Which I had ignored for a prolonged period of time. I have an affinity for demolishing my big problems as soon as possible but letting my small problems just sit around and brew until they become these vicious monsoon motherfuckers that rip the life out of my balls for ignoring them for too long. 

Yes. This tooth was one of those problems, I had a chip a while ago that I ignored, I refused to go in due to my last terrible experience that I had at the dentist for never going in, they got a hammer a chisel to break my fucking jaw so they could steal my wisdom 

 

teeth.

Anyway, they asked me what I wanted and I told them 'Check up please and fill a cavity.'

They were like, 'alright have a seat.' 

So I sit down, get that little adult-bib wrapped around me and then I open my mouth when asked and the dentist ... her eyes open wide for a second and she goes, 'Hmm... Ah.'

And then walks away, and comes back and tells me, 'We're going to start some x-rays.'

So we do the x-rays, seems fine.

Then she goes and tells the other dentist 'Hey, I need someone to put him down.'

And I'm thinking like, 'Wait what? Why do I have to be sedated for a cavity?', but I don't say anything since I am rarely at the dentist (3rd time in my life) and I don't want to sound like some idiot.

So after a while, another lady comes, gives me this shit in my mouth, then fires off a series of more shots, she smiles at me and sings the Mulan song, 'Let's get down to business' with her 2 year old daughter dancing around in the office to ease my discomfort about being drugged without my consent.

Then after my mouth is nice and numb.... it begins...

This lady pulls out a drill and I make this muffled, 'Ugh.' Noise to show them, no. Stop. Don't do this. Why are you doing this? Why do you need to drill away a cavity? This isn't right... You shouldn't have to have that huge of a tool...

But then she says the words which make me want to run out of that office: Root Canal.

I'm like..... FUCK..... MY........ LIFE.........

Dentist: Sorry, but I don't think the tooth can be salvaged... You waited too long to come in and well... yea, we have to take it out now... this is why you're supposed to come in early so we can fix it because nobody likes to do a root canal, not me, not you, but especially not you. 

........ 

And she was right.

Or any other social form requiring detection of subtlety and/or innuendos. By the time I realize something is up, it's already pretty late, and even after I realize, my reaction time is slower than a dead beaver. 

Anyway, onto the story:

I walk into an American Apparel with a friend, browse around for a gift and there is this cute cashier working at the front. The store is completely empty and then as I am walking within sight of her, she smiles broadly and goes 'Hi! How are you doing?' 

I mechanically put on a bright smile and say, 'Hey! I'm doing fine, just browsing around. Thanks for asking!' 

And she goes, 'Oh, ok then, let me know if you need anything.'

Fast forward, I decide to buy a circle scarf and I head over to the register. She looks at me and goes, 'Is that what you want?' 

I respond, 'Uh... Yea...' 

So she takes my credit card and says, 'Can I please see your ID?' 

I grab my ID out of my wallet and hand it to her, and she grabs my hand and leans in towards it and reads all close: 'Benjamin... Yep... That's you...'

At this point, she looks at me, smiles again, I awkwardly return smile, and then transaction proceeds.

'So have you ever shopped here before?' she asks.

'Na.'

(lol)

She finishes the transaction, then hands over the bag to me giving yet another flirty look at me and at this point I think to myself, 'Hey, maybe she's flir-'

but nope, I'm already turned around and walking out. 

My friend then says to me as we leave the store, 'So dude, what did you think of that cashier?'

Me: Huh?

Friend: Like, did you think she was cute?

Me: Yea, she was super cute, why do you ask?

Friend: I mean, just the way she was looking at you and talking with you, it seemed like she was interested...

Me: Hmmm. Are you sure?

Friend: Well, she sure as hell wasn't looking at me like that, and what kind of cashier does that when checking someone's ID?

Me: Damn... I thought she was just being friendly.

Friend: Eh, maybe. You should have tried to ask for her number or something, no harm right? Anyway, let's go grab something to eat, I's starvin'.

