Miss me?

Originally published at David Nikithser. » Click here « to leave any comments.

You'd seriously think I was developing the antidote for death with how hard I have to work to do the most simple web-based administration and maintenance.

Originally published at David Nikithser.

29 minutes. I normally like letter addition/subtraction/substitution puzzles, but when you add that along with homonyms, it just makes the whole thing a little too precious for me.

Originally published at David Nikithser. » Click here « to leave any comments.

Twitter's been a hot topic in my circle as of late - even my mom asked me about it the other day! In recent days, I've gotten a number of new Twitter followers, mostly from my twittering at the WSOP. Im some cases, it's really cool - in others, it's not. So, if you give a damn, here's my policy for followers on Twitter - will I follow, will I block, or "other".

Originally published at David Nikithser (aka david973 on Twitter). » Click here « to leave any comments.

On my upcoming trip, gardening, and my weekly update on the Sunday Times crossword puzzle.

Originally published at David Nikithser.

It is now two weeks until I leave for Vegas for my World Series Of Poker adventure. Some of you may be curious about what I'll be up to, so I shall now attempt to explain.

Will you be on TV?
Depends on whether or not they decide to televise my event, which is very early in the tournament.

What do you mean, "your event"?
Yes, there is the giant tournament that ESPN and the rest of the media gives great attention to - the "Main Event", which takes places over a number of weeks, attracts thousands of players, and offers a prize of millions of dollars to the winner. I am not playing in that event, mainly because I don't have $10,000 for the buy in.

So which event are you playing in?
I will be playing in Event #3, the Limit Omaha Hi-Lo Split tournament.

Omaha?
Yep. Omaha.

The games you see regularly on TV are based on Texas Hold 'Em - each player gets two cards for themselves, and has to make the best possible hand with any combination of the two in their hand and the five community cards that come up on the table. Omaha Hold 'Em is similar, except each player gets four cards and must use exactly two of them in a given hand. "Two from your hand, three from the board." Always.

What's the "hi-lo" part mean?
It means that for any given hand their can be two winners who split the pot - one with a high hand (the typical rankings apply, with a royal flush being tops), and a low hand, where the wheel (A-2-3-4-5) is the best possible hand. Here's the catch - you don't need to use the same two pocket cards for both possible hands, so it's possible for a player to "scoop", or win both hands of the pot, with the same hand. Scooping is how one wins this particular brand of poker.

Originally published at David Nikithser.

I've made the executive decision that this will be the last Windows/Intel architecture-based machine that I own. I kinda want to blame HP, but if there's one thing that 20 years working in technology has taught me it's that root causes are very much like roots - many-fingered, knotted, and rarely trackable to a single point. When things like this happen, it's usually due to a cocktail of problems.

What happened, you ask? Well, for a few weeks now I'd start up the machine and get some random application failures - mostly around the manufacturer's pre-installed nonsense that I generally don't have time to uninstall or disable myself (Root Cause #1: My own laziness). I'd reboot again later, and immediately go into a CHKDSK state while the low-level OS worked out whatever corruption it had found. This generally led to me having to re-install software (remember my "constantly re-installing WoW" complaints?) and generally have to move things around to get stuff back up-and-running properly. Then the whole cycle would start all over again.

About a week ago, things finally got to the point where Vista's (Root Cause #2: The world is MS's beta test) system repair wizard started and did some repairs on the hard drive. All was right with the world, and things appeared to be working fantastically. Then, last night, as Dawn was killing things with her own WoW toon, we starting having persistent lock-ups. I rebooted this morning, and the repair wizard began again - only this time, it couldn't make the necessary repairs.

I had to do a bare-metal restore. Which, dating back to the first jobs I had in this God-forsaken industry, are my LEAST favorite things to do.

So now, here I sit, reinstalling everything for what will absolutely be the last time EVER on a PC. If things go south on this laptop again, I'm imaging it with Linux and learning how the rest of the world does it.

