Does anyone know if pre-paid credit cards still work for Poker Sites?
I am thinking of reloading for a hundred or two, but with Neteller not accepting transfers I will need another method.
NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship is tonight. I got my BoDog account cleaned out with the semi-finals so I am just rooting for a good game.
My garage is fully wired now. Pictures to follow. No fires, heck no sparks.
Another music video from one of my favorite content producers, JibJab:
My website has been sickly lately. I disabled my gallery which helped, but it is still really bad. I’m going to try upgrading WordPress; but the system itself is up-to-date as of today. Very odd and very frustrating.
Has anyone else found The Riches yet? I just finished watching the 2nd episode (one week late thanks to TiVo) and think I might be hooked. It is one of the better new shows at least that I have seen. Episode 3 is on tonight.
This is hilarious! Peyton Manning for United Way.
Props to The Big Lead.
I am sitting at my new desk. It is located at MessageOne’s world headquarters here in Austin. So far (all 2 days and 2 hours of it) it has been a good experience. The people I am working with are smart and dedicated.
I’m not a big fan of my commute. It is not that it is far or time consuming (I had both when I lived in NoVA), but it is painful because it is all surface streets with lights and schools and people who have no sense of direction. Oh well. I’m here for awhile so I might as well get used to it.
I’m doing OK in my NCAA pool. I got 28 of 32 games in the first round; all of my 2nd round teams remained. I missed 2 major ones in the second round with Maryland and Texas losing- but I still have my Final 4 intact. We are using a 1-2-4-8-16-32 point system; but I am digging Brendan Loy’s 5-7-10-15-20-25 point system. Maybe next year I’ll try and get that system used in my local bar pool.
Happy Hump Day Everyone!
I am officially done at IBM. I signed my last rights away an hour or so ago and can now collect unemployment. Well, for one day anyway 🙂 I start my new job Monday.
I am in the process of moving this blog (and other darkrune.org stuff) to my SliceHost hosting environment. Hopefully everything will go well and it will be up and running today.
-ST
I have in my hands a very generous offer from a local company. This is my replacement job because my current stint at IBM is ending on the 15th. I will be signing the paperwork today and starting on the 19th. I am going to hold off mentioning the company until I am actually working there; just seems like a prudent thing to do.
Thanks to those who wished me well in this transition. It does appear everything is going to work out quite well.
I’m thinking of running the Statesman Capitol 10K on March 25th. That will be right on the edge of the distance I can run at that point but I should be able to handle it.
PS. My “On-The-Wagon Adventure” ended yesterday.
As most of you know, I am leaving Big Blue on the 15th of March. Since it looks like a sad severance package- I am need of employment. Luckily I appear to be in some amount of demand.
I had a meeting with a staffing service/head hunter last Wednesday that went quite well. From there I did a phone screen on Friday for a contract-to-hire position. It looks promising, but I need to talk to folks there in person before I can decide if I like the job or not. There has been no follow-up on that that phone call yet. I expect one shortly.
Yesterday I got an email from a recruiter for a high-tech software company in town. As it turns out, I know a few people who work there. I know the VP from reputation, we worked at the same company but not directly together. I also know one of the QA managers and one of the QA folks. I did work with them directly. That got me fast tracked and I went in for a on-site today. I think it went really well. I hope to know more by the end of the week. It got down to job role description and start date. That is a good thing in my experience.
My goal is to start on March 19th. That gives me the 15th and 16th to watch the first round of the NCAA basketball tourney. It also gives me the weekend to watch the round of 32. I have four days of flex-holiday which I will take before the 15th. That gives me plenty of time to hang out. I might even play a little golf. Mookie’s Weekend at Mookie’s is coming up in April; It would be nice to at least be able to *hit* the ball.
I am still on the wagon. 5 days left. There are several of us on this plan. One of them figures he had his last drink at 10PM Super Bowl Sunday. He figures one month puts it at 10PM Sunday. I, for one, will not be going out Sunday to have a beer at 10 just because the month is up. Most likely I will just hit a happy hour on the 5th. I figure two or three beers and I will be swimming. Last year I had three beers and one shot before I got on the plane to Vegas and was *hammered*. Lack of tolerance is a hell of a thing.