*****DISCLAIMER: The following will be boring as fuck for the majority of you to even read, and most won't even understand, so I wouldn't recommend you proceed, I am just placing this here for archiving purposes incase my computer crash and burns since I need somewhere to store it*********

 

So I'm going to try to go about coding this to dust off my skills, but I figured I'd toss this to other coders to see how you guys would approach this problem and in what language (though language probably doesn't matter much).

Challenge 0:

So your job is to create a program, that when run, will output 5 random cards out of a 52 card deck, 

Challenge 1:

After outputting the 5 cards, then prompt the user for input asking, "out of the remaining 47 cards, what is the best hand?' 

This is based on hold'em rules so the 5 dealt out would be the community cards and your program would have to determine what the best hand is then check the user's input, if right, it says so, if wrong, it tells the user and gives the option to try again or give up and get the answer.

The program checks for redundant/duplicate hands (so entering any combination of the winning hands suffices see Example 1), split pot due to community win (example 2), and other various scenarios.

Example 1:
Computer deals out: 7s 2c Kh 10h 9d
What is the best hand?

(At this point, the user is to enter the answer in Xy Xy format [X being card, y being suit])

Answer computer wants to see/checks for: Qy Jy (y indicating that any suit the user enters is valid i.e. Qc Jc, Qc Jh, Qh Js, etc...)

Example 2:
Computer deals out: 10s 10c 10d 10h As
What is the best hand?

In this case, no hand would be a winning hand as the community would win every case and it would be a split pot. 

So the user could enter something such as: Xy Xy (that is, anything is a 'winning' hand) or 0 (indicating that there is no 'best' hand). 

---------------

Challenge 2:

Now taking the program, modify it such that the computer deals out in the hold'em fashion that is,

Burn 1 card

3 random cards, (flop)

Burn 1 card

then 1 random card, (4th st/turn)

Burn 1 card.

then another random card. (5th st/river)

and during each stage, the user is prompted to guess what the best hand is and the computer checks/recalculates.

----------------------

Challenge 3:

Now add to the program such that each simulation is written to a text file and stored in a database for stat keeping, the stats which you keep are up to you, but a few basic ones you might want to try to add:

% guessed correctly (also represent this % as a fraction of x/X)
% of best hands determined by the flop (that is, 4th and 5th st had no effect on the outcome)
% changed by 4th
% changed by 5th

You might also want to break down which hands are the nuts most often such as full house, straight flush, etc...

--------------------------------------

Challenge 4:

Now, modify the program to properly deal out in 3 modes: Heads-up, 5-man, and 9-man.

So the program will deal out 2 cards to each player, then burn 1 card, lay out a flop, and then the game will progress as in challenge 2.

Now you are to guess the nuts every step and at the end, it will be revealed if any of the players were dealt the hand.

--------------------------

Challenge 5:

Modify the database to stat track how often the 'nuts' are dealt out, and track the most common winning hands in all 3 scenarios, how often 4th and 5th impact the game in each mode (that is, change which of the players has the 'nuts' of the cards dealt out), and which combination of hands holds the greatest advantage during: preflop, flop, turn, river (example 3).

Example 3: (these numbers are made up just to demonstrate)

AA (in 9 man table with no folds) Preflop - 100%, Flop - 80%, Turn, 60%, River, 30%
     
--------------

Challenge 6 (bonus):

Now modify the program (example 4) or do some statistical/stochastic analysis (example 5) which is original from that listed in this challenge (pretty easy).

Example 4:

Modify the program in such a way that you remove the entire user-input step and the entire process becomes fully automatic and then all you're doing is just running a simulation non-stop of a 9-man table constantly dealing out hands to stat track and get an idea of how poker hands are played out.

(this is just an example, you don't have to do this, but any other original idea is welcomed)

Example 5: 

Change the database in such a way that you are able to track how often a person receives a winning hand related to their position on the table (dealer, big blind, small blind, etc...) to see if there is any relationship, 

OR use the database to create separate charts relating the strength of hands based on the size of the table, like for example, Ac 9c is a much stronger hand in a heads up match than it is in a 9-man table, infact, in the latter, depending on what type of poker you are playing (cash, SNG, MTT) the hand should never even be played (figure 1).

