Hot Hot Hot

The grass is cut. I had a nice lunch with my brother and nephew. The bills are organized, paid, and otherwise prioritized. I got to spend some time laying around on the deck sweating like a pig in the sun. I spoke to a couple of recruiters and sent a few resumes. I got the chest and bicep workout done and ate dinner. It was a very productive day. It was a very hot day. My thermometer said 103 at one point. I know it felt that hot. I drank over a gallon of water and I'm sweaty right now. If it's this hot tomorrow, I'm going to the pool. Despite the heat, it was a good day. I feel like I should go to bed now so nothing can ruin it.

I noticed that the FCC approved the sale of Adelphia to Time Warner Cable and Comcast this evening.  "Time Warner will get customers in Los Angeles, Dallas and other cities from Comcast in exchange for customers in Memphis and Minneapolis, among others." Is Kansas City "among others"?  I guess we'll know more when the deal closes on July 31.  I also noticed that Time Warner has layoffs slated for August 2.  They're going to reduce AOL to a free web service.  I hope that has a positive influence on the stock price, because I have to exercise my TWX options by August 8.  The recent price slide is making me tense.

Job search

Well, I have extended my job search to include short term contracts outside the area.  I'm not sure if it would be considered slumming to take a contract that's 100% travel for four months upgrading networks in 187 retail stores.  I think I'm up for it.  I quoted $50 an hour.  I hope they bite.  I think it would be quite an adventure.  I could rack up some frequent flyer miles, at least.  I think after about the 50th store, I might get tired of it, but there are parts of this country I have not seen and this seems like a great time to do it.

There's a $40 an hour gig in St. Louis with AT&T which looks promising.  They like me, but they would want me to move.  I wouldn't mind it if I could work four tens and come back to KC for the long weekends until the contract is over.  There's apparently an on call rotation, which is only cool if they're paying overtime.  I'm not going there again.

The phattest job I've interviewed for so far, Network Controller III at Scott Air Force Base, pays twice what I've ever made and they really like me so far.  I think the only way I could get more money is if I got a Masters degree or started a consulting firm, and neither of those options is as immediate.

Yesterday, I did a pretty intense back and tricep workout.  My hands hurt the worst.  Gripping 85 pound dumbells for three pretty intense sets of bent over rows is killer on the grip.  I did tricep push downs with the entire stack of plates, probably 150 pounds.  I had to do 15 reps, because it wasn't fatiguing my muscles, except my hands.  My palms and forearms were already sore from gripping 100 pound dumbells for shrugs the day before.  I'm considering taking the day off, but might go by the gym and do some core work and calves or something.  Tomorrow is chest and bicep day.  Legs on Friday.  I'll reverse them if my grip is still sore tomorrow.  I will do 90 pound dumbell chest presses if I can find someone to spot.

I drink Cytomax as my pre-workout carb drink, and that stuff works!  I'm not sure if it's as good as Surge, but it's cheaper, and I can tell a difference.  I also like to take a Spike before a workout, but today I took Hot Rox, because I'm out of Spike.  That helps me keep the intensity up for the whole hour.  I'm currently out of both, so a trip to GNC is on the agenda.  I drink a protiein "shake" after my workout, usually about 50 grams of protein.  Then I usually eat a big meal of chicken and green veggies about 45 minutes later.  The only way to feel good enough to work out every day is to really eat a lot.  Right now I can afford to either hit the $6.99 all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet down the street or buy chicken thighs, eggs, greens, and tubs of whey protein.  I don't scrimp on the whey protein powder.  I get the Gladiator brand that Smoothie King sells, because it tastes good enough that I actually crave it and it mixes really easily and tends not to clump up in milk like the EAS or GNC stuff.

Since it's summer, I'm sweating a lot and leaning out.  I haven't lost or gained a single pound, but I'm getting cut.  I haven't been this lean for ten years, but I've also never been this heavy.  I've certainly never been this strong. The hard work is paying off.

