CARDRUNNERS

So this blog has come full circle.  It is not a fast food blog anymore, unfortunately.  Gotta get with the times, I guess, it's time to become a Job posting/update blog.  Who knows what this blog will become next week, better keep reading!

I guess I should start off addressing my oh-so-creative title.  We've had about 200 applications for the Marketing position and probably 50 for the video admin position.  Basically what this means is that it's going to be hard to get this job.  If you don't hear from us, or hear from us but don't get the job, I'm just going to say "I'm sorry" up front because there are a lot of really good applicants.  Thanks for taking the time to submit what you did and we keep all resumes on file in case things change in the future.  It's definitely a cool feeling to have so many people wanting to work for your company, I guess I'll file that in the "one of those things you don't typically think about when owning your own business but is cool when you realize it" category.

On the poker front, I've "regressed to the mean (BT)."  The results haven't been horrible, down a couple of buy-ins, but I've regressed as far as getting hands in.  I just haven't had much time.  I've got some good content though that's ready to be made for a video.  I'll try to get that up for next week.

I'm going to be on Poker After Dark a week from today.  I've seen a 2 minute clip of the show and showed a few of my friends that were over at my house this weekend.  They thought I looked pretty cool which is not something I usually look.  We'll see how it turns out, though.  Set your DVR's because it airs at like 2am or something so no one in their right mind will be up at that time.  I'm not sure when I'll watch them, I might just tape them all and watch them over the weekend, there's 6 episodes.

Man, there are so many blogs I want to write.  The most pressing being my take on internet dating.  I've been sweating one of my roommates online dating adventures and it's probably the most fun I'm having in life these days.  Maybe I'll post one of the "openers" that I wrote last night.  I'm actually sort of embarassed to admit that I wrote some of this stuff but I don't really care.  I'm sure I'm going to look goofy on national TV next week so I might as well not care about what people think about what I say in this blog.

I also need to update on stuff I've been doing.  Let's see.  Friday I had Coop, Craig, Erin, Dawn, and Brad over.  We drank for a few hours then went to Wrightwood Tap.  I had my fair share of beverages and then thought I saw a girl my roommate was on a date with earlier that night.  This was an interesting dynamic because this girl doesn't know me at all but I feel like I know her very well because I've been intimately involved in the online dating process with my roommate.  I wanted to say something to her, but instead I just yelled to my friend "HEY, I think that's the girl that Tom went out with tonight."  The girl may or may not have heard me but she immediately left the bar.

On Saturday I went home for my mom's 60th b-day party.  Melissa came with me and a good time was had by all.  It was this place where you get a big group together and you cook your own meal.  It sounds like it'd be a pain in the ass but in actuality it's a pretty good time.  I ate way too much food.

That's it for now.  Jim (CR's new COO) is coming into town for a few days this week and then I have an undecided weekend.  I might go to NYC Friday night for Jay/Emil's housewarming party.  I'm going to be traveling a lot so we'll see if I actually go, but I'd like to.  Next week Ezra and I are going to Vegas for 3 days and then 2 weeks later I'm going to back to Vegas with Melissa.  In late March I'm supposed to go to Austin with ahh_snap and Daut and maybe some other people, then in April Andrew, Spud, Irockhoes, and I are going to Asia for 2 weeks.  That's probably enough traveling until WSOP.

Alright, that's it.  Thanks for reading.

Are you a "regular" in the online poker scene?  Do you have little to no disdain for me?  Then read on!
 
CardRunners, unfortunately, is going to have to replace two of its most valuable employees in the near future.  They are both moving on to different times in their lives, and although I am sad to see them go, I'm lucky to have had such amazing people working for me as long as they have.  I would encourage anyone who is interested in these jobs to PM or email Ezra and Kevin if you have have questions about the job, the company, or anything else.  These guys really are two of the most stand-up people you will ever meet and I'm sure they'd be happy to answer your questions or give you some pointers for improving your chances at landing a gig.