There is talk of a Vegas trip in April to play some golf and cards. I’m not sure of the time frame, I’m not sure of the job situation, I’m not sure of the cash situation, and well- I’m just not sure I can do it in April. Past that it gets too damn hot to play in the desert. I’ll stick to my 6:30 tee-times here in Austin and sweat it out before noon.
Still running. It is a slow week, with only 6 miles on the schedule. Today I did two miles in 18:26 (9:13s). I did four miles on Saturday in 40:24 (10:06s). I am pretty happy with those paces. Certainly, I would like to get my short runs into the mid to low 8s and my longer runs closer to 9 minute miles- but for now I am pretty content.
The torrent I mentioned in a past post finally worked. I had to change to the actual BitTorrent client and let it try for awhile. 3 gigs of data. 727 songs. 1.8 days of music. I have heard some interesting stuff so far and have only listened to a dozen or two songs.
One small note on poker: I officially suck. My FullTilt account is nearly drained and I reloaded Stars to, apparently, drain that one as well. Ick.
I ordered a new laptop from Dell Outlet over the weekend. It should come in this week since it is being shipped from the next town over. I’m hoping to make my next post from my new shiny laptop. And yes, I will be dual booting it with Linux, probably Ubuntu. I also avoided Vista. XP suits me much, much better.
Have a good Hump Day everyone!
I sit here at work content after getting my weekly greasy spoon fix of cheese enchiladas so it seems appropriate to post to my “Ghey Blog” ™.
Check out Wanky the Safety Cat (props to Gizmodo). I think I need one of those for my truck.
I was going to use a PPA donation to reload a little cash at FullTilt ($20 gets you $50) but after lasts night I am going to hold off. One “bad beat story” to explain my recent run. Bubble time in a cheap SnG. I get Jacks on the BB. Folds to the SB who doubles the blind to 800. I push for 1700ish. He calls with K9 sooted. I get another jack on the flop, but the turn fills his flush and I am done on the bubble. 21 events this month with an amazing ROI of minus 18%. Yeah. 8 cashes but only one 1st. Grrrr. How did I ever stay cash positive at this damn game?
Check out this CG image. Looks as good as a photograph- but completely done with CG. Simply Amazing.
The VA Tech Hokies whooped-down the BC Eagles last night. Tied for 2nd in the ACC with only three games to go. It does look like they can pull a 5 seed with a reasonable showing in the ACC tourney. They seem to have UNC’s number this season so maybe they can even do the unmentionable. They have not been this good since Ace Custis in the mid-late 90s.
I had a screening interview with a contract-to-hire service yesterday. It went pretty well, there is a Linux Lab Admin job in town that I should do well at. I’ll probably know more in the next few days, and maybe even get the interviews going. It would be nice not to have a job gap.
As part of my running regime I am supposed to do “cross training” which is a lose term uses to describe anything but running that involves movement. 30 minutes of spirited Wii tennis probably counts. I am choosing to use the Concept2 rower that I have and has been under-utilized since I got it. What I do is row in 10 minute chunks. If I am supposed to do 30 minutes of cross I do 3×10 minute rows with a 5 minute break. Yesterday that turned into 6+ km of rowing which is good for legs, abs, backs, arms, and overall strength and endurance. The only caveat is that blisters happen. I need to toughen up anyway.
XM vs Sirius. I have XM in the truck and really enjoy it. I need to renew my subscription in March anyway- but this merger/acquisition seems very interesting to me. If they combine programming and I can get NFL, MLB, NPR, and the music I get now I will be pumped. I don’t really give a flying eff through a rolling donut about Stern or O & A or Oprah so hopefully their overly inflated incomes don’t kill the normal programming.
11 days of “On-The-Wagon Travel” left. 16 days of Big Blue employment left. 4 days of floating holiday I need to take- hmmm… what to do?
Has anyone got the torrent from the SXSW website to work?
I am getting an error using BitTornado about an MP3 not existing. Duh. I’m trying to download the collection, it *can’t* exist yet.
I have a meeting with a recruiter tomorrow. Hopefully good things come from that because both jobs I was vying for internally dried up due to budget concerns. I am going to be laid off on March 15th and I would really like something lined up by then. It does not look like the cash part of the severance package is very good, so I will need to be gainfully employed shortly. Of course I have some fairly major expenses in the house and truck. I have emergency funds (as everyone should) but they are in CDs making decent interest and I really don’t want to raid them.