Here The Ship Sailed Out Into The Blue And Sunny Morn

The sun was shining on the sea,
Shining with all his might:
He did his very best to make
The billows smooth and bright--
And this was odd, because it was
The middle of the night.
The moon was shining sulkily,
Because she thought the sun
Had got no business to be there
After the day was done--
"It's very rude of him," she said,
"To come and spoil the fun!"
The sea was wet as wet could be,
The sands were dry as dry.
You could not see a cloud, because
No cloud was in the sky:
No birds were flying overhead--
There were no birds to fly.
The Walrus and the Carpenter
Were walking close at hand;
They wept like anything to see
Such quantities of sand:
"If this were only cleared away,"
They said, "it would be grand!"
"If seven maids with seven mops
Swept it for half a year.
Do you suppose," the Walrus said,
"That they could get it clear?"
"I doubt it," said the Carpenter,
And shed a bitter tear.
"O Oysters, come and walk with us!"
The Walrus did beseech.
"A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk,
Along the briny beach:
We cannot do with more than four,
To give a hand to each."
The eldest Oyster looked at him,
But never a word he said:
The eldest Oyster winked his eye,
And shook his heavy head--
Meaning to say he did not choose
To leave the oyster-bed.
But four young Oysters hurried up,
All eager for the treat:
Their coats were brushed, their faces washed,
Their shoes were clean and neat--
And this was odd, because, you know,
They hadn't any feet.
Four other Oysters followed them,
And yet another four;
And thick and fast they came at last,
And more, and more, and more--
All hopping through the frothy waves,
And scrambling to the shore.
The Walrus and the Carpenter
Walked on a mile or so,
And then they rested on a rock
Conveniently low:
And all the little Oysters stood
And waited in a row.
"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--
Of cabbages--and kings--
And why the sea is boiling hot--
And whether pigs have wings."
"But wait a bit," the Oysters cried,
"Before we have our chat;
For some of us are out of breath,
And all of us are fat!"
"No hurry!" said the Carpenter.
They thanked him much for that.
"A loaf of bread," the Walrus said,
"Is what we chiefly need:
Pepper and vinegar besides
Are very good indeed--
Now if you're ready, Oysters dear,
We can begin to feed."
"But not on us!" the Oysters cried,
Turning a little blue.
"After such kindness, that would be
A dismal thing to do!"
"The night is fine," the Walrus said.
"Do you admire the view?
"It was so kind of you to come!
And you are very nice!"
The Carpenter said nothing but
"Cut us another slice:
I wish you were not quite so deaf--
I've had to ask you twice!"
"It seems a shame," the Walrus said,
"To play them such a trick,
After we've brought them out so far,
And made them trot so quick!"
The Carpenter said nothing but
"The butter's spread too thick!"
"I weep for you," the Walrus said:
"I deeply sympathize."
With sobs and tears he sorted out
Those of the largest size,
Holding his pocket-handkerchief
Before his streaming eyes.
"O Oysters," said the Carpenter,
"You've had a pleasant run!
Shall we be trotting home again?'
But answer came there none--
And this was scarcely odd, because
They'd eaten every one.

Laughing Sorrow Inside Your Head

A sample page from our marketing materials at work. 

 

I decided to plug the nonsense into Google Translate and this is what I got:

"Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Maecenas football
region to region, but the author of makeup and ugly. But the sad bananas pull Etu.
My dear, nor pain to thermal Duis sit amet tristique. Live bows carton
restructuring. Mauris felis massa, volutpat sed imperdiet quis, jaws of life,
sapien. Until chocolate, graduated pull sauce layer, now
Before valley temperature stress in a smile from the lake bed.
Performance heat and skirt. Kids or not, bananas from lorem at,
various salad weekend. Until the real estate developer developers convenience football smile. ves
tibulum venenatis congue a great love of life than to raise up. For soft mass
But the vulputate ullamcorper fears that afternoon. But no members of the lion
of the throat. However, a slide sightseeing, developers throat competition. No, that employee
salad. There is no mass drink financing, developers need only. There was none." 

Apparently this engineering firm has some very bizarre capabilities...

Train Kept A Rollin'

So a few days back I posted a photo of a fortune from a cookie.

I feel like that was sound advice and that I should heed it.  An old friend of mine came in to work the other night when she was in town for (what will probably be the last time).

Every time I see her I cannot help but dwell on where things could have been if our timing had not been so screwy.

I have more than a few times found myself wanting to pursue something more than a strictly platonic relationship with her, but every time one of us was available the other was not.

I keep dwelling on it.

That is a problem.

Not something I am ever going to act upon.  I am happy with where my life has ended up and sometimes I wonder what my motivations would have been.  Would it have been genuine? Or would I have just been there providing a solid foundation for her to rebuild her life from?

I will now never know.

I just need to stop dwelling on it.

Remember When You Were Young

So my favorite Pink Floyd studio album is Wish You Were Here.

