I swear sometimes I think I need therapy for guilt.
I need to print out something I remember my dad asking me when I was little whenever I was upset about the way something was going. He would always ask me: "Did you do your best?" If the answer is really yes, then there is nothing to feel guilty about. I need to remember this when people are making me feel bad.
when you used to be able to leave your luggage at the airport in a locker or at the left luggage counter. As a matter of fact, I did it at Heathrow when I was going to backpack with one of my roomates for a few weeks before heading home.
Since 9/11 that is a thing of the past, but I can't help but wonder if there isn't a way that people could still do it without putting people in danger. I mean, London was the capital or anti-terrorism even before 9/11 and they just scanned people's bags at the left luggage area.
Mine and Jeff's flight gets in about 5 hours before my parents'. I would have liked to drop our luugae and take a cab downtown (Jeff has never been to downtown Seattle), but that's a no go. No place to leave our luggage!
Any ideas of how to kill 5 hours in the SeaTac airport?
EDIT: AHA! http://www.kensbaggage.com/storageservices.html
Well there's a happy thought this morning from Gary Carson, author of the Math and Poker blog.
Although he may sound rather cynical, I do appreciate the point he makes in today's post about calculating expected value. Sometimes in poker EV is really pretty impossible to calculate since it is dependent upon the action of others and these actions are often based on factors too complex and/or random to model effectively - especially while sitting at the poker table using only your own brain.
This is one of many areas where political science and poker overlap. How can we effectively model human behavior? This is, in my opinion, the goal of both poker players and political scientists. In political science we have the added advantage of not having to rely solely on our brain and under time constraints like one does at the felt. However, this is still an issue that everyone in political science struggles with.
Although there is a debate in the field of political science over the goals of "good" political science, I firmly believe one of the primary goals of good political science is prediction. What good is knowing the characteristics of something if we cannot say that it is likley/unlikely to happen again given certain circumstances? This is part of the larger methodological debate within the field - how can we reduce complex human behavior to a mathematical equation that tells us (almost?) everything we need to know? How do you measure core concepts in political science like power and political sophistication quantitatively?
I could write at length about this subject, but suffice it to say that we can only do our best, and a lot of the time, our best is good enough. (This is the rallying cry of quantitative political scientists everywhere - if you don't believe me, just sit in on one of the classes I'm in sometime. I think it is a perfectly legitimate response to ask someone questioning your measures: "Well if it is problematic, what would be a better, feasible way to measure it?"). We can often make pretty accurate predictions about the political world around us even though human behavior is erratic.
I think in poker it's the same way. A lot of times our best effort may be good enough. Yes, we might not be able to accurately calculate EV, but if we actually take the time to think about the situations we find ourselves in, I think good poker players generally make the closest to right decision enough of the time to be profitable in the long run. I don't disagree with Gary Carson that people (self included) often overestimate EV, especially when considering implied odds. However, how big of a problem is that in the overall profitability of people's games? I guess if you are constantly and significantly overestimating EV then this could be a big hole in your game. However, I don't think most thoughtful poker players overestimate EV that significantly that many times for it to make such a large difference. Additionally, in many lower limit games, you don't have to think about the implied odds too much because you know there are a large number of people who will pay you off 9 times out of 10.
And because we are only able to use our own brain power at the felt, I'll (rhetorically) ask Gary Carson (and any poker players reading my blog) the same question that political scientists ask everywhere: "So, how could we feasibly do it better?"
Played in my first league tournament (pot limit Omaha) tonight and won. Made just under $80. Yay!
And a week and a half away from my next one, LOL. Have plenty of pics and reports to tell, but for now enjoy this picture my dad sent me of my parents' backyard. I put it up as the background on my computer at work.
Right after our wedding Jeff confessed to me that the week before our wedding he had an irrational fear of falling down a flight of stairs and breaking his leg. "You're not that klutzy," I thought.
Well apparently *I* am that klutzy. I was out doing yard work in the drizzle today and ran inside to go open the back gate. On my way down the basement stairs, I slipped and fell. I didn't break my leg, but my left ankle (which hit the stairs on the way down), left shoulder, (which was the break that stopped me from going down the entire flight) and, most importantly, my ass are all killing me. There is a visible bump on my butt and it is already all kinds of burst blood vessel black and blue (yes, I have been icing it). I can't really sit without pain. Less importantly, the shelf in our downstairs bathroom which was hanging on the other side of the staircase wall collapsed along with me, sending seashells and glass everywhere.
Sadly this is not the first time I have fallen down a flight of stairs.
This wouldn't be such a big deal if Jeff and I were not going on a cruise on Friday. I don't know if I'm going to be able to do some of the excursions we planned, and I'm really kinda worried about sitting on our flight. Keep your fingers crossed that the flight down won't be too painful for me!
I was looking forward to my upcoming vacation and it dawned on me that I am going to be out and about for the better part of the rest of the summer:
Our luggage is gonna get a workout.
