I was watching Who Wants to Be a Millionaire tonight (I was at the bowling alley, it was on the TV. I had no choice. Honest!), and the following question came up (as best I can remember):

Vice President Dick Cheney was the head of what company?
A) I don’t remember B) Halliburton C) I don’t remember D) I don’t remember

The contestant didn’t know. He had to ask the audience. When anyone living in this country doesn’t know the answer to this question, how can we expect them to make educated decisions voting for our President? To be fair, I don’t know when this show was taped. The audience, however, very clearly knew the answer, and Cheney was obviously already Vice President. Some people did vote for choices A, C, and D, though. Maybe they were relatives of other people waiting to be the next contestant. I can always hope.

I’ve been meaning to write a little bit about the switch from MovableType to WordPress. Not much, just a little bit. Updating my templates wasn’t hard at all. It was basically just replacing all the MT tags with a little bit of PHP. Having multiple index templates (blog, photoblog, etc…) caused a small problem, but a little PHP code fixed that too. Here’s a list of links to useful information that helped me with the move:

• Carthik.net – A post about moving from MT to WP, where I found several of the following links.
• Fix for the date export problem from MT.
• wp-mail.php – WP moblog script, that I modified to fit with my site structure and create thumbnails.
• DrBacchus’ Journal – Importing MT posts into WP while keeping the same post numbers, so with a little .htaccess hacking, all my old links still work.
• Tutorial: Installing AWstats at 1and1.com – Not really WordPress related, but when I made the switch to WP, I also switched from my old hosting to 1and1. And now, I have AWstats going, since 1and1 doesn’t have them by default. I’m sure I could have figured this out on my own, but this tutorial definitely sped up the process.

Hmm… I thought there was more to it than that. I’ll update this post if I find anything else that I used. Also, obviously, the WordPress Docs, though those weren’t as helpful as I would have liked.

My Terror Alert has made the news. The St. Petersburg Times, anyway. I didn’t actually come up with the design, but that’s besides the point. Hopefully, this won’t bring anyone down on me for copyright or trademark violations.

Does anyone know if this was actually printed in a physical newspaper, and if so, how I can get one? Thanks.

(Also, thanks to Google Alert for finding this for me.)

I need a break from online poker. My game has gone to shit, I don’t enjoy it anymore, and I’ve lost too much of the money that I’ve made (haven’t put any more in, but it still sucks.) After losing these three hands in a row: JJ, flop a set, someone turns a gutshot straight after I bet (no free card), KK, capped preflop, beat by A6o (ace flopped), and then 42s, flopped 228, someone rivers a flush. Three hands in a row. I don’t believe online poker is rigged, but I just can’t deal with it anymore.

I was all set to play one last tournament, but I don’t even get to do that as Pacific fucked up and didn’t add me to the tournament.

I don’t think by any means that I’m never going to play online poker again, but I need to stop for a while, and I know the only way I’m going to be able to get myself to do that is to cash out. So I have, from all the online poker sites.

Maybe in a month I’ll put some money back in. I just need a break. Now I just have to figure out what to do with all the time this opens up.

Yes, I have the female avatar.

Here’s a nice article about the state of the media in the US: Only the jester speaks the truth.

As American voters prepare for arguably the most important election in two decades, The Daily Show’s influence is growing. With a blend of scathing satire, comedic brilliance, gonzo hijinks and incisive commentary, the show attracts more than a million viewers a night in the U.S. and has emerged as a force to be reckoned with on the national stage.

I get most of my news (including the article linked here) from Google News. The only news I watch on TV is the Daily Show.

If you’re reading this post, you’ve either found my temporary setup for my switch, or the DNS change has gone through and my website is now running WordPress instead of MovableType, and has been moved to the 1and1 server.

I think the switch to WordPress was fairly smooth, and I love that I don’t have to rebuild anything anymore.

The only thing that seems to have not worked quite right is importing Trackbacks (they got imported as comments.) Seeing as I have a whopping total of five of those to deal with, I will do those by hand at some point.

Once this change goes through, I’ll hopefully post a nice long update about what I’ve been up to. Don’t count on it, though.

3-6 hold ‘em at Bay 101

San Jose, CA

Mets @ Giants