Month: September 2003

I play lots of poker with Ryan. While most parents would talk about Joe Namath, Wayne Gretzky, Bob Gibson and Jack Nicklaus with their children, I fill Ryan’s head with tales of Amarillo Slim, Stu Unger, Doyle Brunson, and Johnny Moss. Most of our “stepfather and son” talks center around the wisdom of guys like Mike Caro, David Sklansky, TJ Cloutier, and Tony Holden. Ryan has a good grounding in the fundamentals of poker. Ryan knows how to be a tight-agressive player, so I usually play him that way.
Every poker book I’ve read (and I’ve read a lot of them) says that poker players can recall, down to the way the chips were stacked, memorable hands they’ve played. I can attest to this fact. They also say that a poker player can recall, in present-tense, exactly how certain hands went down. I can also attest to this fact . . .
We’re on our fourth or fifth hand, playing a no-limit freeze out. I look at my hole cards and find that I’ve dealt myself the Big Slick: A-K, the second best starting hand in Hold ‘Em.
Ryan checks, and I decide to limp in, hoping to get some action on this hand.
“Bet 10,” I say.
Ryan doesn’t even blink, and throws in a blue and three greens.
“Raise 75,” he says. It’s a huge raise this early in the game, and I think he’s bluffing. Ryan hardly ever check-raises.
I put him on a king, maybe a little pair . . . I’m pretty sure that I can blow him out of this pot if I bet into him, let him know that I’ve got cards worth playing.
“Raise 25,” I say, as I deliberately set one green chip in front of me, and flick it into the pot, followed quickly by three others.
“Call.”
The flop is a rainbow: K, 10, 4. I look at my cards, and imagine that it hasn’t helped me at all. I look at Ryan, but can’t read him at all. The kid’s got a good poker face.
He bets 10.
I take a second to wonder if he’s slow-playing a pair of kings. I decide that he’s on a draw, and try to bully him out of the pot again. Even if he calls, my pair is gonna hold up.
“Bet 50,” I say. This time I take five blue chips and two reds, and push them into the pot in a stack.
“Call,” he says, and splashes two greens and a blue.
The turn is the 9 of diamonds. Ryan checks, I bet another fifty, and he calls. We both have too much invested in this pot to get out now, and I’m certain this is going to teach Ryan a valuable lesson about overvaluing cards.
The River is another 4, and I have two pair.
Ryan bets one hundred, a stack of ten blue chips.
I think for a moment, just to make him squirm. I contemplate folding, though I have no intention of mucking this hand, and look at my stack chips. It’s only the fourth of fifth hand we’ve played, and already the pot is bigger than both our stacks.
I check my cards one last time, and say, “Raise 50.” I take my remaining two greens, and put them on top of a stack of blues. I set them in the pot right next to Ryan’s.
“Call,” he says, again without hesitation.
I turn over my A-K. “Two pair,” I say.
He looks down at his short stack of chips, and says, “I got trips, Wil,” as he turns over J-4.
“What?! You played J-4 when I hit you ahead of the flop like that?! What the hell were you thinking?!”
“I was thinking I may get lucky, Wil,” he says, “Looks like I did.”
He smirks, and starts stacking his chips.
“I can’t believe you did that,” I say, “I can’t believe you stayed in until fifth street with a pair of fours.”
“Me neither.” He grins.
I know that I was a statistical favorite to win the hand, and I know that in the long run, I’ll kill him if he stays in a hand until fifth street like that . . . but I don’t care about the bad beat. Sitting here with him, trading barbs like a couple of cowboys in a saloon . . . that is why I like to play cards with him. Some parents play catch with their kids. I play poker with mine.
I pick up the cards, and slide them across the table to him.
“Do you have enough to keep playing, Wil? Or do you need a loan?”
“Shut up and deal, Kid.”

