Andre Molnar

Poker

Yes I too have fallen victim to the poker phenomenon that is sweeping the 'world'. I have been playing with some friends on and off for a few months - and recently I decided to try some zero stakes poker on-line (i.e. no cash involved).

So far I've done fairly well. I started off with 3,700 in phoney chips and have gone up to 47,000 in less than a week. I'm guessing that's because most people really don't know how to play poker - and since its not real stakes people played a lot of hands that they would never have normally played - but still - 12x growth in chips isn't bad - and it would have been about 16x growth if it wasn't for one hand.

This is what makes poker both great and awful.

Consider the following hand - I am dealt Ace Queen suited in my hand. Flop shows up King Queen Queen. I am sitting Trip Queens with an Ace Kicker. After a round of betting two people stay in besides me. I'm guessing they have hit two pair (Kings and Queens) - or possibly have the fourth Queen - worst case someone is sitting King Queen in their hand and have flopped a full house. On the turn comes a Two - no help to anyone (or it shouldn't be of any help after the way the betting went). Finally the river. A big honking Ace shows up giving me a full house Queens and Aces. A no fold hand - a hand you bet - but my opponent is also betting... did they hit the full house on the flop? - Queens and Aces beats Queens and Kings - play on - I'm heavily invested anyway - and it would be nearly impossible to fold QQQAA. Bets are called.

I Lose!

Some ninny had pocket Kings - and this hand was long over before my ace ever showed up on the scene. KKKQQ beats QQQAA. I actually wish that ace never came up because with the way betting went I could have cut my losses knowing that any possible full house would beat my trio of ladies no matter how high my pocket ace kicked.

Talk about knocking the wind out of your sails. 18,000 in the pot - about a third of which was my phoney chips - and I lose. But, that's poker - and that's what makes it fun. Even your unbeatable hand can be beaten.

Ah well. Not being a gambler I don't think I will ever find myself in a situaiton where I have $6,500 invested in a single hand of cards. Good thing too - becase now I know I would lose it.

andre

Back in Black

This past Saturday I took my girlfriend out to see Lewis Black as he swung through town. You may know him from The Daily Show (with Jon Stewart) and his segment "Back in Black".

The first thing he reminded us of was that as Canadians - outsiders looking at the US - if we don't look at the US and think that they are completely insane then there is something seriously wrong with us. I don't think that he will encounter much resistance with Canadian audiences on that topic.

Black covered a wide variety of topics from the superbowl halftime show as a barometer of the state of affairs in the US - to MTV being the worst thing to ever happen to music - to gay marriage - to Jewish Biblical interpretation - to lack of US leadership - as well as a number of amusing digressions along the way.

Fun stuff. And as a special treat after the show he stuck around to sign autographs and have pictures taken by fans. So we got in line and shook his hand and got our ticket stub signed - and even got him to record our new outgoing voicemail message.

Have a listen :-)

Andyway - I need some sleep so I'll leave this post at that.

andre

iPod Shuffle "jerk it out"

Apple has launched its new iPod shuffle and the people are dancing on the screen again.

This time its to the tune "Jerk it out" by Caesars Palace. Great song I.. love it... and have loved it for over 2.5 years... and even then I was late to get on that bandwaggon, because its was a top 40 hit in sweden in like 2000...

But now its on an iPod commercial and everyone and their brother is all of a sudden going to be all like "Oh I just love that song" and suck the cool right out of it. I am one of those irrational people that is protective of their music. Instead of being happy for a band that I like getting a break and getting the chance to sell 5 million copies of their album, I get annoyed that all of a sudden 5 million clueless dweebs are going to take a song that I dig and turn it into their flavour of the week. And, I get annoyed to think that if people were to catch me listening to the song they would think that I am listening to it because it was on a commercial. *sigh* How cool is something if everyone thinks its cool?

Bah... andyway - the band released their recordings under the name "the Caesars" and/or "the Twelve Caesars" in North America. So if you must have the song search for those names and the title "jerk it out".

CDDB listings for Caesars Palace.

andre

My Resume is growing.

It seems like I've gone weeks without a proper post. So now that I have a spare moment without any deadlines or pressing matters hanging over my head, I thought I would bring the world up to speed on Andre Molnar.

I'm a cabbie

Nearly a month ago now I become an officially licensed Taxi driver in the city of Hamilton. "What???" I hear you say.

This is a long story, but it doesn't end with me driving cab for a living. This is just business. I have been involved in my Mother's Taxi business for years now, helping with invoicing and other non-driving related tasks. If ever one day I should want to take over my mother's Taxi business I would need to be officially licensed with the city as a driver (to legally be an owner). So, I went ahead and got my license now to save having to do it later - and to cut down on potential red tape in the future. The other up-side (for my mother) is that if she wants to take time off, I can service her regular customers while she is on vacation.

So you can add cab driver to my resume.

I'm a trainer

I just wrapped up a project a couple of days ago. I ran a CSS training seminar for a small group of designers. I've done some training in the past, but mostly in-house or casual training. This project was the first completely formal training that I had done, where I was in complete control of the content, lesson plans and delivery. I designed a 4 hour course and delivered it receiving unanimous positive feedback.

The first section of the training went a little bit slow as I stumbled a bit to get my rhythm - but once I hit my stride the information started to flow out of me effortlessly. I hope I can run the seminar again in the near future. Its fun to teach.

So you can add trainer/educator to my resume.

Lead Lottery Winner

The networking group I am part of has a monthly lead lottery. The basic idea is that people that attend the monthly networking/professional development meeting get entered into a draw. The winner of the draw is the beneficiary of other group member's generously provided business leads. This month I was the winner, and a lead has already come my way resulting in a sale.

So you can add lucky bastard to my resume.

USB 2.0

I finally went and got a usb2.0 card for my archaic PC. My trusty PIII 600, with its gig of ram can now send files at blazing speeds to my iPod. That and a recent addition of a plenty good 128meg video card, makes me think that there is no good reason to ever get rid of this machine.

So you can add old hardware advocate to my resume.

Wrap up

Other minutia. Ages ago I finished reading Gibson's Pattern Recognition. I also finished reading Never Threaten to Eat Your Co-Workers The Best of Blogs. Both chistmas presents. Gibson, interesting as usual. Best of blogs - you just wouldn't beleive how nice it is to read an anthology of blog entries off line on high-res portable pulp.

I'm going to see Ash in Toronto in April. I am also going to see Of Montreal again. Yay live entertainment!

Recently watched the film "what the bleep do we know." What the bleep do we know anyway.

And that is about all I can think of.

Oh that and the fact that my friends and I have been playing a whole lot of poker recently. We are planning on having a fun poker party night soon - a black tie event with martinis and cheesies.

Thats all for now folks

andre

Catch up

Someone asked what I was using for bookmarks and what virus scanner I was installing (causing my loss of links).

mozilla/netscape was where the bookmarks were - but it uses the exact same book mark system as FF or vanilla mozilla.

The virus scanner was fsecure. I think that the blowout was purely coincidental - but you can never be sure.

andre