Turkey, Shopping, Poker, Rollins and, I’m a moron

My oh my how time flies. I spent a bunch of time in front of my computer over the long weekend, but didn’t once check in and write. I really need to write every day or else I end up with too much I want to write about and never get it all down. Plus, all the posts become mini-books… I tend to Ramble (right Todd?). So, I’ll try to keep each chunk as breif as possible. No promisses, though…

Thanksgiving day was great. We had my brother-in-law, his Fiancee, her sister and husband, my mother-in-law plus the 4 of us. We had a 20 LB turkey (way too much, BTW), a big ‘ol ham and a BUNCH of side dishes. We ate dinner around noon. Yes, I used the words “Dinner” and “Noon” in the same sentence… Then, went into a food coma for several hours. Got up, repeat the process, sleep. Pretty much a great day…

The girls all planned on hitting the stores as they opened. I’m not sure if they are all rookies at Black Friday shopping, but I don’t think they were prepared for what they ran up against. Luckily, they weren’t any part of the brawls that took place here in town. After they went out for Round 1, Chris and I went back out and did more shopping around 10. None of the “good deals” were left at any store, but, we still found several items at prices we were happy with. So, we did most of our shopping on Friday, plus we did some more on Saturday. Had to do over again, I’d just wait for Saturday or even wait a week when the stores have a chance to re-stock everything that went flying off the shelves.

I played a fair bit of Online Poker over the holiday weekend. For no real great reason, I’ve switched from playing No-Limit to playing Limit and have been absolutely killing the tables. I’ve finished in the money probably 90% of the times I’ve played over the past month or so playing Limit. Last night was probably the most dominating performance I’ve had… With 10 players all starting with 800 chips, that puts 8000 chips in play. When it got down to the final 4, I had more than 7000 chips. That didn’t leave much for the other 3. I knocked 2 players out in one hand and the final guy on the next hand to finish first. It was sick. I’m going to stick with the limit poker until I see some sort of downward swing. Hopefully, that’s no time soon.

I went out on Saturday with Todd and Mike G (sorry, no link) to the House of Blues to see Henry Rollins perform his spoken word show. He is a well spoken, well traveled guy with interesting views on pretty much any topic you throw his way. If you’ve never seen or heard him perform, check out his site. There’s a sample or two for download. Or, go buy his DVD.

A couple fairly amusing things happend while we were at the show. I’ll start with the one that doesn’t involve me being an idiot… When we got inside, the place was fairly empty still. So, we walked up to the bar, got some drinks and instead of going to find a place to stand, we just hung out at the bar. We had a good view of the stage and we were close to the booze. Doesn’t get much better than that… So, after a while the show starts and then a little while later, to women come up to the bar to order drinks. They end up staying and standing to my immediate right. The girl on the far left starts talking loud enough that she’s making it difficult for me to hear. I’m fairly passive so I let it go… for a while. After a solid 5 minutes of listening to her, I finally have had enough. Plus, I’ve had a few drinks at this point so I’m feeling a bit feisty anyway… I turn to the ladies and say, “Look… I’ll buy your drinks if you’ll shut up.” A lady standing in front of the two next to me turns around and says, “And I’ll pay for half.” Well, this made Todd laugh and say, “That was awesome. I wouldn’t have said a word.” Normally, I wouldn’t either, but damn it, we were there to see a guy “talk” for 2 hours… I may as well hear what he has to say. Plus, I paid a LOT to see this show… (more on that at the end…)

After the show let out, we headed over to a bar inside Mandalay Bay and did some drinking. Then, headed over to Green Valley Ranch and drank until about 3:30. It made for a bit of a lazy Sunday. We ended up doing a little shopping at the Mall on Sunday. It’s a damn good thing it wasn’t very crowded. I don’t think I’d have been able to handle it and may have snapped.

So, I mentioned I was an idiot, here’s the story. I posted a week or so back about the troubles of buying concert tickets 6 months in advance. After ripping my office apart (and cleaning my desk out in the process), I could NOT find the Henry Rollins tickets. So, Saturday morning I gave up and went back to ticketbastard and bought 3 more tickets. After service charges, around $100… I choose to have the tickets left at Will Call. When we get to HOB that night, I go up to the window and hand the guy my credit card and license. He says, “OK, sign here. And here.” It’s the “And here” that gets me. He then says, “You have two orders, here are your 6 tickets.” Well fuck. Apparently I had the other ones set to pick up at Will Call, too. I normally hate the Will Call option so assuming I have plenty of time, which I did since I ordered 6 F’n months in advance, I have the tickets printed and mailed which doesn’t cost a thing… I have a box on my desk where I NORMALLY store concert tickets for upcoming shows. When these weren’t in there, it never even dawned on my to call and check if they were at Will Call.

