Nat Arem's Blog

I do have a blogroll but it isn’t really a list of blogs that I read. I’ve been intending to transition it to a true list of blogs that I read but I haven’t done it yet. At the request Cory Albertson (who finally gets his coveted link from my blog) I’ve decided to make a post with some of the blogs that I read. Some of them are poker-related, some of them aren’t.  Also, some are blogs disguised as news sites.  I basically count anything that has regular updates on it but is not a true mainstream news site to be a blog.  For instance, CNN is not a blog.  However, a niche news site liker Poker News Daily is basically a blog.  This definition is obviously up for debate (a debate which I don’t care about) but I am just explaining this so you know how I decided what to include.

• Seth Godin: Seth is an amazing marketing mind.  I love his attitude and thought process.  He has some great insights and he posts all the time.  I really feel like I should be paying for a subscription to his blog but he kindly gives his thoughts away for free.
• CrossFit Journal: This one costs $25 a year but if you’re a CrossFitter it is an easy decision to subscribe.  If you’re not a CrossFitter, it would probably be dumb to read it even for free.  But there is some decent exercise-related content on the site even if you just go to a gym on your own.  That all being said, you need to take a lot of the stuff said on the site with a grain of salt because CrossFit has some alliances with people who I feel spout off a lot of bullshit.  So keep in mind that the quality of the content varies.
• CardRunners Blogs: The reason I’m not linking to them is because some of the good bloggers and site owners don’t update often enough.  So this is my passive aggressive way of getting back at them.  But there are some good bloggers on CR so it’s worth a read.
• Poker News Daily: I know that I’m kinda biased here because I have a small hand in helping to run PND but I believe it’s among the best poker news sources online.  The content ranges from news about online poker to news about live poker to updates on poker legislation to top-notch poker videos.
• Google Webmaster Central: A great resource if you’re at all interested in search engine optimization.  Google has a lot of blogs and I read a bunch of them but this is my favorite one.
• Space.com news: I have a long-standing fascination with outer space and I love to read about it.  I like the content on space.com although I can’t stand the design of their site.
• The Onion: The king of web sarcasm.  The content is wildly variant and ranges from audio to “news” to video.  Some of it sucks, some of it is amazing.  I rarely laugh harder than I do at a good article from The Onion.
• xkcd: The best intellectual comic strip.  Updated a few times a week and it rarely disappoints.  It will be over your head if you aren’t into science, technology, math, etc.  You’ve gotta be built from the geek mold to really enjoy this one.
• The Oatmeal: Another great comic.  His site isn’t easy to negotiate (at least, it isn’t set up logically) in my opinion but he has some awesome stuff.

I guess that’s probably enough for one post.  I will do a more “poker specific” one in the near future.  And maybe a search engine optimization one as well.

I’ve been having some on and off issues with google maps. This is, currently, my favorite mishap that I’ve seen. Some strange combination of Philadelphia and the USA.

Google Maps used to be great and now it’s just kinda slow and buggy. I’m not sure if they’ve built too many things into it or what but it definitely isn’t on the cutting edge of performance and quality anymore. Sad.

Yesterday I took an early AM flight from Costa Rica to Newark and rented a car to drive up to New Haven, CT to visit my sister. The flight was great as I managed to snag an upgrade to first class. It was on-time, no bad weather, food was good, etc. Here are some pics from the flight:

First, the Hope Creek Nuclear Plant (wiki):

Second, I got two awesome shots of Philadelphia. Here is a cropped version of one of them so you can see a small version without clicking through:

Also, here are the two images in full res without any alterations (granted these are cellphone pics through a plane window so nothing too amazing): Picture 1 and Picture 2.

Then I got to Newark and saw that Hertz had upgraded my rental car as well so that was pretty awesome. Unfortunately the drive from Newark to New Haven sucked. The whole section from the GW Bridge through the Bronx all the way up to like Stamford, CT was pretty congested and, in places, a dead standstill. The drive took almost an hour longer than it should have taken. Better than a week long traffic jam I guess.

After getting there I went to dinner with my sister and her boyfriend. She was breaking the Yom Kippur fast so she was really hungry. And I was pretty damn hungry also since I hadn’t eaten since about an hour into the plane ride. The restaurant we went to was this shady-ish looking Turkish place called Saray Kabab. But definitely don’t judge this place on it’s looks. The food was AWESOME. Probably the best hummus I’ve ever had and I’ve been to Israel multiple times, etc. I got this awesome lamb gyro thing. Highly highly recommended if you’re ever in the New Haven area or even just driving through on 95.

After that we went back to New Haven and walked around the Yale campus for a bit. Amazing place. The buildings really make you feel like you’re in Oxford or someplace like that. They definitely transplant you away from being in an otherwise-crappy little New England town. I could not believe the detail work on the buildings not to mention the other details and the overall scale of the place. Some of these towers were a few hundred feet tall, easy. We also swung by the Skull & Bones building. Pretty impressive imo although obv you can’t really see much of it. We ended up capping off the evening at Froyo which is a self-serve soft-serve ice cream place where you pay by the pound. Great idea, it seemed to be doing really well.

So we went back, went to sleep, everything seemed normal etc. But then around 2-something AM I was woken up by some ridiculously loud sirens. That went on for like 15 minutes. It was tilting the shit out of me. So I broke out my ipod, Bose QC15s and the Delta Sleep System and that blocked it out and I was back asleep pretty quickly. So today I walked outside to drive to Ithaca (where I am now) and I saw a huge crime scene on College St. This was no less than a few hundred feet from the door to my sister’s apartment. So I called my sister once I got on the road and told her about the crime scene which she had somehow missed despite going outside briefly before me. She later sent me some links to articles about what happened: Gunfight breaks out on College Street and Double shooting as New Haven nightclubs let out. Who would think I’d spend a week in Costa Rica with zero gunshots and then go to Connecticut and the first night there are three-way gun battles involving police in the street below where I’m sleeping. Very surprising even though I know that New Haven can be pretty unsafe and violent.

