Originally posted by Harrier88
Wow, that's pretty crazy...I start my late shifts at 2 PM too, but at least only have to stick to the "normal" eight hours, so I'm back home between 10 and 11 PM.
The fact that there was no internet back then may have been a good thing if you only had a few hours to spare, though.
Although working for 14 hours sounds bad, as a taxi driver I had tons of downtime waiting for fares, so I could do a lot of reading, and since I was mobile, I could do all my shopping and so on while working. Since my pay was half the gross fare, it wasn't costing the company money when I was out of the cab, so they didn't mind.
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Weekend! 
This time, there has not been any poker at all during the week.
Work is going fine, I now have four weeks of it behind me. I still think it would be nice if I found something else by summer, but I don't mind what I'm doing right now too much. It certainly beats not being employed at all, that's for sure. Another interview will be coming up next week, let's see how it goes.
I'm very glad that I managed to pull through all of this, despite the very sudden change in my day to day habits. And I am really grateful towards my good friend (and Troll-wife) Primrose who was always there for me on the weekends and after my shifts to keep my spirits up. 
Football season is approaching too, and things are starting to heat up there as well. I decided at the end of last year that I should have enough energy left for at least one more season, and by now, I'm questioning the wisdom of that. It's not getting any easier to find the time and energy for it, but I'd hate to quit in the middle of our preparations without a pressing reason. I'll try to pull through that one too, until our last scheduled game at the end of this summer.
But one really good thing is that I'm finally feeling like I'm making progress again this year. 2021 often felt like running on a treadmill to me - no matter how much you tried, you wouldn't get forward, or so it seemed at times, both in poker and in so much else. This no longer appears to be the case, it feels like a lot of progress has been made on and off the felt, with many new opportunities opening up.
As for poker this weekend, I plan to stick to the standard 8-Game and Badugi plan with 5CD SNGs in between. My time zone will finally catch up with the daylight savings time switch by Sunday, which I assume should also help the grind.
Last weekend, we made one of our few games count. Will we be able to do the same this time?
Mixed Drinks - Without Alcohol!
Ever since I got into the habit of mixing drinks, I've been on the lookout for some non-alcoholic ones.
There are many instances when you have guests where one or more of them may not be willing or able to have alcohol. Very often, you may be hosting a group of people who arrived by car, which therefore includes at least one designated driver. Sometimes one of your guests may be a pregnant woman. Other times some of your guests may be underage. And some people may decline to drink alcohol altogether for religious or personal reasons. If you are serving mixed drinks to a group, it would be a shame to leave those people out.
Now there are some non-alcoholic mixed drinks which are quite simple to whip up quickly, like the Roy Rogers, which is simply cola with some grenadine, or the Shirley Temple, which instead involves ginger ale and lemon-lime soda along with grenadine. Still, they feel more like a soda variation than a proper cocktail. I've been looking for drinks that feel like they good hold their ground alongside their alcoholic counterparts.
I already had one specific drink in mind last year, but didn't get to it, because it involves several home-made ingredients, and I never got to preparing all of them. I plan to get to it this year, but just yesterday, I happened to stumble upon some recipes on the packaging of some tonic water. When I looked them up online, I noticed that there were a bunch of mixed drinks recipes to be found on the Schweppes website, including over 100 without alcohol.
Two of them I already tried out yesterday. Here they are, though the lighting in the picture leaves a lot to be desired:
To the right is the drink that I saw in the packaging. It's called a "Highway", and it involves 60 ml of orange juice, 20 ml of lemon juice and 20 ml of grenadine, to be shaken with ice. You would then strain the mixture into a highball glass and add 100 ml of tonic water.
The one on the left is called a "Yellow Orchid". This one uses 100 ml of orange juice, 60 ml of grapefruit juice, 20 ml of lime juice, 10 ml of lemon juice and once again 20 ml of grenadine. According to the recipe, you're supposed to shake this one as well, but I must have gotten mixed up (no pun intended) with some other recipes and instead just poured it over ice and stirred it.
Both drinks were really good. If you're a fan of longdrinks, you may not even miss the alcohol.
It was a beautiful sunny day today, and I wanted to retry the Yellow Orchid so I could serve it shaken, as it was supposed to be. I also wanted to serve another drink I found yesterday, but I didn't have enough grenadine left for both of them. As a result, I looked through the Schweppes website again to make the first other non-alcoholic drink I could find which sounded good and for which I had all the ingredients at home.
