It was sometime about 9 1/2 months ago when we were able to say "You're fired" for the first time in our young start up's life. The developers we hired weren't coming close to cutting it which left Jacob and I with just ourselves and a little bit of cash to create a rather intricate website from essentially nothing. Jacob tried teaching himself code when he first came up with the idea for The Pollis however, he figured it would take him 100 years to learn and execute.
Lucky for him, I had taken a very basic HTML class back in 2005 (yikes, I know) and a basic C++ class freshman year of college to program a lego robotic. The technical formatting and flow knowledge of the languages wasn't there, however the logical thought process was. Before March I dabbled in php/html/css and what not attempting to make my own cool website shirefox.com which has since been blank slated and was never very cool. In March when I started the programming Pollis it was a daunting task learning everything for php/mysql/css/html as well as setting up the server. Somehow stuck to my guns and crunched through ~20 hours a week of work after my 8-4 day job.
A big breakthrough came when we got a friend of mine to give us some css layouts which looked stunning however when translated into the basic beta structure of our website looked spaced out, uneven, chopped up and a bit discolored. This wasn't the designers fault, it was my fault for accepting code used on webpagemaker and it was all structured by individual div tags and styles within each div tag.
Initial concept designs:
Followed by:
The smart, efficient way (which is how it's set up now) is to use a .css file and put all the formats into one document and pull up that document per page. Another downfall of the initial layouts were that everything was set up to be static, frozen in place on the screen based on hard pixels left and top. When applied to variable comment sizes, number of posts, and general "we'll never know how big the division is going to be" results, these formats were mind boggling to try and control. These results were all completed during our very soft and rookie launch on October 25th 2012.
Here's what's live now after much detail refinement:
The following day I departed for a week long road trip where I flew to Vegas and drove back to MA with a friend of mine moving from LA to MA. That story will be the next blog post (hopefully done on Sunday pending NFL craziness).
With the time off and not looking at code or a computer or the website, it gave my brain a much needed reset. When I was ready to take on The Pollis programming again, I realized how JV and unprofessional it looked (Not saying the current designs are state of the art, but they are a lot more fluid and consistent). Combined with the realization, Jake was pleasant enough to come up with 20 something things that needed to be changed/added. Since we were hacking away at our product, I added in a bunch of things to help make it more user friendly/simple. Ended up with near 50 todo items a few of which were 8 hour jobs in themselves i.e.: notification system, separate pages for editing blogs and user profiles, etc. Thanks Jake. But, we'd love feedback. With that, I took to Dreamweaver and started making new layouts. It was only supposed to be for the front page but once I got fluid with software and the divs and how to make everything neatly organized, the rest of the pages went by like a breeze. Once all the layouts were completed it was like I was doing surgery on the code taking bits and pieces of php and plugging them into the layouts. This operation took just under 2 months and culminated on December 21st, 2012. Yes, I finished it around 2:00 AM EST on the day of the "Apocalypse". Maybe we're the new beginning to bring some light to portions of humanity, who's to tell yet.
As any of my followers should notice, I'm actually writing a blog post instead of hammering down lines of code which means the portion of work for me on the Pollis has slowed down a bit while we try and find bugs/ get new blogs to sign up and get the ever important readers to sign up and show their blogs that they care. Plus the more blogs and the more user feed back within the site we get, the more the nifty algorithms get to be executed.
It's starting to become a problem when I'm passing through the pages of Pollis trying to find loose ends and can't think of any from what I see. Most would see this as a job coming to a close however I see it as a new frontier where all we need now is users. Yikes. There's one major thing to complete and then for all visual purposes the first draft is done. That major thing being the formatting of the blog updates on the user pages. The rest of the work is for SEO and addressing users comments as they come in which can all be done behind the scenes.
There's no official launch point yet, just a few messages and tweets being sent out by me to bring in a couple of closer friends that blog. I figure we should try and get a small base of material before we send out the mass email to the bloggers Jacob has compiled through Alexa. com. He's spent quite a few hours reading various blogs that scored within our reach on Alexa.com. For those that don't know alexa bases a rank on # of unique hits per given time frame as well as # of external sites linking in. Example being the top 3 sites are Google, Facebook & Youtube. The idea is to find bloggers that are similar to us right now that have a small reach into their social circles and a few random search engine surfers then invite them to join the site, bringing them into a new pool of readers. Hopefully this will work in two ways, most importantly getting the blogs more page hits and readers as well as giving Pollis some wings to broaden its horizons. Although it's not official, I'm hoping that the launch date is November 4th/5th when I return from vacation.