Anyway, now I am safely in Ithaca, NY visiting with my grandmother and brother. I think May 2006 was the last time I was here. It does not seem like it has been that long, at all. I can remember a bunch of details from my last trip like it was yesterday. Amazing how that is when I can’t remember things from last week sometimes. I’m definitely going to be back in Ithaca next May for my brother’s college graduation so it won’t go four years again after this trip.

So I’m traveling in Costa Rica right now (although I’m almost done with my trip) and Amex decided to freeze my card because I guess it looks fraudulent to have a bunch of Costa Rican charges or something like that. I got an email from them saying I needed to call in, etc. So I call in on Skype because my Verizon phone doesn’t work here. It ended up being a conversation a lot like the one I had with Microsoft a few years ago.

Me: Hi, I was told about a fraud alert on my card, I’m calling get it taken care of.
Her: Sir, are you on a speakerphone?
Me: Well yea, I’m using Skype because I’m out of the country and I’m using my laptop to call.
Her: Sir, we cannot speak to anyone on a speakerphone because of our privacy rules.
Me: I don’t have much of a choice, I would need to go find headphones and I don’t have any with me. There’s no way to just let me release liability or state that I am not on a speakerphone?
Her: Sir, we cannot speak to anyone who is on a speakerphone.
Me: Okay, I am not on a speakerphone.
Her: I can tell you are still on a speakerphone.
Me: No, I definitely switched to a regular phone, it is just really echo’y.
Her: Sir I cannot talk to someone on a speakerphone.
Me: Alright, whatever.

Then I call back immediately and I just made sure to not admit that I was on a speakerphone when asked. Don’t they realize this is what will happen when they put in policies like this? It isn’t like they can detect it. It’s like the one-player-to-a-hand rule not being enforceable in online poker. You can’t enforce speakerphone rules. It just leads to annoyance on the part of the customer and forces them to lie.

Received a few minutes ago from 1800contacts:

GFY contact lenses, I don’t need you anymore. Good riddance.

1800contacts, welcome to my email ignore list. Your stay is scheduled to last: forever.

I really love this show. I love how real-time it is and how the players all see the previous episode. It’s amazing how fast they edit it and get it on the air. Not to mention the super-high level of production value (obv, it’s HBO) and the awesome footage. I know that normally I wouldn’t give a second thought to “Richardson cut by Jets” if it wasn’t for Hard Knocks and seeing the behind the scenes of how they got to that point. I know they brought him back one day later but that isn’t really the point. It’s just awesome to see everything play out and get some good behind-the-scenes access.

When reading a thread in P5s OT, someone mentioned that old episodes of Hard Knocks are on Hulu. Keep in mind that until about five months ago, I’d lived outside of the US for over two years. When I moved in January 2008, Hulu was tiny. I think it was online but it certainly didn’t have the same selection of shows. So this is really the first time I’ve ever used it. I watched Season 1 (Baltimore after their Super Bowl win) and I’m partway through Season 2 (1992 Cowboys).

My first impression of Hulu is that it’s awesome. I am excited to order a Boxee box (whenever they finally come out) and get Hulu on my TV with a remote. I know that I can do something with a Mac mini or hook one of my laptops up to the TV but the Boxee box just seems like… way cooler. If there’s anything like that out there now, let me know about it. Oh, and Apple TV sucks so don’t please don’t suggest that. I have one and it’s a doorstop/paperweight.

Another thing I should mention is that Jerry Jones is a total idiot in some ways. I know the guy is super rich, great at marketing his team, etc, etc. But some of his thought processes come out in the Hard Knocks series. Like in this episode at about the 8:10 mark he starts talking about how Quincy Carter is good because: they are both libras, they share a birthday, etc. He also makes a fair number of really dumb other remarks (“I think we could have two pro bowl quarterbacks”) but those are a little more excusable. This sort of thought process really reminds me of poker player superstitions. If Jerry Jones were playing cards, I could easily see him be like “I’m going to hit this draw because the last time I was drinking whiskey neat on the rocks I was hitting every draw”. Or something similar.

I really wonder how much retarded thinking goes on in football. We already know that coaches make poor decisions about whether to go for it on fourth down on the goal line. While there are a few exceptions, NFL coaches seem way more concerned with doing whatever is “standard” than they care about math. It really makes me think that while these guys might know football well (ie, the best way to tackle someone or w/e) they lack the basic analytical skills to make proper rational decisions. Do we have a bunch of math donkeys running a league that really comes down to math in the end? At the end of the day, it’s about points and whatever is mathematically more likely to have you end up with more points is the way to go (with the exception of some end-game clock strategy stuff).

One thing I really like is the “Moneyball” way of thinking described in Michael Lewis’ highly-regarded 2003 book. These guys totally turned baseball’s old way of “gut feelings” upside down and really revolutionized how front offices are run. I know that some front offices are different (ie, the Yankees indiscriminately fling money around like a monkey flings poo around) but many baseball clubs now have a much more analytical approach. Obviously Moneyball has inspired a lot of football sabermetricians but I’m not really so sure that it has really gotten much headway in terms of breaking into the football establishment. As I look around the league, a lot of the same old faces are still running teams. At least some guys like Belichick have the balls to ask for help from the math guys. But I don’t get the feeling that it’s too common around the league.

At the end of the day, I get the feeling most coaches are just kind of stuck in old-school groupthink when it comes to making a decision in the heat of the moment. And that’s sad.