This is not a man with a blog.

Getting Things Done

By Shabbir | May 10, 2005 | Comments Off on Getting Things Done

"Hello, my name is Shabbir Safdar, and I’m a David-Allen-aholic."

April 2005 poker results

By Shabbir | May 9, 2005 | Comments Off on April 2005 poker results

YTD: +US$484.68My upward trend continues as I clocked in lots of profit in April.  I cashed out of a site I’ve been playing on for over $500, and decided that the small selection of games means I’m done with it. My favorite data slicing tool, PokerTracker, now interprets data from Pacific Poker so I’m moving…

Birthday poker in Sin City: Vegas Day Four

By Shabbir | May 8, 2005 | Comments Off on Birthday poker in Sin City: Vegas Day Four

Our final day in Vegas was short.  We had a noon plane to catch and Katie was overly concerned about getting there in time.  We’d seen a long line at Security on the way out of the terminal on Sunday morning and we were eager not to miss our flight because of it.  We went down to the Sahara poker room about 7am and started playing $2/$4.

Birthday poker in Sin City: Vegas Day Three

By Shabbir | May 7, 2005 | Comments Off on Birthday poker in Sin City: Vegas Day Three

Wynn Resort Casino
Day three was a day of hubris.  I woke up at 7am, checked e-mail, downloaded the latest version of a document for the new super-staffer in our Boston office, and headed to breakfast with Katie.  We ate the sausage omelettes again, I spoke to my Boston colleague about the document, and we then headed out to the Wynn.  We had committed to seeing some other casinos, but had been so emboldened by our wins that we intended to head back to the Wynn right away.  Katie, having won several hundred dollars, decided to move up limits and play $8/$16, while I intended to stick to $4/$8.

Birthday poker in Sin City: Vegas Day Two

By Shabbir | May 6, 2005 | Comments Off on Birthday poker in Sin City: Vegas Day Two

Day Two of my birthday Vegas trip started with me setting off the alarm at the Sahara pool complex at 8am.  I’d been up since 7am, editing a document that a new and talented employee in our Boston office had been writing for a client.  The document was awesome, and I called her and told her so.  I wanted to get some exercise before the day started, and since the Sahara didn’t have a health club, I headed out to go for a swim.  Apparently in all the money to be made from the slots and other things at the Sahara, they can’t afford a couple of bucks for a Stairmaster. 

Birthday poker in Sin City: Vegas Day One

By Shabbir | May 5, 2005 | Comments Off on Birthday poker in Sin City: Vegas Day One

I turn 38 this month. Birthdays are not a big deal for me. I don’t freak out marking time, nor do I have special rituals that I
have to do on my birthday. Even the
actual day isn’t a momentous event. I
have breezed right through the actual day many years, and in most cases
attempts at parties have proven occasionally disastrous, with a recent birthday
that had me staring at more empty chairs at a Japanese restaurant than filled
ones. Whether it was organized too last
minute or that I simply don’t have the circle of friends I thought I did, I
found it horribly depressing. Even today
the recall of that dinner makes me somewhat melancholy. As my birthday approached this year, I swore
not to leave my birthday plans in anyone else’s hands. 

Serenity: the movie version of “Firefly”

By Shabbir | April 27, 2005 | Comments Off on Serenity: the movie version of “Firefly”

The tv show Firefly drove the purchase of my first Tivo.  I annoyed the hell out of a coworker who had a Tivo to tape it for me, and he finally said ‘no’, and I realized I needed one badly rather than miss an episode. The show, which packs the same quantity of creativity and…

Photo links should now be fixed.

By Shabbir | April 26, 2005 | Comments Off on Photo links should now be fixed.

Ever since I moved over to the hosted version of Movable Type (called TypePad), I’ve been really happy with the service.  Today I was hunting for all the broken photo links and came across the global search and replace. I don’t suppose I got quite everything, since I’ve been writing for several years, so if…

Sourcing? We don’t need no steenking sourcing!

By Shabbir | April 26, 2005 |

As I turned on the Today show this morning,  I was struck by the poor journalistic standards their producer used in presenting a story about "Take Our Daughters and Sons To Work Day".   Apart from allowing people on the show that are paid to hawk technology goods, "Today" thinks that journalism involves presenting two sides of any issue without a lot of thought as to what obligation they owe the viewers.

Betting well

By Shabbir | April 25, 2005 | Comments Off on Betting well

I love games.  Games of all sorts.

Gambling, to me, is just another sort of game but with a more accurate form of scorekeeping (money).  I love finding strategies to win games.  Sarah shares some of this as well, which is how we
once found ourselves at the National zoo with $20 with which to buy raffle tickets at the sea
lion habitat.  It was a fundraiser for the sea lions, and first prize was the chance to feed them.