Life with Hunny Bear

Farewell to Hunny Bear

2011-05-29T17:10:00.000-07:00

Today Monica and I said goodbye to our best friend in the whole world.

Late Thursday night Hunny Bear started gasping and couldn't catch his breath. We rushed him to the local ER vet and many tests and adventures later -- including transporting him with a portable oxygen tank -- we determined he had fluid in his chest which not only made it hard for him to breathe but was cancerous. They were able to drain the fluid to make him more comfortable so we brought him home Saturday to pamper him. He was still having difficulty breathing last night and this morning and we knew it was his time.

I share how Hunny Bear died, because I know everyone will ask and I would if it were your dog, and it gives a sense of closure, but I'd rather talk about how he lived. And Hunny Bear lived like a prince. Our dogs are our "kids" and we spoil them -- premium food, lots of love, lots of treats, and even the specialty vets know us by name. Our floors our covered with dog beds but the dogs usually sleep between us in, and we upgraded to a king bed for them. But because Hunny Bear was our first dog -- Monica got him when he was eight weeks old -- and the #1 dog, we spoiled him just a little bit more, though please don't tell Cocoa. While Hunny Bear wasn't the cutest, the cuddliest, the smartest (if you can get OUT the dog door how hard can it be to get back in), or the sweetest, he was the toughest.His vet described him as stoic. Despite problems with multiple organs, per his blood tests, he never showed any sign of being sick and just wanted to live life to the fullest.

And we think he did. When we spent two months driving across the county in 2004, Hunny Bear and Emily were with us every step of the way. When Monica and I drove to the Grand Canyon and saw the National Parks in Utah, Hunny Bear was there alongside us. And at the end of the trip when I dropped Monica off at Angels Gate and made the 18-hour drive home he rode shotgun. He was the best listener ever. Hunny Bear has been to more states and stayed in more nice hotels than most people. He saw Mt Rushmore, the Grand Canyon, Old Faithful and many more historic sites. Our favorite trip with him was probably just to get away for the weekend to Seattle or Portland. He was an incredibly well-behaved hotel guest and house guest.

I remember the first time I really met Hunny Bear. I picked Monica up at her apartment -- we weren't even dating yet -- and she wasn't quite ready so I waited in her living room. Hunny Bear barked at me the whole time and when I tried to pet him he ran away and barked some more. At the time I thought damn, I really like this girl and her dog hates me; I'm doomed. Of course, it worked out and I learned that little Hunny Bear is Monica's protector, barking at every stranger who comes into Monica's home, and many friends as well.

I have lots of wonderful memories about Hunny Bear that make me smile but I'll share this one in closing. Monica and I have been very active as volunteers with Seattle Beagle Rescue. Every year SBR hosts two Beaglefest fund raising events where beagles and their friends are welcome. Hunny Bear wasn't particularly what I'd call a trouble maker, but he was very food motivated. At Beaglefest he sat right in front of the "people food" hoping someone would drop something or not pay attention and he could steal food out of their hand. He perfected his technique so well that I coined the phrase "It's not a Beaglefest until Hunny Bear steals a cupcake". And even though I warned everyone who took a cupcake and pointed out Hunny Bear, he always found a way.

So in memory of Hunny Bear, have a cupcake today, or better yet steal one from a friend.

Deep Stack Poker Today

2011-02-13T21:27:00.000-08:00

I played the Hideaway Sunday noon deep stack today. You start with 200 big blinds and rounds are 20 minutes, so there's actually some poker play before stacks become short. I'm going to try a bit different reporting format. Note that the tournament starts with 100-200 blinds.

I finished 8th of 22, which means I played a while and didn't get any money.

Why I lost:

I played only B+/A- poker and could have played better.
I got unlucky. And this was the primary reason.

I sounds like sour grapes to say I got unlucky but given how tournaments play you need to make some hands AND get paid when you do or win a lot of coin flips.

I believe I pushed all-in and risked my tournament life twice the entire tournament. Once in the middle stages I re-raised pre-flop with AA and my opponent folded and even if called I would have been all-in with the nuts. The other time was my last hand.

And the former hand is a good example of how I got unlucky. In the first round of the tournament I flopped the nut flush draw, turned the flush and got paid off by a player who flopped a straight. And that's the only time by big hands really got paid off. I won a ton of pots, but most were raising pre-flop and taking blinds or taking it down with a continuation bet, often when I had nothing.

I had a stretch of hands where I had KK, QQ, and KQ and couldn't even get any action on my pre-flop raises. With QQ I raised just more than 2 BB in EP. With KQ I raised less than 4 BB from the small blind after 2 limpers.

3 key hands that made or broke the tournament for me:
1) The aforementioned AA hand. I think I played this pretty poorly. I had about 53000 in chips. With blinds 1500 and 3000, MP raises to 10K, I have AA in SB and after thinking a bit decide to shove since any re-raise commits me. I also though the oversized raise might look weak. This was bad for two reasons. First, he still has to call off most of his stack here. And unless he has a top 5 hand it's not likely. Second, with AA I'm so far ahead I can afford to slow play. In retrospect I should have smooth called and check-raised all in on the flop. Might have busted, but likely could have won 15K or maybe 40K more. (Note that something seems off here but perhaps this was the start of the level. The next hand seems to have happened way later.)
2) Last hand before the second break. Blinds are 1500/3000 about to go to 2000/4000. UTG shoves for 30K and it folds to me in BB. I know UTG understands short stack play and that he doesn't have time to wait. I have 66 and it's going to cost me 1/3 of my stack, which is borderline for calling. I decide that so much of his range is two-big cards that I should call. He says "nice call" and rolls over A2s. He catches an ace on the river and instead of being up to 123K and first or second in chips, I have 62K and an average stack. This is killer. I realize I'm going to lose 30% of the time and that's poker. But I KNOW to win I need to win pots like this.
3) I had raised and won the pot uncontested pre-flop about 4 of the last seven hands (I had K8, KK, QQ, KQ so it wasn't just moves). I showed KK once. Action folds to me on the button with KJs. This is a raising hand but I'm concerned someone will play back at me. My error is that they two player in the blinds are so tight that they aren't going to play back with less than a premium hand. SB and BB calls. Flop is JT6 all clubs, it checks to me and I bet 12000 into 18000. SB raises to 25000 and I call. Turn is a 2 and she shoves for the pot. I think a long time and decide I don't want to go broke here. Should have raised PF, should have shoved the flop, should have called her shove knowing her game.

Lost too many chips on that last hand and put me in bad shape the rest of the way.

Meier got 4th place, which was nice for him. Will definitely play this again.

Happy New Year

2011-01-19T22:06:00.000-08:00

Yeh, the blog has been dead but not forogotten.

Short version. November was insanely busy. Hunny Bear got sick. We were going like nuts at work trying to ship a product. My parents came to visit for a week at Thanksgiving. We got the crazy weather the same week. And this continued into the first part of December.

And then, every time I'd look at the blog or think about the blog, I'd say to myself I have 5 posts I NEED to write and well I don't have time for that now. Anyway, hope to write more on:

Hunny Bear
Crazy weather
Da Bears
Work and job hunting (past tense)
Poker

Douchebag of the week

2010-10-30T06:55:00.000-07:00

inspired by "redright's" series of a similar name

This actually happened a couple of weeks ago but I still want to share. I advertised a number of Mariners bobbleheads on Craigslist. I was contact by someone asking to purchase 5 of them and offering me $85 which he said was $10 off what I had asked. I noted that Griffey had been sold but I could sell the other 4 for the same $85 which was $10 off. I hope he mis-added and wasn't trying to scam me. He then changed his mind on which ones he wanted but the cost was the same. We agreed to meet over the weekend, likely Saturday, when he'd be in the Factoria area.

Saturday afternoon he emailed me and said the day was busy so we set up an 8 AM Sunday meeting time (I had plans during the day). I arrived at 8, waited a few minutes, then checked my email to see he had said his car was frozen shut and he couldn't make it. It was cold but not cold enough to freeze car doors. I responded that we could touch base around 5 PM. I called him at 5 and he never called back. I emailed him Monday or Tuesday and never heard back.

I don't mind so much that he reneged on a deal. That's the nature of dealing with people through Craigslist. That he gave me the run around over the weekend and didn't have the courtesy to call, text, or email that he was sorry but he had to back out of the deal is what gets me. Given the energy I spent on this transaction, I was barely making any money even if he did show. Acceptance reasons for this behavior are 1) death, 2) brain death.

Playoffs x2

2010-10-24T12:09:00.000-07:00

With the college football season nearing the end of October, talk of a playoff system is heating up again. Having 7 teams undefeated and a handful of very strong one-loss teams makes the noise a bit louder than in typical years. As well, it's almost a certainty that Boise State and either TCU or Utah, who play each other, will wind up undefeated. And so there's a chance we'll have three or four undefeated teams prior to bowls. And thus a "deserving" team would be left out of the Championship if that happens.

The problem with a playoff system, and why I don't like any of the ideas I've heard, is what we're seeing in baseball this year. The playoffs have been competitive and entertaining for sure. And having the Rangers and the Giants in the World Series is a compelling story and a nice change from Yankees, Red Sox, and Phillies. However each league is represented by the weakest of its four playoff teams. We played 162 games to determine that the Yankees, Rays, Phillies, and Braves were the best team and then played 10-12 games to decide to send someone else to the World Series.

I'm not suggesting we go back to two divisions and only four team in the playoffs. However I think college football "fans" are oblivious to what would happen in a playoff system. I think there will be a lot of noise about TCU/Utah being left out of the National Championship, but would having Alabama play Missouri or Michigan State for the Championship make anyone feel better about the title?

Bears: Bad News, Good News, Bad News

2010-10-17T17:50:00.000-07:00

The bad news is that the Bears lost at home to an inferior team that's been particularly bad on the road. And the offense didn't look good at all. Honestly the offensive line is going to have to step up and give Cutler some time. If they can't run and can't pass, they can't win long term. Hopefully Garza and Briggs are back soon because they team doesn't have enough depth to play hurt. And 0-12 on 3rd down conversions should clue them in whatever they're doing isn't working.

The good news is that after 6 weeks, the number of NFC team with a better record than the Bears is 0. There are 4 other teams at 4-2. And the Bears are one of only 8 teams fighting for 5 playoff spots. This assumes that only the NFC West champion will make the playoffs (likely but not a guarantee), the Cowboys at 1-4 are done (hard to see them going 8-3 and 9-7 probably isn't a playoff team anyway), and the Bucs 3-2 is simply an artifact of an easy first two games. And the 8 includes Washington and Minnesota, neither of whom are necessarily good.

Unfortunately there's a bad, bad side. The Bears next three weeks are Washington at home, bye, and at Buffalo. They should be 6-2 after that but the Redskins have shown some flashes; we can re-assess in another two hours. However the second half of the season is a nightmare. Except for one game at Detroit, they play potential playoff team every week. By the time they play the Vikings in week 15, Minnesota's goose may have been cooked but that still looks to be team you won't walk over. The good news is the Jets, Patriots, and Eagles all come to Soldier Field which means they're likely to win one of those. Still 3-5 or even 2-6 isn't out of the question.

You play the games one at a time, but basically the Bears have to beat Washington and Buffalo then home they can manage to go 4-4 the rest of the way and finish at 10-6, which almost certainly gets them in the playoffs. Or it's going to be a disappointing season that started 4-1 and didn't finish with a playoff berth, which would sadly mean the end for Lovie Smith.

No Limit comes to Washington

2010-10-17T08:47:00.000-07:00

Well, sort of.

While playing poker in casinos has been legal as long as I remember, Washington has a screwed up set of laws. First the maximum poker bet in tribal ("Indian") casinos has been $500, but in card rooms the max was $20 when I started playing several years ago. They upped the maximum to $40 about 3 or 4 years ago which led to a bunch of 20-40 limit games, which is actually decent stakes, and some 2-40 spread limit. The 2-40 game was a huge improvement over the 3-6 and 4-8 limit games that dominated the area. Not only could you bet enough to get people to fold but you had huge implied odds which made it "correct" the play a lot of speculative hands, even against raises. This led to much more action and much more profit. But still it wasn't even close to no limit -- the $40 max came into play in almost every raised pot.

The Washington Gaming Commission has been debating higher limits probably since the day they upped the limit to $40. Finally a month ago they decided to allow a trial of hold 'em with a $100 max bet with the law going into affect 30 days later. Friday the 15th was day 30 and The Hideaway was one of the places that got a 3-100 spread game going. It's still not true no limit but in playing a few hours I only saw one hand where the $100 max came into affect. With a $200 max buy-in, you run out of chip before you run into the cap. Note that if someone bets $40, you can then raise to $140. It's really hard to have a deep enough stack and big enough pot that you'd want to bet more than $100.

Anyway, I played in the inaugural game after work on Friday. Lots of people were interested in playing or at least willing to try. The game was really good. I doubled my buy in over 3-4 hours and it would have been much, much better had I not lost a huge pot on a bad suck out. But that's poker.

I expect I'll still play at Snoqualmie with the 2-5 no limit, but this game is a good alternative.

Hideaway Fall Classic

2010-10-10T22:56:00.000-07:00

One of my disappointments in the local poker scene is the lack of reasonably priced deep stack events -- tournaments where you actually play some poker before you get to the stage where everyone is shoving all-in every hand. Either you have daily $30-60 tournaments that are fast with little or no skill or $500+ special events like Tulalip's 10-10-10 $1010 event. So I was excited when I saw The Hideaway was having a Fall Classic with a series of reasonably priced events $60-120 and $240 for the main event with a lot of chips to start with and 20-minute rounds.

I played in a few of these. The first was a $60 buy-in tournament starting with 30K chips (100-200 blinds) and 20-minute levels -- their normal tournament but twice as much play. I didn't play very well and went out early. The second event was an interesting twist on a team tournament. Normally in a team tournament, the teammates switch who's playing every level (15 - 30 minutes). In this tournament each team member was part of a pool of 20 players. Each pool played its own tournament with the top 3 getting paid. Then the top team, based on the ranks of its team members, wins 25% of the total prize pool. I finished 4th in my pool and Meier got 3rd in his pool, which made us the top team. We'll take it but we both feel like we could/should have won our individual pools as well. Meier in particular got unlucky on his last two hands or could have been heads up with 2/3 of the chips.

I had a Mariners conflict and missed the Omaha/8 tournament which I wanted to play. I played the NL bounty tournament Friday AM and finished with two bounties and go unlucky and busted at the final table.

Then I played the HORSE tournament on Saturday. HORSE is a mixed game where you play Hold 'em, Omaha/8, Razz, Stud, and stud/Eight. (Yeh, the "E" is kind of a stretch.) Anyway, the tournament sucked and everyone who played in it thought so too. Basically they started with too many chips for everyone given it's a fixed limit structure and raised the blinds too slowly. I played 6 hours before busting at which point they got to the final table of 8 from 24 who started. A tournament of this nature shouldn't take 6 hours to complete much less to just get to the final table. We spent 3 hours just passing chips back and forth when the blinds were tiny. Then played some poker for a couple hours, then hit a shove fest where it came down to who caught cards. Oh well. Was fun to play HORSE for real and I'd probably go back for their cash game. But I'd never play a structure like that again.

For the series, I think I wound up slightly ahead -- cashing once in the team tournament to pay for my four entry fees and having the bounties as profit.

No poker as I'm busy at work. Played a silly social game Sunday night. I'm not even sure you could call it poker. Looking to play on Friday when the card room max jumps from $40 to $100 and there's going to be 1/3 "no limit" at the Hideaway.

Toronto and Buffalo

2010-10-09T18:34:00.000-07:00

Before going back to work I got in one last vacation. My friends Meier and Nanci were going to Buffalo for a week with a two-day side trip to Toronto in the middle. Having never been to either or Niagara Falls, at least that I remember, I decided to join them for part of the trip. When am I ever going to have a chance to see Buffalo or Toronto?

Flew into Toronto on Monday and they met me at the airport after I passed through customs. We drove to downtown Toronto and wandered around. Perhaps the most interesting things we saw was Paws Way, which is as cute as the pictures on their web site. It's part dog history museum, part educational facility, part shop, and part training center. They also have a little cafe in the front. I had no idea such a thing existed anywhere. Had dinner at Il Fornello. Went back to our hotel, which was all the way back by the airport, but not before driving through the large Jewish neighborhood of Toronto. Next day we got a late start, saw Casa Loma (house on the hill) which is a famous historic castle. After being there and watching some house hunters, I decided our home should have a fancy name. So now we live at "Casa Oso" or perhaps we should call it "Casa Oso de miel".