Greetings! So there's a multitude of reasons why you've happened upon my blog, hopefully it's because you've found a Pollis business card under the keyboard of a W.E.B. DuBois commons computer (or found us on a search engine). If this is the case you likely passed through the site which has been under coding development for several months and originally thought of almost two years ago. As of right now The Pollis is still under development (and missing a few
small features) so if you see any bugs, please feel free to write me a
comment on the blog or shoot me an email.
The basic premise of the site is to offer a free platform to search for blogs you may be interested in. Why not just use Google or Bing? Where's the feedback? When you search on Google or Bing there is limited feedback on how good the content is. To summarize, there are no report cards or consumer reports of various blogs. With the blogosphere's input directly to my business partner or myself (and hopefully an increasing product support team), we hope to offer a continually updated database of blogs. We're inviting all blogosphere users and putting the power in their hands to rate and rank various blogs. The idea behind it is while time passes, some blogs become outdated or abandoned leaving room for newer ones to become a better read. With the inputs from users (5 star rating system and a personal "top 10 blogs") mixed with some other factors we hope to give the reader base a better heads up before spending a few minutes reading something they weren't all that interested in.
Going forward The Pollis is looking for a range of blogs to sign up and add to the blogosphere's social network. With the blogs comes readers and hopefully other blogs since we are giving out free exposure (example being the slide show on the front page of Pollis). If you've come this far from the reaches of the internet, feel free to add a blog to the site or just sign up as a reader. To add a blog it only takes a quick copy and paste of a code into your existing blog site which you can remove once you've confirmed. This process takes a minute at most (during development my count is up near 100 sign ups just for my own blog)
All are welcome! And if you have any questions, suggestions or issues by all means leave myself or Jacob a message. I look forward to reading randomly discovered new blogs that join The Pollis.
"Update your blog to include info about the Pollis." I think I've heard this a couple times in the past couple months. Have I done it? Not yet. I've been focusing on hammering out lines of code while I'm sitting in front of my computer at home. Where am I on Pollis? Much farther than the "professional" programmers from India that we E-Lanced out. That was a waste. I've done more functionality programming using a keyboard that is missing the w i o p ] ' . and 0 keys. If you know anything about programming, there's a lot of quotations and closed brackets, especially when doing Boolean logic. Regardless I'm not going to say much about what I've done and what I have yet to do. Let's just say I'm at the point now where I'm fine tuning everything and making sure it works from both user and blogger ends. Once we agree on final layouts and I receive the code it's time for beta testing.
This is where it starts to get fun for my readers since you'll have an exclusive chance to help out finding flaws/anomalies in the site via email feedback to us(me? [I'm hoping we get a 2nd and 3rd programmer shortly after launch, my eyes are burning]) And no, we're not going to slave you away to click on a near empty site for the first couple days. To the best of my knowledge we're going to be hooking up our friends and family that help get this thing off the ground with some free advertising to keep your blog at the top of the pool of bloggers on the site. That being said, if you are trying to reach a broader audience for whatever reason, I'm hoping this is the chance for you to gain some traction as the site grows. I also just though of an idea for something like "The First 100" archive that can be used to see how certain blogs that started early grew with The Pollis. Just remember, the catalog is yours, readers and bloggers and we want that content to be driven by the blogosphere. Spots within the catalog are not for sale, you have to earn it through readership and activity on the site.
Thanks for those who sign up and volunteer for beta testing. If you would like to sign up, send me your name, email address and your blog URL to justin.fox@pollis.com.
So it looks like my secondary email of codingCTO@gmail.com is starting to live up to its name. We fired our developers from India since they didn't understand anything we were trying to tell them. I've spent most of my free time working on the site and developing a solid, robust infrastructure. This post may be a bit brief and "a tease" as it were but I'm not going to divulge too much information about where I am because A.) I want to spend more time typing lines of code and B.) it'll be my little surprise to both the CEO and the world when I hand over a final, working beta.
