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Getting Organized Feels Good

November 16, 2008

Over the past couple months it’s been a bit crazy the amount of things that have been on my schedule. I don’t recall being this popular… ever. It seems that 4 or 5 nights a week we have plans to go out for one reason or another. Between the 3 meetup groups I’m part of, concerts or just an evening out with friends, it was really getting to be a bit much. That’s partially because I would never write anything down and we’d always end up scrambling to make it somewhere, or worse, we’d be double-booked for the same evening.

Until: iPhone to the rescue!

OK, at the risk of sounding like a fanboy, I have to say that the iPhone has really been the start of me getting some fecal cohesion. Any time ANY sort of appointment comes up, I quickly add it to my calendar. My iPhone calendar has become “the boss of me.” I don’t agree to anything until I check and see if I already have something planned at that time.

I feel like I’m late to the party. Like everybody else around me has been doing this for years and it’s just dawning on me to get organized. But seriously, I never really realized how unorganized I was until just recently. They say ignorance is bliss, so I must have been on cloud 9.

Now, if I could just organize my desk at home and keep it that way, I’ll really be on to something!

Filed Under: Ranting Tagged With: ,

2008 WSOP recap

November 13, 2008

The World Series of Poker is finally over. Congratulations to Peter Eastgate on becoming the youngest player ever to win the Main Event at only 22 years old. I have a feeling it’s going to be a LONG time before anybody is able to beat that record.

This year, rather than playing out the final event of the World Series until there was 1 player left, when they eliminated the 10th place player, they put the tournament on hold and sent the players on a break. A LONG break. A 3 month break. If you are asking yourself why they would do something like that, well, you are not alone. Back when they first announced that they were going to do this, the explanation that I heard was that they were going to send the players home and invite them back in November to play out the final table live on TV. This would give ESPN time to show all the preliminary events, and the action from the main event up until the point where there were only 9 left. This sounded like an awesome idea. Last year I paid for the Pay-Per-View of the final table and watched about 7 hours of the event. I was definitely ready to watch the final table again this year. Unfortunately, that information was incorrect.

Over this past weekend, the “November Nine”, as they were so cutely named, took over the Penn & Teller theater and with about 1000 people in the audience, they played down to the final 2 players. The following evening, the final 2 came back and played it out until Peter Eastgate held all the chips in play. Of course all of this action was filmed, but there was no live broadcast, no pay-per-view, no extra content to be had at all. Instead, the well produced condensed version was shown on ESPN just like every week leading up to the final table. So why did they make the players wait? I have a guess; money.

If they had completed the final table back in July, even the most casual of poker players would have found out by now who won the WSOP. It’s not like the SuperBowl, but if you are in to Poker, you are going to run across the information on a website, magazine or word of mouth. But, by making everybody wait, they have a built up of excitement to find out who wins. This could cause poker players who may not normally watch the ESPN telecast to turn it on to find out who wins. Face it, most poker players don’t actually watch televised poker. ESPN wants those eyes watching. So anything they could do to build SOME excitement has got to be good for them.

I was pretty bummed when I found out they weren’t going to show the entire final table. But, that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to watch the final show.

There were a couple of really ugly beats to knock people out, but I have to say, every player at this final table conducted themselves with a level of professionalism not normally found at the final table. When Scott Montgomery lost on the river to a one-outter, he simply smiled, shook everybody’s hand and walked away. It was a very refreshing sight.

ESPN did one thing during the telecast that is my biggest pet peeve when it comes to televised poker. When they were down to 8 players, they came back from a commercial and they are showing Kelly Kim shaking hands with some of the players. The announcer says that Kelly Kim has just been eliminated. Are you going to tell me that this player fought his way through more than 6800 players and you don’t even have the decency to show his final hand in the tournament? I don’t care if it’s the most mundane hand ever played, he deserves to have his final hand shown.

One other side effect of having a 3 month layoff before the final table, it gave all the players a chance to get sponsorships from dozens of companies. I had made a joke that it looked like we were watching a NASCAR event with everybody covered in sponsorship badges. For the players I’m stoked. Why shouldn’t they get an extra quarter-million if they can work the deals? However, for the viewers at home, I’m a little embarrassed. I would like to think that if I were to ever make it to a televised final table, I would pass up the sponsorship money and instead wear a comfortable suit that actually looks nice.

I’m really curious to hear the plans for next year’s WSOP event. I plan on playing in a couple events next year and want to know what surprises I have ahead of me. I guess I have to wait and see.

