Merger mania

in

Not really a new trend, but still one that I find disturbing. Hot on the heels of SBC's "merger with AT&T":http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000733029998/ comes news today that Verizon is going to snap up MCI. They needed to do something to prove that they were a player, and although some people thought they might go after one of the bigger companies (i.e. Cingular or Nextel), this merger makes headlines without making a huge dent in Verizon's cash. I wonder if this is just a merger for merger's sake, tho. MCI is a troubled company, and they are inheriting a bureaucratic nightmare ("60 billing systems?":http://news.com.com/Verizon+to+buy+MCI+for+5.3+billion/2100-1036_3-5574860.html) Also, I wonder why Verizon's bid which was $.5 billion less than Qwest's was accepted... not like MCI is going to care about Qwest's "financial scruples":http://money.cnn.com/2002/06/26/news/companies/qwest/, right? Consolidation, especially with telcos, makes me nervous. I have "enough trouble":http://feralboy.com/log/archives/001356/ as it is with phone companies, and I still technically have choices for my provider. Wasn't the Ma Bell breakup done specifically to avoid the type of consolidation and lack of choice that we're heading towards?

In other merger news, Blockbuster is "again":http://www.hackingnetflix.com/netflix/2004/12/blockbuster_con.html making a hostile "takeover":http://money.cnn.com/2005/02/03/news/midcaps/hollywood.reut/ play for Hollywood Video. While I've been a satisfied "Netflix":http://netflix.com/ customer for years, the thought that there would only be "Netflix, Blockbuster and Wal-Mart":http://www.hackingnetflix.com/netflix/2005/01/reporter_tests_.html (both of which are gunning for Netflix in the worst way) as the 3 major players makes me worry about their future.

Hate hate hate

in

My general distaste for phone companies has been "well-documented":http://feralboy.com/log/archives/001318/ here, but now I have a new target for my ire.... Qwest! The DSL connection at the house kinda stinks. On a good day, I can muster about 100Kb/s download speeds, which isn't much better than the days of 56K modems. This lack o' bandwidth was never more apparent than last week and early this week, which each time we had a fix to the software release for work that meant building 3 new project installers (dev, test and production) and uploading each one. At 83 megs apiece. Which took about an hour FOR EACH ONE! This is totally unacceptable.

When I first moved here I tried to call Qwest and see if they could bump our service up to the 1.5 Mb speed, and I could bask in glorious bandwidth, soak myself in illegally downloaded movies and television, and not dread trying to do remote database operations over our VPN(Virtual Private Network). At the time they told me that our local loop was about 21,000 feet from the nearest "central office":http://www.dslreports.com/coinfo/clli/TCSNAZTV, which was just over the 20,000 foot cutoff to get said service.

This week my download speeds have been pitiful for some reason; only like 30 Kb/s, which for $70 is so bad I wanted to scream. Called tech support, sat on hold for 20 minutes, and then finally talked to Natalie. She wasn't super-helpful, although she did tell me my local loop distance is exactly 21,267 feet. Woo hoo! I asked what would happen if they tried to upgrade my speed; would they just flick a switch at some data center? Change a card around in the "DSLAM":http://computer.howstuffworks.com/dsl9.htm perhaps? Would I be able to connect, just at a reduced percentage of the 1.5 Mb (sorta like now with the half 256Kb I get), or would I get no connectivity at all? Natalie sorta never answered that question, and instead put me on with Laura from the billing department so I could at least take the phone service off the account, since everyone has cell phones, and the only thing plugged into the wall at all is the DSL modem.

*Laura:* "Sir, for the standalone service through Qwest, you need to have the 1.5 Mb service." *Me:* "No problem, that's what I want anyway." *Laura:* "Ok, but it says here on my system that you're not qualified for the 1.5. In fact, you're not qualified for any service!" *Me:* "Then that means, I'M NOT REALLY HERE! THE CALL IS COMING FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE! RUN AWAY! AAAAAAHHH!" *Laura:* "..."