I will say, I'm thoroughly enjoying doing all the development myself. Its a mental challenge as well as getting to build something (which is always a fun hobby of mine)
Well I hit my goal of +$1500 in poker before May. However, I've been thinking with the priorities in life given my current financial situation and my upcoming expenditures that I probably shouldn't piss 2k out the window. Could I afford it, yes. Do I want to be potentially strapped for a few months, not really. To be perfectly blunt, I need a car which is something I've wanted since The Fast and The Furious came out, the 1st one with Paul Walker sporting the '96 Eclipse. Along with that I want to move out of the fraternity and have a legit apartment where I don't need to worry about drunk people stealing stuff, but mostly so I can cook in a clean kitchen. That being said, I'm looking at ~$20k in expenses between car and first/last/security for an apartment. I just got my taxes back and with the poker money, I have enough to cover a down payment for a car to take out a minimal loan and enough to cover the apartment upfront fees.
If somebody still wants to toss me $500 for the WSOP event in June, I'm very persuadable. But onto the poker updates which have been driving this blog for the time being.
I went to Mohegan on Saturday the 24th knowing I was going to play 1/2 and grind out for 12+ hours. I sold action to a buddy in FL for a straight 20%/20% split. Throughout the session I got rivered twice by 3 and 4 outters in $200+ pots and still walked away a $400 winner on the day. $400 does not equal $1500 +, I know. I had a clause with FL friend that said if I hit high hand i'd give him an additional 200 bucks. I cut ties and called it a night around midnight. I transferred him back his $40 plus $80 in profits I made for him. I also had a clause with my friend Marek who came to Mohegan with me that we'd split high hand jackpot so the winner would give the other 10% up to $200. Well let's be honest, I got drunk in celebration after midnight waiting for them to finish up, wandered around then got bored. I decided to take $100 and go play 1/1 to sober up before driving home. I sure did sober up after waiting til 5am to leave.
The 1/1 game was soft and the lady to my right hated me off the start cuz I was talking with the players (3 of which I had played with before, including one UMass kid). I got AA twice within 15 minutes of sitting down. Those weren't the big winners. Somebody raised 3 bucks early position and about 7 of us called. I was in the cut off with 9c8c. Flop came out, in order of the cards being unstacked as the dealer flipped them over, 7c 8c Jc. Yatzee. First thought I had "shit, is the pot big enough?" I looked, the dealers had set aside the $1 for the high hand and taken out $2 for rake. bingo, I'm qualified, lets just extract money. Checks around. turn is a 7h. Beauty, I hope somebody hit a boat or trips or something. Checks to me, i bet 11 and get 2 callers. river is a 5c. Even better since the Ac likely would call that turn bet and now think they're good. Checks to me again, I fire $22 and get 2 folds. I flip my cards over and call the floor before the dealer can even get a chance to. I hit that at 2:20 and immediately went and told my friends. (i'm a bit of a showboat). 2 hours an 40minutes later I got paid out a nice $2400 high hand jackpot.
In the next couple weeks I probably won't be able to hit up Mohegan due to Alum events for the fraternity and golf but I'll sit on it for a while and make some moves to get a car/apartment lined up.
I ended up busting out of the $109 main event on sports book with QQ all in pre vs AK. he turned K. then i titlted away the rest of my money on .25/.50. I honestly don't see myself playing online any more. I'd rather spend my time blogging/programming/golfing. Plus live is so much more profitable. Maybe when PS or FTP ever come back, count me in.
Last night I did drop $110 at the weekly .25/.50 game. I played well but the cards said no. I had two straights get smoked by flushes (all river). I had 2nd set vs top pair vs lone flush draw and the kid hit a river flush after 3 way all in on flop. I had two times where I had top pair and floated an aggro kid to river and he rivered two pair. I had top trips top kicker get boated on the turn. And to cap the night I had KK all in pre when I was short stacked vs AA. The way I see it is I lost $16 on each of those hands which I'm not mad about. Plus the high light of my night was straddling $10 blind after busting. Got two callers. board was 2-10-8-K-K. First caller showed AK. 2nd caller mucked. I flipped over one card at a time. K was the first card. Table got interested now. 9 cards to win, 3 to split. I curled up the corner slowly, bink, 10. #winning #donk.
