A chocolate box of cardiologists

Off to another cardiologist today.  Dr James Wong. So far, out of the cardiologists I have seen, he is my favorite.

Although I wasn't that keen on the information he delivered. Given my Aortic Aneurysm is just under the threshold for surgical intervention, one of the aims of treatment is to extend the amount of time I stay under the threshold as long as possible. And having a blood pressure that comes in under the 130 systolic mark is his desire.  Unfortunately I have had a run of measurements between the 140 to 150 mark. Thus a new pill, to lower my blood pressure, has been added to my medication list. Sigh. Another marker of age.

I'll be seeing him again in late March after I've been on the medication for a while. Plus I'll be having an echo cardiogram to see whether the measurements from the original echo cardiogram have changed at all.  And while I like his bedside manner, the only disappointing feature for me was that, when asked the odds of my having had surgery for my condition within the next ten years, (Aortic Aneurysm plus Bicuspid Aortic Value with mild to moderate regurgitation)  the body language said it all.  There was significant emotional leakage which suggested my odds for avoiding surgery sometime in the next ten years, all else being equal, are no better than 50:50 and likely to be worse than that.

Having said that, given I don't have private health insurance, it seems that once the threshold which indicates surgery is required has been passed, there will be no lengthy waiting. It seems that for the combination of conditions  I have, that when the threshold has been passed and I am through the gate, Dr Wong assured me that you head towards the front of the public health system queue.  Which is oddly both reassuring and a piece of information that is mildly worrying.  My emotional equilibrium has been given a challenge today and I will be keen to see how long it takes for me to return to an even keel. From my previous experience with the initial diagnosis it may be up to two or three weeks before my equilibrium is restored. It may be a good thing to focus on poker study for two or three weeks and give live poker a miss.  I will ponder on this in the near term

And for anyone who may want to delve into the guidelines for surgical treatment of Bicuspid Aortic Valves with Aortic Aneurysms, Pubmed is a useful place to search. I found one article that seemed to be a fairly good summary of the issues that need to be considered.

Sunday hot and sticky

What feels like a hot and sticky day in Melbourne only turns out to be about 24C.  Up early to attend webinar streamed by Alexander Fitzgerald. Original start time of 06:00 am AEST pushed back to 07:00 due to Alex's computer being corrupted by a house guest having downloaded files that ate some of his hard drive. Poor security by Alex and I was surprised but that is life. Some lessons are delivered the hard way.

Unable to give full focus to the webinar due to fatigue. And will have to review the webinar again when a download becomes available. A feeling that there is still so much to learn was very evident at many points during the webinar. With a title of "Test Your Poker 2" there were many multi-choice type questions posed to attendees. And it would be fair to say that I was all at sea for many of the questions. Thus a review will be required.

On the positive side I have been able to study for between 1 to 3 hours per day for each of the past 5 days.  And while I was keen to go to the Casino after the webinar, an internal self-check told me that a visit to the Casino was likely to be negative EV due to the fatigue I was carrying. Off back to bed for a couple of hours extra kip, then watch some Aussie Millions final table, then an hours meditation, some stretching and some push ups.

Diet wise I am getting urges to deviate from the Modified Atkins diet / ketogenic diet that I've been trying to keep to. With some ice cream and potatoes entering the diet from time to time. Plus Jan has been a month of only a couple of days fasting.  With February around the corner I'm thinking I need to look at a 2 or 3 day fast to give the system a chance to reset.

This last week has seen the anniversay of my arrival in Melbourne come and go. Which is also the anniversary of the last time I saw son #1, son #2 and the ex.  All three make regular appearances in my thoughts every day. Especially as I include them in the loving kindness meditation part of my hourly meditation.

When we first met my ex was particularly mischievous and cheeky. Over the past month I have realized this aspect of her personality had disappeared during our last ten years together. At least while she was around me. For her sake I hope that part of her personality resurfaces and she gets joy from having fun interacting with people in a cheeky, mischievous way.   I'm grateful for the times she was mischievous while around me. Those times were fun.