You know, I have never been a drug user (other than alcohol, and then only in Guinness form. 😉
I don’t know why I dodged this particular bullet that seems to have hit so many of my acting peers squarely between the eyes, but I’m glad I did. I often joke that I wasn’t “cool” enough to hang out with that crowd (it sounds better when you can hear the sarcasm dripping off my words, trust me.)
Personally, I think a lot of our drug laws in America are incredibly stupid, and obviously ineffective. I think that a desire to appear “tough on crime” for “the children” is what drives the colossal failure that is the war on drugs, and I hope some courageous politicians will take some steps toward acknowledging this failure, and start treating addicts like the sick people they are, and maybe bring our drug laws here in America into step with the rest of the civilized world. As far as I can tell, prohibition just doesn’t work, but education does.
And don’t even get me started on the stupid “Just say no” campaign . . . how about we “Just say no” to idiot politicians who just want to appeal to a narrow bloc of voters without really doing anything to solve a major problem?
Sorry. This isn’t intended to be a rant at all. The whole point of this post is to link you all to one of the funniest Fark Photoshop competitions I’ve ever seen: Photoshop your own anti-drug poster.

Cory Doctorow is a brilliant author. He’s also one of the editors at bOINGbOING, and works for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an organization that I value greatly, and encourage you all to join.
I guess I sort of know Cory, because we’re both Disney weenies and privacy advocates. He also “called” my boxing match with Barney last year at DNA lounge. Cory e-mailed me this a call to action earlier today. To be honest, I was *stunned* when I saw the other people he’d sent it to . . . I’m in some very good company!
I figure that I spent enough time this summer pimpin’ my book. Now I can try to raise awareness about a very important issue. Nothing less than the future of electronic voting (and all that implies for the democratic process) is at stake.
Read on . . .
IEEE members: save democracy from a broken standards-committee!
The IEEE, normally the sobersided epitome of integrity and accountability, has had one of its standards-committees jump the tracks. The people who are writing the IEEE standard for voting machines have been doing their best to rig their deliberative process to exclude input from non-vendors who want the standard to include performance metrics that will guard against electoral malfeasance. This is heavy stuff: the standard this committee produces will likely form the basis of the US goverment’s voting-machine purchases (as well as those of governments abroad), and if there are holes in the standard today, they will be biting our democracies on the ass for decades. There’s never been a clearer demonstration that “architecture is politics.”

IEEE is better than this. If you’re a member of the organization, please take a moment to read up on this disaster-in-the-making and then use the form at the EFF’s action-center to write to the IEEE and ask them to investigate this — before it’s too late.

…instead of using this opportunity to create a performance standard, setting benchmarks for e-voting machines to meet with regards to testing the security, reliability, accessibility and accuracy of these machines, P1583 created a design standard, describing how electronic voting machines should be configured (and following the basic plans of most current electronic voting machines). Even more problematic, the standard fails to require or even recommend that voting machines be truly voter verified or verifiable, a security measure that has broad support within the computer security community.

To make matters worse, EFF has received reports of serious procedural problems with the P1538 and SCC 38 Committee processes, including shifting roadblocks placed in front of those who wish to participate and vote, and failure to follow basic procedural requirements. We’ve heard claims that the working group and committee leadership is largely controlled by representatives of the electronic voting machine vendor companies and others with vested interests.

More info from the EFF here.
If you’ve made it this far, and you’re scratching your head a bit, read this. The Accordion Guy puts this into layman’s terms MUCH better than I could.

