Tom Stortz – Page 55

Tom Stortz

Life

This post has been stewing for a while.

My last post about Fuller House is a prime example of posting to post. When I don’t post, it means I have nothing to write about. I went 3 days without a post and felt like I was letting the blog down. I watched Fuller House with the sole intent to write about it and that doesn’t make a good post. That’s doing a job.

I even published the piece without proofreading. I watched the episode and instead of taking notes I said I’d remember my good thoughts. I had at least 3 better than what I published thoughts and by the time I was done writing (and forgetting) it, I said, “who really cares about this pointless show?”

I didn’t care. My brain went to the fact that I’m alive during this age and in this spot right now. What if you were born around the bombings in Syria? The anaconda grip of North Korea? The starvation and corruption in Africa. I couldn’t have been born in a safer environment vs the other 90% of the world. Maybe 85%. I don’t think it’s quantifiable but America is probably the top destination and I grew up well off. Why did I get so lucky? Things are becoming much more real as I look at a global perspective.

There are 7 billion people on this planet. You aren’t unique. You are 1 out of 7 billion. Do you ever think about that? You were 1 of 25 in Kindergarten. 1 of 1,200 in high school. 1 of 35,000 in college. 1 out of 350 million in the USA. 1 out of 7 billion is unheard of. This idea is foreign to many people. The circle of life has been around for a long time which starts to put the vast amount of time vs the vast amount of people in perspective.

People die. I was going to do a post on celebrity deaths and came up with Ryan Dunn and Brandon Lee (Bruce Lee’s son) as dying way too young but there is no purpose to post it. Why is it that celebrities are huge draws? I go to reddit and view the celebrity tab instead of the normal people tab. Celebrities are the best of what they do. Think about the 7 billion number again. Most people are not celebrities. Most people work to make money and figure it out from there. I love the movie Office Space because it puts that into perspective. I could explain that viewpoint as well as Mike Judge and Peter Gibbons (Ron Livingston who never got as good a role) because it was a precise depiction of cube monkey. This last topic caught me rambling and I can’t tie this paragraph to my last one.

Think about Jesus for a second. Jesus happened around the year 33. Does that seem strange to anyone? 2,000 years ago, the son of God walked the Earth. The Earth is 4.5 billion years old and our civilization worship’s a character from 2,000 years ago. I believe the best word to describe faith is agnostic. Atheist is believing there is no god, agnostic leaves the possibility. It’s nice to have God or Jesus of Buddha or whoever people worship nowadays to live a straighter, more purposeful, life. In the end though, I’m not sure it’ll make much difference.

Tom Stortz

Fuller House Should Have Stayed Vacant

Out of sheer curiosity, I watched the premiere of Fuller House on Netflix. It was 36 minutes long and I stomached the entire episode. My biggest complaint was the laugh track. Unbearable. It’s non-stop throughout the whole episode and I counted 1 good joke the entire show (seaman from Uncle Jesse). The show will focus on DJ, Steph, Kimmy, and a bunch of new characters who are family members. Even if Danny, Jesse, Joey, and Becky were cast in the show as prime time characters, it would still be bad.

You can’t create a show on the expectation that the old show was good so people will automatically like a new show with similar characters 29 years later. The new show referenced the old show about a dozen times and it wasn’t funny. Bob Saget looked old, out of shape, and wasn’t the spick and span Danny Tanner. Joey was the same way. Jesse and Becky looked like they hadn’t aged a bit. DJ looked good and I applaud her effort to carry a show on her own but it won’t work. Steph got bazookas and seems well rounded for her meth addicted past. Kimmy looks fine but her character is lame. The new kids are annoying, especially Alex and Nicky.

With all the good TV out there. This is not a show to invest time in.

Tom Stortz

Last Night’s Oil Theory

If you don’t know much about bowling, this post won’t mean much. Last night I rolled a 122, followed by a 112.

For someone who should be in a the top quarter of the league, this is not good. Lane 8 especially was a killer. I’ve moved my ball to playing up the right side and hooking into the pocket. This would be different than rolling a bowl through the lane and hitting the pocket with a wider hook. From what I’ve learned, up the right side seems like a more effective strike ball because it hits the pins with more MPH and that seems to be the goal of the game. Hit the perfect part of the pocket with the fastest ball you can throw.

