The End of an Unproductive Weekend
Posted on September 23, 2007 by Ching under Movies, Poker.
Brian and I just got home from watching Dragon Wars with his dad. What a horrible movie! I feel bad for asking to see it. I wish that I would have looked at reviews first. I could have saved two hours of my life that I will never get back. What’s up with all the stupid movies lately? We really should have gone to see Resident Evil instead. Brian didn’t want to fight the crowds, though. I didn’t think it would be crowded, but what do I know. Maybe we can go see it in a couple of weeks.
By the way, Brian and I had an interesting weekend. We went to celebrate Darcy’s fifth service anniversary, but ended up leaving early because I misread the time. I thought my watch said 6:30 PM but it was only 5:30 PM. Brian said it was okay because his head was starting to hurt from the smoke and loud music anyway. I wasn’t too pleased about the mistake, though, because we could have hung out a little bit longer and I really didn’t want to get to poker too early.
Brian said that I could use the time to read my book. Sounds like a good idea in theory, but it doesn’t always work. I really don’t like going to poker early because strange people end up talking to me and I don’t end up getting much read. Don’t get me wrong. We know a lot of wonderful people at poker with whom I enjoy chatting. However, I really didn’t feel like talking to anyone right at that moment. I just wanted to be left alone to read my book in peace.
Brian’s solution? He said he’d let me stay in the truck and read until it is closer to the start of the tournament. We turned off the truck and rolled the windows down. Just as I opened my book to start reading, Brian started blabbering on about stuff. “Baby,” I said, “You’re being like the annoying people I’m trying to avoid.” He stopped because he realized what he was doing. “You promised me I could read in peace,” I reminded him.
I got through two pages before I got disturbed again. This weirdo in the other car four parking spaces down (there were no cars in between his car and ours unfortunately) starts trying to make conversation. I smiled, nodded, turned my attention back to my book, and prayed that he would get the hint to leave me alone. It was a welcome relief when he finally gave up conversing with me and walked into the building. Even in the parking lot you can’t avoid them.
Having given up reading, Brian and I decided to just go in. It was a pretty crazy night at poker. Usually, I end up playing with mostly normal people. A little before break our table got broken up. Chris moved me to a table with a girl tweaked out on meth to my right and Lotto Man to my left. It was bad. “Chris must hate me,” I joked at Brian. Chris is the tournament director.
A few hands in, I ended up with pocket queens. I went all-in pre-flop. Lotto Man, living up to his name, called me with 10d 8d while declaring “Let’s dance.” Another guy called me with queen jack. I don’t think he would’ve called if it weren’t for Lotto Man’s call, but whatever. Maybe he didn’t believe I had a hand. Who knows? I had Lotto covered, but guy had me covered. Lotto hits a straight. Guy ends up tripping his jacks on the river. Go figure. The girl with the best hand gets knocked out. Stupid, stupid, stupid. It sucked to get knocked out before break, but it was a bit of a blessing to finally get away from that table. I could finally read my book in peace.
Of course, I still didn’t get much reading done because I ran into Big Rick who was already out also. Him, I didn’t mind talking to. I didn’t start reading until after he left to go play a sit-n-go. Not much progress, though, because Brian got knocked out of the tourney shortly after. Such is our poker rut.
Next week we will forgo poker in favor of the Final Fridays art crawl. It’s time to do something different.
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Do You See the Signs!
Posted on September 19, 2007 by Brian under Life, News.
