Common Knowledge

There is no evidence that Vikings wore horns on their helmets.
Marie Antoinette, who was the Queen of France and husband to Louis XVI during the French Revolution, never actually used the phrase “let them eat cake” when she heard that the French peasantry was starving.
George Washington did not have wooden teeth. They were actually made of gold, hippopotamus ivory, lead, and animal teeth, including horse and donkey teeth.
The signing of the United States Declaration of Independence occurred on August 2, 1776, not July 4.
Napoleon Bonaparte was not particularly short in comparison to other French men and did not have a Napoleon complex.
A common misconception is that you must wait at least 24 hours before filing a missing person’s report, this is not true.
Entrapment laws in the United States do not require police officers to identify themselves.
Sushi doesn’t mean “raw fish” and not all sushi includes raw fish.
If a person swallows chewing gum, it doesn’t take seven years to digest. Chewing gum is mostly indigestible, but it still passes through the digestive system and out of your body.
A person who has used LSD more than seven times is not insane.
One hit of marijuana doesn’t have the carcinogen effects of an entire cigarette. The largest study of its kind by the University of California found that people who smoke marijuana are no more likely to develop lung cancer than non-smokers. In fact, some studies have shown that marijuana may actually reduce the risk of some cancers by as much as 61%.
It is commonly claimed that the Great Wall of China is the only human-made object visible from the Moon. This is false. City lights were the only feature reported to be visible.
Seasons are not caused by the Earth being closer to the Sun in the summer. They are the result of the Earth being tilted on its axis.
Meteorites are not hot, but cold when they hit the earth.
The claim that a duck’s quack doesn’t echo is false.
Houseflies do not have an average lifespan of 24 hours. The average lifespan of a housefly is 20 to 30 days.
Bulls are not enraged by the color red, which is used in capes by professional matadors. The movement of the fabric is what irritates the bull and causes them to charge.
Shaving doesn’t cause hair to grow back thicker or darker. Hair which has never been cut has a tapered end and after cutting the hair the taper is lost making the new hair sharp.
Alcohol doesn’t make a person’s body temperature warmer.
Eating less than an hour before swimming doesn’t increase the risk of experiencing muscle cramps or drowning. Drowning is often thought to be a violent struggle, where the victim waves and calls for help. In truth, drowning is often inconspicuous to onlookers. The instinctive drowning response doesn’t show prior evidence of distress.

Desire

In general I only desire things for what they can actually do for me. It's unusual that I want something purely for aesthetic reasons. Please bear in mind I am talking about THINGS. Not another subject, which is another subject.

The exceptions to this rule are motorcycles and cameras. I love retro cameras and I want to own them all. I love them for how they look AND what they can do. I don't want an old Leica Rangefinder. I used to have a Postwar 3C and while it was cool I didn't find it particularly useful and sold it at a camera show. This is exactly what it looked like:

What I love is the new Leica M9 or the Fuji X100. They look like old 35mm Rangefinder cameras, but they are actually very modern sophisticated digital cameras.

This Fuji looks cool right? It's actually a pretty decent 10MP digital camera. No way on earth it's worth $1200 but that's what lusting after something is all about right? They have to be somewhat out of reach. The Leica M9 is even more so, retailing for around $9000. Very awesome, very not what I want to spend for a digital camera.











I do have the same preoccupation with motorcycles. I love new bikes with old styling. I appreciate the looks of the actual old bikes, but just like with digital cameras the technology just makes so much better.

This 2011 Honda Shadow is a beautiful bike to me. It looks like it could have been made in 1976 with the bicentennial colors and the spoke wheels. But it will run like a 2011 fuel injected Honda.

I also really like Royal Enfield. These are 2011 motorcycles made in India.  Modern bikes with modern technology, but with a look borrowed from the past. It's like someone opened a box of WWII surplus that traveled through time and had a modern engine installed in it.















Car manufacturers have been trying this trick lately too, with the Camaros and Mustangs, Minis and Fiat 500s. Some people would say they do it because they've run out of new ideas. I don't know if I'd agree with that. I just think they're recognizing that some ideas that have happened before were really good ideas.

