I'm home and watching my two year old son all weekend: Ask me anything! (1 Viewer)

JMC9389

Royal Flush
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Apologies if this kind of thing isn't allowed, feel free to take down if not allowed.

There's very little that I won't share, including very personal information about family and other sensitive information that can be used to sell my information to identity thieves. Other than that, all fair game!
 
Would the Viral Hit... what's inside your butt hole? Still get the same amount of fame if we weren't all on lock down???

Oh and always my question favorite set of chips, and favorite single of all time? Can be fantasy, casino or customs... always curious on this one!!

Your chippin buddy Ben
 
Is free will an illusion?
Yes. I'd like to retire at 30 and live the rest of my life traveling and seeing the world, going to PCF meetups, and by staying at home with my family.

Free will is indeed an illusion on the basis that I need to work for a living to make money to afford living expenses, despite my wishes to do the above.


What was the saddest moment of your life so far?
Damn, starting this on a happy note I see.

There are two. First is the day that I took the nursing licensing exam the first time. You pass or fail based on the percentage of questions you answer correctly. You need to get a certain percentage right to pass, whether it takes 75 questions (the minimum) or 265 (the maximum before the test shuts off). I got to question 265 and found out that I failed. I've never felt more exhausted mentally and defeated at the same time. It took me a couple of weeks of feeling sorry for myself before I got back on the horse, re-took the exam three months later, and dominated it by passing it in 75 questions. It was my own fault though. I was still a cocky 21 year old kid that didn't mentally leave college yet that thought that I'd ace the licensing exam because I partied, chased girls, and played lots of sports during college and still made good grades and got good clinical evaluation scores. The experience gave me a huge slice of humble pie that made me better when all was said and done.

The second one was a lot more recent just over two years ago. My wife was pregnant with our son when at her 33 week OBGYN appointment they checked her blood pressure and it was through the roof. Admitted to the hospital but got it down with medication. OB said we'd be able to get away with close monitoring and that she wouldn't need to deliver the baby early. One week later at the follow up appointment, her blood pressure was still high. Preeclampsia. Long story short, 15 hours later, our son was born at 34 weeks. My wife needed to be on a magnesium drip to keep her blood pressure down and essentially prevent her from going into heart and kidney failure. Unfortunately, high amounts of magnesium causes respiratory depression in babies. I remember sitting hunched over in the chair in the NICU pod flicking my son's foot so he'd cry every time I saw his O2 sat drop or when I noticed his breathing become more shallow or stop entirely. He ended up being totally fine once the magnesium was out of his system, but knowing that your first child was born, which should have been a happy occasion under normal circumstances, became a nerve wrecking, sad experience knowing that it would be a long time before we could bring him home. He's a happy, healthy little man that loves poker chips now!
 
I remember sitting hunched over in the chair in the NICU pod flicking my son's foot so he'd cry every time I saw his O2 sat drop or when I noticed his breathing become more shallow or stop entirely.
Probably a really scary time living it, but it's a great story now.

He's a happy, healthy little man that loves poker chips now!

My question: Does JMC Jr. have his own PCF account, and have you ever accessed it for shill bidding purposes?
 
Why did you choose your profession? Do you feel like as a whole (pay, goodwill, insurance/retirement, self fulfillment, etc.) you’re compensated or happy enough to stay in this field for the duration of your working years?

What does your wife do for a living (I think I might remember she’s in a similar role/field?) Do you feel like one of your jobs/roles/careers is slightly more important than the others, whether it be due to pay, hours, stress, impact on others?
 
Would the Viral Hit... what's inside your butt hole? Still get the same amount of fame if we weren't all on lock down???

Oh and always my question favorite set of chips, and favorite single of all time? Can be fantasy, casino or customs... always curious on this one!!

Your chippin buddy Ben
1. Absolutely!

2. I'll break the chip question down multiple ways:

Favorite Cash Set I Own: Ugh, tough because each cash set I own (or will own) has one huge thing going for it. Incoming CPC customs are going to have the sentimental factor. Jack Detroit relabels are the first true Paulson set I put together. The $5 chips, $25 secondaries, and $100 primaries I use for the set are just straight fire. CDI '98's are just a kickass overall set with my favorite $5 chip out there. The CDI '98 $5's are definitely my favorite chip that I own in quantity, even over the Jack Detroit $5's. The BW cash set is just awesome and really close to the actual chips of my favorite AC casino.

Gun to my head, it's the Jacks as I made them. But as is, it's the BW's.

Favorite Tourney Set I Own: Again, really tough. I really like the colors and the spot progression of the Rounders set that I have. The custom DG Tiger T1000 with retro blue edge spots really knocks the set out of the park for me. On the other hand, I love the story of the Key West Resort and Casino and the history of the H Mold. The colors used give the set a no nonsense, old school feel.

