Nat Arem's Blog

If you don’t know what this is about, look down two entries.

Email #1 from today:

Mail headers
From razeones@aol.com
To admin@thepokerdb.com
Date Fri, 27 Oct 2006 12:53:39 -0500
Subject Contact Form: support

Message text

why hasn’t anyone emailed me????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? i know i have emailed you atleast 10 times. i also have requested a validationemail 5 times, and requested a password reset more than 5 times. I WANT TO USE THE SEARCH FEATURE OF THE SITE. WHY CANT I GET ANYONE TO CONTACT ME.

Then he decides to email using the webmaster option in the drop-down box. I guess he doesn’t realize it all goes to the same email inbox at admin@thepokerdb.com.

From razeones@aol.com
To admin@thepokerdb.com
Date Fri, 27 Oct 2006 12:59:21 -0500
Subject Contact Form: webmaster

Message text

maybe you can help. i have emailed support a total of over 20 times over the past rew weeks, and believe it or not, i have not heard back one time. yes, 30 emails to them, they havent emailed me once. i dont understand if the site is going down and they dont have anyone for support or what the case is. maybe you can help. i need a password or a validation email and the link this crap site has does absolutely nothing

I suppose it’s possible that this is all a publicity stunt of some kind done by one of my blog readers, but I doubt it.

This is awesome.

Birdman Wingsuit

So this guy has been emailing me and whatnot, but I can’t respond to him. Unfortunately I haven’t saved all of them, but I just got this piece of gold:

“DOES ANYONE WORK THERE OR IS THIS SITE GOING UNDER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I HAVE REQUESTEDVALIDATION 5 TIMES. IT SAID “EMAIL SENT” I REQUESTED PASSWORD CHANGE 5 TIMES…IT SAID “EMAIL SENT” I WROTE TO YOU 3 TIMES. I HAVENT HEARD FROM ANYONE ONETIME, NOT ONE EMAIL IN 3 DAYS!!!!!! THIS IS ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS. HORRIBLY RUN .THE COMPANY OR SITE SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF THEMSELVES”

Obviously he’d be right if we actually weren’t emailing him back. But every time I try, I get this message:

“From: Mail Delivery Subsystem Mailed-By: omr-m07.mx.aol.com
To: natarem@gmail.com
Date: Oct 22, 2006 1:41 AM
Subject: Mail Delivery Problem

Your mail to the following recipients could not be delivered because they are not accepting mail from natarem@gmail.com:
razeones”

Obviously that bounce-back is from a time when I tried emailing from my personal address, but I get the same one when I try from admin@thepokerdb.com.

I do admit I’m a little entertained that he’s sitting there with steam coming out of his head and admonishing me when he isn’t accepting emails. Can anyone get through to razeones@aol.com?

For all those loyal blog readers out there, I’m guessing you remember my First Month Law School Report entry. Well, it hasn’t been two months yet, but I’m ready to write another entry about my experience thus far.

I’ve realized something that I think will allow me to maximize my academic success. There are some key strategies involved in class preparation because of the paradoxical nature of the law school experience. On the one hand you’ve got the threat of being put to the test in front of your peers and on the other hand you’ve got the exam monster, your real evaluation, hanging over your head. The problem is that there simply isn’t enough time to:

a) Prepare for all of your classes completely
b) Learn the actual law from various study guides**
c) Practice attacking hypothetical situations like the ones you might see on the exam

So what the hell are you supposed to do? In my experience thus far, the only thing a student can reasonably cut down on is class preparation. It simply doesn’t make sense to write your own brief for every case and know the case inside and out for the rare situation when you’re the one that’s called on. Even though the threat may seem great, I’ve been called on three times in Contracts, one time in Torts and one time in Civil Procedure (my other two classes don’t “teach by ambush”). I just can’t justify spending so many extra hours just to look slightly smarter or more prepared in front of the class. The reality is that all you should really do is make sure you understand the concept being presented in each case, why it’s being included, the basic facts and the court’s reasoning. I can get those from a case by getting some brief online and skimming the text of the case. Learning the procedural history, each prior court’s reasoning, random facts, etc is a huge waste of time. First, it won’t make you look that bad if you can’t recall exactly what the trial court said about some concept and second, it won’t matter on the exam.

All that being said, I still see extreme levels of preparation in some classes. I honestly have no idea how these people find the time and energy to do all of this extra prep, such as reading 2-3 supplemental texts on each topic the night before every class. Somehow they do full briefs of every case plus they triple their reading load. Not to say that I’m all-knowing about law school success, but I personally think they’re barking up the wrong tree. There’s no need to write out your own brief with free briefs all over the place online — if nothing else it saves you time typing things out to copy portions of another brief. I know it’s over-used, but this is a definite situation where it’s better to working smarter, not harder. I guess we’ll see who’s right when we get our grades back around February.

** Law students don’t actually learn the law in class, you learn how judges in certain jurisdictions apply that jurisdiction’s law to a set of facts — so it’s more that you’re learning reasoning patterns. In actuality, the general law on a subject is often different than what the result of any given case says

Poor mig.com … the Stuper was 735 people tonight

PokerStars Game #6662963346: Tournament #33698208 $150+$12 Hold’em No Limit – Level XV (1000/2000) – 2006/10/17 – 01:02:08 (ET)
Table ’33698208 21′ 9-max Seat #9 is the button
Seat 1: mindwise (56124 in chips)
Seat 2: ramada (40765 in chips)
Seat 3: sailor67 (70010 in chips)
Seat 6: Pier85 (30406 in chips)
Seat 7: mig.com (75589 in chips)
Seat 8: mezyoureyez (27537 in chips)
Seat 9: maximilian74 (66155 in chips)
mindwise: posts the ante 100
ramada: posts the ante 100
sailor67: posts the ante 100
Pier85: posts the ante 100
mig.com: posts the ante 100
mezyoureyez: posts the ante 100
maximilian74: posts the ante 100
mindwise: posts small blind 1000
ramada: posts big blind 2000

Board:
[ ]
Seat 1: mindwise (small blind) folded before Flop
Seat 2: ramada (big blind) folded before Flop
Seat 3: sailor67 folded before Flop (didn’t bet)
Seat 6: Pier85 folded before Flop (didn’t bet)
Seat 7: mig.com showed [ ] and lost with a pair of Jacks
Seat 8: mezyoureyez folded before Flop (didn’t bet)
Seat 9: maximilian74 (button) showed [ ] and won (135810) with a pair of Aces

As I expected, PokerStars decided to continue offering their services to US clients.

Farewell PartyPoker and Firepay, you both suck anyway.

Long live PokerStars and NETeller.