I doan like it when I'm drinking from a drinking fountain near bathrooms, and hear someone flush, and see the drinking fountain water pressure drop.

What a nice weekend.

Friday night, we headed on over to Baditude's for a "Secret Santa" party. It was a lot of fun. I gave Little Buhr a poker book and some lottery tickets. He seemed to like the book a lot, and ended up winning $65 with the tickets, so he was happy. Sara gave me a gift certificate for EB, which is one of the things I asked for, so it all worked out great. I just need to find some computer games to play! One of the best parts of the night, though, was the surprise appearance of an old friend Isaac from high school. The guy was alway a nut (in a good way), and it didn't seem like much had changed. He currently works in set-design and production in various projects, and regaled us with stories from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and running from bad guys in San Francisco and so forth. It was really neat to see him, and hear his wild stories.

Yesterday, Diana and I did a lot of yardwork. Then that evening, after discussing it the night previously, some peeps came over for a little friendly game of poker. It was a lot of fun, and nice to have a full table. It was me, Diana, Eryn, Heather, the brothers Buhr, Iwan, and special guest star Sara, playing with the boys for the first time. She was all giggles and infected the rest of the table with her enthusiasm. At the end of the night, the big winners were me and Heather, ending up about +$16 each. It was a lot of fun.

Today, Diana and I took some time for just ourselves, which was nice. We went and saw "Big Fish", which I liked. Think "Forrest Gump" meets, um, Tim Burton. We came home and watched the end of the Charger game, and had other plans to do some shopping, but I think those are sliding away. It was nice to spend the day with just ourselves, though, as we've both been really busy the last few weeks.

I got "Settlers of Cataan" for Christmas, and I want to get some peeps together to player it. The game requires either 3 or 4 players, which is sort of a weird number. Too many for just me and Diana, but too few for a traditional big-group games night type of thing.

That's about it. Left on the list of to do's for today: shower, laundry, dishes, shave head. Busy day!

Merry Christmas and whatnot.

I write this from Diana's parents hours after a nice day of rest from my hectic work schedule. Things have been pretty crazy around there, thankfully not really including me, but I've had to put in long hours in case things go bad. Sort of dumb.

Last night, we had Diana's parents over for some early gift opening, and a rousing game of a card game called "Rage". Good fun and good to see everyone.

This morning, we slept thankfully late, enjoying a warm cozy bed while it was really nasty and windy and rainy outside. Then up and opened pressies, and had some Adman Omlettes. I make good omlettes. Who knew?

I got lots of good stuff: Simpsons DVDs (seasons 1-3), some nice clothes, new boxers, some books I really wanted (Kevin Mitnicks "Art of Deception" and some novels). I'm looking forward to diving into all of them. I got lots more stuff that I know I'm forgetting. (Games! Settlers of Cataan and the most recent version of Trivial Pursuit).

Early this afternoon, we arrived here at Diana's parents house, and have been hanging out. We opened even MORE pressies, which was nice. We had an early Christmas dinner, and have just generally been enjoying each others company.

My parents and brother and aunt are in Montana right now. It would have been nice to be able to go, but unfortunately my work has needed every able body to stick around and not take vacations. They swear it's a one-time thing, and they were very apoligetic about it, and I believe 'em. It would be nice to see the fam and do a little snowboarding and watch it snow and so forth. Maybe next year.

So, that's about that. Soon, another family is showing up, and we're going to have rousing good game-playing fun! Huzzah.

Tomorrow night is Baditude's Secret Santa party, which I'm really looking forward to. I love secret santas! :)

ttfn

Woah... looks like my last post was rudely interrupted. Weird.

I've been working too much. More this weekend. Dumb.

I watched something on the Wright Brothers last night, and it was really fascinating. Those guys were pretty darn clever. It really got me wondering, though, if there is room for the common man to make any broad-stroke, humanity-changing discoveries.

My first inclination is "yes". Home computers are only a couple decades old. Hell, even cars and flight are 100 years old. There seems to be a lot of room for discovery in fields like medicine (new drugs, genetics, etc), and computers (new software and gadgets).

But the frontiers of discovery are getting pushed further and further away from the garage, it seems. One can hardly set up a lab in their spare time and study different proteins and so forth (can they?). Advancement using computers seems a little more likely, but again, things are now at such a high level (are they?) that it would be beyond one person. Maybe it's all relative, though. Maybe the Wright brothers said the same thing, back in the day.

What broad expanses of unknownness are left? Deep sea. Space. Medicine. New applications for faster/s

Work.

Work has been slow lately, but it's about to pick up, bigtime. I'm probably going to be here late tonight (missing my two latest shows, "Simple Life" and "Celebrity Poker"). This weekend, I'm probably going to have to work Saturday night (missing part or all of a sweet sweet holiday party) and most of Sunday.

Poo.

By the way...

Just in case there is concern out there (mainly my big brother :) my interest (reading/thinking/watching/analyzing/talking about) poker is WAY disproportional to the amount I actually play. So please don't worry (unless things drastically change) about me in that regard.

Just so it's abundantly clear, here is my unabridged gambling history from the basically the past YEAR (more or less):
4 or 5 poker nights with friends (Diana and I combined: +$77)
2 x indian casio poker tournaments (-$25 total (this was purely an "edutainment" cost))
1 x impromptu poker night at Iwan's ($+26? I think + something...)
1 x workboy poker night (+$10)
1 x Vegas trip (-~$250 (Mostly blackjack and various expenses))
Countless hours of free online poker (free :)

The Vegas trip unfortunately skews the numbers, but that's really anamalous (we hadn't been in a couple years before that). It should really be thrown out as bad data, but I include it for honest completeness.

For the sake of argument, turn all those +'s to -'s, and the dollars still compare pretty favorably to golfing or movie watching or other hobbies. But also note that those are indeed +'s and not -'s. And also please know that Diana and both keep track of our winnings and losings, and aren't about to let things get out of control.

And as Norm recently touched on (in a comment that no longer exists), I don't think poker can be compared with roulette, blackjack, slots and many other forms of gambling. Those games are simply mathematically stacked against you. With practice, poker can be a (long run) winnable game of skill, rather than a mathmematically unwinnable (long run) game of chance. You are playing against other players, and can be "better" or "worse" than they are.

A brief example taken from "Winning Low Limit Hold'Em": Let's say the chances of rain for the next 10 days is 70% on each day. A friend gives me 7:3 odds that it's going to rain, and we do this bet for 10 days.

Each day, he bets $7. I bet $3. 30% of the time, I win $7. %70 he wins $3. After 10 days, I should have won 3 days, or $21. He's won 7 times ($3 each) so $21. We're even.

Now suppose it still rains 70%, but he offers me 8:3 odds. After 10 days, I'll still win 3 times, but he pays me $8 each time, for a total of $24. I still lose 7 times, but only lose $21. I'm up $3!

Now moving to poker: I have an inside straight draw (10, J, Q, K, for instance). I've seen a total of 5 cards (my hole cards and three on the flop), so there are 47 unknown cards left. There are 8 cards that can complete my straight (4 aces and 4 nines). The odds are 39:8, or about 5:1 against making my straight. If the pot is at least 5 (or is it 6?) times bigger than what I'm putting into it, that's a profitable bet in the long run.

(I wish I could say that I was good enough to keep track of all these things during a game! But I'm working on it...)

There are other factors at play, of course (if I make the straight, will it even win?, position, player types, bluffing, tells, etc), but the general point is that, with enough skill and practice, the odds of the game CAN be in your favor. Compare that math to roulette and blackjack and see how you fare. I'll give you 8:3 odds (ha!) you can't find a way to beat the game without cheating.

Anyways, this is all a way overblown defense against a problem that really doesn't exist, but just some comments and thoughts.

[edit: Diana found a bug in my odds on a straight. I had 47:8, but it's actually 39:8 (which adds up to 47)]

So.

Friday night was my company's Holiday party. It wasn't clear if Diana was going to be able to go, and I was too stoked on the idea of going without her, but the lure of mega-prizes might have been too great. In any case, she got work done, and even did some in the car-ride down there, and we were able to go. The party was pretty good. We had a drink, talked to some peeps, had dinner, didn't win any prizes, and turned around and came home as things were heating up.

The dumb thing is that Diana was doing all this work for her class on Saturday morning. On Saturday, her professor never showed up because he'd been in a car crash the night before or something. Bummer.

Saturday was lazy. Diana worked in the morning. I played a great old game called "The Fool's Errand", which is an old out-of-print puzzle game. Basically, you solve lots of little mini-puzzles to get pieces of a larger puzzle and chapters of a story. Once you get all those, you read the story and solve the final puzzle to win the game. Lots of fun. You can learn more about it here. (Download the PC version from the www.the-underdogs.org (which is a great website for old games).

That evening we had dinner together (imagine that!) and watched the Special Feature disc that came with our new "Amadeus" DVD. Really interesting feature, with lots of interesting anecdotes and stuff about the making of the movie.

Sunday, Diana worked again in the morning (she's really busy lately, but that should clear up after this week when she has two weeks off! Huzzah!), and I played in the 11:30am no-limit hold'em tournament on Pokerstars.com. I played until 1pm, and then on and off during the Charger game. Diana came home and needed to use the computer, so I just left myself sitting out (losing blinds and antes), logging in occasionally to see how I was doing. I ended up taking 40th place (out of the 5014 entrants). Not too shabby, and I probably would have done even better if I didn't have to quit.

We then headed over to my parents house for some present opening and dinner before they leave for Montana. We saw pictures from my dad's trip to China, which was interesting. It was good to see them. We got home in time to watch the Survivor finale, which was very satisfactory.

Now, back to work!

Poker Report...

[The following is mostly written by me, for my own benefit, to reinforce lessons learned while they're still fresh in my mind. I post it here only in case others are interested in reading it.]