I guess I didn't hear the starting gun that goes off on Monday mornings when the employed world goes from zero to sixty and the unemployed world staggers to the bathroom and decides a shower would be too ambitious, pees, and goes back to the bed.  I slept through the usual checking of email, eating of oatmeal, and applying for the new hot job postings which appeared. . . which I'm doing now.  Something about an overcast day just takes the wind out of my sails.  If you don't look at the clock, the light level indicates that sunrise hasn't happened yet and if the circadian clock inside is synchronized to a weekend sleep-in cycle, it's hard to get the motor running.  Sleep inertia.  The only consequence was that my day started much later and I had to prioritize some things.  I did make it to the gym for a good shoulder workout.  I did cook for myself . . . I boiled some fresh spinach with garlic and some beef fat, which tastes pretty good, and I grilled some chicken with some lemon and italian spices, which I also love. 

For some reason, despite having slept in, I fell asleep playing poker online.  I was down ten bucks anyway.  I usually make between 10 and 30 bucks an hour, but I kept getting checked into decent hands and then getting drawn out on by slightly better hands.  The worst leak in my game, which I have identified and plugged, is my laziness for calculating the odds for drawing hands versus my break even percentage.  If you do the math, it's more of an investment than a bet.  I stopped paying attention to the "zzzzzzz" comments in the chat window and actually taking the time to do the math.  I now practice doing the calculations for betting rounds after I've folded a hand, so they don't take as long when I'm in a hand.  I have most of the odds memorized now.  I know when I'm 48% to win a hand and when I'm 18% to win a hand.  If the pot is $100, I can call a $10 bet if I'm 18% to win, because 18% of the time I'll make 9 times the money.  That's a great investment, you just have to be mentally and financially prepared to lose it 4 out of 5 times.  If you are patient and smart, which I am both, you can wait for the right situations at a poker table and it is most certainly not gambling.  I would say it is less of a gamble than the stock market.  The best advice I got from Phil Gordon about playing selectively aggressive is to never just call pre-flop.  If your cards aren't good enough to raise, you should fold them.  I started raising five times the big blind when I don't want the people to my left to call and three times the big blind when I have a premium hand and want the loose players to call.  I raise ten times the big blind if my raises are not being respected.  That simple formula has put me in the top 10 chip stacks going into the final two tables a number of times.  My only problem is that these are $4 sit'n'go tourneys and I'm not making as much money as in the cash "no limit" games.  I've played in some larger cheap tournaments.  I know that I need to educate myself about how to play the final few tables in a big tournament.  Finishing 29th out of 10,000 feels good, but when you only make fifteen bucks for over three hours of work, it's kind of a downer.  I want those hundred and thousand dollar top prizes.  I'm learning this game fast.  I have a positive expectation when I play now.  That's a good feeling.  Am I a professional poker player yet?  If I pay off my mortgage, the answer will be yes.  So far, it's only paying for itself.

Don't sit out.

I played in a couple of free online Omaha tournaments to get a feel for the game.  I didn't last long in my first attempt.  In my second tourney, I outlasted over half of the players, but got busted when my set of kings got beat by a straight (ace to five) which I simply didn't see coming.  Most people will play aggressively to double their stack early, then sit out the first part of a tournament to wait for better playing conditions.  Ironically, even this guy whose screen name is "dontsitout" will sit out when there's a big chip stack bullying the table.

Last night I finished 13th out of 5470 players in a regular hold'em tournament.  Too bad it was only for play money.  An extra $8500 would be nice right now.

World Series of Poker

Here are a few select pictures from the World Series of Poker at the Rio in Las Vegas.  Phil Gordon and Doyle Brunson pics are inlcluded.  I was impressed by the enormity of the thing, not to mention the stacks of chips.  Those pink ones are worth $500 each.  I hope to have the skill to participate in an event like this someday soon.

My decision to attend Cisco Networkers 2006 was a good one.  My decision to ever put a dollar into a Vegas slot machine, not a good one.  Now that I've been in Las Vegas for just shy of two weeks, I can honestly say that I'd live here if a lucrative opportunity presented itself.  Travel to and from here is cheap enough.  The cost of living off the strip is not too steep.  The climate actually makes me feel good.  I can breathe nasally 100% of the time.  Not so many allergens in the air.

The training I received in the few days at Networkers alone was worth the time and money.  It was enlightening to meet other network engineers of the same personality type who have been in the industry a lot longer than me.  And Cisco sure knows how to throw a party!  Great music and fireworks and open bar and free ice cream and all you can eat sushi. 