So, the best part is that I can't take the phone line off the account, so it's costing me more for the slower service that I'm not even supposed to have, when all I want is high speed (which I'm REALLY not supposed to have) and no phone. Laura pretended to be sorry that she couldn't do anything (while I know she was sending secret mental messages like "You aren't even supposed to have DSL at all you ungrateful jerk! Quit rocking the boat!", while I wondered how an unqualified line ever got DSL service in the first place, and someone must have been able to circumvent "the system" at Qwest. I just want them to _try_ putting me on the 1.5 Mb line, stop charging me for a landline that nobody is using, and we'll see what happens from there. She told me she'd talk to the DSL technical manager and someone would be back in touch with me. I'm not holding my breath.

Me = old

in

Today I turn 31. Hooray for me! I had a good weekend, although I didn't go to Heuco with "the kids":http://apadventures.net/. The weather forecast looked a little crappy, and I had some stuff to do around here, including a little pre-birthday dinner with friends. Turns out it "rained but was climbable":http://www.apadventures.net/archives/2005/02/seeending_in_th.html both days, so a little bit of a bummer that I didn't go, but I had a fine time here as well. Did the dinner thing, and also got out for a lovely bike ride on Saturday (lovely until I got a flat on the back tire and didn't quite realize it until I bent the rim a tiny bit).

This coming up weekend is the group trip to Vegas, which should be loads of fun. I hit the casino for a bit yesterday for the free food and sports pool, but it was the coldest cards I've ever seen; I think I played 3 hands out of the big blind over the course of 4 hours, and steadily had my stack ground down each orbit. Oh well, it happens.

The weekend after that my dad and evil stepmother (not really, but we like to call her that) will be out visiting. If you want to make sure that you get a lot of family visiting when you move away, go someplace where it's warm in the winters. Since I've been here for the last 5 months, I've been visited by both "sisters":http://feralboy.com/log/archives/001340/ (although Laura's visit doesn't really count, since it was when "she helped me move":http://feralboy.com/log/archives/001199/), my best friend, my "mom and stepdad":http://feralboy.com/log/archives/001300/, and my evil stepmother (twice!). My dad coming out completes the friends and family circuit, and I'm excited for him to see me in my new environs.

Misc bits

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My "sister":http://www.livejournal.com/users/fuzzyfruit/ (who came out to visit a week ago) has started to write up her trip report. "Part I":http://www.livejournal.com/users/fuzzyfruit/358161.html "Part II":http://www.livejournal.com/users/fuzzyfruit/358917.html

Hopefully in Part III she'll talk about her totally hot kings full of aces that she crushed everyone with at the casino, as well as my Dropping The Hammer By Raising Pre-flop With "7-2 Offsuit":http://feralboy.com/log/archives/001289/ (and winning!!!)!

Also, Kim has quit "smorking":http://store1.yimg.com/I/engrish-store_1823_814622 (today she gets her one-week chip), so as a show of solidarity, I'm giving up drinking my "beloved diet soda":http://feralboy.com/log/archives/000410/. It's probably for the best, as it causes all sorts of nasty "throat cancer":http://www.mercola.com/2004/jun/2/soda_cancer.htm anyway, plus it'll force me to drink more water.

Congratulations to "Robn":http://firepile.com/robn/ for posting this site's "1000th":http://feralboy.com/log/archives/001333/#comments comment! It just wouldn't be any fun without y'all.

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japanese_treats, originally uploaded by feralboy.

This is what happens when you go with friends to the asian food store to buy a bunch of disgusting stuff. I am going to admit up front that I wussed out of pretty much everything (that's my grape snapple sitting in front of me) and didn't partake in the gross drinks with the chunks in it, the stale marshmallows with some sort of green tea in them, or the purple candle-looking layer cake thing. I did, however, try the red bag of chips in front of me, and they're flavored with anchovies! Ewwww! I think Eric's face pretty much says it all.

Finally, the next field trip to Vegas is planned! There's some sort of competition going on at Heuco in a few weekends, so a bad time to just go normally, so the roomies, Kim, Eric and I are headed to sin city.

Little Furry Things

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Yesterday during lunch I ran to the pet store to get more food and litter for the cats. Right when I walked in there was a dispute going on up at the front counter. A young pimply guy was in an argument with the woman at the register. Apparently he wanted to buy a hamster/gerbil/etc. to feed to his snake, and the woman was refusing to sell him a "companion animal" to use as food. Eventually he gave up and drove off in a huff, but that got me to thinking; why wouldn't he just buy the mice that are bred for that purpose? Was he trying especially to show off for friends or a girl that he could kill something a bit "cuter" or more familiar? Then I also thought about the morality of the whole situation. What was the difference, really? I mean, the cat food I feed my boys is made with animal products, so while I don't have the same active participation, the end result is the same. There are no moral absolutes in this complex world we live in, but what do you think the woman at the counter should have done?

