Bone Marrow

A couple of life times ago, way back when I was a freshman at MIT, there was a guy on the swim team that I really looked up to.  His name was Stefan, he was one of the captains, senior, nice to everyone, just top to bottom a great guy.  Anyway, some way or another he had found his way into what was at the time called I think the National Bone Marrow Registry, and some way or another he was a match for somebody and everything just fell into place and he basically just saved a kid's life one random Friday afternoon.  Like, no big deal, no fanfare, no nothing, he just showed up at the meet Saturday morning with bandages on his hips kind of looped out on vicodin, anchored the 4x100 freestyle relay to victory even though our coach didn't want to let him swim and that was sort of the end of it.  Sort of. 

Being a young and impressionable mind I signed up for the registry immediately, giving a blood sample I suppose (although I have zero memory of this event).  Over the years they've managed to keep track of me (when you're running something like that you kind of have to be good at keeping track of people, I suppose), and other than that there wasn't much to tell until this morning, when I got a call from a nice woman at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute telling me I was a preliminary match for a teenager with severe aplastic anemia.  Nothing definite has happened yet, but I filled out a health survey (that I'll pass with flying colors unless they really hold me up for Danielle living in Africa for 8 weeks), and after that apparently will go one of three ways, which are "we need another test", "we found a better match", or "you may have already won!"

I'm not really sure why I'm writing this post, other than it's something very interesting that could be about to happen to me, and to encourage everyone reading to sign up.  I'm no expert, but "lots" of people die from conditions that could be treated (or even cured) by a relatively simple bone marrow transplant.  The more people that are in the registry, the more matches will be found.  And that's just swell.  As for me, I of course feel good about the opportunity to help someone, but I've been curiously emotionless about the whole thing so far.  I guess it's because there really is nothing I can do and no decision that I'll have to make.  I'll either match and do it, or won't and won't.  If everything in life was that simple I'd sure have a lot less stress :)

Wall Street Journal

And they claim to have a source

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304723304577365080089824216.html

Full Tilt News

I cannot imagine there is anyone out there who reads my blog who has not heard this yet, but supposedly stars is buying full tilt and paying everyone back

http://www.parttimepoker.com/tapie-deal-to-buy-full-tilt-poker-fails-pokerstars-to-the-rescue

Investing Update

For anyone interested, here is my original post regarding getting started in the stock market, in which I espoused a basic strategy of owning as few ETF's as possible and keeping costs low.

For the first, I don't even know, very long time that I was a professional poker player, my net worth remained pathetically stagnant.  I started in August 2008, and for the first 10 months or so just won and won and won and won, but during that time basically lost my ass in the stock market.  Then from June 2009 until late 2010 I pretty much didn't win any money whatsoever (in retrospect it's SHOCKING that I'm still at this), but my investments did quite well.  So on the whole for the first I suppose 2.5 years of my poker career I really didn't get anywhere.  I exacerbated the problem by not studying enough and continuing to not play 40 due to very short term bad results (even though I was rolled for the game) and a general fear of going quote unquote "broke", which to me just meant losing more than some arbitrary amount that I set for myself to lose.  There were lots of other reasons I didn't succeed that I've chronicled at length here, but that's not the point.  The point is that over the last 16 months I've actually managed to win at poker AND have the bottom not fall out of the stock market, and therefore for the first time since my days at Oracle I've actually been accumulating money.  This is all kind of pathetic if I think about it too long, but for now I'm just enjoying it and looking at those first 2.5 years as a learning experience.  Anyway, here is an update on the holdings of my portfolio, updated a few days ago when I purchased some more of the international funds

Domestic Equities

IVV - 27%
VO - 17%
VB - 15%

International Equities

VEU - 15%
VWO - 16%

Bonds

BND - 10%

Obviously this thing is very equities heavy and specifically very focused on the United States.  I'm planning to move away from that over the next year or so, adding to the international and bond pools more so than the domestic equities.  And the money is split pretty haphazardly over two accounts, a tax advantaged IRA and a standard brokerage account, which isn't great.  But the point is that I've kept up with it and kept it simple enough that at no point have I thrown up my hands and gotten frustrated, which to me is just a big honking win.  I've also done the beginning research into buying a rental property, which to be honest is just a daunting and terrifying endeavor that I'm not really sure I can pull off.  However, that is how you see normal people end up with comfortable income streams in their 40s and 50s, so I should probably give it another long hard look while money is almost free and prices are bouncing around what hopefully should be the bottom.  But realistically I needed to get that done before the summer started to happen since everybody I know is getting married and I'm going to have no time whatsoever.  So for now I'm going to keep my head down and try to keep up my winning ways.

This Actually Happened

So I roll up to the bike at 10:30am and what do I find? Two players eating breakfast wondering why there is no game. Normally I'd bail immediately, but these players are extremely special so I hang out for a while to see if the game can go. After 15 minutes the woman calls commerce and is off; she is one of the great hit and run artists of all time, and her loss is no great one as she is also a stark raving bitch. She is just amazing, quitting after as little as 15 minutes if she wins but playing overnight to chase a loss. As an aside the only player who can compete with her in this regard played a 30 hour session this week....

So anyway she bails and it's just me and my buddy AA and to be frank things are looking grim. But this guy is world class so I resolve to teach him Chinese poker and pray for some action to walk in the door. I text everyone while explaining the game to him. And in the conversation with me and the dealer he explains his problem with the NBA and PGA Tour, in a thick accent:

"I can't watch basketball because it's all monkeys running around. And the golf? The same thing, the top player is a monkey"

It's 2012, in Southern California, and this guy is openly referring to black people as monkeys. And I have to be nice to him to try and win $1000 today. I mean...really? REALLY? I excuse myself to the starbucks, re-steel myself and come back to play an hour of Chinese. Eventually we give up and move the game to commerce, where we start a 2nd 40 and I Jesus seat him as he loses five $400 buy ins in 90 minutes. There is some justice...but just some.