We had a late lunch then spent an hour at the Shoe museum which was surprisingly OK. By pure coincidence the Mariners were in town, so we went to the Blue Jays game that night. We had checked ahead and thought it would be fun to see a game in Toronto. Of course, the Mariners lost and looked terrible, but made it interesting in the 9th. Ichiro had 4 hits. And the stadium was empty. We complain about the Mariners drawing 10-15K, but there must have been only about 4000 people at the game though the Jays reported 12K paid. Before going to the game Nanci and I went up the CN Tower and had great views of the city and a cool view looking straight down on Rogers Centre (nee the Skydome).

Went back to the airport hotel, got some sleep then got up the next "morning" and headed to Niagara Falls on the way to Buffalo.

Niagara Falls was awesome. A picture is worth 1000 words.

We had hoped to play poker at Casino Niagara but they had a couple of dealers call in sick and had 15 names on the wait list. I found this stunning as I'm sure they could have found back up dealers. In this economy every dealer is looking to pick up extra shifts. Then back to the US of A. Buffalo isn't very touristy. After Meier and Nanci dropped me at my hotel I walked around downtown for a little bit and saw some of the historic buildings. Meier picked me up later and we went to Duff's for buffalo wings with Nanci's family -- how can you go to Buffalo and not have wings?! Wings were good but we all ate too much. Meier and I headed back to the Falls to play some poker, actually wound up playing on the New York side and had an interesting border crossing at 2:30 AM when we wanted to go back to pick up poker chips. Ended OK but got home very, very late.

Thursday I got up and wandered around town by myself. Walked down to Coca-Cola Field, then walked along the waterfront and looked across to Canada. Meier met me and we discovered that City Hall has a free viewpoint on the 28th floor so we got a good look at the city. Then it was back to eating -- some famous hot dog place that didn't impress me at all and Anderson's for custard (soft serve ice cream) which was pretty good. Then airport and home.

Lots packed in in just four days.

Crazy Hot Poker Session

2010-09-26T20:53:00.000-07:00

Spent most of last week in Toronto and Buffalo -- more on that later -- but wanted to share about a wild thing that happened to me playing poker. Meier and I were at Seneca Niagra Casino, on the US side of the Falls, playing 1-2 NL. After being down quickly, then building back my stack to be ahead, I'd been whittled down to about $65. Meier and I had already decided this was going to be our last orbit and we'd pick up and check out the other casinos. Warning: lots of poker content follows.

I'm under the gun (first after the blinds), so this is my "last" hand. I raise to $10 with TT and get three callers. The flop is 5-4-2 (or similar), I bet $30 and get one caller who we'll call Loose Gambler (LG) because he's a gambler as we'll see. The turn is a jack and I push my last $25 in and LG folds. I'm up to $125 now and it's time to go. However Meier suggests we play one more orbit and I say OK.

BB: UTG+1 raises to 5, not a play I'd seen him make before, and a strange range because anyone who would call 2 will call 5. Action comes to be and I re-raise to 20 with JJ. Honestly I had checked out and hadn't realized that three people had called and thus my raise was too small. Three people called the $20 making an $80 pot. Flop 9-9-7, I bet $45, LG shoves for $25 more. I think a bit and call and he shows K7 for a worse too pair and says "I hoped I could push you off AK". My jacks hold and in two hands, I'm up to $255. LG rebuys for $60.

SB: Meier raises to $8 UTG+1, there's a re-raise all-in for $20, I fold T8o, Meier calls. Flop J-7-x, turn 9. river blank and Meier shows T8s to snap QQ. (I think this was my SB hand.)

Button: I limp KJo behind several limpers. Flop K-J-T. SB leads for $6, three callers, I elect to just call; I'm probably best but it's possible there's a straight out there. I'll see the turn and re-evaluate. Turn K. SB says "I don't like the king" and checks. Everyone checks to me and I check, hoping to peal off an A or Q and have a straight pay me off. River 4. LG bets $10, I raise to $30, LG folds J4 face up. I show a jack. ($300)

CO: With about four limpers, I raise to $15 with KQ, LG re-raises blind to $36. Loose donkey in EP calls the $36. I re-raise to $100 to isolate. EP thinks for a while and calls his last $64 (Oops). Board runs out Q-4-x-J-x and EP shows K4s (yes, really he put his whole stack in with that). Blind LG flipped over his cards and had paired the board too. MHIG. Meier criticized my play but I didn't think the limp $2, call $36 was a trap with AA/KK from this guy and wanted to get my money in good. ($440)

HJ: With a few limpers, I limp TT (I know a raise will get called 4 ways). Meier raises to $12 and given his style his range is wide, he gets 4 callers and I bump it to $90. If he has AA-QQ, so be it. He folds and everyone folds being him. I show TT. ($490)

MP: I open raise to $12 with KQ, Meier calls on the button and we're heads up. Flop A-Q-Q. I figure Meier will bet the ace whether he has it or not, so I check but he checks behind. Turn is a blank. I bet $15, he calls. River K, I bet $25, he thinks for a long time and calls with an ace. ($540)

I may have the previous two hands reversed. Or it's possible I folded from HJ and these are both MP hands.

MP: I limp 77 after several limpers. Flop Jd-7c-4d; bingo, I hit my set. It checks to me and I check. The player to my left bets $6, a few people call, and I call planning to make a move on the turn. Turn is a diamond, everyone checks to me, I check, the flop bettor checks. River is a 4th diamond everyone checks. I turn over my hand, declare a set of 7s then realize I have 7d for a diamond flush; either is good. I played this hand terribly but still won $40. ($580)

UTG+1: I fold

UTG: I limp 5s4s. Several limpers behind me.Flop 4-4-3. Blinds check, and I bet $8. Slow playing is just a bad idea plus there are draws on the board. UTG+1 calls, UTG+2 thinks a long time and folds (77), BB calls. Turn 5, BB checks, I bet $20, UTG+1 calls, BB shoves for $15 more and we both call. As the river is coming out, UTG+1 says "who gets to check first?". River is a blank (high card I think). I bet $65 and UTG+1 folds. BB shows 43 for the flopped boat. Wow, not only did I flop trips but then I hit the three-outer I needed to win the hand. ($675)

Overall in one orbit plus a hand I won 8 of 10 or 11 hands, folded the others pre-flop and went from $65 to $675. I'll probably never have a run like that again.

Trip to Chicago (Vacation)

2010-09-14T12:19:00.000-07:00

We spent most of this past week in Chicago. We went for Monica's niece's first birthday party. Her actual birthday was two weeks before, but they scheduled the party around when we could be in town. How nice.

Usually when we go to Chicago for a family event, our trip is all spending time with family and not really a vacation. The most touristy thing we do is "go to the mall". But we actually managed to combine a bit of vacation with this trip. With three young kids in the house, Monica and I wisely chose to stay in a hotel, which gave us some space but also meant we weren't tied to the family schedule. In part because of that, we actually got to play tourist.

Sunday was about Lily's birthday party, a nice brunch buffet at a local hall, which coincidentally was a 5-minute walk from our hotel. Then we headed to Monica's sister's house to watch the Storm-Mercury game (well, I watched) and hang out. Monday we went to the Cubs game which was a unique experience. Monica got tickets at Costco to sit on a rooftop across the street from the ballpark. The provide an all-you-can eat and drink menu along with first-come, first served seating. We were on the lower roof deck, protected from the weather and with a surprisingly good view of the field from beyond right field. They also have TVs set up so you don't miss anything and bathrooms and what not. Between the four of us, we had one beer, but a lot of people must have run a beer per inning. It's come a long way from when people used to sit on the roofs with lawn chairs and a charcoal grill. I'd certainly recommend trying it once and it's probably a great way to see the game when the Cubs make the playoffs again. But I think I prefer to be in the ballpark, closer to the action.

We drove back after the game and since it was Labor Day, there was surprisingly little traffic. Was actually a pleasant drive rather than a long aggravation. Went out to dinner at Claim Jumper (Monica's favorite) and had salads, since none of us were very hungry after lunch.

Tuesday we went to Long Grove and walked around the shop with Sandra and Ariana. Had a nice lunch and bought lots of stuff (see clothes, Monica) but it was sad to see the place basically deserted. Spent Tuesday evening cooking brisket for Rosh Hashanah and cooking dinner (pasta, rice) for the sick bay. Wednesday Monica and I went downtown to the Planetarium and then browsing along the Miracle Mile. We saw social networking at its best. After I posted on Facebook that I was in downtown Chicago, one of my poker buddies saw it and text messaged me about meeting for lunch. We were able to meet him without any advance planning -- the way Facebook places should work. Raced home later than we planned and got to Sandra's for a nice holiday dinner.

Thursday AM we were up before the crack of dawn to catch our plane home.

Seems like we did a lot in what was really four days in Chicago.

Back to No Limit

2010-08-31T22:52:00.000-07:00

I played 2-5 no limit at Snoqualmie Casino last night for the first time in a couple of months. After a horrible start and an up and down session, I cashed out up 1/2 a buy-in.

My very first hand, I limp re-raised in a straddled pot with QQ and the raiser shoved all-in. I was pretty sure he had AA or KK and folded. It's possible I made a bad lay down not wanting to lose all of my chips on the first hand but I think it was right. Even so, it cost me half my stack. I had to add on a couple of times to have a healthy stack and was basically back to my starting chips when my big hand of the night came up.

I limped in middle position with pocket eights and 6 or 7 people saw a flop of Q-8-3 with two clubs. I bet $20 and a player check-raised to $70. He was one of my targets at the table, clearly willing to put a lot of money in on a draw or medium strength hand. Given he might be drawing and was unlikely to have QQ (and if he does, I lose all my chips), I re-raised him to about $170. He went all-in and I immediately called. The turn was a club, which I didn't like and the river was a blank. He showed KQ for one pair and I doubled up. Unfortunately I lost of bunch of those chips soon after on a bad bluff. I ground back over the rest of the evening and as noted cashed out well ahead.

I made a couple of poorly timed bluffs, but overall played pretty well though I was a bit rusty. Hope to go back soon.

Maybe There's Hope for Customer Service

2010-08-20T15:36:00.000-07:00

One of the reasons I started this blog was a place to vent. Sometimes about stupid thing or frustrating sports teams, but often about bad customer service. And part of why I invested in a restaurant many years ago is I was so disappointed with the terrible service in restaurants that I felt if you could actually run a place with a brain and treat customers well, you'd succeed.

Monica have had some unbelievably bad experiences with people attempting to render customer services. Too many to list but here are a few examples. Monica ordered a hamburger without the sauce that usually comes on it. When it came with sauce she sent it back and they wiped the sauce off the bun and sent it back to her. We checked into a hotel and they gave us a key to the wrong room -- a room where someone was already checked in and Monica walked in on the couple. Fortunately they were sitting on the bed watching TV. And recently we tried out new house cleaners. You'd think people would want to make a good first impression to win your business. They called to say they'd be there between 2 and 3; that's a big range but OK. At 3:30 they called to say they were leaving Mercer Island and they arrived about 4 PM. I understand some technicians (plumber, electrician, computer repairman) could have a job be larger than they expected and run late. But how does a house cleaning job blow up and run over by two hours. We needed the house cleaned, but these people were "fired" before they ever started.

However, I'm glad to say that we've seen a few examples of good customer service of late which somewhat restores my faith in humanity.

(I thought I wrote about this before but can't find it.) Monica and I dined at Ruth's Chris Steak House in January. While nothing was so bad that we were really upset or I asked for a manager, we weren't exactly wowed the way we should be for fine dining. The only real problem was that Monica's fillet was undercooked then when they "fixed" it, the butter sauce made for a very crispy outside. I know from experience it's tricky to cook beef exactly right, but when you have "Steak" in your name you should get a steak right 95% of the time. Other things were minor and fixed as best they could at the time.
However, on the way home it dawned on us that they had problems with our table, our drinks, our salad, Monica's steak, and dessert. I send a nice but unhappy letter to the general manager to let them know about our experience. I got a phone call from the GM two days later who invited us to return on the house, much more than I asked for. Awesome.

And just this week. Expedia has a new "Priceline-like" feature where they'll sell you a discounted hotel without revealing its name. The downside is you don't know exactly which hotel you get and you can't cancel or change the reservation. I booked two rooms for our upcoming trip to Vancouver using this process. In reviewing my confirmation, I noticed that somehow the date got entered as 9/11 which is not what I needed. I called Expedia to ask if there was anything they could do since it was human error -- and I wasn't trying to beat the discount system. The customer rep called the hotel and they were gracious enough to cancel my reservation and refund a non-refundable payment. I'm not a once a month traveler, but I do use Expedia several times a year and they now have a very happy customer.

Monica made a massage appointment next door to the place where she works out and told the front desk person, who may be the manager, that she'd be coming from a workout. She'd done this before and it wasn't a problem. When she arrived, she apologized for being sweaty, and her massage therapist made some sort of snide remark about it. Monica decided to walk out since the guy apparently wasn't comfortable giving her a massage. At first I saw his side, but as I think about it, when I got for a massage they suggest I use the steam room or sauna first, so many people come a bit hot and sweaty. Anyway Monica told the front desk what happened at left. Later that night, Monica got an email from the manager apologizing for what happened, letting her know that therapist was no longer employed, and offering her a free massage if she'd like to come back. I think that's more than they needed to do, but they turned Monica from someone who will never come back and tell horror stories about the place into a likely regular customer... and one who will bring friends. And it cost them the price of one massage.

Poker success

2010-08-19T00:01:00.000-07:00

Made a nice comeback from my poker losses to cash out a big win last Thursday at Club Hollywood. Was a loose, weak game with people throwing money around. I made back my losses from the previous week and also ran good as opposed to running horribly bad. Big hand when my over pair and nut-flush redraw was actually behind on the turn and drew out against second-nut flush and the guy played the river poorly. Need to get back to Snoqualmie this week and play more no limit.

Also, Tommy is doing much better after a few days of recovery. In fact he probably has too much energy for his own good.

Poor Old Dog

2010-08-14T17:09:00.000-07:00

Tommy has been our foster dog for nearly two years. He's effectively ours as it seems unlikely he'll get adopted. He has a myriad of minor problems that make him a difficult adoption, perhaps the worst of which is that he's 13 and people don't want older dogs.

This morning Tommy slipped or stepped funny and badly sprained his front right leg. With two weak hind legs already, he was having a lot of trouble getting around. We took him to the vet and nothing is broken, which is the good news. The bad news is he appears to be in pain and is on bed rest for the next two weeks. We'll have to help him get outside and back inside to do his business. Yes, that's as much fun as it sounds. If there's a bright side, it's that Tommy isn't very active and we don't need to crate him to limit his activity. He does that on his own.

He's resting comfortably now, but is basically stuck downstairs until further notice. And he doesn't like to be picked up to be moved outside or brought back in. Fun, fun, fun.

Taxes

2010-08-14T09:11:00.000-07:00

I finally finished my federal income taxes for 2009.

I've used TurboTax (or equivalent) for about 10 years. And as I look at the insane number of calculations and forms required to compute my taxes it's easy to remember why. However TurboTax has a horrible bug this year that wasted a ton of my time. It likely effects a small % of their users, but if it hits you, it grinds your computer to a halt. Basically if you have a large number of imported stock transactions AND you need to correct an error in these transactions which is common, the program uses a ton of memory and is very slow loading the imported transactions. Since I have a number of "managed accounts", I hit the limit quite easily. Fixing up the data that should have taken me an hour or two probably took 15-20 hours. All that time wasn't active -- much was click a button wait 5 minutes and do something else -- but it was too much. If I had known how long it would take, I might have taken a different route, like buying their competing software. Or paying someone to do our taxes. I'll have to see if they have this bug next year.

But they're done and I'm going to try to get a jump on 2010 taxes by doing a better job of tracking our donations.

Poker update

2010-08-10T20:27:00.001-07:00

Just hit the worst run of poker in my life. With Maor visiting from Zurich I wound up playing limit which was part of he problem. But really I missed most of my draws while it seemed every time I had a big starting hand people chased and caught on the river. Of course in a limit game even if they made a bad decision o get involved before the flop, their play is correct after the flop. This can lead to a wide variance when building big pots as a 2:1 favorite and losing.