That is all. I will be spending more time between now and June programming the Pollis since we fired our incompetent developers. Next blog posts may be about golf gambling
So I found a small hint of listerine for poker, only after dropping $150 last week in the weekly home game I played in. It was a nuts game where the preflop raise was a min of 12x and getting 4 calls at minimum. Plain and simple you need to hit cards to win, or have the deepest stack in order to bully people out. Needless to say I had neither and it became my side focus to see how many times I would have won at showdown. Close only counts for horseshoes and hand grenades and it sure felt like I was getting bombarded with grenades. I counted 0, zero, nadda hands I would have won in showdown for 3 hours straight.
Enough complaining since the moral is, I stuck to my guns, paid back my debts and played the following week (last night) and I walked away up $155. I did get some much wanted help from the deck, along with a couple of good extraction plays. I flopped a few sets that hit boats and usually got the person's stack. One hand in particular tho I limped CO with 7s5s and flopped the nuts (468) rainbow. SB and Button were in the hand. Usually the Button calls me with 2nd pair and sadly is right, time for some payback. SB leads out for $2.25 in a pot that was worth $2.50. I raised to $6.50 and got the button and SB to call. turn was a 2 of clubs putting two clubs on the board. SB leads for $5.50, I raise to $17 and the button calls. SB finally gets the message and folds. River is a Qd and gives me the stone cold nuts. I lead out $25 and get called by 7c8c. Chuckles in my head since he was convinced he was good, again, with 2nd pair. I'm not criticizing as he's usually right, sadly.
Just had some guy shove the button with J7o from the button in a tourney. I had AA in the BB. rofl.
Going to Mohegan Sunday, no longer offering stake as I'm ahead on bills and cashed nicely last night. But I am still taking investments for the $109ME on Sunday for Merge. 50/50 split on that one.
Is there listerine for poker? Like seriously? Anything of the sorts?
548 hands -3.7 buy ins, -68BB/100 32% VPIP, 18 PFR, 28% win showdown
Coolers:
Flopped 2nd set, of queens. board paired 4s on turn. all in on river. dude had pocket 4s (1.5 buyins)
Raised 3x from Button with A3, got called by BB. flopped 2nd nut straight. Now if you're super familiar with Pokerstars/FullTilt you could set option for slider to go up by BB increments when you clicked. MERGE DOESN'T DO THIS. Amidst mid tabling I was raising another table it somehow lined up to just shove the flop. (I wasn't too mad but he snapped me off with the nuts.) No, I wouldn't have gotten it in most likely. So, fuck you merge, I want a couple bucks back. There goes another buy in. (-2.5 so far)
Another 3/4 of a buy in went to a rivered trips vs a rivered boat where I doubled a guy up. The dude was tilting and had just lost a stack with AK to a flopped set.
Another 3/4 of a buy in went to me making a move where I thought a guy was making a fish play like he had in a prior hand. The turn brought a 3rd club (J) on a J835 board. I jammed the turn and made him make a choice. He called AI with 10s10h for 2nd pair no flush draw. River whiff.
I stopped after the queens full loss to the quads. First time it's happened in my life. yippie
fuck merge
So the night started off with local bar free poker. Don't jump to "he go bust already?" and the answer is: no. I'm moving to Sunderland MA at the end of the summer and felt like stopping in to meet locals and play poker to win a free $20 and have a brew.
Played super tight since usual local bar free buys are flopping with fish racing into the pot with a face card. First hand I played was my 2nd deal, AQo. 4 limps, a raise to 3.5x to my right, i flat, a couple more flats then a guy ships for 9x BB on top of the raise (12.5 net) guy to my right flats, I ship. I get it in against the guy to my right who I profited from. ended up making 50% of a starting stack with a dry board which the 12.5x guy hit. The guy to my right had A4 and whiffed.