Testing out Flickr

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P1010078, originally uploaded by feralboy.

The whole "tags":http://flickr.com/photos/tags/ thing "seems to":http://www.metafilter.com/tags.mefi have "taken off":http://www.technorati.com/tag/.

Stoner movie insights

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*Things I learned after watching part of "How High":http://imdb.com/title/tt0278488/ and all of "Harold & Kumar go to White Castle":http://imdb.com/title/tt0366551/ last night:* * Fred Willard should _always_ play some sort of bumbling, race-ignorant administrator type in movies. * Hot college girls _always_ wear argyle sweater vests. * Smoking pot is cool and makes you hungry. * White people = dorks. * Seeing a Doritos commercial in the middle of a movie will piss you off.

Freeflow

in

Well, Stella finally got her groove back. I did a fair amount of multi-tabling BBJ(Bad Beat Jackpot) $2/4 tables a few nights last week when the jackpot was so astronomical ($250k to the guy who eventually hit), and it went well. Monday night at the regular $2/4 tables were no exception, and now I'm up about 150 BBs from where I was last week. Nothing has changed in my play style, so cards are just falling for me. The last few sessions have felt really good. When everything is clicking I feel like an incoming tide. Every so often, a big wave will come and increase my stack, withdraw slightly, and then move forward again... a slow surge that is as inevitable as the tides themselves. The actual play starts to feel secondary, dreamlike. Cards come, bets and raises are made, hands are won and lost, but Zen calmness prevails. I've felt like this a few times while "climbing":http://feralboy.com/log/archives/climbing/; where moves just feel more like instinct than work, and it's almost like you're watching yourself in your activity. It's a nice feeling.

Can you hear me now? Fuck you!!!

in

It's not a secret that Verizon and I have had a long and tumultuous relationship. There was the time that they screwed up my DSL connection for a good 3 months(!), and the time that they didn't bother to tell me that my long distance "wasn't included":http://feralboy.com/log/archives/001307/ in my new plan after I moved. Yesterday they found a new and exciting way to give me agita! I got a letter from a collection agency for the amount of $197.82, referencing Verizon. Even though I had been getting reamed hard by the lack of long distance, I thought I was all up to date when I bumped my minutes and added long distance. WTF? I immediately freaked out, paid the amount on the web (I'm trying to buy a house, after all), and then got in touch with Verizon to see what was going on. I called their customer service, was on hold for 15 minutes, and then finally spoke to a nice and helpful CS rep, Travis. Travis told me my account was up to date, (they had just gotten my most recent payment a few days before) and didn't see any reason why I had gotten the letter. He thought maybe it was something to do with the move and switching my number/service. We connected to an east coast call center, sat on hold some more, and then got Tiffani on the line. Some verbal acrobatics, and then we started to get an idea of what happened.

When I switched my account, for some reason they tried to charge me a $175 cancellation fee, even though I was just moving and not cancelling. I got a bill back in October, called their customer service back then, and they told me it was a glitch and to ignore it, and my account would be credited. Apparently it wasn't, or was done too late, and even though I got no further notice about an unpaid amount they sent my Pittsburgh account off to collections.

Tiffani tried to call the collections office last night, but they were already closed, so she fired off an email explaining that it was their screw-up. So, now I have to wait to get my $200 back, as well as demand a letter from them explaining that there actually is no problem with my credit while I wait for this to get cleared out of my credit report. Oh, and somehow there was still like $10 that I actually _do_ owe Verizon (some sort of fee for account closing... always with the fees!), so if my credit gets a mark on it for $10 I'm gonna be pissed. I'll be calling the collection agency today to find out just what they're going to do for me.

Vegas trip wrapup

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Time to post my long-overdue report from my trip to Las Vegas last weekend. We flew out Saturday afternoon, and I had my first SouthWest experience. I didn't notice much of a difference from other airlines, other than the whole cheaper thing, and getting to pick your own seats. The flight attendants didn't have cigarettes dangling from the corners of their mouths, and there were no chickens in coops under our seats.