I went and played some neighborhood poker with work-boys last night. It was a lot of fun, and fun to hang out with some nice people in a non-work setting.

We eventually got around to actually playing poker. We decided to all buy-in for $20, playing $.40/$.80 limit hold'em (blinds of $.20 and $.40). Experience ranged from lots of free-money online play (me and another guy) to people who knew the rules, to people who were totally brand new.

And so we started playing. I won a small pot or two early on, and was satisfied with my play and moderate winnings so far. But it changed pretty quick. An early hand killed me: I had AQo, and the flop comes A-2-8 rainbow. I'm feeling pretty good right about now. Bets and raises and a couple callers. Turn comes another A. I'm loving life. Me and another guy (who's brand new to the game) bet and raise each other some more. Everyone else folds. River comes a blank, and we bet out. I flip over my ace, and he shows me a pocket pair of 2's for the full house. Brutal. I didn't even see it coming.

Another killer: I had 56 in the big blind, and flop comes 559. Bets and raises, etc. Turn comes a 9. Me and another guy bet and raise to the max. River is a blank, and we cap it again. I show a 5. He shows (wait for it) 9. Ugh.

Over the night, my $20 dwindled to about $8. A couple big beats and lots of chasing cards a little too far. Things turned around when I got JTo and raised pre-flop. Got lots of callers. Flop an inside straight draw, kept betting and raising, and made the straight on the river. Big pot. Won the next one, too, and one or two more after that. Look down and see that my $6 has grown to $26. Not bad. Win the last hand of the night, and push my chips up to $30 for a net of +$10. Fair enough.

In retrospect: During the evening, it's frustrating to watch people who don't know what they're doing playing and winning hands with the "any two cards can win" theory. This, in addition to a casual atmosphere of "hanging out", makes it hard to fold hands. It's like: "I want to play and have fun, I don't want to sit there and fold all night! Also, look at what cards are winning!" This is bad. This is no. This fosters bad play. I've read about this. I know it. But it's still surprisingly hard to avoid when it actually comes around. And there's something to be said about playing for the thrill of it, and gambling on hands that are unlikely to win. It's certainly fun, but it's fun and losing. I believe it's possible to have fun and still play solid poker. And if I had my choice between hanging out, having fun, and winning, or having fun, hanging out, and losing, I'll take the former.

Looking back, though, the experience poker players (3 of us) all came out ahead (approx: +10, +10, +32). The inexperienced players either were even or lost (approx: -0, -2, -5, -10, -18, -20). So in spite of the fact that people would win random pots, in the longer run, experience paid off.

Ok, people... listen up.

I'm tired of hearing the following things on the radio:

1) Coldplay. Enough already! Their's was the first song I've ever heard playing on THREE radio stations at the same time.
2) Advertisements where they take a Christmas carol and substitute their own catchy lyrics. DUMB!

If I hear either of these things on my radio again, I'm going to ... change the station!

Feminism.

Recently, I've heard from a variety of sources who show disdain for the word "feminist". I think Diana was talking with one of her students, who said something along the lines of "I believe in equal rights for women and stuff, but I'm not, like, a feminist or anything." I've heard similar stuff other places as well.

Something on the radio reminded me of this and got me thinking on the way to work. My thinking is that back in the day (like, the '70s), the feminist movement was critical to gaining equal rights and pay and respect for women. I believe this is a good thing, and would be proud to call myself a feminist. Feminists were people who followed this belief, going against the status quo that women should all be June Cleavers.

But I think with my generation and downwards, the idea of equal rights for women is already a done deal (for the most part). So much so that it pretty much goes without saying. That said, there seems to be a perception that if you still are calling yourself a feminist, you are some sort of extremist (in a negative sense).

Has the definition or connotation of the word changed? Is being a feminist different now than 20 years ago?

Weekend update!

Busy weekend, so let's not waste anymore time!

Friday evening, I invited a few friends over for a little informal birthday get-together. I didn't want to do a big thing, but thought it would be fun to hang out. A couple peeps came over, and brought a few pressies, which was unexpected and nice. We ate some pizza, smashed up a pinata (thanks Norm and Teri!) and played a rousing game of Apples to Apples. Good fun.

Saturday was my birthday proper. Both Diana and I had to work on Saturday morning, which was kind of a bummer. After work, we headed off to a friends baby shower. I have to admit, when we got the invitation, I wasn't too stoked on the idea of going to 1) a baby shower, and 2) it being on my birthday. That was, of course, just a stupid gut reaction, and the party was a lot of fun. We hung out with the peeps, and the boys split off and played miniature golf while the ladies did some sort of sewing project. It was neat to talk to my boy and hear his thoughts on upcoming fatherhood.

I had to stop by work again after that, in the evening. By the time I got home, we were tired and ready for a good sit. We popped in "Iron Giant" (thanks Eron!) and enjoyed it, and headed to bed by like 9pm, which was nice.

Sunday, I watched the Charger game, and the boys actually won! Diana's parents came over afterwards, and we chatted for a bit, and headed out and bought a li'l Christmas tree, and got it set up and decorated. It's a little tree, but smells nice and looks very colorful and cheery. I like it. In the evening, Diana caught up on schoolwork while I caught up on some much-needed computer-game playing. I'm playing "System Shock 2", which is an older game, but supposed to be a classic. I'm enjoying it.

And now, back to work! Feels like the weekend was waaaay too short.

This Friday is my companies Christmas party. I hope I win something big again! :)

I'm so fun!

Today at work people gave me balloons and a card. It was very nice.

Looking at the balloons, I decided to launch something. I wrote a note as follows:

Hi!

My name is Adam. Today is 12/5/03, and tomorrow is my 29th birthday.
My friends at work got me some balloons, so I thought I'd do one of
these "notes in a bottle" dealy and see what happens. I hope a condor doesn't
eat it and die or something!

If you get this, go ahead and drop me an email at aspragg@yahoo.com!
I'd love to hear from you, and where you found this note.

Best wishes!

Adam

I wrapped it in a $1, and tied a red ribbon around it. I put it in a plastic baggie, and put all that into a little water bottle. I'm going to launch it, and see what happens!

A co-worker laughed and said: "You should be glad you're not totally rich... You'd spend your money doing all sorts of crazy geek stuff!" I took it as a compliment.

My birthday.

My birthday is on Saturday. I turn 29. That's kind of a big one! Last hurrah in the 20's!

I'm getting older. I'm starting to lose hair. I noticed a big black line on my face the other day when driving home, and found that it was the shadow that a big crease in my face made when the sun hit it just right. That didn't used to be there. But it was caused by smiling, so it can't be all bad.

I'm not the type to get depressed on birthdays and feel bad about getting older. I never was a wild partier in my glory days, but I'm more and more comfortable with being an old married guy, not staying out till all hours doing crazy stuff, that kind of thing. I'm perfectly happy and comfortable with where I was, where I am, and where I'm going. Huzzah.

For those who feel the need to get me something (please don't feel the need!) I have a small wishlist on Amazon of stuff that I want. Easy-peasy!

Cards.

My family didn't play cards all that much, and I've never really liked card games all that much (poker aside).

However, Diana taught me a really fun card game that she and/or her Dad made up. It's sort of a non-betting poker variant. The goal is to eventually use 30 cards (two hands of 15 each) to make 4 GOOD poker hands, and 2 BAD poker hands (30 cards total in two 15 card hands to make 6 poker hands, 5 cards/hand). The rules are as follows:

The game is played with two decks, shuffled together. Each player is dealt two hands of 12 cards each. After the hands are dealt, 8 cards are turned face up in a flower pattern, and the deck is placed in the middle.

The non-dealer goes first, starting with her left(I think)-most hand. She then draws two cards, either from the face up ones or from the deck (or one of each). She then discards ONE card, always face up (making room for the new card on the table, if necessary). Her hand has grown by one card.

Play continues clockwise, each player drawing two cards and discarding one, for three full rounds.

At this point, the players hands should have grown to 15 cards each. Each player constructs 4 good poker hands and 2 bad poker hands (no crossing cards over... strictly three poker hands per 15 cards)). High hands are compared, followed by low hands, in a "most likely to win" to "least likely to win" order. 6 points are distributed for each of the 6 comparisons (half points for ties).

At this point, the game is over. Of course, points can be tallied and the game can be continued (first one to 20, for instance).

Additional stuff: You can't look back and forth between your two hands. If I just finished playing my left-most hand, and I put it down and pick up my right most hand (while my opponent is playing), I *can't* view my left-most hand again until I've played my right one. Make sense?

Also: It is good strategy to pass cards from one hand to the next, if possible, by discarding it from one and drawing it to the other. It's easy to pass from your right hand to your left hand, since the turns are in order, but harder to pass from your left hand to your right hand, since the card must survive out on the table while your opponent goes).

Finally, for low hands: Aces are high, and straights count as high, so the best low hand is 2-3-4-5-7 non-suited.

It's really quite a brilliant game, with good elements of luck and strategy. Good hands are quite often high 4-of-a-kinds or straight flushes, while lows hands are frequently the nut low (the lowest possible) or just above that.

If you have a couple decks and are looking for something to do, try it out!

Friday night, Diana and I went out for dinner at a little seafood market near our house, and I had I think the best bowl of clam chowder ever. I've had a LOT of clam chowder in my life, so this is no small claim. I was highly impressed.

Later that night, I got a call from Iwan. The Buhrs were in town, and a little impromptu poker night was being set up! Diana was tutoring in the morning, so while she headed to bed, I went to see the boys.

