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Got my new camera, finally, after the fedex guy tried twice before, but no one was home.
The camera seems to work fine, but I have concerns about the rechargable batteries that were included and the memory card. Always something. But I'll get it figured out.
I've had a pretty crazy day, which was preceded by a prety fun weekend, after a stressful, not fun week.
I stayed the extra day in Chicago to get all the work done. The more we walked about it at work today, the more we thought I actually was done, even though I left thinking I had more to do. So that's good.
Then Saturday I came home, and got out the tent that hadn't seen the light of day for 4 years, and set it up to make sure it was going to work for our camping trip the next day. All day the wind had been blowing like crazy, the ride home from Omaha was nasty, constatnly fighting it. Setting the tent up in it was equally unpleasant, but at least the tent was all there, and was going to work.
We started making a list of all the things to take, and started wondering about how crowded it was going to be, etc.
So Aubrey and I rode the bike out there, since it's only 15 minutes away, and we found that the wind had kept many people away, and there were plenty of spots to be had, even some by large trees so the wind wasn't so bad.
Sunday came around, and we spent all day getting ready. WHen I talked with Scott, he was already thinking of not camping the nite because of the wind. I told him about the spot I found that seemed much less windy, and convinced him to stay the nite with us, and since he was planning on going out earlie than us, I went out early too to setup our stuff.
When we got there, the spot we found was perfect, there was almost no wind there due to the trees.
Scott pulled the kids on a tube in his fishing boat and they loved it, except for the girls who didn't get to because they were too small. They didn't like that.
Soon, everyone else came out and had dinner
Later, we had a fun time actually making some use of the wind by flying BJ's hotrod kite, where Chad greatly exaggerated the difficulty of flying it.
Even though it's against the law, we still drank beer, but no one couuld tell, because we kept the beer in koozies.
Then we drank the rest of the nite, and went to bed around 1am, but I didn't fall adleep until close to 4am, and of course, you're up at dawn becuase it's impossilbe to sleep in a tent after the sun's out and all the animals are out making noise.
So we got up to go swimming again, but we were told that the ranger had come by and said the algae levels were too high and there was now no swimming allowed in the lake.
What, since yesterday? We didn't understand it, but that was that.
So we pcked up and went home to get some rest.
After we got home, Ann took the kids to the local pool to swim, and I took myself to my recliner for a nap.
Today, I went to the gym to run, then took my newly sandblasted savaga parts to my cousin and we arranged a time for him to begin painting them.
I then rode the GS to work, and put in a largely succesful day, having a delicious burrito for lunch.
On the way home, I realized I had left too late from work, and now had missed the girl's latest track practice, where they actually ran for ribbons, which annoyed me. I was already home, and no one was there, so I figured I'd go ride around some more. I cruised some neghborhoods, and then got an undeveloped area just south of us. I decided to do some off-roading.
Did I mention it rained last nite?
The results were not pretty.
As soon as I hit the mud, the bike stopped as the front fender filled with mud and locked the front tire. I dropped the bike, and had to walk back home.
Fun.
Then I recruited my neighbor and we drove back to the gs and pushed it out, and I spent the next hour hosing it off.
Oh well, all's well that ends well. I'm still going, and the biek is still going, so now I can laugh about it.
I'm bored in the hotel room right now. We've gone out to eat and drink a lot every other nite I've been here, so I'm taking a break tonite, playing some online poker (badly) and watching this positively awful movie "Alexander the Great". It's extra bad. But it's a nice change of pace. I think I got most of what I set out to do accomplished, but of course, there's still plenty left to do.
Plane ride to omaha tomorrow morning, then pick up the bike and ride home.
I have to get some work done on the basement bathroom, and get all our stuff ready to go camping sunday. Should be fun, I haven't gone camping in years.
Life in Chi-town (a moniker I think is extremely stupid) is going fine.
Except for one small thing, the guy I'm here to help out is not paying any attention to me, and is working on a completely different project. I just said to him "you realize I'm leaving in 2 days, right?"
Whatever. His loss.
I took my BMW to the dealer before I left, and the mechanic there didn't think he heard anything wrong, but I insisted he check the valves, mostly because I had already hauled it all the way up there.