A few hands later in the SB i look down at AA and raise to 6.5x after 3 or 4 limps. Girl to my left flat calls for 1/5 of her stack. One other person calls the rest fold. Flop K47 rainbow. I shove and this girl snap calls. She wakes up with KK....wtf. For a free poker tournament I'm not mad at how I played the hands. She was limp folding and only calling raises with face cards/an A so she was on the range of KQ/QQ/KJ/AK/JJ which i'm crushing 80% of. I still had chips to play with. Waited until I woke up with KJ in the BB after a couple limps and shoved for 8x the BB. Guy took forever to call with A6 suited and only risking 30% of his chips. Dude, just frigging call. I flopped my King and he also hit the A. Turn paired the low card and had me done.
Played well, one cooler that I feel I never get away from due to my position.
Went home and ground out 341 hands in 2 hours. In that time I played at 19.74 BB/100 with a VPIP of 25% and a PFR at 14.7. I think I 3 bet once with QQ and 4 bet shove once with AA. My win rate at showdown was 45.5%. I'd like to get that win rate at showdown higher, which means I'm making better reads on the flop/turn. I foolishly doubled up a short stack with A9 suited and another mid stack with top two pair vs his turned gutter straight.
All in all, playing solid and confident. Picking my spots in position and had to make 0 hard decisions today which I feel will pay off in the long run.
At the stakes I'm grinding out i'm averaging 12.04BB/100 through 1071 hands. Like I said, I'm not counting those online sites since A.) they've been known to miss sessions and B.) I'm counting my play since I reflected on what the hell I was doing wrong and started being back in serious poker mode.
The 3% / $25 offer still stands for Event 21 of the WSOP.
So since I last posted its been a steady drop. Great line for investors right? Well I made the mistake of playing online and dropping $50 playing .1/.25. Then I played live at the regular home game I've been crushing and dropped $100. This all progressed while I was battling the average cold. More focus was spent on my burning nose and sinus pressure. Then today I'm sitting I the rails of a $75 charity tournament where at best we were playing 20 hands per hour. Volunteer dealers for a local scholarship back home so Im not omplaining horribly. I played well and gave my self a shot early to have a monster stack. In past week or so I'm down $225 of an attempted $1500/$2000 gain.(I'm not counting the $500 cash out from sportsbook towards it since who knows if I'll ever see it) The way I see it I need to just keep playing how I was playing (tight aggro with position) and grind it out. My play isn't donnish and I feel strong about my chances of making the $1500 mark. Next Mohegan trip is scheduled for two weeks from now. Im also ahead on bills so the chances of me having the money as a whole is climbing with time ($2000 tax return). The next poker game is a $25 second chance sit and go which should be cake to sit and wait for final 5 and bully the shit out of people. I will advise and post here. Until then it's grinding out the micros online putting in 1000s of hands. PS for those who check poker ratings online under merge network I consider my start playing date as the post about "be the change you want to see". If you are serious about investing for the 1k tourney I will gladly show you hold em manager stats. Every $25 gets you 3% of profits. For now on to the second chance tournament.
So I'm taking a run at a WSOP event. The $1000 NLHE that runs for 3 days starting June 10th. I figure why not take a shot and have my first flight ever be to Vegas. Seems fitting for my personality.
http://www.wsop.com/2012/structuresheets/12121-structure.pdf
In order to help offset some of the costs, I'm running up a $50 bankroll on Sportsbook via tournaments and cash games. I just placed 7th in a $5 rebuy event and cashed $620. The deal I'm offering is a 40/60 split to the investors favor. That means every $25 you stake me, you get 3% of profits in return. I feel that's fair given I have 0 WSOP events under my belt. I do however feel like I'd be in the top 10% of players in the field. Winner took down over $450k last year.
So what I'm doing is making my sessions public so that potential investors can see how I play and if I'm a fish or not. That being said, I'm already down $3.50 of my initial $50 playing 25NL. I got it in with AK vs KQ and split to running straight cards after an AQ8 flop.
There is a $5 1R/1A event starting up at 6 which I hope to run deep in. (2nd event I did of the Poker Maximus I came in 320th, 307 got paid)
Down 8 dollars, guy runnered another straight. Hopefully this won't be a two post quest of the cash out curse.