What constitutes a good day for me

From a goal directed point of view a good day will have the following components:

• Meditation. Aiming for one hour per day. Pretty much the first activity after attending to pressing biological needs in the morning
• Hamstring stretches. Long term goal of being able to touch my toes easily. A long way off. Aim is to stretch for 2 to 3 minutes each morning after meditation
• Push ups. Fifty push ups per day. After the hamstring stretches. Gaol per week is for five days out of seven
• Poker study. Aiming for a minimum of one hour per day. Ideally to be implemented shortly after the above activities.
• Playing some live cash No Limit Hold'em at Crown Casino

With those activities in place my mental strength will be maintained or enhanced, my flexibility will hopefully improve and my upper body strength will be maintained.  And while there is little to no cardio in my routines I am ok with that at this time in my life.

The poker study is the part of the day that I struggle with. I don't really enjoy the study that much. My brain is much less keen to learn these days than in my earlier years. My meditation experience has shown me that it is possible to change the brain even in later years. And, that while I may be a bit slower on the uptake in my later years, continuing to put the effort in will, over time, yield results. Hopefully before I go broke!  

My biggest leak at the moment seems to be the avoidance of study. Therefore I need to implement a routine and habits that make the study part of my day. And to avoid letting myself play until the study part of the day has been executed.

I am more or less happy with my study over the past 3 or so days. With some effort going into starting to learn how to use CardRunners EV, reviewing some of the Live Poker 101 Webinar material and re-visiting Alex Fitzgerald's "Dissecting the Donk Bet" Webinar.   

The Van is insured.... and the story of the bored dealer

The van is now insured. Yah!

Third party only at this stage. When it has been modified to have a bed in the back the cover can be increased to comprehensive cover.

Yesterday at Crown, while playing cash, one of the dealers was delivering a schtick about being bored and attempting to come across as so cool with his boredom. Mildly amusing until he cost me money.

With the hand in question I was in the Big Blind with 84o.  Limped pot.  Flop comes 10h8h4d. I bet, one caller. Dealer starts to deal turn. One player yet to act. I interject "Wait!" but too late, the turn is dealt. 4c. Giving me a Full House. Dealer decides that card has to be put back in deck and deck shuffled. Last player to act folds saying it wouldn't have mattered he was folding anyway.

River card is dealt as the turn card.  5h. Giving a Flush.  And of course, the guy who called my flop bet had a flush draw. He checks behind after I check. River is a blank. And he bets small. I call and show the dealer the cards I had.  A mild serve about his schtick not being so funny now is delivered and the atmosphere at the table turns icy. The guy that folded says "He was going to get his flush on the river anyway" and goes quiet when I say "Yeah. And the original turn gave me a full house"

Aussie Millions Main Event to remain on bucket list

Had a crack at a couple of $250 phase 2 Aussie Millions main event satellites over the past 3 days. Managed to win a phase 3 ticket from each satellite. Sold the first phase three ticket I won for $1100 - a discount of $50 on the entry price.

Played the second phase three ticket tonight as it feels like a free roll after having cashed out the first phase 3 ticket.  Had enough luck and reasonable play to get reasonably deep. Ended up busting around 55th from 242 runners after jamming my 8 BB stack over a 2X raise from Early Position and being called by 77 from someone with a 15BB stack. Sadly, with a 7 on the flop, I was drawing thin and didn't manage to spike an Ace on the turn or river and my run was over.  Winning that flip would have given me an average sized stack with the need to nurse it into 24th place being more than feasible.

As the $250 satellites have now finished that will be it for me. I have no appetite for spending $1150 on phase 3 tickets with one in ten gaining an Aussie Millions main ticket. Back to cash for me for the next week or two. There are so many visitors to Melbourne for the Australian Tennis Open and for the Aussie Millions Tournament series that the next two weeks are likely to be the busiest for the year in the cash arena at the Crown Casino. An opportunity to play against people who I've never played against. And hopefully make some money.

windirstat to the rescue

Today my shiny new laptop made my heart flutter with a message that I needed to perform storage maintenance.  It appears my C Drive had very little space left.

With some detective work it appeared the largest files were in my user directory!  Normal Windows file system tools didn't show me. With my technical skills being rusty, but not completely dead, I vaguely recalled that hidden files may well be the culprit. But how to see them?  I recalled having used the utility WinDirStat on my old laptop. Started firing that up. But, while I was waiting for that glacier to thaw, decided to download a copy of WinDirStat, paid them a donation, and fired the utility up. All was revealed. Pokerstars.log.o was down my hidden AppData directory structure.  Deleted that file (close to 72GB which was about 70% of my SSDs disk space), and all was well in my laptops world again

Another Life First

As part of the journey towards getting the van registered I attended the Carlton VicRoads offices to move the administrivia part of the process forward.  The answer to one of the last questions asked delivered the realization that I had crossed another marker in my life's journey.