When I got here, I rode Mark's R1150RT
for comparison, and I have to say, the noise is somewhat present in his engine too, so maybe it's not such a big deal. But mine is definately louder, so I want it fixed.
My eyebrows are bugging me. I can't stop rubbing them, and I think they're too bushy anyway. I'm considering shaving them off completely. Then maybe I'll be like those women that just paint them on. Or just nothing. It will make me unique.
Here's an amazing hand from a recent tournament I was in (I'm unpredictable)
Full Tilt Poker Game #657396655:
2,000 Play Money Sit & Go (4323274),
Table 1 - 60/120 - Limit Hold'em - 1:25:42 ET - 2006/05/23
Seat 1: unpredictable (1,130)
Seat 2: JACQUEPITT55 (160)
Seat 3: PHILLYGIRL29 (1,840)
Seat 4: ghostface3 (405)
Seat 5: Big Cargo (1,705)
Seat 6: gerardtd (2,625)
Seat 7: jones boy (4,235)
Seat 9: BGPerry (1,400)
gerardtd posts the small blind of 30
jones boy posts the big blind of 60
The button is in seat #5
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to unpredictable [Ts 9s]
BGPerry folds
unpredictable calls 60
JACQUEPITT55 calls 60
PHILLYGIRL29 calls 60
ghostface3 raises to 120
Big Cargo raises to 180
gerardtd folds
jones boy folds
unpredictable calls 120
JACQUEPITT55 calls 100, and is all in
PHILLYGIRL29 calls 120
ghostface3 raises to 240
Big Cargo calls 60
unpredictable calls 60
PHILLYGIRL29 calls 60
*** FLOP *** [2h 2s Td]
unpredictable checks
PHILLYGIRL29 checks
ghostface3 bets 60
Big Cargo raises to 120
unpredictable calls 120
PHILLYGIRL29 folds
ghostface3 raises to 165, and is all in
Big Cargo raises to 225
unpredictable calls 105
*** TURN *** [2h 2s Td] [7s]
unpredictable checks
Big Cargo bets 120
unpredictable calls 120
*** RIVER *** [2h 2s Td 7s] [5s]
unpredictable checks
Big Cargo bets 120
unpredictable raises to 240
Big Cargo calls 120
*** SHOW DOWN ***
unpredictable shows [Ts 9s] (a flush, Ten high)
Big Cargo shows [Kh Ks] (two pair, Kings and Twos)
unpredictable wins side pot #2 (840) with a flush, Ten high
ghostface3 shows [Ac Ad] (two pair, Aces and Twos)
unpredictable wins side pot #1 (815) with a flush, Ten high
JACQUEPITT55 mucks
unpredictable wins the main pot (890) with a flush, Ten high
JACQUEPITT55 stands up
ghostface3 stands up
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 2,545
Main pot 890.
Side pot 1 815.
Side pot 2 840. | Rake 0
Board: [2h 2s Td 7s 5s]
Seat 1: unpredictable showed [Ts 9s] and won (2,545) with a flush, Ten high
Seat 2: JACQUEPITT55 mucked [Jh 3c] - a pair of Twos
Seat 3: PHILLYGIRL29 folded on the Flop
Seat 4: ghostface3 showed [Ac Ad] and lost with two pair, Aces and Twos
Seat 5: Big Cargo (button) showed [Kh Ks] and lost with two pair, Kings and Twos
Seat 6: gerardtd (small blind) folded before the Flop
Seat 7: jones boy (big blind) folded before the Flop
Seat 9: BGPerry didn't bet (folded)
Clearly, I knew I was behind, I was hoping at the beginning that the two raisers just had overcards, and not big pairs. Then I hit top pair on the board, and continued to get more outs until I hit the runner runner.
Have to laugh at it
Went on to win the tournament, BTW.
Just got back my newly sandblasted suzuki parts. They are ready to be painted a color far more manly than orange. My cousin who's painting it originally was talking about putting all these crazy flames and lots of fancy stuff on it, I'm going to try to talk him out of that, for both cost and his time purposes. It makes no sense to have a $3000 paint job on a $1500 bike. I need to take the GS up to omaha this week, but I also need to fly to chicago with work clothes, so I'm not sure how that's going to work out.