Again, gun to head, I pick the Key Wests

Favorite Cash Set Overall:
Fantasy/NAGB: Empress Star
Casino: Lakeshore Inn

Favorite Tourney Set Overall:
Fantasy/NAGB: Empress Star Primary Tournament (another grail set for me besides what's mentioned below)
Casino: Empress Joilet

Grail set that I know I'll never own but here's to hoping: BCC Riverboats, V2

I think I could honestly retire from chipping besides a new CPC custom set here and there if I get my hands on playable sets of ESPT and BCC Riverboats.

Favorite Single I Own: BTP primary snapper. Straight fire. @Ronoh 's Pillage and Plunder T1000 is right there with it.
Favorite Single Overall: Impossible to pick just one. Here's a list: Golden Eagle $5, Lakeshore Inn $1 and $5, the entirety of the ESPT set, CDI '98 $5, Bourbon Street $5, Empress Star $1 and 0.25

Whew...
 
Probably a really scary time living it, but it's a great story now.

My question: Does JMC Jr. have his own PCF account, and have you ever accessed it for shill bidding purposes?
I'm sure he will one day, but not yet. As soon as he learns to play poker in a few years and inevitably starts whooping my ass just a couple of years into joining my home game, he's going to want his own set of chips that my buddies and I are going to inevitably pay for once he takes enough from us :p

Not sure how I feel about him having an account here before he's of legal gambling age though. Perhaps as a birthday present along with the CPC custom set I'm having made for him in the coming months.

Are you babysitting (or being a parent) this weekend?
I'm on dad duty with my son. And yes, I do say "watching" him, to assure that he doesn't kill himself. He's an adventurous little bugger.

what is the atomic weight of hydrogen ?
1.00784 u

Why did you choose your profession? Do you feel like as a whole (pay, goodwill, insurance/retirement, self fulfillment, etc.) you’re compensated or happy enough to stay in this field for the duration of your working years?

What does your wife do for a living (I think I might remember she’s in a similar role/field?) Do you feel like one of your jobs/roles/careers is slightly more important than the others, whether it be due to pay, hours, stress, impact on others?

I grew up in it. My father is a cardiologist and I started working in his office filing charts and taking vital signs on his patients before he saw them since I was 14. The "plan" was to go to medical school, but 18 year old me didn't want to commit to 7 more years of school, plus 3 years of residency, plus how ever many more years of fellowship...you get the idea. If I went that route, I'd really only just be starting to pay off my medical school expenses. By going through nursing school, yes, my parents and scholarships paid the tuition, which was a huge blessing coming out of undergrad debt free, I paid my own way through NP school using my work wages. Younger sister is also halfway through medical school and is well on her way to absorbing my father's practice if she wants it.

As a nurse practitioner, I'm definitely compensated fairly for the medical aspect of the job. What nursing school and medical school don't prepare you for is all of the social and even legal issues that you will face. Yeah, we have malpractice insurance that protects us well enough, but I was really shocked and disheartened by the amount of distrust and vitriol that is directed towards nurses, doctors, and other healthcare personnel. There are good days where you feel like that you really helped someone, but there are also days that I want to walk away from it all and open my own restaurant (which if money and lack of experience was not a factor, I'd want to do), but doing that is just as if not more challenging than what I do now. Not to mention I have absolutely no business or economic background to do it viably.

At the end of the day, I'm happy with what I am doing, but I would be remiss to not mention the difficulties and the drawbacks of the profession. My job honestly is pretty awesome, though, outside of the whole COVID thing. I work 5 days a week, two weekend days a month (with a day off during the week of my choosing to make up for it), can waltz into work at 9:30 in the morning if I want to, but can also go in earlier if I want without and repercussion. It's all about the bottom line at the end of the day. As long as I meet my quota of patients that I need to see (yes, that's a thing), the higher ups don't say anything. Four of the past five days this past week, I got to work at 9:30 and was out by 4. No other NP job offers the potential to do this.

As far as retirement goes, eh, the company I work for has a 401k plan we can contribute to, but they don't match any contributions which irks me a bit, but I'm putting away 15% of my pretax income for it, and if there's any left after the whole COVID thing, my wife and I will be just fine and I'll be on track to retire at 65 or somewhere in that neighborhood if I wanted to. Job security is usually very good, but even so, an out of work NP can find work in a matter of days. There is always a need somewhere.

