Poker in the Rear

I know a lot of liberals who think they bill hasn't gone far enough, and I know many conservatives who think it has gone way too far. Personally I think things like the public option should be in there but I realize that is going to be a long shot with the way the republicans are reacting.

But even though there's stuff that hasn't made it in that I'd like, the changes that are in there are really damn good imo and I'm very happy with the results. Considering that health care reform has been attempted by several previous presidents and they've failed because of how fucking hard it is to achieve, the progress we have right now is huge and a thing to be very happy about. Once we get this passed and see good results from it, getting more changes will be easier.

Here's an update I just read:

There are some great elements of this bill that will take some time to set up, such as the new insurance marketplace -- the Exchange -- that allows people without insurance and small businesses to compare plans and buy insurance at competitive prices. But there are a lot of other benefits for families that will kick in during the first year if we get this passed: * In the first year, we will make it illegal for insurance companies to drop coverage for Americans. * In the first year, more of your money will start going where it belongs: towards your care instead of excessive insurance company profits or TV ads. We will start forcing insurance companies to report the proportion of premium dollars that are not spent on medical care -- including profits. If a company isn’t spending enough of its premium dollars providing benefits for families, it will have to issue rebate checks to its customers to make up the difference. * In the first year, all insurance plans will have to begin covering preventive services, helping to shift our health care from just sickness to wellness. If you purchase insurance on your own, you will receive preventive care from your doctor without paying a co-pay. * In the first year, seniors will see major relief in paying for prescription drugs. The gap in coverage with Medicare, the so-called "donut hole," will start to close for good. This bill will reduce premiums for your family, shifting the balance of power from your insurance company back to you. Health reform extends coverage to 30,000,000 Americans without adding a dime to the Federal deficit. In fact, it represents the largest reduction to the deficit in well over a decade.

I know conservatives will read those bullet points and go "SEE THAT'S WHAT I HATE" and go rah rah rah, Obama is a communist destroying America, but to me those are the reasons I'm so happy. Those are all GREAT changes imo and I can't wait to see them put into action. Good job Obama, and good job to all the senators and congressmen/women who are working to pass this bill!

As for official status, my understanding is that there are 60 votes so no more republican stalling. I'm not sure if they've actually had the vote yet or if it's going to happen on monday or something like that. Then it's conference time to hash out final compromises btwn house/senate and then Obama signs it!

So close.

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I need some help figuring out how to do something with HEM. I want to filter by actions, which I figured out how to do (like only hands where there was a checkraise on the flop). But I only know how to filter it for me, and what I want to do is get HEM to give me all hands of my villains. Not sure how to do that.

So to try and be more clear, I want HEM to show me all hands in my DB where a villain took a certain line, like Open Raise preflop, cbet flop and check raise turn. I can get HEM to tell me all the hands where I took that line, but not sure how to get it to give me hands when villains took that line.

Thanks for any help!

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For the nonprofit I work part time for, The PeaceJam Foundation: Sick 25k ship

Chase bank decided to give away $5 million via Facebook by doing online voting. For 1 month any non-profit in the guidestar database (over 500,000) was eligible to get a vote. The top 100 vote getters would take home 25k and move on to round 2. I found out about this when it first started and went crazy on trying to get PJ enough votes, and yesterday the results came in and we made the top 100!!! Ship it.

The next round is only the top 100 and starts on January 15th, lasting 1 week. First place of round 2 gets $1 million, and the next 5 get $100k. We're going for 1st place and I'm hoping LP can help get us there. So on Jan 15th I'm gonna start asking you guys to help out cause this money will make a GIGANTIC difference for PeaceJam. This is one of those rare times where you'll get to take minute and make a huge difference.

Anyway I'm super happy that we made the top 100 and that people came out to vote and support us. To get 1st place in the next round ain't gonna be easy, but I'm sure with the help of the poker and BW worlds we could totally get it done =)

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Only 30 minutes left on the auction, if you're interested in getting a crazy pimpin guitar then read the blog below!

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bump, plz check out post below, auction ends in a few days

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Reposting this cause this person said everything I want to but better than I could (everything below was written by Claire at theregularweirdpeople.com):

A good friend of mine works for PeaceJam, an international education program that brings the knowledge of Nobel Peace Laureates to youth around the world. I pretty much piss excellence, joy and beauty when I am around them.

“Piss” is not a word they employ with any regularity at PeaceJam. However, I do.

A couple of years ago I participated as a mentor in a PeaceJam Slam which brought together youth from all over the mountain region to Denver for a day of awesome discussions, awesome lectures, awesome goal planning and an awesome speech by Naomi Tutu (daughter of the awesome Desmond Tutu) who inspired us to be even more awesome than we felt in our awesome glands. I was blown away by how involved PeaceJam had made these students. They were, by themselves, creating all types of programs in their schools, neighborhoods and cities from picking up trash to raising money for African NGO’s. They were taking on huge projects and accomplishing deliverable goals. I very much enjoyed encouraging their continued awesomeness…and wanted to be more like them! Please check out their website and learn more about how to be involved with the organization.

click here to bid

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bump cause blog go owned by maintenance =)

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I flew to DC yesterday to begin my annual Xmas tour where I fly around the USA to visit family. I woke up late so in my rush to pack my laptop I left my mouse on the mouse pad... fuck.