Poker was a LOT of fun. We (Adam, Iwan, Little Buhr, Gabe, Miami John, Baron) cashed in for $10 playing pot-limit $.20/$.40 hold 'em. I actually ran through my $10 pretty quick, getting out-kickered a couple times, or someone picked up a second pair on the river, or whatever. I bought in for $5 more, and was able to win it all back, and more. Most of that came from one huge hand. I had 5-6 offsuit. I don't remember my position, but I think I was a blind. The bet was raised by Baron for a tiny raise, which I called. Most people were in from the flop. Flop comes 3,4,7 rainbow (three suits). I've flopped a huge hand. I believe I checked from an early position, someone bets, Baron raises, every folds to me, and I raise again (or call), and everyone else folds. Turn comes 8. I bet big, Baron calls. I don't remember the river, but I was feeling pretty good with my straight. I lead off with a big bet (around $4). Baron thinks for a long time. I'm staring into the pot, saying in my head "pleasecallpleasecallpleasecallpleasecall". He mutters about what I might have, including "5-6", but why would I have survived a pre-flop raise with 5-6 (because it was a small raise and I was already partially in, being a blind!) He calls. I show. He mucks (later revealing he had pocket queens). That and a couple smaller pots cashed me out for $24. I then lost a dollar or two on the famous post-poker Little Buhr Blackjack. All in all, it was a really fun time.

Saturday, Diana tutored in the morning. I lolled for a while, and met up with most of the same boys for some flag football. We played a great game, and Baditude took some footage for a video he's going to make. We retired to his place for some Mario Kart Double Dash, and then home. I met up with Diana, and we got ready for dinner. A group of us headed out to a fondue restaurant, which was a lot of fun. The food was pretty good, but sitting around and cooking it yourself and hanging out with friends was great. Dinner was like 3 hours, and since I'm working this morning, it was home for bed.

This morning, I'm at work on support, surfing the web and hoping that nothing goes wrong that I need to worry about. Getting out of warm bed with a sleepy, cuddly wife on Sunday morning is hard. :(

Football has left me about as sore as I've been. I jacuzzi'd yesterday, and might need another does today.

Thanksgiving!

Yesterday, Diana and I got up and started working. We made beans and a salad for our upcoming feast. We also were able to take a li'l walk, which was nice.

Early in the afternoon, we headed over to some family friends of Diana's family, where we met my parents and her parents. The whole group of us had drinks and munchies, then a great traditional Thanksgiving dinner, followed by a rousing game of "Beyond Balderdash". All in all, it was a really nice evening, and we were stuffed and ready for bed by like 8pm. :)

I'm thankful for:
Diana - I feel lucky every day that she is in my life (again). There's simply too much to list her without doing it justice. She is so much fun to be around, smart enough to discuss anything, silly enough to sing duets about literally anything, and easy on the eyes to boot.

Our house - I feel so lucky that we were able to get our house in the location that we did at the bargain that we did. I enjoy it every day.

Our parents - Our parents are almost overwhelmingly loving and supportive and proud of both of us. If every child could have such parents, the world would be a better place.

My friends - I love my friends. As we get older, it seems to be harder and harder to make time for us all to get together, but when we do... LOOK OUT!

My job - I have a great job at a great company, with great people. I get paid to do stuff that I love doing. I'm learning all the time and (albeit indirectly) making a difference in lots of peoples lives.

That's the top of the list, at least. Happy Thanksgiving to all.

---

OH! My car's mileage recently turn over 65536! First person to comment why this number is significant wins Adam Respect Points!

Work is slow today, so more bloggin'!

I'm planning on upgrading our computer. Currently, I'm running a 1.2 Ghz Athlon on an ABIT KT7A-RAID motherboard with 1 gig of (cheap, mismatched) RAM. I also have a Radeon 9700 video card, which I don't think I should have gotten. It has gotten VERY mixed reviews. The proponents say it's the best card ever. But it's really finicky with different motherboards (including my own), and has caused some problems. Our computer, for example, won't show video on a cold boot. We have to turn it on, wait a few seconds, then hit the reset button. Stuff like that scares me.

I was recommended some stuff by a co-worker of my dad's who builds computers on the side. Here's what I'm thinking:

ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe motherboard ~$185
Pentium 4 2.8 Ghz 800Mhz FSB CPU ~$220
512 Megs RAM ~$135
Total: ~$540

Not bad to upgrade to basically a dream system. RAM might be doubled to 1 Gig, and CPU could be bumped up if I really got greedy.

Also, I should definitely have enough spare parts to build a second computer, if need be. I'd really like Diana to have her own computer, 'cause I'd hate to do some tweaking and lose her teaching/billing/schooling work.

Work is picking up! Gotta go.

Dumb!

I just read a news story about a guy who, as a kid, slept in the same bed with Michael Jackson. The point of the story was that he said that "nothing weird happened". Not only is it sort of funny that sleeping in a bed with MJ isn't weird enough by itself, but there's sort of an illogical implication.

I mean, I knew a guy in high school who ended up murdering both his parents. But he didn't kill *me*. Does that have any meaning implications? No.

---

I just got invited to a Secret Santa party! I love Secret Santa parties! I'm excited.

Thanksgiving is tomorrow. Me and the 'rents and the wife and her 'rents are meeting at some OTHER peeps' house for an extravaganza. Should be food-eatin', game-playin' good fun.

There's also rumblings of friends getting together to play football, Mario Kart, watch movies, or do other fun stuff, but it hasn't really been specified yet. The only bummer is that I have to work some this weekend, which kind of sucks. I'm probably not even going to be working, but just hanging around in case something goes wrong. Oh well. That's why I get paid the *big bucks*.

So... A pretty lazy weekend for the Adman. Diana and I went and saw
"Master and Commander" on Saturday night, which was fun. It was a
pretty good movie, in spite of not a lot really happening. It was very
much like a novel, where there was a single overarching plot, and lots
of little things that happen along the way. But worth seeing.

I watched the Chargers lose this weekend. Poor Chargers.

I recently got the jacuzzi cleaned out and warmed up, and that's been
nice in this latest cold spell. It's been really clear and dark out at
nights, and Diana and I saw a couple shooting stars, which was fun.

Not much other news to report. Work is going well. I was assigned a
task which I thought was going to be pretty tough, but I was clever and
found an easy way to do it (to programmers, laziness is a GOOD thing),
so now I'm sort of waiting for my idea to get reviewed. I've already
written the code, so I hope it does! :)

Crazy dreams!

I had some CRAZY dreams last night. The first was that I was at my parents house. I was filling out some sort of form or something that involved filling in addresses and phone numbers or something. And our family dog (who died in when I was in junior high) was there, and seemed really interested in what I was writing. So I flipped the paper over to the blank backside, and wrote a number 1, and said "One", and he repeated it back in a doglike voice. Took a couple tries, but soon he was counting to 10. Pretty soon after that, he was speaking with about a 5-year-old's vocabulary! Then my grandfather (who died when I was in college) came out from a nap, and the dog went up to him and said (I don't remember exactly, but the equivalent of) "Hey, what's up?", and we all chatted it up.

I also had another dream that I left work at lunchtime and was driving somewhere, and a female coworker of mine had left at around the same time, and was in the car behind me, being driving by some man I didn't know. And they were totally making out while driving on the freeway. I was both worried they'd rear-end me (because he wasn't watching the road), and curious who this guy was that she was seeing.

There you go.

Random memory time!

I remember as a very little boy learning a particularly witty little "street rhyme", like "Eenie Meenie Minie Moe" and whatnot. I was very excited, because it was quite funny, and I wanted to share it with someone.

My mom was taking a nap. I went in and performed the following little piece of delicate art:

"Chinese!" (I put my fingers to my eyes and pulled them down, making crude slanted eyes).
"Japanese!" (I pulled my fingers upwards, making crude slanted eyes the other way).
"Dirty knees!" (I put my hands on my knees)

And the coup de grace... I can still feel the anticipation:

"Look at these!" I used my thumb and forefinger, delicately pincing my t-shirt above each nipple, and pulled outwards, making boobies.

My mom politely told me she didn't think it was very funny or appropriate. I guess I can see her point.

Vegas.

Friday morning, I met Iwan and Eryn for lunch near Diana's work. She joined us shortly after noon, and we headed out for the long drive to Vegas.

The drive was a lot of fun. We chatted about stuff, and Eryn pulled out a book called "Cocology" (or something like that) that was quite a bit of fun. It's apparently all the rage in Japan. The book was filled with lots of little mini quizzes that were supposed to tell you what kind of person you are. For instance, we were supposed to draw three stars of different sizes, and add a tail onto one of the stars to make it like a comet. After doing a couple things like that, depending on how you drew your stars, which had the tail, etc, was supposed to tell you about your current career and it's future. Lots of bullshit, but a lot of fun. My cheeks were sore from smiling and laughing. The trip went well, and I had a lot of fun with everyone.

We rolled into Vegas around 6 or so, and met up with Heather and Mick who were already at the hotel. We got cleaned up and headed out to PF Changs for a nice dinner, and had a good time catching up. We then headed downtown to the Horseshoe for some blackjack, where me and D won some money, but everyone else lost (I think). We then headed over to the Sahara where me and D's winnings were quite quickly turned into losings, and other people lost even more money. The night was still somewhat young, but the $5 tables had taken quite a toll on us, so I headed to bed with the ladies, and the rest joined us soon after.

The next morning, we all got up and headed over to Capriotti's, which is a little hole in the wall sandwich shop which has the BEST sandwiches ever. The "Bobbi" is shredded turkey, stuffing, mashed potato, and cranberry sauce in a roll, and is a favorite in the group. After lunch, we headed down to the other end of the strip to the Excalibur, where Iwan and I checked out the poker tables. We decided to play, while the rest of the group wandered the strip and saw the sights.

The poker was a lot of fun. The previous night I dropped $80 on the $5 blackjack tables in about 20 minutes, so being able to cash in for $100 and play for a long time was a neat. I played at a $1-$3 spread limit game with a single $1 blind. This means that every hand, there is one person who's automatically in for $1, and everyone else can fold for free. Minimum bet is $1 on every round, and you can raise up to $3 on any round (max of 4 raises per round). Because of the small, single blind, you could potentially play for hours and see lots of hands for only a couple bucks. I started off folding quite a bit, waiting for good hands. When I did see a good hand, I'd try to raise pre-flop and knock out some players to improve my chances, but knocking out players seemed to be hard to do at such low stakes. So my AKs would face a flop of 3-6-8, and someone would bet $3 into me. I might see another card, but it would quickly become apparent that my ace-high wasn't going to win.

