Brenham - What do people do in Brenham?

Repeated Action – Jen doesn’t post for a very long time.

I’m going to start out be admitting what a slacker I am. Everyday I make some sort of small mental note that I will update my blog, and of course the days turn into weeks – which turn into months. *Dust off keyboard*

Poker front:

I’ve been spending more time in the poker arena. I play at a few regular games and got back in to the online poker play as well. I took a hiatus from online poker since my computer’s memory board got toasted a month and ½ ago during a storm that lasted approximately 1 hour. I started to smell something burning and when I removed the case on the computer…there was a steady stream of smoke flying up from the motherboard. It died…sucks. I now have a computer thanks to a good friend, Phil, who hooked me up with a great system. Thanks Phil!

The 2005/2006 WSOP Circuit started in August. I am going to head to Caesars Indiana – Oct. 19-Nov. 2, 2005. There are a couple of events I want to play – the LIPS Ladies No Limit Hold’em Event and one of the NL events that are the lower buy ins ~ 500.00 or 1,000.00. The payouts are nice if you place in the money for your investment. I might even be able to get into those events for a smaller investment through satellites. It’s still a month and a week away, so have practice time to tune up my tournament play.

I’ll admit, I probably have no chance at placing in the money – but I think my chances are the highest in Indiana compared to the Vegas or Atlantic city circuit events. I mean, “Who plays poker in Indiana?”

Come on’ poker gods….keep me safe.

My friend, Michelle, is going on vacation to see her parents in Indiana, so she'll be at the circuit event as well. I hope I don't have to play at her table though - the last tournament we play at in Austin, she took me out. We both flopped the same set - my kicker sucked. She flopped a boat (little did I know). Mental note: Never play with crap kickers...and I deserved being eliminated for playing that crap. Michelle won the tourney - she deserved my chips.

Hmm, I just thought of something. I remember getting knocked out of a tournament with another girlfriend of mine a few months ago. Her name is Kat and she did awesome and placed in the money! She deserved my chips as well.

We need more female players in Poker. Kat should be back here in Austin dominating the poker scene. Hmmm, she should also be playing in the circuit event in Indiana....Kat, "Get back to Austin!"

Billiard front:

I’ve decided that I want to move to another level in Billiards. I’ve been playing in two leagues the past couple of years and I’m at a point where I either need to focus on improving my game or give it up. I choose, focusing on my game! I’m a nervous player – let the mental part of the game interfere. I’m trying to overcome that fear, just can’t figure out how. I was speaking to a girlfriend of mine and she said, “Jennefer, you need to start playing larger tournaments.” I have played the smaller local tournaments in Austin and it’s time for me to branch out to something larger.

Ok, I’ll try it – prolly get spanked royally my first few, err, 100 times. We are going to play in the HUNTER CLASSICS AMATEUR WOMEN'S TOUR

Sept. 24-25
Legend’s Billiards and Grill
Brenham, Texas • (979) 251-7665

It’s a 30.00 investment there will be about 60 – 80 female players. Most of them are amazing shots and my goal = not to be the first person out. The most amazing part of this is that The Hunter Classics Tour is a stepping stone to the WPBA.

The tournament format is race to 7. True double elimination (ie: race to 7 in semi-final and if necessary two races to 7 in the finals. Saturday is alternating break and Sunday is winner break.

I’m looking forward to the event – Christy, Michelle and I are going to drive up Saturday morning ~ 3 hours. We are going to stay overnight to play in the 2nd chance tournament on Sunday if we get eliminated from the main event. It gives us the opportunity to redeem ourselves. Christy and Michelle are both amazing shots and I learn from watching them. Hopefully their skills will rub off on me. 3 Girls from Austin hitting the big ol’ town of Brenham. What does Brenham have in store for us? *shrugs*

Well, since the population of Brenham is , 15K - I can't imagine there being a ton of attractions. The only thing I know: Blue Bell Creamery - um, wait nevermind - only have weekday tours. Ugh.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

This has nothing to do with poker or pool, but his speech made a huge impact and made me realize that I made one of the best decisions (toughest) of my life this week. I hope you enjoy this as much as I did.

This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005 at Stanford.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on.

Let me give you one example: Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation - the Macintosh - a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I retuned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

Five Hundred and Twenty Six

526: Yep, that is the record for Willie Mosconi in 1954. He pocketed 526 balls continuously before missing a shot.

Straight Pool - this has become one of my favorite forms of pool. I went up to a local pool hall last night just to shoot some balls around. A player came up to me and asked if I wanted to shoot a game and said it would be my choice of game.

I thought about it for a second and asked if he shot straight pool? He looked at me and said, "don't we all". This was the first time in over 5 months that I had the opportunity to shoot this game. This is one of my favorite forms of pool, "straight pool", in which the player can shoot at any ball he likes. Once 14 (of the 15) ball are made, a new frame begins. To keep a run going, you have to make your shot and attempt to break the balls open with the cue ball breaking up the rack. Most of the skill in straight pool is selecting the order of balls to play, leaving a good break shot, and most importantly playing a safety shot with there is no attractive shot.

He dominated the table. It was pretty discouraging, but as Mosconi once said, "Don't waste time. Only play people that play better than you play."

So, gotta practice gotta practice gotta practice - then maybe I won't always have to be the onlooker. *filed to myself* Get the hunger back Jen!