All it takes is a moment, one observation, one second's pause to absorb a saying, an experience, or do something that could change somebody's course of direction. This could be an example of chaos theory at its finest. One large graffiti saying on a side street outside of Boston University could have a positive affect on the life of somebody who the artist doesn't even know exists.
Saturday night a group of us were walking to catch the T to meet up for a birthday bar crawl in Faneuil Hall downtown Boston when I noticed black writing on the side of what looked like a white garage wall. The writing looked like the lettering of a Times Union heading and read "Be The Change You Want To See." At the time, I didn't think much of it as I had to catch up with the group. The night passed with no thought of it; not until I left Mohegan Sun 24 hours later.
After a couple drinks and a couple hundred dollars gone in painful poker fashion (dwindling for 4 hours then getting it in preflop with pocket kings to be snap called by pocket aces) I had a long two hour drive back home. I'm not upset with how I played or the fact that I had lost a couple hundred dollars; that's nothing in the scheme of life. What I was upset about was the lack of prep I've been doing in multiple facets of my life. What came back to me on the ride home was what exactly "Be The Change You Want To See" meant to me and how I would want to answer that question "[because] at the end of the day, there's only one person looking back at you in the mirror, and that's one person you don't want to cheat." This summer felt like I was truly being me and hitting my potential. All I was doing was self motivated studying, working out and being active with the people around me. Since then, I feel like I've been cheating myself in the smaller things of life.
Programming
(Don't think of this as a rant, because after each section I'm going to detail things to do to turn around the mood/direction) The first thing I realized was that I feel stuck in neutral for the time being. Everything is well with work, but outside of that in my hobbies and interests had become fuzzy. Starting with Pollis: I feel powerless waiting for the developers to wrap up their shitty work so I can take over and fine tune it in order to launch. On that note since they've been developing I haven't been able to do any programming and learning of my own on the server because I don't want to erase any of the work they've done if I make an error. Almost daily I get emails from Youtube notifying me that The New Boston has uploaded a new coding video. This opportunity is in front of my face yet isn't being capitalized on. The change I want to see is one that watches minimum 10 videos a week (90 minutes a week) and implements the concepts and ideas into a side programmed Shirefox ( or Pollis to implement later down the road).
Football
Growing up I enjoyed playing pickup football however I was never allowed to play unless I got straight A's. Needless to say it never happened. Once I hit college I went gung-ho for lifting, training and walking onto UMass Football. After a season with a semi-pro team I made it as a walk on tryout for UMass. The rough part, I was deemed ineligible due to my semi-pro coaching staff and the grey area between semi-pro and pro. So instead of doing daily practices at McQuirk with the UMass team, I'd do my own workouts nearly daily to keep me in shape for both semi-pro and intramural. This photo I would have to consider my high point in the college career of football. Last eligible undergraduate game I could play in we were in the championship and won 47-27 after trailing at the half 27-26. A couple months later I didn't even finish my season last year with the Storm (semi-pro). Explain to me how somebody can go from eating, sleeping, breathing football to 6 months later not even finishing a season? I can't explain it either and on the ride home I couldn't help but think that we're only fortunate enough to play for so long, may as well capitalize on it. I had been going to the gym consistently since early January but of these past three weeks I've skipped two full weeks of workouts. The change I want to see is one where I go to the gym a minimum of 4 days a week and can get back into the tryout shape I was in for UMass. Plus it would be nice to get all the tone back that I had when I was 19/20. This will be the biggest self test I can put on myself since it is easy to give into the fatigue from work and other mandatory errands.
Engineering
Yes, I do this 40+ hours a week so I can imagine the question coming to mind. "What could you possibly want to improve upon here?" Well simply, I'm not talking about in work engineering; the atmosphere there naturally has a "do better every time you do something a second time" improvement feel. This topic is referring to my lump of a drive train motorcycle that's been sitting in the backyard here for 3 years now. I do have goals for it, just the hard part has been finding time and the budget to do what I want to it. Ideally I'm going to replace the shifting linkage and the gaskets then retrofit a buggy frame and go-kart-esq controls it. Nothing like a back yard beater for when I'm bored on a Saturday BBQ.
