Well, I can cross one item off the list below. I bought the 160 GB iPod Classic yesterday. It’s nice, though I have no idea what I’m going to do with all that space. It will probably get used as portable backup storage while I’m away from home. Unfortunately, Apple seems to have changed the database format with these new iPod models, so all the non-iTunes programs that used to work on Linux and Windows are now broken. I tried to use Anapod Photosync (running in Linux, under wine) to put a few pictures on it. When it was done, scrolling to the Photo menu option would cause the iPod to lock up. If I clicked, to go to the photos, before it locked up, it would just reboot instead. Oops. Hopefully, the database format will get reverse engineered soon and some of these programs will start working again. (Note: I don’t believe Apple did this to intentionally make these programs break. There were probably good reasons for it.)

So, that’s one item off the list. Actually, after I posted that list I remembered something else I meant to add. The Delphi XpressRC. The headset/line out jack in the XM I have my car is dying, and it was just in general due for an upgrade. It looks like I won’t be getting that, though, because… I’ve decided I need to get a new car instead. I just had to bring mine in, again, because the check engine light was on. Repair of some stupid sensor was around $400, and it just seems like it’s getting more expensive to maintain than is worth it. It looks pretty beat up at this point, my speakers or some other part of my sound system is dying, and I’ve had to bring it in several times in the past few months. My next car will almost definitely have a built in XM radio, which is why I no longer need to buy that other one. I’ve sort of tentatively started looking around at stuff online, but haven’t really narrowed anything down yet.

A couple of weeks ago, I was in a violent sort of mood. I’d been wanting to redo the closets in my bedroom for a while, so with nothing else to do, I took my hammer to the shelves that were in there. It felt good. Last weekend, I finished up one half of the closet. Pictures on flickr, here and here. There’s another closet the same size right next to it, which I’ll get to eventually.

Tonight, I’m driving to LAX, and then flying to JFK on Virgin America. Tomorrow night, I go to a wedding. Sunday afternoon, hopefully to Mets/Phillies at Shea, and then I have a 7:30 PM flight out. I’ll be in New York/New Jersey for under 36 hours, if you don’t count time spent in JFK. I get back to LAX Sunday night at 10:30 and then have to drive back to Santa Barbara. Fun.

If the Mets sweep the weekend, their magic number can drop to 5.

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For a weekend I had planned to do absolutely nothing, I got a whole lot done.

• Had my mailbox bees taken care of. This was actually done on Friday
• Bowled Saturday morning, the last week of the league. The league is normally a PBA shot, but since it was the last week, they put the house shot out. I shot a 688.
• Took my college diploma frame in for repair.
• Took delivery of a bookcase for my house.
• Took a picture in to a photo place for a nice big print.
• Played a round of disc golf, at Evergreen.
• Played some poker at Chumash. Lost $200, but if not for a 4 outer on my last hand I’d have had $700 instead of being broke. A♥A♣ vs K♥J♠, board J♣3♣2♥9♣, or something like that. River? J♥. $20 in preflop, $100 on the flop, $185 on the turn.
• Got a carwash.
• Got a haircut.
• Made a ton of progress on cleaning up my office at home, though you couldn’t tell by looking at it. It was mostly going through and shredding lots of old bills and other stuff that I have no need to keep anymore. Shredding is fun.
• The Mets took 2 of 3 from the Dodgers. I had very little to do with this, but I did watch most of the first and last game, and some of the second.

It was the most relaxing weekend I’ve had in months.

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This is gonna be fun. I didn’t notice them at all when I left for work this morning, and it’s the kind of thing you’d think I’d see. That means the whole thing appeared while I was at work today. I’ve gotten suggestions of Raid Bee Killer, or a hose from a distance, but I’ll probably take the easy way out and call an exterminator. Nothing easier than just paying someone else to handle it for me. Anyone else have any suggestions (or exterminator recommendations in Santa Barbara) before I call someone tomorrow?

Click the image for bigger sizes.

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My brother Jon and his wife were in Santa Barbara visiting this weekend. A lot of what we did while they were here was shopping. Saturday, we walked around State Street here, and they twisted my arm into buying a bunch of clothes and also toys we saw once in these bunny vibrator reviews. From there, we drove down to the outlet stores in Camarillo. In addition to more clothes, I ended up buying something else there. I’ve read a bunch of people rave about the Bose Quiet Comfort 3 noise canceling headphones, but hadn’t had a chance to try them. Bose had a store in the outlet mall. I went in and tried them twice. I checked Amazon on my phone to see if I could save shipping and tax. Nope, Amazon only has them through Bose as a partner. So I bought them, factory renewed for $50 cheaper. They’re incredible. The real test will be later this week when I fly to New York.