Also hit some coolers and brutal suck outs. I ran flopped ace-high flush into flopped straight flush. That's a lose all your money hand though I could have lost more had I not realized I was beaten before all the money went in. Almost made a hero smooth call and saved two big bets. And I can't remember losing to more 2 and 3 outers ever. If a player has only two or three cards that will win him the hand, he'll get there 10% of the time but they sure hit a lot more than that...and in hands where the other guy would have lost a lot of money if he didn't hit.

Oh well. Can't change the past. Back to winning money later this week.

Skeet shooting

2010-08-10T20:16:00.001-07:00

Every December I make a list of things I want to do in the coming year -- new restaurants to try, places to visit, local activities to check out and so on. And every year it's the same list because somehow not much of it gets done.

I picked one item off the list a couple of weeks ago when Monica and I attended a Sounders game, well half of one. But this past week I did something very new a different even though it wasn't on the list, though it might have been had I known such a thing existed.

My financial consultant team at Merrill Lynch invited a bunch of clients and friends to the Seattle skeet and trap club to go shooting. I've never shot a gun in my life, aside from a water gun or nerf gun and neither prepares you for this. They spent an hour and a half teaching us and then held a competition.

My first challenge was that I'm right handed but left-eye dominant. They suggested I just close my left eye but that leaves me with 20/50 vision so I decided to learn to shoot left-handed. I surprised myself by hitting my first two practice shots but it was clearly beginners luck. It gets a lot harder once you aren't shooting straight on and the pigeons are going straight out.

Practice was OK. In the competitive round they split us into three groups bases on skill level; I was in the lowest group of course. I felt I did OK. I did better in the second round of 25 than the first round of 25 so that's improvement but still missed more than I hit. I guess most beginners did worse because I got 3rd place in the "cant shoot a darn" group. Yes Dad, there were more than three people in the group, probably 7-9.

Was fun to try something new and had a lot of fun. The food and wine served was an added bonus. I don't know if I'd do this again on my own but would be a great group activity. Only downside is my arms were sore for two days.

July Update

2010-07-31T12:34:00.000-07:00

It's pretty clear that my blog has been neglected the past month. Even without a 9-5 job July is pretty crazy busy. I looked at the start of the month and there were about 5 days where Monica and I were actually free in the evenings and two of them were last night and tonight. A couple others opened up, but it's busy, busy, busy.

Softball really becomes a dominant factor in July. We have weeknight games which are always challenging to field a team. The playoffs start and takes a lot of time to get my team RSVPs and get ready for games. As league commissioner there are a lot of little things to deal with -- questions, complaints, issues, players going postal on umpires, etc. Oh and then I actually have to play softball. We won our first two games, including knocking off the #1 seed which was a great start. But then a bit injured and a bit shorthanded dropped our next two to finish in 3rd place. 3rd out of 11 teams isn't bad but when you think you have a championship caliber team and there are only 4 real contenders, 3rd of 4 isn't that exciting. Still we had a pretty good year, had a lot of fun, and were well behaved. My team actually likes each other which is a good thing.

Mariners. Yuck. Still going to a lot of games and watching/listening to my team. Cubs, ditto though obviously I'm not going to games. Can baseball season be over yet? I can't recall a year where my teams had so much "potential" and were so terrible. Can't believe the excitement is the Cubs reaching for .500 and the Mariners trying to avoid 100 losses.

Busy around the house. Deck is done. Hardwood floors are done. I put in grout between the hardwood floor and the tile edges. Learned a lot and will be easier next time. Of course, "next time" will probably be 20 years down the road and I won't remember anything. Don't you hate when that happens. Have been watering plants and the lawn now that summer has arrived and it doesn't rain anymore. Sadly everything is too wet in May and June and then dies in July and August. Re-arranged the art with help from my parents.

My mom and dad visited for 5 days last weekend and I spent a lot of time running around town with them. We mainly spent time at the Belleve Arts Fairs. Monica and I bought a few things for our house and my parents found an anniversary gift for us -- though we have to pick what we want and order it -- but I'm not sure they actually bought anything despite hours of looking at arts and crafts. They also helped with hanging art as noted. They are helpful, but it's really more their presence inspires me to hang things up. And dad likes putting up pictures.

Tommy has been getting acupuncture twice a week and will start the underwater treadmill next week. We're trying to strengthen his back and legs or at least make sure they don't get any worse. Cocoa has horrible yeast infections in his ears that won't quite clear up. They're better especially in one ear, but we're still working on it. Hunny Bear is good. He's suddenly the easy one.

With all that, I really haven't played much poker. I active in online forums thinking about my game, but really need to find time to play. Hard to believe, but someone it never quite happens.

Busy doing little things

2010-07-10T22:16:00.000-07:00

The hardwood floors are done. Closet doors are back in finally. Just need to grout a couple of transitions.

The deck is coming along nicely. All the framing is done and decking is down for about 3/4 of the deck. Should be pretty close by the end of next week.

We fired our house cleaners this week. We've had the same cleaners since we moved in. At first they did really good work but as staffing has changed and I think one of the girls has gotten board, service has gone downhill. They're very slow and we find too much stuff that was outright missed.

Slowly working on straightening some stuff up, but it seems to get messed up faster than I can put things away .

We're temporarily a five dog household. Monica is watching two dogs while their families are away, coincidentally both beagles. Well, Monica's business is getting paid to watch the dogs, but I'm watching them. How do I handle having five dogs? Not very well.

Getting ready to go to the All-Star game next week. Quick one day in-and-out trip.

Piniella

2010-07-08T10:37:00.000-07:00

Just had to vent as there are those who think Lou is a great manager.

Much as it pains me to admit, Derrek Lee is done. This is hard to believe for a guy who was a superstar last year but 35-year-old first baseman often fall off a cliff. Lee's OPS by month are 679, 733, 706, and 638 so far in July. Anyone can have a bad month simply by not being "on" and getting unlucky. Lee has had one bad month and two terrible months. Digging deeper, Lee can't hit a fastball anymore. It's possible he's hurt and not admitting it but either way he's totally unproductive. Yet Piniella has run Lee out there every day hitting 3rd or 4th in the lineup. And here's the thing, if I can figure out Lee is done, why can't Piniella. Meanwhile he can't figure out how to get playing time for his four outfielders.

Here's an idea -- have one of them take fielding practice at first base. I suspect none of them have played first on a regular basis since high school if ever, but for a player with center fielder skills, first base should be easy to learn. Might not make Fukudome the every day 1B, but with a fly ball pitcher on the mound and facing a right-hander that's the type of thing winning teams do. And if you're going to play Lee, hit hit 6th or 7th.

Thankfully it sounds more and more like Lou is done after this year.

Poker Tournament Win

2010-07-01T22:33:00.000-07:00

Been working on a lot of small projects over the past couple of weeks.

Had cousins in town last weekend -- on their way to an Alaska cruise -- and spent much of Thursday, all day Friday and Saturday evening with them. Working on getting ready for 4th of July this week. Cleaning up, though Monica doesn't notice it, planting plants, making lists and checking them twice.

I took a break today and played the 11 AM tournament at Hideaway. As I've probably mentioned, this is the best local daily tournament as you start with 100 BB but it's still pretty fast. Was able to grind my way through with great short stack play and bully the table, despite losing half my stack with QQ vs AA, ironically with both of us limping in. One thing I like about this tournament is that the short stack play is terrible and any tournament like this involves mainly short stack play from about 12 players left. Stole blinds, but really I won because I won a bunch of races, mostly as a slight underdog. After the ugly QQ vs AA hand, I won KQ vs. 77, 33 vs a very short stack A6, KJ vs 99 for 75% of the chips, and on the final hand my JTs beat the small stacks Q6. I raised on the button and he called. Made a net of $300+.

Cubs Update

2010-06-25T21:21:00.000-07:00

"Big Z is on a short leash"
From short leash to dog house in less than 24 hours. At least it gets Gorzelanny back in the rotation.

I loved Piniella's comment, basically how do you blame the defense when the guy hits the ball in the seats.

The Idiocy of the Cubs

2010-06-24T20:36:00.000-07:00

The Cubs are in town which happens about once every 6 years, so I spent much of the past three days at the Mariners games. Looking at the talent on the team, I've been puzzled at why the Cubs have struggled this year. The starting pitching is so good, Zambrano has spent much of the year in the pen. Marshall and Marmol are great to close out games. And there's a collection of pretty good hitters.

Having looked closer, it's pretty apparent that there are two things going on. First, despite the names and reputations on the infielders they've been terrible this year. In fact Lee, Theriot, Castro, and Ramirez have all played below replacement level. That pretty much kills the offense. Lee's OPS is down 250 points from last year and he's played below his 10th percentile PECOTA projection. Theriot and Ramirez are below their 10% as well. In fact Ramirez put up 200 of the worst at bats ever before going on the DL. These three guys are 6 wins worse than projected already. To some degree, you can't do anything about good players sucking.

But then there's an insane about of stupid decision making going on. Lou Piniella is beloved in Seattle as the manager who got the Mariners to the playoffs, but I've never been impressed. The Cubs best hitters this year are Colvin, Soriano, Byrd, and Soto. It took until June before Colvin became a regular, Soriano is only playing 2/3 of the time, Soto spent most of the year hitting 7th or 8th and recently lost his starting job to Koyie Hill (who can't hit worth a lick). The Cubs worst hitters are Ramirez, Theriot, Baker, and Lee. Lee has hit 3rd or 4th all season, Theriot has hit leadoff until recently and Baker has been given the 3rd base job with Ramirez hurt. Now batting order doesn't matter much, but you have to think that getting the best hitters in the lineup every day at the top of the order and putting the weaker hitters at the bottom couldn't hurt.

Wait, but then there's the pitching. Tom Gorzelanny isn't the name that some of the others are but he was the Cubs best starter last year, though he had a terrible ERA because of a 62% strand rate -- a level so low it has to be bad luck. And this year he's been striking on > 1 batter per inning something matched by only 4 NL starters. He's probably the Cubs best starter again yet he's relegated to the bullpen, where he's been ineffective. That said, it's a pretty tough call who to put in the pen. Zambrano and Lilly are the 5th and 6th best starters but the Cubs have invested a lot in them and really need the big three to succeed. But Gorz has been too good to NOT to go every 5 days. Much like Colvin, it doesn't matter which OF you sit because he's better than all of them. Personally I'd put Lilly in the pen to see if he can get his act together but Big Z is on a short leash. Or I'd think about something radical like a six-man rotation letting them pitch a bit deeper into games.

That said, with the complete disaster by the infield, this team is dead in the water. But they're also making dumb decisions on a daily basis that cost the team runs and wins.

If there's a silver lining, it's doubtful Piniella will be back. I expect him to "retire" and become a broadcaster.

Blogging is hard

2010-06-21T22:14:00.000-07:00

No, not a self pity party just an observation. Even people who start blogs with the best of intentions tend to fail pretty quickly. Seems if I discover a new web site and it has a blog, the default is it hasn't been updated since 2009.

and I assume intending to post something new each day. He started April 1 and had 30 posts in April, which is awesome. He had a couple the first week of May, a couple over the next two weeks and then there's nothing for the past five weeks. In his quest for 365 he made it to 34. And sadly, this seems to be typical. Once you fall of the wagon of blogging daily, it's easy to throw your hands up in the air and give up all together.A guy I know recently started a blog and Facebook page "365 things to do...", i.e., one for each day of the year. My cousin David is one of the few people I know who's kept a blog running. But now that he has a job, he's gone 11 days without a post.

I wonder if blogs will simply go away. And people's "blogs" will be their stream of Facebook and Twitter comments. And that would be a bad thing because much as I love Twitter, you can't really have an extended though in 140 or even 280 characters. It's great for "Toy Story 3 is awesome. Loved it.", but it's not nearly enough space for real thoughts on why it was great, much less a real review.

When talking about poker, it's easy for me to Tweet ("Playing 2-5 at Snoqualmie. Three way all-in with QT and 87.") or post to Facebook ("Going to Hideaway to play the 11 AM tournament. Where's a good place in Shoreline to eat?") about my high level plans and hands but I can't actual discuss anything that happens.

Thus I hope I continue to blog, though it's going to be in spurts.

TGIM

2010-06-21T13:15:00.000-07:00

Yes, really. Thank goodness it's Monday. This was a crazy weekend. Saturday we went to the Edmonds Art Fair. Monica wanted to go to the Fremont Fair -- I don't really like the Fremont Fair but it's one of those things you do for love and I'm willing to go every 4 years or so. But I thought it would be fun to try something different. The Edmonds Art fair was actually pretty good. It's a lot like Salmon Days with a lot of arts, crafts, and food vendors (honey, spice rubs), along with a couple of concessions areas, though not as big. Monica was really happy we went. However we walked around for a couple hours, then decided to walk into downtown Edmonds and walk around for another hour, then walked up hill to the car. Add in a long drive there, a longer drive home to get around the traffic on I-5 and it's a long day. But it didn't end there as I went to the Mariners game that night.

Sunday we got up all took all three dogs to the Furry 5K. They start the walk at 10 AM because they want to be done and get the dogs away before it gets hot. Hah! It was mid 50s and rainy. Monica and I were wet, a bit cold, and a bit unhappy. The dogs were all filthy messes but they had a great time. Unfortunately at the end of the walk, we just wanted to get home rather than spend much time at the vendor booths. Got back to the car and headed home just as the rain got a lot worse. The walk wasn't as exhausting physically as it was mentally.

Got home just in time to get a call from the JCC Softball League Coordinator about whether we should cancel softball games. This is the un-fun part of being league chair. People want to play, and you have to play in rain in Seattle, but no one wants to get hurt on wet outfield grass. They installed turf fields so the infields can take a lot of water. We'd already had one injury so we decided to cancel the rest of the day. Of course, 30 minutes later the rain stopped. Still I think the fields were really, really wet and the outfields weren't safe.

Had some lunch then took a nice hot shower. Then I went to the Storm game Sunday night. Great game, though Sue Bird got hurt.

Now it's Monday and I can relax and get some stuff done around the house. Though all I'm actually doing is email and blogging.

Blackhawks

2010-06-17T15:37:00.000-07:00

Wow, I guess I hadn't been following hockey very closely since I moved to Seattle. I hadn't realized the Blackhawks had been so bad for so long. The Blackhawks made the playoffs every year from 1970-1995. Since then they'd made the playoffs only in 2002 before this year and last year. One playoff appearance in 13 years, then the playoffs then a Stanley Cup final. Pretty quick return from the dead.

Home Improvement this week

2010-06-17T10:16:00.000-07:00

Our hardwood floors are done. Our contractor just needs to put together some things he took apart to install the floors, like closet doors and the cover to the air return. And then the hardwood stairs go in which is a different project. We decided to just use solid white risers (the vertical part of the stairs), so I painted the MDF boards that he brought over. Thought it might take a couple hours, but with a roller and a long handle it took about 15 minutes for the actual painting.

Our deck is going, going. They delivered the new boards today.

I need to plant some fruit shrubs and trees. Seems like a good time as it's still wet and rainy. Also been working on our auction business a bit.

Played poker Tuesday night at Snoqualmie Casino. It was the first time I'd been there in three months. I came back from Las Vegas in March and was a bit frustrated and took a break. Between being out of town every weekend, finishing up work, and knowing I was going to Vegas, poker didn't fit in April or May, or when it did I met Meier in Seattle. Anyway, a very boring session. I saw two pocket pairs -- raised and flopped top set with jacks, called a raise and folded the flop with sixes -- and AK and AQ (won with both), and a bunch of nothing. Good news is I finished up a bit. A lot of times when card dead I play too many very speculative hands and wind up behind. I tightened up and just made money where I could. Bummer is that it was a very good table -- saw a number of pre-flop all-ins for $200 with marginal hands. Lots of money was being passed around. Couldn't really get much though.

Anyway, back to work on home projects.

Update

2010-06-14T07:18:00.000-07:00

As expected I didn't blog from Las Vegas. I was doing some running updates on Twitter and Facebook. Just not enough time/dedication to sit for 10 minutes each day and blog.

Had a great time in Vegas. The weather was hot and sunny and I actually got to enjoy it for at least a few minutes each day. Yes most of my time was spent inside poker rooms -- which is why the weather in Vegas doesn't matter too much -- but I walked outside and spent a few mornings relaxing by the pool. Overall I wound up down a bit for the trip playing poker. I did really well the first week, then the second week I made a few mistakes and got a bit unlucky in a few hands. No doubt playing a lot improved my game. One of my big takeaways is learning to trust my reads -- i.e., whether my opponent has a hand or is bluffing -- which have been dead on. I've been pretty good but lost a few pots where I called and should have raised.

