Well… what a day.

First of it Friday.

THANK GOD!

Jana, Connie, and I are going to go out tonight and see Uncle JuJu play at Daddy Jacks.

We’ll probably hit Chalkies after that for some 8-Ball.

(any of you that care to join us please let me know)

HFO is being bombarded with comments from some very odd people.

A lovable bunch.. but odd. They fit right in over at the madhouse that is HFO.

And I found out about a new project here at work that may get to take the lead on.

VERY cool!

I love a challenge and hope it goes through.

I’ll post more when/if it wraps up.

Saturday we’re hoping to get together with some friends and maybe even play some CAPS.

Sometime this weekend I hope to get an account setup on PokerStars.com so I can match poker wits with a guy here at work.

He’ll probably take all my money but it will make for good office chat.

..And sometime this weekend the yard needs mowed.

But at least Daddy Jacks is cigar friendly so I know I’ll get at least one stogie in!

Sometimes days just suck.

This one does royally.

I’m not kidding… have you ever had a day so bad that you just want to get up… walk out of work, drive home, and go to bed.

Sure you have.

But not like this.

See I’ve had very little human interaction today, so it’s not like someone has pissed me off. But even so, I’m sitting here trying to decide if going home right now is worth losing my job. And the jury’s still out.

I get physically ill when I think about the fact that it isn’t even Friday which means I have to come back into work instead of sleeping all day tomorrow.

(I think I threw up a little bit just now)

I’m supposed to be eating healthy and exercising too.

But I’m serious here:

It’s taken a candy bar, and two over priced vending machine cookies to keep me from openly weeping at my desk today.

Honestly, 90 cents for two preservative laden, vending machine cookies? Robbery. But at least they’re allowing me to stare at the clock for a few minutes more instead of rocking back and forth crying under my desk.

These cookies… actually they ought to be labeled “Chocolate chip fat cakes” are about a third the quality of a good Granny Smith cookie… and cost about a third more.

Stupid Cookies.

Stupid vending machine.

Also I’m overpaying for my diet caffeine drink.

But I opted for Diet Pepsi today since at least gives me a chance to win a BILLION dollars. So I guess that’s good.

Well no… it’s probably only 500-600 Million after taxes.

Stupid Taxes.

Stupid Pepsi.

Stupid Contest.

Stupid Day.

If I play poker against Barry Greenstein and lose can I write it off as a charitable donation instead of a gambling loss

Ok so here’s a little mystery for you all.

I come into work this morning, and there’s a little candy on my laptop.
(I use a laptop as my primary PC here, so the fact that it’s a laptop isn’t really relevant.)

A square candy, that I can only assume to be chocolate, wrapped in gold foil.

Over the foil is wrapped a lovely painting style picture of some unidentified harbor town.
Now this isn’t really all that big a deal.

Could have been some friendly co-worker leaving candy for everyone in part of some “Happy Monday” initiative.

(As much as I appreciate the thought; when will people learn that Mondays aren’t happy and that’s just the way God intended it?!)

Well here’s the thing.

Enchanted by this ornate little treat I picked it up to better inspect the picture.
Flipped it over and noticed some writing…

“PORTOFINO BAY HOTEL
AT UNIVERSAL ORLANDO ™
A LOWES HOTEL”

Hmmmm…

No one that I know of just got back from a trip.

I suppose it’s possible that the mystery person has a tub of various hotel candies at home, saved for just such an occasion.

But I think that’s the least likely scenario.
It’s most probably a sign of some sort.
A clue to some international case of intrigue and danger.

A plea for help from some embattled government agent who can only complete their mission with my help perhaps.

Somehow… I have to get to Orlando to track this mystery down.

So i get a lot of SPAM…

The other day (07/19/04 to be exact) I got an interesting one…

I generally delete all spam without so much as counting how many there were.

But this one made it through the spam filter and it’s content was quite unique.

It didn’t try to sell me anything.

It didn’t even try to load any html.

It was just a string of seemingly random words.

Odd.

So odd I thought it may be a code of some kind.

But My 10 second long review of the text yielded no easily recognizable pattern, and I wasn’t interested enough to keep starring at it.

I then cut and paste it into word and tried to change the font to something weird like “Wingdings” thinking that perhaps a series of icons would form some sort of pictogram.

Nope… one to many James Bond movies I guess.

In the end I seems it may have been nothing but odd words, put together for no apparent reason.

Here’s the text by the way:

basel balboa victory visible wiretapper kneecap vincent balm kurt

wink marcel powerhouse wish mayonnaise vixen kiwi lagos mausoleum

wack wiretapper workbench wrapup voodoo kilgore wyman wilkins kiwi

landlord wit worth mayo baird preemptor versailles mcconnell pollock

posey wingback present wino willful award bagel landowner marmot

postage vichy portentous aware krebs wyner populist vulnerable preoccupy

keynesian avocet axiology precise pooh mayer woodcarver virtuosi wintertime

worse maze poop wrinkle would porcupine wingmen barren kraft

mayflower version wingtip bantus xylem ponchartrain viscosity postprocessor backwater

mature posy bartend vernier yalta verona barley maverick walnut

marketplace precede vortices violate mart possessive voltage knockdown lana

basalt barb knife kiosk presentational winters preside preposterous mathematic

prejudicial la wore kiosk matinee axiology bacilli wipe knightsbridge

One of the oddest spams in recent history for me.

No purpose… just waste.

Or maybe that was the point.

At any rate I did find what I think will be my new favorite term for those that piss me off.

“poop wrinkle”

Oh it’s in there… go find it.

It’s brilliant.

It will piss my adversary off when I call them a poop wrinkle.