This is what I ended up serving in the backyard, this time paying more attention to the lighting:
To the left is a drink called "Davis Cup", which is the one I found the day before. It uses 100 ml of bitter lemon, 60 ml of orange juice, 20 ml of lemon juice and 10 ml of grenadine. To the right is a "Surfing Woman", the drink I picked from the Schweppes website at the last minute. For this one, you shake 60 ml of grapefruit juice, 20 ml of lemon juice and 20 ml of blue curaçao syrup with ice, and then add 12 ml of tonic water to the strained mixture.
Once again, both drinks were very good. They will definitely be added to the collection, which now involves a pretty decent selection for non-alcoholic cocktails already. Perfect for all those designated drivers and everyone else who needs to keep their brain in working order, for example because they have an important poker tournament coming up.
Crème de Cassis and Ginger Ale with our without cold tea is a favourite here — no name that I know of.
Also, in a punch bowl, add a can of undiluted frozen orange juice to a 2-litre bottle of ginger ale. Add frozen strawberries to the mix for colour and you have a punch known the world over as "Clean Only"
OK, maybe it's not known at all anywhere outside Vorpal Manor, but it's mighty tasty
Originally posted by VorpalF2F
Crème de Cassis and Ginger Ale with our without cold tea is a favourite here — no name that I know of.
One drink involving crème de cassis and ginger ale would be El Diablo, but this one also includes tequila.
I've encountered several recipes that called for crème de cassis before, but I don't think I've ever tried it.
No 8-Game today. The tournaments I'm interested in just overlap awkwardly with my dinner time, and Saturday is the day when I'm invited for dinner rather than preparing it for myself. It will be different tomorrow, and the daylight savings time switch will also occur tonight, so all tournaments will be back to their usual time slot for me. We should be able to see some 8-Game action tomorrow, and hopefully some cashes as well.
I did play Badugi tonight, which had a promising run, but stopped a few places short of ITM without any bounties. I got it in good, but my opponent drew out on my T-Badugi on the last draw. It happens.
Thanks to my winnings from the two Courchevel SNGs Prim and I played in our Troll Challenge, I still ended up with a small profit - especially because one of them was freerolled with $2 of tournament money from Pokerstars chests.
It has been an abysmal day at the tables, absolutely inexcusable. It didn't start too badly, with a 1st place in a 5CD SNG and a good start in 8-Game. This, however, was followed by a five game losing streak in the SNGs, none of the 8-Games cashed, Badugi bricked and my FL cash table, which was about 8 big bets up at one point, ended up about 6 big bets down.
I think my mistake was that I tried to force too much poker in, which is tempting to do if this is the only day in a week where you are really able to do it. I would love to play more poker, I just don't have the time.
Can't say it was a very relaxing weekend now. Pity, because I will have a tough week ahead of me. I will be away all day tomorrow, going to a job interview right before the start of my actual work shift, which will last until 10 PM. Next weekend won't be much of a weekend either, because I will be away for a football training camp. And after getting through that, there will be another week of early shifts in store for me.
This will very likely not allow any time for poker at all for a while, which may be for the best if I keep playing like I did today. Hopefully, I will eventually have more time for the grind, and hopefully, it will go a lot better then.
Busy day, but we made it through. Not sure if I did too well in the interview. It's funny how I always prepared for my first couple of job interviews by rehearsing answers to personality-related questions and they never came up, only job-related questions. And then I go into the next few interviews expecting mostly job-related questions and get almost exclusively those personality-related questions which I then neglected to prepare because I didn't think they'd come up.
Today featured mostly those personality-related questions too ("What three things do you find most annoying in friends?", "What is one thing you are proud of?", "What are your fears?", etc), and I don't think I did too great with my improvised answers. Some were underwhelming, some sounded too much like "telling them what they want to hear", and others simply involved too much eye-shifting and similar tells - at least that's how I felt it was, but often you're too harsh with yourself after something like this. And I did well on the standardized aptitude test before the interview, so at least I got that going for me.
I expect that smart money would say I won't be picked, but that wouldn't be too tragic. I already had my doubts whether this position would be the best choice for me, I simply wanted to give it a shot, now that I got the invitation and all. It is about a three year training position for some clerical work at a local courthouse. Not the worst of jobs, but is this the kind of thing I'd like to commit to long-term?
