I <3 Smallville

Anyone else loving Smallville lately as much as I am?

It seems around the middle of the 4th season, the writing has just improved by leaps and bounds. After the whole "Lana is a witch that fights Kung-fu" episodes (which I kinda hated), the storyline just took off like crazy. Filler episodes became less frequent; less eps where some random powered nobody that Clark has to outsmart. And all of a sudden the main characters are becoming more of a main focus.

I loved how the theme of season 4 became identity. Lionel and Clark switch bodies, Lex splits into two people, Chloe gets taken over by a spirit, Clark gets amnesia. All of course are cliches, but it revealed a great deal about their characters. When Clark got amnesia, he still acted with morality. But hands-down, the best ep of the season was Onyx when Lex's evil half is separated. The evil half learns of Clark's powers and his weakness. Evil Lex offers Clark a chance to join together to rule the world. When Clark refuses, Evil Lex says something like "you will join me, or everyone you love will suffer!" and socks him with a kryptonite ring! I was like whoa whoa whoa dude. I even replayed it on my dvd player seconds later cuz it was such a dope scene.

Last night's ep was alright. Filler vampire halloween episode. The best part was when Clark talked about how he hated costumes. He said he loved the cape but hated the mask. Friggin awesome. Other than that... eh. Okay episode. But I love how Spike from Buffy is playing Brainiac. That's a great pick. I will never miss another episode again for that reason alone.

Clocky

Man this thing is ugly. But it might be one of the best things for me to buy when it comes out on the market.

Anyone else have trouble getting out of bed in the morning? Are you like me and hit the snooze button several times until you have like 10 minutes to get ready and drive to work? I know myself so well, that I even set my alarm 1 hour ahead just to allow myself to snooze.

Apparently, the best thing to do is to not hit the snooze button and just get up and be active. Hitting the snooze button does not effectively stimulate the "wake up neuron" and all it does is reinforce the same pattern of sleeping in and then finally rushing in the morning to get to work/school.

A student from MIT invented this clock named "Clocky". What it does is when the alarm goes off, it rolls off and runs around and then tries to hide. This gets you active in the morning trying to chase it, effectively stimulating your wake up neuron.

For now, I'll just concentrate on getting right out of bed when the alarm hits. I think I'll also wait for a better looking version of Clocky to come out. Full article on Clocky here.

Fairy princess

My niece dressed up early for Halloween.

No limit... to the potential losses

Ugh... what can I do? I get all my money in the middle with AA and get beat by an 88 hitting its straight on the turn. The problem with no-limit hold'em is that at any given moment, even if you play perfect poker, there is potential to go broke.

Therefore, I vow to this day to stay away from No Limit cash games. Limit hold'em and tournament structures are fine, but man... my bankroll cannot handle the swings of no limit. I won about $1000 or so last month, maybe more. In no-limit I dropped around $700 within a week. It's crazy! I was watching some pros play a cash game last night, and they were throwing around thousand dollar pots like it was nothing. I mean, they buy in for like 10 grand and just play with it. Sometimes they play multiple tables at one time online, buying in for $10k each! That's insane.

I read somewhere that a poker professional can spend around $500,000 in tournament entries alone a year. And that on average, a professional has a bad track record when it comes to no limit cash games. How do people afford that kind of action?

Whew. Anyway, I intend to reread Super System 2, Sklanksy's Hold'em for Advanced players, and continue taking classes at that poker school online. I think it's the best way to deal with the slump; just bone up on the knowledge and stay away from the tables while on tilt.

See my vest

My niece Avery wearing her new vest. Everyone says she looks like my mom.

Movies-to-buy-soon-list

Quick list to myself on what movies I intend to buy within the next couple weeks:

1. Batman Begins
2. Sin City (on PSP)
3. Star Wars ep III
4. Rounders special edition
5. Crash
6. Unbreakable
7. Signs

Also: Arrested Development season 2

From Hellmuth to Lederer

I've decided to leave ultimatebet.com and move to fulltiltpoker.com.

