About Tom Stortz

Enjoying my last few responsibility free years left.

Snowed in

So it’s obviously snowing out and I’ve been playing poker. Literally, eating gushers and playing poker. Last time I wrote about it I logged 2000 hands for -200. Now I’ve logged 6862 hands for -180 dollars. That means I made 20 dollars in 4800 hands. I’ve spend hours and hours of frustration to accomplish nothing. This is why poker is just not time well spent. I’m really trying hard to work on my game and I feel like I have a pretty big edge on a lot of opponents but coming out on top has just been difficult. My holdem manager says I’m running about 100 dollars less than expectation so that’s at least something positive.

Thank you Jess Baker and Jill for letting me know that the video blog wasn’t terrible. Obviously 7 minutes is too long so possibly a shorter summary of something would be better. I’d have to think about how to incorporate that into this. On a side, note I had 117 unique visitors for the month of February which is more than I’d expect. It’s not an incredible amount of people but at least it’s an audience which makes me at least feel some satisfaction of people reading what I write.

You’d think that being snowed in would mean drinking but unless I can go out an interact with people, I really don’t think drinking by myself is too amusing. I’ve had a beer or two but nothing crazy. Today was one of the first days I’ve woke up whenever I wanted without being hungover. Usually I either have to wake up for work or I’m hungover and I feel like shit, so it was a nice change of pace. I don’t expect I’m going to work tomorrow as it will be nearly impossible to get out of the driveway. That sounds like a Mad River Thursday to me.

By |2016-11-01T23:59:04-04:00February 10th, 2010|My Life|2 Comments

Interjection

A midday post because I remembered something. The best commercial during the superbowl was this one.

I read an article in the journal today that was wondering why Google chose their first superbowl ad to be about the service that they are absolutely dominating. They have other products out their like their Nexus or their g-mail which they are constantly adding too. Nevertheless I thought this commercial was really good.

Two other random things. March 29th, 1999 was the first time the Dow closed above 10,000. After today’s rally it will close above that mark barely. This means that if you invested 10 years ago in the dow, you would have not made a cent. Just goes to show what kind of shitty economy we’ve been living through these last few years

The other funny thought has to do with basketball. Growing up I was always one of the better bball players. I did all the camps, played all the leagues, never really had any issues. Now that I’m older and I don’t really ever play aside from a league game once a week so my skills have developed atrophy (I think that’s right and am too lazy to look it up even though if I would have used that time to look it up instead of writing this sentence I probably would know). When I fired up an air-ball from 12 feet after being wide open last week it was demoralizing. The other team basically knew they didn’t have to cover me and let me roam free. It’s actually a better defense because they lower your self esteem to the point that you really don’t want the ball. Jkash told me that growing up he used to get the “let him shoot” or “he’s got nothing”. I’ve really turned into a head case when it comes to these sports that are supposed to be fun. What’s happened though, as I got older, I just don’t find the sports that much fun. So if I have to weigh how much fun it is compared to the feeling of embarrassment…

By |2016-11-03T15:34:08-04:00February 9th, 2010|My Brain|2 Comments

Upstream w/o a paddle

So I’ve been kind of bummed out lately. Everything is just kind of blah. I’m really sick of the cold weather and especially the snow. Our building for work has terrible insulation and every room is under 62. Not to mention it’s completely dead and this week looks like it’s going to be shot. Plus the market looks like it’s tanking again so that has me down. And then the fact that I’ve logged 2600 hands for a net loss of 200 dollars doesn’t have me thrilled. I didn’t even bet on the Super Bowl because it was like what’s really the point. I also didn’t go to they gym today because I was being lazy which is another wtf. Basically everything is just boring and shitty. This isn’t really the outlook I like to have either but I seem to be on this trend of not really making any progress one way or another. What really makes me think is that there are people who are so much worse off than me that if this is how I feel, how the hell do they feel? When I look at it like that I feel a little bit better but when I have to view it from my point of view, I just need something to change. I can’t explain what it is either but I will be doing some serious thinking about maybe a new approach. Sorry for such a downer post but this is my medium for thought, so you get what I’m thinking about. Tomorrow’s another day.

