Ten years ago on Father's Day 2003, on a whim, I walked into Garden City for the first time to see what California poker was like. I really liked it.

I had owned a copy of Theory of Poker for at least a year or two, so I wasn't completely on the Moneymaker bandwagon, but it was a few weeks after the series and I had been gleefully watching the first season of the WPT.

I bought in for $60, played about an hour of 3/6, and cashed out a full rack. It was a while before I got to cash out good again.

Oh, LJ, how I've missed you. Let's bring you up to date.



Samuel Tesla Showalter, born Thu, Aug 30 2012 20:00 -0700, 8 lbs 9 oz
Maxwell Sagan Showalter, born Thu, Aug 30 2012 20:01 -0700, 7 lbs 8 oz

In the picture above, Sam is on the left right. [ed: bayareajenn made me correct this two years later.]

MegaMillions is at $476M, or something like $330 "cash".

At what point is it +EV to play a progressive lottery?  Or this progressive lottery?  I can work out the odds, and have, but I don't know how to take into account the chance of someone else winning -- much less taxes.

I saw a billboard for a car that said "GAS-P!", or something to that effect, and it took me a good fifteen seconds to think through it and make sure they weren't making a Lisp joke.

In retrospect, it's obvious: -p never goes with !, those conventions just don't match.

I heard a news story on the radio about Sears closing stores recently while driving, and I've spent some time recently obsessing about improving my toolbox. It occurred to me that since I moved to California, I don't know that have bought any tools at Sears. I have lots of Craftsman stuff, all from Orchard Supply Hardware. (Orchard has been owned by Sears for about 15 years.) But I have started having problems finding things at Orchard, which doesn't carry a few things I wanted.

What a difference! Orchard doesn't have small Torx stuff, with or without the Craftsman label; Sears has two different kinds. Orchard has given up on most Craftsman power tools, but naturally Sears has lots. Their socket wrench selection is limited -- I couldn't find a spinner handle there. There are no Craftsman hammers at Orchard, either.

Of course, Sears has relatively little that isn't Craftsman, but I had forgotten how much they do have.

Orchard has started pushing their new OSH house brand and lots of cheap tools. I gather they're trying to escape the Sears-Kmart death spiral. I just can't trust tools without a real warranty. (I realize Craftsman is not Snap-on, but it is still a very nice lower bar.)

Had some time to kill on Wednesday and the Rivers Casino, just outside of Pittsburgh's downtown, seemed inviting.

At 11:30 on a Wednesday morning, they had two tables of 1-3 NL running. One was short, so I got a seat immediately. The other table was doing shots, and the scuttlebutt was that they'd been going at it all night.

The players seem chummy, and there was a lot of limping. I won very few pots in the first hour, but two stick out:

One of the big winners raised UTG to $6 to-go. There were several callers, so I popped it from late position to $40. UTG called, and everyone else folded. I had AxQh and liked the A-high flop with three hearts. IIRC, he checked and I jammed; he said I didn't have an ace, and called. He showed KK, neither of which was Kh. At the end of the hand, my pair of aces was still good and I took it down.

Later, if I recall this correctly, I limped UTG with 87h. I never do that, but this game was such an inexplicable limpfest, I couldn't help myself. Three or four other limpers came along until the BB raised to $15. I called, as did three others. Flop: Q5h6h, giving me an open-ended straight-flush draw. BB bet something like $40, and I raised to $110; he called for less. I raised to try and make my flush draw good, but it was probably the wrong play; anyway, the Qh came on the river, and I cracked aces.

I left after a little under two hours with a $220 profit.

The room is very close to the self-park garage. The casino stinks of smoke, although the poker room is non-smoking and not too bad. Sodas are free, but I forgot to ask about the alcohol. The room serves food.

The room itself is about 30 tables. It's open to the casino, but very dimly lit. The room is bland, but the dark lighting and walls make it a poker cave. The dealers and floor seemed fine, for what little I played. The cocktail waitress was walking around with a tray of diet sodas for immediate service. I probably should have tipped more than I did.

When I left at about 1:30, they had three games running and a two-table tournament.

The casino is sort of a bland mix of pretty Vegas-style decorations. A few tables had electronic betting systems, but still dealt paper cards for the blackjack game. Most of the casino is slots. The restaurants had some nice views of the local scenery, and there was a little natural light in the casino.

The worst knock on the place is that it is impossible to get to it. Rivers is just adjacent to the Carnegie Science Center, PNC Park, and Heinz Field. On game day it must be an incredible disaster. I accidentally crossed the Ft. Pitt bridge trying to get from some random location on the North Side into there; I would have stuck to the freeway, except I was coming from breakfast at Primanti Brothers in the Strip District.

Breakfast at Primanti Brothers is a good idea, by the way.

time to assemble hobby power supply: 2.5 hours

time to blow up capacitor in hobby power supply: 90 seconds

Since I forgot to study electrical engineering, electronics, ham radio, or anything that would otherwise answer this question, where did I screw up?

I have one of these: Jameco Adjustable Power Supply kit. My soldering is decent enough, and I have learned not to plug stuff backwards.

What I have apparently not learned to do is, (a), run power supplies with no load, and (b), turn up the adjustment knob all the way to see what the power supply's max voltage is.

A few seconds after I did that, the relevant filter cap popped open and magic smoke streamed out. I pulled the plug. I had added an AC line fuse to the power supply, but it didn't blow.

If I replace the cap, will the power supply work again?

Did I blow this up by running a 16V capacitor at or just past 16V? I thought it was at about 11 or 12; the documentation says it will do 15, but I never saw that.

Cut for those who don't care. ( Read more...Collapse )

8 is the ideal number of people to attend a home poker game. With 8, you can play stud, it doesn't take forever to deal a hand of Omaha or draw, and there's enough space around the table.

No poker game is ever attended by 8 people. Usually, it's 6, 5, or 11.

Digging through an old bug, I found the following comment from me regarding a server that did not start reliably when run by QA.


Looking back, my "a-ha!" moment, standing over someone's shoulder and asking them to reproduce the problem after enlarging the window, was a good one.