We land in Vegas 20 minutes after we took off (with the time change); pretty sweet. I'm still tickled every time I land at the airport, and you get right off your plane to the sound of slot machines. I noticed that they're catering to "developmentally challenged":http://feralboy.com/photoalbum/photos/20050110_vegas/IMG_0426.jpg people now, which is nice. Bit of a pain to find our hotel shuttle bus, but eventually we get on and make our way to Palace Station.

First order of business is to get some food. Off to the buffet, which was sub-par at best, but for only $7.99, you really can't beat it.

kim and some of her food kim loves her buffet kim sneaks some treats out

Then it was off to the strip for some gaming. The first place we went to was the Excalibur, which somehow feels like a sleazy Disneyland with its castle theme. I sat at a $2/6 spread-limit table for a little while, and it was as good as advertised (although there was "no fight":http://taopoker.blogspot.com/2004_12_01_taopoker_archive.html#110304710577342822 while I was there). They had a thing there that if your pocket aces got beaten, you got to spin the "money wheel", and could win anywhere between $20 and $230 cash. Too bad that never happened to me. They had strange tables, with a wooden border where you would stack your chips, if anyone took theirs out of the rack, which they didn't. I found that highly annoying, and it slowed the game down as people tried to get chips out of a full row. I only was there for less than an hour, sitting in the 10s closest to the dealer's right, and got only one or two playable hands, but there were 6-8 people limping in to see every flop, hoping to hit a big hand. I raised from MP with pocket 10s once and got no callers. Another hand I had QJo, limped in and flopped middle pair. A woman with about $200 in front of her in the 8s bet, and I raised. I wound up making a straight on the river, beating her pair of queens. When I got up I was up about $20, which was fine. I wanted to go back, but never quite made it.

the Luxor the strip from the north end, looking down

Next was the Luxor, which had a small poker room, maybe only 6-8 tables. I sat at a $2/4 which had some of the drunkest people ever at the other end. Apparently they had been there for a good part of the afternoon into the evening, drinking a lot and playing crazy; capping the raises at every opportunity, etc. They were so loose that it was a shame that I got no playable hands for the hour or so I was there. -$20.

Then it was back to Palace Station for Kim to play bingo. I went into their poker room, which was jammed. I put my name on the list for $4/8, and sat at a $2/4 table to wait. There were the oldest people in the world at my table, and each hand took about 5 minutes as people took their heart medicine or something before making a move. I won one hand before I moved (K-10o which turned into 2-pair), and then I slid over into my $4/8 seat. The structure was pretty cool, because small blind and big blind were $1 and $2, respectively. So, you could limp in for $2, or raise it to $6 pre-flop. That made it pretty cheap to play tight and wait for a good hand; no more expensive per orbit than $2/4.

I played pretty cautiously early on trying to gauge the skill level of the table. I won one decent pot betting into two other players with K-10o (again) with an A and Q on the board, as well as 3 clubs. Guess that was scary enough to make them go away.

Next big hand I had KK, raised pre-flop and got 3 callers. The flop is a rainbow of low cards; perfect for my hand. I bet out, and get 2 callers. Turn is an ace, which I'm not happy about at all, but I fire my $8 out, the 5s folds, and the 7s directly to my right raises. I make a crying call. He checks the river, and I check behind him. Jackass had A9o.

Near the end of my 2 hours being there I get AK of diamonds and raise. 2 callers, and a K and a diamond on the flop. Wahoo! Betting and getting called by the 3s. Turn and river are both diamonds, giving me the nut flush. One last bet and a call, and the other guy had AKo, so I scoop a healthy pot. Finished up for the night up $40, which wasn't bad considering I didn't play many hands.

Next day (Sunday) we made our way over in the morning to the Rio to drop our bags off and get some food. We went to the "World Buffet", which was $25 a person and fantastic.

crazy food more crazy food zany food

It was fun to try and see how many different continents you could get on one plate. Look, I've got sushi next to mashed potatoes next to some General Tzo's chicken!

We rolled out of there and made our way to the CES. It was a giant clusterfuck trying to get on the shuttle bus, pick up our passes, and get into the show. Once finally inside we saw some neat stuff, although I didn't get to the TiVo booth. Apparently there are these things called "plasma TVs", which will be really hot in the near future.

people in weird squeezey chairs big-ass speakers OCC bike

Back to the Rio, and time to check out their newly opened poker room. You would think since they're hosting the 2005 WSOP they'd be a bit more on the stick, but the room was barely a month old, and the tables were old tables that had been refurbished. Apparently they're building some huge new building out by their convention center just to house the WSOP.

Anyway, when I got there there was only one game going, a $3/6 with a bunch of die-hards playing. 2 couples that wanted to play showed up, so we got a new dealer and started a new table.

1s - Kinda hot woman with a big rack 2s - Her husband, who fancied himself a fantastic player 3s - A guy in a baseball cap who actually knew what he was doing, sorta 4s - Relatively tight asian guy. By relatively tight I mean he was the only guy (besides me) that wasn't in every single hand! 5s - Me 6s - Saucy older asian woman. Big hair, big fake jewelry, and very sweet. 7s - ?? 8s - Fat wife. Part of the 2 couples that showed up. 9s - Fat balding husband. 10s - Jay from NYC. Old-ish guy (sort of "Dennis Farina":http://imdb.com/name/nm0001199/ -looking) who sold karaoke supplies or some such nonsense.

This was the greatest table ever, and I wasn't able to take advantage of it. It was 8-handed to almost every flop, as loose-passive as you could ever hope for. The problem was I got hardly any cards to play. I mean I was in some sort of statistical black hole where I kept getting 5-10 offsuit, Q-3 offsuit, etc. Finally I'm in late position and peek down at AQo. Raise and get 6(!) callers. Flop has a queen, and I'm feeling good. I bet the whole way, and callers keep dropping off until the river, when a 3 gives fatty in 8s a set. I didn't really mind, because a few hands later I get Q10o in late position, limp in and see a Q-3-7 rainbow flop. I figure it's time to get aggressive with this table. Fatty in 8s bets, gets 3 callers and I raise. Fatty calls, and other callers fold. Turn is a beautiful 10, giving me top 2 pair. She bets, I raise, and she calls. River is a blank; she checks, I bet and she calls. She had Q-3 and flopped two pair, but it was a worse two pair.

Next interesting hand I get AQs in EP and raise. 6(!) callers. Flop is Q-2-x. Turn is a 2. I bet, 4 limpers folds, and 2s raises. Uh-oh. I call, and the river is another 2. Now I'm fucked. I check, he bets, and I call. He flips up (drum roll, please), "The Hammer":http://72off.cjb.net/! Oh, "cruel irony":http://feralboy.com/log/archives/001289/!

At this point I'm down $70, which is amazing considering how juicy the table is. Then I start to get a few hands. KQo, which I raise and get 3 callers. Flop is K-Q-x, giving me top two pair. I bet, 8s calls, everyone else folds. Turn is a 3. I bet, she calls, and now I'm worried about her having a set again. River's a blank, I bet and she calls with A-3o. Hahaha!

Very next hand I have pocket 4s, and flop a set. Huge pot!

I finish the session up $115 and go to have some dinner, then back to the tables. I get a different table this time, with some new faces. Slightly better play at this one, as it's only 6-handed to every flop instead of 8. I sat tucked into the corner of the 9 seat, next to a guy who groused about every hand he didn't play that would have flopped an unlikely straight, and a very drunk asian man who didn't know where the hell he was.

At some point a guy who just won $1000 playing roulette came and sat in the 7s, which gave us some action for awhile. He quickly pissed away $100, including the last $20 that he played about 3 hands raising the whole way without even looking at his hole cards. And he won 2 of the 3!

I blew one hand completely. I was in the small blind, and had K-9 of hearts. There were 6 limpers, and I completed the bet. Flop has 3 hearts, and I could feel my eyes doing that old WB cartoon thing of turning into cash register dollar signs. It checked around to the button, who bet. Here's where I screwed up. I raised, when I should have just smooth-called and let the rest of the table call as well. There was realistically only one card out there to worry about; the ace of hearts, and I wouldn't be able to put in enough raises to get someone with that card to folds, so all I did by raising was announce my made flush, and scare everyone off. Next time I'll think a bit more about what I'm trying to accomplish; if I'm trying to protect my hand, or let other people make 2nd best hands. A few hands later I had KK, and had it hold up.

