Business is Picking Up, BY GAWD!

In my natural habitat

Business has surely picked up in the last three weeks and it’ll continue to gain steam right up until August 28th.  We’ve hit the home stretch in our current release development at work, while at the same time I’m prepping for a presentation to 400 engineers in San Francisco in early May.  I’m pretty nervous about the latter, but with my code complete deadlines I haven’t had as much time as I’d like to prepare and rehearse.

Wwhazz keeps wanting to show me spawning muskies but I’m trying to fit it in with the gym, work, wedding planning, and playing Morning Golf with Lawman.  Morning Golf is a time-honored tradition where you golf at the crack of dawn and then scamper into work relatively on time.

I want to remind you folks that Joe’s Casino is always open, and that they honor Mystique and Diamond Jo’s player cards.  Fuck it: let’s just go to Mystiquewho’swithmeamIrtieamIrite?

As I mentioned before I’ll be out in the Bay Area May 1st through the 8th– HOLLLAR at a player when you seem ‘im in the streets, trick.  In the meantime I’ll be watching the Brewers rotation either (a) work the kinks out or (b) flush the whole fuckin season down the toilet.

I’m hoping for (a).

Tim, C.C., and Me

Spacebee, her sister, assorted friends, and I all went to Summerfest on Thursday.  I got her Tim McGraw tickets for her birthday back in February and she was ready to cash in.  All in al it was a good Summerfest trip– we stayed at the Hilton in downtown in Milwaukee and I got mistaken for Jason Aldean when we pulled up in front.  The concert itself was pretty fun (really drunk) and then we walked back to the Hilton from the Summerfest grounds afterwards.

Saturday morning we played disc golf out at Elver Park.  I’d like to do it again, so anytime anyone wants to toss some discs hit me up.  I also played golf on Tuesday at University Ridge with Scubby and down in Racine yesterday with my brother and JOEY~!  Yo wwhazz, my bro said he was going to have a poker tourney at his new house for his birthday this year– reserve August 23rd or 24th.

Finally: C.C. Sabathia.  I’m of mixed thoughts about it.  On one hand I hate to see them deal LaPorta; I would have rather them dealt Prince now and brought LaPorta up.  But I see why they did what they did– in a push for the division they’d rather have a known arm AND a known bat rather than take a chance on bringing up LaPorta in the heat of a pennant race.  However- I’m seriously concerned about next year at this point.  Sheets will be gone, CC will be gone, our top prospect is gone, Cameron is gone.  At a cookout the other day when someone broached the idea of dealing Prince I was shocked at first, but the idea makes a lot of sense.  He hasn’t really shown consistency, and his leadership seems (from afar) more like bullying.  If someone else wants a guy who hits 50 homers one season and 25 the next, and wants to deal us an arm for him I say go for it.  More and more in retrospect I like the Braun deal.

So, overall I’m concerned that they’ve mortgaged the future to make one final push in the division.  I suppose that’s pretty much the only way a small-town team can do it these days.  But if the Cubs keep surging and the Brewers fizzle out– *shrug* there may not be much to look forward to next season.  I’ll stay optimistic for now, though.  This is the first time the Brewers have won a mid-season pickup sweepstakes in… well, ever?

Golf, and Poker, and Strippers… Uh Oh

Word of the Week: Doppel-gang-bang

We had three whazzers present at my brother’s weekend-long celebration of bachelorhood and its impending end. Timmer, wwhazz, and I spent all day Saturday making ourselves unhealthy to the point of some kind of whack contamination, but we still had a good time. A not-in-order list of some fond memories follows:

• Saturday night, wwhazz and I drove through hellacious rain and thunder to get down to Racine in order to escort my brother to Potowatomi for an evening of gambling. That place currently lies in a ruins not unlike a quarter of the Las Vegas strip at any given moment. It’s all for their ‘expansion’ project, which, if applied to something like countries would be like Japan annexing China. I predict that eventually Potowatomi will own everything in the Menomonee Valley from Lake Michigan to Miller Park. Oh yeah, I lost $100 in 3-6 limit. Shrug, no cards.
• Finding yourself at a strip club two nights in a row is either an incredibly satisfactory experience or an embarrassing one. I triumphantly choose the former.
• Petrifying Springs Golf Course in Kenosha was like playing golf in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Yeah, genius, it was wet.
• The Aaron Moneypenny Main Event of Poker tournament went well enough. Forty dollar buy-in, 2000 chips to start, and 9 players. To give you an idea, we only got up to about 200-400 before it was all over. The wiener? Timmer, with second place going to Uncle Frank.
• For roughly a dozen people, my brother ordered roughly a dozen goddamned pizzas. Later at the bar when Joey ordered a bar pizza my brother exploded, “WE HAVE EIGHT LEFT AT HOME, WHY DON’T YOU JUST ORDER ELEVEN MORE?!”
• Our ‘designated driver’ drank more at the bar than I did. A unique interpretation of the term, I guess.
• My brother had prepared a nice spread of food for the poker games. Unfortunately, the food table was located in the garage such that the sun beat down on it for three straight hours, turning the cheese and sausage to grotesque vagueries of their former selves. Later in the day, the common rhetorical question “anyone want any sausage?” was typically met with catcalls.
• R., a player in the poker game, assured me that in heads-up play the button was always the big blind. I told him that was not so, and the basis he used for his argument was that “[he had] played tons of tournaments.” Then again, R. had some extremely interesting insights into “The River” that I will let wwhazz or timmer explain, if they please.
• Interestingly, my brother and I had a bunch of money on the golf game, and we ended to tying on the front, tying on the back, tying our overall score, and tying in skins. A hard-fought day of golf, reduced to no profit for either one of us. Pffft.