I played at about a dozen different poker rooms and stopped by two or three others just to take a look. Added to my chip collection and upgraded a number of other chips to excellent condition. I guess with all the action the WSOP brings to town a lot of places put new $1 chips in play. Speaking of which, one of the really cool things I did was to check out the WSOP action. Meier and I watched the $50,000 Players Championship where we could see 100 of the best -- or at least 100 of the wealthiest poker players -- up close. Basically every big name player was there, like an all-star game or sorts. I'd say 1/3 of the field was big name players anyone who follows the sport would recognize (Doyle Brunson, Mike Matusow, Phil Hellmuth, etc.), 1/3 were guys some people would recognize or some knew that they won this or that tournament, and the rest appeared to be internet wonder kids. There were a bunch of young guys that didn't look at all familiar. In addition to watching the start, I came back three days later to sit in the studio and watch the final three battle it out. It's just what you see on TV. In fact if you watch on ESPN July 27th, you should be able to see me on TV.

Also met up with my cousins Roz and Irv while there and got to catch up. And I did a touristy thing and checked out the Auto Collection at Imperial Palace. Lots of cool, classic cars; Monica would love it.

Last week I spent catching up between handing our remodeling projects. With the floors being sanded and finished, I had to get the dogs out of the house every day. Our deck contractor also started the tear down of the existing deck. We knew some of the decking was bad, but as he's removed the decking up we can see how badly rotted some of the joists are.

The hardwood floor is basically done. The flooring is all in, sanded and finished. He just needs to reinstall the molding, air registers, and some other things that were removed. He's also going to install the hardwood stairs and then we're done with the inside. Deck project is going to take a while.

In Las Vegas

2010-05-26T17:20:00.001-07:00

I'm in Las Vegas for the next two weeks. In part I plan to play a lot of poker but I also want a long enough stay to enjoy the sun and other attractions.

As such I'm not blogging much. It's too hard to blog on an iPhone. In fact this post got deleted the first time. Currently Meier and I are at the El Cortez waiting to play poker. This isn't my first choice of poker room and really not in the top 20. Long story short. Meier came down to join me. The cheapest flight he could find was $340. But through Expedia he booked the same flight and three nights at the El Cortez for $260. That's just a bizarre deal. So we drove over to check into his room even though he's not staying here. And since were here we're going to try to play poker since we'd never come here again. I believe it's 50 cent-$1 no limit!!

Day 11 and 12, Sports

2010-05-20T20:17:00.000-07:00

Met a friend for breakfast at the Original Pancake House in Kirkland. On weekends this place is packed crazy, hard to find parking, and basically you give your name and walk around for 45 minutes. I was surprised that at 8:30 during the week I could park right in front and the place was empty.

Spent a bunch of time Wednesday trying to get my softball team in order. Everyone seems to be out of town this weekend and I'm trying to find subs to show up at 10 AM. Fun, fun, NOT. Also the floor guy came back to check on the hardwoods and how they're "settling". Can see the cherry wood getting darker already. We set the official date for him to finish and talked about doing the stairs as well. Will all wait until I'm back from Vegas.

Wednesday night went to the second Storm game of the season. I've been to two of two games so far and will likely make about two games the rest of the year. As I expected they were sloppy at times and looked great at times. They trailed most of the game but put in together in the last three minutes and won by 3. In the end it's a W not an L and that's all that counts.

Started some research on electric toothbrushes for Monica (why aren't these called teethbrushes?) and continued today. Down to a handful of choices. Basically got up today, had breakfast, did some misc stuff, tried to walk Hunny Bear until the drizzle turned to pouring rain and got ready to go to the Mariners game. When Aaron and I split up tickets before the season, I figured this would be a beautiful day to be outside and the Mariners would be fun to watch. Instead it was 50 and cold. The sun was out for a couple of innings, but then they closed the roof because storms were approaching. Then it was 50 in the shade and COLD. And the Mariners were terrible, down 3-1 going to the 9th. In the ninth they showed more life than they have in weeks and put together a great rally to win!! This was the first time I've seen them win in person this year (1-6). Aaron, who I share seats with, says they've won every game he's attended.

Got home, made dinner, and met with a photographer who's doing a family photo for us.

Day 11, Cocoa's Birthday

2010-05-18T21:23:00.000-07:00

Today was Cocoa's 6th birthday. He got some steak with breakfast, took a nap, then I dropped him off at daycare to hang out with his friends. There's a great picture of him on my and Monica's Facebook pages. Cocoa also got some steak for dinner.

Spent most of the day dealing with a couple of issues from the softball league where the rules are a bit ambiguous... and I thought we had fixed all the loopholes and confusion years ago. Also looked into purchasing a second home, either to flip it or as a rental. The previous owners started an illegal conversion to a duplex -- they never got any permits -- and then the bank foreclosed on them. The house is in limbo -- either the conversion needs to get the legal approval and be completed, or it needs to be reversed back to single-family housing and the bank certainly isn't going to spend any money to do so -- so it's selling at a big discount. Unclear how much work and time would be required to fix it.

Picked up Cocoa. The day care put a birthday hat on Cocoa and took a picture of him. He's adorable. Cocoa got more steak for dinner. I think he ate better than I did today. Then I made dinner for Monica and I -- salmon and brown rice -- and as I type this the brownies are out of the oven and cooling. Mmm, time for dessert.

Day 10, Monday

2010-05-18T00:33:00.000-07:00

Took it easy and slept late. Didn't do much. Yay, me.

Met a friend to play poker for an hour at Parkers. Had never played there and not a bad place. Then met Monica and friends at Bell Square for dinner (Cheesecake Factory) and some browsing. Good news is we had great service. Bad news is I figure I get service like that once a year and we still have six months to go.

Tomorrow is Cocoa's birthday. We don't know how old he is.

Friday and the weekend (long)

2010-05-17T10:02:00.000-07:00

Friday I finished cleaning our outdoor furniture and moving it upstairs to the deck. We now have 10 chairs and a "bench", so it's more work than it sounds. Though it's mainly tedious -- lots of trips around the house. I moved our table on Sunday. It's big, glass, and heavy; that was actually work. And when I thought I was done, Monica said "hey let's put one chair downstairs so I can sit with the dogs". Score one point for well-written acceptance criteria.

Met my friend Jay for lunch on Friday and got to catch up. Jay's sort of like Griffey, Jr. -- he was the face and the star of our softball team for a number of years but was often injured and those injuries have finally led him to retire. What's that? Griffey hasn't retired yet?

Spent a lot of time over the weekend working on taxes, mainly stock sales, interest, and dividends. This is where having managed accounts -- like mutual funds but you own actual stocks -- becomes a pain. Lots and lots of stock transactions. Import/download is a life saver, but verifying is still a fair amount of work. Yuck!

In more fun stuff, Saturday I helped man the both for Monica at the Redmond pet fair. My role is basically to watch the booth when she needs a break and keep her company. It isn't busy enough and I don't really know enough about Ttouch or pet adoption counseling to share the booth. For the first time she's set up at one of these things, it was actually useful. I don't know if she'll actually get anyone who calls, but she talked to a number of people who seemed very interested in her services, took her card, and should call her. On of our observations mid-way through the day was that 10-3 was too long for this event. Everyone started packing up their booths at 2:30, so I guess we weren't alone in that view. I walked outside at 2:25 to get some fresh air and when I came back 1/3 of the "vendors" were gone. I think once the first person bailed, everyone else decided it was OK to follow suit. By 3:00, there was no one left.
Saturday night we went to a great dinner at Ruth's Chris, separate post coming. Sunday was mainly running around. We had softball in the morning and played one of the key games of the season. Before the 2008 season I split our team in two. We had developed a group of players who thought recreational co-ed softball was all about winning and not about having fun (OK they liked to have fun, but their idea of fun was winning). Their attitudes sucked and it made it no fun to play on Sunday. I kicked a couple people off the team a few of their friends from my team joined them and they decided to recruit a bunch of good players and form their own team. I wouldn't say this team is our rival but they're one of the better teams in the division, they care a lot about the final score, and half the players used to be on our team, so the game is special. We scored 3 runs in the top of the first and never trailed though the game was a toss up until we pulled away in the 6th and 7th innings. We played terrific defense which was the key and got them out running the bases four or five times, though the umpire missed one of the outs. Final was 13-6.

Sunday afternoon Hunny Bear had an acupuncture appointment. And then Sunday evening I went to the Storm Opening Night. The game was sloppy as I'd expect. Training camp is about 3 weeks in the WNBA and the star players don't get back from overseas until the last week. So you're watching a team that's practiced together for about 4 days. It was pretty ugly at times and the Storm had long stretches where they didn't score, but in the end they beat LA, their #1 rival, by about 10 points.

Oh yeh, Sprint 3 planning Sunday night.

Day 8, Thursday

2010-05-14T10:12:00.000-07:00

A very busy and productive day, though I started by sleeping in since we didn't have contractors coming at 7:30.

I made it back to the gym for the first time this week. Lined up a contractor, actually two it turns out, to trim and tack the carpet in the doorways where it bumps up against the new hardwoods. Made a nice dinner -- brisket and sweet potato casserole (Yams Richard). Was a nice treat to do that without it being a holiday. Sort of like turkey only gets made once or twice a year.

Made a lot of progress catching up on financial records. Really I hadn't entered our "bank" statements into MS Money in a year. Which was really dumb because it took 10 minutes for most months and 20 minutes for tricky months... it just became a pile I never looked at. Caught up through the end of 2009, so I can work on taxes now. And so, I really started on our taxes for 2009.

Went to Kinko's to print some brochures for Monica's business to use at the Pet Fair this weekend. In the end, she has nice looking brochures -- I assume, I've only seen the proof, but the process was a bit frustrating. Actually working with the people at Fedex/Kinko's took 5-10 minutes but driving there, figuring out where I needed to be, and waiting in line took 45 minutes -- very high signal to noise ratio. Also helped Monica do through all her stuff to get ready for Saturday.

Worked out cleaning our outdoor furniture for the season. Everything has sat outside getting rained on or worse since the fall. A quick soap and rinse and letting mother nature do the drying.

Somewhere in between we took Hunny Bear for a nice long walk.

Week 2

2010-05-13T12:19:00.000-07:00

After another typical weekend -- Mariners lose, softball team wins -- it's back to work.

This week I've been keeping an eye on our dogs while parts of the remodel are in progress. I was going to put them in daycare, but they're actually been pretty good about staying out of the way and not barking at the workers or all the noise. Nailing in a hardwood floor is noisy, but Tommy sleeps right through it.

Monday the hardwood guy got to work installing boards and my painters arrived. Fortunately the were working around each other. When we moved in we removed a divider from the bottom of the stairs and patched the walls and ceiling but never painted. I picked up some paint six months ago to see if I could get a match, but it was never on the top of the to do list. Sort of out-of-sight, out-of-mind but more after staring at the ugliness every day, we just learned to live with it. But with hardwoods going in, we wanted to paint first rather than risk getting paint on the new wood floors. In the end, we cut out a chunk of the wall and did a color match. They were able to feather in the paint to avoid painting the 15" wall above the stairwell and perhaps other walls to match which was a great saving of time and money. Hard to explain really; you have to see it.

Tuesday the hardwood installer got most of the floor done and Wednesday he finished up with the hallway and the edges. Looks great and it hasn't been sanded or finished yet.

Meanwhile I've been working on planning my trip to Las Vegas and it looks like it's a go. I'll be there May 24th through June 4th. Have airfare, hotels, and a rental car booked. I'm staying off the strip at Alexis Park the first week to keep my costs down. Even Imperial Palace wants $200 for Saturday over Memorial Day weekend, then moving to IP the second week where I have 4 nights for $85! My plan is rather than to play poker non-stop to actually have a vacation. See some shows, walk down the strip, maybe sit by the pool. Get away from the strip to see some other parts of Vegas. And really before 11 AM the poker action isn't that good.

Also working around the house. It seems the laundry never stops, even for just the two of us. I've been catching up on entering our financial records into MS Money in preparation for doing our taxes. Yes, I haven't even started taxes yet. Finished reseeding the back yard. Dogs and dog "output" do a number on a lawn. I can't believe how bad it looks just a year after we put down sod. Seeding is more work than it sounds like. Had to loosen up the soil in lots of places and work the seed into the dirt. Otherwise it just washes away. The lawn eeds a lot of TLC (and a lot of water) this year. Hope to see some grass and hope in a couple of weeks.

I installed a keyless entry for the garage. That was actually a fun project where I felt like I accomplished something rather than started something that will eventually finish. Our garage is attached to our house but is external so the door is locked and it's a pain to unlock it, every time to go into the garage. I looked at doing this when we first moved in, but didn't see one that would work. Maybe it's a new model, but this was pretty easy to install and only took an hour and works great.already.

Also made a trip to the vet. Hunny Bear and Cocoa are fine -- still needs another round of meds for his yeast infection -- but Tommy has problems with ears and eyes. And it's almost impossible for us to medicate him. He sees the dropper bottle coming for his ears or eyes and he runs. When you catch him he shakes and jerks his head. Try putting eye drops in while shaking -- impossible. That's my challenge foe the week.

Friday Day 4

2010-05-08T14:46:00.001-07:00

The remodel started for real. Our hardwood installer ripped out the carpets. While they didn't look so bad from the top, I was amazed how badly stained they were once you could see the underside. No wonder cleaning didn't help. Monica says thanks to Hunny Bear, Cocoa, Tommy, Jazz, Shayna, Duke, and all out other dog visitors for her new hardwoods. Barak Obama says thanks Monica for stimulating the economy.

I dropped the dogs at daycare to get them out of the house then worked out at David Barton Gym. Best workout yet. I felt energized afterwards rather than tired. Then went to the Mariners RBI Club luncheon and heard pitching coach Rick Adiar speak.

My softball swing was way off in our first games,so I went to the batting cages to work on it. An it's still off but at least I have some ideas. I'm dropping my back shoulder and getting under the ball. And since I'm not a power hitter that's awful. Think Jack Wilson hitting fly balls. My stroke got a bit better in the third round. We'll see what happens on Sunday. I think I'm heading back to the cages next week no matter what.

After dinner Monica and I went to the Issaquah Art Walk. Issaquah has a free art show along Front Street every Friday during the summer. This year they've expanded to Gilman Village as well. We got in a three mile walk and got to see a lot of art and artistic mediums, though nothing we liked enough to think about buying. Not that we have any space.

Weekend here I come :). Our vet us having an open house on Saturdayand I'm going to the Mariners game to try to break my streak.

Day 3

2010-05-06T22:59:00.000-07:00

Went to Hideaway to play their 10:30 poker tournament. This is the best structured daily tournament in town. You start with 100BB which gives you some time to play before you're short stacked and generally the field is small so it's not a luck fest until you're at the final table. One of the guys who seemed to be a regular said they get 40 or 50 people which I found surprising. They actually had 22 people at the start and just had two tables with two alternates. I lasted about an hour in the tournament. On the only good hand I had early I managed to steal the blinds. Lost a bunch of chips where I got unlucky and then bluffed off much of my stack against a guy who couldn't figure out he should fold, or had an amazing read on me.

Had lunch with my friend Meier and talked at length about ideas for an upcoming Vegas trip. Seems like it actually might not make sense to drive down, even for a long stay. Then came home to work on the yard. I fixed the light in the backyard; actually if just fixed itself but I programmed the timer. Filled in half a dozen holes in backyard and pretty the ground for reseeding. We love our dogs, but wow do they do a number on the lawn; number 1 that is.

Then to the Mariners game for the second night in a row. Who knew filling dirt would be more fun than the Mariners game. Wow is it cold for May baseball. The reported crowd was 17,000 but this is one of the two smallest crowds I've seen. Can't believe it was much more than 10K, if that.

Day 2, Wednesday

2010-05-06T06:24:00.000-07:00

As planned much of the day was pre-work on the hardwoods.

To replace the carpets in the living room and dining/piano room with hardwoods (thanks doggies), we need to get all of the furniture out of the way. For the most part Monica and I could move the items ourselves, but there's the matter of a huge, heavy piano so we hired professionals to store everything in our garage for a month.

Got in a quick workout before the movers were scheduled to arrive at 10 AM. Unfortunately there was a car fire on the 520 bridge and even more unfortunate they chose to take 520 instead of coming across I-90 which delayed them until 10:45. Other than that the move went smoothly. The wood delivery showed up at 11, but they kept out of each other's way though they were using the same space. Move was done by noon.

