Poker Room Freeroll Recap – 02/11/2010
Feb 11th
I played poker again tonight in the Poker Room at the Best Western in Keene. My initial thought was that I should buy 4,000 chips for $20 because I wanted to at least have as many chips as those at the table who had already done that; about two thirds of the players at my table had. After thinking about it a bit I decided against it, because I would really like to take down one of these for free.
The cards weren’t coming at all for me at first, but after reading Chapter 4 and 5 of The Poker Tournament Formula by Arnold Snyder, I’ve become much more aware of how important position is at the table and how you can bet your trash cards and still make money based upon the way people in front of you respond to the bet. I should note that the book is for fast tournaments, which is exactly what the Poker Room tournament is. I successfully stole some blinds and bets, especially after identifying a particularly tight player who would raise preflop, but then check and allow me to bet to take the pot.
There were somewhere around 72 players in attendance, and after playing through the first hour I was sitting at 13.5K in chips. Returning from break, the woman to my left who had been buying a lot of pots was the big blind. A few other people were in the pot, and I raised 3X the blind with my AK off suit. She was the only caller. I was first to act and I checked the flop of 10-K-4. She went all in with 5100 and I quickly called, thinking she had K-something. I had her on a pair, but not pocket 10s.
It took me awhile to battle back from that blow, but then I got my chance when I flopped a straight. Fortunately there were some faces involved, so the people who were in it with their big hole cards stayed right in with me. One guy had a flush possibility, but fortunately it did not come. We got moved to a different table not too long after that where I met a ‘talkative’ guy named Jack, a foreigner named Akmed (spelling?), and a couple players who appeared to be younger than me. I took a shot on Akmed with KJ off suit. JJ looked good, but then I saw the ace came and thought I was done. I knew he had paired up. Somehow, I caught a queen on the river and made a straight. After additional playing, it was again time for break. I apologized to him at the break, and with a big smile he said that’s OK, it’s poker my friend.
When I returned, I noticed that I had been “chipped up.” I played some additional hands and then the next thing I knew there were only three tables left. Two new comers and one of them had TWO 10K chips and a big slew of other 1K chips. Wow! My $19K was starting to look like chump change compared to the other stacks I was looking at. with the blinds at 1/2K, I took my shot on Akmed. I had 9/5 off suit, and was only in the pot because I was the blind. When I saw a 9-J-2 flop, I thought 9’s were weak but stood a chance. I gave it a shot and he called. Crap, he has jacks. The next card that came was a heart for 3 hearts on the board. I was the first to act and should have gone all in, but instead bet 8K. he thought a bit and called. Finally, the last card came and it was of no danger to me. I went all in for another 6500 more.
Akmed thought and thought about his decision. Said numerous times “I can’t call he has me beat.” Unfortunately, he did call his pair of jacks even though he thought I had a flush. He Turned over his jack and I turned over my 9. I finished in 26th place, which I consider a terrific accomplishment. Obviously it would be nice to place in the money, but I played poker for 2 and a half hours and didn’t spend a dime. I was very entertained, learned a lot, and met some very interesting people including a guy I went to school with named Mike Davis.
- Lessons Learned:
*When trying to buy a pot against a guy with a bigger stack, push all in. All in has a much more threatening sound than “8,000.”
*Sometimes I do get lucky.
*Position is a very valuable tool, be aware of it.
Easy Pass Privacy
Jan 15th
I was listening to the radio the other day and they were talking about the Easy Pass system you see on most modern highways. The speaker was talking about some of the common things everyone knows about the easy pass system. Some of these things included it’s ease of use, how much time it can save, and the financial advantages it can provide with volume discounts. An additional topic came up which I had never thought of before: privacy.
The interviewer asked the speaker to discuss some of the privacy concerns people have with the Easy Pass system. I personally had never thought about the subject, and was very interested to hear more. The speaker explained that the Easy Pass system tracks data as it relates to each person who uses the system. Every time a user drives through an Easy Pass toll, their Easy Pass account is deducted by the appropriate amount and a record of their driving through that particular toll and that particular lane is tracked.
