with the latest announcement from netflix i jumped on the off bandwagon and cancelled their service.

beyond the joy of punishing a vendor for crappy service was this excellent comment on their blog – well said bryan…

i would have “liked it” on facebook but i’m rewarding their crappy service by not visiting them either…

of all presentations and all the slides at javaone, this was my favorite…

one class act, honors another –

“my condolences for the loss in your community”

sting, dedicating “fields of gold” to the memory of steve jobs at the oracle world/java one customer appreciation event on 5 october 2011

the front page of the apple web site on the same day…

feeling generous after taking home twenty dollars more than i came with, i replaced my children’s usual one dollar a week allowance by splitting my poker winnings between them.

the sudden appearance of a hamilton in ethan’s hand made him anxious to learn poker. so we printed off a list of poker hands ranked in order and sat down to learn five card draw.

we played the first few hands cards up and i helped ethan decide which cards to keep and which to discard. after only a few hands he seemed to be making all the right choices so we moved on to betting. a few more face up hands with bets and he was ready to go.

playing with the cards up, ethan had won nearly every hand, but ironically after the cards were turned, i was winning all the hands (and after each hand i double checked his discards and he was making good choices – i was just started getting all the good cards).

on the fourth or fifth hand in, ethan starting making very large bets. i had a weak pair so i folded after i didn’t get better cards on the draw. ethan excitedly threw down his cards showing nothing but rubbish – he had bluffed the pot.

bluffing the pot, was not included in the instruction i had given him earlier.

a colleague at work hosted a poker night this past weekend. about an hour in to the first round of texas hold ‘em he warned everyone that one of our indian co-workers (let’s say ravi) may be on his way and he would be bringing “the business”.

seems this guy called our host earlier in the day and with much enthusiasm asked if he could “bring the business”. with a sporting attitude he encouraged ravi to bring whatever he liked. ravi went on to say that folks could engage in “the business” if they weren’t interested in cards. at this point our host needed clarification on what kind of business ravi was planning on bringing.

in india “the business” is the game we call “monopoly”

i guess our host did not display the appropriate level of enthusiasm to getting “the business” in his house and ravi never showed.

unrelated, fun fact, I took home twenty dollars more than i came with…

september schedule is crazy busy so i’m taking the month off instead of continuing the sporadic posting of lousy content – cheers.

an electrician came by the house today and performed three repairs. he swapped out a ceiling fan; replaced a fluorescent light ballast and replaced three light switches.

he did all this without ever going near the fuse box to turn off the power; without getting electrocuted and completed everything in under an hour.

needless to say, that is not the narrative that would have followed my feeble attempts to make the same repairs.

hilarious…

the jar of coins on a free standing shelf starting rattling first.

then my desktop montiors and office chair shook.

as i looked around at all the loose and free standing objects in my office i saw visions of our earthquake conscious, california living friend robbie darting around admonishing “all of this should be secured to the walls!”

i went downstairs and asked the family if they felt anything strange. they looked up from the book they were reading on the couch like i was somehow off.

but out the window i could see my neighbor outside their house looking up as if something were falling from the sky.

“[name redacted], why are you outside?”

she responded – “why are you outside?”

so at least two of us noticed something strange had just happened.

thirty minutes later i heard the report that a 5.8 magnitude earth quake shook virginia.

while i’ve been in places with earthquakes, this was the first one i ever felt. and this was nothing compared to what the folks in new zealand and japan have experienced recently.

it is quite an amazing sensation and one that i’m glad i got to enjoy at the lowest levels of magnitude.

after more than two weeks – we’re nearing the end…

lego death star vs. eight year old boy…