Aside from the beater bike, I've been trying to find a niche for something on the public market that I could develop and produce some prototypes of in my backyard or in a local machine shop. It would be nice to get my name on a patent or two (maybe even have the next $5 invention that everybody wants/needs). For this I just have to keep my mind and eyes open, you never know when you'll stumble upon something that alters the direction of your life. I want to see 4 hours a month spent into either research and development of something brand new, or 4 hours a month spent fixing up the motorcycle engine or designing the specifics of the buggy.
Poker
Well this just came full circle. In this case it's not a bad thing to end up where I started since a positive absorption of the experiences of the path taken has occurred. Its easy for a poker player to stew over a loss or a bad beat at the poker table, but only the greatest players (and thinkers) ask themselves "what went wrong and how do I make sure it doesn't happen again?" In this instance, I'm not regretting my play but rather the fact that I've watched 0 hours of poker advice or televised content. I used to have a residential housing job where I sat at a desk for 9 hours a week doing nothing. During those 9 hours I watched YouTube uploads of the World Series of Poker, High Stakes Poker and any other televised free content of poker. It was to the point where if I came across the show on actual TV I could list what was going to happen in the hand once the cards were dealt. I'm talking I could list the river card and suit then what the players were going to bet (and I could see why). I didn't watch it for entertainment, I was truly trying to get inside their minds. My roommate at the time told me to get a hobby, that was my hobby. Since Black Friday (April 15th, 2011) where they shut down online poker, I hadn't watched any content on YouTube, ESPN or CardRunners. Off the top of my head I can't even list who has won the past two Main Events. Seeing first hand the difference between studying via CardRunners (a GREAT source of poker tutorials) and grinding out thousands of hands vs taking the game as a time burner I wonder why I let my competitive nature slip my grasps. "You gotta think of it as war." Towards the end of my drive when everything else had gone through my head I realized it was a preparatory issue. It's like football, you can't expect not to run for 2 months and then be the fastest, most endured person on the field. The change I want to see in poker is that I spend about 4 hours a week either playing lower limit local games or watching TV footage/CardRunners clips or something of the nature to get inside the minds of some people who play poker for a living. Once I feel that my preparation has put me back to a higher thinking and playing level than I am at now and I have set aside enough money aside to bankroll 1/2 I will then jump back into casino action. Poker is a hobby, but a hobby is supposed to be fun and let's face it: if you're losing money, it's not fun.
Finale
For those that stuck with the entire post there's a few observations that I've made while writing that I feel are worth taking away from this. If you think about it, whenever you read a textbook or take a test for a class, all you're doing is learning or reciting information that was formerly inside somebody's mind. Society was built on absorbing some pre-existing foundation of knowledge with some innovations here and there. Whenever you learned how to use an iPhone or iPod, you were simply getting inside the mind of Steve Jobs. Then there's the app developers who add to the device by first getting inside the mind of Jobs then building upon it. Get inside the minds of the greatest people of the trade you enjoy andfigure out why they excel while others try to play keep up.
On the ride back just outside of Hartford and into Springfield I noticed dozens of billboards and other various advertisements. I almost felt as if I was in the movie Minority Report (video clip) being blasted by corporate America. It's easy in today's society to tune out everything that we aren't on a mission to see or do since everywhere we turn our attention to we're likely to have an advertisement thrown at us. However, if I had just not looked around to absorb the surroundings in Boston, I would never have taken the time to read the graffiti. Take the time to absorb details and let them sink into your conscience thoughts; you never know what you might find, or more importantly what you might learn.
It's easy for people to think of a bazillion ideas that could be thrown at a problem to solve it. There are also some people who are just the grunt workers that do some of these ideas. However the most successful people in life are those who are thinkers and doers. These are the people that see a niche or a void in anything, solve the problem and then build a team to tackle it.
In today's competitive society if you're not always on your toes somebody will run you over whether metaphorically(poker/programming) or physically(football/crosswalks) and not think twice about it. Take the time to prepare, practice, learn and figure out a way to be the leader of the pack. Even if times get tough, keep to your guns, self discipline and determination to formulate a way to change for the better. "Look up, get up, and don't ever give up" because that Change You Want To See is in front of your eyes every day it's just a matter of seizing the opportunity.
