Musings and writings

my mini city

2010-02-11T19:07:00.000-08:00

Kind of a fun site:

http://mini-opolous.myminicity.com/

Cheers,

John

Poker tournament results

2009-11-15T13:51:00.000-08:00

Here is a random post - the results of several different Texas Hold'em tounaments I have entered at pokerstars.net. I am getting somewhat better at this game, but still have a long ways to go. In particular, "position play" is something I am not good with, as I do not like betting when I have nothing.

Tourney info: "hubble" tourneys pay out to the top 72 players. "fox" tourneys pay out to the top ten players. "pca" tourneys pay out to the top nine players. All of these very small bands of payouts contribute to a very desperate style of extreme play, especially since entry is free, and usually another tourney will start again soon. What follows is my results in many separate tourneys.

Usually the first quarter of players out are very active, risky bet makers. The next quarter (or less) out are players that signed up but never actually played - but they outlast a lot of active players since the blinds take a long time to bleed them dry. Finally, the last half of players out usually have played with at least some skill and/or luck.

11/13/09 hubble 16:42 - 9000 entries.
Finished 6687 - lost every hand, but had huge value for the money on each hand.

11/13/09 pca 17:20 - 14078 entries.
At first break, had $13084 and was 391 out of 3609.
At second break, had $59388 and was 117 out of 153. Had been as high as 26th place.
Played a long time into the third set, and finished 87th.

11/13/09 fox 20:00 - 10000 entries.
Finished 6406, on a hugh pot ($16,705) with four players all in before the flop. The biggest player in won the pot. If I would have beaten even only him, my pot would have been over 9K. His pocket kings made a boat, my suited A 3 made a straight.

11/13/09 fox 21:00 - 10000 entries.
Finished 8815, on two bad beats in a row. Note, am playing very aggressive since additional tourneys start each hour.

11/13/09 fox 22:00 - 10000 entries.
Finished 6325, never really got going after large early bad beat.

11/13/09 fox 23:00 - 10000 entries.
Finished 4917, had a very hard time as two tourneys were active at the same time, and I would have my 'clicks' go on the wrong one as it would pop to the top of the window stack! This and the next one listed...

11/13/09 hubble 23:22 - 9000 entries.
Finished 5998.

11/14/09 fox 20:00 - 10000 entries.
Finished 6863, on a huge pot with a bad beat. My A-Q suited lost to an A-10 that hit a flush. Another lesser starting hand also was eliminated in this pot.

11/14/09 fox 21:00 - 10000 entries.
Finished 8387, on another huge pot. After watching an idiot go all-in the first three hands in a row, I called him on hand four with A-3 suited. Three others also jumped in. I made my ace high flush, he made a king high flush, but we both lost to a fellow that made a STRAIGHT flush with his 7 of spades...

11/14/09 fox 22:00 - 10000 entries.
Finished 7408, shortly after losing a coin flip all in. My pocket nines lost to Q-K. Also a smaller fellow lost with (I think) a suited J-rag.

11/14/09 pca 22:20 - 7191 entries.
Finished 6768, died on second hand with A-K going all in against two worse hands, one of which hit a straight and one of which hit a pair. I had slow played the A-K, but did call their all-ins.

11/14/09 fox 23:00 - 10000 entries.
Finished 6626. NEVER won a hand, never hit a flop. Was all in after the flop with two overcards against a fellow with a straight draw, and another guy with A-rag. Hit both my cards, K then 10! But the river 10 also finished the other guy's 6-10 straight...

11/15/09 hubble 00:02 - 9000 entries.
Finished 2647. I went all in into a five person min-raised pot with pocket deuces. Called by two, including a guy with pocket 7's that won the pot.

11/15/09 pca 14:20 - 18749 entries.
Finished 12800. Never won a hand, never hit a flop. Saw a BUNCH of flops, and then went through a long period of folding as player after player called all-in one at a time. Finally drew A-Q as all folded except one fellow and I was last to act. With several bets, got all in before the flop - he had K-Q! And he hit the K and won...

Happy Valentine's Day

2008-02-14T07:13:00.000-08:00

As we all enjoy our unofficial holiday of love, it is jarring to read about Saudi Arabia's plans to execute a woman for the 'crime' of witchcraft:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23162712/

Saudi Arabia - close ally of the Bush clan, source of most of the 9/11 terrorists and one of the most sexually repressed countries on earth is a very good place not to be on Valentine's Day!