I'm in LP(Late Position) and see 4-8 of diamonds. 4 limpers, so I'm getting decent odds to try and have a big hand. Flop has 2 diamonds in it. There's a bet from early position, I raise and get 2 callers. Turn no diamond, and it's checked around (using the free card play! I learned stuff from books!). River is a diamond. Guy to my right bets, and I just call, hoping for an overcall from the 5s. 5s _raises_, and now I figure my baby flush just got beaten. "Oh, shit" I say. 8s calls, and so do I. 5s made a straight, and 8s had two pair. "What was that about 'oh shit'?" the 8s laughed as I scooped the pot.

Towards the end of the night 3 young guys who were all dealers at the "Canterbury":http://www.canterburypark.com/ (which is a huge card club in Minnesota(?)) showed up. The one guy was kind of a smug prick, doing all kinds of "chip tricks":http://pokerchiptricks.com/, and wearing mirrored shades and a visor. C'mon, dude.. it's just a $3/6 game.. what kind of "tells" are you going to get off of a bunch of loose drunks that will call with anything? Turns out he was a "prop" player for the Canterbury most of the time, which means that he played at tables to fill seats. Apparently the difference between a prop player and a shill is that he played with his own money, not the house's. So, he was actually like a professional poker player, which means I needed to get out of there, especially considering I was down about $70 for that session.

One of the last hands I had was pocket 8s. Flop was Q-Q-6. I bet (figuring I'm going to call a bet it's better to bet than call anyway), get 2 callers. The magical 8 comes on the turn, giving me a full house. I bet, and get one caller. The river is the 13 of purple horseshoes(I totally stole that phrase from some 2+2 forums discussion, btw), and I bet. Last caller folds, and I show my house. Finished that session down $5, so +$110 for the night.

Our last day we had some time before our afternoon flight, so we checked out of the Rio and headed to Treasure Island (now just "TI") to check out their buffet, which was slightly cheaper and almost as magical as the Rio's. Took the tram over to "the fucking Mirage":http://imdb.com/title/tt0128442/quotes, and I check out a $3/6 table. The action was good, but nothing can compare to the joy that was the Rio the night before. I was only sitting for a half-hour or so (Kim quickly lost her money at roulette), won one hand with a flopped set, and walked out up $20.

We went over to the forum shops at Caeser's, which was pretty damn impressive. Lots of walking around, and lots of expensive crap.

We had just enough time before catching a cab to our flight to the airport for me to go back to the Mirage for a short while. I sat at a different table, lost with my pocket 10s on one of the first hands, and the time approached for me to leave. I waited through one last orbit, and then pulled the most awesome move from UTG(Under The Gun, first position after the blinds). Yep, I tossed "a live straddle":http://archiveserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=&Number=838502&page=&view=&sb=5&o=&fpart= out there (For those of you that don't know, a straddle bet is raising before you even see your cards. It's totally stupid and will lose you lots of money in the long run. But it was Vegas, baby, Vegas), and got 2 callers. While the flop is coming I actually look at my cards... A-6o, not too shabby. Flop has a pair of jacks and a 3 or something, and I bet it. Both guys fold, I turn over my cards triumphantly, and skedaddle out of there.

Flight home was uneventful, and I slept like the dead that night.

I definitely need to go back sometime in the near future and do nothing but play poker at some of the juicier spots I found, namely the Excalibur and the Rio. I think with some more time and some slightly better cards (see stats below), and I should clean up.

Some stats for the cards I saw. Times getting KK: 2. Times getting 10-10: 2. Times getting AKs: 1. Times getting AA, QQ or JJ: 0.

Too good to not share

in

Got this email from Kim earlier this week: bq. so right after you left this morning i could have sworn i heard the dog yakking. ...went out into the living room i looked all over for this giant pile of vomit but could find none. i repeatedly walked around and checked everywhere (ish), and almost thought i was nuts. then i noticed a faint discoloration underneath a strategically placed napkin. yup, there's the puppybarf. i guess otis kinda felt bad about it, so must have put the napkin over the pile to cover it up. the napkin is all mangled, but it is placed directly over the center of the stain, so i gotta give him that.

Otis

If only my cats "were":http://feralboy.com/log/archives/000919/ so well "behaved":http://feralboy.com/log/archives/000491/.

