Soul Searchings

I need a new pair of jeans.

My current main pair now has some rather large holes in the back wallet pocket. I’ve worn numerous different brands of jeans over the years, but my last couple pairs have been DKNY and I have really liked them, so I intend to continue wearing the brand. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it… and I personally don’t like change.

Without a doubt, my favourite label is DKNY. The first article of clothing I purchased of their’s was a pair of tearaways in grade 10 or 11. Even now, I still have that pair of pants and it’s actually still in perfectly wearable condition, although I haven’t worn them in a really long time… one reason being that it lacks in the pocket department and I tend to carry a lot of random crap with me. I really like DKNY because I’ve found the overall quality of their clothing to be very good.

I don’t shop all that often, but when I do, a large portion of the clothes I’ve purchased have been DKNY gear ever since then.

Recently, I decided I wanted to get some new stuff, so of course I wanted to first check out the DKNY selection. It seems like it used to be a lot easier finding DKNY stuff. Latitude used to always carry a decent selection, but for the past year or so, they have had next to nothing… only a few pairs of jeans. Below the Belt used to carry DKNY as well, as that was where I purchased my pair of tearaways, but I don’t think they’ve had any stock in years. In fact, after shopping Metrotown yesterday, it seems like Mantique is the only store there that has any DKNY stuff now.

Several years ago, we found out that there was a DKNY outlet at the Auburn Supermall down in Washington State. We went there a couple times, and each time there were some great deals to be had. When we went down again the last time, we were completely and utterly disappointed to find out that they had closed down the store. Without it, there is very little reason for me to take the 2.5 hour drive there anymore.

Of course, there is the actual DKNY store on Granville off of Broadway. I’ve been there a couple times, but of course the prices are pretty high there so I’ve never actually bought anything there before. I found out from someone on RevScene about this place called Enda-B on West 10th that supposedly had a good selection of DKNY stuff. That was a fantastic lead. I went there last weekend with Elaine and we both picked up some stuff. Actually, the store seems to be affiliated with the DKNY Granville store, as they offered to call up that store to check if they had another size on an item I was interested in. It’s ironic that Enda-B actually has a significantly larger selection of DKNY stuff than the actual DKNY store does, even though they carry a lot of the same stuff. Their prices are the same, and most of the discounts are as well.

Only problem left is I still need a pair of new jeans. I’m probably going to need to resort to the global flea market again - eBay. So I started looking at DKNY stuff on there since going to Enda-B and have already won a couple auctions, including one fairly interesting item.

Back in 1999, the inaugural Gumball 3000 took place. Most car enthusiasts would probably know what it is by now, but for the lesser informed, basically it is an event that takes place once a year, where a large number of vehicles, including many supercars, drive 3000 miles across a continent in a span of 6 days. Many celebrities have taken part over the years.

For the 2002 event, DKNY sponsored the event and made a custom race jacket for all the participants. I happened to see an auction for one on eBay, so I thought… what the heck, let’s bid on it. I wasn’t going to pay that much for it.. and was actually quite surprised there wasn’t much interest in the item. I won the auction with a bid of just US$19.99! I should be receiving it fairly shortly. =)

Now all I need to go with that is a new pair of jeans…

Decided to play on Absolute Poker for the first time ever since they upped their raked hands requirement from 25¢ to 50¢ rake, because I felt like doing their free hat promo just for the hell of it. The requirements are to deposit at least $200, and play 100 raked hands. Sounds easy enough.

Getting a raked hand on Absolute Poker is much more difficult than on Party Poker, and it always has been. With the 50¢ rake requirement now, it’s harder than ever. But it’s only 100 raked hands. In the previous few days, I had cleared over 1800 raked hands on Party Poker for their March bonus in a span of 3 days, so how hard could 100 raked hands on Absolute be?

Harder than I thought.

With the pot needing to reach $10 for it to count as a raked hand, 25¢ NL was out of the question. It would take forever. Definitely had to play at least 50¢ NL, so I stepped up.

Can’t believe the beat after beat I’ve been taking in the short time I’ve been playing.

After finishing 75 of the 100 raked hands, I was already down over $100.

After finishing the 100 raked hands, I had $77 left, including the $10 bonus for 100 raked hands. Can’t believe I’ve lost over $130 getting to a hundred raked hands, most of it from hands that generally can’t be gotten away from cheaply.