Primary politics

2008-02-12T11:34:00.000-08:00

It looks as if Obama is going to chalk up more big wins in VA, MD and DC today, all areas that Hillary probably thought she would do well in. Voting is reportedly very heavy - which is a good sign for Obama. In previous elections, the so-called "black" vote has never fulfilled the promise that its numbers would suggest it has. Black Democrats have never voted as religiously as say white Republicans - but this year looks different. If the black Democrats can make it to the polls in November in the same numbers they are getting to the polls now, the Republicans will lose the White House for sure.

I think Obama or Clinton both would be good Presidents, certainly light years ahead of the brain-damaged ex-pothead idiot we currently have. But I must say I am pleased that Obama seems to be pulling ahead. It has troubled me that America has been flipping back and forth between two ruling families for so long - that is not the America I know. That is the sort of thing that happens in a banana republic or third world country, not a major democracy with millions of talented citizens.

More than one sci-fi writer has already mentioned President Chelsea Clinton in their near future stories. Let's not limit our possibilities quite yet...

The population of space

2008-02-11T23:51:00.000-08:00

I have updated my page on the population of "space" to reflect the current mission of the Atlantis.

http://www.neoscifi.com/SPACEPOP.html

Incidentally, the station will be extra visible in the early evening/early morning sky for the next few days while Atlantis is joined to it. Check the sighting opportunities at the NASA site below, and see if you have a chance to catch a glimpse of the extra bright, always growing station...

http://spaceflight1.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings/

I'll try harder...

2008-02-10T23:21:00.000-08:00

I will attempt to post more stuff, more often, and follow up better on my topics. Hmm, the best blogs, like John Scalzi's "Whatever" blog usually have four or five new posts each day, and attract dozens of comments and replies too. Having a blog with one post a month, will never reach that level of involvement and interest, so I shall attempt to change my ways, beginning NOW.

For a follow up on my concert vending job, here is an update on the shows from the last six weeks or so:

http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.ListAll&friendID=133863738

and that link will also show updates on the shows that I work as I post the updates.

Nerd Alert - Eternity II - (almost) impossible

2008-01-22T00:05:00.000-08:00

This post will reveal the depths of my nerd-dom, in case any one still hasn't figured that out.

This day I purchased myself a new way to waste time - the Eternity II puzzle. The deal with this is that it is one of these math things - it has a solution, but there are so many billion-gazillion-pentillion-willion NON-solutions, that there is really almost no chance of finding a good solution. Go ahead, use computers, that is allowed. The maker of the game even offers up a two million dollar prize to the first person to correctly solve it and follow some simple instructions on mailing the solution in. The only catch, is you have to solve it before 2010 ends. It is that hard, even using banks of super fast computers, the game maker figures his odds of paying out the prize money aren't all bad.

Anything THAT crazy is of course going to appeal to my nerd side.

The puzzle is only 256 pieces, an exact square made of littler squares in a 16 by 16 grid. Each piece has a design and color on each edge that must be lined up with a matching piece on all sides, and there is a gray border that must be built around the outside edge. One piece in the middle is given to you, and you have to use that piece in that spot (which actually makes the puzzle harder).

Let's see, the middle of the puzzle is 14 pieces by 14 pieces, with one piece given. That leaves 195 pieces to place in the middle, or 195! (195 factorial) ways to place them. But of course, each piece can also be turned four different ways, so the total number of ways to build just the middle, is really (195!)*(4 to the power of 195), which is a very big number. And then the 60 pieces that make up the edge can also be placed a bunch of possible ways, so I better get working on it. I will come back to this topic again, as my efforts hopefully show some results...

A new political Haiku published

2007-12-20T00:49:00.000-08:00

Steel Moon Publishing, the e-zine, was kind enough to accept a new political Haiku from me. It is in their December issue now:

http://www.steelmoonpublishing.us/POLITICAL.html

My real world job... the current one at least.

2007-10-04T14:43:00.000-07:00

For those that are curious, my real world source of income is in the concert business. I sell whatever the band brings for merchandise when they come to the venues I work at, which include The Fillmore and The Warfield in San Francisco; Shoreline in Mt View; Oracle Arena, McAfee Coliseum and The Paramount in Oakland.

I have a very terse blog about the shows at myspace, specifically:

http://www.myspace.com/fillmorejohn

I have a ton of weird concert junk, and it seems almost every group on tour comes through San Francisco eventually.

John

Two Haikus reprinted

2007-10-01T20:02:00.000-07:00

www.steelmoonpublishing.us/EZINE.html is worth a look. It is a successor ezine to Ragged Edge Publishing, which was on a really good roll until the guiding hand, W.G. Marsh, ran into some health problems. They are not all behind him, but WGM is back with all the best ideas from his previous effort and some new things as well.