There is just something about it that I really like.  Could be the amazing yet relaxing Shine On You Crazy Diamond that it opens and closes with, could be the cynical Welcome to the Machine/Have a Cigar which I feel still perfectly represents the greed and money-hunger that is in our world.

I just don't know.

Anyway, as I said the other night I pulled out the CD I own and the record that I bought years ago to compare the artwork, and I'm not going to lie...They are far more different than I expected.

Here are pictures of everything side by side:

 

I am unsure of the original color of the record label, but some fading would not be surprising. 

The CD version of the artwork is on top, while the vinyl version is below.

 

It intrigues me that the scanner did not pick up the color on the records themselves.  I really am not feeling like scanning them again.

The difference in artwork on this album astounds me.  

Pink Floyd have been known to be so picky and perfectionistic that there were rumors about their album "Pulse" being re-recorded in the studio and having audience noise added to it to be sure that the album is perfect.

Competition In Other Places

I was reading the following article this morning and I really found the part about the con artists very intriguing.  It is amazing how accurate it is if you put up every little detail of your life onto social media and do not do anything with your privacy settings.  Even then though, Facebook (I'm pretty sure, I need to go read through their Ts & Cs again) owns everything you post.

The TV show Castle did a fun episode about a con man a few years back.  That was one of my favorites.

Anyway, here is the article:

A conversation with...

Maria Konnikova Shows Her Cards

The well-regarded science writer took up poker while researching a book. Now she’s on the professional circuit.

"Luck is just … randomness," said Maria Konnikova. "That’s what I wanted to write about. Poker was a way into it."CreditJoshua Bright for The New York Times

By Claudia Dreifus

As a science writer at The New Yorker, Maria Konnikova, 34, focuses on the brain, and the weird and interesting ways people use their brains.

Dr. Konnikova is an experimental psychologist trained at Columbia University. But her latest experiment is on herself. For a book she’s researching on luck and decision-making, Dr. Konnikova began studying poker.

Within a year, she had moved from poker novice to poker professional, winning more than $200,000 in tournament jackpots. This summer Poker Stars, an online gaming site, began sponsoring Dr. Konnikova in professional tournaments.

We spoke recently for two hours at the offices of The Times. An edited and condensed version of the conversation follows.

You’ve taken a year’s sabbatical from The New Yorker to play on the professional poker circuit. Why?

I’d been thinking, for a while, about what my next book was going to be. I was interested in the theme of skill versus chance and was looking for a way to get into it. A friend suggested I read John von Neumann’s “Theory of Games and Economic Behavior,” the foundational text of game theory.

Von Neumann, as you know, was one of the geniuses of the 20th century — the hydrogen bomb, computing, economics. And he’d been a poker player. It turned out that all of game theory came out of poker!

When he was trying to understand how strategic decision-making worked, he concluded that poker was the perfect analog, because it was a blend of skill and chance and because, over the long run, skill can win. I decided that poker was the way to go.

I knew I’d need to spend a few months living in that world. I thought, “I’m going to have to dedicate myself to this like a career, because otherwise it’s just going to be ‘a writer dabbles in the world of poker.’”

Did you have a background in the game?

No, no. When I started this, I didn’t know how many cards were in a deck. I hate casinos. I have zero interest in gambling.

Then I met Erik Seidel, one of the best poker players in the world. He agreed to become my coach, though he told me, “You’re a hard worker, and you have a good background for this, but who knows if you’re going to be any good?”

It’s been an unexpected journey. I don’t think anyone could have predicted that I would have gone in less than a year from not knowing how many cards were in a deck to winning a major poker title.

What did that involve?

I’ve been studying, playing, living, breathing poker for eight to nine hours a day. Every day! When I’m between events and in New York, I’m reading, watching videos or live-streaming very good players.

There might be a specific concept I want to work on, and I’ll watch some videos of people doing this and take notes. Sometimes I’ll go to New Jersey and hop onto the poker website at an internet cafe. Online poker is illegal in New York, but not in Jersey.

When Erik Seidel said you had the right background, what did he mean?

I think he was talking about my background in experimental psychology. I did a doctorate on overconfidence and risky decision-making with Walter Mischel, who invented the “marshmallow test.”

I wanted to see if people with high levels of self-control made better decisions in risky conditions, like in the stock market. Usually, people with high self-control do so much better at everything than people with low self-control.

But it ends up that in unpredictable environments like the stock market, successful high self-control people — when in an environment where control is taken away from them — take longer to figure things out. They are too confident and won’t take negative feedback from the environment.

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Whereas people with lower self-control and who aren’t as successful — they’re like, “Uh oh, a bad thing is happening. I guess I should actually figure that out.”

Are the other poker pros nice to you?

For the most part. I’ve been very lucky because my coach introduced me to high-level players. They are not only brilliant but nice, and they’ve taken me under their wing.

So yeah, there are people who aren’t nice to me. I mean, I’ve been called everything at the poker table. I’ve been propositioned at the poker table — like, actually propositioned!