We didn’t get to see the UFC PPV, but wwhazz may come over and we’ll order the replay on Tuesday.  I may also post some pictures once I get them up on flickr.  I totally forgot to take any during the poker, but I’ve got some good ones from the golf outing.

HOLLLLAIR.

Yo Ho Hello There Go To Racine And Do A Show There

Hey everyone! Wiggity wiggity wiggity! It’s your old pal whazzmaster and have I got a deal for YOU!  Get this whazzers: I’m gonna be out of town next weekend! Wheee!  Spacebee and I are going down to Elburn Days… hmm, where did I put that link… here? Hmm, no.  Aha, here it is.  I’m gonna eat me a big ol’ thing of sweet corn.  Then I’m gonna ride the Tilt-A-Whirl, slap some money down on the Meat Raffle, and probably contract salmonella.  All in a days work, my friends.

Plus, on Tuesday I’m delivering a new computer to my parents, and I’ll probably hook up with my brother again for some old fashioned Ray-Seen golf action.  Will we play Johnson’s Park, where sonuvabitch rangers yell at you no matter how fast or slow you play?  Or will we play at Ives Grove, where the gale force winds blow your tee shot out into a random cornfield in Union Grove? We won’t know until Wednesday, so stay tuned!

Also, I recently made some trip plans to travel out to the Valley in October.  I’ll be in San Heezy (For Sheezy) Oct 16th through the 22nd, and as an Extra! Surprise! spacebee will be joining me on the weekend.

This past weekend was relaxing, and I even got to play some golf with Scubby out at Bridges.  I lost about a dozen balls on the back nine and stopped keeping score, but the front was pretty good; I shot a 43.

That’s about it for now, I’m sure this week will be full of tales of Rogue Bartending by wwhazz.  Also, scientist, I ask you a direct question: how’s it going out in San Diego? Are you guys planning on doing a few more rotations out there? Gonna move to LA proper so you can heckle the Live at the Bike dudes… live?  Or are you planning on moving to Atlanta, GA?  You know (from first hand stories) they gots some good strip clubs there…

Say lah vee, whazzmaster.

Here Comes The Putter Thr– Wait, He Stopped

The past two days have been Dude Central at my place. My brother drove up from Racine on Tuesday and that night him, myself, and wwhazz played in the aforementioned poker tourney.

This week was ok, not great. Wwhazz busted out first (he was feeling ‘fuzzy’) and my brother lasted until right after the second break. I went out 16th, just after we broke down to two tables. When we hit four tables, I was chip leader at the table, but from four to two tables my stack stayed exactly the same while everyone else built up mountains of chips. This resulted in me running some plays to try to pick up blinds (not all at once or anything, maybe two plays in 45 minutes). Both times I did it, the blinds woke up with AK and pocket pair, respectively. At the time we hit two tables, I had horrible table image due to no quality showdowns + the bad plays that I had to give up on. So, with the 1000-2000 blinds about to hit me and a stack of ~6500 chips I just pushed with K8 and got called by TT. Say lah vee.

I ventured upon my brother and wwhazz playing the 1-2 NL game. My first hand: KK. I took some money from wwhazz with his AQ, but the rest of the table showed me respect. A couple of hands later I raised it up with JJ (not nearly enough though) and pushed ($65-ish) on the T83 flop. One dude called with his 8T offsuit that he called my raise with, and my bro called with nut flush draw. Brother rivered the flush; good for him. That was it for me. Wwhazz was begging me for booze $$ by the end.

