Rants, Poker, and Photography
Archive for December, 2005
Holidays go by too fast
02697 days
I really should be working. But since I’m not, my holidays have been going by far too quickly.
Still, its been a good holidays – lots of time with the family, and a couple friends are coming over tomorrow afternoon. Then there’s new years and the two year anniversary for Diane and I coming up in short order! Amazingness!
Last night I watched Memoirs of a Geisha … I don’t know what rotten tomatoes has against it – I thought it really was a pretty good movie. Oh well. Maybe I’m just ignorant – I haven’t read the book nor do I know anything about Japanese culture. *shrug* – from an ignorant standpoint, I thought it was good 
Hope everyone is having a good holidays!
Heraldk
Merry Christmas!
02701 days
Merry Christmas everybody!
I hope everyone is having a relaxing, wonderful holiday season. My own holidays have been busy, but good so far – and I hope everyone has had a similar time of it
Until next time, enjoy some Christmas grow!
Heraldk
Why you should continue to date me …
02705 days
by Heraldk
in On the Web
Ahahahahaha. I particularly like the chart that says “6 billion plus people who aren’t me” “1 person who is me”.
I dunno where this guy came up with this, but its funny
Heraldk
Work work
0I found out that there are some theoretical issues with my code so it turns out that I’ll need to continue working right up until Christmas to see if I can find what the issues are. It also turns out that because of this, the results I’ve finished running already aren’t valid anymore 
*sigh*
Oh well, its not so bad … I don’t really mind working right up until Christmas. My “job” is really fun – so while it would be nice to have a holiday, I’m having a good time anyways
Plus I get to see Diane today. That makes every day better
Heraldk
Poker Satellite!
0Saturday night was crazy. I bought a deep freezer for my condo, as well as a couple of Christmas gifts – and then picked Diane up. From there we visited three parties, including Diane’s work party, a fantastic dinner at Lingnan, and then a birthday party for one of our friends from Dance class way back when.
Lingnan was awesome. Amy, the owner of the lunchtime establishment in Scotia place (by the name of Chicken for Lunch) is an awesome host – particularly when you are a loyal patron of her Chicken for Lunch restaurant. She took care of us and gave us gifts and we ate far more food than we should have. It was awesome!
I didn’t get long to sleep in today – we had a satellite tournament to send one of us to an upcoming Canadian Poker Tour event in January. Amazingly enough, I managed to come out on top – which I was hoping for, but not too sure if I could manage. There’s a lot of luck involved, and I picked up some key hands that got me through. By the time I was heads up with Curtis, I had a pretty sizable chip stack and was able to take him out in a couple of hands. Hooray!
So I’m going to be looking into details on securing my seat – but I’m not too worried about getting in. Should be fun … wish me luck! I know a lot more about poker than I did last January – maybe that will be a good thing!
Heraldk
Narnia
02709 days
Last night Diane and I joined several of my friends to go see the first of the Narnia films. It was amazing … at least I thought it was really well done. I didn’t really like the discovery of the wardrobe sequence – but other than that, I felt that the movie was really quite well done.
I really quite enjoyed the Narnia books – and so I was quite excited to hear that they were making movies out of the books. My understanding is they are going to do them all … which should be pretty cool.
So indeed … a very good movie in my eyes and a movie to go see if you can!
Heraldk
Blog Revamped!
22712 days
by Heraldk
in Site Admin
Well I can finally say that I have my own custom blog template! I borrowed this template from Open Source Web Designs which is an awesome site for those who want to have professional looking websites without the web design ability. Frankly, I’m learning a lot just by playing with them.
Anyways, I found this template which I liked a lot. It’ll be the basis of my new web page hosted on the CS department servers. But since I liked it so much I figured I’d work it into my blog – and this is the result! I hope you like it!
If there are issues (there will likely be some) please let me know!
Heraldk
4 colour playing cards
0Well then.
Ever since I’ve started playing poker online, I’ve come to really appreciate the 4-colour deck. For those who haven’t seen them, the clubs are green and the diamonds are blue … making it easy to distinguish the different suits for flush purposes. I have considered for awhile looking around for one, but everytime I couldn’t find any. But now I have. These were linked to from the PSO forums – and I immediately pounced on them. I ordered a set for myself, and Darse wants a set as well. I also took the opportunity to order a standard set as well to add to my collection of nice plastic cards. Gotta love them.
