The Halls

Had a pretty laid back week this week.
Today, I worked from home. Over lunch, to train for our upcoming adventure race, we rode bikes, and I ended up riding over 20 miles! That is a personal record. On the way home, of course, I had to ride over the most hilly section, directly into the wind. It was the first time in my life I didn't want to pedal the whole way. I wanted to walk. I was crazy tired.
So when I got home, I had to take a nap.

And that is what is called 'the benefits of working at home'

Posted by Aaron at 1:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I have made a monumental decision. I am selling my GS.
I'm not riding it much anymore, and it's still worth some $$ so off it goes.
The other part of this monumental decision is that I posted an ad on a forum that gets a lot of traffic, and I chose to host the pictures myself, so I could display as many as I wanted and as big as I wanted in the ad.
But this means that my little home DSL apache server is really going to be put to the test.

I got some good news today, that my non-working AC in my truck was an easy fix. Not the $800+ fix I was anticipating. Now I should have a nice cool summer, unlike summers past.

I'm going to go get the truck, go home, and continue building the new swingset we got. Now we have one of the large wooden ones. Nothing other than swings, cuz I'm too cheap to spring for one of the huge ones, but this should be much more sturdy. The kids killed the rinky-dink metal one we first got.

Posted by Aaron at 3:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

no new entries for almost a week?!?!
"What is going on?" you say?
I know, I know, you missed the regular griping and moaning of Aaron.
You missed it because Aaron wasn't here, to update it. Aaron was in Vega$.
More accurately, Aaron was hemorrhaging vasts amounts of $$ in Vegas last week.

This was easily the most money I've lost in vegas to date, and I lost the vast majority of it on the first day, making the remainder of the trip for me a little irritating, since I knew I didn't have much left to gamble.
It was at Ceaser's $1/$3 NL table, where a terrible call kind of made me question what I was doing, and then shortly thereafter followed a terrible suckout just cleaned me out.
I had to leave and get more money from our room at imperial palace, which was good to be able to 'walk it off'. I then went to the Mirage to play some stud.
I had a good time there, ending +$100, when Chad, Scott, and Jeff came over and started playing there too. But once we all got on the same table, I started playing like an idiot, and drinking way too much, so I lost all that profit plus another $100.
Sheesh.
So I went to bed mad. I had lost almost 80% of what I brought as a maximum amount to lose in the first day. Jeff and I were going to rent harleys again this year, and had it all planned out that we would get up early and get them rented by 9am.
Well, thanks to my tanking all my money, and being extremely hungover, that didn't happen. That's right, I'm still 21 and a complete idiot.
I finally could get up around 11am and we went and got something to eat at O'Sheas subway. I'm pretty sure if I would have tried to eat at a buffet I would have barfed.
Then we noticed a nice cheap hold'em tournament at O'Sheas that was going to start at 1pm, so we signed up for that. And Chad and I cashed in that, so I felt quite a bit better.
Although now, I must note that I am irritated about that tournament.
I had lots of chips in the middle of the thing, so I started to get very aggressive with everyone, and would either buy lots of pots, and when I ever got callers, I would be way ahead, or would outdraw. It was unreal. By the time we got to the bubble, I had 80% of the chips, and one guy (lowest stack, of course) is trying to get a chop deal going. When he first said it, it sounded like I would be getting $50-75 less than 1st place money, and I was pretty convinced I was going to win, so I wasn't going to settle. Only one other guy was not interested, so we didn't chop. I knocked out 2 more guys, but doubled up 2 others (Chad, of course, since I was trying to keep him in the money), to the point that they would hurt me if I doubled them up and then before I knew it, we were all pretty close. So we just split it there.
Later I found out that the guys was in fact suggesting that I get all the 1st place money, and the other 4 just split the remainder equally. If I would have understood it that way at that time, I would have said yes, and then I'm sure the last guy would have agreed too.
Sigh. So I made $200 there, but could have made another $200, if only.
Then Chad, Scott, and I went to pool to relax, and slow down the losing process.
We had a pretty time there, Chad and I smoked cigars, and we just layed on the chairs watching bikinis and drinking fruity drinks.
While we were there, a group of fairly overweight women were there drinking to excess. One of them decided she would make a pretty good stripper, and started to do an exotic dance for her friends, dancing on the banister pole that went along the stairs into the pool.
She would gyrate on it while her friends would take pictures of other friends sticking dollars in here top. Of course she fell on the pole once, in a manner that would have racked a guy so bad he would surely be dead, and in the process lost her top all together. This would have been great if she was good looking and weighed less than 200 lbs. Because those things were not true, it was not cool, but it was funny.

