, where he will put up $1.5 million against an opponent's $500,000. They will play 50,000 hands online, playing no less than 4 tables at one time. At the end of the 50,000 hands, the winner (whoever is ahead) will get the other player's "entry fee" (if durrrr wins, he gets $500,000, if his opponent wins, he gets durrrr's 1.5 mill), PLUS whatever money he won over the course of the 50,000 hands.

One of your first questions, besides are these people insane, may be "How long does it take to play 50,000 hands?". In a recent conversation between Barry Greenstein and Phil Ivey, Barry guessed that it would be something like 4-5 hours a day for a month. Ivey also noted that he, David Benyamine and Patrick Antonius have all accepted the challenge.

--------














In 1980, Stu Ungar won the first of his 3 WSOP Main Event championships. Upon winning the tournament, he was asked at a press conference what he was going to do with the prize money ($385,000). "Lose it," he muttered under his breath. When asked what he said, he straitened up and lied, "Put it in the bank and give it to my kids - waddaya think?!?"

Like a lot of the things we find entertaining, this type of money could go to much better use than being thrown away on games (like getting Rye, Coovo and I matching TLATL jumpsuits). But I can't help it - it's just fun to watch.

News Nits

"All the news that's fit to reprint."

Well, the Chameleon-Elect is delivering on his promise of change. We can be thankful for years and years to come of trillion dollar deficits. With next year's projected $1.6 trillion deficit, I think I could do with a little less change and a little more spare change. Mr. Obama's colors seem to be showing a little bit more now. He seems to believe that if the massive federal government is just run by slightly smarter people, it will work really well. That certainly is one form of audacity.

Since when is it the federal government's job to create jobs? Speaking of Jobs, Steve has seen better days. This guy's health is causing the stock market to fluctuate. Maybe he should find some distance from Apple like Bill Gates did from Microsoft.

What else is in the news? Oh yeah, there appears to be a little disagreement in Israel over some land and some water. Maybe we should get involved. Yellowstone National Park is also apparently at risk. A bunch of little quakes and such are suggesting that maybe or maybe not a giant volcanic eruption may be around the corner.

I did notice that the helmet laws recently instituted in Nigeria have been mostly rejected by the people. Whether it's unfounded fear, lack of money or the fact that most folks don't like being told what to do by strangers, many motorcyclists are apparently resorting to hollowed-out fruit shells to trick the cops.

IL isn't the only state with one U.S. Senator. In a reversal of fortune (as is currently measured by lust for power), Norm Coleman has found the short side of the margin of error. They used to say it's not over until the fat lady sings. Now, it's not over until the lawyers collect their fees. I'd say the people of MN couldn't care less -- over 450,000 voted for a no name Independent just because both Coleman and Franken ran nasty, despicable campaigns. We'll get a schmuck in the Senate either way.

Spin City Reruns

Greetings TLATL nation. I'm back from my four month sabbatical in the Arctic where I continued the ongoing search for my dignity. I tried to grow a mustache to disguise myself, but no luck.

My most recent travels took me to my roots, The Loop, to ring in the new year. Many thanks to loyal reader Austin and his roommate(s) for opening up their apartment to celebrate another new year. Can you believe it? It's 2009. I don't know karate but I know Caaaarazy!.

Every year we gear up for that big moment. The clock is getting ready to strike 12 and the new year is just around the corner. Ok, let's go live to, I mean, let's role that tape of the Apple thing falling. I'm not sure why this year as opposed to all the others I had a sudden resentment towards a tape delayed new years. Particularly because I had an opportunity this summer to go to New York for the first time ever and I came away amazed. It is truly a great city.

But so is Chicago. And so is St. Louis. And on and on. So why are we watching a tape delayed celebration of New York? Certainly Dick Clark and the tradition of Times Square have a lot to do with it. But now it's Seacrest, Carson Daly and Anderson Cooper. Ahh, not so much.

I think it's time for a Central Time Zone celebration. This is not to try to lessen the impact of New York, but an attempt to celebrate a love new year for maybe the first time ever. In the past couple days, I've floated several ideas ideas in conversation and now I'd like to bring them to the blogging universe.

My first instinct was a Vienna hot dog fall into a poppyseed bun the way the apple falls in New York. I'm ready to roll with this idea, however, this might be seen as too Chicago-centric for our Midwestern friends. How about a piece of pizza finding its way to someone's mouth? Everyone likes pizza right? This would mix Chicago tradition with the Midwest's love of all things pizza. It could be a horizontal progress as opposed to the Apple's vertical. And if the budget isn't sufficient to be in lights atop some building, we'll just order Lou Malnati's and film the slice going into my mouth.

But I think where New York might have us is their ability to pack Times Square with people despite frigid temperatures. Are there enough lunatics in Chicago to do this? I know there are in New York. Our only chance may be to tell Cub fans that they're having a special New Years eve game at 11pm. I'm not sure why they'd come but they will. They (we) always have and always will.

My proposal, stated here on the Loop and the Lou, January 5th, 2009, is too have a New Year's celebration in Chicago next year, with some sort of live televised countdown to take the place of the Apple. Roller, make it happen.

Do You FaceSpace?