Been a fun ride, IBM Clones. Stay sweet. See you 'round the office sometime.

Originally published at David Nikithser.

Since I don't toot my own horn all that often, I added a page chronicling my run on Jeopardy! You can get to it via the "Pages" sidebar link.

I posted this from my brand-new laptop, purchased after an unfortunately-timed incident involving the old laptop, Mina, and a pint of Guinness. I have learned my lesson.

Originally published at David Nikithser.

Just saw a commercial for the latest Hollywood regurge - an update of Wes Craven's seminal masterpiece, Last House On The Left. From the looks of it, they seem to want to apply an Uwe Boll take on what was a perfectly good movie the first time around.

So will this herald the new trend in modern horror? "Revenge Torture Porn"? Is Paris Hilton in a retooling of I Spit On Your Grave next?

To avoid eyerolling, keep repeating, "It's only a crappy copy. . .it's only a crappy copy. . .it's only a crappy copy. . ."

Originally published at David Nikithser.

I've always been a fan of Daniel Negreanu. He's one of the best players on the circuit, he's always funny, and the camera loves him. While I've been less than pleased with his attitude toward his fellow players, in the past couple of years he's "grown up" considerably. However, one of the things he's famous for among the TV commentators and poker columnists is his reading ability - his ability to discern with near-deadly accuracy the pocket cards of his opponents. I thought for a while that this was just from years of playing and watching for the usual tells and signals from him opponents. However, I think his technique has more to it than simple application of established techniques, like Joe Navarro's well-publicized "spycatcher" training for poker pros. I think he's accentuating this ability by emulating a different kind of celebrity - John Edward.

John Edward's techniques have been ripped up and debunked by skeptics for years (including my personal favorites), but Kid Poker may be on to something by applying the "cold reading" approach to picking up on what his opponents may be holding. Check out the YouTube video below:



Okay -- in the first hand, he didn't even need the read, yet the announcers go nuts. Even I knew the best his opponents had was two pair, but Daniel announced "I think you both have Ace-King", hoping to elicit a reaction. This is exactly how John Edwards claims to know so much about the people he "connects" with - he says something until he gets the reaction he needs. Had Daniel not seen a reaction he liked, he might have assumed that his initial read was wrong, and someone caught the middle set to beat his bottom set. No reaction, so the bet is made.

For the second hand, he creatively used the technique, but turned it around on the other player - he started with a fair assumption - rockets - and then made this guy believe he had him beat simply because the read was correct. Look at the other guy's body language: he's all but screaming "damn, my Aces are cracked." Any other reaction, and Daniel may have acted differently - but I think he wanted the guy to turn over his Aces so the table knew that the read was right. To him, it was worth the price of the bets.

The third hand, it doesn't take much for Daniel to realize that the kid made his straight - K9 was a fair read at that point, since trips or two pair might have elicited a different response. Troudt obviously chokes back a smile and clenches his teeth when Daniel announces "some kinda nine. . .King nine or something. . ." Didn't cost Daniel anything at that point, but the reaction was the same - he got the guy to turn over his cards, firming up his table rep.

I gotta give this a shot when I play in the PLO8 tourney at World Series this year. I try to emulate Negreanu when it comes to reading anyway - maybe by adding the Edwards cold reading techniques I can "cross over" into winning some cash.

Originally published at David Nikithser.

My wife has a new website up at her domain, wordsbydawn.com, which I helped design. Y'all should go take a look, especially if you need someone to help with your writing or editing projects!

Originally published at David Nikithser.

Is there nothing this wonderful device can't do? I just wish I had access to the Twitter and LJ plugins.