I've been wrong before, though, and either way, there shouldn't be a reply until about two months from now. Plenty of time to focus on my current job, but I wouldn't mind something else with more convenient work hours and ideally, some better pay too, though the one I get so far is all right for the time being. I'll stick around to take care of some of my immediate financial needs, probably for a couple of months, at least, but I'll keep looking for something that would leave more time for other projects, including poker.
Truth be told, this and the following week should be among the more stressful ones for me this year, so I don't expect too much time for other stuff. But after this busy day, it should be pretty much downhill from here until the weekend or so. 
In the job interview for the IT technician job I had for several years I was asked do describe one of my greatest strengths.
I answered with something along the lines of "When faced with a problem I'm like a bulldog, and can not let it go until it is solved, so if something worked once, it will work again".
When asked about any weaknesses, I said, "When faced with a problem I'm like a bulldog, and can not let it go until it is solved, so I need to be careful to prioritize".
I didn't prepare those — they just happened.
My boss was a bit of a technophobe. When I was working on a server or other piece of equipment he would hover.
When he asked how long I would give him a time. Each time he asked after that, I gave him a somewhat longer time.
Originally posted by VorpalF2F
In the job interview for the IT technician job I had for several years I was asked do describe one of my greatest strengths.
I answered with something along the lines of "When faced with a problem I'm like a bulldog, and can not let it go until it is solved, so if something worked once, it will work again".
When asked about any weaknesses, I said, "When faced with a problem I'm like a bulldog, and can not let it go until it is solved, so I need to be careful to prioritize".I didn't prepare those — they just happened.
Surprisingly, the very common "What are your weaknesses?" question did not come up in my interview.
Your reply does sound quite good. Coming up with a good response there can be tricky, because most interviewers would be familiar with stuff like "I'm too much a perfectionist" and other obvious attempts at letting a weakness look like a strength. Ironically, I actually can be a bit of perfectionist in some areas...
Some guides I've read suggest to relate an honest weakness which is not a key skill for the job, and then give a brief description of what you've done to counter it, e.g. "I have trouble speaking in front of a large audience. It makes me feel nervous, but I have taken measures to get it under control, which is why I have signed up at a public speaking course with a good coach". This example assumes, of course, that speaking in front of large audiences is not an everyday part of the job in question.
The perfectionist one is tricky — It is important to not let perfect prevent you from good
Originally posted by VorpalF2F
The perfectionist one is tricky — It is important to not let perfect prevent you from good
Yes, that's a problem with actual perfectionism, I've noticed it myself a few times. In the worst case, trying to get something perfect could prevent you from getting anything going at all.
As for using alleged perfectionism as a weakness in a job interview, the problem is mainly that interviewers might smell BS. Either that, or they're just unimpressed. It sounds too much like a rehearsed one size fits all reply.
Made it through an entire month of full-time blue collar work now - I guess I'm not such a lazy bugger after all. That being said, I'm still constantly on the lookout for new job opportunities. What I'm doing now is a lot better than what I did last year, which was a whole lot of nothing, but I can think of many better things to do too.
Two of the things that I like to say to myself about that job whenever I'm feeling a little jaded are 1. "It's a living" and 2. "I won't do this forever". Don't get me wrong, though: For the most part, I'm pretty satisfied with it. However, I can't say I like this evening shift very much. It makes you feel like you are working pretty much all day, even though you aren't.
Among many other things, I miss poker a lot. The new 8-Game lineup is interesting, and I would love to grind it out for a while and see where I could go. The main problems with mixed games were always a lack of games and a lack of opportunities to move up in stakes, and those new 8-Game tournaments take care of both to a degree. Only problem: I'm too busy to play them now...
I have collected my stats and results from last month too, but they will have to wait until another time. It's getting late, and I still have a few tough days ahead of me.
I am unashamedly lazy.
I put out the maximum effort required to get each task done satisfactorily — but I make sure that it is done the most efficient way I can devise.
Originally posted by VorpalF2F
I am unashamedly lazy.
I put out the maximum effort required to get each task done satisfactorily — but I make sure that it is done the most efficient way I can devise.
"Work smart, not hard", just as they say.