I initially joined UB because Phil Hellmuth's "Play Poker Like the Pros" book pushed the website so much and at the time, Phil was my favorite player despite his table antics. But now that I've seen him play in several big tournaments, he no longer is my favorite player. I'd say Howard Lederer, the "Professor" of poker and Phil Ivey are my top 2 favorites now. Although Phil Gordon and Doyle Brunson are tops picks too. It just so happens that Lederer, Gordon and Ivey are all Full Tilt .com supporters.

One of my biggest complaints about UB is that, although you get big sign-up bonuses and referral bonuses, you do not get the money right away. You have to earn "UB points" to get the bonuses. This is pretty standard for poker sites; however, they limit the UB points to ring games only! Meaning, if I play in sit-and-gos most of the time, I don't see a dime of the bonus points.

Full Tilt is different. They award points for every real money game you play. This is great for me because I grow tired of $3-6 tables, and I hate seeing only $5 a day of the $100 "bonus" that I was supposed to get on UB.

Anyway! Moving on! Not that any of my readers really care about online poker... not that I know of anyway (BECAUSE NONE OF YOU LEAVE COMMENTS)... but to Howard Lederer I go! If there was any one player that I could totally emulate my game after, it'd be him. He's very sportsmanly, calculating and selectively aggressive. If there's any opponent I would avoid though, it'd be Phil Ivey. Okay, now I'm babbling. Better cut out.

25 hours of poker; $20 profit

Just got back from Reno last night; I played sooo much poker and I only made a profit of about $.80 an hour. Most poker pros will tell you that good players should average 1 big bet an hour profit at the tables, meaning that if you play $3-6, you should be making $6 an hour (in the long run). I didn't meet that quota this weekend.

I blame El Dorado - I mean, look at their blind structure! It's a $3-6 table, but the blinds are $1 and $2?? To raise it up, you make it $5 to go?? That makes no sense, and no casino ever has a structure like that. Oh, and I guess I played horribly too over at El Dorado, but that's not the point.

So I won about $250 over at Peppermill, but dropped about $230 over at El Dorado. Let me tell you that the sharks in Reno have moved to El Dorado. So if you're looking to make some money, I suggest you stick to $3-6 over at Peppermill. I actually am becoming quite fond of $4-8 kill. Seems the players are more predictable and they tend to respect your bets more.

The hand of the weekend went as follows. I'm dealt KK under the gun at $4-8. I raise it up and make it two bets to go. The guy directly to my left calls, someone else calls and the rest of the table folds. The board comes down A36. Now when you're holding pocket Kings, any ace on the board is supa scary. But I bet out hoping that someone doesn't raise. The guy to my left raises. The other guy folds. Now I'm at a decision: should I fold and save myself about $30 or is this guy bluffing me? I tell the table "time" meaning I get time out to consider my decision. I close my eyes and the guy to my left waits impatiently. I've never seen this guy play, so I'm not sure if he's a bluffer or if he's tight aggressive. Somehow I knew he was just raising and bluffing his position. So I call. I check-call it down and he only has 77. I sweep in about $70 worth of chips while he complains like crazy. "This guy calls me down, even though he knows he's beat!" Which is completely untrue - I didn't know i was beat; in fact I had a feeling that this guy was full of crizzap. I just smiled at that guy and said "nice hand." But in my head, I'm like "what a call, Jay! Nice try, ya jerk."

Music owns you

"It's just something, like, when you get in there and the music, like, owns you. It's like that house music. It's like bomp, bomp, bomp,bompbompbomp, boom boom boom boom! You know, you start dancin'... " - Matt Damon, Good Will Hunting


From www.stuffonmycat.com

Avery the flower

My niece Avery dressed up as a flower.

First the Third

Dang, I was considering naming my Blog: Third 2nd, b/c Joe Kwon already named his Third as a sweet reference to Ender's Game... but I decided against it. Jaydizzle's what I been using for video games and whatnot, so decided on that instead. It's what Turk called JD a few times on Scrubs and it's a quiet pat-on-the-back for getting my Juris Doctorate recently in San Diego.

Welcome to my new blog.