Ann and I got to discussing summer plans, and it looks like the rest of my summer if practically planned out already.
5/27: Memorial day weekend: soccer & camping
6/24: road trip to Ft Collins brewfest
7/1: WSOP in Vegas
8/5:work in chicago
8/19-8/26: fishing trip
I'm still trying to find some time to work in a family trip to Ft. Collins and my parents in there too, and I have pretty much no vacation after all that, so that should be tricky.
This weekend we had the girls 6th birthday party,
complete with 16 screaming 6 year old girls. My dream come true. But it went well, and they all seemed to have a fun time. I needed to take a nap after it.
Then I had to go help out at my aunt's garage sale. I needed another nap then. After that, Ann's mom watched the kids, and Ann and I finally went to a swanky, new-to-us reaturant on our side of town, called the Venue. It was pretty good, but as expensive as I expected.
Sunday we had Aubrey's hockey game, and the girl's soccer, then we met Ann's brother's family at HuHot (again!). My large intestine hates me. I need to go on a diet again, I've been eating there so much lately.
Scott is a guy we play poker with, and I like his sense of humor.
An email from him today, after I asked him if he and his family would want to go camping with us sometime.
I'm 50-50 on this. My wife wants to go to eastern Iowa for a niece's graduation, and guess what, I don't. So if I can get her to leave one of my kids here, I'm in for a night or two.
Marriage is great, isn't it? Whenever you think that, remember, it is for everyone else too.
So I've been looking for a new digital camera for a while now. To give myself extra insentive, I traded my dad my old camera for the GPS handheld he got. Except for the fact that I still haven't actually given him the camera yet. Hmm, doesn't seem like a fair trade, eh?
So now I finally decided on this one.
It's the lesser version of my brother's, so I'm confident I will like it, but only time will tell.
Did I mention I got a B+ in my class? Holy crap, I can barely believe it!
My class has been over for 2 weeks. In general, I think grades are supposed to be posted the week following finals. I've been checking for my grade everyday since 5/8, and I have no grade. Yesterday I even asked our college secratary if she got her grades yet, and she said "yeah, I thought they were all supposed to be posted like 2 weeks ago"
"Yeah, me too"
So I've been starting to sweat this, why isn't my grade posted? I know I blew the first test HUGE. I got great grades on everything else, all the labs, projects and homeworks, but with only 2 tests at 30% each, that doesn't matter much.
The lovely thing about grad school (at least in the engineering college) is that no grade less than a B counts towards your degree, so anything less than a B is a good as an F. I get a freaking 59 on the first test. I'm nearly suicidal. Even if I get 100% on every other assignment, I would need a 90 or better on the final to get a B. Possible, just not terribly likely.
So everything was going to ride on the final.
I study my brains out, and then came the final.
8 problems of varying points each, the last being 20 points.
I felt like I nailed all but two. Which two? One 15 pointer, and of course, the 20 pointer. I ran out of time for the last one, and literally wrote "You need to do X,Y,Z (replaced of course by a couple of sentences of real engineering jargon), but I've run out of time, and just wanted to put something down to show that I knew how to approach the problem"
In other words "Please have mercy on me"
So cleary, I only write all this because today I checked, and my grade is finally posted, B+. I almost fell out of my chair.
My academic career can continue now.
ugh. The funny noises on the bmw are getting worse. I have an appt to take it to the dealer next week, but I think it should be sooner. Now of course I need to go to Chicago for a trip, so that will screw up my being able to get the bike up to omaha.
Fun.
So the girls are now 6. We took them to a build a bear place for their birthday, and they chose to go eat at the mongolian laxitive buffet. I didn't even make out of the restaurant this time.
They have a big party for friends tomorrow, that will be fun. 15 screaming 6 year old girls. Can't wait.
Oh well, as long as they have fun.
It's cool because Ann gets into it too, and she's got it all planned out, so I'm sure they'll have a good time. I'm pretty much going to be in the background, just doing manual labor. And that's just fine with me, I'm no good at decorating flip flops.
lagwagon song, not their best.
