Umm... See 853

What aspect of the TPR story did I neglect to discuss?

I have lots I could say about my employment there, but I'm not sure it matters to too many people. I did some very good things there and thought certain aspects of the company and its programs were great, but left with a very bad taste in my mouth for several reasons (one of which Ive even agreed not to discuss, though I'd like to). If anyone wants to know anything in particular, ask away.

Re 851: Yes, I answered that, though not in a way that makes me very happy.

Re SHEOD: It's about voting — a way to prevent last minute wagons, which Scott (with others) nbelives are usually bad. I don't like it because I think last minute wagons, while often leading to mislynches, are among the richest sources of information villagers have.

Re finding time for werewolf: It's a problem. I would like to see more slow games run, and plenty of smaller games — and I think a number of moderators have been taking up that baton. But there's no getting around it: playing werewolf well is time consuming.

Just wondering what eventually caused you to leave. But if you've agreed not to discuss it I understand.

Feel free to PM if you feel this doesn't belong in the well. Or feel free to ignore it altogether; it is just my curiosity.

I have a couple questions left to answer (re, e.g., my leaving TPR); I'll get that, and any remaining questions, when I get back from my grandmother's in a few days. At that point I'll be wrapping up the well, so if there are other questions that I've missed and you'd still like addressed, please remind me of them.

Happy Thanksgiving, for those who are celebrating it.

Happy Thanksgiving, Atak.

Bump for TPR story and update on Atakdog, Esq.

I, too, am very interested in the rest of the story.

I followed a link in the "Best of 2+2" to this well a few weeks ago and discovered POG. It is one of the most interesting threads I have read on 2+2 in all my time of lurking. And POG is a wonderful corner of the forums that I look at first these days.

How did the tax preparer gig work out for you? I know you posted that the hours were extreme, especially in May. Besides that, would you recommend such a job? Is the money decent?

.

Bump

very interesting post, good job

Didn't go to class today so I got bored and read this thread (only's Atak's posts but basically the same thing).

Basically posting to ask for an update with life: Are you working? How are things with your son?, anything else you feel is relevant.

Cool thread, thanks.

Urgh.

There's good news and bad; I will get to a complete(ish) answer to this, and to the other late questions that I've been ignoring for approximately forever, later on. Coincidentally I'm having some trouble thinking clearly today, but I'll pull it together, and the focus will be good.

How and why did you acquire a stalker??

I'm not sure how much I should, or will, say about that one; let me think about it.

lol

sorry

So say you, me, brr, and Wyman are partnering for a swiss at a National event. Who should partner with whom?

Nah, please don't worry about it. Answering will be feel good (once I've done it), and I appreciate the interest.

the obvious solution is to coin flip before each round, have agreements based only on leads and carding, and to play Bludgeon (all bids are to play: 1 level openings are 11-14, 2 level are 15-18, 3 level 19+; all doubles are penalty).

If you were to die tomorrow, how satisfied would you be with how you lived your life?

OK, so I guess I'll view these updates as my 30K well...
Not. That's easy; the question is how close I am to that being different.

atakpup is coming along well — considerably better, even, than the last time I talked about him. And frankly, I take a good chunk of credit for this. But there is so much left to do for him: to a large extent it's too late to have an effect on his basic personality, but I can help put him in a position to be successful (at whatever he tries to do) and maybe even to be happy. I haven't done that yet, but give me a few more years and maybe I will. Having done that (if I do), I'll feel that I accomplished something and left the world a better place than I found it; if I were to die today that test clearly would not be satisfied.

Apropos of that, the major change in my life is something I've mentioned before in other threads but hasn't appeared in this well: As of a month and a half ago, it seems that pup will be living with me full time, come the beginning of next school year. His mother seems to have given up her resistance to the idea that his expressed desire to be with me instead of her is just a passing fancy or a transient phase, so she has started talking to him about how he'll be with me next year. There won't be a formal custody battle (which I've always wanted to avoid), just a simple handover.