Just so you don’t X out with a thought like “wow that was depressing,” I want to comprise a list of my thoughts:

  • I don’t understand the popularity behind tool and DMB
  • I have no interest in Lost or the Office
  • Baseball bores me to death and now that football is over and it’s too cold for golf, what do you do on Sundays?
  • Besides Pretty Woman what is Julia Roberts good in?
  • Panasonic, Magnavox, Sharp, Phillips, Toshiba all leave bad tastes in my mouth for TV types. Hp and AMD processors for computers. Java and Itunes for software. Seriously when Limewire brings up itunes every time I shut it down I nearly lose it.
  • Unless you wearing dress socks, socks above the ankle are not allowed.
  • I’m not going to expand on this, but using lube to jerk off creates a mess.
  • I like sleeping with my socks on
  • When people change the channel without using the guide function
  • Who gets excited about Ellen being on American Idol? I don’t really watch the show but what does she know about singing?
  • I can’t stand checking my voice mail
  • People who double click every link on the internet when a single click is needed (my dad)
  • People who act like the world revolves around them. They get their way because it’s what they are used to and are basically oblivious to the people around them.
  • Why does my room seem like a bomb hit it after every weekend.
  • Fucking damp jeans when I walk in the snow. Seriously out of the entire list this tilts me the most. I’m actually going to close on this one because I can write about it for a while. I like my clothes clean. I have different standards of what is clean. Examples, if I put on a nice sweater, go to the bar for a few hours and then come back without spillage, I put the sweater away and can wear it again. If I start the day with a t-shirt and finish it with the same shirt on, this gets washed regardless of the activity. Socks always get washed after one use, same with boxers. On to the jeans. Jeans don’t need to get washed often. Practically never. People don’t go around smelling your jeans and I really never notice any odor, but if I did I would wash them. Damp jeans. Water eats up the cuffs. Even higher in this past snowstorm. In my book this is actually forcing me to wash my nice jeans. Jeans sitting around in water leads to fungus or mold, whether it’s true or not doesn’t really matter because that’s what I think. So for this rare occurrence that my jeans are damp, this is forcing me to wash them. I don’t like washing them cause they potentially shrink and tight pants around the waist is like cutting off the breathing to my member. Plus it’s uncomfortable.
    • By |2010-02-11T16:57:49-05:00February 9th, 2010|My Brain, My Life|1 Comment

    The best laid schemes of Mice and Men

    I’ve been trying to post daily aside from the weekends and I sort of dropped the ball. Jkash and I were going to go to wing bowl on Friday but we hit a little snag. I should have known I was in trouble after drinking 6 beers before we left for the bar on Thursday, then did 2 shots of this Jim Beam combo, 1 shot of jager, and then a mind eraser. To prepare for the end of the special I probably bought around 5 more beers and was quadruple fisting at point point. I was fine coherently but ended up playing poker till 1:30. When you have a wake up time for 3:30, that amount of alcohol can be problematic. So we pathetically missed it and this was the low of the weekend. Friday and Saturday were kind of ho-hum. I proved my worth in quarters and told some girl she looked like Snookie but that’s really the most exciting part. I was complaining how I have nothing to write about and it’s still somewhat true. I did stumble upon one topic that is worth mentioning though.

    There are good things, and there are bad things. Any form of presentation can fall into one of these two categories whether it be movies, songs, TV, or anything else. I want to explain why things are good. A commercial I particularly liked last night was the Simpson’s coke commercial. No it wasn’t funny and I’m not even a real Simpson’s fan (anymore). What I liked about it was the theme and the simplicity. Themes are a key factor in how things become good.

    Let’s dissect. We are in a recession and tons of people have the feeling of losing money. This commercial relates to the average American. When something as simple as a coke can give joy to Burns, it symbolizes that money isn’t the only thing that can make you happy. A simple concept of a coke bringing happiness is what I constitute as a good commercial. You can substitute coke for anything, cotton candy bubble gum, asian massage hj’s, making snow angels (for some reason I made one on a high school track and it turned out perfect and it was like a scene from a movie where the character was enlightened with something unexplainable), any simple thing that makes you happy can overshadow a feeling of dejection.

