those crooked sob's



well, i like signing up for free magazines, but i made the mistake of not keeping track of my credit card bills. well, this is how they were able to scam me. i had about 7 free magazine subscriptions. and for one of them (and only one of them) i paid a small price for it so i gave them my credit card information. but it turns out that all these magazine subscriptions online are ALL centrally connected. when the rest other 6 free subscriptions ran out, and i didn't respond to any of their renew noticies, they just decide to charge me anyway to renew without my notice by obtaining my credit card information through the grapevine. fraud? smells of it. another trick they pulled is that when you sign up for a free subscription, they are supposed to add that free subscrpition to the one you're already paying for. what they did was just send me 2 issues of the same magazine. and another thing that makes me mad is that I had paid for Stuff magazine last year. Like $22. All the other magazines (excluding the double copy one) were okay. but for Stuff? that magazine could be called Shitt and it wouldn't change what I would expect from that magazine. so beware. they are sneaky like you wouldn't believe. make sure you cancel the magazine when your free subscrpitions run out. just by waiting for them to stop sending you renewal noticies won't work. i wouldn't be surprised if they didn't have your credit card info and the just got the billing and payment information that someone with your same last name is getting in the house and start charging that person.



card counting is coming along great. i can coun about 3/4 of 6 decks in 5 minutes with 0 errors. i need to dramatically cut that to probably less than a minute to actually try to use it without getting caught in the casinos. the program also has the memorization mode of all the basic combinations. same thing as the multi colored pocket sized card you buy in vegas. i always tried to memorize that table without much success...i'd always make it to somewhere in the middle of the card and give up. with this program, they drill you in filling it out like you do an excel sheet, and in about 2 hours spanned in 3 days, i was able to memorize every combination. just by using this program the last 2 days, i think i am 10x better in blackjack than i was before it. and i always thought i was descent at it. vegas, watch out!



the music pitch lessons are coming along nicely. i now have c major down (7,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,1) with 100% accuracy. i'm finding out that what makes it hard is the note that you hear before they play the note of the one you're trying to guess. its not just memorizing how the pitch sounds. it also has a lot to do with how the preceeding note affects your perception. if i just heard the note on its own, it some notes would be much easier, some notes would be much harder.



the appointment with the surgeon was rescheduled for this wednesday noon (today), but it just dawned on me that i probably won't be scheduling until the paperwork comes through, which might actually not be for 5 business days. i'll have to see if i can get the doctor to pull some strings for me.



things i'm looking forward to

when i'm able to return to normal activities after surgery:

celebrate

just walk on semi flat surfaces around la jolla (yes, i'm actually really looking forward to this)



when i'm pretty much done recovering:

vegas

moderate hiking

walking to work



when i'm fully recovered:

camping

back to the gym



i think the overall lesson i'm learning from all this is, when life is just ok, you shouldn't hesitate to change it up and make it great.