ADD for babies

When do kids gain focus? I had my son for TBall practice again and he kept getting distracted and wanting to go play in the park or run around, or something. It wasn't that he didn't enjoy baseball, as he was having fun, but he simply did not have the focus to stick with it for long. I wonder at what age they derive better focus.

This weekend I get to go to his TBall game, so that's sweet.

I'm slightly grumpy at the wife for not playing World of Warcraft with me last night. Sounds funny, but its just one of those plans gone awry thing. On the way into work yesterday we talked about doing an instance together, and went over strategy and some things we needed to do, etc. So when I got home, I worked on buying some eq upgrades, doing some fishing to make up money for the upgrades, and then logged into my priest alchemist. I sent him hunting for materials, and made enough potions to last us for the instance, and then mailed them off.

Then the wife said she didn't want to play.

Bah.

Catch Up

Well, the prerelease went great. Money was good and the event went well. And sometimes things just work out to your advantage.

I've been having computer problems for a while now, so I was hoping, if things go well, I could just screw it and buy a new computer. But I figured that asking the wife would be a challenge for this one.

On Saturday, however, amidst the chaos of the event, my wife turns to me and says "This is ridiculous. We really need to buy another portable so we can have two to run things at the same time for these events!"

Well, uh, ok. If we have to.

I got one today, 1.8 Centurion, 15.4 in Screen with a really nice graphics card, 80 gig drive, express bus, etc. World of Warcaft looks amazing on it. We upgraded the memory from 512K. I bought a one gig, but it turns out they had two 256's in their, so they left a 256 in and plugged a one gig in the other slot, so plenty of memory.

That being said, WoW was laggy last night. Did anyone else have this problem? It felt like it was a network issue more than an issue with my computer... The wife and I sat on the couch, portable next to portable, playing. It was damn fun.

Played some poker last night too. In a limit holdem ring game playing $.10/$.20 I went from $4.95 to $9.77 in an hour or two, even after losing a HUGE pot when my full house lost to a bigger full house. OUCH. Then I played in a tournament, missed some big flops, was down to half stack with the blinds advancing, and saw KK in my hand. I really needed a double up, so I just pushed all in and prayed I would get a call. I did, by Jd8d. Flop was J98. Turn was a 10, but I could not get the Queen or King I needed and our I went to two pair. Bleh.

I really feel so much more comfortable in a limit ring game. I think I can perform in a ring game correctly almost every single time. In a no limit game I don't feel nearly as confident, but I think its mainly because my no limit experience is mainly multi table tournaments. I need to work on that.

Tonight is pub poker time, which should be fun. I've had a big urge to write lately, so I may start doing that again. We'll see how it goes.

Exhausted

Not ignoring you all. I just am exhausted. Prerelease went great, but now all the work is catching up to me. Tonight is all paperwork, tomorrow is poker. I'll try to think up something good in the next 24 hrs to talk about.

Everybody's Working for the weekend!

Except me. I am working this weekend. The whole weekend long. Its time for one of my big events that happens about once a quarter, which is normally a big pay off for me. But this event has been so much more work for what feels like less actual benefit. The hosting company keeps requesting more and more stuff from me and I'm not making any more money out of the deal.

Here is a short list:

1) They wanted me to prescan all product I am using and have it to them by today. We normally just scan all product we are using after the event, but now we have to do ALL of it before. And when did we find this out? Yesterday. I spent last night doing Phoenix, but had no way in hell to do San Diego. Maybe next time we should get an actual advance notice of this....

2) Web Stats. The hosting company suddenly decided they want to track the web hits to our site for traffic measurement. This week. Fortunately I have a great web master who already has some fantastic stuff set up, but another ton of work to heap on the week of the event.

3) Surveys. They want us to pass out surveys at this event. That's bad enough, but the kicker came when we got a spreadsheet asking us to compile all of the survey data for them and send that back. So now I am their marketing R&D department too?

4) Lifestyle DVD. This week we suddenly got a DVD in the mail They want us to play this DVD over and over again at the event to highlight the lifestyle of their game. Because you know, I want to spend an extra $200 on AV to advertise for them a dvd that is unlikely to actually be viewed by anyone but bored parents. Again, just got it this week.

