Caltrain is starting to get on my nerves.  Or more to the
point,  the drunken idiots who take the train home after Giants’
games.  Normally a thirty minute ride home from the City, 
tonight,  it took an hour and a half!  We stopped in South
City for nearly an hour while cops boarded our train.  Turns out
some fifteen year old girl was talking a lot of trash in the next
car,  and someone walked by and slugged her in the face. 
Teenagers these days….

The Giants game was a rough one.  Victor Santos pitched an amazing
game for the Brewers and I subsequently picked him up in my main
fantasy basebal league.  The Brewers ended their seven game losing
streak and I went home unhappy.  Throughout the game I was a
little more vocal,  heckling ex-Cub (and now Giant) Moises Alou
for his weak swings at the plate and his lackluster defense in
right.  I called for Felipe to put in Tucker;  he must have
heard me.  Tucker didn’t do much better,  but at least he
showed some hustle.

Pictures from the game.

Its expected to rain off and on in the City tomorrow,  i think
i’ll skip tomorrows game and stay in and clean my apartment.  And
I need to play in that poker tourney for which I recently
qualified.  But more on that in my next blog post.  (Don’t
worry,  it only cost me $10)

I am back from my blogging hiatus.  Between work, managing my
diabetes,  and various attempts at a social life,  i’ve been
very very busy.

On the diabetes front,  things are going really well.  I’ve
managed to drop my daily glucose averages to around 160-170, 
which is considerably better than where they were a month ago, 
nearly 100 points higher.  I can definitely feel the
difference.  I’m a little less sore and i’ve had fewer headaches
from what i perceived to be swings in my glucose.  I haven’t quite
gotten back into the regimen of hitting the gym every other day, 
but I blame that on the return of baseball.  I’m usually quite a
bit happier once springtime rolls around.  I’ve been to quite a
few games already this season.  I won’t admit how many;  it
is a little embarassing.

Five weeks from today,  I’m to Las Vegas…..Sin City.  The
third annual memorial day weekend trip where I get a chance to see
friends from college who I don’t usually see during the
year.   As always,  we’ll be staying at the
Flamingo,  mainly for its central location on the Strip and its
awesome pool. 

This week (and next) are jam-packed for me.  Tuesday night, 
I saw The Killers in concert at the Fillmore.  WHAT AN AMAZING
SHOW!   Damn, that was a good time.  Last night, I was
at the Giants game.  Noah Lowry pitched well,  but just
didn’t have the defense behind him nor any run support,  so that
combination made it tough to come up with a win. The Giants lost 2-0 to
the dbacks, and will get their revenge tonight.  Schmidt is on the
mound tonight and Arcade-152 will be throwing the K’s up as
usual.  (Provided either Brendan, Aaron, or Kevin show up….I
really should have a set made up as well since I’m always there for the
Schmidt games…) 

As for the rest of the week,  Giants games through Sunday, 
Monday i’m taking the day off (i’ll actually get to watch 24 this week
instead of tivo’ing or torrenting it), 
Tuesday, i’m seeing the Donna’s @ Slims,  Wed/Thurs, i’m seeing
New Found Glory,  and Friday i’m stoked because i’m seeing WEEZER!
at the Warfield.  They’ve been on my “must-see-live” list
forever.  Tickets sold out in three minutes,  or close to
that.  I ended up driving down to Los Banos on Easter Sunday to
assure that i’d get tickets at face-value,  thats how much I
wanted them.  Tickets are now going for $75 a pop on
craigslist.  Viva Capitalism and all,  but really…..

What a fun evening.

A few weeks ago, one of my friends from northwestern (who is from the east bay) pointed me towards a cool bayarea site called bayarealinkup.com. 
It is a social gathering group which is perfect for me since it seems
that most of my friends live in Chicago or points even further East, so
between this and OneBrick events,  its a good way to do fun things and meet new people.

Tonight I went to my first event. Pub Trivia at Elephant & Castle
Pub, conveniently about three blocks from where I work.  I was the
first to get there but eventually we ended up with a group of
eleven. 

Our table had some trouble coming up with a team name. Someone
suggested something about bankruptcy,  but that didn’t work too
well.  We settled on “Rowdy Ice Cubes.”  Derek, Bethany,
Catherine, Roberto, and myself were quite the team.  I even
managed to answer a few questions which the rest of the team had no
clue about,  one on the coors-molson merger,  another was a
music question and i named “the killers” (one of my fave bands by the
way) as the band that was playing.  I didn’t quite get the “Get
Low” by Lil Jon.   I thought it was Chingy…..he must’ve
done a remix.  We were near the top of the leaderboard for most of
the game,  but we were a few years off on the tiebreaker in the
final round and ended up in second place.  The 18 point round at
the end (9 somewhat hard questions out of 10) really sealed it. 
We won free drink coupons….guess I have something to use next time I
go!

Derek, Catherine and I then headed off to grab a drink at the Cat
Club,  a fun little club in SoMa,  which was playing 80s
music.  We had a few drinks,  chatted for a bit, did a little
dancing / people-watching,  and then called it a night.  A
very fun evening and we all even left in time where I could catch the
last train home.  I had planned to grab a drink tonight with my
friend Stacy,  but that didn’t quite work out as I hadn’t planned
on going out after Trivia.  Catherine was cool,  I thought i
was getting some sort of vibe,  but I never can tell….maybe i’ll
see her at another one of these things…..