Was it an attempt to throw you off your game or to get you to his room?

Probably both. I called the “floor,” which is management, and had him moved to another table.

If poker is an analog to real life, does it help or hurt to be a woman?

Obviously, the first thing people notice about me is my gender. And people stereotype.

When you see someone looking a certain way, you assume they play a certain way. So once I figure out how they view women, I can figure out how to play against them. They’re not seeing me as a poker player, they’re seeing me as a female poker player.

There are people who’d rather die than be bluffed by a woman. They’ll never fold to me because that’s an affront to their masculinity.

I never bluff them. I know that no matter how strong my hand, they are still going to call me because they just can’t fold to a girl.

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Other people think women are incapable of bluffing. They think if I’m betting really aggressively, it means I have an incredibly strong hand. I bluff those people all the time.

There are people who think that women shouldn’t be at a poker table, and they try to bully me. So, what do I do? I let them. And I wait to be in a good position so that I can take their chips. Just like life, right?

Your last book, “The Confidence Game,” was about con artists. Is there a thematic connection to the topics you write about?

The motive for this book was about getting back to what I’d studied in grad school: the illusion of control. How much of our lives do we actually control — and can we tell the difference?

People often ascribe everything good to skill. And then when bad things happen, they say, “Oh, it’s bad luck.” Or they say, “You make your luck.”

That’s just empirically impossible. And it drives me crazy because luck, by definition, is something you can’t make. Luck is just … randomness. So that’s what I wanted to write about. Poker was a way into it.

Now, it is true that I’ve long been preoccupied with the darker side of humanity. I’m interested in deviations because they make you notice the normal. In psychology, you learn a lot about the brain by looking at the deviant cases.

When you ask if my books have a progression, I’d say the world of con artists has a lot of overlap with poker because of belief, deception, figuring out what people are representing.

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Do you have any insights on why grifting schemes appear to be proliferating?

Fraud really thrives in moments of great social change and transition. We’re in the midst of a technological revolution. That gives con artists huge opportunities. People lose their frame of reference for what can and can’t be real.

Are there more con artists now? It’s more that technology made conning easier.

Before, if you wanted to con someone, you had to do expend a lot of energy doing research. Was a person a good target? Today, we’re all on Twitter and Facebook, putting out all this information about ourselves.

With cellphones and emails, it’s much easier to inundate a large number of people and to catch one person at a vulnerable moment. In the past, the grifter would have a lot of misses. Now, they don’t care if they’ll have a thousand misses. All they need is one hit.

You’ve earned so far over $200,000 at the table. Few writers make that sort of money. Will you be quitting your day job?

For the next year, yes. But I’m never going to stop being a writer. Why can’t I do both? I love poker. Why would I stop? 

A version of this article appears in print on Aug. 14, 2018, on Page D5 of the New York edition with the headline: Rewiring Her Brain To Win at Poker. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

You Shone Like The Sun

Picked up a brand new copy of my favorite Pink Floyd studio album "Wish You Were Here" this evening.  I am really liking the packaging on it.

I think I'm going to pull out my record and compare the two in the next couple of days.

Flowing Like A River

Been putting that bike rack to good use. 

We have added the canal to our bike riding list of locations now.

Why?

Because we can!

Three Men In Black Said, "Don't Report This"

I have no idea what younger me was thinking.  Anyone has any idea, please let me know.

Doing All The Things A Spider Can

This thing kept building a web on my front porch. I got tired of walking throught it in the morning so I ammonia and bleached it to death.  At least it was sanitary.

Come Suzy Dear Let’s Take A Walk

Found a fortune in the parking lot!

I feel that this is sound advice!

John Deer Green

We went to the Steam Engine show in Rushville today.  Always fun!
I will post some photos one of these days.

Heart Of Glass

So upon my second go on the Harry Potter books I find that Harry is kind of a self-centered jerk.


Granted, I thought this the first time through, but I think I made it to Order of the Phoenix before it really got to me.


Draco Malfoy, though...There is an interesting character.


Draco was born to an evil family that he tries to fit into, but it doesn't seem to be working.  He gets to school and, initially, tries to make friends with Harry.  Harry has already met Ron, so in some sense, his future allegiances were already cemented.  When Draco comes into the train car he instantly (and regrettably) insults Ron and his family which further alienates Draco and Harry.


His behavior toward Harry throughout reminds me of that toddler who wants any kind of attention from his mother and knows that being mean is the best way to do it.


Harry and co, however basically assume that since his family is evil and he is a Slytherin person that they want nothing to do with Draco.  Got to love the prejudice!


In some ways I feel like Draco is kind of the alternate universe version of Sirius Black.  Born to evil, Sirius did not try to fit in with the evil.  Instead he decided to change the course of his future, became friends with James Potter and Remus Lupin and basically was disowned by his family.  While yes, sad, at least James and Remus were willing to give Sirius a chance, unlike Ron and Harry with Draco.