While I don’t personally care of ‘Big Brother’ knows where I’ve been traveling, I can see the reason for some people to be concerned. The speaker, who may have been an Easy Pass representative, said that the data is generally used to catch people who go through Easy Pass lanes with a delinquent account. Easy Pass tracks the name on the account as well as the license plate to make it easy for authorities to find toll violators. These people are then charged with passing through the toll without payment.
Personally, I am not so sure that is all Easy Pass would use the data only to find toll violators. I would say that if law enforcement went to easy pass to request toll data on a particular individual, Easy Pass would not hesitate to gather information for them.
What are your thoughts?
Distracted Driver Laws – Are They Effective?
Nov 23rd
According to this article posted on USA Today’s website, 38 states have or are in the process of enacting distracted driver laws. For the most part, the laws seem to target texting while driving. Some sates completely ban cell phone use while driving; others require the use of a hands-free device such as a Bluetooth headset while driving. There are a handful of states, too, which ban the use of cell phones by minors only while driving.
For the most part, these laws are difficult to enforce. In order to prove that a person was texting or talking on the phone while driving, the law enforcement involved (probably just town officer), would need to subpoena phone records from the driver’s cellular phone company. It is unlikely phone companies would want to give such information to law enforcement, as they would risk the customer switching to a different company out of irritation. Phone companies might also face privacy criticisms.
For the states that have an outright ban on the use of cell phones while driving, I must say that I do not agree. I believe these states are making a mistake when they ban cell phone use while driving because the phone can be used in emergency situations. What if you are driving and you see a vehicle swerving all over the road? Wouldn’t you feel safer living in a state which allowed you to pick up the phone and call for law enforcement? I know I would! While I agree that the intention is good, I believe that the difference in using voice activated commands to call someone and talking to a passenger are slim to none.
As mentioned, a handful of states ban cell phone use by minors while driving. I cannot allow myself to agree with this as it is discrimination. What if your 17 year old daughter were to be driving home from her fast food job late at night with an unidentified vehicle following her? Would you feel more comfortable if she were legally allowed to pick up the phone and call you, the parent, or law enforcement? I know that if I had a daughter, I would!
The reality is the greatest danger in cell phone usage while driving is the tapping of the keys. This does not only apply to texting but also to calling. Most people must take their eyes off the road to dial a number or send a text message, myself included. This really is a very dangerous activity and should be avoided when necessary and done with care in emergency situations.
The states which have enacted distracted driver laws have generally targeted activities which involve the use of cell phones. This is only half the story, considering that this article on drivers.com concludes that eating may be the top driving distraction. 58% of respondents admitted to driving while talking on the cell phone, whereas 65% admitted to driving and talking on the cell phone. Drivers assigned these tasks a danger rating of 3.8 and 4.0 out of 5 respectively.
Consider too, that police officers do all sorts of things while driving. Many modern patrol vehicles have a laptop mounted in the vehicle and facing the driver seat. This way, the driver can quickly and easily use his or her laptop to run a registration check, license check, communicate with dispatch, log events, and a myriad of other things. Police officers are often trying to find vehicles which are not registered or inspected, and also trying to catch speeding motorists. The officer will often look at the plate sticker and inspection sticker of every passing car in hopes to find one to catch. The instant on technology of radar units is also becoming increasingly popular. To use instant on, the officer would visually determine the speed of an oncoming car. If the officer feels the car is speeding, a button is pressed and his radar unit is activated to determine the speed of the car. The officer then checks the speed by looking on the control panel of his radar equipment. Is this not also distracted driving?
I believe that to combat distracted drivers, the answer is not to create silly laws which are difficult to enforce, but to truly show people the dangers of it. Brittan has already aired a public service announcement showing the dangers of texting while driving. Fox News Chicago aired a news story about the video, highlighting that the Secretary of State Jesse White wants the video to air in Chicago too. This, more than the enactment of laws, is the way to combat this danger. Many activists say that the video is too gory to show on TV, and You Tube has restricted viewing of the video to those over 18 years of age. The truth is that we must stop shielding our youth from this grave reality.
