Playing Poker Online

Last Saturday night, Toni and I stayed up until 3am Sunday morning playing Texas Hold'em on PokerStars.net. Shhh, don't the the cops! Anyway, we bought into a 100 player $11 tournament. Poker Stars paid out to the top 10 players overall, and we ended 11th. Oh well, at least we wont have any "gambling winnings" to report for next year's taxes. :)

$5k camera, $5 cameraman.

Ever see those cars with the $5,000 sound system, but it's in a $50 car? I felt the same way yesterday when I ran our church's new professional grade video camera. It was a $5,000 camera being run by a $50 cameraman (me). Even worse, it was on a $5 tripod. Oh well, I'm sure there's some special effects and transitions that can be added to the final video to make my poor camera work less obvious.

Hatred of techies

Dead-on article. The hatred of techies.

Visual Studio 'Orcas' