Arcade: First Saturday a Success!

Okay, to start off with, a lot of people have been asking for photo updates. So, I have created a flickr photo set that I will be adding photos to. Here it is!

I got to my parents house at about 9:30 Saturday morning and Zach and I started working. We learned very quickly that we had very different approaches to the project, but it ended up working out. We spend the entire day planning, talking about things, what part should be what size, drawing, looking at other cabs online, etc. We decided about noon that we needed to go out and do a little research on a few cab related things. So, we tried to find arcade cabinets and pizza. We ended up 2 for 2 :) Regal Cinemas didn't have any arcade machines with joysticks, but Bullwinkle's did. We got our measurements and moved on to pizza. I haven't had pizza hut pan crust meat lover's pizza and cheesy break sticks for a LONG time...it was great!

Oh, k, back to the cabinet, sorry ;) After all the research and planning all day we finally knew what we needed to buy, so we headed off to Home Depot. We got all of our wood for the project and our polycarbonate thermoplastic. It was loads of fun. The lady at the checkout couldn't believe what we were building. Her response was, "What, are you guys tripp'n?!"

So now we have a garage filled with wood, all our plans for building it, and a lot of excitement and motivation :) Hopefully I will be blogging another update soon :)

Arcade Cab Update

Zach: "Four plus three quarters is . . ."
Bill: "Four and three quarters."

Arcade Cabinet Project Update

Well, after a lengthy hiatus, my arcade cabinet project is being resurrected. Zach expressed interest in building one also and I thought it would be a lot of fun to build them together, so I decided to wait and build mine with Zach. Well, my parents moved to an apartment for a couple months while they looked for a house….yada yada yada….project delayed until now. My parents have moved into their new place, Zach and I both have all our parts needed, and we are ready! Tomorrow morning we begin construction! I’ll post pics and give updates more frequently now that it’s in progress again :D

My girls

Here are the latest pictures of my cute little girls:

A couple of files

I found the following directory on our network at work. The entire contents is no longer needed. There is no reason the data will ever be needed again. Just a couple files in there taking up a little space... /sigh

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.

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 :)

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 :)