Archive for July, 2006

Taking The Cake

Sunday, July 30th, 2006



Taking The Cake

Originally uploaded by jaslusher.

Emily’s birthday was a smashing success and a good time was had by all. You know you did it right when all the food gets eaten and the other kids refuse to leave.

Emily was great and she was a great hostess. I’m so proud of her. That’s my child. Whether she thinks she is a child or not.

Happy Birthday, Emily!!

Sunday, July 30th, 2006

Today is Emily Nicole’s 4th birthday! Happy Birthday baby girl!

From the mouths of (non)babes:

I’m not a child anymore.

She keeps trying to get us to start the party and we keep reminding her that it doesn’t start until 2. She went into her room and got her little paper clock and moved the hands to 2 o’clock. Then she announced that it was 2 and it was time to get this party started.

Learn From My Mistakes, Lesson 1

Saturday, July 29th, 2006

This will be an ongoing series of posts in which you can learn from my mistakes. That way you can vicariously enjoy the fruits of stupidity without actually having to be stupid like me.

Today’s lesson will actually be a small list:

  • When you get home on Monday morning (trash day), don’t park in front of the trash can.
  • When your beautiful wife tells you that you need to move your car and you tell her that you will, you should actually do it.
  • If you can’t avoid the above items, don’t do it the Monday before your daughter’s Sunday birthday party, thereby ensuring the absolute biggest, smelliest, most disgusting pile of garbage possible, with visitors coming to the house.

Remember: I’m stupid, so that you don’t have to be.

Thanks, George

Wednesday, July 19th, 2006

I would just like to send out a special thank you to George W. Bush for using his first ever veto to stop Congress from allowing expanded research on stem cells. That this research could possibly save me and millions like me from blindness, loss of limbs and early death is of no consequence. And that’s just the diabetics. Let’s not even get into the people suffering from Alzheimers, Parkinson’s and hundreds of other diseases. He stuck up for his principles and that’s what is important. They might be ridiculous, ignorant principles based on a complete lack of scientific and philosopical understanding of life, but he stuck up for them anyways.

Thanks, George. Thanks for putting this research back for 8 years. 8 years. Thanks for making it so I might never get to enjoy the benefits of it. And thanks to all of you who voted for him. Thanks alot. The next time you decide to vote for an autistic born-again christian fundamentalist failed-upward-because-of-his-last-name cokehead alcoholic because he’s a Republican and darnit, you have to maintain party loyalty, do me a favor. Go ahead and poke my eyes out, saw off my feet and kill me early. Let’s skip all the bullshit in between. Thanks.

Staying In Vegas

Monday, July 17th, 2006

Whatever is staying in Vegas this year is staying without me. I failed to qualify for the WSOP seat that I was trying for. In the second round tournament I finished a disappointing 426nd out of 568. The really disappointing part of it was that in the 3rd round you only have to finish in the top 20 (rather than the top 9) and if my calculations are correct there would have been only 37 players in that tournament. Bummer.

I didn’t go out on a completely punk hand at least. I started with a King and Jack of hearts in the hole. The flop was a 6 of hearts, a 7 of hearts and a King of spades. So this gave me top pair and a flush draw. I made a hefty wager and everyone but one other player dropped out. The turn was a Jack of clubs. So know I have top two pair and still a flush draw. I made another hefty wager and my opponent reraised me.

So here was where I made my mistake. I re-reraised all-in. I forgot one of the rules that Phil Gordon preaches: never make a monster bet without a monster hand. Top two pair with a flush possibility is a good hand. Really good. It’s not a monster hand and I made a monster bet. My opponent, who had me beat on chip stack, called my all-in. He had a pair of 6s in the hole. That gave him three of a kind (a “set” of 6s in Hold ‘Em jargon). So he has me beat at the turn and the only thing that can save me is a King, a Jack, or any heart. When the 8 of spades came on the river (the last card), my tourney and my hopes for going to Vegas this year, were done.

Disappointing, yes. Devastating, no. I only started trying to qualify like this in the last month or so. And I made an incredible amount of headway. I really have nothing to be ashamed of. So over the next year I can keep honing my skills, learning, studying, and playing. By that point, I will be a better player and maybe then, just maybe, I can remember not to make monster bets unless I have a monster hand.

Sickly Birthday

Tuesday, July 11th, 2006

I had a Birthday on the tenth, but celebrated on Sunday which involved my dear wife and I going to see Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man’s Chest (good movie, by the way) and visiting my Mom.

When we went to PotC we ate like pigs and I took a bunch of insulin. When I went to Mom’s house I ate like a pig and took a bunch of insulin. By mid-afternoon I felt like my blood was on fire and was peeing like a redneck on a beer binge. I’ve been diabetic long enough to know what that is: high blood sugar. I took my blood sugar reading. It was 589. That’s only about 5 times normal. I kicked the pump into fifth gear and engaged the afterburners. An hour later it was still up there.

Now this had me confused because I had just changed my catheter site that morning. I knew the insulin was good because this wasn’t my first fill up off it. But after a few hours of extreme discomfort and with an impending coma coming on, it was time to take some action. I changed my site again and whilst removing the old catheter I noticed something a bit odd. The little plastic catheter that sticks in me wasn’t the right color. I looked at it closer and found that the needle that is used to inject it into me had broken off in it, blocking the flow of insulin. So I had eaten a couple hundred carbs of food and not gotten any insulin to metabolize it.

So at least the mystery of why I was on fire was solved. Next I had to put it out. I gave myself enough insulin to normally cover about two days of eating. I thought it was over. But then the bouncing began. My sugar level would drop down, then shoot back up, then drop down again. Enough was enough, I went to the doctor. She theorized that I was dehydrated from my extended high blood sugar episode and that the new insulin was having difficulty being transported through my body evenly.

So I’ve been drinking like a fish and taking extra insulin to drop everything back to normal. I’m still not 100 percent now, but I’m much better and feel good enough to smart mouth people. Which is about as good as I get.

Networking

Monday, July 3rd, 2006

I would just like to say that the following people are on my (s)hit list:

Bill Gates
The guy who thought up networking
His buddy who thought up routers
His other buddy who thought up print servers
Linksys (the entire company)
Cisco (for owning Linksys)
Microsoft
Anybody who likes Microsoft products
Steve Jobs
Apple
Anybody who likes Mac crap
People who like networks/routers/print servers
People who can make networks/routers/print servers work correctly
Anybody who knows any of the above people
The horses they rode in on

I’m not having fun trying to get my PC and Mac to share an internet connection and a printer. Can you tell?