Marketing experience is highly recommended but isn't 100% required.  We would anticipate that any serious candidate would have at least a bachelor's degree.  Willingness to relocate to Chicago is extremely important, although extraordinary candidates who cannot live in Chicago may be considered on a case by case basis.

I'm back.  Back on the wagon that is.  I know, it's a day early, but we got a keg for the Super Bowl and it's sitting in my kegerator ten feet from my chair so I have given in.  I've had an amazingly productive month.  I worked hard, worked out a lot, ate reasonably well, and am feeling really good about life in general.

-I won 49k at poker.  About 60 in NLHE and -11 in PLO.  I probably ran above expectation but I played well also.  I can remember three instances where I didn't think I was playing my best.  One was earlier today when I just didn't really feel like playing and I was basically just calling way too much.  Another was in a 4.5 hour heads up session vs Mahatma where I should have quit him after 2-3 hours.  He was playing better than me and I knew it but didn't quit. That cost me about 10k.  The last one was when I was up at 4am because I had a really stressful day and couldn't sleep.  I basically gave some mid stakes PLO guy 4k playing like an asshole.  Anyway, 50k months are fine by me, especially considering I spent about 7 days traveling and thus not being able to play any poker.

-I spent the last 3 days in Dallas for some CardRunners meetings.  It's really incredible how much this company is changing.  It's not always easy, but we are doing a pretty good job building out our company.  I am learning a lot and I am confident that someone will want to hire me at some point in the future.  Or I'll just keep doing this, we'll see.  We have some pretty ambitious goals for 2009, we'll see if we get there.

-I'm going to Vegas in a few weeks for work stuff, then back out there in early March with Melissa for a getaway.  I'm going to teach her some poker before the trip and hit up the small stakes NLHE games with her.  That should be interesting.  Andrew, Spud, and myself are also planning a trip to Asia in April.

-I am going to have a very degenerate Super Bowl Sunday, filled with drinking, gambling, and eating unhealthily.  Starting Monday it is back to business and I have a lot to do.

-Oh yeah, the rail has been clowning on me hard.  People think I suck at poker because I was down 135k on my table ratings stats.  First, 56k of that was down to Eric Liu which was mostly from a CR video we did for fun.  Second, I lost a few buy-ins at 100-200 and some at 200-400 taking a shot when there was an amazing game.  Anyway, I'm back on my feet and I think the site has me down something like 50 or 60k now.  It's pretty funny how there are so many haters on the rail consitently clowning on me.  I've started chatting with the rail and shipping money to random supports to try to improve my street cred.  Maybe I'll get a fan base and I'll be cool like some of the jokers I don't envy.  Tableratings has helped me get more action though so that's a bonus.  Hopefully I'll have a good month again this month, but I don't think I'm going to be able to put in as many hands as I'd like.  

Alright, go Steelers and my squares

I just wrote up a blog entry and my internet crashed which left me without the blog entry.  Because I'm such a dedicated blogger I will re-blog.  Ironically enough, the blog I wrote is horrible and it's probably best I don't try to recreate it.  I'll just post some bullet points.

-I'm feeling great after not drinking this month (except for business dinners/functions where it's often seemingly inappropriate to not have a glass of wine or a cocktail).  It's amazing how productive and functional I feel on the weekends.  I've also lost weight by simply not drinking.  I've basically changed no other habits and I just started to work out this week.  The other day I had my first ever craving for a beer.  I never actually WANT to drink alcohol, it's just I'm used to drinking in certain situations.  You know, situations like being at a ballgame, at a bar, while watching a big sporting event, I feel like I'm just programmed to drink alcohol.  It's actually encouraging to realize that I don't really even miss drinking, it's more just out of habit than it is out of necessity.

-I drank last night.  I know, I know, I suck.  I went out for sushi with my friend Mork and then met up with Nutedawg, his gf, Robin_Ripper, Ezra, and Mork at good old Lincoln Station, aka the bar we went to when we weren't old enough to get into real bars.  I gave in and had two beers.  sigh.

-I'm going to the Killers concert tonight with Melissa.  That should be fun, it was a pretty cool Christmas present from her.

