Last night I was playing in another poker tournament. I played pretty conservative for quite some time. I finally started to get some playable hands.

Before I knew it, I was heads-up with one other player. We played several hands back and forth, and then the dealer announced, "this is the last hand". The tournaments are timed, and when there's no last man standing a chip count is taken to determine the winner.

I checked out his chip count, he had me covered by about 7k or so. I was under the gun, and looked down to find , a MONSTER hand, heads-up. I decided to act weak, if I could get just 5-6k more of his chips I'd win for the night. And since I don't play as much as some of the others in the league, a win is huge.

I made a really weak raise of 2K from the small blind. The current blind stuctures were 500 and 1000. It was a no brainer for my opponent, he had to call. He did, and the flop came down . Wow, I flopped a set, and along with my set I had the stone cold nuts. There were NO 2 cards my opponent could have that would beat me. I checked to my opponent, and he checked as well. The turn produced the . I bet out 3k, my opponent just called. I still was confident. The river exposed the . Now I had a full house. I checked, hoping my opponent would take a stab at it. He bet out 6K, I said, "I'm all in", and he called! He turned over King high, I turned over my full house for the win. Twas' a good night.

First off, if you're reading this, and you don't know who Comcast is, or you have dish, let me tell you how lucky you are.

I awoke this AM to find that Comcast had totally revamped the menu systems on my set top box. I didn't like them  before, but got used to how they worked, and while not stellar, they weren't really that bad.

We like to have Good Morning America on in the AM when we're getting ready, eating breakfast, and rushing out the door. I turned on the TV and clicked MENU, instantly I was confused. The menu is all pixely, and terrible looking, when in HD mode, it used to be crisp and clear, but I can get past that.

Ummmmmm where the Hell is my HDTV option? It's like GONE. What the hell, hmmmmmm, click menu again, and this 'quick menu' thing comes up that allows you to choose an option quickly, instead of choosing it from the menu.... I don't really see how it saves time but I digress. So I notice a new icon, way off to the right, HDTV, ah, there it is!

I click left, expecting the menu to wrap, and to go from the first item to the LAST item. It doesn't. Now instead of 'menu, menu, navigate down twice' (four clicks) I'm forced to click 'menu, and six clicks of navigation to the right' (and then enter).

Ohhhhh man that's dumb. Ok, so I don't really have an option. I go to TV Listing for HD by time. Ummmm there's two channels listed. WTF? Where did all my HD Channels go? I notice that there are little < and > carats at the top of the page, no no no... you're kidding me.

They've apparently grouped the channels by some sort of category. So now instead of paging down the available channels by time, I have to right click, right click, through all of their predefined categories.

The other option is to choose search from the main menu, some more clicks through their ridiculous interface, and choose HD. Resulting in the same view described above.

Tell me who their usability expert is, I'd like to punch him in the face.

Every aspiring poker player attempts to try and not give off 'tells' while they play. If you don't know what a tell is, it's best described as "giving away the strength of your hand, inadvertently". Tells can be anything, the way the chips are thrown into the pot, the way someone replies to a question, or even how they are postured at the table. A tell is not a sure fire way of knowing that someone is strong, or weak. Often times, players send out 'fake tells' to confuse you.

At the level I'm playing at now, I don't think the majority of people I play cards with are well educated on these things. I've recently started on trying to get a better read on players.  I've been reading books, watching professional player videos, and just trying to improve my game. I recently watched a video by Annie Duke (she used to live right here in Portland, but moved to Las Vegas recently).

The video mentioned something interesting that I had never considered. Annie Duke encouraged poker players to read FBI journals available at most public libraries. Well, I don't have the time to go find, and read these journals, so the information I was able to glean from her video seemed good.

Tonight, I was focused on trying to read players in pots against me. I did not expect to be put to the test on the very first hand of the night.

The blinds were $100 / $ 200 (tournament chips, not a cash game). I was dealt 'under the gun' (the first position after the big blind). I raised the pot to $800. I had one caller, and both blinds folded.

The flop came down, . I had totally missed the flop. I was first to act, and I had a feeling that this flop had completely missed my opponent. So I made a continuation bet of $600.