Filed Under: Ranting Tagged With: , ,

Rocky Horror Revisited

November 2, 2008

Many years ago my wife and I used to perform in the Rocky Horror Picture Show when we were MUCH younger. On rare occasions when we are in Los Angeles over a weekend and we have Saturday night free, we stop in to the Nuart to see if any of our old pals are still around. We typically show up early to hang out with people in the parking lot before the show, go in to the theater and stay long enough to see the pre-show and then leave within 5 minutes of the movie starting. That’s pretty much been our only involvement with Rocky in the past 10 years or so.

Recently I learned that Todd had NEVER seen the Rocky Horror Picture Show. This came as a HUGE shock to me since Todd is a hard core geek. Well, when I found out that the Onyx Theater here in Vegas was going to be showing Rocky ON Halloween, which conveniently fell on a Friday night this year, well, there was nothing I could do. We were basically FORCED to drag him out to the show.

We put out an invite to a group of friends and found out that two other people we know, Kim & Rob, have also never seen the show. Ahh, this was gonna be fun!

The show was set to start at 8. We all met for drinks around 6 and showed up to the theater around 7:40. The theater is nestled in the back corner of a fetish clothing store called The Rack. We made our way in, got frisked by security (I made a second stop at the cute female security guard so she could pat me down a second time) and went in to find seats. The theater is really small and at first glance it looked to be PERFECT for showing Rocky. There was a nice sized stage area and the screen was low so the actors would be partly in front of the screen. Then, the show started…

The pre-show was decent. Our friends all took part in the Virgin Sacrifice. A healthy dose of embarrassing photos and a video later, they were back in their seats and the movie began. This is when the wheels started to come off the bus.

First, I gotta say that the cast, Divine Decadence, was pretty decent. They had good costumes and decent props. They did a few things differently than I’ve seen at other Rocky shows, so that part was pretty cool.

Now for the list of complaints.
- The Stage. I thought it was going to be cool that the stage was so close to the screen. However, given the size of the screen (it’s small), the actors took up 2/3s of the screen area.
- The lighting. This sorta ties in to the location of the stage/screen. When the cast members are on stage and the lighting crew is shining flashlights on them, it washes out the screen to the point of almost not being able to see it at all.
- The audience participation callbacks. The idea behind a callback is to say a line during the time the actors on screen are not talking. Then, the actor says something that goes along with what you said and hilarity ensues. Unfortunately, the people doing the call backs have horrible timing and would end up saying their line OVER the actor’s response. So, it was not only not funny, it was hard to make out the joke they were trying to make.
- The AMOUNT of audience participation. Rocky is 30+ years old. People have been watching the movie and coming up with new lines for that whole time. Over time you can come up with 2 or 3 (or 10) different jokes for the same callback. That doesn’t mean you need to try and yell them all. There was SO much yelling going on, hardly any of it in unison, so it was again, almost impossible to catch the jokes.

As a long time Rocky goer, it was difficult for me to follow along with most of the callbacks and sight gags. For my 3 virgin friends, it was nearly impossible.

We did all manage to have a good time. And yet, I’m not sure I’ll be rushing out to see Rocky again any time soon.

Here are some photos from our night at Rocky

Filed Under: Entertainment, Movies, Ranting Tagged With: ,

The Vote Is in

October 30, 2008

Let me start by saying, for those of you who know me, you know I am NOT a political guy. I try not to get in to conversations about politics. The main reason being, I just don’t follow them well enough to be able to carry on a conversation about them at anything more in depth than a superficial level. With that said, read on.

Obviously since I’m writing this on the last Thursday in October, the vote isn’t over yet. It won’t be done until late on Tuesday, but my vote is officially in. For the second election in a row I went out at lunch time and headed to the outlet mall right by my office. We got there and there was absolutely ZERO line. We walked right up, showed our voter registration packets, got scanned in and we were in the polling booths in less than a minute. A few minutes after that, I was out the other side and heading to the food court with me fresh “I Voted” sticker on my chest. Total time from start to finish: roughly 5 minutes. If you miss out on the early voting, I’m pretty certain you aren’t going to be getting in and out of any polling place in under 5 minutes on Tuesday.

So, if I’m not a political guy, why do I bother going out and voting early? Well, the truth is, I think it’s VERY important that everybody gets out and votes. It sounds funny for me to say that, but it’s true. The way I see it, if you don’t go out and vote, you shouldn’t complain about the way things are being run. Period.