I realized it last night after arriving and unpacking my laptop and wanting to grind. I was gonna go out and buy a new one but it was too late at night and everything was closed. My girl realized we'd forgotten some other crucial things that we'll need over the next 16 days of travel so I wrote home to my dad who's fedexing the mouse and so on to arrive tomorrow morning.

But that didn't help me today. Today I had nothing to do (which was planned so I could have time to relax and grind if I felt like it) and man, I felt like grinding all day long. I'd spent the entire plane ride doing math in my head to figure out how many hands I need to play every month to make X amount of profit and got really excited cause for some reason I'd never done it before... and now that I have it's become a huge motivation to play more hands. Lately I've been having 20k hand months and that's just not cutting it. I've been harping on about long term long term long term and gotten myself to stop focusing on session results so much that I don't check for often a week or more. But despite all of that I never realized that I shouldn't only be focusing on making sure that whenever I play I play my A game, but also to make sure that I play a lot. The most I ever do is set a very vague hand goal for the month and then I procrastinate playing and then the month comes close to ending and I realize there's no way I'll hit my goal and decide not to force it on myself cause I know I'll just start playing shitty since I'm looking at 4 days of 18 hr sessions.

So I figured out how many hands I need to play a month and then how many a week and then kinda planned out a weekly schedule. Not the arbitrary "I need to play X amount of hands a week so divide X by 7 and that's how many a day" cause I know I won't play everyday. So I've assigned a # of hands for each day that I will play and as I've broken it down it's not intimidating at all. It's just 2 sessions a day during my playing days. And now I have a huge motivation to follow through and play that # of hands each day, cause I know that it will add up to the profit I figured out between winnings and rakeback. It's given me more structure and a way to approach poker as more of a "job" which gives me a better feeling about how I spend my time =) Like I'm being more productive.

I've got all of that in my head and I'm just itching to play cause I want to get in my # of hands cause I'm behind for the month right now due to losing a day for traveling and a day with no mouse. Tomorrow is gonna be a bit tough too cause we've got some museums to visit, but once I get my mouse I will be back in action.

And to preempt any "use the touchpad" comments, I have to say that I hate touchpads. They tilt me. And I'm not gonna sit down to grind in a situation where I'm already tilted. Plus my touchpad overall sucks - the buttons crap out a lot and I can just imagine the tilt that will come cause of a misclick fold in a key spot due to a crappy touchpad. I'd rather avoid it. I guess I'm like one of those annoying superstitious sports players who has to wear his lucky jock strap or something. Before I play I like to set my environment up properly, and a HUGE part of that is my mouse. Maybe it comes from playing BW for so long and learning how to move a mouse quickly and accurately. I notice that when I'm using someone elses computer it's annoying cause the mouse doesn't feel right, or the settings are very slow, etc. So when I grind the last thing I need is mouse problems.

God this is a rambling blog if ever I wrote one. I guess that's what blogs are for.

On another topic I saw "men who stare at goats" tonight and it was pretty damn funny, weird, and entertaining. Planning to see Avatar this weekend. I've avoided most previews so I don't know much about it which always makes movies better for me.

I hope the mouse comes tomorrow so I can get my grind on. Gotta get those hands in!

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I've got a lot of travel coming up and need to do a major music update. I haven't DL'd any new songs in at least 2 years so I'm very outta date. I like rap but hate the southern crunk shit. I've got a shitload of older underground hip hop (at least it was underground back then, lotta peeps are known now). I also like lots of alternative rock (is that still what it's called?). God I'm so bad with genres. So I'll list some artists I like:

BEP
30H3 (just that 1 song, but any songs like it are thx)
timbaland
kanye
Jack Johnson
Dispatch
Daft Punk

My musical taste are all over the board from classical (mozart is thx) to tupac to hindi music. So please just post suggestions, preferably by posting a youtube video so I can check it out if it's new to me. My musical memory is so bad and I hear lots of songs I like and forget them really fast. Halp plz

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"Wow, this is awesome"

Those are the words that just slipped out of my mouth while browsing the Team Liquid VOD section for the first time. I rarely ever visited TL back in the day cause I was always more interested in the USA and Europe scene than the Korean one. My memories of the site are probably extremely outdated as I haven't visited it in at least 2 years.

When I used to play BW I'd think about how cool it would be to have a nice easy to access VOD section on a website to satisfy my VOD watching desires. I remember the days when watching a VOD meant hunting around a Korean website clicking random links till something started to DL. Then replays came along and that became the primary way to watch games, but VODs were always so fun with the commentators and so on. I remember for the Team Liquid league that they ran a year or so ago they had videos on youtube and I watched a bunch from their channel and loved em. And now I've found this VOD section and I'm probably gonna crack out on it for a bit and my girl is gonna be sick of my nerdiness real quick, haha.

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