I had a couple hands where I got creamed. I had Ax suited, and the flop comes giving me four-to-the-flush. I and a couple others are betting and raising. The turn completes my nut flush, and my heart is racing. More betting and raising. River comes up a 9, pairing up with another 9 on the board. A new guys raises, and my heart drops. I call and he shows his TWO-NINE OFFSUIT, which gives up a full house and busts my straight. He was betting his 2-9 two-pair from the flop with all those raises and stuff. Urgh.

Another hand, I think I had the nut straight, and a card came on the river to make an even bigger straight possible, and I got stuck in a raising war with two other guys, and they ended up splitting the pot with the big straight, and I lost. I probably should have folded, but it was a tough move.

All in all, I lost $100 playing there, only winning one or two pots. In spite of that, it was the most fun I had gambling the entire weekend. I was able to play for a long time, and had some really thrilling moments. Iwan didn't play as long as I did, and cashed out with a profit of $52, which was great to see. Next time I go to Vegas, I'm definitely going to forego blackjack (especially $5 blackjack, which I think is above my means) and save money and play more poker.

Iwan and I met up with the gang late that afternoon back at the hotel. Iwan and Mick settled in to watch college football, while the rest of us rested and hung out. Soon enough dinner time was rolling up, and Iwan and Mick were showing very little signs of wanted to go anywhere. The girls were getting hungry, and I was getting restless to go out and do SOMETHING (I didn't come to Vegas to sit in the hotel room!) We waited for the footballers for a while, heading down to the casino to lose even more money at the blackjack tables (ugh!). We eventually headed out to dinner at the CPK at the Mirage. At the CPK, we sat at a table next to a famous poker player who was featured on the World Poker Tour. I don't remember his name, but he was a really annoying guy who licked the corners of his mouth a lot, had a weird nose, called bets "quack-quacks", and went by the moniker "X22". We were all thrilled to see a minor celebrity like that.

Saturday night, we were a little gun-shy about gambling. We left the Mirage and wandered around a little, but no one really seemed rarin' to go. We headed back to the Stratosphere and played a little more blackjack. Eryn won some decent money, and I won a tiny bit, which was nice, and had lots of Tom Collins', which was nicer. :) It was fun to have some excitement at the tables instead of just watching our money dissappear before our eyes.

I was beat, and headed up stairs to bed shortly after the ladies, surprised to see it was only 1am. Eryn and the boys followed pretty soon after, after playing some roulette.

Sunday morning, Iwan and Mick headed to the sportsbook and settled in for a long day of football. Eryn and Heather and Diana and I got some brunch, and then Diana and I hit the road. The traffic was pretty bad, but it was nice to spend some time alone and talk about the trip. We eventually made it home. I picked up the Chargers game that my parents were nice enough to record for me (thank you!) and watched that trainwreck. The only good side was that Shannon Sharpe had 3 touchdowns, which helped the Birdmen (my fantasy football team) a lot. And then we went to bed, thankful for our new mattress.

This trip, overall, was good, but not the best ever. It was a lot of fun to see Mick. I really miss having him around. And I always have a great time with Iwan and Eryn and Diana and Heather. Everyone is always uniformally so happy and funny and just generally fun to be around. I love to be reminded of what great friends I have, and how much I enjoy their company. The gambling was kind of the rough part of the trip. In previous Vegas trips, I remember our group getting a table to ourselves, drinking round after round of Tom Collins', cheering wildly and booing loudly at the swings of the table, and just generally having lots of fun. The gaming this time around was really subdued. Not a whole lot of drinking, lots of dissapointing losses and not a whole lot of winning.

I don't mean to end on a sour note, because I really did have a lot of fun. I spent quality time with my peeps, learned some lessons, and have some stories to tell. And because of our cheap hotel room and driving, this weekend certainly wasn't very much more expensive than any other weekend getaway.

Now... Back to work!

Well, this is it.

The calm before the storm. Tomorrow, I depart for Vegas with some compadres for a weeking of carousing the likes of which have never been seen!

Well, maybe they have, but we should have a good time.

I'm going to try to play poker while I'm there. Apparently there is a good newbie-friendly, low-stakes game at the Excalibur. Full details upon my return.

I'm bored.

Someone hit the power transformer outside my work with their car and knocked out power, so we all were let out a little early. Pretty crazy.

So, I was home early, Diana's not home until 10pm, and I'm bored. Don't feel like watching TV, don't feel like playing computer games or programming. Don't really feel like reading. Played poker and lost and got bored. Bleah. I did talk to Diana's sister on the phone for a while, which was nice.

I guess I'll go try to track down some food.

:|

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Update: Went out and got a sammich, went to Barnes and Noble and read computer and poker books. Much better. :)

Weekend roundup.

What a great, floppy weekend.

Friday night, it took me like an hour to get home from work. Bleah. Diana and I went out for a nice casual dinner and read the free entertainment magazines.

Saturday, we took my car in for it's 60K service, and on the way back went to Fry's and picked up a new monitor and case. I spent the next couple hours up to my elbows in computer parts (swapping the guts from one computer case to another isn't that hard, but it's not for the squeamish), and lo, everything worked. We now have a nice quiet case on the floor (rather than a big open one on my desk), and a nice clear monitor that doesn't cut out every so often for no reason. We definitely went for more budget options compared with what we could have done. A small part of me wants a cool computer case with a window and lights and stuff, and a flatscreen monitor. Most of me, though, realizes that that the extra $600 to get both those things probably isn't worth it. Anyways, my office is a lot quieter and cleaner looking now, which is nice.

Sunday, we sort of vegged around. I watched the Charger game, which was great. The boys played as well as I've ever seen them play, spreading the ball around and getting stuff done. It was great to see. Did a little cleaning, went in the jacuzzi, played some poker. A nice, quiet day.

A great, restful weekend. Diana's been so busy and stressed lately with school stuff that it was great to spend some quality time with her.

You ever just have one of those days?

Last night, we all got sent home from work early (thank you very much, Slammer virus!). I didn't check my morning work schedule before going to bed like I normally do.

So, when I checked my stuff this morning (around 8:15am), I saw that I had an 8:30am meeting. It takes me about 35 minutes to get to work usually. So I get ready as quick as possible, and spill a mostly full cup of hot apple cider (now cold since it was left out since last night (by yours truly)). Clean that up. Rush to work, fully aware that I didn't pack a lunch (aware that I *promised* my lovely wife I would do).

On the way to work, remember that I didn't fill my car with gas last night, figuring I'd do it this morning. Contemplate running out of gas on the way to work, but make it.

It's not a big deal to be late to the meeting, which was good. Sit down with some work to do, and immediately get slammed from all directions from people with either a critical thing to do, or needing help with something, or asking my expert opinion on something else. Deal with shit until about 1pm.

Come home for lunch (remembering to stop on the way to get gas). At the gas station, while filling up, I decide to go get a drink (I haven't eaten all day and am pretty hungry). The line is long, and the guy is trying to figure out how to refill the register receipt tape. Put back drink and leave. Get home. Diana is sick and crashed out on the couch. Lunch is sitting on the table made for me. I love her so much. Not for making lunch, but for understanding me. Eat lunch. Stroke Diana's face lovingly while she sleeps. Back to work. High point of day.

Finally make some progress on fixing stuff. Play foos and lose (breaking my 5-game win streak). Now it's about 4:30pm, and I'm ready to go home, take a shower, and veg out, either playing poker online, or watching TV. Maybe I'll buy some beer. I deserve it.

PS: I played poker online last night (play money). I started with $1000. I left with $560,000. Not too shabby at all, if I may say.

Weekend roundup…

Let's see here…

On Friday during the day, I went over to have lunch with my mom. This wasn't as much of a thoughtful thing, but a way for me to weasel out of going out to a show they invited me to. Let me rewind a little…

*stereotypical "back in time" harp music*

The phone rang. It was my mom.

Mom: "Hi dear… Your dad and I would love to take you and Diana out for your birthday. We bought tickets, and have two extra ones, to go see…"

Adam: (at this point, I'm pretty excited! What are we going to see?! A play? A neat show like Stomp or Cirque de Soleil? A magician? Comedian?)

Mom: "… a live show of Garrison Kealor's 'A Prarie Home Companion'"

Adam: (Struggling to hide his life-long loathing of that infernal show) "Oh! Um… Let me talk to Diana. That's really nice of you to think of us!"

Now I was stuck. I call Diana, who's not feeling very well and in the middle of her own situations, who plants a square "I don't care one way or the other" on me. Tickets had already been purchased for me for perhaps the last show I'd actually pay money to see. To be fair, I actually haven't listened to *that* much PCH. But I've heard enough to know that there's probably a lot of people in the world who'd rather go than I would. And they're probably mostly over 50. It's kind of like inviting my mom, for her birthday, to go see the Red Hot Chili Peppers or go to a computer game center for an afternoon of Counterstrike.

I even get an opinion from Dr. Dave, who says that even he can't stand that show, and that since tickets were already purchased for me, that I "was hosed".

Ugh. My choices were to weasel out of going, risking seeming ingrateful and unappreciative of my parents, or to go to the show, waste a Friday evening, and probably suffer physical pain from Garrison Kealor's voice.

I decided to go for the former. As we all know, weaseling out of things is what seperates humans from the rest of the animals… (except the weasel).