Dodge Ball Vs. Corning 10/11/2009
Oct 11th
Tonight Target Practice played dodge ball against Corning, a team we had played twice in the past. They put the first point on the scoreboard decimating our team on the first round. Next, we took a point to tie it up 1-1. They went on to score three additional points to make the score 1-4. With only about 5 minutes left in the game, it appeared we would not have a chance to win. With just four seconds left on the clock, we scored again to make the final score 2-4. We had 7 confirmed players, however only 5 were able to make it. Corning had 6 of their 12 member team in attendance. Had more of our players been able to make it, I believe we might have had a shot at winning. Perhaps next week will bring us more success!
Dodge Ball Vs. Staff Infection 10/05/2009
Oct 10th
On Monday October 5th, 2009 Target Practice played dodge ball at the Keene Recreational Center against Staff Infection. Unfortunately, only three members of their team showed up so they had to forfeit. We decided to still play out the game and have Nichole, one of our 5 players in attendance, play for the other team.
The game started off well, initially it was 0-1, then 1-1, then 2-1. We were thrilled! For the first time in 19 games we were the team ahead. Sadly though, that was soon erased as the other team went on to score 8 additional points to end the game at 2-9. There were some excellent catches made by our team, most notably one by Raj where he fell and caught the ball one handed. Nichole and I talked after the game and we think it might be best to just start catching instead of throwing.
Our next game is Sunday October 11th against Bunch Of Tools at 6:45PM.
DataStage Dates – An Easy Solution
Oct 10th
After spending several hours yesterday in the Transformer Stage of IBM’s DataStage 8.1, I was incredibly frustrated with the date functions. No matter what I did, I couldn’t seem to get the StringToDate function to work on my input file. The data was coming in a format of YYYYMMDD, but when I tried to use StringToDate([FieldName],”%yy%mm%dd”) it kept complaining of the data being in an invalid format. I was tasked with modifying three jobs in an hour and a half. It’s not a difficult task when you find something that works, but DataStage 8.1 seems to behave in a different manner than DataStage 7.5 and the old way was not allowing the job to run.
I went for a walk, picked my brain, and finally came up with a solution. Instead of using any date related functions in the stage variable portion of the transformer stage, I’d treat the data like a string. Since the data could be either a valid date (20091011) or 0, I used an if then else statement to handle the 0. If the record had a date of 0, it was set to 9999-12-31, otherwise I took the various pieces of the input string and concatenated the -’s in the date. The code for each staging variable date ended up being:
IF Len(FieldName) <> 8
THEN ‘9999-12-31′
ELSE FieldName[1,4]:’-':FieldName[5,2]:’-':FieldName[7,2]
Using DataStage’s concatenation character (:), I was able to pick apart the input string and convert it into a format of YYYY-MM-DD. At this point the data is still in string format. The len() function checks to see what the length of the input data is. Since we are dealing with data in YYYYMMDD format, any data having a length not matching 8 characters can be rejected as invalid. In the output link column, I then used the following code:
IF NOT(IsValid(”Date”,StageVariable))
THEN ‘9999-12-31′
ELSE StageVariable
This code seems to work perfectly. Say that ABCD1122 is passed. Going through the staging variable code would result in ABCD-11-22 which is an invalid date. The NOT(IsValid()) function takes care of that. Since ABCD-11-22 is not a valid date, it is converted to the default (9999-12-31) and loaded.
As you can see from the above method, we have a way to easily take the date and convert it to a proper format (YYYY-MM-DD). This can be done with any uniform input format. If the input is not uniform, it will be much more difficult if not impossible to validate the date. It is my very strong belief that you should ALWAYS be able to expect the same format for each row in the input file. If you have a record with a date in format YYYY-MM-DD, YYYYMMDD and YYMMDD, you need to go back to the developer of the input file and asked that it be cleaned up. There is no reason to pass a variety of different formats in the same column and doing so is only going to result in disaster.