My little project for the day was to fix the outdoor light for our backyard. At least I thought it was little -- position ladder, remove bulb, replace bulb. That didn't help. The light is on a programmable timer switch and it turns out the batteries in the switch needed to be replaced. Had to go to Fred Meyer to get tiny watch-like batteries.. and now the switch works but the light doesn't come on. Working more on this today. Also picked up a programmable lock for the garage -- the kind where you can punch in a combination instead of using a key. Our garage is detached so we need to unlock it every time we go in there. This probably would have happened a year ago if there was room for my car in there.

Went to the Mariners game last night. Pretty good for 7 innings, but overall yuck. It's pretty painful to watch Griffey play. And without Bradley, that offense is terrible.

Off to play poker in the AM.

Days 0 and 1

2010-05-05T22:30:00.000-07:00

The weekend doesn't count because I'm usually "unemployed" on weekends, so this isn't different. And this was pretty typical for a spring/summer weekend. Went to the Mariners game on Saturday and played started softball season on Sunday. Mariners lost and I've yet to see them win in person this year. Softball team went 1-1 which is good since we started last year 0-7. We also met with our hardwood installer again and finalized our floor plan. We're going to install real cherry wood floors rather than prefinished wood. It's a lot messier and will take a few days longer because it will have to be sanded and finished, but it will look a lot better and be less expensive. Also we can get the wood this week instead of a 3-4 week backup for delivery.

Monday was day 0. When we got laid off, it was supposed to be our last day of work, but as noted I was already done so my real plans were for Tuesday. Slept in, went to the gym, hit Costco for some essentials, finished Mother's Day shopping and mailed all our Mother's Day gifts.Got movers in place for Wednesday.

Tuesday I had some plans in place. I took the dogs to the vet in the morning. Cocoa was due for his annual checkup and some vaccines and Hunny Bear needed to have stitches removed from his surgery last week and was due for a vaccine as well. Hunny Bear is great though Cocoa has a yeast infection in his ears. We need to do some serious ear cleaning on him. Then I met a friend for lunch, met with my financial adviser to discuss converting my traditional IRAs to Roth IRAs which has special rules in 2010. It turns out to be a good idea if you're far from retiring and don't want to be forced to take withdrawals at 70 1/2 -- say you don't expect to ever need the money. Didn't make it to the gym.

Monica and I had a 4:30 meeting regarding the Humane Society's vision plan, so it was a bit of a short day.

Plan for day 2 is to be here while they do the prep work for converting carpets to hardwoods.

Day -1: Recovering

2010-04-30T17:41:00.000-07:00

Since I'm technically still employed until Monday, this isn't really even day 1 yet. OK, and I'm a technology geek.

My time off started with a bang. Last night on my way home my car battery died. Had to call AAA to get me home. Looks like I need a new alternator. Always nice to have big expenses right as you lose your job. Oh well, maybe it's an excuse to play more poker to earn some extra income.

Today was about recovering from the last couple of weeks. I haven't been working very hard but work has been emotionally exhausting. I made a list of projects to work on while it helped me get organized, it also seems a bit overwhelming. And I decided to use the product I've worked on to see if we can attack these projects in an Agile fashion. So I organized my work and uploaded all of it into Serena Agile. In the process I found three really bad bugs. While finding bugs is normally exciting, it was actually a bit disheartening to see problems in production and to spend my last week working on real problems. As such, I really haven't been motivated to do much around the house.

So today is about doing dishes, running several loads of laundry, going through the last week of mail (some email too), putting away the stuff I brought home from the office, cleaning out the fridge, and doing some grocery shopping. But first, I got to sleep in late for the first time in a really long time. I think I got up about 10:30.

Oh and I made it to gym for the second day in a row. Good. And I stepped on a scale for the first time in weeks. Bad, very bad. Tomorrow I buy a new scale.

Taking the Summer Off

2010-04-30T17:33:00.000-07:00

As many of you who are reading this know, a couple months ago my company decided to close its Bellevue office and laid us all off. I was part of the transition team that was retained until May 3 to help move our work from Bellevue to Kiev. While May 3 is technically my last day at Serena, Thursday was my last day in the office and today starts my "summer".

Rather than jump back into another job, I decided to take a break for the summer to work on some projects. I'm going to try to blog about my day-to-day activities though won't necessarily post daily. One thing I want to do is take an extended trip to Las Vegas though this seems harder and harder to fit in around other plans.

Long time no see

2010-04-29T21:03:00.001-07:00

I haven't blogged in quite some time because I haven't played any poker since I got back from Vegas. As it gets to be summer in Seattle my weekends and weeknights have been busy. And with my poker buddy overseas, no one has called to say let's play poker.

But I did play Tuesday night finally. Played the 2-40 spread game at Club Hollywood. I used to love this game an find it easy money. But since Snoqualmie opened I've found the lure of no limit 20 minutes away too enticing to trek to Shoreline very often. The game was just as I remembered that I played well which helped. I won three sizeable pots snapping off bluffs on the river, though a couple were just terrible bluffing spots. In 2.5 hours I more than doubled my buy-in.

With my job done (more on that later) I should be able to play more than once a month going forward.

More of poker and my summer plans soon.

Tulalip tournament

2010-03-07T15:42:00.000-08:00

Finally played poker for the first time in a couple of weeks. A friend wanted to play the Tulalip evening tournament, so we met in Northgate and carpooled up. The tournament has 30-minute levels which is much better than the 15-20 minute levels you see in most places. The structure allows for play, though there's a huge jump after the first break when blinds go from 100-200 (300 an orbit) to 200-400 with a 25 ante (850 an orbit). To be frank, this is a flaw in what's otherwise a good tournament.

Given that you go from good stack to short stack after the break, I took some chances in the third and fourth levels and wound up busting out early. While busting out early seems like a bad thing, it's actually better to take chances and bust out early than nurse a tiny stack a long time and still miss the money. 11th and 120th place pay the same -- nothing. Of course if you get to 11th or 12th, you had a chance to cash, but truly these no difference between 30th and 90th except you waste a couple more hours. A had a couple of hands where I made a steal raise, bet the flop and got check-raised all-in. Not having much of a hand, I could fold but that cost be a lot of chips. Went out when I made a small raise with KK looking for action, shoved on an A-A-9 flop (pretty good) and was called by 99.

The cash game was good, though I hate the 1-3 blinds and $200 max structure. I guess it's the same as 2-5, $300 max but both feel very, very small. On an aside, that's one of the pluses of playing in Vegas -- they have larger max buy-ins which allows you to win more money and play more hands. Imagine choosing between two stocks that are similar companies each selling for $10/share (yes the price is silly but bear with me). If you were told one stock could never go above $20 while the other could go into the $50s, the latter is the better choice all other things being equal.

I turned a small profit in the cash game and was close to even for the night. I think I made one bad fold, but since I folded I'll never know. I'd go back sometime, but it's still quite a trip. With a couple stops at the park and ride and dropping off Meier and home, it took me well over an hour to get home.

Bahamas

2010-02-28T10:06:00.003-08:00

Monica and I just got back from a week in Orlando and Atlantis in the Bahamas. Thus no poker in a while.

Orlando was same old same old. Saw the family, went to Disneyworld, bought a bunch of stuff for Monica's nephew and nieces. But we had never been to the Bahamas.

Atlantis was beautiful and while the weather wasn't perfect - it rained Wednesday and was very windy Thursday - it was nice to get away from Seattle winter. That said I think we were both dissappointed. The prices were pretty outrageous; we were essentially paying "ballpark" prices all week. $4 for a bottle of water, $28 for the breakfast buffet. To me, everything was inflated about 100%. I wondered if I missed an exchange rate but I didn't. That said the food was excellent almost eveywhere we ate.

But I don't think we were disappointed as much by the prices as that service was disappointing almost eveywhere we went except for fine dining for dinner. The spa, the activities, the casual dining by the pool, housekeeping and maintenance all left something if not a lot to be desired. Our room was $$$$ and came with a cracked toliet seat.

One thing we did consistently notice was that the high prices did lead to a higher class of people. While Disney is expensive, you get visitors from almost every walk of life and lack of courtesy and common sense is the default. Can't remember the last time I didn't see a parked stroller with a camera in it begging to be stolen.

At Atlantis people had brains, were thoughful, nobody rushed to be first and it wasn't until breakfast the last day that we saw kids that weren't well behaved.

Bahamas

2010-02-28T10:06:00.001-08:00

Tournament at Hideaway

2010-02-15T20:16:00.000-08:00

I played the 2-5 game at Snoqualmie last Wednesday and had some huge swings. Was down two buy ins at one point. Quite honestly I wasn't playing well -- too loose and too passive. I got "fooled" on a big hand where my opponent took a lot of time to make his decision on the flop and looked like he was going to fold and I pegged him for weak. Instead he had flopped the nuts and I guess was pondering a raise.

I shaped up my play, hit some draws, made a couple of hero calls in big pots and wound up cashing out up a buy-in. That gets me close to even for the year.

This morning I decided to check out Hideaway with Meier. We'd popped in a couple of time since it re-opened a couple of years ago, but it never seemed inviting. Was the same four to six regulars and a couple of dealers hoping to get a 3-6 game started. But recently they've been advertising a pretty good structure for their daily tournaments so I figured I'd give it a try. I had the day off today for President's Day (yes really) and Meier is always happy to play in Shoreline casinos. It turns out we know the casino manager there. Mooske used to be the poker room manager at Treasure Casino and then Rascal's before both places removed their poker room; and while there ran the best low buy-in tournaments in town.

Unfortunately it was a bit of a last minute decision and we were both alternates. I didn't get in until the middle of the third level which put me at a disadvantage. After the break, it was push fest time -- my chip stack was so small my only choices were to go all-in or fold. I stole the blinds with 54s, then raised with KQs and was called by a shorter stack with 44 -- a really terrible play as he's either a slight favorite or a 4.5:1 dog if I have a pair -- flopped a king and knocked him out. Then I shoved with AK and took the blinds and had my M up to 9 and we broke to two tables.

From this point on I ran over the table, shoving liberally to pick off blinds which is the only way to play. Sometimes I had hands, but a lot of times I just had position. I believe of the perhaps 15-20 times I pushed all-in pre-flop the KQ v 44 hand was the only time I got called. In a key hand, a decent shack shoved, I found KK and re-shoved and didn't get unlucky against 66. At this point I finally had enough chips that I could raise without having to go all-in.

At the final table, the big stack was on my right and I continued to accumulate chips once he was out of the hand. I think we started the table with 165K for him and 120K for me. Key hand of the tournament. Blinds are 10K-20K and big stack (now #2 stack) is first to act min raises to 40K, I ask what he has left and he counts 150K. I shove for 230K total with AK, the BB tosses in her last few chips and #2 guy thinks a long time before folding JJ. BB shows QT (or something silly), I flop an ace and we're 5-handed and I have almost half the chips in play. It was easy from there especially since no one wanted to tangle with me.

Last hand I limp on the button with A7o, trying to trap. Flop is K-7-4 and my opponents pushes for about the size of the pot. I think a bit and can't believe he has a king and call. He shows 54 and doesn't suck out.

If only they were all this easy. Turned $50 into $565 in about 2.5 hours.

Hunny Bear climbs into bed

2010-02-01T22:10:00.000-08:00

For a blog named for Hunny Bear, there's not actually much about Hunny Bear in the blog.

But yesterday Hunny Bear did something we've been trying to get him to do for years. And we're very proud of him! A few years ago we got a Tempur-Pedic bed and found that with the thicker mattress and his advanced age, Hunny Bear could no longer jump on the bed to sleep with us. So we got some pet steps and put them next to the bed. (They don't quite look like the picture but you get the idea.) He wouldn't go near them. Emily immediately ran up them. Every foster dog or dog we've dog sat ran up them into bed. Hunny Bear wouldn't touch them. If you put his front paws on the first step, he stepped off.

We tried off and on to teach him, but finally we put the steps away. But in the new house we have them out. For the first time yesterday, Hunny Bear used the steps to walk into bed without any physical assistance. I patted the bottom step and once he stepped on, I patted the second step, and he stepped up and figured the rest out from there. And he just repeated the behavior tonight.

I only wonder what took him so long to try it.

Wild poker action last weekend

2010-02-01T21:51:00.000-08:00

I played at Snoqualmie last Saturday night. Weekends are usually good games because everyone is out having fun and thus the play is more relaxed. You don't often get "drunk tourist" locally like to do in Las Vegas, but on Saturday night there's a lot more drinking.

It was one of the wildest sessions I've had in a while -- up a bit, down a lot, back to ahead, and finally down a bit. In a short four hours I had a ton of hands. AA, KK, QQ, JJ twice, AK at least three times, KQ, AJ, 88, probably some others I forget.

That said, a lot of medium pots but no huge pots. I don't think I saw the turn with any of the big hands.

I'll never understand why people enjoy getting plastered while playing poker. A social drink sure, but what's the fun in paying $30/drink because you're so out of it you're giving away your money. That said, I'm happy to relieve stupid people of their cash; that's much of why I play poker.

Why College Basketball is Close

2010-01-16T17:30:00.000-08:00

Anyone who's watched college basketball over the past few years has noticed that games are generally close. There are lots of upset every year, even with top 5 teams against unranked opponents. Cornell, an Ivy league school, played then #1 Kansas close and lost by only five points.

Vanderbilt just beat South Carolina by 10 points on the road. Any road win in the SEC is an accomplishment, and a double digit road win is doubly impressive. However I wondered whether South Carolina was just really bad, Vanderbilt was good, or Vanderbilt just played well. And this is interesting.

I checked the "Vegas lines" and Vanderbilt was a 1 point favorite, so winning easily is a great. Then I checked Sagrain ratings to get a computerized view of what they've done so far. Vanderbilt is #21 and South Carolina is #73 so at first it looks like Vanderbilt should win easily and the line is "off". However a close look shows Vanderbilt's rating is only 4.5 point more than South Carolina's. Give South Carolina 4 points for being home, and the "Sagarin line" is Vanderbilt by 1/2 point! That's right a top 25 team plays a team not in the top 70 -- a team hoping for a NIT berth -- and the game is a toss up.

There are some good teams at the top, but the difference between #10 and #100 is just 12 points. The difference between #10, what some might call an elite team and #50, a team on the NCAA tournament bubble is 6 points. And if the #50 team is at home, the difference is 2 points, essentially a toss up.

In the ACC, the difference between the second best team and the worst (12th) team is 8 points. 2nd to 7th are separated by 3 points. That's going to be a wild conference and a wilder tournament. In the Big East, the top 12 teams are separated by 10 points. It's not quite a crapshoot, but most conference games are 60-40 propositions even if there's a big spread in rankings.

It's a good year to bet on middle seeds making a run in the NCAA tournament.

Vegas poker trip

2010-01-11T23:27:00.000-08:00

Went to Vegas for a few days right before New Year's. It's a great place to play because there are more good poker rooms in a two mile stretch than there are in all of Washington and Oregon combined. Had a couple of huge cashes, mainly at the Venetian and Planet Hollywood and came out enough ahead that the trip was free. Of course staying three nights for $89 total makes that pretty easy.

I played so much poker in three days that I really can't talk about interesting hands or sessions. Independent of the cash result, it was a lot of fun to live on the wild side. Cuz I'm kinda a simple boring guy :)

I'll be heading back in March and it looks like July as well.

Seahawks and Mora

2009-12-20T17:32:00.000-08:00

I'm a firm believer that you need to give a coach a chance to build a team. But at some point there has to be a level of play where you conclude you have a PURE (previously undiscovered recruiting error) as a coach and should let him go.

Before the season, the Seahawks were talking playoffs. Obviously the absence of Walter Jones has hurt them. But this team has been terrible. They're 5-9 and just lost to a Tampa Bay team that hadn't scored a touchdown since November and might be the worst team in the league. Three of their five wins are against St Louis and Detroit. You could argue that the game against Jacksonville is the only time they've played well all year. Somehow when the team seems to underachieve every week and gets worse as the season goes on, you have to blame coaching.

I'd fire Mora. It's not all his fault, but it's hard to believe a good coach could get such a terrible effort out of this team.

Poker update

2009-12-20T17:26:00.000-08:00

It's not that I haven't been blogging, I actually haven't played much poker since my last post. With the holidays, evenings have been spent shopping, wrapping, packaging, lighting candles, etc. And then I had a major "non-playing" disappointment.