I explained to my mother that the last thing I would want to do is seem ungrateful. However, the *second to last thing* I would want is to actually sit through that show, and maybe they could invite someone more appreciative than myself and Diana, and we could do something else instead. This was accepted and went over well. The rest of the conversation was about what great kids my brother and I are, what great parents my parents are, and what great parents my brother and I will be. So, no feelings hurt (I hope), only minor guilt on my end, and no going to the show. :)

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Friday night was Halloween. We didn't have any plans, and neither did any of my friends, so we invited everyone over to sit at our house and not have plans together. I carved pumpkins. Everything showed up, and we grilled some food and hung out and chatted and watched "Scream", which was a lot of fun. I really feel lucky to have the friends that I do, and really enjoy hanging out with them all.

We only had like 4 trick-or-treaters come by, which means we have a lot of freakin' candy left over.

Saturday, Diana and I gathered up some clothes to donate to fire victims. I was called into work briefly, and then we headed downtown to donate the clothes. We then drove through a little bit of Scripps Ranch and looked at burned homes. Sad stuff, but at the same time, it was clear that the firemen did a HUGE job of saving the homes that they could. There were lots of signs thanking them posted in windows and whatnot, which was nice to see.

Saturday night we went over to Hbomb's new house, and hung out with her and Baditude. The evening was fun. Heather and her sister have a tiny new kitten, and let me tell you this: kittens and hardwood floors make for a hilarious evening. :)

Sunday, we had the sets of parents over for brunch, which was nice. Afterwards, I went and helped my dad out with their new computer. It made me eager to upgrade my own machine, which I've been wanting to do for a year now (which makes me realize how not-critical it is :)

That afternoon, I watched my taped game of the Chargers lose. Fuckers. We also watched more of the miniseries "Lonesome Dove", which we've been enjoying.

That's about it for now. Not a bad weekend 'tall.

Dreams

I had 5 dreams last night that I remember.

1) I dreamt something about a horse in our house. It was very person-like, and affectionate.

2) I dreamt I was in a classroom-like setting, with Jack Black in a teacher-like role. He was passing out DnD-type experience points while making fun of his students. He made some crack about me having one eye-brow. "You, with the eyebrow... 1000 experience points!" I was keeping track of this while writing on my jeans with a pen (light blue jeans, leaky dark blue pen) until my friend Eryn let me borrow a piece of paper (which has *his* experience points on it... I wondered how he was going to keep track).

3) I dreamt I was driving through a beach parking lot with my friends, and we were discussing how we'd just arrived in Vegas, and what we were going to do.

4) I dreamt I was driving on the freeway behind an old rusty VW bus. All of a sudden I noticed it was stopped, and I had the thought "Oh man I'm going to hit it!" and I woke up.

5) I used to remember #5, but now I don't. Oh well.

Adman's hot and ready to pop!

Let's see what's going on in my world here.

This week has been a li'l crazy because of the fires. Work has been kind of slow as people have been in and out, and we've been let out early each day to get home before dark (for some reason). But it's getting back to normal now.

The weather is clearing up here on the coast as the fires are moving east and the smoke is being blown away. It's going to be nice to see a nice, clear day again.

Norman and I have been trying to connect to each other to play Diablo II, and that hasn't been going very well. I was able to recruit a third party off battle.net and he was able to connect to my computer, so I'm going to say that proves that the problem is on Norm's side. :) We're both at the same point in the game, independantly, and I'm really hoping we can try to play the rest of it through together. It's always hard to mesh schedules, though.

I've been making bits of progress on my little programming project. I found some frames of animation of a little cartoon lady running around, so I grabbed that. I wrote the maze-generation algorithm that will create the set of rooms, and can run around that (each square in the maze is a complete room). Now I need to write a little room-creation tool, and create a bunch of rooms, and I'll have reached Milestone 1! This is good.

A Vegas trip is being planned. I'm going to take a Friday off work (when Diana has a half-day anyways), and we're going to drive up and meet other friends up there. I think my boy Baditude is going to drive up with us, which will be fun. (Reminder to self: Get car checked up before trip!) I wish we could fly both ways, but it just doesn't make a whole lot of sense financially. The drive back on Sunday afternoon is a killer, though. Anyways, we should meet up with Iwan, maybe Little Buhr, and Dr. Mick and some of his boys. I haven't seen Doc Mick in a long time, so I'm looking forward to that.

We bought an air purifier last night. It's a sellers market on air purifiers around here, itellyouwhatbuddy. Luckily, we had a 20% off coupon from Linens 'n Things, so that was nice. And the purifier we got was some ionic deal that doesn't have a filter. Some of the other ones I saw at Home Depot were ones with filters that needed to be replaced at $50 a pop, so this should work out well.

That's about all the news from me. Nothing too mind boggling, but hey, slow and steady...

I don't understand God.

With this recent disaster in San Diego, people have been calling for prayers. "Our thoughts and prayers are with the families", and "pray that the Santa Ana conditions let up", etc.

It seems to me, though, uneducated in these matters as I am, equally likely that God is punishing San Diego for it's wickedness (or something) than it is that he will help us through this. (Which is to say, both seem pretty unlikely to me, but equally so).

If the fire was God's will, then praying for help seems pretty silly, doesn't it?
If the fire was not God's will (is there such thing?) then it seems unlikely that He wouldn't know there was a fire going on, and that He would choose to help or not, whether or not we prayed. And sounds like he's not helping much.

Maybe I'm thinking of a too literal meaning of the term "prayer". If it's a metaphor for hoping everything gets better, then it makes a lot more sense to me.

Unless this is all a test to test mankinds faith, etc, etc, in which case, from a skeptical point of view, that's a pretty handy fail-safe answer for almost everything.

San Diego burns...

Holy shit, it's bad news bears around here. Diana and I woke and could smell smoke from fires way far away. During the morning, we could see little bits of ash falling from the sky. The fire is pretty far south of here, but another little bit of it is easy of us, and potentially heading our way.

This is scary.

I think the chances are pretty slim, but they've talked a lot on the news about people having to leave their houses at the last minute. We figured better to be safe than sorry, and decided to pack up some non-replaceables.

That's a weird thing to do: actually walk around and decide what you could and could not live without. We grabbed wedding pictures, of course. A change of clothes. Diana packed up all her teaching lessons from all the years past. I grabbed a Shakespeare book that was my great-great-grandfathers, as well as a little trophy my grandfather won when he was a boy. That's about it. It's weird to think that we have a lot of stuff, but nothing that we couldn't replace or live without, if it really came down to it.

I hope and doubt the fire will come our way, but even the thought that it could is pretty chilling.

In other news, we bought a bed this weekend. It's NIIIIICE.

That is all, for now.

Ok...

So what's the deal with this grocery store strike? Actually, I take that back. I don't really care what the deal is with the grocery store strike. They want something, and the employers want something, and they'll have to find an agreement somewhere. Whatever.

What I do care about is that somehow we, the general public, are now involved in their fight. Willling or not, shoppers are being used as a pawn in the negotiations by the union workers against the stores, specifically by being encouraged (or bullied) at shopping elsewhere.

Is this fair? Or even appropriate? It just seems wrong to me that a lot of people who probably don't know or care about the specifics of the negotiations are now unwittingly on the side of the union strikers through their actions of shopping elsewhere.

Comments?

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Yesterday, we had a "team building" event at a local mini-golf place. Contests were held in lazer-tag and mini-golf. My team won both (we had a good team). Yay us. It was a fun day. Beat working, at least.

Are you ready, kids?
(Aye-aye, Captain!)
I can't HEEEAAAAR YOOUUUUU!
(AYE-AYE CAPTAIN!)

Nothing like a little stress to make being not-stressed a lot more fun. My work-boy and I wrote an internet game used by the marketing department when they go on tour and meet with existing and perspective clients. They were in Boston, and are now in NYC running the game. Apparently, while in Boston, they were having problems, and hoped that we could have those problems fixed up. It was a problem that was beyond me (re: hardware and configuration that I don't have access to), but I couldn't round anyone up to fix it. I left messages for relevant people, and eventually someone got back to me. The problem was fixed at around 12:30am, and the game ran smoothely this morning (in front of a lot of clients as well as the heads of our company!). This is good. *phew*

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I thought I was getting sick last night. I wasn't feeling that hot, and my throat was starting to get sore. I feel pretty good today, though, so hopefully the sickness has been averted.

---

A couple weeks ago was my 10 year high school reunion. This process dredged up a lot of memories, and made me wonder about a lot of people that I haven't heard anything about since high school. Anyways, I was able to track down an email address to an old classmate of mine who I went to school with from early elementary school (kindergarten?) all the way though high school. She wrote me back a nice long email, and it was surprisingly good to hear from her. It's really neat for me, in some vague conceptual way, to know that all those people that had some part in shaping my life are all still out there, doing whatever they're doing.

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The snowball of a Vegas trip is starting it's way down the mountain. Look out!

I had a great weekend

Lots of quality time with my most favorite wife in the world. Got to hang out with friends on Friday night for H-Bomb's birthday, and see a fun band. Went to the Zoo and walked around for a bit. The Chargers won. Made lots of progress on my latest programming project.

Everything's coming up Adman!

Sad.

A friend of mine at work just found out that her boyfriend was killed in a car accident. They'd been dating for a good bit of time now, and were pretty serious and going to move in together. (He was from England, and they were going to spend time in both countries to decide who was going to move where). And all of a sudden, this.

I feel really bad for her. It's terrible to hear about someone losing someone like that. The only natural thing to do is to put yourself in that person's situation, and come to the realization that, at any moment, any of your friends or loved ones, or even you, could be struck down and killed.

And that's a suck-ass thing to remember.

So, find someone you love and give 'em a hug.

Two quick things to make the world a better place.

1) Elevators shall be LIFO. Last In, First Out. Women and children be damned. It's really annoying to watch people shuffle around to make sure the ladies get out first.
2) Do NOT drive on the freeway with your blinker on unless you are actually using it. It's not that hard, people. I know you're old, and it's harder to hear and see things, but if you can't SEE the FLASHING LIGHT, or HEAR the TICKING SOUND, you might not be road-worthy.

