Last night a few of us went to Lucky Chances for a night of poker. It was the first time I’d been there in about a year. I was a pleasantly surprised to learn that they have very few limit games anymore. I know that people only want to play no limit nowadays, but previously they’d been pretty resistant to running so many no limit games(I hear that limit games are much more profitable for the house). But last night, they had many 2-3-5 spread limit and 1-1-2 spread limit tables. The spread limit means that it’s not technically no-limit, but you can only bet between the minimum and $200. I still haven’t exactly figured out why there’s a $200 cap, but at least at the San Jose card rooms, there was a city imposed limit that the bet size could not exceed $200. The last time I was there, I remember having to wait more than 2 hours to get into the small spread limit game and it was so annoying that we had given up and just played 6/12.

I sit down at a 1-1-2 game and buy in for the max of $200 and I don’t to do a lot for about a half hour. Later I switch to the table where my friends are at and my first hand I get aces and I bust a short stack for about $60. Things continue for a while and I continue to get good cards and I start to build a reasonable size stack. We amused ourselves by trying to bet prime numbers

Later on in the night we see Adam Morrison walk through the tables. Earlier in the night, he and the Charlotte Bobcats were soundly defeated by the Golden State Warriors and I guess he figured he’d use some of his down time and come in to play some cards. After my friends left, I switched over to Adam’s table because he was playing 1-1-2 as well. It didn’t take long to realize that he wasn’t playing very well. In the 2-3 hours I played with him, he rebought 5 or 6 times for $100. It seems like he has the capability and understanding to play reasonably, but it’s kind of chump change for a guy whose NBA contract pays $3mil/year. So it’s not a huge surprise that he doesn’t play like the money means something to him. He made a number of bad preflop calls, quite a few questionable chases and showed a couple bluffs and generally didn’t play well.

I didn’t play that great either, there was quite a bit of money flowing around the table and because I wasn’t getting good cards at Adam’s table, I played a bit looser than I normally do so I bled faster than I would like. It was the kind of game where preflop pots are big and to take down a pot, you need to bet the pot twice after the flop to get people to fold. So I was trying to see some flops for cheap and flop a big hand.

I ended the night +67 which wasn’t very impressive considering the action. I also missed another prop bet with the guys and that sucks because I’ve missed one at every poker outing we’ve had since we instituted them.

We had a party for Lucas for his 1 year birthday. Lots of food, people, fun. He didn’t officially turn one until today.

I’ve been looking for a new PC sound solution for a while because my Cambridge Soundworks 5.1 PC system is a piece of crap. The sound is mediocre, the cabling runs everywhere and it’s lost one of its channels. I was leaning towards headphones because you get better quality for the money and more importantly Tracy and baby go to sleep pretty early and I stay up very late sometimes and I don’t want to bother them.

So a friend recommended a pair of these Steelsound 5H v2 headphones and I’m happy with them after one night. They are comfortable, provide good sound and weren’t too expensive. In my younger days, I was a bit more of an audiophile, but now I’m satisfied by just reasonably good sound as long as I can get good stereo effects while playing games. There’s a mic of course too, but I don’t really have any occasion to use it because I hate talking into games even though most games support voice chat these days.

I’m not sure if I’m supposed to use my onboard sound card or I should use their built in USB sound processor, but I’m too lazy to switch to USB and I sort of doubt I’ll notice a difference anyways.

We’ve got a friends and family discount going at Shutterfly. If you want a buy one get one free for an 8×8 Story Book send me an email and I’ll send you a discount code which will be good for 4-5 months. They do look really good, everyone I’ve shown them to has been pretty impressed.

At our regular poker game we decide to introduce a new way for some extra action with some extra proposition(prop) bets. If you hit a flop which contains only cards, you get $1 from each player at the table. For instance if you have 456, a 456 or a 554 board pays you. This is just something new and amusing we added. We’ll see if it lasts. There’s no skill in it at all other than remembering to notice it. But it does add a bit of spice to a game that we’ve gotten a bit to complacent with.

Lucas loves playing with spices from the spice cabinet. The other day he took out the turmeric and got it open and spilled it out over the carpet. It turns out that it’s nearly impossible to remove. We can’t figure out how to get rid of it and it’s a really bright yellow. We are pretty sad about the carpet right now.

A couple of Lucas’ favorite things are: Pulling the dental floss out of the dispenser and getting his teeth brushed. Maybe he wants to take after his aunt Mary and be a dentist or maybe he’s just trying to get his dad to floss more than twice a year.

I am a pretty loyal DirecTV user because they’re on the cutting edge of providing HD programming. Their lineup of HD programming and NFL coverage is unbeatable. Also their customer service is about the best I’ve had. They never demean, cover up or blame my problems on me.

From the list of new HD channels they’ll offer, Food Network is the best, because we watch at least 3-5 hours a week of it. And having the Sci-Fi channel will allow us to get BSG in HD. Those are the two biggest bonuses, but everything is good.

The 2006 venture capital market was funny, all the same business models from 2000 are coming back. Many of the Web 2.0 business models are reborn ideas from dead Web 1.0 companies. Which begs the question, how can these companies be successful now when they failed so miserably just 6 years ago?

Here’s some reasons.

• Mature consumers: in 2006, people feel comfortable on the web especially in ecommerce transactions. Online shopping does not scare users anymore.
• Realistic marketing: It’s no longer “customer acquisition at all costs”. It’s word of mouth, low budget, stealth, viral marketing.
• Managed expectations: Investors are looking at bottom line growth instead of top line growth. An IPO is not realistic without a proven track record of growth and a clear horizon to profitability.
• Adsense as a business model: Today’s small and medium sized pure content web sites are now viable thanks to the power of Google’s Adsense. In 2000, a content company would need an ad sales team, infrastructure to serve up and manage ads, and a way to analyze and optimize ad data. Today Google can do most of that. This enables the content companies to focus on generating quality content. By lowering the capital investment required to monetize traffic, small web companies can survive for much longer with much less capital.

So there won’t be as many instant riches to be had, but the prospects look better for sustainable growth in the sector.

I spent a couple days in New York on Long Island where my brother Tim lives. Got to see all the family and Tim’s new twins Robert and John(Bobby and Johnny) who were born in September. I forgot to take pictures, but otherwise it was the usual fun, Chinese food, playing with the nephews. We went to a Legal Seafoods one night for a nice seafood dinner.

I flew Jet Blue which I had never done before. They have some nice features, like leather seats for everyone and individual TVs with 30+ channels which really make the time pass.