I played at Snoqualmie a couple of weeks ago and nearly tripled up by buy in. One of my best results of late. Basically had two big hands where I hit sets and got paid. One I erred by calling too much pre flop -- but I just didn't believe the guy -- but the other I played well calling down what was essentially a three barrel bluff on an all-club flop. Also had a simple hand where four people limp called my raise to 25 and a flopped top pair and took down the pot. I wish I could have more hands that were so easy.

We spent the weekend at Tulalip for my birthday so I could get a lot of poker in. Unfortunately it didn't work out well. Monica wanted to go shopping after dinner so I accompanied her and didn't get into a game until after 9 PM. It had been a long day and I just wasn't feeling it. Though it was a great table with really bad players. I also liked that their 3-5 game allows a $500 buy in which means more money on the table. Wound up winning a little bit almost all of it on one hand where a guy "donated" $300 with trips, no-kicker against my tips-ace kicker when his hand HAD to be no good on the turn.

Hope to get in a session this week, likely Friday if not before, before I head to Las Vegas next Monday.

Poker this week

2009-11-28T20:02:00.001-08:00

I'm trying blogging from my phone. Good week of poker. Came out ahead on cash game Tuesday. Won a home game tournament Friday and cashed in the Snoqualmie tournament today.

Hmm, apparently blogging via phone doesn't create a title. Scratch that and stick to Twitter and Facebook via phone/text.

Session on Tuesday was good. I nearly doubled up early with KK vs AK with all money in pre-flop. He really thought he was racing when I four-bet!?! Played a couple more hours and gave some back. Some friends held a home game Friday night. Well, I wish it was Friday night. We were supposed to start at 9:30 but actually started at 11 (!). Without much structure and organization we kept the starting blinds for at least 90 minutes. Good news was that I chopped the prize pool with another player at 2AM though I had a small chip lead.

Today I probably played the best tournament poker I've played in a long time. I had one bad read, but basically made hands, put pressure on other people, and kept winning pots. By the time we got to the final table everyone was micro-stacking (about 2-5 BB) and the determining factors were draw for seats, getting lucky with cards, then chips, and last a touch of skill. I did poorly on the first one and wound up 8th. So I cashed twice in one day. Not sure I've ever done that.

NFL Update

2009-11-27T09:11:00.000-08:00

After 10+ weeks, the NFL looks exactly like I called it after 3 weeks. While it's nice to be right, it's also disappointing the the league is so predictable. The eight teams I called out as terrible are a combined 18-64 (22%) but 10 of those wins are against each other. Against the "non-terrible" teams they're 8-54 (13%), which means it's almost a guaranteed win if you play one of them. The Lions have two wins not because they're improved but because other teams have fallen to their level. As noted, 2-2 was a schedule fluke for the Redskins whose 3-7 is a better representation of the team's skill level. The Panthers, who were the top of the terrible group, appear to have upgraded to "bad".

The top is a bit trickier. I gave the Ravens too much credit for wins against bad teams and they're 2-5 since. That said all five loses are to division leaders and they were close in every game. The schedule looks more favorable the rest of the way.

The Titans shaped up from their start and people are actually talking playoffs. I think they have too many teams to catch, but 8-8 would be a great accomplishment after starting 0-6. Sadly it might help Jeff Fisher keep his job.

Beyond the Colts, I still think there's a lot of smoke and mirrors with the top teams. The Saints and Vikings have played the two easiest schedules in the league this year. (Followed by the Packers and Redskins, see I told you Washington was awful.) But no one in the NFC looks that good, so I'd expect the Vikings and Saints to win in the playoffs, but bet against them and take the points.

The wild variance of tournaments

2009-11-22T14:18:00.000-08:00

Tournaments are great fun because you can turn a 60 buy in into a few hundred of few thousand dollars in three or four hours. I enjoy them because the competition is generally week because people don't adjust their play to tournament constraints. Adequate cash players become bad tournament players and bad players become terrible in tournaments.

The flip side is the variance is high. While 30-50% of cash players at a table come out ahead only 10-15% of players in any tournament make the money. As well, with short stacks, you can't be patient and one mistake or one unlucky hand can do you in. Today was a day like that.

Played the Snoqualmie $60 bounty tournament. In addition to paying the top 10 players, you get $10 for every player you bust out. It's a reasonable tournament -- the players aren't very tough but it plays pretty fast. You have to take some chances. Today I had three key hands in huge pots, which coincidentally all involved the same hole cards.

Experts say that when you get under 8-12 big blinds, you should either go all-in or fold preflop. In part that's because you shouldn't raise for 1/3 of your stack and then ever fold. I generally agree but I've found that in these fast tournaments, bad players react almost the same to any raise size. If you have 10 BB whether you raise to 3 BB or 10 BB, people will look you up with TT,AQ+ and fold everything else. A small raise puts a few more hands in play. Thus a small raise has almost the same benefit is a big raise without risking your tournament life with 5-high. That said this play can sometimes get you in trouble. Because of my cards, stack size, and position, I wound up with a few hands where I raised, got called and was all-in on the flop.

First time I had king-rag, flopped a king and both players folded. Then the last hand before the break, the first key hand came up which hurt me. I read an article where the author declared the worst thing that happens in poker is when a third party makes a stupid play which affects the outcome of the hand. And I ran into this here. A MP limps, late position player with a short stack limps in, I complete the SB with JT, BB checks. The flop is 5-2-2 rainbow. This seems like a good spot to bluff -- except for BB, there's no reason anyone should have a 5, 2, or 43 -- so I make a small bet, BB calls (oops), LP calls (double oops). Even if I hit a J or T on the turn, I'm going to be careful. Turn is a T, I check BB bets 1200, LP goes all-in for 1800, I think a long time and fold -- one of them must have me beat, BB says "I have to call". BB has 95, LP has Kh7h, there are not two hearts on the board. LP simply decided he wanted to go home. He made obvious mistakes on all three streets including a naked bluff with no fold equity; it's his money he can do what he wants BUT his stupid play cost me the pot and truly donated chips to BB. I could call one player here, but not two.

Next key hand. UTG limps and it folds to me in the hijack with 7h5h. I decide to steal here, though to be honest I missed that UTG was in until I declared raise. The BB and UTG both call. Flop is Th-8h-5s, pretty good for my hand. Both players check, I shove all in for 2/3 of the pot, BB folds but UTG tanks and finally calls with JdTd. His call is easy if he knows what I have, even though I'm a slight favorite, but this is the exact peril of limp calling (see a couple posts below) with a marginal hand. Even if you hit, you have no idea if your hand is good. Turn ace, River 7. I survive.

Last hand. One mid position limper. I have AJ in SB and raise to 1200, BB is only caller. Flop is J-T-x. I bet 2000, BB raises to 4000, I got all in for about 5500, he calls (uh oh). He has JT. The turn is a ace, but he resucks with a river ten and I'm done. This worked great for him, but I think he'll get in trouble calling here with JT. If he doesn't hit the ten, he's going to lose a lot of chips here.

Poker is a game of skill, but in the short term, luck plays a pretty huge factor. And my luck wasn't so good today.

Snoqualmie 11/18

2009-11-20T19:29:00.000-08:00

Had one of the most frustrating nights of poker in a while. First see my previous post on bad players.

Was at a good table at Snoqualmie against a number of bad players and wound up down a buy-in. Played three or four hands the first hour and was up $4 -- I had K8 in the blinds flopped top pair a rivered a straight and won a small pot. I could never get anything going. Had at most one big pair, no big aces that I recall, and a couple of small pairs. Saw a lot of KQ, KJ, 75 hands.

A made a few bad plays, but meanwhile I watched people throw money around. The guy on my left seemed like he had never played live before -- needed an explanation on every bit of terminology. He was pretty tight, but would limp call for 20% of his stack. I made a bunch of second best hands, but I think my real problem was inconsistent aggression. I'd make a loose raise pre-flop then give up when someone check-called. I think I could have pushed people off better hands a few times with a turn or river bet. And I probably played a bit too lose.

But ultimately when people are calling too often, you have to make a hand to win, and I couldn't make a hand.

Overall I'd grade my play a B-, but I need to be on my A game.

Recognizing bad players, way #1: Limp, call

2009-11-20T19:10:00.000-08:00

A key element to winning at poker is playing against bad players. If everyone at the table is as good or better than you, the only way you can make money is to get lucky. So it's critical to find bad players and be able to recognize them. How do you find a bad player? Easy, look for them to make bad plays. What's a bad play, well that's not so easy. But here's a favorite of mine.

Sklansky's gap theory says you need a better hand to call a raise then to raise. An application of that is that limp calling is a bad decision. You have a hand you've already deciding isn't worth raising, are now faced with a raise and decide to call the raise. Essentially concluding A > B > A.

Like anything in poker, it's not a hard truth but "it depends". This doesn't apply to a fixed limit game where you're getting at least 4:1 and sometimes 10:1 on your call; here you'd be foolish to fold though this is a reason to not limp first in or in early position. In non-poker terms, once you've paid/wasted $4 for a bottle of water, you might as well drink it. In no limit games, this is often a bad play but one you see all the time. With deep enough stacks and a speculative hand, it makes sense to call a small raise with a speculative hand, like a small pair. But you need to be able to win enough money when it hits to make up for the times it misses. If you start with $100, limp in early position with 44 and someone raises to 25, you can't call off 1/4 of your stack. You'd actually be wise to fold a raise to 15 unless several others are in the pot but that's open to discussion.

That said, one of the worst plays you can make is to limp with a medium strength hand -- a suited ace, ace-jack, ace-ten, two face cards -- then call a raise out of position when you're easily dominated. You're better calling with 98 than with AT even though AT is a better hand overall.

This is doubly true in a short-stack game where players have 20-50 BB only. Watch players who limp call and see if they ever put in more than 10% of their stack or have trouble hands.

Poker this week, Main Event

2009-11-14T20:23:00.000-08:00

I played twice this week though neither of those were the most interesting poker of the week.

I played pot limit Omaha at Snoqualmie on Tuesday. Generally I've found that Omaha games are very profitable. Take all the hold 'em players who look for any excuse to play a hand and love Ace-rag or king-seven and give them four cards and their in heaven. Watch any Omaha game for 15-minute and you'll be amazed at hands people turn over -- 8876, Q973, etc. If you play a decent game, you start out so far ahead of your opponents' average hands that it's easy to make a profit. Of course that's a long term thing and over a short session anything can happen. I started off way ahead when I won a huge pot with full house over full house (rare in hold 'em but common in Omaha). But over the course of the session I lost most of a buy-in. I wasn't very happy with my play -- I bet a couple of times when I checked behind -- but basically I ran bad, making lots of second best hands.

Wednesday I played in my semi-regular home game -- blinds of 10 cents and 20 cents and a $10 buy-in. I got great cards and people made loose calls and I quadrupled my buy-in over 3 hours. We started only five-handed and ended with only four players. I think we were mainly screwing around rather than playing actual poker most of the time.

The real poker highlight of the week was watching the final table of the WSOP main event. For the final nine players at the biggest poker event of the year, there was some amazingly wild and poor play. No doubt Cada and Moon are good players but they made some incredibly terrible plays and got lucky. Cada should have busted several times but won as a 4:1 dog and wound up winning the whole thing. I commented that the only player at the final table who would scare me in my home game is Phil Ivey and stand by that. I think this will be great for poker. Watching the play will further convince casual (bad) poker players that anyone can win the main event. I think we'll see a second poker boom and that's great for regular players.

Poker History and Playing in Vegas

2009-11-08T01:18:00.000-08:00

Not really to my surprise, but my posts have been few and far between. Part of this is not finding time to blog though much of this is the explosion of microblogging (Facebook, Twitter) since I started this blog. I'm going to try to blog more on my poker sessions and see if that will get me writting more on a regular basis.

So I thought I'd start with writing how I got into playing poker on a serious recreational basis and making regular trips to Las Vegas.

Mark Rafn first explained Texas Hold ‘em to me sometime in late 2004 or early 2005 and we played at work for Hershey’s kisses. This was just after BEA Systems announced they were closing the Seattle office and we weren't very busy or very motivated. I first played in Las Vegas in April 2005 (2/4 limit at the Flamingo), but really didn’t know what I was doing. I was there to meet my parents and see the Cubs-Mariners spring training game and coincidentally some of my friends who played were there and introduced me to live hold ‘em for money. I think I screwed around for six months or so – made some trips to Muckleshoot with a couple of friends. I remember one drive where they were trying to explain starting hand ranges to me, so I was pretty clueless at that point. I bought Lee Jones Winning Low Limit Hold ‘em in January of 2006, finally had some idea how to play, and got more serious. That’s really the start of my hold ‘em play with any thought to starting hands and actually strategy of play and level 1 thinking.

I started playing low limit in local card rooms, mainly the now closed Kenmore Lanes. (As a side note, I think I've played more hours in local card rooms that are now closed than that are still open.) Monica and I met her family in Vegas in February 2006 and I got in a few limit sessions. April 2006 was the first time I/we went to Vegas for the primary purpose of playing poker (along with my business partner and some of her friends) and my poker record keeping starts here. A group of us went in November 2006 (I won the Sahara tournament twice) and that was the first time I played no limit cash games. We went in March 2007 and then again in September. In 2008 I went to Vegas in January, March, and August. I was there again for March madness and a "business" trip in October. I'm trying to get back in December.

Why Vegas? Well, the glitz and glamor are a lot of fun. But the big factors are variety of places to play, really bad players, and good tournaments.

Locally I play almost exclusively at Snoqualmie Casino. It opened a year ago so has that new feel and it's a nice place and 15-20 minutes away. But the room is small (10 tables) and cramped. And the choices are 4-8 limit or 2-5 NL with a 300 max buy in. I'd rather play with deeper stacks where there's more money to win. And the tournament selection is pretty sparse. It's weekend mornings at Snoqualmie. Sure there are other tournaments and places to play. But only the tribal ("Indian") casinos have anything close to a no limit game.

I usually play at Snoqualmie Sunday AM when the Bears don't play and Monday or Tuesday night and then Friday or Saturday night. But it winds up twice a week at most. And there's a friendly penny stakes home game that runs occasionally on Wednesdays.

College Football, SEC Dominates

2009-10-10T20:00:00.000-07:00

Because of the baseball playoffs, my car radio is usually on ESPN Radio in the evenings, so in the mornings I've been listening to much more sports talk than normal.

There's a lot of talk about SEC dominance in football. Florida and Alabama are #1 and #2. And they've mentioned that the SEC has won the last three national championships. I was looking at it and was surprised the SEC run is actually deeper than that. LSU won after the 2003 season, Florida after 2006 and last year and LSU again in 2007. That's 4 of 6 and in 2004, Auburn finished 12-0 but was shut out of the title game by two other 12-0 teams. And Georgia and LSU have had top 3 finishes in years the SEC won the title.

So the interesting question is could you have two SEC team play for the National Championship. The consensus was "no" and I agree the pollsters wouldn't let it happen. But it's pretty stupid -- if Alabama and Florida are the clear best teams in the country, go undefeated and settle the SEC Championship in double overtime, and LSU is the third best team (losing only to Florida and Alabama) do you really want Cincinnati, Boise State, or USC in the the title game?

MLB Playoffs

2009-10-07T20:34:00.001-07:00

It's been proven time and again that the baseball playoffs are a crap shoot. As much as people like to see the Yankees as great and a "sure" thing to make the World Series, history shows they're just better than 50-50 to win each series. It's of course a bit better with a 1-0 lead already.

My take, I have no clue who will win but bet the underdogs -- Rockies, Twins, Cardinals. Not really sure who's the dog in the Boston-LA series.

NFL So Far

2009-10-07T18:47:00.000-07:00

I figure it takes three weeks to really have any idea about the football season. Any given game can be an outlier and with two games it's hard to know which is real and which is the outlier. After four weeks, we have a really good idea.

The Browns, Chiefs, Raiders, Redskins, Lions, Buccaneers, Rams, and Panthers are terrible. Despite being 2-2, Washington has beaten Rams and Buccaneers, by five points total, and lost to the Lions. Incredibly they get the Panthers and Chiefs next and might make it to 3-3 or 4-2; but then they'll finish 2-8 or 1-9. If Matt Hasselback doesn't return soon, the Seahawks join that group. That's a quarter of the league that's horrible.

Giants, Ravens, Patriots, Colts, and Saints appear to be the elite teams. Despite being 4-0, I'm not convinced the Broncos and Vikings are better than average the rest of the way; of course 6-6 will get them to 10-6 and likely playoffs. Next batch of teams -- Bears, Bengals (maybe), Eagles, Falcons (maybe), and 49ers (maybe).