Every Sunday in Santa Barbara, there’s an arts and crafts show along the street by the beach. I usually go whenever I have people visiting. It’s a nice way to spend a few hours. I’ve bought a few things there before, but usually nothing terribly big or expensive. This time I saw a painting that I had to have, and knew it would go perfectly on a wall in my house. The artist wasn’t around his area the first time I saw it. He still wasn’t there when we walked back by it again after lunch, and I figured it would be a lot more money than I wanted to spend, so we eventually kept walking. About 20 minutes later, I decided I had to go back and find him, so we did. It ended up being about 1/3 to 1/2 the price I thought it would be, so I bought it. I’m glad I did.

I couldn’t get it home in my car, so the artist drove it by yesterday morning.

Tonight, bowling. Thursday, off to NY.

Is it bad that I’m really looking forward to leaving work at around 2:20 today……. to go to the dentist?

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Real post coming soon, I promise. For now, what I spent my time on after bowling (horribly) tonight:

Link to wall storage at Skymall.
Note: WPG2 is cool.

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PSO is making me post this. Well, they’re giving me free stuff for doing it. DuggleBogey shills for them all the time and gets away with it. I think I can do it once. Actually, I’ve posted about them before a few times. Basically, you sign up at their site, their poker forum, and then some poker sites through their affiliate links, and they give you free stuff just for playing a bunch of hands of poker. Which you were going to do anyway. Also, their Instant Bankroll promo is great for people who don’t already have Party or Titan accounts. Their forum just hit 25k users. I just recently got some cool new $1k Nevada Jacks to round out my set. Now, I actually have to start having a home game, or something.

Not much to report on my actual poker play, lately. Since my crazy run of four final tables in a week, I’ve cashed in a few more of the $8k and $16k tournaments on FTP, but no big money cashes. I had about a week of bubble finishes, and a few times got the bottom payout. This week, I got knocked out in the middle of the field getting my chips in as a 90% favorite. Luckily, I had swapped 5% with Ryan, who made the final table, so I got back more than my buyin.

One of these days, I’m going to hit a big win when someone has a piece of me.

Part of the reason I haven’t been playing in as many of them as I’d like is that my parents were here for a week. I’m not at all complaining about that, just giving it as a reason. I still did manage to play a few of the late night $8ks. While they were here, we went out and did something I’ve been needing to do for a while: furniture shopping. It was surprisingly tiring, and after driving down as far as Oxnard (about an hour), ended up getting just about everything at a store that’s closing right around the corner from me. I ended up with a new dining room table and chairs, living room furniture, some bookcases, and a bed (instead of the plain metal frame only that I had). There are pictures up in the gallery.

I’ve also been killing a lot of time playing the damn blobby game. I made it this far:

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I did it again.

I played some online poker. But it wasn’t real online poker, honest (it was .50/1 limit, and the fishiest I’ve seen in a long time. I don’t remember the low limits being that bad when I started). And I wasn’t playing it to play poker, I was playing it to test out wine. I swear.

I was chatting with helixx in IRC, and he said he was playing at FullTilt. They just released a Mac (beta) client, but sadly nothing for Linux. Not that I’m surprised. That market is probably all of a couple dozen people, if that. 🙂 Anyway, it got me playing with wine and really banging on it until I could get things to work.

Then of course, once it was up and running, I had to actually test it. I successfully played at FullTilt on my Linux desktop for two hours. It crashed once, but that computer has other issues and other things (Firefox, for one) crash on it, too. There are some graphics and drawing issues, but for the most part it is very playable. I ended up losing a little bit of money, but the side chat about the other players at the table was hilarious and worth it. April also sat down at the table for a bit while we were there.

I got Party and Stars going, too. UB is sort of halfway working, but I don’t really plan to play there much in the near future anyway. I’m seriously considering setting up a “Poker on Linux” website with instructions on how to do all of this (complete with affiliate links to all the poker sites, of course). Here’s a nice little screenshot of me not actually playing poker:

On a totally unrelated topic, I took some more pictures of my house. They’re up in the gallery.

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Constant physical attack (er.. vacuuming) didn’t seem to work, so I’ve had to resort to chemical warfare. Hopefully, this will take care of the problem.

I’ve been running pretty bad at the tables lately, and have decided I need to take a break. My bankroll is suffering too much, and it doesn’t seem like I can do anything to stop it. So, with the exception of Wil’s tournaments, I’m not going to play any more online poker until next year. I wonder if I can make it the whole ten days.

This doesn’t mean I won’t possibly head up to Chumash and get some time in at real tables, though. I feel much better about my game thanks to the weekend in Vegas, actually. I just can’t seem to avoid the bad beats online lately.

Maybe I’ll use the extra time to finish a Vegas write-up. I still have to talk about the tournament, storming the castle, 1-2 NL at the MGM, and some serious 2/4 donkey poker at the IP.

Right now, though, it’s time for bed.

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