He has even resurrected a couple of 2005 era political haikus I had published at the earlier site. For those that are interested, please see:

www.steelmoonpublishing.us/politicalhaiku.html

Sudoku Excel solver

2007-09-12T14:54:00.000-07:00

I am a numbers kind of guy; and I have enjoyed the Sudoku craze. But I am also an Excel spreadsheet kind of guy, and have often boasted that I can make Excel do anything I want. Then I began to wonder if I could make an Excel work book that can solve Soduko puzzles. Yes I can!

I created a sheet that has a grid for the puzzle you are trying to solve, and then another grid next to it that shows recommended moves. As you enter the recommended moves into the puzzle grid, other recommended moves are generated. The recommendations come from four different sources. One is that the particular move is the only place in that column where that number can go, another is the only place in that row for that number to go, and another is the only place in that 3 by 3 big square for that number to go. The fourth source of recommendations is that that small square cannot hold any of the other eight numbers, and therefore must be the recommended number.

The Excel spreadsheet NEVER misses seeing any easy, available move. It is amazing how many moves it points out to me, that I did not see when looking at the same puzzle.

What the spreadsheet still cannot do, is realize that when a pair of numbers must both go into a pair of spaces, those spaces would be off limits for any other number. And it does not have the ability to realize that when a number is going to be forced into two or three spots all inside the same big square, it will make it impossible for that number to go into any other square in that big square. But those situations do not come up as often, when you never miss an "obvious" move.

The most amazing part for me, is that I was able to do this using Excel - which is not even a regular programming language!

Story published at Static Movement

2007-09-06T13:59:00.000-07:00

I have a very small story in the September issue of Static Movement Online.

Static Movement is here: www.staticmovementonline
Their September issue is here: www.staticmovementonline.com/septemberissue.htm
and my story in the issue is here: www.staticmovementonline.com/dreamjob.htm

I love the illustration they made to go with my story! That is really above and beyond what most on line ezines will do for an author, so I must say thank you Chris (publisher) and Kevin (artist).

Combat with a computer virus!

2007-09-04T12:37:00.000-07:00

So my computer came down with a virus. Terrible news. What this one SEEMS to do is spam Google with requests for data. I think someone is just trying to make their website look popular, and maybe raise up its Google ranking. That is conjecture. What I noticed, is that every time I turned on my computer it would tell me:

You (or a program) have requested information from www.google.com

Searching on the internet told me two files named fmideploy.exe and flsmontr.exe might be involved, although nobody really seemed to know what they did. I looked in my system folder and found both of those files, with very recent creation dates - very suspicious indeed. So I took a chance, and deleted them both. And then I continued to examine the System folder, sorting the names by file extension, and then by creation date. And then I again saw, that I had newly created versions of fmideploy.exe and flsmontr.exe! The files I had JUST deleted had been recreated 20 seconds later. So I got off the internet, and again deleted them. And 20 seconds later they had again recreated themselves.

I didn't like that - there is something else on my machine that is amiss. But I can't find what it is. So I tried another option. I deleted the two bad files, jumped immediately into notepad, and SAVED empty documents with those two file names. And that seems to have fooled the piece of the virus that I cannot find - it is happy to see that the two files exist, and does not recreate the troublesome versions of them. Now when I boot up my computer, both of my empty documents briefly open and then close - but no program is asking to connect to the internet anymore.

To be Green, or not to be Green...

2007-08-28T23:50:00.000-07:00

My electric razor has become dull. Usually I seem to lose them or break them before this can happen, but in my older years I am in more of a steady rut, as far as shaving goes. So then the question is - what to do next? I can buy an entirely new razor for under $50, and it will have everything in new condition - power cord, battery pack, etc etc. Or I can try and be Green.

Going online, I find I CAN reorder just the rotary head that I need, and the cost will be $40. Great, I just saved a couple of bucks - right? But what if my battery poops out in the next few months, or my cord gets a short? And there is also a nagging uncertainty. My razor says (right on it) that it needs an "HQ55+" head. And the Norelco website wants to sell me an "HQ55 Plus" head. Is + the same as Plus? Probably, right??

Well, since I am doing such a great job of not losing or breaking this razor, I decide to see how far I can go with it. An HQ55 Plus head is even now waiting to be sent to me, just as soon as the Norelco people process my order. Hopefully I can be Green AND well groomed too.