5) Prereg. This is admittedly not from the hosting company. I noticed in the last marketing blitz responses a couple of comments about players desire for Preregistration, so I reimplemented preregistration. I gotta be honest, preregistration is a huge annoyance factor for me, and I only do it for customer satisfaction issues. It requires more staff, it has more logistical issues, and it means more work for me pre-event. I was surprised to learn that some organizer a) give discounts for prereg (so they're doing more work for less money) and b) charge the players in advance (thus having to pay transaction fees, and possible chargebacks for no shows). Whatever works for them I guess.

6) I am short staffed! Another issue that is not really the hosting companies fault, but I was short to begin with this time, and in the past week one guy has stated he is sick, and my wife, who is a huge help, won't be there for the first hour or two. Not so good for me..

So I'm stressed and bitching a bit, but that's the way it goes. I'm sure it will be fine when I get there. I always find a way to make it all work out.

Have a good weekend.

A typical Wednesday night.

I caught very few hands. I made it to top 14 and lost when my short stack went all in with the best hand and got rivered. End of story.

I thought I'd cut it down to the basest form because everything else is just details about bad beats. At least I had the one hot girl of the entire tournament at my table for most of the night.

I have no urge to type here today. Sorry. I'll go now.

Caught Up

I got the big judge e-mail done for the prerelease, making me feel a lot better about getting things done. Took me over 90 minutes. Sheesh. Then I did another half hour of preregistrations. I hate preregistrations, but the players love it. Its really a ton of extra work for me, but if the players want it, so be it.

Not much really happened past that. We played with the kids for a little while, then it was their bed time, then the wife and I had our bed time *wink wink* so there's not much to write about for the evening. Tonight is pub poker, and next week I hope to play in the work tounament for $40. It seems soft, so I think I can handle it, but who knows.

I downloaded the WSOP audio coverage and am listening to it at work. hehehe. Not much else to talk about today. I'll give you guys some poker talk tomorrow.

Second Job

So, my secondary job is event management. I run tournaments for game companies mostly, and this weekend is one of the larger one's out there, called a prerelease. I am responsible for a 350 person event in Phoenix and a 350 person event in San Diego simultaneously. I need to arrange product, staffing, sites, and all the other fun stuff that goes along with event management.

The way this event works is that each player pays an entry fee and gets a set amount of cards for this game that they then use to build a deck they use to play against their opponents. The cards they get come in two forms, tournament packs and booster packs. In addition, for playing in this event, they get a special prerelease card. So, when I get the product in, I normally set aside a night to do "baggying." This is the process of building little bags of what each person should get when they sign up: one prerelease card, one tournament pack, and two booster packs. Making these bags in advance makes it much easier to get an event running when it is time.

Yeah, that's what the wife and I did last night. I invited some friends to come help, but everyone bailed on me. The wife was pissed about this, but me, not so much. I mean, first of all its is pretty annoyingly boring work and its for free, not to mention the fact that I gave them zero days advance notice, so I can't really blame them. While I am sure that some of it is the inherent laziness of my friends, its not something I think I can hold against them. Heck, *I* didn't want to do the job.

No poker last night and no cute kids stories. I'll try to work on that more tonight.

Some Interesting Hands

This weekend was pretty good. It was a relaxing time, got some work done, got some chores done, got to spend time with the wife and kids, and got to play some poker. I have two hands to post today as a good example of the highs and lows of poker, but first I want to share another story for the weekend.

My three year old son watches me play online all the time, and is very interested in cards as a whole, obviously a daddy trait. He even says cute phrases like "Chip In" when I bet, and whenever he sees an ace he says "Ace Wins!" All those are cute in their own right, but then he hit me up with a new one. Happy me gets dealt pocket aces, and since he always says "Ace Wins!" when one ace comes up, I asked what two aces meant, and he replies to me "That means you have to do War!" And was very confused when I couldn't put down three more cards for "war."

Too cute for words.