That is all.

Poker update... it's 1am, and the tournament is on break.

3050 players entered.
After 1 hour, 1126 are left.
I'm currently in 5th place. At one point I was in 2nd!

That is all.

---

Ugh.

I'm dealt KJo, and limp in.

Flop comes KJx. I go all in. One caller. We flip 'em, and he's got KK. I'm basically drawing dead...

Finish in 357th place.

The Theater.

Diana and I went to the theater tonight, and saw the play "Proof". It was a surprise for Diana. It turns out she'd seen the play before when she was in New York visiting her sister, but I didn't know this. Oh well. She was pleased to see it again, though.

I noticed a couple of things about the theater:

1) The ushers are almost invariable OLD! Why is this?
2) When we approached the usher at the door, our tickets were in my coat pocket, and my hands were full of programs. I figured I'd just tell the guy our seat numbers. That didn't really fly. I had to fuss around with people waiting behind us to get all my crap together and give him the tickets, just so he could walk us to our seats which we could have found very well on our own. Oh well.

The play was pretty good. Clearly the best part was that the lead was played by Danica McKellar, who's probably best known by most for playing Winnie Cooper on "The Wonder Years". I heard her on the radio on a local morning show talking about the play, being a child actor, being a math whiz, and so forth. It sounds like she's a really smart person, and the way she talked about math reminded me of Diana. She not only was so gifted, but was truly enthusiastic about it, which was fun to listen to. So I bought tickets that very same day.

Winnie Cooper (and therefore Ms. McKellar) was not an insignificant part of my childhood, I don't think. I was roughly the same age as young Kevin, and it was a crazy age where all of a sudden one starts to notice girls and get weird feeilngs in your stomach. Everything was so goddamn nerve-wracking, but in an exhilarating, semi-pubescent sexual-tension sort of way. I'd notice girls, and notice them notice me, but of course each side has to play it cool and not make it obvious that we're noticing each other. And Winnie, while not the literal object of devotion or anything, was the incarnation of every girl I'd ever noticed in That Sort of Way, and all the glorious nervous energy that went along with it.

It was only within the last year or so when I saw a commercial and saw that she was going to be on West Wing that I noticed (ha!) that she'd grown up to be a total babe. Combine that with hearing her on the radio, and hearing how smart she was, and how *wise* she was was very impressive. And I know this sounds cheeseball, and I don't mean it to, but she reminded me of Diana. I don't mean "reminded" like I'd forgotten anything. "Reinfoced" might be a better word. All the things that I was so impressed with about her I've already found in Diana. (Although Diana hasn't been on any critically acclaimed TV shows lately, but who's counting?)

And now, I'm tired. But I just registered for a free poker tournament starting at midnight, and I've discovered a great new computer game called "Savage", which I've been playing around with. It's a fusion of RTS and FPS, which is a really natural fit. Imagine Warcraft II or Age of Empires type RTS, but where the units you command are actual human players rather that NPCs. So, one commander plays the game from "on high", issuing commands to the rest of the team who plays in a FPS style. Pretty cool stuff.

Quick recap... Friday night, Diana and I went and hung out with Norm and Teri and her parents at the beach house. I wasn't sure how hanging out with her parents was going to be, but it turned out to be really fun. They're both really nice, and it was good to sit and get to know them. It's always great to see Norm and Teri, and we had a good time just sitting around and chatting.

Saturday evening, Diana and Iwan and I headed to the home opener of the San Diego Sockers! The game was pretty low scoring and boring, but it's still fun to see live sporting events. The Sockers lost.

Sunday, Dad and I went out for his birthday present to Fry's. We bought a DVD player, and headed back to their house and got it all set up. He seemed happy to have it, and hopefully they'll enjoy it. I watched the first bit of the Charger game over there, and headed home to watch the rest. Poor, poor Chargers. The state of San Diego sports is really in the shitter right now.

We rented two movies recently: "Confidence" and Jackie Chan's "Drunken Master". The first was ok. A heist movie that tried to be "The Usual Suspects", but wasn't as catchy or clever or good. I was hoping the latter would be better, but it wasn't nearly as cool as some of Jackie's newer stuff. So, a couple of duds there. Bummer.

Last night, Diana, who usually has class from 5-10pm got a call as she was walking out the door that it was cancelled. We spent the evening enjoying the couch and watching trashy TV, which is fun while we're doing it, but afterwards can leave one with a feeling of having wasted an evening.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BLOG!

Wow... I just was checking out my archives, and found that the ol' blog is about a year old. Nice work, me!

Diana and I were in bed last night flipping the channels. "Leave it to Beaver" was on, and she didn't recognize what it was. It wasn't like it was a weird part or anything; Wally and the Beav were having a little heart to heart. When she heard the names "Wally" and "Beaver", she guessed "Beaver the Cleaver"? She's so cute and television-retarded at the same time. Seriously, I think we could count on one hand the cumulative number of episodes she's seen of Bewitched, I Dream of Jeanie, Happy Days, M*A*S*H, I Love Lucy, The Munsters, Gilligan's Island, and Leave It To Beaver. And we didn't talk about it, but I have doubts about The Love Boat, too.

I'm not saying I'm a TV god or anything, but these, to me, represent some serious classics, and shows that I grew up with (when my parents weren't home and I was allowed to watch as much glorious TV as I wanted!) Nor do I (of course) think anything worse of Diana at all. It just kind of astounds me, for some reason, as these shows strike me as sort of ubiquitous fundamentals. I vowed that I would gather a representitive sample of each of those shows and watch them with her, but I'm not sure how I could accomplish that.

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I think I did good work today. There is really nasty task that we programmers have to do when we're done with out programs and submitting them to the testing group. We have to find component that our program depends on, and write them out in a list. Then we have to find every component that THOSE components depend on, and add those to the list. And so on, until you get to components that don't depend on others. I think I've just written a small tool that will do that (pain in the ass) job automatically. My boy Bruce had the idea, and we talked about doing it on a weekend or after hours or something, but I had some time today and was able to get a good start on it, and stayed late tonight while Diana was working to get it finished up. I hope he can test it tomorrow, and release it on the masses! I hope it goes well, as stuff like this can directly influence year-end reviews, raises, and bonuses and whatnot.

Man, I had such a good Nethack game going last night, then I got ruined.

DianaFury was a female elven Wizard (chaotic). She started off with the force bolt and magic missile spells. There was a pair of gloves in the room she started in, which her pet dutifully brought to her. Since they weren't cursed, she put 'em on, and watched her strength jump to 25. Gauntlets of Power in the first room. Sweet.

She made it down to minetown, where the altar was coaligned, and got some holy water. One of the shops sold a lamp for 75, and dropping it on the altar confirmed it was blessed. She rubbed the lamp, and a djinni appeared and granted her wish of Silver Dragon scale mail. Sweet.

She then went to find Sokoban, and completed it, but needed to break a bunch of boulders along the way, which reduced her luck a lot, I guess. In Sokoban, she found a stray kitten on the last level, which grew very quickly into a large cat in the treasure room. The treasure room yielded a bag of holding, which was very needed with the scrolls and rings and potions she had. She then went back to complete the mines, which wasn't much of a problem. A nice dwarf was kind enough to bring the luckstone right to her. A polymorph trap turned her large cat into a Gray Dragon. Sweet.

This is where the problems began. She headed back to minetown, to do some killing and sacrificing to try to improve her weapon and get more holy water. She drank from a fountain (the guards didn't scare her!), and it overflowed making a couple little pools. She then got all her useless potions out of the bag of holding, and put all her other stuff IN the bag of holding in preparation to drop it and jump in the pool (to dilute her potions to water).

All of a sudden, the bag (which was FULL of goodies) was gone. My only guess is that one of my unID'd wands was a wand of cancellation (putting a wand of cancellation into a bag of holding explodes it, losing everything). All I was left with was the armor I was wearing (still not bad) and a couple of gems. My god wasn't happy with me, and sacrificing wasn't helping (I think it was all the bad luck I'd incurred in Sokoban). I starved to death soon after. Bogus.

Magic.

I've been (doing?performing?practicing? I'm not sure what the right verb is) magic for the past 15 years or so, off and on. I always liked magic, and it started when I got a great book for Christmas (Mark Wilson's book, which might just be called "Magic", is a great book for beginners). I then took some classes at a local magic shop, and bought more books and practiced, practiced, practiced! I've probably spent hundreds of hours in front of a mirror practicing various slights and tricks and so forth. And when I'd get a new one down, I'd go and show my mom. This in itself was frusterating, because her skill at catching how a trick was done was exactly proportional to my skill as a magician. She politely humor me, which would only motivate me to practice it a little more. When I did fool her, I knew I was doing well.

The problem is that I hate performing magic tricks. I get nervous and full shaky-hands, which is bad enough. And after the trick is done, I don't know how to deal with the reactions people have. People want me to do it again (rule #3 of magicians is you don't repeat a trick). People want me to tell 'em how it's done (rule #1, natch). People are impressed and shower me with praise. All of which make me very uncomfortable.

I'm actually a lot better with a couple of drinks in me. Clears up the nervousness, loosens up the muscles a little bit.

I'm totally not a ham, or an actor, or a dramatist or whatever. I do have quite an ego, and love to impress people, (some people call it "showing off"), but I like to do so in a roundabout way, I guess. I'd rather be juggling off by myself somewhere, and have someone happen to see me and be impressed than to gather everyone around and say "Look at what I can do!" and perform. If that makes sense.

I love, however, the tricks themselves. I love doing 'moves'. I have some videos that I brought out the other day, and have been practicing my Classic Pass. A lot. I carry a deck of cards around with me at work, pass, pass, pass.

So. Such are the conundrums in my life.

Weekend roundup

This weekend was pretty good!