Some "highlights":

1. Got AA just several minutes into playing. Pulled someone all-in preflop for $20. He had QQ. He lands a Q on the turn. It’s funny… when the Q landed on the board, I almost expected him to flip over queens… and of course he did. There goes a quick twenty bucks.
2. Got QQ in the big bind. Quite a few limpers, so I decided to raise to $5, 10x big blind. Got one caller. Flop was like T93 rainbow. I was sure I wasn’t beat, so I led out and went all-in for $20+. The other guy thinks about it for awhile, and makes a stupid call with AK. He has no draws at all, and at this point, I’m 75% favorite. Does it matter? No. He gets a K on the river. There goes another $30+.
3. Got AQ on the button. A few limpers, so I raised to $1.50. Got one caller. Flop comes AT4. I bet $2, he calls. Turn comes another ace. I bet $4, he calls. River is a rag. I bet $12, he just flat calls again. He had AK. Argh. Okay, this one wasn’t a bad beat, but still. About another $20 gone.
4. Got JJ twice, both times someone had KK. Lost like $10 each time.
5. Got KK, raise to $2 preflop. Flop comes Q94 so I bet strong. Problem is other guy has Q9 and flopped his two pair. No, he can’t just flop top pair queens, he has to flop two pair. There goes another $30+.

It was just ridiculous. I couldn’t catch any breaks. Everytime I had a good hand, either one of two things:

• a. Someone calls my large bets or all-in and catches their cards to beat me.
• b. Nobody has any sort of hand at all and I win peanuts.

Everytime I’m behind or chasing, I never catch my cards.

It’s like if I’m holding 53 and the flop comes 55Q, nobody EVER has the Q. But if I’m holding AQ and the flop comes 55Q, someone always has the 5. Argh.

I know it’s just a run of bad luck… but it couldn’t have come at a worse time, when I’m playing higher stakes than I normally do. I’m sure I can handle playing 50¢ NL. I also know it has nothing to do with Absolute Poker, but this has left a really bad taste in my mouth and I don’t plan on playing there ever again.

That’s the most expensive hat I’ve ever bought. And I don’t even intend on wearing it.

My computer is on the fritz. It’s actually been out of commission for several weeks now. Looks like the motherboard has taken its toll from being on 24/7 for five years. Swapped parts between two machines and narrowed it down to that as the reason the machine won’t power on anymore. It’s actually had difficulties for like a year now, but it seems that it has gasped its last breath… or at least drawn its last volt.

Ever since it died, I haven’t quite figured out what I’m going to do with it. I don’t know whether I should just build a whole new computer, or get an old Socket A motherboard and fix it. I’m not home to use it all that often at all anymore, so I don’t need a powerful new system. It feels like a waste to just stop using the other components, and they’ll have next to no resale value. All the hard drives are IDE and all the RAM is PC133, so I wouldn’t be able to reuse any of it if I were to build a new system.

Edit: Actually, I guess I could still use the hard drives with my PCI IDE controllers… but I’d probably want to make a RAID5 with all new 300GB or larger hard drives…

Here are the most current specs of my system:

AMD Athlon XP1800+
Volcano 6CU Fan
EPoX 8KTA3L+ Motherboard
18" Case with 350W PS
512MB PC133 Micron SDRAM
256MB PC133 Micron SDRAM
256MB PC133 Micron SDRAM
Maxtor 60GB HD 7200rpm 2MB (Ultra ATA-100)
Maxtor 160GB HD 5400rpm 2MB (Ultra ATA-133)
Maxtor 160GB HD 5400rpm 2MB (Ultra ATA-133)
Maxtor 160GB HD 5400rpm 2MB (Ultra ATA-133)
Maxtor 160GB HD 7200rpm 8MB (Ultra ATA-133)
Maxtor 160GB HD 7200rpm 8MB (Ultra ATA-133)
Maxtor 160GB HD 7200rpm 8MB (Ultra ATA-133)
Maxtor ATA-133 IDE Controller
Maxtor ATA-133 IDE Controller
LG 52×24x52 CDRW
ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon 32MB Retail
Sound Blaster Live! Value
Altec Lansing ACS54 four speakers w/subwoofer
5.25" 2-Fan Hard Drive Cooler
5.25" 2-Fan Hard Drive Cooler
5.25" 2-Fan Hard Drive Cooler
21" Dell P1110