Ok, now, to go over my "High and Low" hands, starting with my High hand, mainly because this was a first for me:

> ***** Hand History for Game 11431756 *****
> 10.00/20.00 Texas Hold'em (No Limit) - Sat Sep 17 05:27:43
> Table 17 (10 max) -- Seat 8 is the button
> Tourney ID 5970, Level 1
> Seat 1: Piano54 (2280)
> Seat 2: runningman (1870)
> Seat 3: cerapino (1470)
> Seat 4: fairview (1340)
> Seat 5: bars1 (1390)
> Seat 6: Ray_Powers (1410)
> Seat 7: leroy777 (1010)
> Seat 8: gross (3080)
> Seat 9: gavsol (2730)
> Seat 10: HowardLederer (1500)
> gavsol : Small Blind (10)
> HowardLederer : Big Blind (20)
> ** Dealing down cards **
> Dealt to Ray_Powers [ Kh Qh ]
> Piano54 : Fold
> runningman : Call (20)
> cerapino : Fold
> fairview : Fold
> bars1 : Call (20)
> Ray_Powers : Raise (40)
> leroy777 : Call (40)
> gross : Fold
> gavsol : Call (30)
> HowardLederer : Fold
> runningman : Call (20)
> bars1 : Raise (60)
> Ray_Powers : Raise (200)
> leroy777 : Fold
> gavsol : Call (160)
> runningman : Call (160)
> bars1 : Raise (340)
> Ray_Powers : Raise (1410)
> gavsol : Fold
> runningman : Fold
> bars1 : Call (1050)
> ** Dealing Flop ** : [ Ah Th Jh ]
> ** Dealing Turn ** : [ 7d ]
> ** Dealing River ** : [ Qd ]
> ** Summary **
> Main Pot: 3240 | Rake: 0
> Side Pot: 20 | Rake: 0
> Board: [ Ah Th Jh 7d Qd ]
> bars1 lost 1390 [ Kd Ad ] [ a straight, ace to ten -- Ah Kd Qd Jh Th
> Ray_Powers bet 1410, collected 3260, net +1850 [ Kh Qh ] [ a royal flush, ace high -- Ah Kh Qh Jh Th ]
> Ray_Powers wins 3240 from the main pot with a royal flush, ace high
> Ray_Powers wins 20 from side pot #1 with a royal flush, ace high



Yay for my first Royal Flush! Pretty Lucky too, considering I was dominated preflop.



That one made the sting from this one hurt a lot less. In fact, I just plain laughed when this one happened.


> 3000.00/6000.00 Texas Hold'em (No Limit) - Mon Sep 19 03:45:55
> Table 16 (10 max) -- Seat 8 is the button
> Tourney ID 6038, Level 15
> Seat 4: bztian (7529.40)
> Seat 5: player79 (88957.20)
> Seat 6: mudflats (37287)
> Seat 7: GCCinny (92117.20)
> Seat 8: countrygirl41 (20605)
> Seat 9: Ray_Powers (25490)
> Ray_Powers : Ante (300)
> bztian : Ante (300)
> player79 : Ante (300)
> mudflats : Ante (300)
> GCCinny : Ante (300)
> countrygirl41 : Ante (300)
> Ray_Powers : Small Blind (3000)
> bztian : Big Blind (6000)
> ** Dealing down cards **
> Dealt to Ray_Powers [ Jh Jd ]
> player79 : Fold
> mudflats : Fold
> GCCinny : Fold
> countrygirl41 : Fold
> Ray_Powers : Raise (25190)
> bztian : Call (1229.40)
> ** Dealing Flop ** : [ 7s 7c 5c ]
> ** Dealing Turn ** : [ 7h ]
> ** Dealing River ** : [ Kd ]
> ** Summary **
> Main Pot: 16258.80 | Rake: 0
> Side Pot: 17960.60 | Rake: 0
> Board: [ 7s 7c 5c 7h Kd ]
> bztian bet 7529.40, collected 16258.80, net +8729.40 [ 7d 4s ] [ four of a kind, sevens -- 7s 7h 7d 7c Kd ]
> Ray_Powers bet 25490, collected 17960.60, net -7529.40 [ Jh Jd ] [ a full house, sevens full of jacks -- 7s 7h 7c Jh Jd ]
> bztian wins 16258.80 from the main pot with four of a kind, sevens
> Ray_Powers wins 17960.60 from side pot #1 with a full house, sevens full of jacks



What ya gonna do there, really? Called by 7-4 offsuit and he picks up four of a kind? Ah well...



Have a good one all.

Family Man

Last night was my son's first T-ball Practice. Although I'm not a sports dad, this was a very exciting thing for me. He got his glove and was gleeful about the prospect of "playing ball." Now, he's three years old, and his team was the 3-4 range, so my expectation of anything remotely resembling a real baseball game was low, but as long as he had fun, it didn't matter to me.