The rest of the league looks mediocre. Despite being 0-4, the Titans should be decent. Of course, you can't overcome an 0-4 start and make the playoffs.

Check back in 12 weeks.

Maybe they need an exhibition season

2009-09-13T14:49:00.000-07:00

The first half of the Rams-Seahawks game is the worst exhibition of pro football I've seen in a long time.

The Rams fumbled the opening kickoff and the Seahawks started the season on the Rams 19 yard line. Incomplete, incomplete, interception in the end zone. The Seahawks also turned the ball over on the first play of their third possession. Oh but it gets worse, check out the Rams next possession.

Incomplete pass, offensive holding, defensive offside, timeout Rams, incomplete pass, timeout Rams, bad snap followed by Bulger throwing the ball in the ground to avoid a sack (marginally legal), punt downed at the 4 and the Seahawks waste a challenge. One set of downs, six bad plays and that doesn't count the three incompletions.

Oh, it keeps going. The Rams have third and one on the Seahawks nine -- false start, delay of game, missed field goal.

With the half winding down the Seahawks attempt a 49-yard field goal which the Rams block and run back for a touchdown. Then the replay official notices the Rams had 12 men on the field.

One half: four turnovers, 11 penalties (nine by the Rams), two botched field goals, an a bad challenge.

Maybe if they had an exhibition season like baseball where the starters got to play under game conditions, it would look like pro football out there.

The weather outside

2009-09-06T20:57:00.000-07:00

was crazy today.

Light rain, torrential downpour, rain, overcast, sun breaks, repeat. A couple of times I could see the lake across the street.

Driving to the gym (second day in a row) I passed two joggers running down the street. I know these people are dedicated but I have to think there's something not quite right up there when you run in pouring rain. That can't be good for your health, can it.

House update

2009-09-06T20:52:00.000-07:00

We signed paperwork last week. Closing is scheduled for Tuesday. Feels good to be done with the house since the emotional part has long past and it's a business transaction waiting to happen.

House Sold!

2009-08-23T21:39:00.000-07:00

We haven't closed yet but our home in Sammamish is basically sold. The buyers have moved in and are paying us rent which is a double win -- we get money before closing and it's pretty unlikely they cancel the deal having moved in.

It's an exaggeration to say we sleep easier at night, but it's one less big thing to spend or energy on.

What I Do

2009-07-01T19:02:00.000-07:00

Since I started by new job in August I find it hard to explain to people, especially those not in software development exactly what it is that I do and what my company does. Serena recently updated our web site and has a ton of information about Agile on Demand. There's also a picture of me and my co-workers on the site.

The information is very high level and you can click through in ten minutes and get of what we do.

Michael Jackson dies

2009-06-25T21:35:00.000-07:00

No this isn't another one of a thousand posts reflecting on Michael Jackson's life. Rather it's about the process surrounding how I/we found out the news.

At work about 2 PM Pacific, someone shouted the first news about Michael Jackson. I forget if it was that he'd had a cardiac arrest, was rushed to the hospital or something else. Shortly thereafter someone yelled that he had died. As a group we spent the next 20 minutes using the power of the internet to get the latest and greatest news. We used out local IRC chat to sent around the latest news link. I found Crowd Eye incredibly useful as I could see what other people we're tweeting. We all found TMZ breaking the news first and for 15 minutes it was the only source aside from those quoting TMZ. While we knew it was 99% likely true, none of us believed it until we saw got confirmation in the LA Times blog. Meanwhile I was getting breaking news email updates from CNN which we're all "old news".

The thing I've found most interesting about his death is how open people are about their hatred of the man just minutes or hours after he died. I.e., their feeling are so intense, or perhaps their tact so lacking, that they can't wait a day to share their negative thoughts. I'm no fan of the Michael Jackson of the last 15 years but for God sakes, the man just died and people lost their father, brother, and son.

Woo hoo, softball

2009-06-15T22:28:00.000-07:00

Our softball team finally won a game this weekend to move up to 1-7. Funny thing is unlike all of my brother's teams, this team isn't bad at all. We've played even with the top teams in the league. Seems like our good games are against good teams and our bad games -- missing people or didn't play well -- are against the teams we should beat. Good news is every team makes the playoffs as we'll be ready.

Our house is coming along. We're replacing the carpet downstairs with a tile floor. Should increase cleanliness and reduce allergens. Time to think about painting/staining outside now that it's warm.

New House

2009-05-02T23:19:00.001-07:00

I've been telling people that December-March is a big blur. Monica and I made an offer on a house in early December and between negotiating, repairs, packing, unpacking, decorating, etc., time has flown by. I see my blog is neglected as well.

Pretty much everyone has heard about the house by now, so I won't go into details. We moved to be closer in to the city and have less to take care of. We're loving it.

Super Bore

2009-01-19T23:07:00.000-08:00

Is anyone excited about this game, outside of Cardinals and Steelers fans of course.

The Cardinals either got hot at the right time or simply survived among 6 not-so-good NFC teams, one of which had to go to the Super Bowl. In the regular season they were 9-7 and outscored their opponents by 1 point. They made the playoffs by winning their division by default. In the last five weeks of the regular season they were routed by New England, Minnesota, and Philadelphia. And in the NFC finals they got by a Philadelphia team who got every break the last two weeks to sneak into the playoffs.

The Steelers are pretty good and arguably the best team in the NFL. But they're boring.

With neither city being among the dozen largest markets, and I assume Phoenix being relatively low on % of football fans due to transplants, snow birds, and relatively short and horrid tenure of the Cardinals in the city, this is almost guaranteed to be the lowest rated Super Bowl in 20+ years. I guess it could have been worse -- the Titans could be playing the Panthers.

Now I've seen everything

2009-01-11T12:43:00.000-08:00

Or what happens in Redmond, doesn't stay in Redmond.

While our blog is named "Life with Hunny Bear", there hasn't been much about Hunny Bear himself in the blog, so here's some news.

Hunny Bear was having some back problems -- he couldn't jump up on the couch or bed -- so Monica took him to the vet to get checked out.

Apparently the holistic vet is a bit different. Yes, that's Hunny Bear getting an acupuncture treatment. He was well-behaved and decided to relax and take a nap.

Woof!

College Bowl Games

2009-01-01T23:02:00.000-08:00

Today is January 1st. For the first time in what might be my lifetime, I didn't watch a single minute of college football. I actually watched hockey (the Winter Classic) and baseball (part of Don Larsen's perfect game on the new MLB Network) instead of New Year's Day Bowls.

Which gets to a post I've been kicking around for a few weeks but never typed out about college bowls.

Point 1: I've been really undecided what to think about Vanderbilt being in a bowl. On one hand it's nice that Vanderbilt no longer appears near the top of "longest bowl drought" lists. And a six-win season is the best Vanderbilt has had in a long time so this qualifies as a great year by Vanderbilt standards. On the other hand, it's not like Vanderbilt is actually any good. After starting 5-1, they finished the regular season 6-6 which isn't exactly something to be proud of. Their offense is horrible, their defense is OK. They basically win by not making mistakes and getting some breaks. They may not even be in the top 50 this year heading into bowl season. I'd like being excited that a C and D student got one B on her report card.

Having played the game, it was a lot of fun to watch them on National TV and pull off a big upset. While the line was only 3-4 points, Boston College was a top 25 team and I think 90% of ESPN viewers picked them to win. A guy I know was in a contest where he ranked the bowl games by likelihood of winners and made BC his #1 pick.

Point 2: On the BCS, I had a long talk with Glenn about the selection process and options and we came to a couple of interesting conclusions. There's no good way to decide a three-way tie for a conference or division title when each team has lost to one of the others. And it's a bit disconcerting that who plays for a national championship comes down to the arbitrary selection of which tie breaker rules the conference happens to have in place. I can't argue against the approach utilized by other conferences to "eliminate" the #3 team then look at head-to-head and that approach would likely have put Texas in the championship game. Not sure how the conference strength of victory would have determined a winner. What's really tough is a lot of the computer polls have Oklahoma, Texas, and Texas Tech 1-2-3 so it's very close. I suspect some weird things can happen in the Pac Ten with USC being the dominant team but coming very close to NOT winning the conference title.

What Glenn and I found very interesting is that even though this is a year where there's a good argument that the best team in the nation isn't playing for the National Championship (Texas), the BCS does a better job of ensuring that the best team IS in the championship than a playoff. Let's declare best team to mean if the top 21 teams each played each other 50 times, the team with the best record is the best team. This year is pretty extreme, but even so there's only a 35% chance the best team isn't in the game. It's hard to argue Texas being so much better than Oklahoma and Florida that it wins more than 1/3 of the time. In general, I'd say the best team is left out of the BCS Championship 20% of the time. But if you switch to a 16-team playoff or even an 8-team playoff, the best team missed out of the championship game much, much more often.

Let's be optimistic and say the #1 team has a 100% chance of beating the #16 team, and then a 90% chance of beating the #8/9 team and a 70% chance of winning in the national semifinal against the #4 or 5 team. That would give the team a 37% chance of NOT making the championship. And really it's greater than that since those win % are inflated. Rank your top 8 teams and see if you think the top team would really beat #8 9 times in 10 or #4 70% of the time.

This is the dark side of the beauty of March Madness. While it's good entertainment to see upsets and close games and 64 teams in, it's also almost a crapshoot once you get to the final 16. I believe last year was the first time ever that all 4 #1 seed made it to the Final Four. Quite simply, the more teams you involve, the LESS likely it is that you crown the best team as champion assuming the selection process isn't arbitrary.

Net net, so while I firmly believe Texas got screwed even though I think Oklahoma is better, I much prefer the current system to a 16-team playoff. I would like a 6-team playoff, though it will never happen.

Happy New Year

2009-01-01T23:01:00.000-08:00

Happy 2009. Here's hoping for a great year for everyone.

Gas prices

2008-11-23T13:15:00.000-08:00

In May, just six months ago, I blogged about gas crossing the $4 mark. Last week, I paid $2.41 and it looks like prices are down a few pennies since then.

That means gas prices have dropped 40% in 6 months. I sure crude oil is down, but that's an amazing price drop. Has any good dropped 20% or even 10% in the last six months (stocks aren't really goods)? My gut is everything is MORE expensive now. Seems like a fake scarcity to me.

Here at Last

2008-11-03T18:47:00.001-08:00

Finally the last day before the election. Likely tomorrow, we'll know who the next President of the United States will be. In fact, it's likely the major networks will call it officially at 8 PM Pacific when polls close in California, Washington, and Oregon giving Senator Obama 73 additional electoral votes and pushing him over the top. However, since not much West of the Mississippi is up for grabs, we'll really know three hours earlier if they can call the "close" states shortly after the polls close. Actually, at 4:30 Pacific time, Ohio and North Carolina close their polls and Florida and Virginia will have been closed for a while, and it might be over.

My prediction is Obama 53-45 nationally and winning 379-159* in the electoral college. He takes all of the Kerry states plus NM, VA, CO, OH, FL, NV, MO, NC, IN, the second district in NE, and MT or ND. I'm pretty convinced that the national polls underrepresent cell phone users and African Americans and both groups will come out strongly in support of Obama.

Best place to follow the election is HDnet or CNN on TV or fivethirtyeight.com online.

* Originally I wrote 382-162 but that's inconsistent with my breakdown as that would mean Obama would win MT and ND.

NFL Update

2008-10-26T19:55:00.001-07:00

At the start of the season, I remarked that the Bears could be pretty good if they got average play at QB and RB. Well Kyle Orton has actually been quite good this year. Not at Pro Bowl level but in the top 1/3 of QBs in the league, outperforming well-known names like Manning and Favre. Likewise Matt Forte has been an average running back. While that doesn't sound like much, last year Cedric Benson was so bad that his NFL career is over.

The Bears are 4-3 but if not for a fluky and poorly played final 30 seconds against the Falcons would be 5-2. And with some luck could have been 6-1! They aren't awesome, but they look like a playoff caliber team. As well, the league is pretty even with a lot of teams within a game of 500 so anything could happen in the playoffs.

World Series

2008-10-21T22:21:00.000-07:00

Well, I came pretty close in the LCS. The AL indeed went 7 games, though the Rays won and the Phillies took care of the Dodgers in 5 not 6. Off by two total.

I see the Rays in 6 games. Quite frankly they're just a lot better than the Phillies.

This will probably be the least watched World Series in years with Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston, and New York all watching from home.

Playoff FIrst Round

2008-10-06T22:33:00.000-07:00

Yuck, yuck, and more yuck.

I'm not sure whether I'm more sad, frustrated, or embarrassed by the Cubs performance. Monica's sister and brother-in-law attended game 1 in Chicago, Monica went to game 2, and I went to LA for the weekend for game 3 (and what I expected would be game 4). What a waste of a season. And a double-whammy for me on top of the Storm's post season.

On the other hand, I had the other three series pegged right. I actually had Phillies in 4 originally, but didn't like picking them all to be four game series.

Red Sox in 7 and Phillies in 6 in the LCS.

Baseball Playoffs

2008-09-29T12:38:00.001-07:00

After my previous post, the Brewers won 5 of 6 and passed the "great collapse" tag over to the Mets who went 3-4.

Monica is headed to Chicago Tuesday night for the Cubs games Wednesday and Thursday, and I've just booked tickets to head to LA for the Saturday and Sunday games against the Dodgers. Yeh, we're excited about the Cubs in the playoffs and being the favorite to win the NL.

Predictions:
Cubs over the Dodgers in 4. This is a bad mismatch but it's hard to sweep.
Phillies over Brewers in 3. Likewise I don't think this is close, especially with Sheets hurt. The Brewers play poor defense, have a bad bullpen, and were lucky to get in the playoffs with a hot final weak AND the Mets collapse. I don't believe Sabathia can continue to pitch like he has on short rest and facing a quality offense.

Red Sox over Angels in 4. I really should get money down on this. The wisdom is the Angels are the best team in baseball, but I'd argue that they are at best the 3rd best team in the American League. They have the most wins, but beat up on a terrible division. In run differential, they're 6th in the AL. Home field advantage doesn't make up for team quality disadvantage. Angels don't even have the better closer here.
Rays over Twins in 5, White Sox in 4. Another good team vs. not-so-good team series.

Skunky beer

2008-09-21T10:18:00.000-07:00

In honor of the Brewers, I made French toast for breakfast. Ask David for an explanation.

Because their collapse happened in the first part of September rather than the end of the season, I expect this will be forgotten and left off the list of great collapses. But the Brewers' fade is truly amazing. By Baseball Prospectus's post season odds, Milwaukee had an 85% chance at winning the wild card on 8/31 and 2/3 of the time they "missed" the wild card it was because they actually won the division. They were a virtual lock (95%) for the post season.

Over the next three weeks, they went 5-15, including 1-8 in their last nine games, fired their manager (too little, too late) an now have only a 16% chance at the wild card. That's an 80% drop in three weeks, and a 55% drop in 8 days.

It's not over yet, but the team hurt most by this could be the Cubs who might get a hot Phillies team in the NLDS rather than a 500 Dodgers team who got in the playoffs by default.

Farewell George

2008-09-21T08:15:00.000-07:00

No not that George. Our foster dog passed away in late August.

George was a sweetie who we rescued from death row. He had a loss of appetite and energy toward the end of July and we took him in for a check up. He went on Rimadyl and antibiotics and seemed to get better for a while but was never quite himself. He went in for surgery to have a small mass in his throat removed, and the vet discovered it was a large mass that was slowly closing off his windpipe and there was nothing they could do for him.

Take care George. Thanks for being part of our lives.

In happier news, we're fostering/dog sitting an 8-week old Beagle puppy this weekend. He's the cutest, sweetest thing you ever saw. If only he could stay that size forever.

New job

2008-09-14T21:45:00.000-07:00

This post is long overdue. Sorry.

I started a new job four weeks ago working for Serena software. We're building Agile on Demand which is the product you see featured on the front page of the web site. It's a tool for managing Agile software projects that you'll access via your browser. The job is great, the people are great, and I feel like I'm making a real impact.