I have been trying like crazy to fall in love with the new tool album, but sadly, it's not taking. It took some time with the previous album, but not this long. I still like the new Built to Spill album much better.
The project I'm working on is a WinCE based project, which is embedded windows, which to you means putting 10lbs of sand in a 5lb bucket. Worse, there are few people who are familiar with WinCE because no one works on it, since few customers are calling for it. Well, apparently some of out customers did, so now we have to work with it, and no one knows squat.
Our solution: hire some contractors who are familiar with it to do that work. Fair enough. I have to do the audio portion of this project, and the contractor I am working with is pure evil. I generally get along with most people, becuase, let's face it, I'm a likable, tolerant guy. To a point, anyway. This guy had me pissed off within 30 seconds of meeting him, and it has only gotten worse since then. Apparently it's the same with every other person he's worked directly with at our company.
Ingenient's solution to this problem? Hire him full time, and make him a manager of a group.
I live in a Dilbert cartoon.
Had a productive day yesterday. Not so much at work, though, although it wasn't a bad day there either. I came home from work and broke out a fair section of the bathroom floor to find the sewer drain for the shower, but it doesn't appear to be there. Which doesn't make any sense, because the rough in area has a square where there in no concrete like that's where the drain is, yet there is no drain. I dug to 3' deep, and no pipe of any sort. So I guess that wasn't too productive, but at least I got going on it, since that project has been stalled for months now.
So then I went into the garage and thought I would start working on getting the honda running so I can sell it. I got it running in pretty short order. Not in a permanent fashion, mind you, but when I spray in starting fluid and hook it up to a good battery,. it will run. I think the carbs need to be adjusted for real performance. But if I can get it where it starts, then I can at least sell it.
I finished taking off the rest of the savage parts to be painted, and took them to the sandblaster this morning. So hopefully soon that little project will be done.
Today I should concentrate on getting more done here at work, although I have a lot of phone calls to make...
a little irritated this morning. The pig is making a funny noise lately. The kind of "clacking" noise that all vehicles make when you start them and the oil pressure hasn't built up yet. I had a car that had an oil pressure problem like that all the time, and it eventually threw a rod. The pig now makes this noise almost all the time now too. It actually doesn't really do it until it's warmed up though, and I can't figure out why that would be.
I think it's still under warrenty, so I have to call the "local" dealer in omaha to see if I can get some warrenty work done on it.
As my dad once told me, "when you buy a used vehicle, you're buying someone else's problem". Most assuredly.
I can't even remember how I came across this list, but I found the top 1200 high schools in the nation.
Curious, I went through the whole stinking list. Guess how many schools are in lincoln, or even nebraska?
The answer is the same, zero.
Poudre high was something like 300, which I was impressed with, as most of these schools seem to be private schools. Whatever. Guess I'm a lesser-than.
I finally went for a ride longer than 20 minutes on the new bike today. Got a big release done by noon, and played hooky the rest of the day. Rode to omaha, where of course, I played some cards. Then rode home in time to hang with the kids a few hours, although they barely noticed me, as they were playing with neighbors when I got back. Even so, a pretty good day. Although it was quite windy all day, which made the ride less than perfect, but it still beats working!
Since I'm not in class anymore, I can read for pleasure. I'm currently reading this book,
I can barely stand this book. I'm reading it because it seems that it's well regarded, but I can't stand the dialoge. It's all insane.
Here's a typical passage:
Dreedle wanted his men to spend as much time out on the skeet shooting range as the facilities and their flight schedule would allow. Shooting skeet eight hours a month was excellent training for them. It trained them to shoot skeet. Dunbar loved shooting skeet because he hated every minute of it and the time passed so slowly. He had figured out that a single hour on the skeet shooting range with people like Havermeyer and Appleby could be worth as much as eleven times seventeen years.
WTF!?!? Who talks or thinks like that? This guy had to be on some serious drugs.
It's official people. Vega$ for WSOP
At least so far it's me, Jeff and Aaron
Chad claims he's going, and going to play in the the first $1500 event as well. But we'll see, he has no tickets as of right now.