The coach was fine, the coach's daughter who is also playing was pretty bratty, but whatever. Randy hit a couple of balls off the tee, then went out to the field to catch balls the other kids hit. That went about as expected, with 7 kids all huddled as close to the batter as the coach would let them running after every ball that was hit because somehow they would all miss it. My son actually caught two balls, and his throwing is pretty good when it goes off. Sometimes he just plain releases too early and the ball goes straight up.

I was surprised by the fact that the 3-4 range had somehow become the 3-5 range when I wasn't looking, and it turns out my son was the only 3 year old, the rest of the kids being four and five. But he didn't seem to be intimidated at all, so good for him, although his three year old lack of attention span did make for the funny event of the evening. The coach was teaching the kids how to run the bases which he described as a drill beneficial to "both the kids and the parents." The parents were extremely amused at the fact that he showed the kids all of the bases, and their names, and what order to run them in, but the kids just did not get it. He would say 'Ok now, what base do we run to FIRST?" and we'd hear kids yelling "Second! No wait Home Plate!"

Eventually they all got it and they did the first run to first plate. Then they had to run to first AND then second. The first kid decided to run the whole bases. The second did it right, then came my son who ran to first and rounded it like a champ... And then just kind of ran off aimlessly, settling on the pitcher's mound where he proceeded to spin in circles because he thought it was funny.

I was torn between cracking up with the rest of the parents, and silently taking note to check my child for brain damage. Just kidding, I cheered him on and told him good job and got him back into line for another go. He was having so much fun.

Since he was so good listening to his coach and I was so proud of him, I decided to give him a super special treat. Since we were literally less than a half mile from home, off all major roads, I asked him if he wanted to sit in the front seat instead of his booster chair in the back. I figured for such a short drive at 25 miles per hour in the complex he would be safe, and I'd buckle him in tight of course. I told him he wasn't allowed to tell mommy though, because she would be mad. (Mommy was off with my daughter at her swim class. We have a busy Thursday night.)

He was grinning like mad all the way home, and we got home and I cooked up a quick dinner. Shortly later my wife came home with my daughter and I started talking to my daughter about her swim class when I hear this exchange:

"Did you have fun at baseball practice?"
"I got to ride in the front seat!"

DOH! Pwned and double pwned!

Yeah, I didn't get any last night.

(For those of you that only listen to me for the poker updates, here's a quick one. Knocked out early of an MTT when my big blind 36 ran into 3Q on a board of 733. Who woulda thunk? Then I played a ring game and won about 5bb/100 in a short session. It felt good playing in a ring game of limit hold'em. Its where I feel most comfortable right now.)

Moved

So, I was a huge fan of modblog for the longest time. My good friend Brad had worked on it for a while, and it had some great functions. But as time went by, the server started having problems and the blog was down for long periods of time. I was disappointed, but determined to stick it out, until today.

Yesterday someone on Full Contact Poker had nicely pointed out that my blog link in my sig was not working. If someone saw my blog link in my sig on Full Contact Poker and clicked on it, they got a blocked error and to contact abuse. I contacted modblog to find out what was up and they mentioned that modblog had recently blocked several "gambling and porn" sites from linking to them because of complaints. Now, Full Contact Poker has one blog on it Daniel N's, but is basically just a forum site, not a "gambling site." This was annoying.

But then it got worse. Modblog then complained that the three links I had in my blog were a violation of their Terms of Use because they were advertisments with click referrals.

Link 1 was a link to Poker Source online, which doesn't sell anything, but gives people good deals on Bonuses for signing up on Poker sites. In that link there is a referrer code I use, but its not per click. Still, ok, I would concede this one just ot be nice.

Link 2 was to Cardplayer.com, the electronic form of the Popular Poker Magazine, which sells basically nothing.

Link 3 was to Full Contact Poker, which as we just went through, is a forum site.

They were nice enough about the whole thing when I pointed this out, but nonetheless, they have now been filed under my "too stupid to deal with" category so I am moving my blog. To here I guess. Going to try it out for a few days and see how it goes. Meanwhile, if you have no idea who I am and just stumbled here because you troll Blogspot, feel free to check out my old blog at http://monkster.modblog.com.

You know, if they don't block it.