So, Dave sent me a link a while back where they give out free money at a poker site. There are conditions attached obviously, and they only give out money to 25 people a day, but I was awake when the counter reset the other day, so I signed up. They send you an email, and you have to call them at an 800 number to confirm that you’re you and all that, but at the end of it, I had $75.01 deposited into a real money account on a poker site.

The main catch is that you have to play 500 hands before you can cash out any of it. I figure that if you just sat and folded, you’d wind up with half of your $75 left at the end of the time. Of course that wouldn’t be much fun though.

So, I played a little poker for real money last night. I lost a couple of big hands, and won one big hand, and wound up down $14 for the night. I started out playing pretty stupidly, so it doesn’t surprise me that I lost a bunch of money. It’s scary playing online, cause there are a lot of really stupid people out there, so you’re tempted to take a chance and try to take their money on hands that you know are easily beaten. The problem is that with so many stupid people out there playing, chances are really good that you’re beaten by at least one of them, unless you’ve got a legitimate hand. I know this. I still didn’t play that way though. I was just another one of the stupid people paying off the smart people when I didn’t have a hand. Glad that I can learn my lessons without putting any of my own real money on the line. Don’t get me wrong, once my free money is done, so am I - unless that doesn’t happen, and I turn it into a bunch of money…The one thing that I like about having a real money account on the site is that they occasionally have tournaments with free entry and decent sized prize pools. People without a real money account can’t enter though. I think I’ll try my hand at the next one that I see come up (supposedly a $10K prize tourney is coming up in mid January.)

I don’t expect to win or anything, but it should be a lot of fun, and an interesting experience.

Ok, and if anyone is interested in the free money thing, I’ll send you the link. I don’t want to post it here and attract all the poker spammers back (though this post is probably enough to do the trick.)

Simpson’s quote of the day: “D’oh! D’oh! D’oh! I mean…woo hoo.” - Homer

I got the projector mounted on the wall last night. Well, technically, it’s not on the wall so much as in the closet. I still only have one speaker hooked up though, and the screen is now too small, so it’s not like it’s greatly usable right now.

I would probably have been working on the new computer instead, but the RAM was apparently error-filled. NCIX didn’t test it when they built the machine, so they’re sending me replacement RAM and refunding my PC Builder fee, which is nice. The only drawback is that the new machine sits useless on the floor without any RAM in it, and with the holidays, it could be a while before I can even turn it on again.

People who care about that kind of stuff can read about the odyssey over at my new site which will detail my experiences with the new machine and it’s setup.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “Ng-hey. I doubt very highly that one elixir could boast so many fantastic properties.” - Professor Frink

Christmas approaches relentlessly.

Yesterday, Erin was kind enough to track down a DVD burner for me, so I got to start installing Gentoo on the new machine. It isn’t a simple point and click installer, but it seems to be exactly what I am looking for. I started off a relatively long running process (probably took 10 minutes to a half hour - I dunno) before I went to bed because I was too tired to type straight. I know that there are much longer processes ahead, and I look forward to each and every one of them. I’m blogging the whole process, and when I’m done, I’ll tell the world about it - don’t worry, it won’t be here, so those of you who are bored to tears by the differences between EXT2, EXT3 and ReiserFS won’t have to be subjected to it.

Unfortunately, William was restless, so when I went to bed, I didn’t get much sleep before I had to get up with him for a while. I think he was hungry, but there’s more to it as well. Erin thinks that he’s maybe got some anxiety that we’re moving again, because the last time Grandpa John came to visit, we moved. I don’t know if that’s the case, but I’m sure that a visit or two where we don’t wind up moving will alleviate it if it is the case.

I’m not sure if I’ll post here tomorrow, since it’s a holiday and all, so in case I don’t - have a very Merry Christmas/holiday season to every one of you that reads this site regularly. I know there are a lot of anonymous people out there that read the site (heavens only know why) and it’s been a pleasure to — umm — bore you over the last year.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “Ho ho ho, suckin’ down the cider, uh? Hey, word to the wise — [shows Homer a card] season pass! It pays for itself after the sixteenth visit. You know, most people don’t know the difference between apple cider and apple juice, but I do. Now here’s a little trick to help you remember. If it’s clear and yella’, you’ve got juice there, fella! If it’s tangy and brown, you’re in cider town. Now, there’s two exceptions and it gets kinda tricky here…” - Ned Flanders

The new computer that I ordered arrived yesterday, so I was looking forward to an evening of compiling but for one small problem. I cracked open the case, popped in the video capture card and DVD burner, and it didn’t boot up. It froze on the “Detecting IDE Drives” stage, which was pretty depressing. I tried a bunch of stuff, and eventually decided that the DVD burner had died. I tried a “known good” CD drive, and the system came up just fine. I decided that I’d wait until I can get a new DVD burner to do the requisite compiling/setup…I suppose I could have gone ahead with the “known good” cd drive, but it’s slow and loud, and William wanted to play with me, so I called it a night.