TGIF... except the most exhausting part of the week should be just ahead of me. Need to get up early tomorrow despite having worked until 10 PM tonight to make it to my all-day football training camp. Originally, we were supposed to stay for the weekend, but the hostel decided to take in a wave of refugees from Ukraine, so there were no more rooms left. We'll still practice pretty much all-day, and until afternoon on Sunday too. Oh, and as I pointed out in the IDC thread, it's pretty much winter over here...
Let's see how it goes, but I'll be glad when this is behind me - only to be greeted by another week of early shifts on Monday. It will be tough, but to make it more doable, I already asked for a one day vacation next Friday, where I intend to meet up with a certain grindette if all goes well.
It's unlikely that there will be any poker. Maybe a few games on Sunday.
Oh, and just because I know that Primrose tends to find those stories very "interesting"... 
I'm using one of those safety cutter knives at work, with a dull tape splitter on one side and a well concealed blade for cutting on the other side, making sure that you cut what you intend to cut, and not your hands.
Spoiler
I'm usually keeping it in the pocket of my pants while I'm working when it's not in use. I also have to wear those steel toe work boots, which are of course not the most comfortable shoes to spend over eight hours in, so I'm using some insoles, which work quite well. The only problem is that the right insole tends to shift to the front and needs to be readjusted every few hours. Not sure why, either it's because I tend to kneel a lot on that leg or the insole wasn't cut as well as the left one.
Anyway, I took another bathroom break at around 9 PM, about an hour before the end of my shift, and decided to take my right shoe off while I'm at it to adjust that insole one last time. I put my pants down a bit more to reach it better, then lifted my right leg to step into that boot again... and heard a little splash...
Yes, that nifty safety cutter knife dropped from my pocket into the toilet.
Well, what can you do? Not much, except fishing it back out - which is what I did. No, I didn't flush yet at that point.
Some water and soap were hopefully enough for that cutter. I had to use it a couple of times that night after that, and it at least passed the smell test.
Originally posted by Harrier88
I also have to wear those steel toe work boots, which are of course not the most comfortable shoes to spend over eight hours
I had to wear safety toes where I worked as well.
The toe caps were nylon I think, and the shoes themselves were so comfortable I wore them all the time.
They were dress shoe style, not a boot.
They also had a plate in the sole to prevent sharp objects from piercing your foot if you stepped on something sharp.
I had one other requirement — they had to have static dissipating sole material.
Originally posted by VorpalF2F
I had to wear safety toes where I worked as well.
The toe caps were nylon I think, and the shoes themselves were so comfortable I wore them all the time.
They were dress shoe style, not a boot.
My work boots look like this:
They are pretty comfortable for work shoes, but walking around in them for over eight hours straight still requires getting used to it. By now, it's not really a problem for me.
I once forgot those shoes at home and then also had to use some of those strap-on steel toes. They weren't really an improvement when it came to comfort, though being able to wear them over my regular shoes was convenient, at least for the first few hours.
Let's play some football...
Yes, that's how it looked like from my living room window at around 6:30 AM, shortly before I left for that mini camp. The German April weather is known to be a troll, often playing 8-Game with weather conditions, but this is something else...
As I said, we wouldn't stay in that hostel for the weekend, as it was originally planned. We arrived there at around 8 AM and stayed for three practice sessions of two hours each, with a lunch break and another small 30 minute break in between. At least that was the plan, our sessions got a little shortened, partially because we weren't as many players as planned (looks like some got second thoughts when they saw the icy cold winter landscape outside, and some genuinely couldn't make it because of that), and also because we had to clear the pitch first.
The hostel actually has a decent selection of playing fields for various sports, even including an indoor pool, but the pitch we were using was pretty much a pure soccer field. Needless to say, it was covered in several inches of snow too. Since we were the first ones to use it that day, we of course had to clear it ourselves, using some of the miniature soccer goals they had over there as makeshift snow plows...
It was both a decent warm-up as well as a pretty good team-building exercise. We then made the most of it and got easily five hours of proper practice in after all.
There will be another big practice session tomorrow on our regular training field, lasting from 10 AM to some time late in the afternoon. After that, I'll be done for the time being - and can prepare to wake up at 5 AM for work again. But in the meantime, I'm just taking it easy at home, sipping some Irish Coffee and Jagertee after all that unexpected winter fun in April.
So did I get it right: Your knife fell into the toilet and right into the sh........?