I myself don’t vote on very many of the races on the ballot. Again, this is because I just don’t know enough about the issue, the candidates, their policies on issues, etc. So, as a non-political guy, how do I go about choosing who I’m going to vote for when it comes to our President? A friend sent me a link to a site called glassbooth.org. It helps match you up with the candidate best suited for you based on the issues that matter to you. You are given 20 points and you spread them out across the issues and then it asks you some questions about each issue. When it finally gives you the results it will tell you the percentage of a match you are for each candidate and it provides links to news articles, video clips and other information where each candidate spoke about the issues at hand. For a guy like me who doesn’t know much about it, I found the site to be very helpful.

So if you get a chance, vote early. You only have tomorrow to do it. If you miss out on the early vote, BE SURE to get out and vote on Tuesday. It’s important and it’s worth your time.

Filed Under: Ranting Tagged With: ,

Movie Review: Saw V

October 25, 2008

sucked.

Filed Under: Movies, Ranting

Why do you make us wait?

October 23, 2008

Have you ever used UPS or Fed/Ex to have a package delivered? Of course you have. It’s almost impossible not to. Buy something online and 9 times out of 10 you are going to have it delivered by one of these two companies. 99% of the time your shipment is going to arrive on time, undamaged and everything is going to be peachy. I’m not even going to complain about that 1% of the time where something goes wrong. Sometimes shit is just going to hit the fan and that’s all there is to it. When that happens, I’m pretty easy going and don’t get too bent out of shape. However, there is one thing that both of these companies do that irks me to no end. If you are having something shipped to your house by one of these two companies, be prepared to wait.

Recently I purchased something online from amazon.com and due to it’s price, amazon requires that somebody be at the house to sign for the package rather than allowing the driver to leave it in a semi-safe spot on the front porch. Since I’d hate to have anything happen to my purchase, I’m totally fine with this. I made arrangements to have somebody at the house all day to accept the package when it arrived. Just after leaving for work my wife calls to tell me we received an automated call from UPS stating that our package was out for delivery and that an adult needed to be on hand to accept it. I thought it was very cool that they had the automated system make that call. Very efficient. Now, we just need to wait for it to arrive.

Lunch time came and went, still no package. I called home before leaving the office at 4:30 and still no package. I got home around 5, still not there. We started cooking dinner and at 5:45 the doorbell rings and there’s my delivery. While I’m stoked to have the package arrive and arrive safely, even though I was at work, we still had somebody sitting at the house from 8 am until 5:45 PM waiting to accept the package. That is a fairly hefty delivery window and I was certainly not pleased.

I got to thinking and came up with an idea that I thing would be pretty cool. As your item gets scanned while it’s being loaded on the final delivery truck, that should update the online tracking site with the truck number. Then, when you are looking online at your delivery status, you could see on a map the location of the truck carrying your package. It doesn’t have to be real time. Updates every 5-10 minutes would be fine. This way if you need to run a quick errand, like getting food at lunch time, you could look and see if the truck is anywhere near your house yet. If not, you know it’s safe to leave the house without worrying that you are missing your delivery.

Yes, I realize there are safety issues with letting people see where the truck is. I get it. I’m just saying, for a company that does nothing but deliver packages all day every day, you’d think they could at least give you a delivery window of 1-2 hours rather than 10 hours. It’s called good customer service. You should try it some time.

The other solution I have for this problem is to have your packages delivered to your office. This is going to be my preferred location for all deliveries from now on. Because waiting all day sucks!

Filed Under: Ranting Tagged With: , , , ,

Rock Band 2 Times 2

October 18, 2008

First a little history. A few months back I loaned my xBox 360 to a friend so he could host a Rock Band party at his house. I sent it home with him the day before the party, he set it up, we all went over and had a great time. A couple days later he returned it to me and I brought it home and hooked it all back up. Only one problem, I was no longer able to connect to my network. I checked a bunch of settings and thought I had exhausted all my options. When I still wasn’t able to connect, I sorta gave up and just went on playing without connecting. No biggie.

Fast forward a few months. I was anxiously awaiting the release of Rock Band 2. I picked it up the day it came out, brought it hope and since I had a few dozen new songs to unlock and play, the need to access the online music store was set soothed.

That all changed last week. I received a text message that said, “Dude, Motley Crue’s Dr. Feelgood whole album available for download on Rock Band.” This comes on the heels of the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ full album being released for download only a few weeks before. OK, time to get this problem taken care of, STAT!

I thought my issue was the fact that my xBox is downstairs and my wireless router is upstairs on the opposite side of the house. So, I unhooked the wires from the TV so that I could re-wire it in a way that would let me move the xBox several feet closer to the router. Like a moron, I did this while the xBox was on and the Rock Band 2 disc was in. After moving the machine didn’t work, I checked some more settings and FOUND THE ISSUE! Hot damn! I was connected again and all was right in the world. Temporarily.

