Dave Barry’s latest missive analyzes the current poker craze overtaking the nation. It’s hilarious…

Mugger Can’t Believe Crap Victim Has On MP3 Player

BOSTON — Following the successful mugging of a jogger in Franklin Park, petty criminal Derek Mesker announced Monday that he cannot believe the shit he’s found on his victim’s Philips 20GB MP3 player. “3 Doors Down? Maroon 5!” Mesker said, scrolling through the songs. “The new Counting Crows?! Man, I’m glad I pistol-whipped that motherfuck.” Mesker added that the first thing he did was toss the device’s “gay-ass” teal neoprene case.

Thanks to a serious security hole, I have taken down my photo album until I have a chance to upgrade my installation of Gallery. It should return to working order in a few days (It should be a brainless upgrade but I need shell access, which I don’t have here at work, and since I have plans tonight it might take a few days). Those of you running Gallery should also upgrade.

Mucho thanks to for the heads up!

I stumbled across this seemingly-good RegEx site with tutorials, tools, examples, etc. Great for the RegEx novice or the experienced, yet out-of-practice developer like myself.

http://www.regular-expressions.info/

On the way home from work yesterday I decided to stop by Micro Center and shop for a replacement DVD burner. My burner died a month or so ago (it started to destruct as I was backing up my MP3 archive), and was just going to stop by to see what they had. I kinda browsed around for awhile, and while I was doing so I ran into Maria, a “cousin” (daughter of my sister’s godmother) of mine that I haven’t seen in ages. She was attending Harvard the entire time I have lived in Boston, but I never got in touch with her. In fact, she was under the impression that I was still living back in NJ after losing my job, so she was really surprised to see me too! She was there with her Fiance, who’s name I’ve already forgotton, but he seemed like a really nice guy. She just got her Ph.D and is moving to Philly to do post doc work.

After that close encouter, I finished shopping. I ended up with a Sony DRU-700a Dual-Layer job, which supports both the DVD-R(W) and DVD+R(W) formats, so I don’t have to deal so much with the “proper media” nonsense anymore. Plus, when someone starts selling dual layer blanks I can burn them, which is great for making video DVDs.

On the way home from Micro Center I was driving down Western Ave. and thought I saw ‘s car. I examined closer and saw someone who looked a hell of a lot like in the passenger seat, and decided to do a quick u-turn and see if it was them. It was, apparently R’s car had been towed and he was liberating it from it’s oppressors. I chit-chatted with Matt a bit while Rory was turning over his life savings, and then continued to proceed home. Weird, weird day….

This past weekend and I trekked back to NJ to visit the family and meet the new addition to the family, Buster (a.k.a. “Butters”, a.k.a. “Professor Chaos”). The drive down was no big deal, we left Boston a bit before 6:30pm and didn’t really hit any significant traffic on the whole trip down. I was excited to see the Fam, and was home after graduation (and before moving down south to work), so it was cool to chill with her. moved out of the house this past week, having graduated from her Masters’ program and entering the real world with a job, so I only really saw her Saturday night.

Butters is ridiculously cute, and there are more pictures TK but I have yet to grab them off the camera yet. Saturday morning Corinna and I joined my dad on the Party Barge Regency Edition for a little cruise around the lake. We brought the puppy along to get him acclimated to being on the boat, since that is where my dad spends as much of his summer free time as he can (and rightfully so). The doggie seemed fine on the boat, only getting nervous when my dad slammed on the gas. Dad made a roast Saturday night for dinner and it was delicious as always… The house looks so nice now, with the renovated bathrooms and kitchen, but I’m still not used to it all… After dinner Saturday night Johnny and Casey came over and we ended up playing poker. I got really frustrated though, because nobody was paying attention and everyone was talking, etc. I guess we should have played some other game that I’m not so serious about….

Corinna and I took off on Sunday around 1:30pm (after I installed an Air Conditioner in the bedroom window for Mom) and made it back in Boston around 6pm. We then headed over to the Kendall Cinema to catch Saved! with the SNFC, which was pretty light but really enjoyable. Overall it was a fantastic weekend!

Sean is a retard
He can’t write a fake haiku
Special Olympics

After our trip to the ‘Woods I started putting alot of thought into my poker game. I have been kind of in a poker nexus for the past few months, straddling the line between someone who plays seriously and someone who just plays for fun. I determined that I really needed to pick a side and run with it, either playing to improve my strategy or just playing to play. I’ve decided to get serious about my strategy and poker education, so I consulted with and got a pep talk.

On Tuesday I played $4/8 Hold’Em at a home game in Cambridge. I think I was out of my league, but I managed to hold my own, coming out of the game up about 6 bucks after about 4 hours of play. I also took down the largest pot in the history of this home game, $219. Of course, with that data, my $6 profit looks pretty sad. But this game really gave me the motivation I needed to start studying and practicing. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have any intentions or delusions of going pro, or winning the World Series of Poker or anything like that. But I have decided to really hone my skills and learn the game properly. For too long I have had enough knowledge to be dangerous, and while my poker bankroll has been positive overall throughout the year I’ve been playing, there is a lot of luck involved in that.

Based on Rory’s advice, I ordered two books:

• Hold’Em Poker for Advanced Players
• Winning Low-Limit Hold’em (2nd Edition)

My plan is to study up, practice, then come out swinging.

Thanks , who is hooking me up with a free CacheCard for my Tivo, which should speed up lots of the program database functions by caching the entire program database on a 512MB DIMM.

I just got an email from Security here at work letting me know that another item was added to the list of objects banned from premises.