With this idea in mind, after bowling a high career series for myself this past Monday, I felt I should work the lanes the same as I did 2 nights before. However this proved ineffective especially on lane 8 where my first 3 frames on that lane were 9, 1, 3 in embarrassing fashion. I started moving further left to compensate and this left weak entries in the pocket leaving the 7 or 10, which I wasn’t converting. Then I started losing my feel on the other lane and started making poor adjustments and rolling just as bad. In the 3rd game I went back to my initial game plan up the right side and guess what, I started hitting the pocket hard. I had 4 strikes and a spare in 5 frames. I finished with an exact 200 which was decent but had better potential and wondered what happened with a 122, 112, 200 series?

The bottom line is that hi spot is not a first class bowling establishment. My theory is that the oiling of the lanes occurred in the afternoon and the machine missed the end of lane 8; i.e. it was shut off too early or ran out of oil. This caused my ball to hit the oil-less lane early and start hooking directly left. This led to missing hard down the left side. To compensate I moved left and tried to roll the ball to the right part of the lane. As the night went on, the oil on uncleaned bowling balls started to come back to the top of lane 8. In game 3 when I went back to the initial plan, it worked like a charm. I will say that at least 3 of the strikes were Jersey so I was getting paid back for the poor first few games but talk about a volatile night of bowling.

Tom Stortz

A Major Eating Monkey Wrench

I am a creature of habit. I like what I like and I do what I like the most. This is especially evident in my eating habits. Today I had a major disruption which spurred this post.

Breakfast
Dunkin Donuts breakfast, a sesame seed bagel and medium coffee, is $4.03. Every day I grab a nickel or 3 pennies from my change so I don’t get .97 cents back. My other option is to tack on a glazed doughnut and the total comes to 4.87 but I view this as unhealthier even though it is delicious when mixed with the coffee. Anyway, Today I went to the register and the total came up at $4.27. I handed 5.03 and received .76 cents. The fuck.

I’ve eat Dunkin pretty much every day because of the breakfast conundrum. As much as I agree that 4 dollars is overpaying for breakfast, I do it strictly for time. If I woke up and cooked myself eggs and sat down and ate them at my home, I wouldn’t enjoy it as much as bringing it to work and reading the WSJ and doing the crossword. It’s one of the few parts of the day that I look forward to on a daily basis. So I don’t mind whatever money it costs for enjoyment. That being said, I know a sesame seed bagel isn’t the healthiest option but it’s better than sausage, egg, and cheese alternatives. The point is, that even though the price was raised and my world was in a tailspin for a day, I’ll have to adapt.

Lunch

JC likes the corn beef special.

There are tons of places to get lunch from but, like breakfast, location is paramount. I don’t have a work where everyone gets an hour for lunch to do as they please. I imagine corporations leaving for lunch, congregating at a local diner or restaurant, relaxing for an hour, and returning for work. At Stortz, we get lunch, eat for 10 minutes, get back to what we were doing. Most times we pick up sandwiches or get cheese steaks delivered. 3 places are active: Plaza Pizza, Sassafras, and Del Rossi’s.

My personal favorite is Sassafras. There are 3 main menu options I select from which are the turkey club wrap. the honey mustard chicken wrap, and the Jewish hoagie. Based on consistency, the turkey club wrap is my favorite. Every once in a while they’ll go light on the mayo but it’s near perfect taste each time. The honey mustard chicken wrap is at the tip top when the chicken is cooked properly. Every so often it’ll be chewy and it ruins the wrap. The Jewish hoagie, without cole slaw, was my old favorite and I’ll revisit it from time to time but it’s sort of been replaced. With Sassafras I’m also able to get a cherry coke and Mr. Goodbar which I enjoy as well.

Del Rossi’s is not quite there.

I’ll lump Plaza and Del Rossi’s into the same boat. I like the cheeseburger deluxe at Plaza and I also think their pizza is pretty good. Jeff gets the turkey burger which I’m pretty sure is rarely a turkey burger. I’ll sometimes get the half chicken but I wouldn’t be shocked if it was a half pigeon. I like Del Rossi’s but the price is a bit high for what they server. The cheese steaks are decent and the fries are much improved. However, for a 2 person delivery, it was over 21 dollars for 2 steaks and 1 order of fries. The chicken parmigiana sandwich and Stromboli is also recommended by me.

This was an easy to write post and I’m not going to get into dinner. Usually the posts that I think are the stupid tend to be the most liked so I’ll go with that.

Tom Stortz

Guy Got Scammed for $100 and Got This Tweet

This kid is NSFW with his language.

So I get scammed for $100, then I receive a video by the person who did it…. pic.twitter.com/p1va6Jt0XW

— Colin tierney (@colin_tierney) January 24, 2016

The weirdest part is the noise he makes at the end. Little kids like this are growing up watching hardcore porn and this is the result. Obviously that statement is not all inclusive because he most likely has abusive or alcoholic parents but when I was young, getting your hands on porn at the age of 13 was the holy grail. Like even if a Vanity Fair had an ad that had a boob on it. Times are changin.

unholycowgod · 2016-02-23T18:18:40+00:00

The 90’s Kid I Was

I always write when I steal directly from Reddit.