You remember correctly; my wife is a nurse as well. Bedside nursing is much, much tougher than my job now, even with the increased responsibility. Bedside nursing suckssssssss. They should be paid double what they make and should make more than I do honestly. They're the eyes and ears of the whole healthcare industry. Scrubs absolutely had it right; if you piss off one nurse, you piss off all of them. They're like the hospital mafia. No one is safe. Doctors, surgeons, patients and families. If you're rude to one nurse, you're a marked man/woman, and it's hard to get back in the good graces. If you think about it, they're the ones that make sure that you're getting the right medications at the right doses and making sure that the doctors don't kill you by overdosing or underdosing a medication, they're the ones making sure you're fed and hydrated, they're the ones talking to your family for the most part (trust me, an unsolicited all from a doctor or NP is almost always bad news, you don't want to hear from us unless you ask to speak with us), they're wiping your asses when you're too weak to get up and go to the bathroom, and they're holding your loved one's hand when they're in their final moments of life. Nurses are definitely more important than anyone else in the whole healthcare industry. That being said, it's hard and literally back breaking work. I worked bedside nursing for a year and decided that I was going back to grad school of some kind to get away from it.
 
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Why is it half way through May and yet, still snowing? Even the forest behind my house hasn't bloomed yet. F#@K 2020!
 
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Whats the one question that your hoping nobody asks?
Honestly I'm not ashamed to admit anything to you guys here. My own wife doesn't even know that I failed the nursing licensing exam the first time around as I posted earlier in the thread. I guess it's something that's never come up.

I really won't know the answer to this question until it is asked. Anything trying to solicit my social or credit card and bank account numbers is absolutely off limits :p
 
Is there anything you regret during your chipping journey? Chips you didn’t pull the trigger on buying or chips you wish you had not let go of?
 
Is there anything you regret during your chipping journey? Chips you didn’t pull the trigger on buying or chips you wish you had not let go of?
Excellent question, and one that took some thought.

I have made some missteps along the way, but the beauty of the hobby is that you can get your money back in most cases for those missteps.

What led me to this site in the first place is that I was looking for a new set of chips to buy for my home game that I had started to get back together again last year. I lurked for a little while until I signed up and made an account. In the meantime, I bought a set of slugged Poker Knights chips (which IMO are actually one of the nicer slugged chips out there). I dabbled in ceramics and bought a piss poor breakdown of Scrolls from The Poker Store. My players liked them, interestingly enough. This happened while I was lurking and before I signed up.

Regret #1: I signed up here not knowing how much this hobby was going to cost me. I was initially looking to get a set of chips that was a step up from the Scroll ceramics and the slugged chips. A user here sold me a useable breakdown of Majestic China Clays, which I actually still use as a guest set when someone else is hosting and they request for me to bring chips. They get their purpose in that way, but as the pros here say, just go right for the gusto and into the clay pool. This wasn't so much a regret as a slight misstep.

Regret #2: Ok, you all rubbed off on me and I took the plunge and I bought my first set of Paulsons from the Chip Exchange. I am grateful for Todd's contributions to the chipping community along with Jim and all of the other vendors here, but the HS Cincy chips were filthy lol. I took hours to clean the chips and used them in one cash game. I was happy with them until I discovered HS Cincy Secondaries. I sold off the primary $5's and $25's for secondary versions of the Cincy chips plus some more cash, of course. Should have gone right for the secondaries in retrospect. I ended up selling the entire HS Cincy set to fund my upcoming CPC customs anyway, so in the end, it's no big deal.

Regret #3: @hoosierdonny offered me a sweet deal looking back on it on relabeled Horseshoe WSOP buy in chips that would have gone perfectly with my Jack Detroit relabel set. I really wish I had these now. At the time though it was more than I was willing to spend. Today though? I wouldn't think twice about pulling the trigger.

Regret #4: Down the Jack rabbit hole I go. I had bought a rack of snappers thinking I was going to relabel them as my quarters for the set, but I fell in love with the $25 secondaries but knew that I would never use $25 chips in my home game, so I relabeled the watermelons as my quarters and now I am trying to sell my rack of snappers. The ad is still open, by the way, if anyone is interested ;)

Regret #5: Ok, the Jack's are awesome, but what is the fuss about THC mold chips that I keep reading about, especially those with textured, shaped inlays? I bought a rack of Aztar $25 secondaries because they are one of the more obtainable chips that can be found in good condition, thinking I'd build a mixed set, but my OCD would have never allowed that to happen. I bought and sold these chips all within 3 weeks. I bought a CDI '98 set over time earlier this year and I love them!

In a sense I've been lucky and haven't really been in a position to pass up on a grail set because the grail sets aren't publicly available, haha. I'm still very early in my journey all things considered, and I'm sure there are going to be regrets that come up in the future.
 
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