He instantly called, this worried me. The turn produced the . I had put almost 1/2 of my chips into the pot. I decided to check, I knew he'd probably move his remaining chips in, and I knew I'd have to fold, or risk the rest of my chips to see the last card. Like I expected, he moved all his chips in, and for a second, I considered folding. I decided to wait, draw it out and see if I picked up something.

My opponent was starring me directly in the eye, generally appearing to be strong, means you're weak. From his behavior, I was pretty sure that my ace high was the best hand. I watched him a bit more. I said call, and turned up my cards.

He turned up his, and with a disgusted face, he asked me, "how could you call?" I said, you did something that made me call. The river was a blank, and I doubled up.

Annie Duke's video mentioned that people that are uncomfortable about their situation (i.e. lying or bluffing in this case) tend to unconsciously blink more often than people that are telling the truth. When my opponent moved his chips in, he must have blinked about 20 times in thirty seconds or so.

Everyone at the table gasped, they all wanted to know how I could make the call. I replied I picked up a huge tell on him, they all bugged me to tell what it was... I didn't. :)

I'm working on a .NET project w/ a friend, and I intitially thought FolderShare was the for sure way to go. So after setting up a new foldershare instance with my friend, I realized, (duh) that there are files we don't want to just blindly copy back and forth. There is no way in foldershare to exclude a file from a share. My friend Scott said "Dude, it's FOLDERSHARE, not FILESHARE" thanks Scott. But he suggested using Subversion. We use it at work, and I'm not opposed to using it, but I did not want to pay for hosting and did not really have a server (publically accessible) to set it up on.

Scott said there were some places that would host subversion repositories for free. So we found https://OpenSVN.csie.org/ It looks like a site I would probably design (read bad). So it must be good? :) We created our project, set it up to use only HTTPS and even created two user accounts that can access it.

Installed Tortoise SVN 1.4 and bam! Connected! So we now have version control, as well as a place we can work out of. Too freakin' cool.

I had been using the online/mail delivery of DVDs from Blockbuster. But I began to realize, that the DVDs would sit for a week before I viewed them, thus making the $17.99 a month not really seem worth it. I mean if I were watching 2-3 DVDs a week, it would be worth it I guess. They also entice you to use their service w/ free in store rentals each week. Well, I have not had time to watch DVDs lately and I' m definitely not going to their brick and mortar store either!

I decided to cancel a few days ago. Check out this screenshot of my inbox on gmail. I canceled on the 24th. And today I get an email saying we've shipped the latest DVD in your queue. Great. I can just see the hassle canceling is going to be. :<

My goal for this session in the poker league was to place in the top 100 players, and be invited to play in the quarter end tournament (only open to the top 100). I'm currently 82nd, and they still have a first place, and a third place finish to record.

I have a shot at being the top player at the venue I play out of, but I was REALLY close to another guy, like a few points close, so it will all depend on how he did in the second game the other night.

It's still possible my recent first place, and third place finish won't be enough to keep me in the top 100, so Thursday would be my last shot to 'squeeze' in a last game or so. I really hope it won't come down to that, I don't think it will. But it's good to know I have a contingency plan in place.

It was funny, my first place finish the other night was almost a last place one. I had been getting reallllllllly crappy hands, and got caught bluffing a time or two. I finally got   and I just 'tilted' and said "All In".

I had three callers. Man, why did I do that. I got out of my chair, as when you have three hands to beat, it's almost a no brainer, that you're gonna be out. The flop totally missed me . I jokingly called for "runner runner" clubs.

The turn produced a , and the river , I just quadrupled up! and knocked out two opponents. I got really lucky, but it was the turnaround point of the night, I started getting really good cards, and went on to win.

Scott turned me on to this awesome tool. The user interface and the total control over the settings is way better than the Jodix tool I mentioned earlier. This combined with DVD Decrypter is the total way to go.

Some cute video of the kid laughing and cooing. :) If you're here for technical stuff, scroll down. :) Oh yeah, ignore my baby talking... Heh...

Here's the free way to do it.
http://www.engadget.com/2005/10/18/how-to-get-tv-s...

After reading all the steps involved with this approach, I opted to spend $25. And while the transfer process of transfering a show from your tivo to your computer is painfully slow... I tend to move the shows off my tivo to my computer while I sleep.

The upside is you can set it to automatically create portable versions whenever you transfer shows to your computer. So when I wake up in the morning, all my iPod files are ready to by synch'd.