mid day gym experiment?
Posted by mep | Filed under life, sports
So i decided to mix up the schedule a bit - try something new - mix up the routine and see what i see.
off to the gym at 3pm. ugh
takes twice as long to get there mid day due to traffic. had to wait for equipment. took more than twice the amount of time to get home.
As i walked out of the gym and squinted at the warm sunshine, i declared that i am truly (and forever it seems) a night owl.
The mid day gym experiment is over - back to my 8pm to 9pm arrival time slot for the 3+ mile run. I’d try the 6am run, but there would be too many Type A folks fighting over equipment while power typing on their BlackBerry for my taste…plus i’m a total idiot at 6am in the first place.
i love the relaxed gym evening routine. traffic is light, gym is almost empty, running is easier for me at night, i seem to be the only one on a BlackBerry, i love the cool night air on my skin when i leave. grabbing sushi and a Sopporo on way home is a viable option if i choose.
cloud computing results
Posted by mep | Filed under tech
well, it’s been a month plus since switching my personal, business and other sites into the amazon cloud.
what’s the verdict? very, very happy. costs are down about 60%, i have more of server resources, availability is up, access times are faster, i’m more redundant, can scale if needed in minutes and i sleep better at night.
i’d do it all over in a heart beat - every test i ran (and i ran many) performed beyond expectations.
i can get to market cheaper, faster and with more ease - and i can scale at will. happy years to come
ouch, it’s getting cold in here
Posted by mep | Filed under poker
On my recent poker playing trip to Las Vegas, I managed to get my money in with the best of it 8 times, only winning one hand (KK vs TT). I did suggest that someone was WAY ahead when he had a flush draw vs my nut straight with one card to come.
I could list all the bad beats, but it’s pointless. get all your money in the middle when your at least at 75% favorite and let the cards fall where they may - it’s all you can do. If the donkey makes the call and gets lucky, so be it.
Highlights of this trip where few, but must include NEVER getting it all in with the worst of it. having no fear to play pocket 4’s in early position with a raise, then betting on the flop of AK9, getting someone to let go of the best hand.
There is still much to work on, but my resolve has never been stronger. I just need to find a way out of the poker cooler.
Oceanside Open
Posted by mep | Filed under poker
Oceans 11 held the Oceanside Open on July 4th. A nice field of players, good structure and free BBQ made the event fun to play in (the BBQ was real good and was quite a distraction after they started the grilling process). Of course it always helps when you make the final table of an event with a first place of $10,280. I played well, took a nasty bad beat at the final table and placed well into the top 9.
The field was varied, not too many sharks, lots of loose play and some regular bonehead moves by less than talented players. One guy that made the final table was playing in his first tournament. He got ultra short stacked, then won 6 hands in a row and became a serious threat. I gladly welcomed him at his first final table when we reassembled to the final 9 players.
It just goes to show you, take a chance and play a tournament, anything can happen
getting it all in with the best of it…
Posted by mep | Filed under poker
…in the end, it really is all you can do in poker.
After shoving as a 91% favorite with one to come and exiting the tournament when a 2 outer shows up, all you can do is shake your head and look for a new game.
That’s 3 exits in a row where I got all my chips in the middle as a 84%, 80% and 91% favorite. Poker is a cruel game at times….it’s good to have a backup plan, Have a solid financial management (a.k.a. bankroll management) that will allow you to ride through the chop.
It’s never as smooth of a ride as your have planned.
how to win the local friends/office poker game
Posted by mep | Filed under poker
- Go to Vegas, play a $1500 or $2000 No Limit World Series of Poker event
- come home and don’t worry about playing a solid game at the WSOP
- play your normal $10 No Limit game with family/friends/coworkers
From a financial perspective, it makes no sense. I took down the local game for a whopping profit of $40 after coming back from my WSOP bloodletting.
I now need to earn $1460 to cover my $1500 entry fee.
did you blink?
Posted by mep | Filed under wsop
If you did blink, you might have missed my WSOP play.
After buying into Event #27 - $1500 No-Limit, I lasted 45 minutes and played exactly one hand.