For those who gawk at the price, consider for a moment what you get. You get a set of cards that will last a *long* time. They are beautiful cards that will endure a lot of punishment before they show any sign of them. They’re even washable so if they get dirty you can just clean them off and use them some more! Really, I don’t think you can go wrong. Plus – if you’re playing any serious game, a non-marking card is always nice.
I can’t wait for these cards to get here!
Heraldk
CS Department Christmas Party and the Singing Christmas Tree
02714 days
Ahh Christmas … so much to do, so little time!
Saturday was the department Christmas party – and it was a blast as I kind of expected. The food was not spectacular, but the dancing was fun. Diane and I showed off our dancing skillz – though I felt really rusty at most of the dances other than the waltz. Our waltz is our best dance for sure The DJ at the party was a little too involved in the dance. At first it was pretty cool – with him playing several instruments along with the music. But after he switched costumes a few times and tried getting people to dance all night, I started to feel a little awkward. Oh wells. I also won the limbo contest, which was kinda fun. I dunno what I do right there – I just seem to know how to do it. Kinda weird For a prize, I got a cool see-through digital clock. It sits on my desk now
Last night I joined Diane and her mother to go see the singing Christmas tree. For those who haven’t gone, its a big tree with tiers for a choir to get setup in it. Its usually pretty good – and while I didn’t think it was too bad this year, there was a couple of things that I kind of didn’t like. Mostly, I didn’t like how the sound was setup. Usually, the capability of a largish choir to sing doesn’t need a lot of amplification through the sound system. But using a little is okay too. However, some sort of effect was being applied I think, and the result didn’t sound very good to me. The concert also seemed a lot shorter than past years too. *shrug*.
The other thing that I’ve started thinking over the past few years that I’ve gone there is that I’m feeling increasingly uncomfortable in a church like the one the tree is in. Its too … over the top for me. I consider myself to be a Christian – at least in a lot of the ways I think about life and its opportunities. But I just can’t feel comfortable in an environment where there’s this big speaker setup, with tv monitors lining the aisles and corporate sponsers for the program and the refreshments. I’m fond of the little church my family goes to – its nice, its not near as flashy, and it just feels more comfortable. *shrug* This will probably come up later in another post. For now, I’ll leave it at that.
It certainly doesn’t look or feel like Christmas outside. All the snow is gone again – and its less that two weeks to Christmas. Weird weird weather. But no matter – I’m starting to look forward to a chance to take a holiday here … I need some time off I think
Heraldk
Life
0I’m the luckiest guy in the world.
At least, I’m really really fortunate with what I’ve managed to accomplish in this life of mine so far … and honestly, I’m not too sure that I deserve it all.
First and foremost, Diane and I have an amazingly loving relationship. From the way I stumbled into the relationship, I’m a little surprised that it turned out so well. It turns out that we have so much in common that we’ve just clicked. Its pretty amazing when the worst things we have to argue about are things like who gets to pay for dinner or the movie.
My family is caring and wonderful. They are a significant reason why I was able to put together the funds to purchase my condo. My dad lets me borrow the car just about any time I want, and I’m always welcome home for dinner! 
. Those are just the physical things that are easy to describe how wonderful they are!
I own my own condo which I’m hoping to have paid off (with a little help) in around five years. I love living on my own. Don’t get me wrong, living with my parents isn’t too bad – it certainly had its perks. But there’s something about having the freedom to come and go under your own whims … something I could never really do at home. I think I’ve settled down pretty well – though perhaps I need to force myself to start trying new food recipes so I don’t just eat the same things all the time.
I’m in grad school working on a master’s degree on something I’ve grown to like a lot: poker. I have a scholarship that is paying my living expenses as well as putting me through grad school. I have one of the best supervisors in the research world, and its a fun laid-back environment to learn and develop my computer science skills.
Really, not only do I have no reason to complain about anything, I feel kinda spoiled. Its not that life has been easy … that’s certainly not it. But I feel super-amazingly fortunate, and I don’t know how to describe it. I don’t want to gloat … I just want to put how I feel into words and this isn’t a bad place to put it (since as far as I know, there’s only one person that regularly checks in on this blog).
And that’s how I feel.
Heraldk
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