Anyone else want to meet us out there?
edit: Oh yes. We're going to be out there 6/28 - 7/2
Chad claims he's going to go earlier and play in the 6/27 $1500 NL Hold'Em event. We'll see.
The girls had track and soccer tonite. I only saw the track, where they had races. They were both consistantly in the top half, and Abby won her heat, and Ally came in 2nd in hers. It was impressive considering how short they are.
Weather here was absolutely perfect for riding today, but I went and bought a shower today, so drove everywhere.
Of course, tomorrow, when I'm considering riding to omaha, it's possibly going to rain again. Bleh.
Good weekend. The weather was cloudy, but it wasn't too cold, so you were able to be outside if you wanted.
Friday I went to Pete's monthly again, just for the cash game, and won $20 directly from Pete, right after he started playing. I may not be welcome back there anymore.
Saturday the girls and I did the Mayor's run, a 1 mile run for elementary kids and parents. About 3/4 of the way through, Abby said "I wished I didn't sign up for this". But we finished, and ran the whole way. Ally didn't seem to have as much trouble, but she did say that she was out of breath when we finished. Aubrey had his hockey game while we were there, and I guess they lost 9-10. Sheesh, sounds like a lacrosse score, not a hockey score.
Saturday nite we had some couples with kids come over so the kids could play, and we could drink. We had a good time, although I nearly drank too much. And by too much, I mean, I nearly puked during the course of the nite. But I stopped short of that, switched to water, and all was well.
Sunday, the girls had their soccer game, and Ally scored her first goal of the year. Both the girls have been insanely close to scoring in every game, yet neither has actually closed the deal yet. The only real goal scorers on this team are Abby, Ally, and a third girl, Grace. They're the only aggressive ones. The rest just run around.
Now that my semester is over, I started reading a new book (to me) "Catch-22 by joseph heller"
So far, I don't recommend this book. I must be pretty dense, because I'm 3 chapters into this book, and I can't tell what's going on at all. I think the author was on drugs, it's impossible to follow. But then, that's why I wasn't an english major. I seem to remember getting something like a 16 on the english part of the ACT.
Whoa boy, I am full. We just had a company employee lunch, massive amounts of sushi were had. The guy said "you know, this is an awful lot of sushi"
"I know, I know" I replied, acting like it was nothing to us.
We struggled, but we did finish it all, but now I am quite full. Fat and happy to be exact.
It's going to ruin me for the beginning of my very full weekend.
Tonite
5-7pm: elementary school spaghetti feed
9pm-? Pete's monthly poker tourn
Saturday
8am: Mayor's run
6pm: Sheltons are coming over to grill steaks
Sunday:
10am: Church
2pm: Girl's soccer
I have to work a nap or two in there somewhere, as well as maybe trying to go finally purchasing a shower and shower fixture so the basement bathroom can make some progress. But the naps are more important.
But no homework! woohoo!
Chad and I just got back from playing NL hold'em at the boats. I did pretty well, and am starting to see the allure of NL play. Chad's luck has gone from one extreme (very lucky for the last several months) so the absolute worst in the just the last 2-3 weeks. He got crushed tonite, and is was all jus bad luck, not bad plays/choices.
I had planned on riding up there, but it was quite cold and raining when we left, but of course, it was great weather when we came back home.
sigh.
oh boy. I do not think that final went well. I think I'll be throwing myself at the court's mercy.
I could not be happier about this class being over, it's been brutal, and the final was the steaming turd to top it all off with.
bleh.
Now I can start to turn my attention to the many projects I've been neglecting, such as:
The basement bathroom
Several various home electronic projects
Building another poker table
Changing motorcycle tire
Get old Honda running
probably others...
First tank of gas on the pyg.
227miles/6.5gal = 35.9 miles/gal
Hmm.. certainly isn't the 50+ my 650 savage gets, but it's still better than the 20 my truck gets.
Just distracting myself from studying. Oh yeah, and working.
Been studying for my final for 4 straight days. A little fried now.
It's all over tommorrow afternoon...