So our developers asked us to install CPanel which pretty much is a GUI for the entire server. It allows you to change permissions and enable/disable features. Sadly, at least once a week i've been getting emails from them asking to enable certain things and do this and do that.....they have root access so they can change EVERYTHING. Not to mention our logo they developed looked worse than what I did in the UMass library using free computers, my camera phone and some time to burn during the October power outage. I've asked Devin Shea of Reaction Foundry to hook me up with a professional looking logo and not something out of a Nintendo GameCube. Along with that I feel like the developers are twiddling their thumbs since they thought they were all done even though their work is subpar for "professionals". Currently I'm looking for developers who are looking to do part time work to fine tooth comb the site and make it presentable to the world.
On a side note, work at BETE is going strong, just got my 60 day review today and aside from one ridic complex project, my boss says I've been doing well. Looks like all the time spent interviewing/prepping and focusing on job fairs between September and October paid off. If you check out their site and take a look at the spiral nozzles, ask yourself how that would be made on a machine. I don't know exactly but I just finished up developing my first one for a fire suppression system. It's definitely a fun challenge.
Hopefully Pollis comes together so we can start getting live users on it, even though I do think you can sign up and add friends but nothing is going to the database to be pulled up like a live user feed.
So Pollis.com officially soft launched on January 19th. It looks pretty good, but deffinetly rough around the edges....very rough. I tried creating a blog and it said access denied, must be part of a group to do so. That's an issue. Jake is currently in the process of writing Yogesh (our lead developer hired through E-Lance) an email. I've asked to proof it since I can imagine what could be said due to the end result being SOOOO far off target. There also seems to be alot of frizz I guess you could say, a few extra duplicate links, some unnecessary features and somewhat general confusion on how to use the site. I don't think it bodes well when the CTO is having trouble navigating the site. It's hard for me not to login the dashboard and start moving things around to make them look like what we want. Feel free to head to Pollis.com and sign up then add me as a friend By clicking here
pollis.com/users/jmfox1987
Please comment and send me some love.
-Justin
Bet 50 on the capitols to win at home vs a banged up penquins squad. Close margin but it's a win. 88 and change going on the bruins at home Thursday night. Hard not to bet on them given the record. Question is spread over or money line. I may go with spread given the opponents losing record. Have 7 bucks fun money on Dallas mavs win and heat clips over 203 that wins 36. Looking for miracle since both teams shooting like high schoolers. Should have bet Miami money line. I think once I get over 2k I'll start betting 50% per game. May be mentally tough loosing a full two weeks pay even tho I started of with an hour
I took the spread on the Bruins at -1.5 for $30 and they won 5-3. Easy money. I was going to parlay the over of 5.5 as well...would have been a nice +280 score, but one game down 12 to go.
$30 --> $57.43
The next game I'll take should be tomorrow night depending upon if there's any matchups I really like. Hopefully by March I'm halfway to the 100k goal
So I've always been fascinated with compounding interest. It's one of those things that blows up quickly if done right and given he right circumstances. The bruins went on a 13 game win streak last month and it got me thinking about static small and letting a small initial investment snowball into something large. For example if you take $10 and put it on a -110 bet you'll be returned $19.09 upon winning. Roll that up 13 times and you get about $89,000. 13 is hard to get right in a row but it's worth a fun sweat for a week or so. My goal is to take 13 -120 favorites and turn $30 into just over $100,000. If you want to try and do similar streak for a free $100k head to espn streak for the cash site. I'll be posting later today/tomorrow my weave of games that I hope to take me to that payday bonus.
Ok so for those who read my postings on ShireFox before hand are probably wondering why I've been exiled from my own website. Well, the answer's pretty straight forward: Pollis development is going to the final stages where our developer is putting their work onto the server. They're shedding light onto new platforms and GUI (graphical user interfaces) that I had never heard of. So, I figure it's easier to reroute to an automated blog while A.) Pollis is being launched B.) I work on completing my redesign and C.) I can update this on the go (work at BETE Fog Nozzle), during my lunch breaks.
I plan on updating this with all of the latest info about going from unemployed college grad to full time engineer and entrepreneur. It's definitely an experience working with India on an outsourced launch project. Thanks <a href="http://jacobweindling.blogspot.com/" Jake </a>