In answering my question with respect to the expected costs of registering the van, a counter-question came back.  "Are you a pensioner?......"

The value of a skype study group

Part of the ongoing value of signing up for Alexander Fitzgerald's Live Poker 101 webinar series was becoming part of a skype Assassinato University interest group.

I shared some information about a live leak with respect to tilt control and have found myself with new options.

• Dennis Pedersen pointed me to Elliot Roe's warm-up MP3s.  I've downloaded the free tilt buster MP3 and will likely buy one of his live Cash warm up MP3s
• As a result of ferreting around on Roe's website, I've been nudged into making some purchases  that I've been wanting to make for some time.  Tim Ferriss's Tools of Titans,  The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin  and Vagabonding by Rolf Potts. 

Apart from that specific help, I've been able to watch some discussion between other members of the group and have learned from their inputs.

Every poker player will have their share of bad beat stories

And I am no exception.  I am acutely aware of this with the skype study group I have joined recently.  My level of interest in other people's bat beat stories generally approaches zero. Exceptions  to be made for those stories where someone has done some meaningful analysis to the hand to see whether the hand could be played differently, or whether it was a generally profitable scenario where, over time, if you play the hand the same way, you will be profitable.

Being aware of the fact no-one else in the world is in the slightest bit concerned about my bad beat stories, I am also aware that a bad beat can generate tilt. Being on tilt is negative EV over the long term. So the challenge after a bad beat is to come back to an even keel.  In general terms focusing on mindfulness techniques for several minutes, maybe playing very tight for an orbit then getting up and having a short five to ten minute break seems to help me personally come back to an even keel. Then with the ship righted, it can be back to disciplined play.  A marker for me if I am on tilt after a bad beat is that I'll be wanting to open up my game more so as to be able to win back the money that was taken from me by the poker gods.  I'll also extend a session, where previously I had planned to end the session after a set time interval.  This remains a major leak for me and I need to end the session as planned. Trying to win back the losses remains a leak.

Sometimes sharing the bad beat, while I am aware the universe is not interested, seems to help. Maybe I need to use ShareMyPair app / website to document the hand, then walk away from the hand. Pondering on that approach for my next bad beat where I have the nut straight Vs two pair, and someone hits their three outer on the turn to turn a full house. For the pedants, one of the cards that would have given my opponent a full house in my latest bad beat story would have given me a straight flush, so in this case it was a three outer, not a four outer....

An urge to code again

Never thought I would get the itch to write code again... But it seems I have.  I am resisting the urge for now. But may end up installing Python and/or Perl on my laptop to write some basic scripts to do some web page scraping.

Hopefully this will be a fleeting urge and I will be able to procrastinate long enough to avoid writing any code. Bizarre.

Although from looking at the Perl/Python modules that are available it would likely be much easier to accomplish the task I'm thinking of performing than I anticipated it would be.  So who knows. Some rust may end up being knocked off my very, very rusty Python / Perl skills

Freakonomics - the men who started a thinking revolution

In 1984 the New Zealand Labour party came to power espousing a philosphy of neo-classical model based on the monetarist policies of Milton Friedman and the Chicago School. Roger Douglas championed "Economic Rationalism" and there was huge economic change. In my opinion New Zealand came to have a less pleasant outlook largely because of the push to adopt neo-classical economics.

And through the lens of history it is my belief that New Zealand is a society that is much less equal, with the "haves" having done well, and the "have nots" becoming more and more likely to be permanent tenants in their own land. Listening to the Freakonomics podcast about the men who started a thinking revolution was a bitter-sweet listen.  Because their ideas and research more or less proves that the neo-classical economic model pushed by Roger Douglas has fatally flawed assumptions. With the assumption that people make economically rational decisions having been shown to be a load of bunk.  A good listen.  Pity that the information wasn't available more widely 30 years ago.

Brain Pickings, podcasts and intellectual stimulation

Thirty years ago a large chunk of my intellectual stimulation on a regular basis came from reading newspapers. Physical newspapers. Those days are gone. It is a very rare occasion that I read a physical news paper these days.

Today was one of those days. At North Fitzroy public library, while I waited for the results of the roadworthy test on my van, I sat at a table with some other oldish geezers and read four papers.