My bro and me also played two rounds of golf: nine holes at university Ridge on Wednesday morning and 18 at Odana Hills this morning (Thursday). Yesterday was pretty fun; even when you’re sucking hind tit at the Ridge, at least it’s beautiful. I beat my brother pretty soundly, but he was having a really off day. We went out later and got him his early birthday present: a fancy new driver… which he used to whip the holy living fuck out of me on the golf course this morning. I four-putted the first hole, and then flung my putter about 100 yards towards the next tee box. I proceeded to play the worst round of my life, yet at some point in the middle I made eagle on a 460 yard par 5. By the back nine I was in a bad mood again, and lost 6 balls on the 15th hole, Joe Pesci-style (“Hit me. [face card] Fuck you. Hit me. [face card] Take that fucking card, and shove it up your ass. Hit me. [face card]“). I feel kinda foolish for acting a fool, but whatever, I fucking four-putted. Ride or die.

This weekend is All Crazy, All The Time. The Sausage Rage is Saturday, and I wouldn’t be surprised if our award for finishing is an ice-pick in the balls. Anything To Fuck You Over: that’s the Milwaukee Brewer’s promotional model. I guess we should have guessed that they wouldn’t take success that well. I mean, they’ve got groups-of-twenty-five-or-more tickets to sell, why should they give a fuck about the people who were buying the tickets and going to the sausage race when only 2000 hobos attended a weekday game?

Sunday my family is going to the game since my dad got the company tickets. I’ll hollar and yell at Barry Bonds for all of you. Afterwards is a family pic-a-nic. Should be fun, whazzmaster.com. HOLLLLARIT.

I heart New York

Spacebee and I have returned from our long sojurn into the deep, sometimes durrty, South. Florida was wonderful, except that we couldn’t get there on time, couldn’t fly in to the right city, it rained a lot, it was cold the first few days, and our return flight almost got diverted to Memphis (where they make you eat coleslaw on your BBQ sammiches).

On the Plus Side, however, we did enjoy some incredible mini-golf tournaments. The mini-golfing was free at spacebee’s parent’s resort and it wasn’t some jank little course. It was pirate-themed, and I got my picture taken with an incredibly busty she-pirate statue. In any case, most of the time the Tournament Stakes were that the loser had to buy the first round. With 5 people ordering incredibly expensive drinks, it was in your best interests to not lose that tournament. After the tourney we would retire to one of the seven pools for some R&R (and pizza) (and booze). Pictures will be forthcoming.
We also had time to go to the happiest place on earth: Disney’s Animal Kingdom. I agreed to go because I figured, “well, it’s part zoo, so it can’t be all bad.” In fact, except for the brief (refreshing!) rain showers throughout the day it was pretty swell. My disappointment in all things Disney was upheld however, when we went on the Kilimanjaro Safari ride and they couldn’t just leave well enough alone. I was happy seeing all these animals just mixing it up out in a giant field somewhere, but then they contrived some story about ‘catching poachers’. Dude, just show me the animals. I tire of your attempts to make every attraction a heart-pounding adventure thrill ride.

I had a blast one day when spacebee’s brother-in-law and I hit a golf course while the rest of the clamoring hoardes traveled east to the Ocean and Beach. It was kinda sorta expensive, but then we were in the middle of Orlando. We drank more than a 12-pack between us on the course and it was affecting my shit like whoa. I’ve had a beer or two during eighteen, but not seven or eight. Fun though, and in the bar afterwards I had a bloody mary. Then it was off to BW3 for some boneless wings and NIT basketball action (an oxymoron, I know) and even more booze.

Finally, on Friday just spacebee and I went to Typhoon Lagoon, a Disney water park. That was very fun; there was practically no one in the park. Our plane left at 7:30p, so we were only there from 11:30a until about 4p. In that time, however, we were able to run all the way to the top of each water slide and jump right on (sometimes multiple times in a row). It was so fun I didn’t even care that I had to pay $10 for BBQ onna bun for luncho.

We got jerked around a little at the airport but made it safe and sound back to O’Hare (and only an hour late!) We stayed at spacebee’s parent’s house in Sugar Grove for the night, but had to kick it early to get back to Madison cuuuuz…

My parents came up to visit this weekend. First things first: holy moses. They’re on Weight Watchers and look great! My dad’s lost 40 pounds or something! Dude’s skinny now. We had a chez awesome dinner at the Magnus, and breakfast the next day at the Pancake Cafe. In the meantime we caught up and drank two bottles of wine.

So now you’re all caught up. I’m looking forward to getting a little bit of that pig. Slice off a shank or something, lawman, and we’ll cook it up ourselves, secret-like. We’ll drench it in some kind of sauce from BW3 and go to fucking town. Spicy Garlic-covered hog shank. Yum.