I had to add a pointer for the XML-RPC service on my Header page before the app would load properly, but once it did everything came up fine. The interface is a little clumsy, but it's a great start for a free app. What I'd like to see in future releases:

• Support for the Excerpt field within posts


• Access to the post-based plugins, so I can notify Twitter about posts right from the iPhone interface


• Support for the Visual features in the post interface (Bold, bullets, block quotes, etc.) - though this may be a limitation of the iPhone itself

You folks would probably like to see some more robust features, but my needs are simple. :)

Originally published at David Nikithser.

I never thought I'd see the day. However, like many in our country since January 20, I feel myself more politically aware and interested in the process for the first time in about 8 years. Full disclosure: My knowledge of politics, economics, and worldwide monetary process lies somewhere between "shit" and "Shinola" - most of what I know comes directly from Al Franken and my friends who are in the know. However, when I read on CNN.com the details of what's been cut from the Economic Stimulus Bill that is being proposed, I feel compelled to add to the discourse, even though there are only 2 or 3 of you who will be reading this. So, here goes:

The allowance for "energy-efficient Federal buildings" was cut in half, from $7B to $3.5B. Maybe I'm naive, but doesn't "energy-efficient" mean "lest costly to operate"? Wouldn't we want to focus more money on something like this, so we save more money in the long run? If that's the case, does this cut make sense?

Similarly, the budget for "Law Enforcement Wireless" was cut in half, from $200M to $100M. You know that thing about "if we make guns illegal, only criminals will have guns"? Well, if you throttle wireless for law enforcement, only criminals won't have to be tethered somewhere to steal identities, credit card numbers, and communicate with aiders and abetters. Why the hell would you want to hobble law enforcement like that?

The "Federal fleet of hybrid vehicles" allowance was cut from $600M to $300M. See my question regarding energy-efficient buildings above. If spending now means spending less later, why would you want to reduce spending for such things? I don't get it. Someone explain it to me.

$2B for broadband was cut entirely. I can't properly articulate my apoplexy about this. You want to limit efficient communication? Are you serious? C'mon, neocons, level with me -- this is because Obama wanted to keep his Blackberry, isn't it. (I know that Blackberries and broadband have little to do directly with each other, but based on this line-item cancellation I can't imagine anyone on the right side of the aisle does).

Another full cut? $98M for "school nutrition". If it's not about how greedy we are, it's about how fat we are, but please -- eliminate funding to, you know, do something about that.

$50M from DHS and $200M from TSA. Fucking amazing.

No Child Left Behind got a full line through it too -- guess we finally figured out that's working about as well as DHS and the TSA.

$16B for school construction, and $3.5B for higher education construction got wiped off the board too. Because God knows if we improve the conditions of our nations schools we run the risk of not producing another straight-C student who can illegally and unfairly take control of the White House.

Now, there's a few things there were eliminated that I can't really have an opinion about because, admittedly (remember, full disclosure) I just don't understand what they are. Like what the hell is "Health Prevention Activity", and why did it need $5.8B? Why did we allocate money in the first place to prevent health?

Also, I'm all for any cuts to funds for the GSA. If there's a government agency that needs to figure out how to do more with less, it's the fucking GSA.

That's all I can really comment on, because the rest is stuff I absolutely have no input on (for instance, I have no clue what the "BYRNE Formula grant program" is) or I don't know enough about (like how "cross agency support" works). So, from my perspective, I think this is a good everyman's take on the recent activity with the stimulus package. Please teach me what I don't know and tell me why I'm wrong.

Originally published at David Nikithser.

Looks like I'll be spending the nights in Charlotte, North Carolina. Lucky me.

listen:
http://www.jott.com/show.aspx?id=07156144-149f-4d84-a979-6eed223be639
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So now that this works, I figure I can update things here a lot more often or at least give pointers to my regular blog at davidnik.com. So, stay tuned!

listen:
http://www.jott.com/show.aspx?id=d22c2679-9592-4492-996f-0aabdd122495
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Testing a post via jott.

listen:
http://www.jott.com/show.aspx?id=64db99ac-622b-4704-bb83-2e943228148f
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I dig these style thingies.