-Poker has been going pretty well this month.  I'm running above expectation for sure, but I'm also playing better htan I have in the past.  The main thing is that I'm playing my A game just about all the time, save for 10 minutes when I was tilted as hell playing 3-6 HU PLO.  I really believe that the reason I have had poker success was because I was always so focused on the bottom line.  I have some weird innate desire to make money and that drove me to be insanely focused on not only becoming the best player I could be, but playing my A game all of the time.  After having success playing and then having business income on the side, I really didn't seem to care too much about what happened day to day at the tables.  I believe I have solved that problem by sticking to my goal of writing down my account balance before and after every session I play.  Even though the money won or lost from each session has no bearing on my day to day life, I have the singular goal of having a bigger number on that sheet of paper each time I play.  Maybe I'm nuts, but it's really helping me focus.

This blog sort of sucks but it's the best I could muster up.  I'll do something better sometime.
 

So Burger King recently launched a new Whopper.  Apparently this Whopper is angry.  So angry that it's name is the Angry Whopper.  I think it's more of a confused burger than anything else, as it's actually spicy, not angry.  You can read about it at the link I included if you want to know what's on the burger.  Okay I'll just tell you, spicy crispy onions, jalapenos, pepper jack cheese, bacon, tamatoes, lettuce, mayo, and spicy "angry sauce."  Sounds pretty good to me.

The interesting part here is the viral marketing campaign that goes along with it.  It's the best use of facebook for a marketing campaign that I've ever heard of.  If you install the BK Angry Whopper app, all you need to do is "de-friend" 10 friends on facebook and you get a coupon for a FREE Angry Whopper.  The reason this is particularly brilliant is that the app. actually sends a notice to your friends letting them know that 1) you de-friended them and 2) you did so to get a sandwich (an angry one, at that).

I will be de-friending 10 friends sometime in the near future to test this baby out.  Don't take it personally, I'm just a sucker for a good promotion.  This truly is a great example how companies can relatively cheaply use facebook to market their product.  It's funny because I've seen probably five ads for the Angry Whopper in the past week and I've laughed at all of them and generally ignored the messaging.  As soon as I heard about this I immediately vowed to take advantage of the offer, and more importantly, seriously looked at WTF an Angry Whopper is and came to the conclusion that it actually looks pretty good. 

Taylor

PS - I was paid by Burger King to write this.  Paid in Whoppers. 

PPS - I'm curious to see if anyone actually went out and either bought this product or de-friended 10 people because they saw this blog post.  If you did, post here and let me know!

According to this article, Wendy's appears to be revamping their breakfast.  This is a good decision, as Wendy's breakfast is at best the third best fast food breakfast, and I say that only having eaten fast food breakfast from three places in recent memory (MdD's, BK, Wendy's).  Actually as I am thinking about this, Hardees breakfast is definitely better than Wendy's too, but I haven't eaten there in like 7 years so I don't know if it has changed (doubt it).

This reminds me of a not-so-interesting story that I don't think I ever blogged about.  About a year and a half ago I decided to give up eating meat for one month, pretty much for no good reason.  I do stuff like this periodically, and yes, I know it's weird.  During my meat-less month, Wendy's announced they were now serving breakfast and had a big marketing blitz on TV for the news.  Of course all I month I bemoaned my terrible luck, and I openly resolved to eat Wendy's breakfast the first day I was back on the meat wagon.  So the first day of the new month rolls around and if I recall it was a Sunday morning.  Naturally there was at least one straggler from the night before sleeping on my couch, and he and one of my roommates decided to go to Wendy's at about 10am when we woke up.  It took us a really long time to get over there because I wasn't wearing my contacts and I made a wrong turn (yes Wendy's is less than a mile from my house, don't ask).

We roll in like 4 minutes before breakfast is up and I triumphantly was chanting things such as "WENDY'S BREAKFAST" and "MEAT!"  So I am second in line and my friend orders whatever crap they have on the menu.  He pays and then it is my turn.  I order the same thing, then the lady at the counter looks in the back and says "We are all out of that."  OK, cool, so I order something else.  She then says "Actually, we are finished serving breakfast."  It was ridiculous, it wasn't even 10:30, I had waited all month for this new breakfast meal, and I don't even think they were out of food, they just didn't want to heat up more of the stuff that wasn't already pre-made.

