ARE WE PROGRAMMED?

I could not sleep last night. It was the bed and probably the pajamas I had. They were too hot and the damn bed is too soft. Combine that with having napped yesterday and you've got a low form of insomnia. I kept tossing and turning and then woke-up just a few hours later.

Unable to sleep any further, I went downstairs and had breakfast. Then Beejay called me to discuss his case. After encouraging him to go for it and fight the power, I finally fell asleep again. I caught up and woke-up for lunch. It felt good.

After lunch, I had a long conversation with my cousin Rachelle. We can get into pretty philosophical discussions and this one centered on how we react to external stimuli, or more specifically, how we react to people in our lives. Are the genes we carry so strong that we are unable to react differently than how we want? Or are we able to control these impulses and make choices that are different than how we are?

I brought up Star Wars because I felt it was a perfect example. The Force can be used for good or evil. It's Luke's decision to become a Jedi while his father's was to be a Sith. But Darth Vader is Luke's father, so does that necessarily make Luke evil? Of course it doesn't.

But I have to admit, I was pretty surprised that my cousin had such strong feelings about people in her life. It surprised me because I finally realized that she has always had strong feelings - she just doesn't express them very much. This trait is interesting because it can be a lot more difficult to understand than someone who is outspoken. And at the end of the day, all I'm really trying to move toward is understanding.

Then I went to get an oil change. I went Purrfect Auto in Diamond Bar and the asshole guy who ripped me off was there. This guy changed my radiator tubes when they were perfectly fine so I gave him some shit about doing it. So when I asked for an oil change, he asked which one I'd like, good, better or best which ranged from $20 to $40. I showed him the coupon I had from the Pennysaver and said I wanted the $15 special. He said that they didn't have any more of that kind of oil and that I had to come back tomorrow.

I left and went to another place where I'd gotten my oil change but they were charging $30 for a standard one. I left again and thought about driving to Brea, but decided I would just go home and go to Purrfect again tomorrow. I hope that guy isn't there so I can ask if they did indeed run out of that oil.

When I returned, I started working on backing up all the photos that were on the PC's hard drive. I couldn't figure out how to burn a DVD though. It was really easy transferring everything to the network drive, but burning a DVD had some issues. I had to download some program that allowed the old-ass Sonic RecordNow! to recognize the DVD burner. For some reason, the DVD burner wasn't being recognized it. After running the program and re-starting the PC, it worked! I love it when a plan comes together.

After backing-up all the photos, it was time to play some poker. I had breached the $90 mark again last night and was anxious to get it up even further. Unfortunately, after an almost three hour session, I ended up crashing down to $83. It's not a huge loss, but when you're playing limit at these micro-levels, it's big on a relative scale.

I've said it once and I'll say it a thousand times. Limit poker is incredibly frustrating at times. No matter how good your hands are, you still need to get lucky and without a good flop, you're pretty much screwed. I need to work on limiting my losses in limit poker because I'll sometimes get these bad streaks that I just keep fighting against. Perhaps it's just better to take a loss and move on, just like in golf. The thing about golf though is that you have another hole you can play, whereas in poker, you just have to quit to stop the loss. That means no more hands as you wonder what the hell just happened.