Current location:	home, as usual
Current mood:	tired
Current music:	Bobby Darin's "Rainin"

it's been a long time
I suppose I should format some of this, to make it more attractive. But hell, since when do I care if my writing is "pretty?" So I'll just go on as usual, 'cause really no one's watching anyway.

I don't even know when the last entry was, and haven't bothered to look. I'm not even sure where I was living at that time - was I in the rented Mesa house, or still in my Chandler house? No idea at all. I do recall there being a few rants about my so-called family - and nothing in that direction has changed. They're still assholes, and I still have no contact with any of them. For a while my mom and I were writing snail-mail letters, but that's stopped also. I tried inviting her here for dinner one night, and ended up wondering why I keep trying to have any kind of "relationship" with people who are utterly incapable. All that happens every time I see her is I end up wondering why I'm seeing her. Oh, and bad childhood (and later) memories come up as well. The bottom line is, nothing positive happens, except perhaps for my "reminder" of why I don't have contact.

The past 11 months I've been working for PokerStars, an online poker site. It all happened by accident. After moving to the rural desert and having no internet connection for over a year, WildBlue started up their satellite company, and I think we were one of their first customers in this area. Of course, the first place I went was to "my" poker site to play a quickie tournament. I beat this guy in a hand, and he said "fuck you, bitch." Nice welcome back, I thought. I was more disgusted at how a few idiots (ok, many idiots, but such is the world) insist on making their presence known, on the best poker site online, than I was personally offended by his comment. I hastily brought up Outlook Express and found "PokerStars" in my address book, and started an email. The subject line was "Nothing has Changed." It was a rather short email, basically saying how sad it was that such a great site has such bad chat problems, and I don't know why PS puts up with it, and on and on. I hit "send" and forgot about it.

The next day, I received this email:

DJ,

we do still take chat abuse seriously. I asked support to take further
look at your complaint.

Unfortunately the amount of abuse is much higher than we would like to
have on our site. One idea that we are considering is to assign a number
of players as chat monitors with special privileges. If you are interested
to know more I can send you details.

Kind regards,

David
PokerStars Management

A few emails went back and forth, and then one day "David" asks if he can call me. On the phone, he states that he needs to hire me - and soon after a contract was sent and signed. I'm still there. I designed the software moderators use, hire/train/fire moderators, of which there are now 38 (I think), soon to be upward of 45. So far we are on play money tables only, but there are plans to move onto the real money tables as well, in the next several weeks. I have an assistant also, who has been with PokerStars for 5 1/2 years, named Larry.

Did I ever, in my wildest dreams, think I'd be doing this for more money than I've ever made in my life? Hell no. I thought I'd be sitting here coming up with "things to do" for the rest of my life, not harried every day managing a huge staff and trying to keep a program running as smoothly as possible.

Like any company, there are a lot of really likable people, and there are those I could do without, but overall it's just about the best environment I've ever had for creating things like this. The owners understand the "too many cooks" rule, and have pretty successfully kept things humming by enforcing that. Thank heaven they are as clever as they are, or this would have taken a lot longer (assuming I'd have even lasted this long in any other kind of environment). It's also very nice to be working from home, saving gas, clothes, lunch, etc. money. It is much cheaper (and, I think, better for "society") staying home. One big downside (perhaps the only big downside) is that I've grown even more sedentary than I already was, and I'm feeling it. Is up to me, but I tend toward physical laziness anyway, so having a "sit down" job encourages that.

In a week or so I will be flying in my new puppy from a Florida kennel. His registered name is: TMC:P - DJ's Midnight Stars for Isai - very fancy, but can't think of a nickname yet. It will no doubt have nothing to do with the registered name. Perhaps this will force me off my arse - the necessity of training. Since this pup, like Mack, will be my Service Dog, he'll be going everywhere with me. The trouble is I don't go anywhere except the casino. He'll be the most unflappable casino dog ever, though a nervous wreck everywhere else . Hopefully I will not stay this physically inactive once he gets here.

There are details to catch up on here, but that's the main stuff. I will try to write more regularly, only because it's good, I think, to have this as a record. Not sure why, but what the heck - I've done more with less motivation, so, Full Speed Ahead.