Finally, this is funny.

It Was Fun While It Lasted

Five years ago I moved out to California with a trailer full of clothes, books, and a computer. The good people at Intuit gave me a signing bonus of $5,000 (before taxes) and I used it to buy a Golden Tee 99 arcade machine off eBay for ~$2000 (including shipping). I had many late nights in San Jose playing Whazz with the Madd Scientist (before he was even known as such). I dominated him so thoroughly and embarassingly that I named myself the Whazzmaster. It’s not like I made him call me that at home, I just fancied myself The Whazzmaster. When it came time to buy a domain name for my new website I naturally used it, because duh, it fucking rules. Fun was had.

Five years passed: I’ve moved it four times (three with Judd’s much-appreciated help) a total of 10 flights of stairs and it is a heavy fucker. I haven’t played it much lately but when Scientist was out here earlier this year we hit a few rounds. Fun times, fun times.

I just sold it for $500 plus a $20 tip for helping the guy bring it down to his van. The dream has died.

*sigh* … say lah vee. Feel free to reminisce about how whazz has affected your lives. I know I will tonight. Break out the whiskey.

The Shrine on our desk.

Can I still call myself whazzmaster? Or do I have to change the name of the website? So many questions.

Palo Alto Municipal Meh Course

Played some golf this morning at 7am. We played the back nine at Palo Alto Municipal and I started the tenth with a fairway shot and then an approach pin high about 10 feet from the hole. Nice. I then proceeded to shoot an eight on the par 3 eleventh and things were a bit downhill. I ended with a 49 after some hellacious shots out of mud and deep grass. It hasn’t rained here in a few days but the course was just soggy as all hell.

I’m looking forward to the game this Sunday with Cal and Simon. I WILL WIN~!

RAJ OUT.

Checkpoint Charlie!

I’ve got 4 minutes before my next meeting starts. Today has been quite a good day so far: shot a 44 in golf this morning, including the last four holes going bogey, par, par, par, and when I got into work found that my manager’s manager had given me a $100 reward for a “Jorb Well Done”.

Looks like I have a full gambling calender coming up. Got a poker game this Saturday, possibly one this Thursday, and one next Friday. Time to tinker with the Aggressive Game and see what happens. If I go out first, eh, I’ll play some FIFA soccer on PS2.

I’m still collecting pictures from Raw/Smackdorn on Monday, but it was merely “ehh”.

Oops, meetingstartinggottarunseeya.

–whazz on

An Update

1. Wirkuswhazz, very nice tale of Woe in Pittsburgh. I expected more vitriol over the Brewers non-skull-bashing of the worst team in the NL Central, but we take what we can get these days. Thank you for using your mighty pen for the good of Whazzmaster.com.

2. Cal, you screaming twit, I’ve been calling you to do stuff for the last few days straight? Do you ever answer your phone? Or do you just scream at it “you no art-knowing motherfucker!” every time it rings? I called you about that baseball game the other day and now I want to know if you want to play golf this week sometime. I have off all week from work (more below).

3. I have all week off from work this week because my company wanted to get everyones’ banked vacation time off the books or some other accounting garbage. Anyways, what I thought would be an eventful week has mostly turned into me playing golf during the daytime and sleeping at night-time. At no other time during the last 72 hours have I been really, honest-to-god productive. I wanted to work on the website but I guess that too will have to wait until I’m back at my desk on Monday morning (which will also be my First Anniversary).

4. So since I’ve been playing all this golf I figured I’d alert the world that I broke my own best score (all-time) this morning. Up until today my best round of 18 holes stood at 90. This morning I knocked that score on the floor and stomped on its nuts. The result? A Zach-pleasing 82. That’s 10 over par, folks. In Fake Whazz, that’s very bad. In Real Whazz, where it is nigh impossible to shoot -26 in 18 holes, +10 is awesome. I think I’ll go masturbate to my scorecard.

5. Finally, the reason there was no posting last weekend was because I took my lovely wife Rock Chalk up to Sonoma for her birthday. So we went and stayed at a very nice Marriott where, when they do your turndown service, they leave your door unlocked and open when they’re done in order for the whole world to have access to your purchased wine and unmentionables. Overall it was a great 2-day getaway, though. Some wine, some golf (Erin’s idea!), some booty-tappin’, and some fine meal-eatin’.

6. To all who complain about the lack of color, sorry but Grey it is. Maybe I’ll throw some red or blue somewhere so you don’t want to die so much.

7. Weight Update: I was down to 187 at one point, but all the fine food and spirits in Sonoma fucked that one up. I weighed in at 190 this morning. Boo-yah to your momma’s house.

–whazz on