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!