This is the 90’s kid I wanted to be:

This was the 90’s kid I was.

A few other great parts to this thread:

Christian Bale in the 80’s – Only a rebel would play videos games with his monitor off.

I wanted to be the kid that won this.

–]unholycowgod 52 points 4 hours ago

Duck Tales Theme Song

Tom Stortz

Want to Chop? Absolutely Not.

I decided to play some 1-2 NL on Saturday. The table wouldn’t fold to any of my bigger bets (and I never had it) and I dropped around $250 and decided that I was going to play in the 7:15pm, $100 buy in poker tournament. My tourney game is rusty but I still have decent fundamentals and know when to gamble. I also had been drinking since 4pm so my game was a bit wilder than usual. Here’s the recap as I remember it and I have a feeling it would be slightly different in actuality.

On the very first hand I got KQ and the flop game QJT and I lead out, hit an A on the turn and won a decent sized pot without showdown. The very next hand I get 8T and kept it running by turning a gutter that won another decent sized pot. The next level I had 39 and called a raise from a tight player and the flop came 39J. I busted his QQ. At that point in the tourney I wouldn’t have been surprised if I was top 5 in chips. Now one lousy part of getting this table image is people tend to think you never have it and you surprise them when you do. This brings me to the next hand where I had AJ and hit a flop that was J high with 2 hearts. The turn brought an Ace of hearts and I got it all in against a flush. I had a re-draw to the jack but missed. This put me back to right around average.

Tournaments are all about getting lucky and I called a short stack with AQ and beat his AK. Then my 44 out raced a A8 when he hit an A on the flop and I smacked a 4 on the river. I won another decent sized pot with QQ and went to the final table as a relative short stack. 7 cashed and with 8 left, the table wanted to give money to the bubble boy. I said there was no way I was doing it. I had an A2 beat a QT right on the bubble and that double up caused the entire table to be pissed off. The bubble burst and there was some chop stirring talk and I once again I said I had zero interest. I had about 40k with the blinds at 2.5k/5k and only one guy had a shorter stack than me. I wasn’t pressured into making a move but there was an open, then a 3 bet, and I saw AK and shipped it. I was called by AA and was basically drawing dead after the flop. I took my $387 dollars which barely made me even for the day and called it a night. I was drunk for the end and even though I was reasonably well behaved, the table did not like my antics. There’s always next time.

Tom Stortz

Frostbite 5 Miler – 2016

Today could not have been any better planned.

I’m by no means a great runner. Today was one of those times I would say I ran as good a race as I could. At my age you are not running to win the race. You set a personal goal and try to achieve it. As Sam would say, “I’m a lifetime 17:30 5k” and that’s what I strive to be.

I’m a fair weather runner and when the weather gets cold, I head to the treadmill. Sam said he was doing the Frostbite 5 miler and I said I would too. This gave me a purpose. I would go to the gym and run exactly 5 miles on the treadmill. The goal for me was always 6 minute miles. Some days I would be under it by about 30 seconds and others I’d struggle to hit it on the nose. This past week I hit the 29 minute mark and I knew I was ready to race.

Not this year’s.

My pre race routine is standard to me but I have no idea how others act. I googled “what to eat before a race” and got results to avoid coffee, don’t eat too much in a sitting, and random specifics on what works for that person. I said fuck it and ordered Domino’s Cali Ranch Pizza. I ate 4 slices and went to sleep at 12am after watching Butterfly Effect.

I woke up at 6am in a weird state and realized I was running today. I shit and showered. I then went to Dunkin Donuts and got a medium coffee and a sesame seed bagel with cream cheese. I ate the bagel (except for the middle because they spread too much cream cheese there) and drank the coffee slowly. I arrived 27 minutes later to my parents house and had to take another poop. Perfect. I lightened my load and talked with Sam before having to poop yet again. Even better.

Any runner knows you poop out as much waste as possible to run good times. I took a water bottle and drove to the race. I met up with some people I know and then went for a pre-race jog. I did 800 meters on the track which to me is more than I want to do. My legs only have so much mileage and I don’t want to waste it warming up.