They will then grow angrier as I stand there obviously proud of myself for burning them with such a silly phrase.

And then they will positively go nuts when I fail to see how “poop wrinkle” is anything less than a devastating insult.

I will then confound them by insisting that since I called them a “poop wrinkle” I automatically win whatever argument we were having.

At least that’s how it’d go if I used it on Dave…

But then… he always has been a HUGE poop wrinkle.

So I put some real money into my FullTiltpoker.com account the other day.
I’ve played four times since then.

Remarkably I find that I do pretty well… as long as I play smart.

Twice I’ve just played stupid and even though I KNEW it was stupid I somehow couldn’t stop.

Maybe I was actually on tilt. Who knows.

The play went like this.

Session 1:
Sat down at .25/.50 limit holdem game with 20 bucks.
Played STUPID (having fun with real money) and quickly lost it all.

Session 2:
Immediately after busting out I slapped myself for being stupid and
Sat back down at the .25/.50 limit holdem game with 10 more bucks.
Played smart poker and ended with 31.55

So I ended the night +1.55

Session 3:
Next day:
Sat back down at the .25/.50 limit holdem game with 15 bucks.
Played smart poker and ended with 21.00 + change
So I ended the night +6 bucks plus change.

Session 4:
Next day:
Sat back down at the .25/.50 limit holdem game with 15 bucks.
Played STUPID and lost it all.
So I ended the night -15 bucks.

So all together I’m down about 7 bucks.

A good experience for me though because it drives home a couple key points.

1) I can win if I practice a little discipline
2) discipline involves quitting when I know I’m playing stupid.
3) Failure to do either of those will erase any gains I’ve grinded out pretty darn quick.

So now I’m gonna make a little sign and hang it by my PC

– Begin Sign –

THIS IS REAL MONEY!

If you want to play stupid go to the play money tables.

Protect your money or Jana won’t give you any more!

– End Sign –

So tonight I have to mow the yard, workout… and hopefully make my 7 dollars back.

(If any of you play on FullTilt let me know!)

Well things are moving along.

I’ve got the logging/What’s new system built, and now the news section is very nearly complete.

Hopefully I’ll get the old quote data and Guestbook data loaded into the database this weekend. But no promises… we have a wedding to go to on Saturday.

Also on the list of “Easy things to get done quickly” is the CAPS guide. I basically just need to get this uploaded and point a page to it.

The completion of the news section and the logging/what’s new sections marks a very important turning point here.

Once the quoteboard is finished only the Photo Album will remain on the list of critical areas to REbuild after those hacking bastards messed everything up.

Keep an eye on the development page as things get further along.

Belive it or not my time as a web developer/programmer has left me with one big handicap when it comes to web design…

I prefer a REALLY tight resolution on any monitor I use.

I supposed this stems from my coding days; The more real estate I had on-screen the more of the programming code I could see without scrolling.

For instance right now I’m using 1600×1200 resolution on my monitor here at work.

But when I design a site I have to keep in mind that other people may not feel the same about this. So it become crucial that, from time to time, I lower my resolution while building a site to make sure it works at other settings.

This site for instance was designed to WORK at 800×600, and FIT at 1024×768… but to be honest I designed it much higher. Today I wanted to make sure everything still worked out ok at 1024×768 so I bumped the resolution down.

And although everything FIT and WORKED pretty well I suddenly realized how F’n HUGE that picture of me is at lower resolutions. WOW!

I hadn’t realized how much of your screens I was taking up.

It’s a good thing I’m so damned handsome.

So let’s take an informal poll…

What resolution are you all using?

It’s been an odd several weeks, and the stall of development here at DougMeade.com isn’t helping.

Past readership is down as the “What’s New” list isn’t live. (Enticing readers to see who has visited.) Also the quote board, always a big attraction, is still painfully absent.

Despite my witty diatribe, and a plethora of exciting new topics upon which I have been Blogging the number of comments is still ridiculously low.

Here’s the weird part.

I get emails, instant messages, and sometimes even phone calls… ABOUT MY BLOG.

But no comments.

What the hell?!

People you’re already here … you’re reading… if you aren’t going to participate HERE don’t bother.

I wrote the Blog to be a web site thing. I’m not sitting by the phone hoping to talk to someone about it. The fun of it all is to see people chime in. It doesn’t have to be profound or even on topic just… live your dreams… hit submit.

Anyway back to the development efforts…

I’m REALLY REALLY busy here and as much as I’d like to say you’ll see everything done soon… you probably won’t.

None of it is hard … but I just don’t have the time right now.

I’d have to stop doing other things I enjoy to do so, and after the hacking bastards (including Dave) wrecked everything I just don’t have the drive to put more of myself into this.

I’d rather spend my time with cigars and poker.

If you don’t like it… well I guess you should have been commenting all this time huh?!

I’m going to post soon about my predictions for the future but that’s all for now…

Ok so get this…

My friend Kevin told me to watch the final two hands of the first WSOP event that ESPN showed this year.

The second to last hand has something fishy in it.
Thanks to Tivo I went back and slow-mo’d it.

The hand has Rice on pocket 4s and Vogl on Pocket 7s (both red).

But when they switch to the hole camera for Vogl it shows one of his cards as a 10 of spades!

(it’s black at the very least)

This is odd so I started looking for some more evidence of what I hope was just stupid editing by ESPN.

Before they cut to the hole cam both of Vogl’s hands are on his cards, and the dealer is moving in his direction.

Once the camera cuts to his cards the dealer is no where near him and one of his hands is on his chips.

Looks to me like this is ANOTHER case of ESPN not doing a very good job of editing the poker events.