I believe this change is good for pup, of course, but it's also a reflection of how I think he's growing up. He has decided that being with me is better even though his understanding of the situation (whether correct or not yet to be determined) is that it means he will be spending the school year with me in Chicago and giving up the fun, exciting summers traveling and playing with me to spend them instead with his mother, who rarely travels with him or does much else that's fun or interesting. He also believes that he won't be spending Christmases with me and my very cool, very fun, very generous family (typically in New Hampshire) any more, to do it instead with his mother and her (boring, fairly Christian [which he's not]) family instead. But even though he sees it as meaning he's pretty much giving up everything fun in his life, he wants to do it anyway, because he has come to understand that the freedom he will have with me (I recognize that he is a teenager; his mother doesn't) and most importantly the encouragement and assistance I will give him in academics, are worth it in the long run. He has his mind set on being an engineer, and understands who difficult that will be if he goes to high school in a backwater town with a mother who two years ago stopped helping him with his homework because she couldn't handle it and who won't let him go to the library without accompaniment. I think this reflects a maturity level beyond his years, and I'm proud of him for it.

That impending change, in turn, leads to what's different in my life, for what's better and worse. By the time pup gets here I must be settled into a stable life conducive to being a single (time to admit it's inevitable, at least for the next few years) father. That stable life also has to support the likely need for private school (it's too late to test into magnet schools for next year, and it's not clear he'd make it anyway as he doesn't test terribly well). Basically, it means I have to be working as a lawyer, which means... well, anyone who has read this well understands what it means in terms of overcoming barriers.

I thought this was all good. I thought what would happen now that I need to do my law stuff for someone else is that I would just do it — I'm terrible at doing things for myself but pretty good at doing them for others. But that hasn't happened. Instead, I went into my post-atakpup funk (which has been a twice-yearly part of my life for as long as we've been doing this) and have gotten pretty much nothing done since he went home at New Year's. And now, getting nothing done matters even more than usual, so I get depressed about that, and when I'm depressed I get even less productive... and there we have my usual spiral of failure, manifesting itself at a time when things really have to be different. I've had some very bad days, and there are more to come. Somehow I have to beat this, but I really don't understand how.

Well, that was a ramble, but anyone who's gotten this far knows that's what I do.

+1

is better

Excellent post Atak. It has glimpses of great happiness combined with moments of really touching sadness aswell, like this whole thread.

Good luck with achieving what you feel you need to, although I'm sure that when push comes to shove, you won't need it.

I've played with wyman but not you or brr, so I'll speak in the abstract; for really doing it (which I guess we are?), we can try to apply the principles.

I do well (relative to my own skill level, I mean), with partners I feel comfortable with. That's most players, once I get used to them, with a few exceptions. The biggest (and perhaps most unexpected) exception is that, patient though I am, I suck when I'm playing with a partner who is slow. Appropriately or not, I think I worry so much about slowing down the game that if my partner is tanking a lot I get nervous and upset, causing me to hurry to make up for it (which is bad), to lose focus (very bad), and to convey that nervousness to partner (probably worst of all, because I think one's obligation to be a good partner is the most important concern at the table).

Assuming reasonable tempo, I get along with most partners. (I'm also assuming none of the people in question are mean, to partner or opps, or prone to criticism; I don't tolerate those things at the bridge table, which is my happy place, pretty much.) But some don't get along with me, and that matters too. For example, I am not a disciplined bidder, and won't be changing in that regard. I don't particularly care if rebidding my suit "promises" six; I make it if it's the right bid, and need a partner who can accept that. On the other hand, I have reasons for my bids, logical reasons grounded in a very good understanding of theory, and don't appreciate people taking flyers because their gut told them to do it.

My card play is worse than my bidding, by a long shot. A good partner for me can give me very difficult bidding problems to solve and I will do it to partner, too — it's crucial to think back to bids I could have made, but didn't, on previous rounds — but will try to avoid it on defense because I get them wrong sometimes. I do signal, and read signals, so I expect a partner who takes them seriously. I can't play fancy discards, however, without screwing them up.

Ceteris paribus I like playing an extremely complicated card — but only with someone who will not mess it up; failing that, I'm OK with mama-papa 2/1. I don't play conventions for conventions' sake — I need a reason to add something. I prefer weak notrumps but won't play them with someone who won't think about the implications on later rounds. And so on. (My favorite card was a super-aggressive canapé system with relays in nearly all auctions, but my partner never could draw higher-order inferences about complex sequences so I realize playing it was irrational.)

With that all understood, I am willing to leave the decision to others. Bridge is for fun, even in the Vanderbilt (please, someone, I need a team that needs me for that) or the Reisinger (which those who read the bridge thread know I finished dead last in back in November). I am happier at the bridge table than anywhere else, I think, so as long as we're pleasant, happy, and doing our best, I'm pretty much good with whatever.

Your son is lucky to have such a conscientious and caring father, atak.