So there ya go, I’m an idiot. This is likely not news to most of you. For those just catching on, get used to it.

the weekend… good and not so good

Well, the weekend started off pretty good. Saturday we went and saw Harry Potter with a group of folks from the office. We bought our tickets a few days early and I instintively bought 4 tickets for me, the wife and 2 kids… That night, I find out that my son doesn’t want to go to the movie. What the hell is up with that?? The next day at work I tell Rob not to buy a ticket, I have an extra. Later than night I find out my Daughter doesn’t want to go, either. Who are these kids??? The following day I get Matt “606″ to take the other ticket. So at least they didn’t end up costing me extra and/or going to waste… The movie, if you haven’t seen it yet, is pretty darn good. It’s about 2.5 hours long. It hits the ground running and doesn’t stop! If you’ve read the book, you already know this thing was a monster sized book. Sooooo much happens in it. Just fitting in most of the story was a big effort. Some things did suffer because of it. There are very few classroom scenes. Harry’s battles with both Snape and Draco are cut fairly short, Sirius Black is hardly in it and there isn’t nearly as much interaction between Harry, Ron and Hermione. These are not complaints exactly. Just more matter of fact. The movie has some great visuals. It’s DEFINITELY darker than any of the previous movies. They, once again, picked some great actors to fill in some important roles. Cho, Cedric and Krum all come across exactly as I’d had them pictured after reading the book. Very well done. If you are a HP fan, you’re going to enjoy this movie without a doubt.

OK, now to the not so cool part(s)…

1. There is a problem with purchasing tickets for a concert 6 months in advance. Where the hell do you keep the tickets so you can find them 6 months later? I’m not exactly the most organized guy in the world, so this is a bit of a challenge for me. Ya see, about 6 months ago, I bought 3 tickets to see Henry Rollins’ spoken word tour at House of Blues. The show is this coming Saturday. At the moment, the tickets are MIA. So, Mike & Todd, if you read this… have no fear. I’ll turn the house upside down between now and then.

2. My hosting service has sucked ass this weekend. MySQL had to be restarted 5 times. If that wasn’t lame enough, each time it happend and I reported it, they’d simply restart MySQL. They wouldn’t (as far as I can tell) dig any further to figure out what the actual problem was. Now, if I only hosted this site and other such gems, I wouldn’t really care. I know you’d be heart broken not to be able to get your fix of geeeek.com, but, you’d get over it in time. The worst part is, I’ve got sites that actually generate a little income. If they are down, that income flow sorta stops. Plus, it’s not just the time you are down, but, anybody who visits during that time who may have been a potential customer, well, it’s unlikely they’ll be back… You know that saying about first impressions? Well, it goes triple when you are talking about potential customers…

On a positive note, MySQL has been alive and kicking for the past 6 hours without fail. So, perhaps the worst of it’s over. I’ve got my fingers crossed.

Look, up in the sky. WTF is that???

Well, I’ll tell you what it is… it’s one more thing I want but will never buy! That’s not to say I wouldn’t buy one… OK, yeah it is. But, tell me this sucker doesn’t look cool. Everybody needs a remote control UFO. I saw a video a while back of a guy flying one of these in doors. It has amazing control, durable as all hell and, apparently, it has lights that would allow you to fly it in the dark.

Well, if you are just dying to get me something for Christmas, this gadget would do nicely. :) (hint hint)

my how the time slips away…

I look up and it’s been more than a week since my last post. That’s just crazy! I’ve had so much going on, this just keeps falling to the bottom of the list, I guess.

Well, let’s see if I can get caught up on what the hell has been going on. I’ll sorta work backwards…

Went and saw “Saw II” again today. This time I went with 4 other people. Myya and Alex ;) hadn’t seen the first one before and Myya was a bit freaked out by the movie before going. So, she went to a “’spoiler” site and read a huge write up about the movie so she knew everything that was going to happen. This helped her get through the movie. Matt’s girlfriend, however, I thought for sure she was going to either leave or puke. Not sure which. It added an extra level of enjoyment for me as I knew what was coming and could time it just right to watch her reactions to the “good stuff.”

This morning I played in an online poker tourney that had a guaranteed pot of $100,000. Only 830 players in it so the odds were pretty good. I got dealt craptacular hands for the first hour and was watching this one player make stupid movies and win pots. 75 minutes in to the tourney, this is how I went out:
I’m in the big blind with pocket 10s. The blinds are 30/60. The loose/aggressive player raised to 200. I called. The flop came out 2/6/8 rainbow. The original raiser bet enough to put me all-in. Knowing for sure that I was far ahead, I called. Sure enough, I was right. He had K/Q off-suit. The turn card was a Q and that was the end of my tourney. I felt bad since I was actually playing for somebody else who had won the seat but wasn’t able to play in the tourney. I really wanted to do well for him. Next time, I guess…

Last night’s poker tourney was a lot of fun. But, I made one bad call that I should NEVER have made and it cost me the tournament. I’m not certain that I would have won the whole thing outright, but, I was in strong position to do so before my major screw up. Then, after that hand I pretty much let it eat at me until I threw all my chips in with K/10 and lost to J/3 (fitting).