They are everywhere, signs of a break in our society. Signs of a civil war or at the least a fall in the structure of or nation. I have been watching the news and I have noticed an alarming trend. First you have the Federal Reserve lowering the national interest rate to help fight off what some people are calling the beginning to a new recession. If the country goes into another recession then you have companies that will lay off employees to cut cost, you have large concentrations of unemployed people that are now starving, trying to hold on to what they have. Recession brings crime and hatred from those less fortunate. To make matters worse you have people that are expressing there right to free speech getting arrested for simply wearing “Anti-Bush” t-shirts, or look at the collage student that was tazered for asking questions at a Kerry forum. Then there is Mike McConnell, the top U.S. Intelligence Spy Official asking Congress to lift the restrictions on privacy invasion, stating that the current laws are restricting there abilities to do there jobs effectively. Some congress officials believe that lifting this ban would allow the Intelligence department to spy on whom ever they wanted when ever they wanted. Currently there are restrictions limiting the spying to foreign persons on American soil. One statement stated that they can only spy on Americans if they they are following leads that will eventually lead them to a foreign person suspected of terrorist activity. Lifting that ban would allow them more access to more Americans and leave us open to be spied on by our own country for whatever reasons that the Intelligence department saw fit. To top it all off you now have a person that is wanting to sue God. Thats right, sue God. He states that he is doing it as a statement to tell the Judicial system that they need to open there doors to allow all kinds of lawsuits to be presented and tried. The reality of the situation is that we can not allow frivolous lawsuits like this to go into the system to be tried. We are wasting time, money and manpower trying case after case of some stupid person that is trying to make the Judicial system work for them just to make a quick buck. (more…)
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Portable Back-Up’s are a thing of the past.
Posted on September 18, 2007 by Ching under Sponsored Post.
I was browsing the web the other day looking for parts to build my dad a portable hard drive for his laptop. I came across this site that offered online back-up for next to nothing. That got me wondering, and I decided to do a little research. I found that on-line back up is the next big thing in digital storage. It used to be that if you had a lot of stuff to back up then you bought a drive, filled it up, got another and started the process all over again. Now we are moving into the age of online backup and anywhere storage. No more lugging around bulky hard drives that require power outlets or buzz away on the table top while your sitting at the library. Now you can access anything you store from anywhere in the world and have it at your fingertips. IDrive-E, a leading online backup service provider offers encrypted online backups up to 2GB for free and Unlimited storage for $4.95/month. It is easy to use, fast and secure. While there are other alternatives in consumer online backup space, IDrive-E is one step ahead of them in performance and features. Recent enhancements include near real time backup of frequently changing data. I truly think that this is the way to go for future storage needs. Its easy, it fast and you never have to worry about maintenance or space limitations ever again.
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Lay Off the Web MD
Posted on September 17, 2007 by Ching under Family, Life.
I woke up at four o’clock this morning due to severe chest pain. I thought I was having a heart attack. I ended up waking Brian up, much to his dismay. He said it was only heartburn. I never get heartburn, though.
It felt like there was a brick in my chest. It was like I wanted to burp but couldn’t but somehow I knew that if I burped or vomitted it would make me feel better. I really thought about trying to make myself gag with my fingers but then decided against it because that would just be too gross and painful. Then I coughed. I coughed a few times and white, cloudy phlegm came out. That actually made me feel better.
I was thinking that maybe my lungs were inflamed or something. On the up side the phlegm was white and not a gross green or yellow color. On the downside, I felt like I did when I had bronchitis minus the wheezing.
Brian rubbed some Vicks VapoRub on my chest. He figured that would help me breathe. It helped a little bit but it took a couple of hours before I could finally get back to sleep. Just as I started to doze off, the morning alarm went. I decided to call in a day of vacation and stay home. Brian and I agreed I could use the rest.
I slept until Brian woke me up around ten. The volume on my phone was set to super loud. It startled me. Anyway, I was going to go back to bed but after being abruptly woken up I decided to just stay up. I needed to read my book, Steve Kaplan’s “Bag the Elephant,”
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Shoot ‘Em Up
Posted on September 16, 2007 by Ching under Family, Flickr, Movies.
Please don’t be misled by the categorization of this blog entry. Shoot ‘Em Up
I enjoy a good action flick just like the next guy, but the movie has to be at least somewhat believable. Look at The Italian Job, the Bourne series.. These are good action films. Heck, even Grindhouse is good compared to Shoot ‘Em Up. Brian disagrees. He thought Grindhouse was really campy. I argue that it is supposed to be campy so it actually succeeds at achieving it’s objective. In Shoot ‘Em Up, I have no idea what their objective is.. It’s like an action movie that is comedic, but unintentionally so. Some of the scenes are so stupid and unbelievable that it’s funny. However, that’s not actually the goal of the movie so it fails its purpose. I think the critics were overly generous for giving it a C+ mark. Anyway, here are some pictures of last night’s outing.. (more…)
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