This is a test of the emergency blogging system…..ie, blogging from my Treo 650 on the train ride home. This is only a test. Had this been a real blog post, it would have been much more exciting!

My attempts at finding a possible solution to watch High Definition TV
on my new Cinema Display have been thwarted for now.  Although
Steve Jobs recently declared at MacWorld that “2005 is the year of
HDTV”,  I seem to be ahead of the technology curve once again and
will have to settle for watching DVDs on my Mac as there is no software
yet to handle live playback from a HD cable box.  Sure you can
capture the video and play the stream back,  but I want to be able
to view it live off the cable box firewire connection.  I wonder
if I will have to write this application myself.

My display arrives tomorrow,  so i’m very excited about that.  

This is going to be a hectic week for me…..between concerts,  a
family dinner, and volunteering,  I am quite booked for the next
week.  Hopefully i’ll have the chance to still update my blog.

Garden State is a phenomenal movie…..if you haven’t seen it,  go rent it!

I finally broke down and bought one.   Every time I walk into
the Apple Store in Burlingame,  I end up ogling the Cinema Displays. 
I can’t help it.  I’ve got a bulky 17″ CRT monitor which weighs
8000 pounds that sits on my desk.   It doesn’t really fit the
charm/elegance of my primary computing machine at home,  my G4
Macintosh.   It is more in line for a UNIX box or
something.  And as for watching dvds on it?  An okay
experience,  but since most of my dvds that I buy are widescreen,
there is a lot of wasted screen space. So thanks to some thriftiness
and saving over the past few months,  I ordered one off of
amazon.   I almost walked into the store and bought one but I
figured for the same price on amazon,  I’ll get the $150 gift
certificate deal that they are currently offering with electronics
purchases over a certain amount.

Office Space is one of my favorite movies ever,  but I think that
the BBC series,  “The Office” actually might be even
funnier. 

What is amazing about the weather lately is that it was absolutely
gorgeous yesterday.   Now the whole BayArea seems
flooded.   I’m looking forward to a nice relaxing weekend of
reading and watching the dvds which i’ve recently purchased on
amazon.   I also thought of a good idea for a software
project so i can get my coding “chops” back in gear.  I won’t go
into too many details right now, but as far as I know it isn’t
something which exists currently.

Look,  proof of good weather,  yesterday.

I never expected 2005 to start like this!

I was diagnosed today with Type I Diabetes so now i’ll be doing the
whole blood check and insulin injection deal.   My blood
sugars were through the roof and for the last month I’ve been battling
oral thrush.  It wasn’t going away so I figured that diabetes
might have been an issue.   I’ve checked my blood glucose a
few times already,  as well as administered a few insulin
injections.  I have no fear of needles so its not big deal for me.
It is just something that I have to get used to doing. Four times a
day….ew,  i hate regimens but its something i’ve got to
do! 

More updates soon…..i promise.

The Mayor has made another appearance.

Over Memorial Day weekend in Vegas, I picked up yet another nickname, “The Mayor” while at the poker tables at Imperial Palace. It was towards the end of the trip and myself and Laz decided we should hit the $2-$4 tables and just mess around a bit. I did fairly well, doubling up my $100 buy-in and after the four or so hours at the table, earned quite a bit of “table respect.”

Flash forward to saturday night.

There are a lot of casinos around California, but most of them are a good 2-hour drive away at the very least. My favorite one happens to be Cache Creek which is just north of Vacaville. Back when I worked for the movie theatre, my boss and I would make trips after work up there to play blackjack. I really liked the place then, but as of April of this year, they have completely outdone themselves with the remodeling. Hotel, Spa, more tables (even craps!) and tons of slot machines. TONS. Megabucks, Wheel of Fortune, and all that jazz. I have been working quite a bit and didn’t have the time or energy to drive up there until this weekend even thought I really wanted to do so.

I left Saturday morning and it took a little longer than I expected due to traffic leaving the City. I got in and walked around the place for my first half hour. It had a whole new feel to it, with the Casino being one large room instead of stretched out as it was before. I had come up to play blackjack but after about 30 or 40 minutes, I lost interest and decided to cash out breaking even for the session.

I walked around some more, got some ice cream, then went to look for their poker room to check out the limit games. I had trouble finding it, as I was looking for an actual “poker room”, when it turned out to be a roped off area in the corner of the floor. The limit games were $4-$8, $3-$6, and a $100 buy-in no-limit game. I chose to stay away from the no-limit game, as those are best suited for tourneys, not cash games. The highest limit games i’ve played online were $2-$4, so I was a little nervous signing up for the $3-$6. I had the desired 50-times the blind ($150) so i figured I would take a seat.

After about 20 minutes, I was placed at a $3-$6 next to some interesting characters. We joked around a bit about the cute brunette who was sitting at the table behind us, obviously a distraction as her boyfriend or dad must’ve also been playing that table. I ended up turning $150 into $301 and decided to call it a night. I went over to the steakhouse, had oysters rockefeller and a steak to celebrate my victory. Headed home after that with the realization that texas holdem is a lot more fun than blackjack, and if you’re patient and wait for the right cards, you can have a very long night of entertainment, as opposed to 21 where you can lose 10 hands in a row at a $15 table and be done in half an hour.

whew. another stressful work week is over. work hard, time to play hard.