Playing Pool with God

Let's talk about some pool. This is one of my favorite pictures...I've always said that if there isn't a pool hall in heaven, i'm not going. As you can see, there is is a table.

I was shooting the other night before a match and my cue was on auto pilot. The cue ball rolled perfectly on the green and all I had to do with my cue was point and shoot. (note: she is a female cue). This is shooting under no pressure - just fun. Now the turning point for me....

It was my turn to shoot a match, and all of a sudden I couldn't make a ball no matter how hard I tried. I couldn't even vision the balls making it to the pocket. I stood up, walked away as my opponent shot and took a deep breath. I realize the mental part of the game had taken over - worst part, is I let it.

My weaknessness range from facing a difficult shot, to dealing with an opponent's good fortune, to playing a player much better than myself, to playing in front of an audience --

How each situation affects you is really up to yourself. If I let myself get discouraged when the opponent gets more than his/her fair share of rolls (due to the pool gods), nobody but myself is to blame when it adversely affects my concentration for the rest of the game or match.

Another common mental barrier experienced by myself is getting nervous when playing before an audience or playing an important match against a much stronger opponent. I know we all get nervous -- even the best in the world. What separates the winners from the losers is that the winners handle that nervousness to the extent that it is no longer a barrier in their way to success.

To wrap it up, I blew the most important game of the season at Slick Willies. Not only did I let myself down, I let down the people that are the most important to me in my billiard world, my teammates [Dave, Patrick, Clay, Michael, Scott, Ronnie & Phil - without you guys, the league wouldn't be as fun or challenging]. I made horrible decisions, didn't shoot with confidence and doubted every single shot. It is okay to feel edgy before or during an important match, as long as you still perform well under those circumstances. This I failed to do. This was our playoff match to make it to regionals. It was the rubber match and the hill game. I had no doubt that we would dominate at regionals if we got there.

I made a promise to myself to never play like that again and let them down a second time. Getting over that mental barrier...that my friends, I need to learn.

I'm really back this time....

Jen's back...

Sorry I have been so out of touch. I've been working on a couple of projects in my world and put everything else on hold. Now back to reality and I plan to post regularly from here forward. I'm notorious for falling of the earth, but know that I always come back.

It's been awhile

It's been a long time since I've posted and my apologies for being disconnected. I plan to start posting on a more regular basis starting in February of 2005.

Tilt is in the pipeline

ESPN has announced its new gambling TV show, "Tilt". Brian Koppelman of Rounders was developing a series with ESPN. It was originally pitched to be about college gambling, but the series that made it is about the World Series of Poker!

The dramatic series will air on Thursday nights beginning Jan. 13 (9 ET), with one-hour shows that will explore the drama of high-stakes gambling, as well as the action away from the table where greed and revenge fuel conflict, power plays and deal making. Link for more info.

Introducing Alita - Battlefield Angel

Who is Alita?
Alita is the girl that Ido finds in the scrapyards and brings home without knowing what he has really found. That it is the most beautiful girl ever and she will group up to be the best you can be. Alita is a dreamy and always struggling to find out who she really is. Alita has no memory from her past and doesn't really know how she had the gift of knowing the martialart Panzer Kunst or the "Armorted Arts". It is said to be the most powerful of the various fighting techniques developed for Humanoid Cyborgs.

Alita Continued....

Since she discovers her knowledge of the Panzer Kunst, she decides to be a "Hunter Warrior" just as Ido is. It is this decision that will trigger the whole new life for Alita. Alita is very kind and fair to all people she meets not judging from color of the skin or if the person is rich or poor. Alita's struggling for knowing about Tiphares "The Cloud City" and the scrapyard will soon prove not be be an easy task. Along the way she will be kind of finding hersleft and will meet many people good and evil, but they will all be part of something bigger and have some part in Alita's destiny.

Mental Game of Billiards

The mental aspect is actually MORE important than the physical. A smart, focused, intense player with limited physical skills can beat a dumb, unfocused, slack-ass with a perfect stroke every single time. Pool is not sumo - physical skills are far less important than being able to out-think your opponent. In the world of professional pool, almost everyone has a great stroke. What separates them on any given day? Their ability to think their way through racks, their efforts of concentration, their sheer will-power. Any monkey can learn to stroke a cue in a straight line. It takes a lot more commitment to bear down on every single shot, to get that focus going and perform the same action over and over again. Not only are those parts of the mental game important, so is learning how to focus, how to concentrate, and how to use that knowledge during a match. And although I've seen many a player blow up because of a mistake, pros generally have an even demeanor. This allows them not to focus on the negative, and to allow mental energy to be spent on the table, not stewing over a missed shot.

The best players, though, aren't the ones blessed with just a perfectly straight stroke. The best players aren't the ones with 200 IQs. The best players have the best combination of physical and mental talents. In other words, a great mind coupled with a great stroke will combine to create one hell of a player. Just as I said above, though, all other things being equal, like equipment, environment, and stroke, the intangible that separates players is the ability to use their minds.

Kara and Andrew get Engaged!

MGM Grand Casino, Las Vegas - August 23, 2004

What started out as our annual trip to Vegas for APA Billiards turned in the the most memorial day of their lives. Andrew asked Kara to spend the rest of her life with him during a late night, romantic dinner at MGM Grand. I'd have to say that there are no two people that are more suited (Ace/Queen of Hearts) for eachother.

Congratulations to you both
On the joy you have found with eachother,
I know the days ahead will be filled with eternal love.

Gods Blessings are upon you.