I went to the online music store and downloaded 1 of the new Motley tracks, Dr. Feelgood. Unfortunately, it seems that they have changed the way the music store works and you are no longer able to queue up several purchases for downloading in the background while you are playing other tracks. Instead, you must wait and watch the progress bar march along. Because of this I only bought the 1 song and then headed back to the game to go play it. Paxton and I log in, go to the quickplay screen and start scrolling down to find Dr. Feelgood. As we do an error message pops up saying, “This disc is unreadable. Please wipe with a soft cloth and try again.” When I take the disc out to clean it, the disc is spotlessly clean. However, about a quarter-inch from the edge, there is a ring around the disc that basically looks like somebody took a laser and carved in to it. The only thing I can figure is that when I moved the xBox while it was on, it caused something very funky to happen and I ruined the disc.

Yesterday I went and picked up my second copy of Rock Band 2. I downloaded a few more tracks today and had a great time. I’m still pretty bummed about having to buy a second copy, but I don’t think this is anything I can blame on anybody but myself. Another lesson learned the hard way.

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Dealing with Twitter Spam

October 16, 2008

I’m not even close to being surprised, but the amount of Twitter Spam I’ve been getting lately is on the rise. Sure, it’s nice to have your follower count go up, but when the only messages coming from them are for you to come check out their poker site and receive $50 in bonus cash, the trade off is just not worth it. Besides, letting these spammers stick around only makes the place a little worse for everybody.

So how should you deal with spammers? Easy; block them.

Ya see, Twitter has a nice set of rules that is designed to keep the spammers out. Of course that’s just not going to happen entirely since any time you have access to a large number of people, the spammers want to come piss in that pool. But, by taking the 10 seconds to go an block the spammer on twitter, you are actively being part of the solution.

Twitter’s software is getting pretty good at catching the spammers. Twice this week I have received notices that I have a new follower. An hour later when I went to check out their account, they had already been blocked. I call that efficient!

I’m one of those guys who leaves the email notifications turned on so that every time I get a new follower, I receive an email. I do this because I usually will go and follow the people who follow me. I read the incoming email, click the link to go check out the person’s twitter profile and I decide if they are a spammer.

What is considered spam?
When I view the person’s twitter account, I look at the following:
1) How many followers do they have?
2) How many people are they following?
3) How many tweets do they send out?
4) How many tweets include a link or some sort of offer?

If they have 8 or 10 (or more) times less followers than they are following, this is a good indication that they are using external software to follow mass quantities of people hoping that they will reciprocate by following them. They are getting blocked.

If they are following more than 100 people and they have less than 10 tweets, I’ll check the content of their tweets to see if they look “spammy.” I usually just give it the sniff test. If something smells funny, for example, 5 tweets and 3 of them have a link back to the same site, I’ll block them.

If somebody has sent 5000 or more tweets, I won’t block these ones, but I’m less likely to follow them, too. Typically I find that these guys are responding to EVERY tweet they see come in. That’s totally fine. I have no problem with that. I’m just not going to follow them back as I don’t need to read all their response messages.

Twitter’s software looks for all of these things as well, so it won’t be too long before your spammy follwers end up getting the proverbial boot by Twitter. But, it’s such a nice feeling to think that you’ve helped get them kicked off the site. Well, I know it works for me.

Not sure how to block somebody on twitter? Check out this post here.

Filed Under: Ranting, Social Media, Technology Tagged With: ,

Two Types of Poker

October 12, 2008

On Friday night we went over to a co-worker’s house for a poker game. The host made some fantastic food, supplied some drinks and had invited enough people over that we could put together a 10 person tournament. As you may know, I have a fair bit of experience in running poker tournaments as we had one at our house on a monthly basis for about 4 years. I’m always glad to go to other people’s houses to play poker as it’s nice not to be the host every time. For all the fun, it is a bit of work.

We brought over our poker chip set and my laptop which has my Poker Tournament Manager software installed. We arrived right as the game was supposed to be starting, but luckily we weren’t the last to arrive, so it wasn’t a big deal. We ate some food, had a drink and then set up the game.

Even though I wasn’t hosting, my poker knowledge and the fact that everybody there KNOWS I know how to run a poker tournament automatically puts me in charge. I don’t mind, I actually enjoy running the show. But, there are still some things that the host should be making the decisions on, or at least asking about prior to everybody sitting down at the table. For example, the amount of the buy-in, the amount of chips to start, the length of the blind levels and the rules for rebuying. None of these things had been discussed prior to the game so we made some quick decisions and the game was underway. I should also mention that I offered to deal the entire time as I knew it would take FOREVER to pass the deal around the table.