The timing of this trip is also a bonus.  I've seen a room with over 200 poker tables at the World Series of Poker 2006.  I got poker lessons from Phil Gordon.  I got blackjack card counting tips from Andy Bloch of the famed MIT Blackjack team.  I've watched fighter jets take off at Nellis AFB.  I've seen bodies embalmed with plastic polymer and dissected for display to the public.  I have physically handled an actual human heart.  I've stayed in hotels for absolutely free (because of my slot play. . . so, not really free.)  I've eaten many free meals.  I've collected an entire bag of free t-shirts, free decks of cards, and various hotel soap and shampoo products.  :-)   I got to see some really great UFC fights at The Joint in the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino.  Josh Koscheck gave me his autograph and Michael Bisping posed for a pic.  

Because of some free promotions, I even checked out some topless bars.  Seamless is a nice loungy place with a large stage and very cool decor.  Sapphire Club is over the top.  Marble floors and velvet furniture and the women were postively gorgeous.  The rest of the clubs were disappointing.  And I never got to use a VIP pass to Scores, so I'm giving it to the highest bidder.  It doesn't expire.  I accumulated two more free passes for Sapphire Club, and one very questionable coupon for a "massage".  More than one cabby has offered to take me to a "house".  One purportedly has Japanese and Korean women who bathe and "massage" you and "everything" for $300.  I've been accosted by prostitutes in the casino in the Hilton.  One wanted $200 plus cab fare.  One only wanted $150 and she was hotter and very young.  This town is overrun by whores, I'd say.  What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. . . and cash is what happens.  Lots of cash.  There are no less than 5 cranes operating near The Strip building new condos and hotels.  Plus, the Stardust is being prepared for demolition next month.  It really is incredible.  I was told that on their busiest nights, MGM Grand does 12 million an hour in revenue and their operating costs are 6 million an hour.  Another thing I noticed about Vegas, it's the poker capital of the world.  Poker rooms are popping up in every casino.  Some of them have the tables right by the street where the slots once were.  They take a 10% rake from every pot, up to $4 a hand.  If they can deal 100 hands an hour, I dare say they're making as much as they might make from a row of penny slot machines and none of the house money is ever at risk, since the players are playing against each other and not against the house.  

I tried to get by for a while spending as little as possible and made it through two days on only $40.  During that adventure, which revealed a completely sobering view of this city, I met a recovering crack addict named Chad at the bus stop who told me, "There is every opportunity in this town to be successful, but there's every possible trap for someone to fall into."  Just about that time one of those billboard trucks rolled by with an ad for "Hot Babes!  Direct to you!" and a phone number.  He said, "See?"  Then he told me that he's now a Christian and prays every day.  His problem is that other Christians make it hard on him, because they don't understand his situation and try to put rules on him that he finds impossible to abide by.  He works day shift security at one of the wedding chapels downtown near the marriage license bureau.  I'd say the man is working out his own salvation.  He and his friend Billy got off the bus at their rehab center just before their curfew.

My other CAT bus (read: crack bus) adventure involved getting on the wrong bus and ending up at Nellis AFB instead of my Cisco class.  I realized my mistake about 20 minutes too late to make my class, so I just decided on sightseeing.  I got to see another side of this town out there.  It's a strange mix of folks who live on the north side, and I'll leave it at that.  Apartments and trailer parks for miles.  Housekeeping staff, crackheads carrying in one hand a trashbag containing all their belongings except for a pillow which is in their other hand, and non-poser emo kids replete with chopped up hair which covers most of their face and arm scars.  I soaked in some air conditioning in Wal-Mart Supercenter, ate some Del Taco, and took the bus route back downtown.

Saturday was my favorite day.  A poker class by Phil Gordon!  I took notes and learned a lot about the game.  "Seeing the flop cheaply is usually not a good strategy."  I know that's the philosophy here.  I stopped limping and started making money.  "Play tight in a loose game, play loose in a tight game."  I made back the price of the seminar in the very next session at a loose limit game at the Stratosphere.  I played no more than two hands per orbit, if that many.  I never called.  I always raised.  I won almost every hand I was involved in.  It felt great.