Having said that, implementing this technique is rather easy. First, consult with the source file developer or take a look at the file yourself. Determine the possible values for the input and identify which format it is in. Next, validate the data and construct the input into the ideal format (YYYY-MM-DD). The IsValid function for dates ONLY accepts YYYY-MM-DD, therefore this is critical. Finally, implement the validation function in the output link. This ensures that you trap any garbage that might have been passed along.
Remote Controlled Tarantula Spider
Aug 13th
This has got to be one of the first times I’ve ever clicked on an ad on a wesbite. I was on some site on MSN when I realized that the advertising to the right hand side was showing… yes, a remote controlled SPIDER for sale. I’ve never seen anything like it! I think I’d have all kinds of fun with this sort of thing, especially at a nursing home, work, a restaurant, or my grandmother’s house.
Paddle Power 2005 Shirts – Grantham Goonies
Jun 27th
LOL. Call Tom for computer repair?
The front of the shirt, our team name for Paddle Power 2005.
I was going through some old CDs today and I found these pictures from Paddlepower 2005. These are the images I used for the T-shirt transfer. I get a real kick out of the fake sponsors, the middle initials, and the stars. Paddle Power is a 36 mile paddle down the Connecticut River to raise money for West Central Behavioral Health, with a focus on suicide prevention. It was a lot of fun in 2005 and I plan to do it again. Take a look at their website for more information about the event. In the video on the main page, you can see me paddling at 9:06.
Bad Dates Play at the Peterborough Players
Jun 17th
Last night, my grandmother and I went to “C&S night” at the Peterborough Players. We followed some directions and initially got lost. I paid for access to VZ Navigator for the day and plugged in our destination. The GPS on my phone, of course, gave us better results than the handwritten directions we had!
We arrived at about 7:45; the play was to start at 8. At the time we arrived, they hadn’t even started letting people into the playhouse. We arrived while a woman was explaining some things, and shortly thereafter we were allowed to enter. We were told the normal things like “no photography” and “please turn off your cell phones;” and since this was a dress rehearsal, the house manager (if you can call him that), explained that the set was completely finished (usually not the case for a dress rehearsal).
The play featured only one actress, a leggy brunette haired woman with blonde highlights. She was visually pleasing, and she was an exceptional actress! I was convinced only once that she had forgotten her line. Had she slipped up at any other point, she did a fantastic job hiding it. While her facial expressions, body language and overall appearance helped make the play more interesting, I did not find the play to be particularly good.
One of the things I disliked was that the actress was all by herself. While it allowed me to appreciate her exceptional acting even more, I felt that one or two more actors on the stage would have made it far more enjoyable. The entire play took place in her New York apartment, with her trying on various sexy shoes and telling a story the entire time. A few times, she even stripped down to her undergarments on stage to change. John Riley commented that this was to keep the men in the audience interested.
That’s essentially what the ENTIRE play consisted of, a story. The story of the woman’s life was interesting enough, but I just found the play a bit lacking. The women in the audience seemed to thoroughly enjoy the play. From the male perspective, John Riley said it perefectly: “You know how there are chick flicks? That was a chick play.” Had I not been with my grandmother, I would still have found the play entertaining enough to stay for the whole thing; several people, however, left at intermission.
Gym – 06/08/2009
Jun 9th
It felt great to be back at Total Fitness Zone last night! It has been a long time since I’ve done a weight workout in addition to the cardio I normally do. Last night I exercised for 47 minutes on the treadmill, burning an average of 1081 calories per hour. I varied my speed between 3.3 and 8.2, and changed the incline around.
After my cardio workout, I did bicep curls, forearm curls, bench press, tricep pressdowns, and dumbell flys. Today my body has been a bit sore, but it’s a refreshing feeling.
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