Saturday morning, Iwan and I headed out to Viejas for a $12 limit Hold'em tournament. We played in a no-limit tournament a couple weeks ago, and this was quite a bit different. Not nearly as nerve-wracking, and we were able to play for quite a bit longer. Winning a hand is so exciting! I'm not sure which is more fun, having everyone fold to you, or having a showdown where you have the best hand. Either way, I was able to "drag some pots" (as they say), and play for a good bit of time. Eventually, though, the blinds got raised disproportionately to my stack, and I got married to my K-Q offsuit and lost. Iwan was simply bled to death shortly after that.

Not only is the actual poker fun, but we have about a 45 minute drive out there, where we talk strategy, and just generally catch up. Then we play. Then on the drive home, discuss hands and just be excited. The whole experience is just plain fun.

Shortly after that, we all met over at Baditudes dad's house (where he's housesitting) for a little pool party and BBQ for Iwan's birthday. That was a good time. Good food, good peeps, nice house. It was a good, friend-bonding day.

Sunday, Diana was up and out early to her golf class. I lazed in bed for a while, and got up to check email and news and whatnot. On PokerStars, a no-limit free money tournament was starting, so I entered that. I actually did really well (for me). For the majority of the game, I was in the top 100 (out of 3800), and ended up in 377th place or so. Anyways, at some point I went out to make some lunch, and saw big puddles in our courtyard. I thought it was raining, but discovered the sprinklers were on... since like 5am! I don't know why they didn't turn off, and they didn't turn off on my first attempts, but I eventually pushed enough buttons that they did. Weird. The water soaked in quickly enough, though, so I'm pretty sure no harm done.

Diana got home, and we watched the rest of the Charger game together, which was nice. Gannon and LT scored lots of points for the Mighty Birdmen. Too bad the Chargers lost, but they played well.

We went over to my parents house for dinner after that, which was nice. I'm giving my dad a trip to Fry's, a purchase of a DVD player, and help setting it up for his birthday, which will be a lot of fun. We came home early enough to make a fire and work on our mystery puzzle thing. I know it sounds lame, but sometimes it's just nice to sit with someone you love and work on a puzzle.

And now, back to work!

Friendster.

In the same vein as below, an old friend found my email and invited me as a friend on friendster.com.

For those who have lived in a cave the last year or so, this is a six-degrees-of-seperation type of thing. You create a personal entry (hobbies, likes and dislikes and whatnot), and you invite friends. And all those friends invite their friends, and so on and so forth.

The real kicker, though, is that it keeps track of all these links. So I can look up random people, and see if/how they are connected to me. In my "personal network", there's over 76000 people, all of whom I'm connected to via friends and friends of friends, etc.

Pretty wacky.

The end result, of course, is people inviting people to be their "friends", simply so they can either get a higher count or access to more people. This is dumb, but that's the way it goes.

Chatting.

So, on the radio on the drive home last night, I hear stories about online chatting, and how it can be dangerous for kids and whatnot. Being an investigative, curious sort of guy, I blow the dust of off Yahoo Chat and login.

It didn't make any difference where I went, or what I said or didn't say. Most people just entered and left the room without saying anything. If someone did actually say something, it was always something like "If you think (something) (is cool/sucks) type (some random digits)":

If you think Britney Spears sucks, type 123456!
If you think I'm cute, type 222!
If u think the Patriots r going to win the superbowl, type 99!

I didn't see a single response to any such plea, either.

If it wasn't that, it was seemingly random spoutings, mostly trying to get a rise out of someone else. People would just sort of voice their thoughts, but there wasn't much actual 2-way communication. Of course, with colors and various font-sizes, everything was all in day-glo letters, and HUGE ones at that. It didn't take me long to get bored and play Nethack.

I miss the days when the Internet was hard to use. It wasn't perfect, but filtering out people who were either too dumb or too impatient to actually find their way to a newsgroup or IRC chatroom greatly improved the so-called signal-to-noise ratio. Now, it's all spam, porn-ads, and 12 year olds (or those who act like 'em).

Now that I think more about it, I wonder if there's now a new sort of filter. Maybe the amount of trash that you need to wade through to find something meaningful (like, a chat room with a coherant conversation, or a newsgroup with actual discussions) is the thing that keeps people like me out. The immature newbs get stuck in the first layer, but to find real wealth takes some wading. Like pearl-diving in a septic tank.

Ugh.

Sunday, Normie invited a couple people to the Charger game. It was tons of fun, and neat to sit in the front row seats. It's weird, though, that with footbal, I think I almost prefer to sit in the cheaper seats. Most of the time, actually, I think I prefer to watch it from home on TV. There's just so much going on at once that the closer you are, the harder it is to follow everything (like sitting in the front row of the movies). However, it's a very cool experience to sit where we were, especially when the plays happen right underneath you. Being that close, you do get a good sense of how big those guys are. So, thanks to Norm for the tix!

Tonight, Diana's got a late class. I have no plans. Maybe rent a movie or play Nethack or Diablo II. Or poker. At one point I was up around 200,000 in play money chips, and now it's all gone through a couple sessions of "I'm bored and will play crazy" play.

So... there it is.

So...

Last night was my 10 year high school reunion.

As noted previously, I was looking foward to it, but also not looking forward to getting stuck in situations making small talk with people that I really didn't care about. Luckily, that didn't happen much, and the evening was a good success.

First, Diana and I headed over to Eryn's, where we met up with him and Liz. We shared nervousness and wondered what the evening had in store for us. We headed over and arrived right when the thing was supposed to open it's doors, so we took the opportunity to hit the bar and partake in some, as Liz put it, liquid courage.

We soon went to the ballroom and claimed a table in the corner. With us, other people were filing in, and the reunion got under full swing.

*Focus-dissolve to high-school Adman*

I definitely wasn't in the popular crowd in high school, but I'd go out on a limb to say that I was relatively well known and reasonably liked. I didn't drink or do drugs, so I wasn't invited to many parties by the more, uh, outgoing students. But I feel I was respected athletically, academically, and socially. I was never bullied by anyone, and was generally friendly to people in different social strata. I was certainly geeky, though, and I had an unusual flair of self-confidence (some people said "egotistical". I'm not sure I can disagree, looking back). I didn't really care if people thought it was weird that I played Smashball at lunch. Smashball is fun, so bite me. So, if anyone thought I was a lame geek, they did so behind my back.

I had a solid group of maybe 10 really good friends, which was probably enough of an established group to be it's own niche in the high school ecosystem and we were affored the protection that gives. I affectionally think ofl us as The Misfits, although I don't think that's entirely accurate. We weren't Jocks, Drama Freaks, Nerds, Stoners, Skaters, or Surfers. Leftovers, maybe. Although I guess that could describe the majority of students.

*Fade back to last night*

So, last night, I was pleased to run into old friends (Bob and Dax, especially). Other folks I ran into ranged anywhere from "very nice to see and catch up with" to "muh, I really don't care about you". Some people who were annoying in high school seemed to have grown up a lot, and changed for the better. Some didn't. A couple people who would have never really talked to me in high school came up and seemed generally interested to hear what I was up to, which was nice. I'm afraid I can't name any names, though, which brings me to an important point.

A couple of people already knew that Diana and I were married, and sited this blog as a source of that information. This was somewhat terrifying, but another reinforcement to the lesson that I shouldn't badmouth anyone by name (unless, of course, I want them to find it). So, if you saw me at the reunion, and are trying to classify yourself with the above, you'll have to take your best guess at it. By the way, if you're reading this and you were at the reunion, go ahead and drop a comment! I'd love to take a poll of who's actually reading this thing (which is often said but rarely accomplished).

The best part, though, was that it was very easy to disengage from conversations. Just a quick "Well, it was good to see you again", and that was that. Only had to use it once or twice, but it worked like a charm.

Eric Cheng couldn't make it, unfortunately, but had a friend bring down a lifesize cardboard standup figure (like you'd see at a movie opening or something) of himself to stand up in the corner and have people sign. It was really creepy, actually, to catch out of the corner of your eye. Of course it wasn't long before someone drew fake genatalia (both sexes represented) and so forth. Bunch of savages in this town...

Rich showed up, and protested the entire event by not paying the $80 ticket fee (per person!) and hung out in the bar with his lovely wife Christa. He didn't miss anything by paying the rediculous amount, and eventually got into the ballroom anyways. For our $80, we got an airplane food meal (with inedibly bad cheesecake for desert), and a lame-ass "memory book". Dumb. Oh well.

Finally, I should note that it would have been not nearly as much fun to go without Eryn and Liz and, of course, Diana. Diana and I had so much fun sharing so many memories and predictions from our shared high school experience. Eryn was the source of a lot of humor over the night as he might have been the least known student at the whole school. I really don't know Liz very well at all, but the few times I've hung out with her, I've always found her refreshing real and down to earth, both funny, but not afraid to laugh with others, which are qualities that I look for in all my friends. My favorite part of the evening, by far, was just hanging out with those three before the event in the bar, joking around in nervous anticipation of what was to come.

After a couple hours, we'd seen the people we'd wanted to see, and talked to the people on our lists of people we'd wanted to talk to, it was time to vamoose. And like that (*poof*), we were gone.

Will I be at my 20 year high school reunion? It's hard to say, at this point. We'll see, I guess.

Oh yeah, one last thing.

Eryn took his video camera and shot some various footage through the event. At some points, when it was too dark in the room, he turned on his 'night vision' setting in his camera. This sets the mode of the camera to some sort of infrared setting or something, which allows vision in the dark, but skews colors and so forth. Skin tones turn a sickly green, and black pupils turn bright white. It's really eerie.

Another side effect is that, depending on the fabric, it can see through clothes. And not in a subtle sort of way. *Right through*. We only found this out afterwards when reviewing the footage the he'd shot. There's a shot of the dancefloor with people dancing, and everything looks generally normal except one girl looks like she's just wearing a bra and panties.