Reruns

I was reading through my own blog looking for something when I stumbled upon this post from 2004(!):

...I was playing at an Intertops Freeroll around 10:00 and I thought about the blogger table. I knew SirFWALman always played at these things and always with his actual name, so I searched for him. Sure enough, he was at a table full of bloggers. When otis took off it opened up a spot for me.

How was the table? BRUTAL with a capital BRUTAL. 98% of hands were raised pre-flop. Even more flops were bet. A huge number of bluffs, and an even larger number of suck-outs. AA was garbage (except when I raise into it with my 72.)...

...I do not reccomend the blogger table, unless you just want to show off and have fun. The blogger tourneys are a better idea. I'm not sure why they don't play a weekly league or something, if all of them show up so regularly every night. There was Iggy, Pauly, Otis, Poker Prof, Maudie, the aforementioned SirF, and a bunch of others I can't remember. All funny guys, but playing at these small stakes makes them pretty crazy.

Wow what a blast from the past. That's some serious old-school shit right there, we weren't even calling Waffles Waffles yet. Good thing we started because I misspelled his name there. I'm amazed that I can read entire posts and have no idea what or whom I was writing about. It's like it was written by a stranger, but definitely in my voice. Very unsettling.

Long Night, Work Early

Scooterific

I've been trying to move the content direction of this site from Online Poker more towards my other interests, which are Video Games and Scooters.

So here's some scooter content, courtesy an ad from Zappos.

Coq au Vin

When on vacation, I like to cook. I like to try at least one new thing. This time it was Coq Au Vin, which is French for "Rooster with Wine." I definitely strayed from the recipe and made it my own. It was very easy and it turned out very well. The folks I was serving raved about it. I thought it was very good, but not incredible. I may try it again with a different wine.

Surf's Up

Oh yeah...

I must have been very busy vacationing because I didn't notice that the seventh anniversary of this blog went by. Woosh!

Not a very happy anniversary with online poker being all but dead in the US. This blog hasn't been about poker in a long time anyway, it's just an artifact of what originally brought a lot of us together. I might could have kept poker alive for myself if there was any place to play it near where I live, but Tennessee, while being fantastic for other reasons, really sucks on the poker front.

Don't expect this blog to go away though. I've always considered it my online journal, not just for poker nonsense. I'm trying to make an effort to take more pictures and post them, and hopefully I will come up with a new hobby that's blog friendly. I never thought World of Warcraft was a blog compatible hobby. While very entertaining, it just wasn't an original kind of experience I felt the need to blog about very often.

What's Going On

I still read blogs, but I have no idea what's going on. People used to talk about what was happening with them, but now I'm just getting cryptic messages that bring up more questions than they answer.

Apparently someone is going to prison? And someone that used to be linked to him is getting a new apartment but hasn't said anything about getting a job to pay for it? Weirdness. Nobody has ever offered to pay me to not live with them anymore.

Things with me are pretty much the same. I'm on vacation for a week in Florida and it has been very relaxing. It started out rough. For the first few days all I could think about was things going on at work and what I was going to have to do when I got back. But eventually all that melted away and I can enjoy the sunshine and water. I'm very lucky to have a completely stress free place to come and get away from all that hassle.

I did get one work call from someone who was on a work site and didn't know I was on vacation. I guess if you give someone your cell phone number you run that risk. I was happy to help him though because he's helped me out multiple times.

I have to go back on the fifth, which means driving on Independence Day. At least it was an extra vacation day without using more precious "Paid Time Off" days.

My company did a thing where they consolidated sick days with vacation days and call it "PTO." I don't know if people were abusing the unlimited sick day policy or what. I never took a sick day so it didn't really affect me. Especially since I work on projects, so if you take a day off that's just another day of work you have to make up later. It's not like the deadline changes because you take a sick day. We are allowed to work from home occasionally so if I actually did get sick I'd probably just do that. I should work from home more often just in general to save a few bucks on gas occasionally.

And here I am talking about work again, when I should only be concerned with enjoying my vacation. I'll probably go out on the boat or go swimming in a little bit. I need to return some movies to redbox and come up with something to create for dinner. Earlier I made my Lasagne Bolognese that was a huge hit, I don't want a let down after that performance.