While Rye gave me the nudge to do a baseball post in his most recent comment on the previous post, I'm going to steer clear of that for a while (at least until the next post). There's only so many times you can complain about how much the game you love is so out of whack it makes you want to scream and shake your fist. (Awesome - my last sentence fulfilled my clause with Coovo that I'll maintain a 1-to-1 ratio between "normal" use of the word whack and "stupid" use of the word whack (description of the clause does not count, so I'm only up one, not three). Coovo doesn't like me going urban on you guys all the time for some reason.)

The purpose of this post is to explain my general attitude towards the vast number of social networking sites, the most popular being MySpace and FaceBook. Most of you know that my career revolves around web development, so one might think that I would be all over these sites. Not so much.

Probably the biggest reason I have not jumped into this pool is related to privacy. I have no desire to lay out the details of my life for the internet's consumption. I did create a FaceBook account some time ago out of curiosity. As I recall, the site wasn't of much use until you started using FaceBook applications. And to use the applications, I was immediately presented with some "let's get to know you a little better" forms that wanted to know things I didn't tell my wife until we were on our honeymoon. Like my stint in San Quentin. That was the end of my interaction with FaceBook. I understand how hippocritical this sounds, as I am expressing this complaint in a blog. But, I actually take great care not to give too many personal details in this blog. I view the blog as a fun way to try to generate discussion amongst my cool friends.

Somewhat related to privacy concerns is a lack of desire to meet new people. I suppose that if I were single, these sites would be plenty useful to me. Even as a married guy, I'm sure I could meet some interesting folks or reconnect with a longlost grade school buddy. Somehow this benefit doesn't outweigh the cost of posting all my info out there, or even reconnecting with someone with whom I don't really want to reconnect.

The last thing I'll whine about is the user interface. MySpace in particular, has to be the most poorly designed site on the internet in proportion to the size of its user base. Besides the fact that I find it visually cluttered, it's functionality is incredibly Web 1.0. If I'm listening to a song or watching a video on a user's/band's page, and see that there is a blog entry about that song/video, I should be able to read that entry without interrupting the song at all. Instead, music stops, and I'm navigated to a different page. That is incredibly, incredibly, stupid. Or perhaps better said - that shit is WHACK!

So now that I've made myself out to be an old curmudgeon who doesn't like to try anything new, I would like to hear the experiences of you all. Do you guys use MySpace, FaceBook or any other social networking site? Do you agree or disagree with anything I've said? What good or bad things have I left out? It's entirely possible that my impressions of these sites are unfair, and I could enjoy some of the benefits they offer while disabling the capabilities I griped about.

Hopefully this post will generate some discussion about this topic, and I already have a follow-on post about the aspects of social networking that I do enjoy, as well as the gaps in the current offerings that could easily be filled.

News Nits

"All the news that's fit to reprint."

For those of us who got tattoos of Al Gore's face on our backs like Mt. Rushmore, when, after inventing the internet, he convinced us all that our polar bears would be sleeping with the fishes -- or something like that -- breathe easy! Or easier. Looks like at least our cars aren't really to blame after all. But it would be nice if Coovo would stop cooking his grilled cheese sandwiches over his coal oven.

Although there is pretty consensus evidence that the earth has warmed by just over a degree in the past 100 years (although even that has been debated by some due to changes in measuring techniques), it's still a bit of a debate as to exactly what is causing that warming and what the effects will be. But let's not actually have a discussion on this -- Guilt is the new American complex, and Fear our newest motivator.

From one computer modeler to another, take the predictions with a grain of salt.

And here's a nice little twist on an old idea. Tired of all that ink your printer uses? I know Roller is. Why not use a new font that has tiny holes in it? Apparently, you'll use about 20% less ink, and you can't even see the holes! How I love the Dutch.

The world is falling apart, right? O'Bama is Time's Man of the Year, already (should they just give it to him for the next 4?). Layoffs are adding up and most major religions are having our main celebrations coming up soon. Maybe the drop in spending will remind us what this season really is about?

When I think of China, I think of poisoned milk, cheap products and a positive, slim version of the internet. Censorship has always struck me as a weird way to go. But what do I know? "Hey China, your breath stinks! What are you gonna do about it?" (Don't worry, this will be censored.)

That's it from News Nits. Talk amongst yourselves, and be respectful... Word to your Moms.

A New Slogan

It occurred to us recently that the slogan of our site is still "Two guys on opposite ends of I-55 trying to see what happens when people stop being polite and start Bloggin'!"

Coovo's homage to The Real World was fitting for the two man team of Coovo and me. After all, MTV did put us up in this sweet blog with the only condition that we participate in contrived scenes about Coovo's addiction to Fruit Loops and my obsession with replacing 27% of his Fruit Loops with Apple Jacks. Man, the confessionals that came out of that.

Fortunately, Ryan joined us this past Spring, threw the MTV producers out on their nose rings and shaped things up around here. "First things first!" he then told Coovo and me. "No Apple Jacks in me Lucky Charms!!".

Since then it's been a honeymoon around here. But the 50% staff increase and Ryan's lack of proximity to I-55 have left the original slogan outdated. That's where you guys come in! We'd like your suggestions, and we'll throw a few of our own in, too. We'll then put a poll up, and everyone can vote on the new slogan. We'll still be keeping "The Loop And The Lou", of course, we just want a more descriptive/intelligent/ironic/satirical/dumb slogan.

The author of the winning slogan gets a secret prize, the value of which will be well worth the effort, and may or may not involve Coovo's mustache!