I pushed all my chips in the middle holding trip 5’s (three fives) and my opponent called on a flush draw. Even know I was a 84% favorite, I left the ‘poker sauna’ knowing that i made the correct decision to get all my chips into play. here are the numbers with a flop/turn of (5c, 6c, 2d, 5h) :
cards win %win lose %lose tie %tie EV
Ks 5d 37 84.09 7 15.91 0 0.00 0.841
Ac Jc 7 15.91 37 84.09 0 0.00 0.159
Of course there is a story behind the hand that makes me playing K5o not sound as bad as it probably does, but all one can really do in poker is to get all their chips in the middle with the best of it. if you are not willing to put all your chips at risk with 84% EV early in a tournament, you might as well not play the game.Living life by the turn of a card can be a harsh existence. I’m happy to get back to writing software for a living, but I’ll be back on the felt in no time.
Off to the WSOP
Posted by mep | Filed under wsop
Well, Friday morning I push off to Vegas to play some WSOP events.
I’m excited about logging some serious poker hours. I’m not going to get wiggy and put the entire roll into one, say a 5k, event. That’s a bit too much of a lottery ticket mentality.
There are a lot of events to pick from, but i’ll probably opt for a $200 or $300 satellite/event either at The Rio, or another card room. My main goal is to find a way to play the 10k main event next month. I’ll keep the blog updated with what’s going on as it relates to my WSOP trip.
Because of the event, I’ve added a new wsop category on the blog. you can get directly to it via: this link
As far as being prepared goes, i’m well rested, in shape, mentally fit, rid myself of bad habits, full of focus, quite happy and have found quite a bit of patience.
I brought a ‘TV shirt’…just in case
adding your netflix queue via RSS
Posted by mep | Filed under java, tech
I’ve been messing with XSLT a good bit and decided I needed a small project to work some muscles to their fell extent. When i found that NetFlix offers a number of RSS feeds for their users, I decided to add my NetFlix Queue to my site.
I could have found a taglib and added a new page to display the feed, but that seemed like the messy way. Since I use the Spring Framework, it was pretty easy to get it working very fast.
All it took was 2 xslt files a new movies jsp page, a transformation class/bean with a simple date based cache and a bunch of wirings in the servlet.xml file. Its set up so the RSS file will only be fetched from NetFlix and transformed no more than once per 24 hours and on server restarts. Having the transformation cached means i’m fetching the html via a cached pojo.
Kind of sweet and neat little project. I thought about doing a step by step how to - but i really don’t have the time. I’ll get around to refactoring a few things in the future, then maybe i’ll do a better writeup. But now, I’m off to better uses of my time.
review: Saeco Incanto
Posted by mep | Filed under life
we in the technical community understand the issues involved with troubleshooting a product (new or existing).
I unpacked the new espresso machine and followed the instructions strictly. Within 3 minutes of filling with water, adding whole beans, priming the pump and pressing the one shot button, i received what most would consider a decent, full shot of espresso. it was watery and weak, but with nice crema. I tossed that one way (who would drink the first shot anyway?) and made a few more, same results. most would stop there and call the new machine a success. I needed to press on. Was it the machine, the bean, the grind, grinder or, most likely, some combination of them. Time to simplify. lets remove the bean, grind, built in grinder and test the machine is its most basic mode. Thank god someone created a way to use preground coffee to make a shot. I pulled out my trusted standby of preground espresso, dropped it into the preground slot, listened as the machine tamped without a grind and pulled a shot that was about 85% of perfection. The machines’ ability to put out a shot is beyond doubt. I’ll have to play around with bean and grind. I have no doubt that i’ll get it just the way i like it. It’s par for the course to mess around with bean and grind on a new machine. I’m happy with the purchase and the resulting product, as will anyone that comes over and has a cuppa my finest. Just don’t ask for drip coffee, i’m likely to bite you!
Needless to say, but you know it’s going to be a long night when your pulling shots of espresso at 9:30pm on a Wednesday, but a guy has to do what a guy has to do…and there is no such thing as a shot that does not get sipped a bit before tossing it down the drain.
Thursday morning was a real test. I played with the frothing device the previous night and had no issues, thought getting used to it would take some time. I put a cup on the machine top to get warm, frothed some milk and pulled a shot with preground coffee. when you put them all together in the right way, you get a latte. A fine latte, worthy of being served under my roof. Off to the couch where i unfolded the New York Times and spent the next hour in pure bliss, sipping, reading, smiling.
I can say without a doubt that the Saeco 00065 Incanto Rapid Steam SBS Fully Automatic Espresso Machine is a winner.