Best of the Blogs

Wampum: 2004 Koufax Award Winners were announced last week and I'm just now getting to them. There are several categories but my favorite is Most Humorous Blog won by J.C. Christian's Jesus' General. Also, the Most Humorous Post by the Poorman. But they are all good so go and read and hopefully learn something new and have fun.

My Poker Afternoon

Eariler this week, I was invited to a poker game hosted by a former college roommate. We started at 12:30 PM today. I ended up winning the whole thing (5 people at $20 buy-in). Here's who played and how they lost:

John: I took John out on the forth hand. He bet much and lost on the second hand so he had about half of his chips going into this hand. I got a pocket pair of 7s. The flop included my other two 7s and a three. John bet first and immediatly went All-In. So I'm sitting there with 4 of a kind of 7s and the best that I figure that John could get was 4 3s so I alone stayed. As it turned out, John had pocket 3s and thought that his Full House would win.

Duane: Duane lost to Mel (our host) by trying to bluff his way out of a pair. He had a pair of 10s and bluffed to Mel and lost to a pair of Aces. He only had a few chips left and he went All-In and lost to Mel the next hand.

Mel: I beat Mel when I bluffed with an Ace high. I scared him and Tim out of a big pot with my Ace High hand. Then Tim beat Mel after several hands of Check-Raising Mel. Finally, Mel with just a Full House went All-In and I beat him, 9s over 8s to 8s over 10s.

Tim: Tim and I tried to wear each other out by betting low and conservative. I lucked out on one hand. Tim had two pair to my single pair but I got a Flush on the River. Just a few hands later, Tim went All-In with another Two Pair and I had Three of a Kind (three 9s) to his 9s and Jacks.

So that was how I spent my afternoon winning $100 from a old friend and 3 new friends (or victims, your call.)

... Fixed some typos.

O-O-O-Oklahoma!

This article is really fun. Charles Pierce at The American Prospect makes the case that Oklahoma has the most entertaining Senators in the nation. Not that they are in on the joke mind you. Just read it and enjoy.

... Changed title of post

That was the best OC of the season!

So I just watched the latest episode of "The OC" and I haven't enjoyed an episode of it this much since Christmauka of this season. I think that this episode was better than that one. Even before our very happy ending (Seth & Summer aka Sethummer kissing in the rain ala Spiderman), this was just fun episode.

Boyz II Men songs 'cause characters were depressed, one character outing herself and her girlfriend to her Evil Mom rendering Evil Mom speechless (that's a first), Evil Mom admitting that she "experimented" when she was younger in a funny "Too Much Info" moment. It was just a fun, good episode.

I hope that it stays on track.

Well, we're fucked!

Read this long essay and tell me that we (as a country) are not fucked by the Bush Administration for the rest of my natural life.

The best of the Daily Show from last week

New feature this week. Since tonight's Daily Show is a rerun, I'm recapping my favorite bits from last week.

- Eric Idle entering the rap world as "Muff Daddy"
- Stephen Colbert coming clean about his real name, Ted Hitler.
- Jon's inability to look at Colbert, er Hitler after that.
- www.colbertkilledapanda.com
- "In my own defense, it was dark, I was drunk, and it [the panda] was delicious."
- This Week In God (just in general)

Steve's Outrage of the Day (Why I Stopped Shopping at Walmart Edition)

This article tells you why I stopped shopping at WalMart. WalMart is paying fines for voiolating child labor laws in 3 states. In return, the Labor Department will call ahead and give WalMart 15 days notice before they show up to clean up any infractions. And it's not like WalMart locks its employees inside the store or anything.

Just a thought...

Contribute to help Howard Dean make a statement for America.

Contribution amount:
$

Steve's Outrage of the Day: Budget Strangeness

So I was looking at reports of Bush's budget and I noticed that it increases the Abstinence-only education budget. This after Bush said that he would only increase funds to programs that work. He reduces funds to programs that sponser poor but smart children to go to college but a program that is killing kids* gets more money.

* The Abstinence-only programs have been shown to reduce teens ability to understand how to use condoms or other forms of birth control. Teen pregnancy and STDs have risen greatly in the last 4 years after declining for the previous 6.

...Changed title of post

Mardi Gras

So I remember that it is Mardi Gras weekend and I wondered what the weather was like in New Orleans since that was the main reason why I wasn't going to New Orleans this year. So I looked and today was the worse forcast day.

Some rain in the mid 50s.
Tomorrow and Sunday -- Sunny in the mid 60s.
Monday and Fat Tuesday -- lower 70s.

I go in late Feburary and the weather is rainy and 50s. I don't go in early Febuary and it is wonderful weather. Does that seem right?

What happened to gas prices?

I bought gas for the car on Sunday at about $1.73. I was driving by the same gas station today and it was $1.92. What happened in this week?

Strange week at work

Work has been a bit strange this week. In a previous post, I mentioned how we finished our project and were thrilled at being "done". Well, we missed some functionality and were working on fixing/adding it. So we had a goal of finishing it at 8am Thursday. We almost got it just didn't have one part (the writing to the disk part) complete by then.

But here's the strange part, nearly everyday this week, just as the work day was near closing, we had a Production issue which needed to be fixed. Which is very unusual for us. We normally get about one issue a week and 3 out of 4 times, they are easy issues. This week we've had severs failing to start, data out of sync for 6 weeks but no one noticed and it must be fixed by Monday, and a support call this morning (but sent to me at 3PM today) from a customer who completely forgot that the error occurred this morning. Kinda shows how important that issue was, huh?