Well, this is not really poker related (might be gambling related though) but it's fairly cool and since other people posts about their investments I guess I'll do that too. This is not investment advice, I have no background that gives a reasonable or even a only slightly unreasonably man any reason to think I know what I talk about as far as stock picking goes and basically what thewh00sel said;
Disclosure: I'm Long NUG.v I am not a professional investment adviser, and my opinions are not recommendations to purchase.
So this year I've made a lot of money in Sandstorm gold. It's a really nice company that delivers what it should and it has pretty much made sure that I'm still happy despite running 25k under ev on stars. Thus I've watched a few interviews with founder Nolan Watson, including this one:
This I learned.
1. He's religious. Not in the "I like little boys" kind of way but rather in the "God wants me to work hard"-kind of way. I have a friend who's religious in that way. I know how great religion is to motivate people to work hard.
2. He thinks that a good way to find good miners is to just see what people who knows what's up likes and then check that out.
Thus I decided that he knows what up and I should figure out what he and the rest of the top people in Sandstorm is involved in. One company I found and then bought shares in are Nulegacy Gold. They are searching for gold in two different places in Nevada. I'll not talk much more about that other then saying that a lot of people who, as far as I can tell, knows what up in the gold mining industry is involved and that I did like what I read when I spent 5 hours or so reading through most stuff on this home page and doing most of the due diligence I could think of. As far as I can tell it's a glorified and probably fairly +ev lottery ticket.
It's a very small company (http://www.nulegacygold.com/s/CorporateStructure.asp) but I still got rather suprised when I got an e-mail a few days after I signed up for their newsletter and bought a bunch of shares (about 3k's worth). It was a question. They asked "would you mind please letting me know how you discovered NuLegacy to help guide our marketing efforts?" signed by their CEO. I wasn't sure if it was just some standard E-mail (probably) or if I was just the first in Sweden to sign up and trigged the curiosity of someone. Well, I've been very lazy with my poker playing the last week so I figured the least I could do was to take a break from playing computer games with Longple and Arirang and write an answer. It was a rather witty one describing my various investment adventures and other things including my unholy worship of Nolan Watson. I did not expect their chairman to answer it. They did, however, and on a Saturday.
Despite the fact that I did give them some shit for some things he wrote me back and explained some things, even took time to link me some stuff about their most recent private placement and other things. I also pointed out that the chairman used to work with had the same name as a very stupid looking company with a homepage that might be the ugliest thing ever. The chairman told me that the "right" company had the legal right to that name so I assume that might be able to fix it or at least get that god awful website of the web.
Anyway, I found it rather amussing so I figured I'd put the story out there since I have not blogged in a while. Next post might be about something like "5 reason everyone should love Longple".
That was some great as fights. I almost shit my pants when Belfort had him in that armbar. God damn grapplers screwing up though, both Oliviera, Thoresen and Hettes could've done better. Thank god for Vinny
Lacking anything else to do while I'm waiting for the lust to gamble to return (which will probably take about half an hour or so) I thought I could try to enrich the literary knowledge of LP by recommending one of my favourite authors. Anyone who consider himself as having any kind of humour should have read at least a few books by Terry Pratchett, preferably from his discworld series. Anyone who wants a background of the guy could read up on him on wiki. The guy has Alzheimer's disease and decided to handle that by making the BBC documentary Choosing To Die. Anyone who wants to watch it can find it on youtube:
Anyway, the guy has written some of the funniest books of all time and I think I've had more laughs reading them then from anything else, and I hope he can write one or two more books before it's all said and done. He also seems like a very nice old man so I wish him all the best.
Here's a few of my favourite quotes by him:
"Over the centuries, mankind has tried many ways of combating the forces of evil... prayer, fasting, good works and so on. Up until Doom, no one seemed to have thought about the double-barrel shotgun. Eat leaden death, demon... "
"The pen is mightier than the sword ... if the sword is very short, and the pen is very sharp."
"He could think in italics. Such people need watching. Preferably from a safe distance."
Anyway, if you like fantasy and/or stuff like "the Hitch Hikers Guide To the Galaxy" you should definitely check him out.
So I have a credit card. I don't like buying shit on credit but it's golden and looks cool. And I got it for free since I had a lot of money in the bank (and still have some of it left! Yea! Go me!). The bank wanted me to do various crap with my money but everything they suggested seemed like it'd be a great freeroll for them and fairly crappy for me so that card was pretty much the only thing I got after having a meeting with my "Personal bank contact" or whatever the hell they call it. Anyway, I figured that a golden card should attract chicks. That was the plus side. The minus was that I was, and still is, in a committed relationship. Whatever, maybe I could get sex more often, right?
Anyway, turns out the damn thing is useful for something. My regular card did not work with bluefire poker so I just used this card to sign up since my man crush on Galfond could not be cooled down by anything less. So basically the only thing on my credit card bill each month was like 29 US or something for my bluefire subscription. Today I got another one and it struck me as odd that I still gave them money every month despite not really be able to remember that I ever renewed that thing.
So I sent an E-mail and asked them.
They replied that "oops, we've been taking zee monies for 4 months without giving you anything for it... Can't pay it all back due to anti fraud regulations and crap, do you want a free 6 month subscription?" I did want one. I'm happy with that deal. They replied really fast too so I just wanted to state that I like how they handle things. Also, now I can finally cancel my golden card and only use it to have something to flash in my valet.
Other then that poker is going ok. Unibet has turned on the ethernal doomswitch and I keep turning top2 + flushdraws 150bb deep vs bot set and losing every damn time. Up a ton on stars though, despite running below equity. I think something like 14k+ plus a bunch of points. Not bad for someone who played PLO50 a couple of months ago.
Did BJJ today. Felt tired as crap but pulled through due to "tired Dusty stubbornness". I'm probably the most boring grappler in the world when I'm tired. My gameplan when tired is something like:
If on my back: Go to rubberguard. Find out I'm not having shit for angles. Remember that I'm limber as fuck and go for (and mostly fail) omoplatas anyway.
If on top: Put lots of weight on top and hope it's uncomfortable. Wait until they fuck up. Go for, and mess up due to being slow as hell, armbars and try to get into full guard when they turn shit around. See "If on my back".
When I'm not half dead I'm not doing stupid rubber guard shit, but my top game sucks anyway. I seriously managed to miss enough armbars from month that I'm fairly sure I have a higher success rate just going for mounted gogoplatas, and that sure as hell ain't a solid "go-to-move". I have a hard time thinking I'll ever be more then a halfway decent grappler, but it's fun as hell.
One of the people I roll a lot with is a girl who's a 60kg purple belt. I'm about 100kg. I should probably weight like 85 if I was in good shape, but it's still a big weight difference. She still owns me for the most part due to her being really, really good. She lost the finals of the Swedish championships in submission grappling last year to some girl who went on to survive for something like 7 minutes against Kyra Gracie in adcc later that year. Anyway, she's in the hospital now due to running around at work with a pencil in her mouth(!). Dunno what the f happened but apparently they need to sedate her to fix her mouth or something, so that's kind of weird and I hope everything turns out well for her. While she looks like a monster she's actually really nice.
