Nat Arem's Blog

I was on Bluff Poker Radio last week… I’m not sure how many people heard it live on the webcast or on Sirius Satellite Radio.

Anyway, I got a copy of the MP3 and I trimmed it down to the 6.5 minute part that I was on for.

Get a copy of it here (right-click to save and listen):

Nat’s Interview with Bluff Poker Radio

I don’t care whether it’s their fault.

How can I withdraw funds from my NETELLER account?

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Why can’t I use my Gold NETELLER Card anymore?

The Gold NETELLER Card is not available as a withdrawal option at this time.

We are doing our best to restore our withdrawal options but don’t know how long this will take. In the meantime your funds are safely maintained in trust accounts. We will communicate any updates as soon as possible.

Why can’t I get a Gold NETELLER Card anymore?

We are temporarily not issuing Gold NETELLER Cards. The Gold NETELLER Card is not available as a withdrawal option at this time.

It cost me thousands of dollars to get my money out over the last week. So annoying.

I completed my goal of 15 miles in post-PCA January. You can see the original post here: Nike+.

I did it from the 13th to the 25th, so 13 days inclusive. For me, averaging running more than a mile a day for two weeks is pretty good. I definitely noticed improvements. I started off at a pathetic 5 mph (12 min/mile) and now I’m doing 7 mph (a bit worse than 8.5 min/mile). I also have done half-mile segments here and there at 8 mph (7.5 min/mile). I expect that I’ll settle in at around 7.5 mph for most runs, but I want to do a full-mile in less than seven minutes at some point. At this point, I don’t think I could do it. But if I keep up a regular running schedule, I’m very confident I’ll be able to do it relatively soon.

On a down note, my last few runs have been plagued by a knee pain. It sits in the inner part of my right knee and it pretty much only hurts when I’m running. I don’t feel it at all when I walk. When I’m walking up stairs, I can tell that it’s tender, but it doesn’t really hurt. As a test, I tried putting the inside of my shoe against a vertical surface and I just pulled inward to try to put pressure on the joint. That hurt. I then tried the outside of my foot and it didn’t hurt at all. The pain was clearly on the inside of my knee and it hurts when pulled on (obviously, I didn’t put too much pressure on it).

I think I must have somehow strained a ligament. It isn’t bad to the point where I can’t run, although it’s certainly getting there. It was worse earlier tonight than it had been previously. If it advances further, I won’t be able to run until it subsides.

Just from looking at the following diagram of the right knee, it appears that my MCL is hurting me.

Any doctors out there?

Anyway, I’m going to take three full days off of running to see how it feels. I’ll still go work out, but I’ll try to avoid anything that might strain it. I’ll do my next run on Monday the 29th and hopefully it will feel better. If not, I’ll think about doing something else for exercise or maybe going to see a doctor. I certainly don’t want it to get worse.

Jimmy “gobboboy” Fricke won AUS$1 Million for finishing 2nd in the Aussie Millions a few days ago. Gobbo is a great young tournament player who I started talking to a little over a year ago. I’ve met him a few times at Turning Stone and I’ve seen him rise from an $11r force to one of the most feared online MTTers. In addition, he’s the only person who I ever made a big rankings push for on P5s. I rarely got involved in the rankings-related posting battles that went on before the automated system, but I felt pretty strongly that gobboboy was deserving of being ranked and he definitely wanted to be recognized. Eventually, he got what he was looking for and was ranked on the non-automated system. I think it’s great that he hit a major score in one of his first few big live events — I know that he played WPT Niagara and the PCA (which he went very deep in also), but I don’t think he’s played any other big live events.

Anyway, I found this picture on the PokerStars blog of gobbo and a few other online poker friends of mine:

From left: nath, schaefer, gobbo, aaronbeen, a_junglen and some other guy I don’t recognize

I just got this thing two days ago, but the Wii is awesome. Thus far I’ve done mostly Boxing and Bowling. I’m pretty bad at Tennis and I don’t like it too much. It just doesn’t seem like I can hit winners very well, but maybe I just don’t understand how to play it. I haven’t even tried Golf yet but I hear it’s awesome and I will try it ASAP. Baseball is awesome too, I just haven’t had enough time yet to play it much.

Anyway, I’ve done mostly bowling so far and became “pro” pretty fast. It isn’t too hard to get there, but it is hard to increase your skill level well above 1000 (the pro level). Anyway, I’m just excited because I bowled a record-high a few minutes ago. I keep bowling in the 180-200 range and I’ve only had about 5 games above 200, so 225 was awesome. I’m definitely a serious threat to bowl 300 as I’ve had a few 6 strike streaks and tons of 5 strike streaks. It’s only a matter of time before I put it all together and pull out the 300 game. I’ll definitely be posting it when I do.

I don’t even care much about this post, but there’s a lot of e-drama going on over in the 2+2 HSNL/NVG forums about samoleus and EmpireMaker2 (two HSNL poker pros who used to play together a lot on Party). This post, which I think started the latest forum back and forth but continued a long-existing disagreement, was deleted at samoleus’s request before I could read it. But google cache came to the rescue, like the champ that it is.

I edited out the link that led to a picture of samo’s baby.