For the first 20 minutes, no real big hands came up and there was a lot of limping in the pot. Any time somebody would raise, at least one person would say, “they are trying to buy the pot.” During the second round I picked up a few hands. A/K, A/Q, 9/9, 8/8 and one hand that I would love to have back where I folded Q/Q pre-flop face up. All these hands I raised with pre-flop. On the hand with Q/Q, here’s what happened. With the blinds at 50/100 I raised to 400, it folded around to a player across from me who looks at his hand, he sits back a little and got really silent and then throws out 1600 without saying anything. He never showed his hand, but even if he had A/K there, I didn’t really want to race for all my chips, so I decided to fold. I honestly think he had A/A, but we’ll never know, I guess. The reason I say I’d like to have those cards back, is I may as well have just got all my money in with Q/Q and felt unlucky to run in to aces as compared to the way I got knocked out (first of course) a few minutes later. I was really steamed at how I got knocked out and gave myself a time-out away from the table so that I could simmer down.

After 10 minutes away, I calmed down and because the rules on rebuys had not been discussed, both myself and another player bought back in right at the end of the rebuy period. I sat back down and started dealing again. About 15 minutes later, I realized that I was an idiot for being steamed about losing. What I failed to do was properly evaluate the type of poker game we were playing. The home tournament that I ran for 4 years would start out as a friendly game with drinks and laughter and people playing a little loose. But, once the rebuy period was over, the game would get serious as people were interested in winning. However, this particular home game was not like that at all. The majority of the players there could care less if they won. They were there for a good time. Don’t get me wrong, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that attitude. It was my attitude that was wrong given the circumstances. Once I realized all of this I switched my way of thinking and the rest of the night was a lot of fun. There was very little “poker” being played, but again, there’s nothing wrong with that.

This morning I went to the Cannnery casino to play in the 10am poker tourament. There were 3 tables and a total of about 25 people. I played fairly loose during the first few rounds knowing that I could rebuy if needed before the end of the first hour. On the last hand prior to the cut-off, I got involved with a hand I should have never been in, but I made 2 pair on the turn and was able to double my stack back to almost it’s original starting size.

Over the next couple hours I played some pretty decent poker. I stole several pots on the turn and river when I felt my opponent wasn’t in a position to call a bet. I also ended up having to show down some hands that I had raised with like 6/8 suited and K/7 suited. As I accumulated chips, that loose play would serve me really well as the tournament went on. I was able to get a guy to move all-in against me after I raised. We turned over the cards and I had Q/Q and he had A/7. He made a flush on that hand. In another hand, against the same guy I made top two pair and he once again made a flush against me. I still had plenty of chips, so even though the second double-up was a decent set-back, I felt it was only a matter of time before I beat this guy because he would never give me credit for a hand. He always thought I was bluffing.

When we were down to 4 players the guy I doubled-up twice had the chip lead. I was dealt A/A on the button. The lady before me folded and with the blinds at 800/1600, I decided to min-raise to see what would happen. The lady in the small blind had only 3400, so I figured it wouldn’t take very much for her to get all her chips in on this hand. And, I was really hoping that if she called or pushed all-in, the buy in the BB might push all-in with a marginal hand in order to get me to fold and play against only the lady. The lady just called leaving only 200 chips in her stack. The guy thought about it for a short time and throws in the additional 1600 as well. The flop came Q/6/2 but had 2 spades. The lady throws in her remaining 200, the guy calls the 200 and I push all-in. He has me covered in chips, but not by much. He decides to call and shows Q/K. The lady had A/7 with only one spade. I was in really good shape here. I just needed to avoid a K or a Q basically. The turn was a 7 and the river was a 10. I knocked out the lady and left the guy with only 800 chips. He went broke on the very next hand. And I know had a HUGE chip lead against the other player. We put all the money in blind on the very next hand and I won the tournament.

Winning a tournament always feels good. But, I think this win felt especially good after how crazy the poker play was on Friday night. I was able to bluff at pots in certain spots today that would have NEVER worked on Friday.

I learned a valuable lesson at Friday night’s game that I will carry with me from now on. Be mindful of the type of game you are playing in. If the majority of the players are just there to have some fun and hang out with friends, do not expect them to make logical poker decisions. Had I realized that earlier in the evening on Friday, I would have saved myself some unnecessary aggravation.

BTW – If you are interested in running a home poker tournament, I wrote a guide that has some helpful information. I hope it helps.

Filed Under: Entertainment, Ranting Tagged With: , ,