Friday, July 27, 2007

Free space: 5,249,558,134,784 bytes

I just finished setting up a storage server at work. It might not be large for some people, but it's the biggest RAID 5 array I've ever administered...I'm a little giddy.

Are you immune to phishing?

http://www.siteadvisor.com/quizzes/phishing_0707/

That's a pretty good quiz to test your phishing detection skills. Being in the IT world for awhile and having worked in a financial institution for 2 years, I would have been devastated by anything less than a perfect score on this test :)

It's a good quiz though...I'd recommend everyone take it to brush up on phishing detection.

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

A Chip and a Virtual Chair

This past Friday night I played in a bounty tournament on UltimateBet.com. For those of you who don’t know, in a bounty tournament, part of your buy-in goes to the prize pool and part of it becomes a “bounty” on your head; whoever knocks you out gets your bounty. This particular tournament was a $25 buy-in ($20 to the prize pool and $5 bounty). I really like the idea of having a bounty because it means you don’t even have to make the money to earn your buy-in back. It also slightly alters the style of play. People are more likely to call your all-in, knowing that if they knock you out it’s money in their pocket.

Anyway, I started playing and I always play rather conservative in the first several rounds of a tournament because there are so many players that play a lot of hands simply because the blinds are cheap. If most of my table is playing loose, I tend to play tighter. So, I expected to not play many hands. I did not expect, however, to have such a long stretch of bad cards. I think in the first 2 hours I played 5 hands. It was horrible.

A couple times I had medium strength hands (AT, A9, QJs, 22, 33, etc.) that I would have liked to see a flop with, but every time I limped in or made a 2x the BB raise, I was raised or re-raised. It was the worst run of cards I have had in a long time. I eventually got down to only a single BB in chips left. I had the button, so I knew that one of the next 9 hands would be my all-in. I don’t remember what I played, but I tripled up. So, now I had to make another move very soon. Well, I did and it faired well for me. I was able to stay alive long enough to make the money. Out of 365 entries, 40 players made the money. When we hit 40 players I gave a big sigh of relief. I did it! I had the least amount of chips out of anyone in the tournament, but I was still here and I was walking away with at least something.

At this point in the tournament something changed. It was a combination of a couple things. First of all, I started to get a few hands now and then. I got TT, AK, AQ, 88, etc. I also loosened up my play quite a bit because the fear of being knocked out before the money was gone.

So, the end of the story is that when we got down to the final table I found myself in 2nd chip position and I was able to keep that position until we got down to heads-up play! I couldn’t believe it! It was after 11pm and I had been playing for over 4 hours so I was a bit tired and I didn’t play a very good heads-up game. I ended up getting 2nd place! It was my biggest cash in any tournament by far and probably my biggest accomplishment in poker. Not only did I get 2nd out of 365, but I did it coming back from just having a chip and a virtual chair :)

Saturday, July 07, 2007

Ordering Pizza Online

The last time I tried order pizza online was in the summer of 2000. Krista and I were just married and we decided to try ordering pizza online. After an hour or so had passed after we placed our order and there was no pizza, I called them. Our conversation went something like this:
Me: Yeah, I ordered a pizza online over an hour ago and it isn't here yet.
Them: Online?
(pause)
Them: Oh yeah, online! Yeah...hang on...let me verify your order...
(pause)
Them: Ok, now, what did you order? And, what was your address?
(I give him my order)
Them: Yeah, I think that's just coming out of the oven...yeah, it's on its way!
And about 40 minutes later we got our pizza. Not the best ever, but hey, it was worth a try to order online.

Lately I've noticed all the pizza places in town advertising online ordering. It's been 7 years and now they are advertising it...I'll give it another shot. Just sent my order off for a couple P'zones from Pizza Hut. We'll see if we get it :)


UPDATE: We got our pizza! No problems! Wow! Pizza technology has come a long way in the last 7 years ;) Oh, and P'zones are great!

Transformers

I enjoyed watching the new Transformers movie this week, but this guy took it a little too far:

(originally posted by PunkJr on Flickr.com)

While we were up at Krista's parents for the 4th of July holiday, we snuck away to the theater and saw Transformers. I loved it! It brought back a lot of memories and made me check eBay for old 80's Transformers toys :) No, I didn't buy anything, but I'd like to :)