Figure 1:
http://i.imgur.com/tttcf.jpg

--------------

Anyone that wants to work on this with me or ask me for help (in how to approach the problem or clarify any parts of challenges that you don't fully understand, but not debug code) is free to join, I'm going to be coding this in C++ and porting over the data onto a text file and reading it in with SQL. 

Challenge 0 can be done by a beginner, but after that, it gets kind of advanced. Good luck. 

Notes:

This program would be pretty useless overall as far as helping you in no-limit, but would drastically give you a much better understanding of the game in limit hold'em (though I'm mainly doing this for fun since I rarely play limit anyway).

No-limit hold'em requires a strong analysis of position + raising (how much, how often, at what stage, etc...) however, such analysis is also much more complex as it cannot be simulated by an AI and the stats need to be collected by observing hundreds of thousands of tables in thousands of different settings.

I find myself still searching for who I am, what it is I want to be, and constantly undecided on which path I want to take.

I've been preparing for an interview I have on Monday for an engineering position with the power company in SoCal, so far things have been looking very promising up till this point and I am on the last leg of finally getting my first real job relating to my profession. The ball is now on my side of the court and all that is left for me is to not screw up my opportunity; all that's left now is for me to nail the interview and the job is mine.

There are still times I look back at my life, look at where I am now, look towards the future, and then look at a mirror and ask myself: Is this what I want? 

There are various goals I had in my life growing up, such as producing music, art, or a book, none of which I would say I had the courage to just throw everything I had built aside and more or less 'Follow my dreams'. There lies my main conflict, do I want to pursue a life of passion or security? I honestly have no clue, but currently I am on the route for the latter it seems. If I do get this job, I can tell you with near certainty where I will be in 3-5 years, if not dead. I am not sure how I feel about this as on one side, I get the impression that I have a better sense of control over my life, but on the other, I feel a lack of freedom. 

Life is just too damn short to not be doing something which you find meaningful or enjoyable with it, you have one shot so you might as well go big or go home. Right now, I'm compromising. I am doing something I don't necessarily have the passion for in order to build myself up, to gain the capital necessary to pursue my goals in the future. I see a lot of people with great ideas but no way to implement them, they lack the money, the connections, and the drive to just throw themselves into the giant mess called life, to step out of the box which they know as their world, and really just bite down hard to get their share of what it is they want out of it all.

As Oscar Wilde put it best, "I have the simplest tastes, I am always satisfied with the best."

However, you can't be at two places at the same time, so thus, there is only one path you can take, so it is important to understand where you are headed in life so that you don't end up bitterly disappointed by the direction you chose, because there is no rewind, no restart, nothing really that allows an individual to go back and fix mistakes, all you can really do is just look back and learn from them. 

Wherever you go, go with confidence, move with determination and focus in the direction you are headed because if you are indecisive, you will be plagued with self-doubt ultimately accomplishing very little, shorting yourself of great opportunities and accomplishments that could have been.

There are many times I am presented with many options on what to do and some of those times, I fail to make a decision, ultimately letting the opportunity pass me by. These times leave me frustrated with myself at not having made up my mind and allowing these chances to expire, like a man presented with many appetizing dishes, unable to decide which he wants to eat and in the end having all plates spoil as he stares longingly at each one, resulting in the man starving to death. 

Many times I make the wrong decision... A decision which I regret, and looking back brings a variation of emotions forward such as regret, embarrassment, anger, and disappointment, but from each of these mistakes is something learned, a little progress made. Sometimes you'll pick the wrong dish, end up eating something you hate, but the worst tasting dishes are some of the most memorable, and they stay with you for life, give you something to reference so that you can better appreciate the good, and provide valuable experience so that you are able to not repeat your bad choice in the future versus skipping the meal.