We went back to the mirage and played some more stud with the old people. We were the youngest people at the table by at least 30 years. Scott got extremely drunk and loud, and started naming people at the table. The default name was 'my hero'. Then an older black guy got named Morgan Freeman, another old crotchety guy was the senator, and some old grumpy lady was 'grumpy lady'. Later, Jaba the Hut came to the table.
It was another session of drinking too much, and playing badly so that I lost way too much. This was a bad pattern.

Saturday, we got up and did it all again, tournament, and pool. This time at the pool, a mexican guy with flowers suddenly came up to us, and said "I need to hide behind you guys"
He explained that he was going to surprise his common law wife of 15 years today, their anniversary. We got his whole life story, and got to watch him surprise his wife, it was pretty cool.
Later, we asked him to pick which of us was the oldest looking.

Predictably, I was chosen as the oldest, and Chad was chosen as the youngest.
Our real ages are
Jeff 34
Aaron 35
Chad 37
Scott 40
So they were way off, and Chad loved it.

Later, Chad and I went to the Bellagio buffet, and it was expensive, but very good. I once again ate until I was nearly sick.
Then Chad and I played in the O'Sheas tournament once more. Only then did we discover that it was $45, but only $30 of it went to the prize pool. Holy crap! That's a 30% rake! Most tournaments are only 10%!
If I would have known that from the beginning, I would never have played in it.
Sigh.

Anyway, now we're home, safe and sound, and I'm trying to catch up on my sleep.

Posted by Aaron at 2:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

So we watched Babel last nite, after much anticipation.
I will say that I was mostly disappointed. It was ok, but overly disjoint. It was good in the sense that it took some paying attention to follow, and you had to think to figure out some of the story, but it was too much. Most of the stories were so unrelated and complex that it seemed forced.
Maybe it was just me. since it won a bunch of awards.

Whatever. It was ok, I've never been very artistic, in that sense, so maybe I shouldn't be so surprised. I didn't think run lola run was all that good either.

Posted by Aaron at 12:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So last nite, Jake and I were judges in a small town MMA event. It was, well, entertaining. And it was just about everything I would expect in a stereotypical small town. The people we met in the town and the bar we had dinner in were nice, mostly farmer-ish looking people. The people at the fight were white trash, inbred, borderline scary people.
I ended up sitting at a table where the ring girls were sitting, the ring girls that had been hired that afternoon. What this should tell you is that they would not have been anybody sought out normally to be a ring girl. They were accompanied by one of the girl's equally skanky mothers, and their kids. That's right, the 19 year old ring girls had two kids each, all in the 4-7 years range. There was even an indescribably uncomfortable moment where it was suggested by the "promoter" of the event to get the girls in the ring and 'dance' during an intermission. So now they get up, in front of mom and kids, and effectively do a 10 minute stripper dance for dollar bills.
It was surreal.
The fights were varied. There was what appeared to be an extended family of troglyditic inbreds there as an entire team, as they all seemed to think were fighters, despite that fact that they were all very overweight, smoked, and generally looked like something that crawled out of the woods in deliverance.
The first fight was the only one we as judges actually had to render a decision. It was two 20-year old, in good fighting shape. Although there was no knockout or stoppage, it was fairly one-sided, and we had a unanimous decision.

The second fight was a 30-something year old guy who looked to be in even worse shape than me, but was tall, and you could see he was comfortable in the ring, ready to fight. He was to fight Cletus, the largest of the clem family, a guy who seriously looked like a retarded homeless guy they had just talked into doing this 5 minutes before the fight started. No real equipment, incredibly overweight, and had a serious "deer in the headlights" look about him. I did not think it was going to go well for him, and it went even worse than I would have expected.
After the ref told them to start, most fighters will put their arms straight out in a "let's touch gloves out of respect before we start" kind of move, similar to bowing before fighting in martial arts, or shaking hands before a wrestling match.
The experienced guy used this move to his advantage, and a move where he put out his left arm straight to touch gloves, and .1 seconds after they touched, he was lunging in with everything he had to hit Cletus with his right. Cletus never even knew they were really starting, and he caught a huge right to the face, and it leveled him. He got 2-3 more times on the way down, and it was over.
The experienced guy is jumping around like he's king of the world, and I'm thinking "you're celebrating the fact that you sucker-punched a retard"
Cletus is on the ground, crying. It was kindof sad.

The rest of the fights were not as dramatic, and nearly every member of the clem family fought and lost, but not so spectacularly.
One was great because it was a 37 year old fighting a younger 20s kid, and it was very, very close. It ended up being stopped by the ref, and the whole crowd booed because it did seem like a premature stoppage. But that's the ref's call I guess.

All in all, it was entertaining, and I would do it again, if for no other reason than I get in free, and get the best seats in the house.

