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.