Regardless of whether what I'm doing now is right for me, I take solace in the fact that I am doing something versus doing nothing and hoping that by doing nothing, things get done.  

I got so drunk today..... my roommate threw this part from around 9 PM to 9 AM, so I drank until I was drunk, knocked out on my bed, woke up, went back out, drank some more till I was drunk, knocked out on my bed again, and then proceeded to walk outside and everyone was gone, my roommate was sleeping on the floor with some other girl sleeping against the wall. 

Madness......

So I thought I was totally leaving today for California, but it turns out that my flight is NEXT WEEK ROFL. Already packed all my shit and I quit my job, so I basically have a full week in NYC to do whatever the fuck I want, which is nice actually... I think I'm going to go visit all of the museums that I haven't seen yet while I am still here 

You know, that feeling of confusion and frustration when you wake up at 2:47 in the morning feeling extremely thirsty and craving a cup of Fresca versus poisonous tap water only to realize that every place that sold Fresca is now closed except for that 24 hour liquor store that sells it for like 4 dollars for a 2 liter which as much as you want Fresca, is a fucking ridiculous price to pay and if you bought it, hours later you'd be mad at yourself that if you had waited a few hours you could have had like three 2 liters of Freca, though having that much Fresca would be pretty fucking ridiculous and excessive since the only reason you wanted Fresca in the first place is to try it because on your flight back to New York from Los Angeles the guy sitting next to you ordered it and you never knew that such a drink existed.

Like 'What the hell is Fresca? That exists?' It looks like Squirt or something...But it has to be better than Squirt because Squirt is terrible, so now I want it.... I want to know what it feels like as it rolls down my dry tongue after I've parched myself walking through this urban Sahara....

Ok so maybe all of the stuff I just described isn't really any type of feeling that any of you can really relate to, and maybe it doesn't even make sense. I don't know, I guess you can't really understand unless you've never tried Fresca and you just came back home at midnight piss drunk after being forced to ride standing on the subway because it was so crowded like this poor man because none of the senior citizens or pregnant women wanted to give up their seats. Courtesy is contagious my ass. Why the hell are there so many plebs riding the subway back to Queens at midnight anyway? Don't you people have like families to be with and crime to be afraid of? WTF?

Anyway, where was I? Coming back home drunk? Yes. So you come back home drunk, you decide, 'Oh I guess I'll go read a bit of news but then you open the page and realize, wow I'm pretty drunk, and this is pretty boring. I'm going to just-' and then your back is on the floor and you can't get up and then you fall asleep and the mice nearby are like, 'Wow, well this is awkward...'

Fast forward 1 hour and 47 minutes later, you wake up hung over, thirsty. confused and feeling like you have a bad back wondering where you are and where in god's hell your safety blanket is then it all slowly comes rushing (oxymoron?) back to you as that wave of reality hits that you're in New York by yourself and that safety blanket is long gone since your mom threw it out behind your back when you were a kid because she thought you were getting too old and too attac- 

..........

I'm never going to forgive her for that.

But anyway, great news! I just spoke with my roommate who is infamous for staying up until 5-6 AM since he doesn't have any sort of real job and he apparently just told me of a 24 hour grocery store that probably sells that which I seek, so I will be donning on my peacoat and heading out at..... Yes.... 3:07 to buy myself a brand spanking new 2 liter of Fresca, a light bulb for my room (Because it's dark in here when you don't have light, you see), and perhaps something to help with this gut-searing hangover (Does that even make sense? I hope not. I'm just throwing words out as they come to me like a true artist).

But before I go! So the reason I was drinking so much on a Tuesday night was because my buddy, who I originally stayed with for a few days when I first moved here before his roommate kicked me out onto the streets, is leaving tomorrow morning back to California in order to go back to school in Berkeley for a year. I am now left to decide if I too want to go back to California or stay in the city since I have to leave my apartment anyway due to the skyrocketing rent prices. As much as I like living in the city, the place I am living ain't so great and I can only imagine the horrors I will encounter in the future in my new place to live. My sister's wedding is also coming up in mid January so I figure maybe that will be the perfect time to quit my job with the law firm and just buy a one-way back to SoCal then pack up all of my things into my car there and drive up to San Jose to look for an engineering job in the Silicon Valley.