So, just thought I'd mention that li'l tidbit.

Weekend activities of note...

So, tomorrow evening is my 10 year high school reunion.

I'm looking forward to going, in spite of the fact that I hate running into people from high school and having that forced "So, what are you up to these days?" conversation. However, some really good high school friends are going to be there that I don't keep in touch with anymore, and I'm looking forward to hearing from all them (Bob, Dax, Adrian, Jamie, Aileen, Sarah, Lea, Nicole...) Unfortunately, many of my high school friends that I'm still very good friends with can't or aren't going (Iwan, Marc, Mike, Norm), so that's kind of a bummer. But, Diana and Baditude will be there, so that will make it fun. Keep posted for how everything went.

I have really no idea what to expect, or what kind of images people are going to want to put across. I'm guessing that a lot of people will show up with a need to show others how they've "made it" in life. I guess I'm no different in that respect. But I think where I might differ is that I'm guessing "made it" to most people (especially at my hoity-toity high school) means "made a lot of money". But I feel that I've "made it" in that I'm genuinely happy in my modest life. So, we'll see, I guess.

One thing that makes me geniunely happy is that I have great friends. Friends who are really nice and caring and giving and invite me to things like Chargers games. Especially when those friends have connections for free tickets in the front row right over the end zone. This pleases me. I'm pleased.

If only the Chargers could win a game.....

I thought this was pretty cool:

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht
oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist
and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you
can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not
raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

pettry amzanig huh?

Long time no blog!

A combination of working late and feeling sort of crappy has kept me otherwise occupied, but I'm now back and better than ever, so watch out!

This weekend, when I wasn't moping around, Diana and I finally received and put built our brand new entertainment center for our family room. It was pretty cheap, but looks really nice (better than we expected, I think). And unexpectedly, I really makes the room feel a lot more like a home rather than just a place to crash out, if that makes any sense at all. Anyways, we're very pleased.

Other news briefs:
My fantasy football boys, in spite of looking good, aren't playing very well. I'm 0-2. Oh well.
Diana's been working hard, out until 9 or 10 every night, which kind of sucks.
Lots of good TV this week! Newlyweds (Jessica Simpers and Nick Whats-his-butt), Survivor, World Poker Tour...
I've been playing more Diablo II, which is easily a top-5 PC game of all time.

Impromptu list time! Adam's top 5 all time favorite PC games, in no particular order:
1) Half Life / Counterstrike. Best FPS ever.
2) X-wing. I loved this game.
3) Warcraft II. The only RTS I've really enjoyed.
4) Diablo II. Best advancement type game.
5) Doom. I played this over and over and over.

I've noticed Diana has an unbelievably cute habit (well, I think so). She likes to ask me questions in the following form:
"If you were going to , would you rather or ?"
... where is something that I'd either never thought of doing, or wouldn't want to do. But in the asking of the question, it's assumed that I *would* want to do that thing, and then asks me to expound on it. I can do nothing but sit speechless, my mind reeling, until I finally just start laughing. I'll post a good example when I have one. What's so funny about it is that the question makes perfectly good sense to her, but throws me off so much when I first hear it.

Anyways, maybe it's just me.

Diana's coming home at 10pm tonight, so we've got a lunch date this afternoon! And then, when I get home from work, I'm going to play Diablo II until my eyes bleed. :)

All work and no play makes Adman something-something...

Worked all day and into the night on Friday. Most of the day on Saturday. All day Sunday. And now, here I am again. Bummer.

On Saturday, when I wasn't working, Diana and I joined up late to a beach BBQ/bonfire with Gabe and Rena and Iwan and the Redlands crew, which was a lot of fun. It was nice to see everyone, and great to see Rhiannon, who is quite noticeably preggos. She seemed healthy and happy and looking forward to being a mom. They seemed to be doing well. We made a big fire, which was irresponsibly fun. Hee!

On Sunday, when I wasn't working, I watched the Chargers get stomped on by the Chiefs. I'm not sure if we were bad or if they were good. But it was a little disheartening. But, "there's always next week".

Anyhoo, that's about it for now. My Fantasy Football team is about 10 points down with my only player left to play being "Philly Defense". Go boys!

What a weekend!

Let'see... a quick re-cap.

Friday night, we went to Baditudes house and watched Shanghai Knights. A fun movie, and fun to hang out with everyone.

Saturday morning, Diana hung out with a friend who was in town. I took the opportunity to work on part of her birthday pressie, which was a treasure-hunt type deal. In the afternoon, we went over to my parents house for dinner, and went to see "Much Ado About Nothing". It was good... not great, but still a lot of fun.

Sunday morning, I gave Diana a little note which was a clue to the first hiding spot, and watched her solve the clues. All the hiding spots were locations of signifiagance, like her wedding bouquet, the first curtains we put up, the place were the crow died, etc. Once she collected all the clues, they went together and formed a little puzzle, on the back of which was a coded message. The final clue also had the key to the code (Norm: I stole the idea from the web thing you sent me). Solving that gave the location of her present (which was one of those murder-mystery jigsaw puzzles... a little anti-climatic, I know, but we had one before that we had a lot of fun with, and gave us good couple-bonding time, so I think it isn't sub-par. I'm not a very good gift-giver.)

So, after all that, we went to my parents house for lunch (more birthday celebration for Diana and my mom), and then met up with Iwan and Sara and went to the races.

The races were a blast. We all made crazy bets. At one point, Iwan and agreed on our betting strategy, and put down two sets of identical bets. We won $56 each. Much of that was lost on subsequent races, but Diana and I walked out with $15 more than we came in with. So, that's a good day. We were all tuckered out, so we got some pizza and went back to our place and watched "Noises Off", which I think is hilarious. I'm not sure how they liked it, but oh well. Early to bed, because we had a big poker tournament the next morning!

Yeah, that's right. Monday morning we got up early (well, not too early, but earlier than normal for a holiday), and picked up Iwan, and headed to Viejas to participate in one of it's daily poker tournaments. The buying was $12, which bought us $1500 in tournament chips and a seat at the No-Limit Hold'Em tournament.

Long story short: Half an hour later, I was out. 15 minutes after that, Diana was out. 15 minutes after that, Iwan went out.
Long story medium: It was crazy to sit down at your seat, and see 10 chips in front of you. 2 x $500, 4 x $100, 4 x $25. Blinds start out at $25/$50, and doubled every 15 minutes. With that few chips, and with blinds increasing so fast, there's really not a lot of time to play tight and sit around waiting for good hands (which is what the three of us did). I also screwed up majorly: I thought there was one player behind me with a bet of $200. I said "raise 300", and threw out a pink ($500) chip, thinking I could scare him away. I didn't realize (or forgot) that there was a player between me and him who had ALREADY raised it to $500. So, when I said "raise $300", that meant I owed $300 on top of the $500 to call. The guy I wanted to fold orginially did so, leaving just me and the raiser (who was an old guy who seemed to know what he was doing).

I was on a semi-bluff with an open ended straight draw, so it wasn't a total catastrophe. The turn came up, making 3 to the flush on the board, and not helping my straight. I checked. The guy who had raised before looked me dead in the eye and said "I'm all in", and pushed his healthy stack out. I had to assume he made his flush, and I had zilch. I'm not sure if I should have called at that point or not, but I folded. That was the beginning of the end.

It seemed the more successful players played pretty crazy, seeing lots of flops and getting lucky with crap cards. Diana threw away what would have been 6 winning hands if she'd stayed in. She had a great hand where she had queen-ace and the board showed Q-3-9. Turn came another Q. She checked, the other guy bet, and she raised all-in over the top! The guy called, showing his Q-J. The river came a 9, giving them BOTH a full house, queens over 9's, so they ended up splitting the pot. A great hand, and really well played by D, but a heartbreak of a result. (Props to anyone who checks and then goes all in).

All in all, we all had a great time. It was a great $12 spent on entertainment (that's what we're calling it), and a very humbling experience. For those who like to worry about me, rest assured I have no plans to lose (or win, for that matter) any serious money via gambling. But $12 for an hour or two of fun, with the potential to win a lot more sounds like a good deal to me.

Afterwards, we stopped by Diana's parents for some more birthday celebration. Then I went to the beach with Iwan and Eryn and Heather, while Diana went home and got some work done. The group of us (minus Heather, plus Sara) ended up back at our place to BBQ and hang out. Iwan and I decided we needed steaks. So we bought 3 pounds of marinated tri-tip from Seaside Martketplace in Cardiff. This came highly reccomended to us from Papa Rosten, and when we were there, a woman said that it was the best thing she'd ever had in her life. So, we were all kinds of fired up. We got the grill going, and managed to not completely ruin the steaks. They were a little well done, but we considered it a dry-run for a future Monday Night Football extravaganza. Even though they were not perfect, the steaks were REALLY good. We all just kind of crashed out on the couch after that and hung out.

There you have it. A busy, fun weekend. Diana's back to school today (her birthday, by the way! Happy Birthday!), and starts her classes to night, so she's not going to be home until 10pm. :(

Hope everyone out there had a great weekend as well!

What a fun weekend so far!

Today, Diana and I went over to my parents hours for lunch. Afterwards, we met up with Iwan and Sara, and hit up the ol' Del Mar Races. We had a lot of fun betting crazy bets. At one point, Iwan and I both bet the same thing, and it paid off, with each of us winning $56. So, that sponsered the rest of the afternoon, with some left over, so that was nice. Then they both came over for some dinner and a movie (Noises Off). I'm not sure how much they liked it, but I still thinks it's a hilariously funny movie. Maybe you have to be in the right mood.

Early night tonight, because me and Iwan and D are going to Viejas to play in our very first poker tournament! $12 buyin for some no-limit hold'em. Should be a whole lot of fun. I hope. We've never done this before, so it will be a total learning experience. But I think $12 is a deal for this kind of lesson. More news as it breaks.