Otherwise though, I’m really happy with the system. It seems well put together, and when I turn it on, it’s dead quiet. Granted, it’s not actually doing anything yet, since I don’t have an OS installed, but it makes my old webserver sound like the Space Shuttle is trying to launch with a Rolling Stones concert inside it.

I pulled out some Christmas decorations last night, and we made some progress toward getting the tree up (but it’s not up yet…) Besides that though, not much else went on last night.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “Don’t take it so hard lad. I was wrestling wolves when you were at your mother’s teat.” - Groundskeeper Willie

I went to Futureshop last night to pick up a cable. The Sony Store had the same cable for $40, but FS had it for $15, so I went there. A lot of things have changed about that store that make it more OK to shop there. They’ve still got lots of room for improvement though.

I waited in line with my cable and $20 bill in hand, and when I got to the front of the line, the guy tells me that he can’t take cash. There was no sign, no way of knowing in advance that I’d gotten in a “no-cash” lineup, but there it was. Thankfully it wasn’t too busy, so the lineups weren’t super long. Still, I had to wait in line twice just to pay for the silly thing (which should have come with the thing that I bought it for, but that’s a rant for another day.)

Ever since we decorated the gingerbread house, William has wanted to see it before bed. Every night before bed, we’ve trooped down the stairs, to the cold room to say goodnight to the gingerbread house. Invariably, he sees the rod hockey table down there, and wants to play hockey, but I’ve gotten him to accept just saying goodnight to the hockey players instead. Well, half of them. He tells the other half (the leafs) that they suck.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “I hereby declare this day to be Snow Day, the funnest day in the history of Springfield.” - Mayor Quimby

Here it is, December 20. Christmas gifts are winging their way around the country, and we’ve got some wicked weather happening - 50-70 km/h winds aren’t fun, especially when they’re accompanied by snow. It’s never a good sign when I see snow whipping by my window virtually horizontally.

But back to the beginning of this post - Christmas is 5 days away. I’ve got a couple of gifts for Erin already, and another bunch are in shipping (dunno if they will arrive before Christmas or not.) Bryan arrived from Vancouver on Saturday, and I’m happy to say that William seemed to take to him right away — he wasn’t scared, or shy or anything. There has been a lot of “Play cars uncle —*pause while William figures out which uncle he’s looking at* Dare—Bryan?” Of course whichever uncle he’s talking to dutifully sits on the carpet and plays cars with him.

Yesterday, Darren taught him how to play the piano with his forehead (eat your heart out Alvin Law) so he did a fair amount of that. He’s invented this game where he chases the dogs in circles, laughing like a maniac the whole time. He’s also rediscovered a love for ice cream, cookies and chocolate apparently. It’s hard to believe that he was a tiny helpless little 7 pound baby just 22 months ago.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “We want chilli-willi!” - Barney

Last night, William and I went shopping for a Erin’s Christmas gift. We were only half successful, unfortunately. Then, we decorated the gingerbread house. (as some of you may already be aware) I saw something that kind of made me think though.

There was this guy selling those nintendo game in a controller knockoff things at the mall. It’s quite a technical achievement, 7600 games stored on a single controller, and it comes with a light gun, and second controller too, for less than $70.

Here’s the thing though - the reason it’s so cheap is because the manufacturer of the device does not own the copyright to any of the games. They didn’t pay a license fee to Nintendo (and epyx, and activision, and namco, and data east etc.) to include the games on the controller. Now, it’s quite a neat toy, and well worth the money if many of those games appeal to you as a nostalgia gamer, but the problem is that it just feels wrong. Somehow it makes it ok to pirate the games if you buy this device. Don’t get me wrong - I’ve downloaded my share of roms in the past, but when I did it, I knew that it wasn’t strictly legal. At the end of the day though, nobody was out any money, and the only person gaining was me (in theory.) Selling them though, is somehow abhorrent. I’d probably even buy/ask for the stupid thing if it came with no games, and some way to copy roms from your computer to the device, since I’d be paying for the actual hardware *only* and not the software that had been pirated for profit. I’d probably then go out and download 7600+ games off the internet, and have essentially the same device. I don’t really know how to explain that it’s different, but to me, it just is.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “No one who speaks German could be an evil man.” - Homer