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.
Thursday, August 19
Saturday, August 14
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.
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.
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.
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.
Tuesday, August 10
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.
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.
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.
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