Vinnie Vegas Report for 02/01/2004:
[disclaimer: this is a VIRTUAL gambling portfolio, bet at your own risk. ]
Opening balance (02/01/2004): $500
Odds based on those at bet365.com
Bet: $10 on Patriots -7, [SuperBowl] +100, 12:55am Pacific time, 02/01/2004.
Open Bets: $10 on Patriots -7 +100 [SuperBowl]
Resulting Bets: none
Final Balance: $490
Today is Super Bowl Sunday. As if you didn’t know, this is one of the biggest days for gambling in our country. Unfortunately, some casinos in Vegas which decided to throw parties are getting jammed. In a strange bit of restraint, I do not have a bet on the game. I have had bets the last two years, which i’ve won, but I don’t have a strong feeling on this years game even if Tom Brady went to a nearby high school. (Serra High School) A separate blog entry will debut today called the “Vinnie Vegas Report” which will start with a $500 opening “account” (which i repeat is VIRTUAL NOT REAL $), today, February 1st. I will make picks for a month or two on a wide variety of sporting events based on the odds at bet365.com at the time of wager.
In other news, i threw $50 into an account [this time, real money] and have been playing around on partypoker.com. I have been doing well, playing around in $6, single-table tourneys, placing top three every couple of tourneys. I’ve won a few, placed second in a few, but done enough so i’ve been basically staying between $45 and $55. I was down to around $40 today, so I decided to go sit at the 6-person, $2/1 tables, and quickly turned it into about $93 thanks to some impressive playing which caused two players to quit after I slow played a flopped full house into a rivered four-of-a-kind. Someone accused me of being a professional and wondered allowed in the chat room what I was doing at such low-limit tables. What little did they know. 
I am going to set aside the initial $50 deposit and just play with my winnings now, who knows, maybe one day it will get me to the World Series of Poker. 
Very frustrating to wake up this morning for a French league soccer match on Fox Sports World, only to have it replaced by a match from England’s Premier. At least I can still watch the French league’s highlight show, tuesday nights…..one of my new years resolutions is to try to follow one of my favorite European soccer teams, Paris Saint-Germain, a team who I saw in action twice at Parc Aux Princes in Paris while backpacking through Europe. Mastery of french is also another one of my resolutions so i’ll be trying to study it at least a few times a week.
I’m off to IKEA to purchase some more shelves for my apartment, moving my technical books into my bedroom next to my Mac. Having the books closer to my computer might inspire me to do some more coding in my “spare time.”
According to my Tanita scale, I weigh in at roughly 146.6 pounds. I can’t remember what my new years resolutions were last year, but I think losing weight was one of them. Well, I think it was actually to lose body fat, which i seem to have done as i’m now around 15 percent, and i can definitely assure you I was much higher last year. I guess I can thank Body For Life and some strict willpower to keep me on track. While fitness is important, it’ll probably be more of a secondary goal for me this year since one of my friends called me “skin and bones” when I went to visit her.
I got a couple packages today of books and music I ordered off of amazon which I will link to when I talk about them.
I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before, but I think I am going to buy a dish/pot rack to hang above the window in my kitchen. It will make the kitchen look a little more like a real kitchen and I think it is better than just leaving them out on the stove even when i’m not using them. (Or in the sink, where they sometimes remain longer than they should. hey, i’m a bachelor, give me a break.)
Exceptional (Trump is da man!) reality tv is premeiring in the next week…..but i’ll talk more about Average Joe 2 and The Apprentice in later blogs……
Definitely a productive day.
Woke up early (for a saturday) and drove up to SF and volunteered with OneBrick at the San Francisco Food Bank. In the afternoon, drove down to Mountain View and saw an excellent movie, Lost in Translation, starring Bill Murray. I highly reccomend it……