Posted by Aaron at 10:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, my dad didn't start his chemo this week after all. They install a 'port' in you now so you don't have to get stabbed each time, so it's kindof a permanent iv. So that has to be installed via surgery, and they is still healing. Can't start chemo until it's fully healed, i guess.
Kindof frustrating, because we all want him to get going with it. Although admittedly, dad more so than anyone else.

Tomorrow nite, I'm going to be a judge in nebraska's first ever sanctioned MMA event. I'm pretty excited about it. Best seats in the house, and might possibly set me up to be a judge in future events. Worst case, a nite of free entertainment.

9 days to vegas!

Posted by Aaron at 1:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, the weekend of sitting on ice is over. It wasn't too bad overall, although I am still pretty black and blue. I was told not to be too concerned about that, but it's still pretty disconcerting to look at.

My dad starts his first treatment today, so I'm anxious to see how that goes. He's got 6 months of it ahead of him, and then he can go back to normal life.

Since after the surgery, you're not supposed to do much of anything but sit, that's pretty much what I did all weekend. Just sat at the kitchen table and programmed my new kegbot board to speak uart to the pc. Going pretty well. I did discover that the board has a cool software phase locked loop, and it takes a while to get locked. And, if you try to use the uart before it's locked, well, predictably, nothing goes across right. So I was trying to send a startup message to the pc when the board powered up.
So board power, send message (I'm alive!) was showing up at the pc as #@!%!SADF
Hmm. So once I realized I had to wait for this PLL to get locked, and had to figure out how to determine when it was locked. All you can do is read a register that is a value from 0 to 255.
I found that when it was not locked, it would just increment by one every interrupt.
But when locked, it would just stay close (+/-1) to one number, but of course, never the same number.
So you can't just say "call it locked when the register is X'
Instead, I needed a test of I need to see when is stops changing 'a lot'. Because it's ok to change a little, and it can only change one step at a time, so the delta of change is always the same.
In the end, I had to save 8 past values of the register and compute the standard deviation of them, and then saying it was locked if the standard deviation was below some low threshold.
So don't let your friends tell you you'll never use algebra and calculus again.
This was a completely mundane application that needed a cool mathematical solution.

Posted by Aaron at 11:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I have 3 kids, well, 4 really, but 3 here. I only ever intended to have 2. I'm a big proponent of the theory that all world problems are ultimately caused by over-population of the planet.
So I always swore I would not have more than 2 kids, so I would not be contributing to the problem as well.
To that end, this morning I got 'the big snip'. That's right, I got myself neutered.
Good times for me right now. As soon as the local wore off, I jumped right on pain pills, good 'ol hydrocodone, which makes me crazy dizzy. So I'm feeling off put right now.
But once i'm healed, it'll be 24-7 rockin and rollin at my house!
yeah...
I cannot put into words how badly I want to take a picture and post it, but I have a feeling that no one else would really appreciate it.

Posted by Aaron at 1:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I got my new msp development board.

This thing is great. So far, I have done little more than run several example programs, but the crazy thing just works. It's a miracle!
I'm going to have it drive the soon-to-be-developed biometric kegerator™.
When finished, it will be one impressive electricity consumer.
I'm taking baby steps though, first step is to get this board to talk to the PC, and capture the flowmeter info. Then, constantly sending flowmeter info will allow me to see when the keg is near empty, and if anyone's been pouring when I'm not around.

Step 2, add a keypad and solenoid, so you have to enter a code just to pour.

Step 3, make a dynamic webpage to display the keg contents, who's been drinking and when.

Step 4, add a fingerprint reader to replace the keypad, but leave the keypad for backup.
Then all you do it press the fingerprint reader, and leave your finger there for as long as you want the beer to flow!

Brilliant!

Posted by Aaron at 4:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Smashing pumpkins are back, I'm kindof surprised that actually happened, I expected that to be more of a guns-n-roses type of comeback, as in, never happening.

Friday, we went and saw Auggie Smith, whom I've always liked when I've heard him on the radio. The only bad thing was, by hearing him on the radio several times, I'd heard 75% of his act. But it was still good. He's very energetic. I love that his act is very topical and yet not really political.

Saturday, we had a first ever. First time ever all the kids had their own activities that kept them somewhere overnite. Ann and I found ourselves with an opportunity to go out with no babysitter waiting for the first time, ever. So we went to our favorite pizza place, and then checked out some other downtown bars until all the young whipper-snappers came out. Now that we're officially old as hell, we stick out like sore thumbs when we go to a downtown bar. So we went home around 11pm, but it was still nice to go out as just the two of us.

Posted by Aaron at 3:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've been endevouring lately to learn more knots. They are such a useful thing that it seems like everyone should know many, yet I know something on the order of 2.

So this is a good start. I'm going outside right now to try some out.

Posted by Aaron at 1:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)