General

Saturday Morning, 9am: Quality Inn Atlantic City
I feel humbled by my losses last night. Like Icarus I flew too high and had to drag myself out of the ocean this morning. I resolve to play a more appropriate game today. After a quick shower, we head down to the lobby and the desk manager calls us a cab, since we don’t have a car.

I lost a big bet playing Halo with my friend V. At the first grudge match I suggested a trip to Atlantic City as the wager. I won the practice match, and then V cleaned up the floor with me when we played for the real thing. Turns out he’s an incredible Halo player, and he had played me like a fiddle. Time to start booking rooms for a weekend in Atlantic City.

I asked my mother in law, “Why is it called canning, if there are no cans involved?”

“I don’t know”, she said, “That’s a good question.”

At that moment, I had perhaps gained just a little respect in her eyes. (Or she thought I was a smart-ass jerk, its hard to tell with her.)

Sarah’s family has had a farm for years up in the mountains of Western Maryland. If the country goes to hell and my fascination with a post-Apocalyptic Earth goes from film fandom to a reality, that’s where you’ll find me with Sarah and the dogs.

Thirty brings wisdom Smugness from mistakes not made. Soon you’ll break a hip.

For the next few days you may see some broken links on my diary website, since I’ve just switched over to the new MovableType 3.1.  I’ve got most of the photos but I have to setup all the linkages to Amazon. Most importantly I’ve got over 8,000 comments on my site that are mostly spammed…

I just spoke to a partner who has their application hosted with AT&T. I was mentioning how I spent part of the hurricane up in the mountains, and he said, yeah, we were down for two hours. Really? Where is AT&T’s data center? “Orlando”, he said. Shit, I should have known.

Apparently I don’t get enough online poker. A while ago I purchased an uber video card for my computer at home with two monitor jacks, so my desktop is super wide, and I can scroll the mouse across both of them like it was one big Nam Jun Paik video installation. I did this because…

As you sit and ponder the beauty, magnitude, and destruction caused by that photo to the right (courtesy www.noaa.gov), I’d like you to consider something. Under the thumb of Hurricane Frances are the states of Florida and Georgia. And in that area are 2,500,000 homes and businesses without electricity. Businesses. Dry cleaners, grocery stores. Internet…

So I’m mentioned in Sunday’s Washington Post in Ann Marchand’s article on the popularity of poker. Also I did ok in the Party Poker Million semi-final. Of the 1,795 entrants I finished 301st. Not anywhere close to the money, but still something to be proud of. I’ll continue to try and get into those tournaments…

Online results: August was a reminder as to why this is called gambling. In the first four days I had an incredible run of good cards, lucky play, and bad opponents. Playing $1/$2 poker, I was up over $300. Then my bad play caught up with me and I ended up about even again. I…