The plastination exhibit called "Bodies" at the Tropicana made me kind of emotional at first.  I was looking at dead people.  The preserved fetuses were supremely interesting.  You can see bones and toes at four weeks.  They showed some plastinated specimens with common birth defects and listed the causes.  Kinda sad to see dead babies who had no chance, but I'm enlightened to have seen it.  They have body parts plastinated and placed under glass.  I got to see what a smoker's lung looks like compared to a non-smoker.  I will never smoke.  Never.  If your skin discolored the way your lung does when you smoke, nobody would.  I got to see a slice of a liver where someone's cancer had metasticized and you can see the flawed liver tissue.  They had people walking around in lab coats answering anatomy questions and displaying the plastinated body parts.  They had a complete circulatory system plastinated and suspended in a liquid.  Iand another fellow were trying to figure out how they got the bones out.  I suppose since they had filled the veins with plastic, they just used enzymes to eat the bones and tissue away.  What was left was postively beautiful.  The vessels in a jejunum when displayed is bright blue plastic, if you didn't know what you were looking at, look like a decorative pattern.  The way everything trees out from the heart, lungs, and liver and supplies every part is fantastic to view.  You had a 1 in 9000 chance to have your innards inverse of everyone else, with no adverse effect.  That means your heart would be on the right and stomach on the left.  Three lobes of lung on the left and two on the right.  I was boggled by that bit of unique trivia.  The nervous system is just as fantastic.  The even spacing of the nerves that branch off through your muscles and fascia to supply every centimeter of your skin with a sense of touch. . . hot, cold, pleasure, and pain. . . positively amazing to actually view.  Getting to see a diaphragm muscle in a relaxed (exhale) state and a flexed (inhale) state is also cool.  It' makes a little dome when it's relaxed and when it flexes, it goes flat and pulls air into your lungs.  I got to handle a liver, which is a surprisingly large and heavy organ.  And an actual human heart.  I peeked inside the valves and checked out the chambers.  I was surprised how small, delicate, and light it is.  It's the size of a fist, but hollow.  Dark meat.  The heart muscles look much different than skeletel muscle.  Enough about that.  I can't do it justice in words.  Suffice it to say that our bodies are amazing machines and getting to see the layers peeled or sliced or dissolved away so you could lay eyes on them was worth every penny of $24.  I'll never forget it.

I spent time by the pool, which I rarely get to do on a Vegas vacation, because there's usually not enough time to see everything and have time for that.  But it's been consistently over 100 degrees.  Pool time was necessary this trip.  I got a skin treatment and hot stone massage and a haircut at the salon/spa in the Flamingo.  Money well spent.  It melted away all the stress.

Network Nerd Invasion

Too late with the slot machine advice, bro.  I've sworn off of them for a long time after yesterday's burn.  I held my own in poker, but my full house met four of a kind, and betting top two pair didn't matter when some guy with more money than sense rivered a set, and nobody cares about your preflop raise in a 2/4 limit game at the Golden Nugget, but now I don't have the bankroll for much more.  Not sure I want to do much more gambling, really.  I can do that at home.  I need to learn the no-limit game.  BADLY!  There's a tournament starting every few hours downtown.  I want to enter the 1am tourney this weekend, maybe. My ticket for Ultimate Fight Night at the Hard Rock Cafe on Sunday afternoon is secured.  I'm THERE!! 

 

My biggest win was at the vendors event at this conference.  Free sushi buffet!  Free shirts and schwag.  Way cool.  At one booth, I won a Deal or No Deal thingy and got $10 cash and a flashlight keychain with a corporate logo on it for picking the right briefcase and listening to the speel.  Not bad considering it was free.

 

Networkers is the most amazing concentration of overpaid walking genetic mistakes per square centimeter.  That said, there's more talent in this one building right now than should be allowed to exist in one building.  Revenge of the nerds, indeed.  Most of these dudes didn't get the girl, but they are paid and have it made in the shade.  I would love to know the average IQ in here.  If not for the food service staff and the spokesmodels at these booths who have little product knowledge, it would exceed 120, and that's a conservative estimate.

 

The training classes go at a pace which keeps me alert, and that's saying a lot.  The top rated Global Knowledge trainers are leading the labs.  I even got to do some BGP tricks I had never tried before.  And after doing MPLS VPNs all afternoon, I'm a stud at that, too.  Well, back to socializing.  I've met some of the commercial customers I supported when I was employed.  It's interesting to hear good things about your work from the customer's perspective.