Or I could just move to Brooklyn and be a hipster, angry at life but particularly angry at my mom about throwing away my blanket.

 

Edit:

Ok, so I just got back, grabbed some Fresca without even reading the label, had a taste and I thought this shit tasted like some kind of diet soda, and I looked it up and it was a diet soda... And apparently it is sold all across the US and has been around since the 1960s? WTF???? Why have I not heard of this until now? Or am I just that fucking oblivious?

Tastes pretty good actually... A lot better than diet coke which I fucking hate with every fiber of my being... So basically here is this soda that has no sugars to give me cavities, looks like Squirt, tastes better than Squirt, is very similar to...... I don't even know... I can't really describe the taste for you by comparing it to another soda... It's like some convoluted hybrid of sprite and squirt (My, I have been saying that word a lot today haven't I? Squirt, that is).... I guess you too will have to come home drunk at midnight, wake up with a massive hangover and then go out in the dead of night to buy Fresca in order to truly understand what you are missing out on. Unless you're not like me, some dude who managed to go over 20 years without trying out this apparently popular brand of soda, and you're just shaking your head right now in disbelief that I am trying out this shit for the first time in my life. 

But man, were there a lot of people outside at 3 AM... a bunch of guys standing near bars and night clubs wearing black jackets and hoods and I was about to say to them 'Why are you all out so late? Don't you guys have families to be-' then I realized, yes. Yes they do have families to be with waiting at home which is EXACTLY why they are outside right now.

So I suppose I can go back to bed now that my curiosity and thirst have been quenched.

I'm so envious of people that are younger than me... Especially as I see more and more of them popping up everywhere.... As I grow older.... AND OLDER! I have lost all respect for adults and no longer want to become one, which means that I will eventually have no respect for myself. 

One day I am going to grow up into that really annoying dad that tries super hard to fit in with his kid's friends and then after I bring them a plate of cookies with milk telling them, 'Don't worry about that guys, it was nothing....' and then coolly walk away as one of the kids tells my child, 'Dude, your dad is soooo cooolll.' (That's what I will make out of their muffled laughter) I'll smile inside knowing that I accomplished all that I wanted to accomplish in life..

The truth is that I'm just really jealous that these young high school kids have access to all this awesome technology at such a young age. It fucking makes me rage that I had to wait forever for pages to load and music to download on my fucking sluggish 56 k modem. The word sluggish does not even capture the incompetence that was my internet connection in the late 90s to early 2000s.

Every time I see little kids running around I wish I could just grab them and run off to my laboratory to steal their youth just so I could relive my childhood with cooler gadgets versus the shitty black and white gameboy that filled the time void that I will refer to as 6th grade. Instead I am just left to wallow in my own self pity as the reality sets in that my body will lose its teeth and hair and that belly fat I acquire every year during summer drinking will become that much harder to burn off then one day my wrinkly goat-hands will barely be able to maneuver through the controls of the latest teleporting device and I will need to ask for the assistance of an 8 year old flying by in a jet pack. FUCKKKK MY FUTURE LIFE! 

This is the face I make every time I see someone younger than me. It will become more frequent as I grow older until this is the only face I make at all times.

 

(Actually, I just realized that I forgot to post a small update on what happened when I went back to Cali last weekend, I should eventually do that....Soon.... Eventually...)

Why don't they have libraries like this back home? Omg. Found my new most favorite place to steal wifi. 

Only here for a day though, I'm leaving tomorrow. No time, no time, no timeeee.

Grandma passed away yesterday. I got a text from my sister telling me my gran was in her last moments in the morning so I spent the next several hours trying to get my work done until finally around 5 PM I got another text from her saying that she had gone. I got into a big argument with my sister, and it was very petty. I sort of regret it but at this point there is nothing either of us can do and we were both pretty emotional at the time.