Anyway, I think I ate a burger instead and it was really good.  I guess that's not the point though.  The point is that when I eventually ate Wendy's breakfast it wasn't very good and I haven't been back since.  See you in 2011, Wendy's breakfast.

 I'm back home.  It's amazing how good it feels to be back in the old US of A after spending a few days elsewhere.  This isn't to say that I don't enjoy traveling or think I could live elsewhere, but when you are out of the US, you realize there are a lot of things that you normally take for granted.

 The first is the food.  Now airport food is notoriously bad just about everywhere, but it's a lot worse outside of the states.  For example, on the way out of Ireland, we figured we'd grab breakfast at the airport before our 9am flight.  When we got the the counter at the food court, I asked the girl at the counter, as I always do, "what's good here?"

As an aside, you'd be surprised how often people at the counter don't know what to say to this question.  Now think about this, assuming you've worked somewhere for more than a few days, you probably know what tastes the best, or at least doesn't have traces of rat feces in it.  If nothing else, you know what most people typically order.  Not to be sexist, but in my experience, most guys typically immediately reply "the burger" (or whatever is good).  I swear, when you ask young girls this question, they always seem to laugh, blush, and go, "Oh, I don't know, it's all pretty good...," as if they either haven't tried any of the food or not one item tastes noticably better to them than anything else.  

One time that sticks out was when I asked this question to a girl at Midway Airport in Chicago and the girl not only couldn't give me any advice, but seemed to think I was making fun of her or the establishment by simply asking "what's good here?"  The funny thing is that after giving me no advice whatsoever, I picked something random, and then after she picked up the food from under the heat lamp, she put a brownie in there that I didn't order and said "I put a little something extra in there for you."  Ezra was with me and we both couldn't believe what happened.  I think I "negged" her (for all you pick up artists, for everyone else, I'm told that's when you give a girl a remark that could either be a compliment or an insult but she can't figure it out ) into giving me some free food.

Anyway, I'm rambling here, so I ask this girl at the Dublin airport what's good and she obviously doesn't say anything substantive.  I ask her about the breakfast sandwhiches, which have eggs in them, and she goes "Ehh, are you planning on taking a long flight today?"  Apparently something about these sandwhiches made them not advisable to eat before a plane ride.  Good food to have in an airport, right?  

I wolfed down most of a half cold breakfast sandwhich from another vendor and then figured I'd just grab something at Heathrow.  Our new gate was extremely far away from where we landed so just headed over in that direction right away.  Now, in the US, people are so fat that smart proprietors have made food available pretty much any place where humans are breathing.  Apparently this is not so everywhere else.  There was literally no food anywhere near our gate, so I had to wait for some airplane food (which was actually pretty decent).

It's simple things like this that I miss about America when I leave the country.  It's basically nice to "know what you are going to get" in most instances.  From food to customer service to travel times, you pretty much know you'll get what you pay for, and if you don't, you know you can bitch about it enough until your next pizza is free.  These are the things I miss about America when I'm gone.

This might sound hypocritical, but I actually would like to live in Europe someday.  Maybe I'll get a job there sometime or just hang out for a few years, but it reallly would be nice to try something different before I'm old and have a family.  There are a lot of things that are really interesting about Europe.  The history, the culture, and the ability to travel to different countries so easily are things that I know I'd enjoy.

Anyway, I was going to talk a little bit about what I've been up to since I'm home but that will have to wait.  I'm mad at myself for not being a better blogger over the Holidays, but my laptop broke and I lost my office key so I literally didn't have computer access for like 10 days.  Any computer time I had was spent on work, unfortunately.  I'll be back blogging about normal life (read: boring) stuff for the next few weeks because I'm off the sauce and not traveling until the end of this month.

Have a good week,
Taylor