    I thought this Dodge Charger was another really good commercial. Once again we (not I) can relate to the experience a man goes through to appease his significant other. Once again, relating to the common person’s experience. All this guy wants to do is drive his Dodge Charger and for doing all these other things, he deserves it. When you can relate to the idea behind the commercial, it makes it that much better.

    Here’s one that is terrible. It’s tries to be funny, it’s not. People don’t correlate your Snickers bar to giving them energy for a football game. All around bad. Even the simpletons should find this bad. I enjoy the cheap laugh just as much as the next guy but this doesn’t even make sense. The Doritos’s and the casket was also just as bad and I don’t want to embed it because it will make this post worse.

    What really bothers me is that the marketing brains behind some of these commercials probably are not stupid people. And stay with me here. The people of America are so dumb that these marketers actually dumb down the commercial to entertain the non-thinking human. The two commercials I picked out are probably rated some of the worst among the masses. I’m not saying I’m smart but well thought out messages hit me harder than cheap laughs at this point of my life.

    A couple more examples away from TV. Paranormal Activity. I watched it this weekend. Bad. Badder than bad. There was absolutely no good from this movie. Maybe if I watched it in the theaters it would have had a better result but honestly this was the biggest piece of shit work I’ve watched in a long time. I’m not even sure it was a movie. How they filled 86 minutes is beyond me. I remember at 54 minutes thinking, has anything happened yet? It can’t be a good movie for the following reasons. The girl wasn’t hot. There is no feeling towards either character. You could care less if either one dies at the end. There is no theme, no message. The point is to try to scare you and I really didn’t even think they did a good job at that. I honestly can’t think of too many worse movies. Kazaam?

    A final focus on what makes something good. Let’s take songs. Whose on top right now? Taylor Swift. Why? She sings about common themes that everyone can relate to. Love, growing up, everyday stuff. Obviously talented too, but her songs are moving to people. What’s not good? Carry out by Justin Timberlake and Timbaland. Doomed from the get-go. No beat is going to save this ridiculous concept. I’ve only listened to it once but it’s hook is carrying something out, and that pretty much makes zero sense.

    So next time someone asks your opinion if something is good or not, forget the glitz and the glam and try to give an intelligent answer. Like when Jordan Cohen tells me Eragon is a great movie, I just have to take into consideration that the special effects were taking over his mind and turned his brain into jello. It probably could have been a fire breathing dragon flying around for two hours and it would have kept him on the edge of his seat. Sorry Jordan, but for some reason you just come to mind when I think of someone who talks up movies.

    By |2013-03-15T17:07:17-04:00February 8th, 2010|Tv|1 Comment

    Nothing Doing

    I don’t have anything to really post so I’ll make this quick. We lost in bball again, giving us an 0-7 record heading to the playoff game, singular. I airballed one from 13 feet, wide open. I can’t really explain why my skills have deteriorated but it’s becoming more evident year after year. We also have no height which hurts when we play against a 6-6 guy who has some talent.

    I also deposited in stars again. I played 350 hands last night for a net loss of $3.50. I still have to grind out my bonus. I’ve been watching a couple cardrunners videos and I feel like my game at the stakes I’m going to play is superior. When I lose, and I look back on why I’m losing, it’s due to bad bankroll management and lack of focus. I just go on cruise control and don’t really think about what I’m doing. So it’s good I took a couple week break because I feel like I can play well again.

    I watched the Graduate w/ Dustin Hoffman which apparently was a 4 star movie but I thought it was awful. It pretty much displays how stupid females are in the late 60’s. If you haven’t seen it I wouldn’t really recommend it.

    I’m excited for the Wing Bowl tomorrow. I’ll try to get as many pictures with strippers as I can so I can post them on this site. These next hours after work should be fantastic. Today is like Friday so I’m pretty pumped.

