Author: Wil

I’m playing in the WCOOP again today, and I’ll be live blogging the action over at CardSquad, for those who are interested. You can also download the PokerStars client and search for player “Wil Wheaton” if you’d like to sweat me from the rail. The tournament begins at 3PM EDT, which is in about six minutes. Eep!

Like everyone else, I’ve been reading The Interdictor for the last week or so. I’ve even gone so far as to add a live bookmark to Firefox, so I can quickly tell if he’s updated or not.
I have found his insights to be very interesting and often moving, like this paragraph from last night:

It’s funny when you notice the effects of sleep deprivation on yourself. Keeping this journal reminds me of Flowers for Algernon. I catch myself making careless errors every now and then. Silly things like forgetting to grab a flashlight or the right keys. And then there’s the deterioration of physical coordination. I have to go down the stairs more slowly and I make a lot more typos so I’m constantly hitting the backspace while I’m typing. And it’s taking a little longer to process information. The days start to blur too and it hasn’t been two weeks yet. I bet some psychology major could have a field day tracking my psychological state for the last 10 days or so.

His story is amazing. If you’ve got some time, it’s worth heading over to his Live Journal, and reading the archives.

In this week’s Games of our Lives, I ask:

Ever wonder what Donkey Kong would have been like if the game had talked to you in a weird underwater voice? Or what if, instead of playing a tough little carpenter fighting a giant cool gorilla, you were a wussy little lumberjack fighting a giant lame-o bird? And what if the game really, really sucked?

Head on over to the AV Club, if you’d like to know the answer.

I rarely visit websites or blogs directly any more, because I prefer to read everything in Bloglines. I do that because I move among several different computers each day, and — because Bloglines is web-based — no matter where I am, I can see if one of my sites has been updated. I try to hit the actual sites I read at least once every few weeks, because sometimes there are announcements or other content that doesn’t make it into the RSS feed . . . but I thought it would be swell if I made a post for all you RSS readers, so you can see the news that you’re missing if you don’t see my smilin’ mug every day at WWdN.
At the top of my blog, you’ll see this:

By popular demand, you can now see or hear me read from my books Just A Geek and Dancing Barefoot! If you like what you hear, you may want to pick up a copy of Just A Geek: Teh Audiobook. Or not. Whatever. I’m not the boss of you.
You can also find me on PokerStars.com as “Wil Wheaton”, and at blogging.la. My column The Games of our Lives is updated every Tuesday night in The Onion AV Club. I contribute poker stories to CardSquad, and I am an editor on the Suicide Girls (NSFW) technology newswire (SFW).

So now you know, and knowing is half the battle.

I played in another WCOOP event today, a heads-up shootout. It’s a format that I really like, and where I’ve historically done quite well . . . but I sucked out loud, and let a guy outplay me in a pretty embarassing way.
The whole thing is posted at CardSquad, but you’ll notice that this entry comes not from the Poker deparment, but the blog department, because of the following:

. . . but the truth is, I was very distracted from the moment I sat down. I’ve been thinking a lot about the people who are suffering down in the Gulf Coast, and all the refugees, and just before the event began, I heard that they’ve found e.coli in the water in NOLA. That’s really not good, and I’m sure it’s just the beginning. I’m not excusing my shitty play, but I’m profoundly upset about the aftermath of Katrina, and I am even more outraged at how poorly the federal government has handled it. I know this doesn’t have a lot to do with the nuts-n-bolts of playing poker, but it brings up an interesting topic: if you’re in a funk, you just don’t play in a cash game or SNG. But if you’re registered in a tournament, you’ve got to show up and play, right? You’ve got to just suck it up, do your best to focus, and play the best you can play.
It’s easier said than done for me, which is annoying, because if I was supposed to work on a film or TV production today, I would have no problem setting my grief and anger aside until the end of the day (probably to resurface when I’m on the 405 at rush hour.) But today, sitting in my office playing on PokerStars, I wasn’t able to do it.

It’s a question that applies beyond poker, or Halo 2, or working in the yard, or whatever: when you’re in a funk, and you’ve got something to do no matter what, how do you just set it aside and do what has to be done? It’s a tough question for me to ponder, because if I had a family obligation, or a TV or film commitment, the answer would be, “I don’t know. I just do.” So what is it that we draw upon to “just do it?” And if we can just do it for one thing, why not others?