This evening, I'm back at my laptop and consuming information the way I normally do. Via the internet. And my twitter feed has served up a tweet from brainpickings that had me pondering for several minutes. Then I realized that thirty years ago I would likely have never landed on the information shared by brainpickings. I like the new environment much more. The link from the brainpickings tweet then pointed out to a brainpickings page on positivity resonance. And the information there resonated with me with respect to the some of the meta reasons for the failure of my relationship with my ex

Every Friday   two of my favourite podcasts land.  The Tim Ferriss Podcast being one.  And Alexander Fitzgerald's collaboration with Barry at oneouter.com being the other.  Looking back at 2016 these podcasts have been my friend.  With much in the way of stimulating and useful information being taken from the Tim Ferriss podcast. And from Alexander Fitzgerald, much in the way of inspiration and self-belief that, providing enough hard work is put in, my poker game will improve over time.

House Sit In Sydney 11th April to 12th July

Three months in a mansion on the horizon in the leafy north shore suburb of Lindfield house sitting /dog sitting Fernie the labradoodle. Three months of walking Fernie a couple of times per day.

It would be nice if internet poker was still legal in Australia at that time. But if it isn't I'll have plenty of time to study without having to worry too much about bleeding money in rent.

April/May/June in Sydney.

Melbourne can be a sweaty place

With temperatures of 36 degrees Celsius over the past couple of days in Melbourne the confines of air-conditioned buildings have been very attractive....

Relationship Train Crash at the Poker Table

Two nights ago a youngish (in my eyes) couple turned up at the table I was playing at. Reasonably attractive couple who were probably in their late 20's.  The lady was attractive and seemed like a good sort.

After 20 to 30 minutes they became involved in a heads up pot. Both had fairly marginal hands and both went all-in with the bloke running out the winner with his pocket 4s beating her pocket 3s.

With her money exhausted, she was happy to spend some time waiting for her bloke. But. It was late. Exhaustion was setting in. She asked nicely several times over a reasonable period of time to leave for home.  First request around 01:30 am.

The bloke was enjoying himself and, in my eyes, wanted her to just sit nearby while he played his poker and to not bother him. However the lady in question was coming close to the end of her tether and clearly at one stage was almost at the point of tears due to exhaustion.

From my observers position it seemed like a case of massive disrespect and a relationship that will be heading towards some major conflict.  And while the lady was sitting so close to the guy it was difficult to state in blunt language that he was being a bit of a dickhead and needed to leave the game and take care of his partner.  Did suggest to him that he should leave. In semi-polite language. But without giving the message that he was putting his relationship in jeopardy through being a massive dickhead

A longer stay

I have the chance to spend about a month in one place and am going to take it.  Possibility of having some of the rent shaved off in exchange for a bit of advice and work for a professional sports gambler I met in 2016.

He is ultra busy and has some menial work that takes up some of his time and takes his focus away from where he needs to be in order to make money. Thus I'll have a look at some of the menial work with the intent of either automating it or documenting it so that he can lay it off to someone else.

Take delivery of my van on Monday 9th with the need to get it road worthy. I have a concern with some rust spots just below the front windscreen.  And am hopeful that those spots will not be tooooo expensive to have fixed up.  Have already acquired an unregistered vehicle permit to allow me to drive the van to a place to have a roadworthy test, to be repaired, or to my place of residence.

Poker wise have had a neutral start to the year. With several positive sessions being balanced by a couple of losing sessions.  Once again I was reminded of the need to listen to my inner voice when it tells me to leave. As one of my losing sessions followed a period of my inner voice telling me to leave when I was up a little.  Time to re-read Tommy D'Angelo's Elements of Poker. Especially the section on practicing quitting.  Though I did quit pretty much instantly yesterday when I started to hear the inner voice telling me it was time to quit.  So maybe there is hope I'll eventually make a habit of listening to that inner voice telling me to quit. And also that I'll make a better habit of planning how long to play for and sticking to it.

Maybe I should add a visit to Holland to my bucket list

Especially after reading this article

A mini 2016 review

2016 was a year of change. And if you measure the year by mental health, then the year was a successful year.