I had known she was going to pass for a while, her health had been poor for the last few years, and a few days before I moved to NY, she had a stroke and lost the ability to move half of her body. Before I left, I went to go see her, and the doctors told me she was refusing to eat and they would have to put a feeding tube in her if she kept refusing to eat. I tried talking and coxing her into eating some food but she was ultra stubborn and just refused to open her mouth for anything other than to let me brush her teeth. I figured she had already decided that she didn't want to live anymore and/or be a burden on the family so she said 'fuck it, I'm done! Going to go log off now.' 

My mom sent me a message yesterday saying the funeral would most likely be this Saturday so I am going to have to buy a ticket to Cali, but I plan to come back to NY right after the ceremony before a bad aftertaste settles in my mouth.

My head is a bit jumbled up considering how I love to over-analyze and put too much thought into things. It's sort of overwhelming but I suppose I can just take it one step at a time and I really don't want to think too much about this because there is nothing positive that will come of it... Whoops! Too late, I already thought a shitload about it.

I was pretty close with my grandma, she raised me since I was a baby, I have a lot of fond memories growing up in the countryside in Korea chasing frogs in the rice paddies and eating an ungodly amount of watermelons for a kid my age. Then I moved here to America and then my gran shortly followed thereafter. Since both of my parents worked and were never home, my sisters and I were watched over by our grandma and she was sort of like our unofficial parent. My gran always told me that she thought I would be successful and supported me, but her and my dad always butted heads since he was always giving me a hard time and she was always trying to protect me from him. Eventually, he kicked her out and she had to live with my aunt watching over my two little cousins... And so it goes...

I'm supposed to write a eulogy, but I'm not even sure what I would say. I am still trying to determine whether or not I feel guilty about the fact that I wasn't around when she passed away or took the time to see her more often before she died because I feel like she was probably very lonely and scared in her last moments... Anyway, at this point, it's rather pointless to regret the past or complain about missed opportunities. I'm also trying to determine whether it is even a good idea for me to write such a thing when I am still harboring deep feelings of resentment towards my dad for what he did to my grandma, I almost feel like not even going to the funeral because I don't want to deal with seeing the family. 

I understand a lot of people might say something like, 'If you cared about your grandma then you should go to pay your last respects.' but people, I don't share the same sentiments as you. I loved my grandma, one of my favorite people in the entire world but going to her funeral isn't going to change anything, she's dead and she isn't in heaven or a ghost waiting to see me at her funeral because none of that stuff exists.

Her consciousness does not exist anymore, she does not have to suffer being alive, and whether or not I attend her funeral, it won't change or do anything other than appease my relatives, most of whom I do not like, from talking even more shit about how I am now a morally bankrupt individual for not attending the funeral of the woman that took care of me as a child etc... etc... etc.... but like I give a fuck? Maybe a little. 

Sigh................. I just don't know right now what I should do. Odds are that I will most likely go and just suck it up. Despite what I said earlier, I am still a somewhat sentimental individual and despite having to deal with and see a lot of people I don't like, I really would regret if I did not go to see my grandmother one last time simply out of spite and hatred for other people. That would be truly, pitiful and silly. 

Though I feel like I could just go visit her grave by myself sometime with some nice flowers as an apology for not being there, and knowing her, if she were around still she would have just said something like, "It's ok, I understand why you did it." or "Don't be stupid, who cares? It's not like it matters." because she didn't care about stuff like this either. Lady fuckin' survived through the Korean War, hard as fuck, didn't give a rats' ass about spending this extraneous amount of time and money towards all this paying respects to the dead mumbo jumbo bullshit because she wasn't a god-fearing, ghost-worshiping, superstitious-ass Asian either. But whatever, I will still attend the funeral and write a bad-fuckin'-ass eulogy, though at the moment, I'm still trying to determine why... seeing as how my grandma would call this a pointless waste, and the only people I am seemingly satisfying are the same people I could go the rest of my life without seeing.