Work has been going real well. I have a few new projects that are all coming together nicely. It’s looking like a couple of my plans are going to turn in to nice little profit centers. I’ve got huge plans for the next 6 months or so. By next summer I want my network traffic to be skyrocketing. Just gotta keep plugging away at it…

I saw a page where a guy was displaying the Alexa rating and Google page rank for a list of sites. I liked how he had done it but wanted my own version of it. I checked out 4 or 5 scripts and finally decided to write my own as none did exactly what I wanted. It’s coming along nicely. I plan on releasing 2 versions of it. A free version and a pay version. I’ll add a link to it as soon as it’s ready for public consumption.

Jason showed me this cool software called phpOpenTracker
While it’s good software, the instructions left a lot to be desired. At one point I resortd to screaming obsenities for 5 minutes while trying to figure out something that should have been dead simple and dead obvious. Neither were the case. But, once installed and running, the tracking software is fantastic. You can track multiple sites all in one location. This is what drew me to the software. I hate having to go check stats all over the place. I guess that’s why I’m writing my own Alexa ranking software, too, I guess…

Well, it’s late and I gotta get up early. I promise not to go a week without writing again. I know you all missed it so.

Concerts and planning ahead

Yesterday at work, my buddy Chip asked if I had plans for the evening. Other than dropping the wife off at the airport, I didn’t. He then offered up a ticket to see U2 at the MGM Grand. After checking on babysitting arrangements, I gladly accepted. I had never seen U2 before and was excited for the opportunity.

Our tickets, on paper, appeared to be pretty good. They were behind the stage, but in the 2nd row of the middle section of seats. Upon arriving, we were treated to a few extra elements that made the seats a bit less appealing. First, we were at about a 3/4 angle to the stage. So, we weren’t directly behind the stage, but off to the side. This meant that all the wires hanging down from the lighting scaffold were directly in front of us. If Bono was standing at his mic at center stage, we were not able to see him.

The second thing we realized was that these were not permanent seats for the MGM. Instead, these were basically “roll in” bleachers that were specifically designed to comfortably seat a person who weighs about 95 pounds. So basically, Chip was sitting in my lap. Thankfully, we didn’t sit much during the show.

The third thing to happen was these strands of lights that looked like those beads that act as a semi-door in every hippies house back in the ’70s. I’ll admit that the lights were VERY cool in that they produced complex patters, images and such during the show, but they were also keeping us from having a clear shot of the stage. Luckily they didn’t stay down the entire time. They brought them up and down and probably only interferred with about 25% of the show.

Regardless, U2 was awesome. Musically, I’d say they were one of the best sounding bands I’ve ever seen live. Thanks again, Chip. I really enjoyed the show!

Also at work on Friday, Todd asked if I knew when the Henry Rollins spoken word show is. Since we bought tickets so long ago, we had both forgotten when the show was. I’ve yet to look it up. I hope we haven’t missed it. Anyway, this brough up conversation about planning ahead. I typically don’t have things planned much past 1 week and at the most 2. But, I recently bought tickets to see Bon Jovi. Even though I bought the tickets 2 weeks ago, the show isn’t until MARCH 2006. Seriously, that’s just WAY too far away to plan anything… Oh, but that’s not true. I realized that this is not the first thing I have planned for March. I actually have an appointment with my dermatologist. This is an honest-to-goodness appointment. I have the little reminder card and everything. At 9:30 am on 3/15/06, I’ll be sitting in a waiting room. This is assuming that I don’t lose the little reminder card…

So much music out here

This week I’ve run across a bunch of new music. I’m not going to say it’s all great music, but, it all got my attention for one reason or another.

1. I had heard a snipped of a song on the country station that I thought was a band called “Big & Rich”. Trust me, if you watch any TV, you’ve at least heard this band. They have one of their songs in about every 3rd commercial this past year… Anyway, I turned the station and that was the end of that. But then, on Saturday, flipping channels on TV we landed on the country video station.. that’s when I was treated to Cowboy Troy. He’s a black country singer/rapper. His type of music, well, he calls it “HickHop”. Man, I sure wish I was making that up. Go to his site and watch the video for “I played Chicken With the Train”. At first it was like a train wreck that I couldn’t stop watching. Then, it sorta grew on me. It’s sorta catchy.

2. This morning on my way to work on the comedy station they played a song by an artist named “MC Hawking”. The song is called “The Big Bizang”. This music is rap music as done through a speak-n-spell which makes the guy sound like Stephen Hawking. Trying to find the song to download, I ran in to mchawking.com. Go there and watch a video or two. They are a riot.

3. While showing the previous site to Justin, he turned me on to dictionaraoke.org. People have taken lyrics to favorite songs and set them to music. But, all the lyrics are “spoken” by the techno voice that is used on dictionary.com to show you how to pronounce a word. Some really good tunes here. Beastie Boys, Pink Floyd, Rage Against the Machine, Linkin Park, and of course, Barry Manilow.

So go check ‘em out and let me know what you think…

(side note: Since the moment I started writing this, I can’t get that damn Cowboy Troy song out of my head. It’s gonna be a long day.)