Nat Arem's Blog

At Denny’s before going to Tambor for the weekend.

He said it was a mistake on the menu. I ordered it anyway. So did Cal. I wouldn’t recommend it.

That’s inside the Sansa plane on the way back from Tambor. I was in the last row of the plane. Adam from P5s is two rows ahead of me (he just missed out on “first class” … aka the first row of the plane). Not exactly big.

Here are some pics out of the window of the plane:

So at least the view was good. And even though we didn’t fly through rain (thank god, that plane has enough trouble with clear skies), we saw a rainbow after we landed in San Jose.

Pretty cool. And lastly a token pic of me on the tarmac. Photo credit: Adam.

(That’s our plane over my right shoulder)

I’ve been pretty busy lately. Ever since the PCA I’ve been hard at work on this latest project of mine (still mostly a secret, but more and more people are hearing about it I think). I’ve referred to it a few times on the blog over the last few months I think, but it has been delayed and delayed for various reasons. FINALLY I think it’s getting to the point where launch is less than a month away. We’re planning on launching the site as a public beta with limited features and then developing the features over time. I think it’s silly to hold it back any longer than we have to, even though the site as we plan on launching it will only be a small % of the site as I eventually envision it.

Also, I am working on the project with a company in Costa Rica, which means that I need to travel to Costa Rica sometimes to speak with the developers. I’m not moving to Costa Rica, but I’ll come down as often as I need to in order to get this project off the ground. That probably means I’ll need to come down on and off all year. I’ve been hanging out a bunch with Adam and Cal from P5s (they live down here quasi-permanently), which has been a bunch of fun.

I guess the other things I’ve been up to include doing taxes (always fun), lots of working out and a fair number of movies. I saw Hitman yesterday — pretty dumb but largely entertaining. I also saw Sleepers (from the mid 1990s). It was pretty good and I’d recommend anyone watch it, although it’s kinda disturbing. The last one, which was surprisingly entertaining, was a movie called Shooter about a sniper. It stars Mark Wahlberg (LOL) and is hardly a deep or intellectually interesting movie, but it definitely held my attention. Then again I like those types of movies, so who knows what other people will think of it (Cal liked it).

In other news, I hope the Pats win the Super Bowl. First of all, I like seeing great accomplishments (such as going undefeated). I really hope I never have to see that dumb ’72 Dolphins champagne crap on TV again. Second, I hate the Giants. Being from Philadelphia, I pretty much hate all New York-area teams. I don’t want to see them somehow pull this Super Bowl out of a hat. Third, I will be able to permanently tell any Boston fan to shut up if they complain about not winning. Of course, considering the Red Sox and the Pats of the last few years, I could probably do that already, but having one of the best football teams of all-time is a little different than winning a championship or two. The Pats are, arguably, the best team of all-time in addition to being a dynasty … and who knows when it will start to fall apart for them. They could keep rolling over everyone in their path for the foreseeable future. I can’t stand the Boston negativity sometimes (see The Sports Guy in ESPN The Mag) — they haven’t come close to experiencing what Philadelphia has gone through since 1983. So being able to shoot down those Bostonian comments instantly will be nice.

I guess I’d better get back to work.

I’m pretty sure no cheater would be dumb enough to do this, but maybe reverse psychology to make us all think that?

One interesting point to note is that he later accused YelloSub86 of being a bot.

So I was told about an angle shoot in the Sunday Second Chance on Stars today.

Apparently the player “wijken” agreed to sit out and wait for support, then sat back in three-handed and stole blinds until ForRealDD and Fjusse sat back in. They then went through a chop discussion with unfair chip stacks, and, for obvious reasons, they were unable to come to a deal.

Then, unfortunately, ForRealDD (got cheated out of like half of his stack) busted and the following chat occurred:

Fjusse: seat out?
wijken: no
wijken: dont trust it
Fjusse: ok
wijken: POKERMANAGER
Fjusse: just wait then for him
Fjusse: lets take the time
wijken: ****
wijken: pokermanager
Fjusse: POKERMANAGER!

Yup, they started *yelling* in the chat box for support. Like that would help.

People are smart…

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showthread.php?t=102582

“so i come home early tonight, kinda trashed, take a piss and start playing some $500 hu sng’s on fulltilt. i win 1 of my matches, like 10 minutes later i’m in my 2nd one and i need to piss again. so i’m holding it, holding it… dude i’m playing is a super nit and the match is taking forever. i don’t want to sit out and let him blind me away, i’m positive i’m not gonna be able to make it to the bathroom and back in time… and mostly important i’m now just drunk enough to start thinking “maybe i can find a bottle or something over here to piss in”, somehow thinking that’s a good idea (thanks deerok). so i find a 16oz orange juice bottle, unzip, and start to do my business as i’m still playing. simultaneously this hand comes up. he minraises on the button, i cahl k9 or some trash, flop comes TTK. i delay as i’m pissing and check at last second, meanwhile i realize the bottle is just about full. so i squeeze the little guy while i try to figure out what to do. in the meantime he checked and i peeled off another ten. so now i’m holding the bottle with my left hand, my joint with my right, and next thing i know i’ve timed out on the turn, sat out, and checked. so i panic to click “i’m back” as quick as i can and obviously when i do this i unleash the hose and i piss everywhere. all over my monitor, my desk, sprinkle all over the floor- a real mess. luckily he auto checked the turn, i bet the river and he mucked. so now obviously i run to the bathroom, dump out the bottle in the toilet, rinse my hands, run back with some paper towels, and start to clean up while simultaneously playing… and thank god i eventually win the match. on the bright side, it was 1 of those secondary drunk pisses so it was just clear urine… but i don’t think that makes this any less amazing. wow.

beat: pissed all over the place while playing drunk
brag: still won the hu sng
variance: using a 16oz bottle”

I’ve always known this type of thing must happen sometimes, but the mental image is pretty hilarious/disgusting.

This one is a $500 competition between yellowsub86 and ahh_snap in flip cup. This took place in the Coral Lobby of Atlantis.

This next one is a credit card roulette video from Fathom’s, which is a pretty good restaurant at Atlantis. Genius was holding the cards while we went around the table picking numbers. I won’t say who lost (not like anyone cares, but I feel like it’s a spoiler), but I will say that he voluntarily ordered $200 worth of shots AFTER losing the game knowing he was paying for the round. Nice guy, right?

On a side note, I was sick for two days after eating at Fathom’s. That was probably the last straw for me, I don’t think I can go back to the PCA unless I have a compelling reason to do so. Even though the place sounds great in theory and on paper, it just isn’t very enjoyable when all is said and done. So please call me out next fall if I claim that I’m going again (like every October I get the itch to go the Bahamas for the PCA and every time I leave saying never again). That being said I do love the atmosphere and the people, so I might have to go to Australia if I can find some people who want to travel around after the Aussie Millions. There’s no way I’d go down there just to hang out in a casino for a week.