Farewell to Hunny Bear

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

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:

1. I played only B+/A- poker and could have played better.
2. 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.