I left Ascentium at the end of July. Basically after being there for a year, my mom still couldn't remember the name of the company I worked for or what I did, so I decided to help her out. Seriously though, it just wasn't quite what I envisioned. When I interviewed and accepted the position, I really liked the people, though doing consulting would be a good experience, but was a bit apprehensive about the consulting structure and tracking hours rather than tracking work completed. And it stayed the same throughout. I liked the people and still do and miss the ones I don't see on a daily basis. And it was great when I was full-time on one project from January through March. But once that project abruptly ended, it was constant chaos trying to fill my hours and figure out if projects were real or just planned. I knew I'd be working on a number of projects and some would be short, but I always figured there'd be a backlog of waiting or upcoming projects to jump on and possibly people would be fighting for my time. Instead there just wasn't enough work and I felt like a contractor searching for work at times. I was salaried and still got paid but in the slow weeks didn't feel it was fulfilling enough. It's a good place and I'd even go back as a contractor -- I get paid when I work, I have free time when there isn't work -- but it just wasn't the right fit for me at this point.

Being back in the product world, rather than projects, I feel happier and am actually excited to see this huge pile of automation work we have to do. Oh, and I'm a pig. Mom, that should be easy to remember, but maybe it's not something to share with your friends over Rosh Hashanah dinner.

NFL and the Bears

2008-09-14T09:50:00.000-07:00

Baseball has always been my #1 sport and still is. However unlike other professional sports, the NFL plays once a week and there's something magical about being able to sit down for one day (really 6 hours) and catch a week's worth of action. So I'm psyched about the start of the NFL season and have all the games on NFL Sunday Ticket even though my favorite team the Bears aren't supposed to be very good this year.

The consensus is that the Bears are a 6-10 or 7-9 team. However I'm actually excited about their potential. This would look a lot smarter before the first game against the Colts but I was really thinking it. 6-10 is based on an assessment that like last season they have no running game and no quarterback. However if their second-round draft pick or perhaps even Adrian Peterson can emerge as a solid running threat and Orton is mediocre instead of terrible, this team is really good in a hurry. As well, I've always felt a decent offense would improve the defense as they'd get longer breaks, spend fewer plays on the field and not have to defend a short field as often.

So far, so good.

Catching up

2008-09-08T11:13:00.000-07:00

I have a bunch of stuff to blog about. Look for a number of posts this week.

Five Thirty-Eight

2008-09-04T18:50:00.000-07:00

This may be the most fascinating site on the Internet right now.

Nate Silver is well-known for his work with Baseball Prospectus and PECOTA and now he's build a projection system not a prediction system for elections. This should be must read for every American at least once per week.

Before the Democratic convention, 538 projected an even race with a slight edge to Obama in electoral votes, popular vote, and likelihood of winning. Now it shows a big lead for the Democrats. That said polls are a bit of a trailing indicator and there aren't any polls that fully reflect the Republican convention. The projections attempt to adjust for that however. Have to read the latest blog posts to see where Obama has been gaining.

Spread Limit Poker

2008-07-12T17:22:00.000-07:00

When I started this blog, I thought I'd post a lot about poker. But it turns out when I'm playing I don't have time to post and when I'm not playing there's nothing to post.

I played 2-40 spread limit at Club Hollywood in Shoreline today. Washington doesn't allow true no limit poker (yet) and non-tribal casinos have a $40 maximum bet, so 2-40 spread is as close to no limit as you can get without driving an hour. I took a horrible beat early (I my opponent all-in on the flop with AQ on a Q-Q-4 board against 66 and he rivered a 6 for those who play poker) but sill finished a two hour session up $60. I believe this is the most beatable and profitable game in the area (Omaha/8 is pretty good too). It's still a small sample size, but in 7 sessions for a total of 26 hours, I'm averaging a profit of $27/hour and have only one losing session. I think the key thing is that people don't understand implied odds for what's sort of a no limit game. And there are just some people there to gamble.

Sonics gone

2008-07-04T19:10:00.000-07:00

...or so it seems.

It was a sad day in Seattle sports. We've known almost from day one that Clayton Bennett's plan was to move the team to OKC, whether he admits it or not. But I really thought they'd play out the lease. It was a sweet deal for the city -- they pocket the lost revenue and then some, but the local (Queen Anne) businesses that benefit from 41 Sonics home days get squat. Actually they get less than squat, they get screwed.

There's so much blame to go around, it's not funny. Bennett is obviously a snake is best described by the old joke -- how do you know when he's lying; answer: his lips move. Howard Schultz, who is a smart businessman was incredibly naive in buying the Sonics and selling to an out of town owner. A lot of people want to blame the city, but I'm of two minds here. Sure the city could have done more for the Sonics. But really spending taxpayer money to subsidize improving Key Arena for the Sonics would have been a bad move. As a whole people are against it and economic studies show it doesn't make sense. And they've already spent a bunch of money on two stadiums that have better draws. So to me, the city is stuck -- they shouldn't get a penny to the Sonics owners, but if they don't the team leaves.

The Schultz suit is still out there, but to me this is one of those suits that has a lot of merit in concept -- it's pretty clear Bennett failed to act in good faith, but in the end he won't win because a court won't reverse a sale two or three years later, after some assets have been sold and the team has moved.

I'm 90% sure Seattle will get another NBA team. The Pacific Northwest is just too large to only have one team. I'm also 90% sure it won't happen in the next 5 years.

Why I Don't Watch the NBA

2008-06-17T07:20:00.000-07:00

or at least don't watch very much.

Tim Donaghy levels some pretty serious allegations at the league about influencing the outcome of games. Donaghy isn't exactly what we'd consider a fine, upstanding citizen and obviously we should believe this just because he says it's true. However one of three things are true:

Donaghy's statements are 90% truth. Maybe he doesn't remember details exactly or maybe he exaggerated a bit.
There's some basis to what he says -- some conversations between the league and the officials on how to call specific games, some things he was told though perhaps misunderstood -- but the specific examples are made up or speculation.
Donaghy made the whole thing up.

David Stern wants you to believe #3. In fact the league's response is to attack Donaghy's character rather than try to defend or interpret the incidents. Does anyone who's watched the NBA really believe option #3 represents reality. While they won't back Donaghy directly (good choice), Phil Jackson and Jeff van Gundy acknowledge they don't believe #3.

We ALL know there different rules for superstars in the NBA. The Piston's "Jordan Rules" was always a double-entendre. Even if the league won't admit it, every TV commentator talks openly about it. The stars get protected -- the fans pay big $ to see them play or watch them on TV and really it's good for the league -- though it's clearly dishonest officiating.

Do I think the NBA is fixed -- predetermined like "pro wrestling"? No. But as far back as the year Jordan retired and the Bulls couldn't get a call, I've wondered if the officiating was totally on the up and up. It's ten+ years and I don't remember the plays, but I remember feeling the Bulls got jobbed. Maybe it's just as subtle as the selection of officials for the game or points of emphasis. Let's say the NBA didn't want the Malone-Stockton Utah Jazz to advance in a playoff series because Salt Lake City is a small city. By assigning referees who call lots of moving screens and let the defense get away with bumping and holding on the pick and roll, they can call the game "fairly" while putting the Jazz at a disadvantage.

I've watched most of the Magic games when I was visiting family in Orlando. And I've checked scores as I've passed by a TV. The one time I actually watched was the last minute of the LA-San Antonio game which solidified my view. It was the game when the San Antonio player was tackled with 1 second to go and prevented from shooting a game-winning or game-tying shot. When many inside and outside the game played it off as "you can't blow the whistle there" or "referees shouldn't decide the game' (ironic) , I wonder how you can honestly let the defense prevent a player from taking a shot.

Did anyone think the Celtics were going to win game 5 yesterday? It may be said half in jest, but with all the hype would the NBA let this be a 5-game series!?!

2007-2008 new TV shows recap

2008-05-26T11:44:00.000-07:00

With the TV season nearing a close -- there are a lot of season finales on my TiVo -- it's time to look back on the new shows I noted I'd be watching and see how they turned out.

I watched every episode of Chuck and Monica even watched for a while but I think she quit following when they got backed up on the TiVo. I liked the show a lot and am looking forward to next season. Dirty Sexy Money -- watched bits of a few episodes; never got into it, never taped it, really don't know if it's good or not. Gossip Girl was my favorite new show of the year. It's good, clean trash television a la Melrose Place or Beverly Hills 90210. There's actually a bit of plot but I think this replaces Veronica Mars as the best written show on TV -- great snark, great kids acting like adults and parents acting like kids, a little bit of mystery. I've seen every episode of Veronica Mars and Gossip Girl is no Veronica Mars. But GG season 1 was more enjoyable that VM season 3. It's one of those shows where you look forward to next week's episode.

Pushing Daisies was the best new concept of the season. It's a pity this show got cut short by the writers strike. Like a good cherry pie, the show is a bit sickeningly sweet at times. Monica watched every episode of me with this one too. Worth watching live. We watched the first couple of episodes of Reaper, then several episodes got backed up on our TiVo and eventually they were deleted without being watched. I'm thinking of ordering the DVD to see what I missed and figure out if I should watch next year. Aliens in America met the same fate. It conflicted with Big Bang Theory and got taped on our second TiVo and eventually deleted in favor of poker. AiA was canceled so I'll never know. Back to You was laugh-out-loud funny at times though it went downhill as they replaced the actress playing Gracie just as she became a key character. I'm sorry it won't be back next year but at least it got a full season and some closure. Apparently the ratings were good, but not great, especially after the strike but with Kelsey Grammer and Patricia Heaton, it was too expensive to produce. Not sure what happened to Return of Jezebel James. The start got delayed and we saw the second episode but never figured out when it was on.

The $4 barrier

2008-05-26T11:28:00.000-07:00

It finally happened that I paid $4/gallon for REGULAR gas. I've been over $4/gallon for premium for a while, but had to fill up the car that takes the "cheap gas" today. It doesn't seem like that long ago we broke the $2 threshold.

That said I think higher gas prices are a good thing. While I hate to see the price of any consumable go up -- higher gas prices cost Monica and I around $1000/year which is not chump change -- my hope is that we hit the pain threshold where people change their driving behaviors.
At some point people get out of their cars and take public transit to work, move or change jobs closer to home, run fewer errands or consolidate them, or do lots of things to get cars off the road. And cars off the road and less dependence on oil is a good thing.

It's always amazing to see how a pseudo holiday reduces traffic to a non-factor. On Friday, the Friday before a three-day weekend, I hit almost no traffic going to work leaving at a time where I'd normally drive 20 MPH much of the way. If we could permanently reduce the number of cars on the road (in the Seattle area) by just 10-15%, we'd go back to rush hour and not rush hours from 7-10 and 3-7. And no one would complain about that.

Storm win home opener

2008-05-19T21:47:00.000-07:00

The Storm won their home opener Saturday night. After playing even for almost three quarters, they finally figured out the Sky and went on a huge run. The Sky outscored the bench a lot in the final minutes so it was only a six point margin, but the game was essentially a blowout.

It was also a very emotional game as it was the first game since a local group of women calling themselves "Force 10" bought the team from Clayton Bennett. Not only were the fans thrilled to know the Storm would be here long term, but the players brought the new owners to center court to join the post game celebration circle.

The Storm have a chance to be something special this year. When Sheryl Swoopes and Yolanda Griffith are your fourth and fifth best players that's quite a team if they have something left.

Taking Responsibility

2008-04-23T08:01:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I left voice messages for five different people, two left for businesses before 9 AM. In three cases I was doing someone the courtesy of responding to their message or email and in three cases I was calling a cell phone (two overlapped) where I'd think I'd be able to reach someone in the first place. Just about every call required a two-minute discussion.

None of the people called me back yesterday though one did just email me back this AM -- to say he found other Mariners tickets. Now I don't expect people to drop everything when I call or they get a voice mail from me. But each of my calls had some sense of time sensitivity, in some cases for the callee. Have people lost common courtesy. Do people not take responsibility anymore for communication? Are we all too busy surfing the Internet to have a human conversation?

I admit some of the pot calling the kettle black, but my frustration is the underlying sense that three days from now I'll still be waiting for responses.

Amazon.com strange shipping

2008-04-12T10:41:00.000-07:00

For Monica's birthday I ordered her two CDs from Amazon.com. I ordered them at the same time and they're both by the same artist. This seems like the kind of user behavior that happens a thousand times a day, though the artist wasn't mainstream.

Here's what we got:

The package on the right was shipped first from Illinois and arrived this morning. The one on the right was shipping a day later from California and arrived yesterday afternoon.
And of course the packaging is very different. Somehow this doesn't seem like the most efficient way to do this, either for Amazon or for me.

The good news is despite their prediction of an April 14th delivery, BOTH CDs made it her for her birthday.

Dog update

2008-04-12T10:02:00.000-07:00

Those who have met Cocoa know he scratches and chews his paws quite often. We took him to a dermatologist last Friday to get checked out.

After giving him the once over he gave Cocoa allergy tests. Cocoa failed miserably. I wish we had a picture but couldn't get him to sit still. Picture a 4 x 10 grid with a dot at every vertex and big dots and most vertices. The large dots are everything he's allergic to including cat dander, wool, and grass. Great for a dog who lives in a house with oriental rugs and a cat and likes to run around a grassy back yard. We're getting him some allergy shots to desensitize him. We're also working on clearing up some yeast infections that cause him to itch. We hope he's better soon and thankfully he's really not so bad right now.

Hunny Bear went to the vet today because he's occasionally been limping. Thankfully the diagnosis is minor. His kneecaps are both loose but it's a grade 1 or 2 on a scale of 1-5. The vet recommended doing nothing.

Long time, no blog

2008-03-18T21:59:00.000-07:00

Eek. It's been a long time since I've blogged. Lots of stuff happening but unfortunately that leaves me little time to blog. I'll try to catch up with some short posts over the next few days.

Had a very neat experience at the end of February. In 2006 at the Jewish Day School auction, Monica won me the experience to go to a Sonics game with Seattle P-I writer Jim Moore. We finally got it scheduled for Feb 24 to see Kobe Bryant play. (Free tickets to a Sonics game isn't reason enough to go.)

Jim was kind enough to take me out to dinner before the game and we got to chat for an hour or so about Seattle sports, his background -- he actually grew up in a house not far from where we live -- and being a sportswriter. Then before the game, he had a press pass made for me and we got to walk around behind the scenes. I watched as he interviewed Jalen, a six-year-old kid on the Sonics boom squad, and the Jalen's dad. Well, at least I watched until the cheerleaders walked by about four feet away. I don't remember much of the interview after that though dad
was surprisingly level-headed and realistic about his son. The article never did run as far as I could see.

The game was a laugher and Kobe got tossed in the third quarter. But it was the most fun I'd had at a Sonics game in years.

Geneology and Family Tree

2008-01-11T17:42:00.000-08:00

At the end of 2007, a friend turned Monica and I on to Geni, where you can create a family tree and make all of your relatives members and then can add to the tree and add their relatives and so on and so on. Essentially it's viral* family tree.

Monica and I each had family trees that were put together from our father's sides and were able to add a lot of relative beyond what we might know off the top of our heads. Then my parents both got involved and talked to my grandmother and filled out as much of their families as they knew. And slowly we're adding some (geographically) distant cousins who are adding their families. And we're searching on the internet to see if we can find people.

One of the neatest parts of searching for information was having my mom go through her old records and searching the Ellis Island records and finding the official records where my grandmother (mom's mother) and her brother and parents came to the United States. It's also somewhat surprising to find information that conflicts.

I hope as time goes by other members add to the tree. Anyone who is married into the family has a whole tree to add. And I'm going to start searching Facebook to find many of my third cousins who I don't know at all.

If you're in my family, let me know and I can give you access to the tree. Or think about starting your own family tree.

Happy New Year

2008-01-01T21:10:00.000-08:00

Best wishes for a terrific 2008. Maybe this will be the year Monica blogs.

I sent our New Year's letter out this AM so you know what we've been up to. If you didn't get it let me know.

I'm already off to a good start, completing a couple of small projects around the house and having a winning day in poker.

My latest project is working on our family tree on Geni. More on that later.

Charlotte Goes Home

2007-12-08T10:34:00.001-08:00

Our latest foster dog Charlotte is going home today after 7 months of being a guest in our house. She's gotten along great with Hunny Bear, Cocoa, and Jasmine. We'll miss her a lot -- Monica a lot more than me cuz she bounds too much with foster dogs -- but are thrilled that she's found a great forever home.

She's also improved her condition tremendously while she's been here as you can see in these photos. No camera tricks here. When she came to Beagle Rescue she was 53 pounds and at her most recent vet exam she was down to an almost svelte 36 pounds. She could still stand to loose a few pounds -- couldn't we all after Thanksgiving -- but she's no longer horribly obese. She loves playing and going for a walk, both of which have helped her trim down.

Here's one more set of before and after photos.