UPDATE: Avast! I be a day early! Some scurvy bilgerat scutterd off w’me sextant! Tomorrow be t’day, but t’entry be in port a day early, ya dawgs. YARR!
Ahoy there, me WWdN mateys! Today be talk like a pirate day! In honoro’this grand occasion, I be writin’ today in PIRATE! Yarr!
Since I was 14, I’ve had an annual passt’Disneyland. me best bucko Darin and I got our passes t’at t’same time, as Xmas gifts from his mom.
Throughout our teenage years, we wentt’Disneyland (or “t’kin’dom” as we called it in a desperate attemptt’sound cool) hundredso’times. In winter, we’d head downt’Anaheim late on Sunday afternoons, and stay until t’park closed at midnight. There’s somethin’ wonderful about Disneyland late at night when it’s mostly empty. For me, that’s when Disneyland feels t’most “magical.” Shiver me timbers!
When I was about 18 or 19, I let me pass lapse, and didn’t renew it until a coupleo’years ago. These days, Anne and I sneak down thar once or twice a month — usually while t’sprogs be in school — and I still get down thar with Darin from timet’time.
T’last time I was thar, while I was walkin’ under what usedt’be t’People Mover, I looked at t’abandoned Submarine Lagoon, and noticed for t’first time that t’waterfalls were turned off . . . and realized that Tomorrowland sucks. Yarrr!
As I pondered t’change in Tomorrowland, and lamented t’losso’T’People Mover, Misisont’Mars, t’huge Arcade, and t’movin’o’t’rocket ships downt’t’ground, I felt sad . . . because Disneyland should be a place where time stands still, aye.
It should be a place that’s more or less timeless, where an adult can reconnect to his childhood in a tactile way. I’m not suggestin’ that Disneyland shouldn’t take advantageo’new technologies and let t’park evolve in certain ways . . . look at how great t’Indiana Jones ride be . . . but by takin’ just about everythin’ I loved about Tomorrowland, and replacin’ it with t’likeso’t’Rocket Rods and Innoventions, Disney has effectively removed a childhood touchstone from me life! Yaaarr!!
T’one areao’t’park that’s almost exactly t’same way it was when I was a kid be New Orleans Square, so it’s no surprise that me favorite rideso’all time be thar: T’Pirateso’t’Caribbean, and T’Haunted Mansion.
I love Pirates so much, I be willin’t’overlook Disney’s stupid political-correct-izin’o’t’ride a few years ago. And I’m such a Nightmare before Christmas geek, t’Haunted Holiday just makes t’mansion that much better for me, ya swabbies.
I think it’s importantt’have some childhood touchstones, even if they be at amusement parks . . . when grown-up life gets me down, I can escape for a few hours down at T’Kin’dom. I can ride t’Mansion and recall t’three or four times I got t’couraget’ask a lasst’ride t'”make out” ride with me, even though I was always too nerdy and shyt’actually make out. I can ride Pirates and remember all t’times Darin and I rode it in a row, when we were tryin’t’learn all t’dialogue. (“Shift your cargo,Ahoy!ie. Show ’em your larboard side . . . “)
I think that Disney could do somethin’ really coolt’Tomorrowland, if they closed it down and revamped it, t’way they did with Fantasyland aft in t’80s. Can you imagine how cool it would be if they rebuilt itt’more-or-less resemble t’Tomorrowlando’t’60s? A Tomorrowland that was flush with optimism and excitement? When t’Adventure into Innerspace terrified me, because I was certain that it wouldn’t be ablet’restore met’me original size? When t’Missiont’Mars was so hokey . . . but that just made it more fun?
Hey, let me have me dreams, ya scurvy bilgerats!
There’s a great big beautiful tomorrow, shinin’ at t’endo’every day . . . a pirate’s life for meeeee!”

I mentioned before I left for the Dodger game that I’d hosed my audioblog . . . turns out my cell phone just wasn’t sending the right DTMF tones.
Stupid cell phone. Anyone know where to get one of those cool Verizon camera phones on the cheap? I gotta replace mine.
Anyhow, I sort of fulfilled a childhood dream at the game . . . I called half of an inning! It’s the top of the 5th, and the Dodgers are trailing 2-0. The first ten seconds or so of this are all garbled (thank you busted cell phone) but the rest it entertaining. To me, at least.
There’s a stupid post, and a post-game post here.