    By |2010-02-04T08:31:46-05:00February 4th, 2010|My Life, Sports|0 Comments

    Communication in today’s world

    Back when the net was in it’s growth stage, kids my age communicated by Aol. I remember this starting back in middle school when I’d scan the chat rooms for progz, warez, and gifs. The programs were hilarious because they’d make you feel like you were a real hacker. You could mail bomb people, phish passwords, or punt people off-line. I would suspect that most of these programs were all viruses and the people who used them were the real people getting tricked. I also remember you’d go to these gif chatrooms and people would tell you to press 1 to be added to the gif list. Once on the gif list they’d bombard you with hundreds of photos that would download one line at a time. You’d sit there and wait, first some hair, then some eyes, a face and you just wait till they get nakes. Honestly I didn’t even know what beating off was till high school so I’m not really sure what the real satisfaction was to looking at the pictures. Nevertheless, these were fun times.

    Then there was the AIM phase. Dsl made it’s way on the scene and made the AOL interface prehistoric. People used Netscape or IE to search the web and AIM was still in it’s heyday. The conversations you had on AIM sometimes would last forever. It was much more convenient than talking on the phone and it gave you the ability to talk to a lot of different people. I didn’t get a cell phone to sophomore year of college. When I look back on that today I wonder how I really lived without it for so long. At this point, AIM has phased out of my life. I actually find it really convenient to type information but as I’ve gotten older AIM has started to feel childish. It reminds me of the days when I would get excited because I just im’d some girl and you anxiously await the reply. The typing point through AIM though will lead into this next paragraph.

    I have a blackberry. I can’t explain why but the BBM is a really useful way of communicating. It has more of an appeal than text messaging. Generally when I think of a text, I think of one and done. When I have a bbm the conversation has more of an ongoing theme to it. The strange thing is I’m not nearly as proficient on my storm as I am on the keyboard. (http://www.typeonline.co.uk/typingspeed.php – I was 84 words a minute with 2 mistakes) The storm has me punching in keys and backspacing my mistakes, but there is a convenience of answering anytime I want because my phone is always on me. Plus I feel like it’s a connection with anyone who also has a bbm. I see my list of bbm contacts and I just think at any time I’m privileged to say “what’s up”. This has become a new, and growing, way of communication. People are constantly coming up with new ways of staying in touch. Why is so important? It doesn’t matter how much money you have at the end of your life, the most important aspect of your life is the relationships that you created and maintained. I welcome anyone who has a blackberry to add me because if you come to this blog by choice, chances are I like you. (My pin: 3097b7a7)

    The final two ways of communicating will be around for a while. Talking on the phone and email. I’ve written about talking on the phone before. I actually don’t really mind it that much. My problem is though that I’m always looking for a purpose of a call. I don’t have this ability instilled in me to chit chat about any and everything. I want to get to the point and move on. This can make me sound like a prick but when I answer calls at work, there’s no how was your day and what’s going on. It’s what are you trying to sell me or what can I sell you. This sort of follows me to personal calls.

    Emailing people has also become a preferred method by some for numerous reasons. It eliminates the phone conversation. Some people don’t like to be bothered talking on the phone and they just prefer the hiding behind the computer. I like email because it gives you a database of what has occurred. There is no forgetting what was written in an email because you can always go back and retrieve the data. I don’t know many people who write down every note from a phone conversation and then store it away so they can always come back to it. Also email lets you get points across quickly without having to debate everything. It also gives the person time to consider the situation without putting them on the spot. (I also want to note that the word ‘situation’ is taking over, I swear every time I hear this word I just ding it off in my head because I’m listening intently for it) Bottom line, using email and phone in conjunction is an effective way to communicate. They are important in the business world. If you aren’t checking your email constantly, you aren’t important (this can obviously be taking out of context). The blackberry is also an effective tool for making this happen.

    By |2010-02-03T01:06:00-05:00February 3rd, 2010|My Brain|0 Comments

    Do this, do that

    Lately I feel like there have been a lot of decisions to make. None of which are particularly difficult decisions, but nevertheless have to be made. I am going to attend a roofing show in New Orleans the 3rd week of Feb. Now I want to do this as cost efficiently as possible, so i was going to fly in on Sunday, do the show Mon and Tues and leave Tues evening. Problem is I have a meeting at 5:15 Tues and no flights leave that late. So I have to stay Wed and miss another day of work. Decision made and me alone in New Oreleans should be good.