Many things to be grateful for:

• While I am bleeding money, I still have enough left that I could AirBnB for another couple of years
• My poker journey has left me with another years experience. And while it was a losing year monetary wise, I feel much better about my skill set than at the start of the year
• AirBnB.  Much like Forest Gump's quote that "life is like a box of chocolates".  AirBnB has much the same sort of lucky dip feel to it.  I am particularly grateful for some of the contacts I made during my journey, and some of the life skills that were passed along.
• Andrew Denton's podcast "Better Off Dead". I just love Denton's work. Listening to Denton explaining complex issues in a way that makes them seem easy to understand is a joy.
• Tim Ferriss's podcast. Lots of life hacks. Some of which I've ignored.  And others that I've experimented with. And best of all, after the intellectual desert that was New Zealand's media environment, intelligent conversations with inspiring people.
• Alexander Fitzgerald's podcast. Positive poker coach who spruiks the virtues of hard work rather than innate talent. I enjoy, at the age of 57, taking inspiration from a 28 year old who has put the hard yards in to improve his poker skill set
• The intermittent emails that I receive from #1 son. I sometimes re-read them and quietly marvel at what excellent written communication skills he has developed. For someone who is pursuing an engineering degree, having his level of written skills will be a great asset
• son #2's mid-year job acquisition. And his continuing employment
• Being able to increase my regular meditation sessions from 30 minutes per day at the start of 2016 to around 60 minutes per day by mid-year.
• Being able to attend Vipassana Blackheath for over 60 days. A significant improvement in my meditation practice in 2016
• The person who introduced me to magic mushrooms. The first trip. And how to identify the species that has Psilocybin present
• The research into Psilocybin in 2016 that showed Psilocybin has great potential as an anti-depressant, anti-anxiolytic and as a treatment for existential angst in terminal cancer patients
• Tim Ferriss's interview with Dr James Fadiman
• The Psychedelic Explorers Guide by James Fadiman
• Sacred Knowledge by William A Richards
• The Spotify playlist that plays the music mentioned in the book "Sacred Knowledge"
• Having lost some weight. Started the year at around 95 Kg. Ended the year around 88Kg. 
• Implemented some of the strategies mentioned in the Tiny Habits Ted Talk to allow me to a) establish a regular push up exercise habit and b) increase the number of push ups completed on a regular basis to around 50 push ups per day around 5 days per week.
• My aero press coffee plunger and portable coffee grinder. With roasted coffee beans readily available for sale at many places through out Melbourne, having self-ground coffee most mornings is both a pleasure and a cost saver.  And is a tool that I use most days. Great value for money
• The Tim Ferriss show episodes with Dom D'agostino around the ketogenic diet. And a pubmed review article on fasting. The ongoing effect for me is that I've started adding coconut oil to my coffee as a way of getting Medium Chain Triglycerides (MCT) into my system. And thus adding another way of avoiding  "white death" (aka sugar) to my kitbag.
• People who I have met through AirBnB who have made my life more interesting
• Shayne from Brighton who I met at Crown Casino and invited me to some poker home games
• Konrad from Box Hill who allowed me to store my recently acquired Hiace Van when the transport company unexpectedly delivered the van 3 weeks before I was expecting it. 
• The Thai barber who buzz cuts my hair. Just an over all nice guy who makes me feel better every time I sit down in his chair
• My new MSI laptop. Still less than one month old and still loving having it
• My new telstra $80 smartphone. After living with #1 son's approximately 5 year old hand me down it is a joy to have this new device.
• Public transport in Melbourne. Cheap as chips. And a great way to get around for me. 
• Not having to use a car as a means of getting around Melbourne. If I can avoid being stuck in Traffic I will.
• Catching up with George McIvor and family in Sydney
• Catching up with Jenni and Geoffrey in Sydney

And probably a few other things I've forgotten about.

Big Bang in the sky!

New Years's Eve saw me in Melbourne's CBD area and in a spot that had a great view of the fireworks that were let off in the CBD area last night. Loads of people around and quite easy to get squeezed like a sardine.

The memory I found coming back was of New Year's eve 1998. When we were about to move back to New Zealand and Shelley, Felix, Isaac and I went to Sydney park and watched the fireworks in Sydney Harbour from afar.  Felix, who was just over the age of two made the remark "Big bang in the sky" while pointing at the fireworks in the distance. Shelley and I made an effort to have a good New Years eve earlier in our relationships but we seemed to run into a plethora of problems with respect to having a good night at New Years. The memory of Felix being fascinated by the explosions in the sky still remain, in a good way, after all those years in between. And I was quietly pleased for the New Year's Eve fireworks that brought in 2017 triggered the memory of Felix's experience with fireworks when he was just over 2 years old