The only significant changes I’ve done for this computer ever since I built it back in 2000 or 2001 is with the hard drives, which I had continually added to for the next few years. Yeah, I know pretty much EVERYBODY has at least 1GB of RAM in their computers now… but back then, hardly anyone did. I also bought the first 160GB hard drive when they FIRST came available. In fact, I had to order it online from the States because local stores wouldn’t have them in for like another month or more, and I was in desperate need of more hard drive space as I had just started my obsession with downloading music videos. I think this first one cost me US$300… and with the exchange rate back then at like 1.6, that one hard drive ended up costing me about $500 CDN. Ouch. Of course, now you can get 300GB hard drives for $120. I slowly added more 160GB drives, each one cheaper than the previous. In 2002, I think I already had three 160GB hard drives in my computer (in addition to a 40GB and a 60GB) so I had over half a terabyte of storage… which was a LOT back then, and I was the envy of all the IRC regulars. =P Even having 200GB was considered a lot, so my 500GB was ridiculous. In fact, in all the time I spent on IRC and other peer to peer networks like Direct Connect, I only ever saw a handful of people that had more hard drive space than me back then. But alas, my once pimp computer is now outdated and run down.

This computer used to be rock solid. I had it running perfectly, with everything tweaked exactly the way I liked. I would have it up for weeks at a time without the need for a reboot, even though I ran a whole plethora of programs on it. It truly was a great computer. Unlike many other systems, it didn’t just up and die one day… instead, its old age got to it and it gradually began getting more ill. I guess the motherboard was starting to go like a year ago already. The computer would sometimes have trouble booting up… and initially I thought it was the power supply that was dying. I wish it was, since that would be easy to fix. It took me a really long time and a lot of effort to finally realize it wasn’t a power problem. I had already disconnected most of my hard drives a long time ago, even though they still remain mounted in the tower. A couple of the hard drives’ healths have started deteriorating as well.

This was actually the first computer I ever put together from scratch. In many way, it was because of this machine that got me on the path of being an all-around computer tech guy.

This machine has served me well for countless hours over its life, but its time has definitely passed, and in retrospect, I really couldn’t have asked for any more out of this system. It ran strong and reliably as long as it could, and with as much as I tortured it and had it running 24/7, it’s amazing it ran as long as it did.

Thanks for the good times.

Two and a half weeks since my last post, just like that, in the blink of an eye. Lots of different things I can write about, but I think I’ll ramble about the Olympics.

Congratulations to the Canadian Olympics team as a whole. I think we more than met our expectations in terms of the medal standings. Well done Cindy Klassen, for winning over 20% of our total medal haul with five podium finishes. Boo to the Canadian mens’ hockey team for an absolutely dismal showing. Not scoring in 11 out of your last 12 periods during the last four games they played? Yeah, you ain’t gonna win any medals doing that. Seriously, that’s just pathetic. I watched their final game against Russia in the quarterfinals with a bunch of coworkers at Fogg ‘n Suds and there wasn’t anything to cheer about.

In my opinion, the roster for the team was poorly put together. There were numerous players that should have been excluded due to poor play this year in the NHL preceeding the Olympics, and that includes Todd Bertuzzi. He has done nothing for the Canucks this year, and he certainly didn’t do anything for Team Canada either. In a way, it almost seemed like his lack of effort is contagious and carried over from the Canucks to Team Canada.

On another topic, while what Cindy Klassen did is incredible, on the flip side, it’s kind of cheap. What I mean is… only in certain sports do players even have a chance to win multiple medals, let alone five. If you’re the best player in the world in hockey and perform superbly, you’re not guaranteed a medal if the rest of your team sucks. If you’re the best ski jumper in the world, you might be able to win a couple medals, but that’s it. But… if you’re a speed skater, like Cindy Klassen, you can win five medals in one Olympics. It has been done before by Eric Heiden for men in 1980, where he won 5 gold medals for the US. It looks like nordic skiing is another disclipline where large hauls of medals can be had.

Similarly, for the summer Olympics, if looks like swimming, gymnastics, and shooting are the areas where athletes have won up to 8 medals at a single Games. These athletes may not be better at what they do than others at what the others do, but it just so happens there are many different competition classes for certain types of events.