I met Sam and the eventual race winner at the starting line and was happy how warm it was. The race started and Sam and I were together. He said people were going out too fast and made a nice call that that bro with headphones and hair would fall. The 1 mile split was 5:20 and the 2 mile 10:50. Sam left me at this point. I’ve been in this place in previous years. The drawn out hill at the 2 mile mark was an awakening that I trained on a treadmill. Huffing and puffing, I made it up to subtle downhill. I didn’t get a clock on mile 3 or 4 but I had a feeling I hadn’t dropped off pace that much. At 4 I got a side stitch and that was fairly severe. On the treadmill I never pushed myself past the point of exhaustion. Fortunately I had speed in my legs and didn’t let the cramp knock me back to bad. I even, barely, kicked it in for a time of 28:39 and good for 19th place. Sam was 12th.

At 32, it’s still fun to race. I like challenging myself and realizing that age is only a number, not an excuse. With a greater effort I could probably get to 28:00 minutes but what’s the difference? I trained about 20 miles a week and ran a time that was faster than I did at 28. As Sam would say, “I’m a one trick pony.” I’m ok with that.

Tom Stortz

Wisdom With Aging

Howard Stern interviewed Jerry Seinfeld and produced this dialogue:

HS: If you could go back to younger Jerry, would you go back there?
JS: Would I want to be young again? No.
HS: You’re happy where you are?
JS: I think if you’re a little lucky in life, you should enjoy getting older. You’re going to see more.When you’re young you can’t see what’s going on so well. You get older, you walk into a room, you meet this guy and that guy and you see exactly what’s going on here. I love that and I don’t care about the physical deterioration. That’s part of it.

Aging is OK

Listen to this man.

I like Howard but Jerry is more evolved than Howard. I personally love that Howard has gone to therapy for decades and Jerry thinks it’s complete hogwash. You can hear a lot of the therapy at work in Howard’s life and it’s refreshing to hear from a guy like Jerry who has it so together without it.

I lead with this interview because this is one part of life that I’m noticing. If you read my post yesterday, you’d probably think I was a dick if you ever answered one of the math problems on Facebook. This isn’t a post I would have ever written years ago because I have never perceived the world as I do now. I look at life, specifically ads, differently than I did earlier. I’m very aware now of people who I feel are taking advantage of situations. This happens as you experience more life, you start to galvanize yourself to spots that you deem negative (and then critique them in your blog read by dozens).

How I pictured laundry.

I like thinking about how I thought about life when I was younger. This particular example came into my head when I noticed that every one of my pair of boxers was inside out after doing laundry. Now I know that if I just took the boxers and turned them the right way before I put them in the hamper, this would not be a problem. However, even after hundreds of times doing laundry, I still don’t. This made me wonder about getting smarter with age. It also made me remember this example when I was heading off to college. I had never done my laundry before and my plan was to ask a hot girl how to do laundry to meet new people. I look back on that now and wonder why on Earth a girl would ever want a mentally handicapped guy who didn’t know how to do his own laundry.

Trust me on this.

A final move where I think I’m being clever but am really an idiot was last night. I wanted to eat some Chick-Fil-A so I drove 15 minutes to get it and there was a 10 car back up in the drive through. I parked my car, was in an out in 3 minutes, and was proud of how much time I saved. I then drove 12 minutes back and parked my car. As I got out, I thought, “I spent 27 minutes driving to pick up chicken (and 1st class lemonade), what a waste of time.”

What I’m pointing out is that you are always experiencing more life and you’re worldly views are always changing. When I was 20 I didn’t care what was going on outside my state. My world was a 2 mile radius. Now I’m in my 30’s and my world has expanded nationally and globally (to a small degree). By the time I’m 40 I’ll look back and say, “remember when I hardly ever traveled in my 30’s.”

I like aging. Sure I wish I was 25 again and I have plenty of regrets that I know I will never get the chance to act on again but that’s ok. I am who I am and these were the choices I made to get me to this point. Everyone can choose to live life their own way. There isn’t 1 right way. Literally there are 0 “right” ways. It’s what YOU want to do.

Tom Stortz

Do Yourself a Favor, Don’t Answer These

We all see these pop up on the Facebook news feed. For those who actively answer these, I ask you, why?

Do you feel satisfaction that you were able to solve a problem that is designed to trick you? Do you need the recognition of your peers? Is the pride so overwhelming that you’re bursting at the seams with glee?

I shake my head every time I see these because you’re being pulled by marketing. People, much smarter than you, are pulling you into their force field by having you click or answer on these types of trickery. I’m going to go right out and say it, you’re stupid if you answer these. It’s that simple. You’re not smart like you think by answering correctly. You’re stupid because you can’t see you’re being mind fucked. By answering your name is going into the category of “we now have this person’s info, let’s market them xyz.” You are the herd.

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