    Wing bowl is this Friday. A couple of us want to go. Honestly, beer and tits are right up my alley so this occasion is sort of designed with the adult male in mind. I have slate rippers coming in but JC said it was fine if I took off Friday. There’s a driving issue because no one wants to drive drunk, obviously, and the parking lots open at 4 am and the center opens at 5 am. So this is before trains and you have to have a ticket to enter. As of now there are no tickets and no definite number of people going. Here’s another one of those decisions that are up in the air.

    I final decision is regarding the company’s website. We have two people competing for the job and I think both would do a good job but I am weighing a bit towards one. Once again another decision, although this one actually is important because it involves money that I’d rather not blow. Another deadline, another decision.

    Off topic, I watched Running Man with Arnold Schwarzenegger and I really liked this movie. Nothing sophisticated, cheesy catch lines, average acting. I was entertained throughout though and would say if you are bored and looking to kill some time, this wasn’t awful, but don’t expect too much.

    So I’ve figured out what is going on with the Stortz tools and google. One person thinks it’s funny to google the phrase “stortz tools” and then click on the link. They’ve done this 19 times over the past 5 days. It’s really kind of bizarre the more I think about it. They visited the site 9 times this way just yesterday and they are on a comcast connection. The only thing I can think of is that it’s a hater of this blog and they want to see this come down because they think I will stop posting if it will interfere with business. The whole circumstance is really weird but since I have backend stats it’s pretty clear what is happening. Hi Hater, I see you. I’m not Sherlock Holmes but I’m pretty sure I know who it is.

    By |2010-02-01T23:09:22-05:00February 1st, 2010|My Life|3 Comments

    Pickle

    Well I’ve gotten myself into a bit of a pickle. I have people on a daily basis coming to this site looking for my company’s website. They google “xxxxxx tools” and they find this link halfway down the page. I can’t even use my last name in these posts anymore because I’m scared that they will picked up by Google. Worst thing is I can actually tell they are perusing my site because the analytics pick up the pageviews. I really feel like I live two separate lives. Responsible me on the weekdays and then drunk me on the weekends. Random people who don’t know me will be quick to judge based on some of these posts. Not a big big deal but just something I’m mindful of.

    Essentially, I’m trying to not mix business with pleasure. I keep this blog because it’s entertaining to me most of all. The post I wrote last night had me cracking up. I’ve wrote before but if I can get myself laughing out loud, then it’s usually pretty good. I will unlock that post eventually but not until it kind of gets lost down the page. I almost wish I was anonymous because then I could really write whatever. So now I’m in this paranoid, don’t judge me, type of a mode. However, I really think that stories like that are what having a blog is all about. Sure I could ladi da my way through entry after boring entry, but, like it or not, stories like that are getting down to the nitty gritty and, I think, maybe I’m wrong, that people find that entertaining. If you read these at work, all I can say is sorry, but I warned you in the first paragraph. None of this really embarrasses me either because if your coming here to read it, then you are here on purpose.
    Aside from that little issue, everything else has been pretty regular. I watched Hurt Locker which I thought was pretty good. I was definitely entertained the entire movie but from the sense of a story, I didn’t think it was amazing. From a realistic standpoing though I thought it was probably pretty accurate. Although I couldn’t understand why the bombs would be sitting there and no one ever detonating them. How do they detonate if it’s not manual? I also watched Memento for the first time in 10 years or so. It’s a really good flick and if you have starz, it’s and haven’t seen it, it’s a movie worth watching. I don’t really have anything else going on. TV isn’t really too exciting right now and even though I’m spending money like crazy, I’m not really accomplishing anything. I know this has been a bland post but how can I compete with yesterday’s?

    By |2010-02-01T14:52:35-05:00February 1st, 2010|My Brain|0 Comments
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