Bright light city gonna set my soul

in

In other news, it's Kim's birthday this weekend (I'm not at liberty to say how old she is), so we're off to Vegas on Saturday for a few days. I'm hoping to have a bit of a turnaround in my poker, because it's been pretty bad lately. Nothing wrong with my play, really... just hitting a bad stretch of cards. Perfect example would have been at the B&M casino over the weekend. I flop a nut flush, and get beaten by a one-card straight flush. I flop a full house, and get beaten by a bigger full house when the board double-pairs. Online hasn't been much better; I'll meander around at the $2/4 tables, and maybe be up a bit, maybe be down a bit. Then I'll go to $3/6 and either make $100 in about a half an hour, or lose 3/4 of that in 2 hours.

We're staying at the Palace Station Saturday night, and the Rio Sunday. It would have been nice to do the Rio both days, but rooms are amazingly expensive that weekend, on account of the fact that it's both the "CES show":http://www.cesweb.org/default.asp AND the "AVN awards":http://www.avnawards.com/... In fact, we're going to try and sneak into the CES show and collect lots of gadgets and pens and USB keychain drives.

Interspersed with all the gadget-coveting and fake-boob-spotting, of course I'm going to try and play some poker. Last time I was there I didn't really play long enough (or well enough) to get a good idea about where the good games were, so this week I'm scouring the online archives of "my":http://guinnessandpoker.blogspot.com/ "favorite":http://taopoker.blogspot.com/ "poker":http://alcanthang.blogspot.com/ "bloggers":http://www.upforanything.net/poker/ to try and find where the juicy tables are. I'm going to want to hit Aladdin, the Flamingo, the Luxor, Excalibur and perhaps the Mirage. Oooh, maybe the Bellagio for some celebrity-spotting. Any other suggestions? I'll be bringing a notebook to the tables, so I should be able to give a pretty good trip report when I come back, as opposed to "I did good" or "I did bad".

Rainy days, pruney nights

in

The rain falling outside makes me a bit nostalgic for Pittsburgh, much in the same way that having a cat sit on your lap reminds you of the 6 months you spent at that Toyko sumo wrestling academy. It's a good thing that it doesn't rain all that often here, because it seems that every time it does my DSL connection gets all freaky. I wish I could get a cable modem; every time I'm at Kim's house and use her high-speed connection I feel immense pangs of jealousy. The max download speed I can get here probably tops out around 30-40k/second, which was great back in the days of ISDN and 56k modems, but I'm having the proverbial sand of speedy connections kicked in my face by all you 98-pound weeklings with your "cable modems" and your "T3s".

Not all that much exciting to report. Last week was super-quiet and super-productive at work. I love that week between xmas and new years; I can put bullets in the heads of lots of bugs quickly.

Speaking of New Year's, it was a quiet affair this year. Just Kim and Eric came over for some wine and snackies. If Kim got a little toasted, then Eric got downright d-r-u-n-k, a fact that he continued to remind us of as the night progressed, as in "I don't have very good balance right now, Because I'm Drunk!", or, "I am probably going to sleep here, Because I'm Drunk!", or even "I'm going to tell you guys something I shouldn't tell you, Because I'm Drunk!". (Kim and I are planning to use that as a suffix to Chinese food fortune cookies from now on, replacing "in bed". "You will meet many friends in the new year, Because You're Drunk!")

Eric also "took some lovely photographs of us":http://feralboy.com/photoalbum/photos/?folder=20041231_eric that evening. Maybe lovely is not the word, because a lot of them were of nothing, or at least something very blurry. For awhile he was holding the camera to the side of his head and just taking random pictures of whatever he happened to be looking at at the time (which apparently was the "side of Kim's head":http://feralboy.com/photoalbum/photos/20041231_eric/DSCN0944.JPG for most of the night). I have "included all his pictures for posterity":http://feralboy.com/photoalbum/photos/?folder=20041231_eric, and perhaps to serve as a warning for everyone out there who wants to take pictures While They Are Drunk! I also "took a few pictures":http://feralboy.com/photoalbum/photos/?folder=20041231_matt while not nearly As Drunk!

After photo hour we went out and tried out the hot tub, which was much fun. They say that whatever you're doing new year's is what you'll be doing the rest of the year, so I guess I'll be drinking a little bit of wine and watching my fingers prune. There are worse things that could happen, I suppose.

My stepmother is in town this week (her sister lives just south of the city), and we have dinner plans for tomorrow night. Should be a lovely time.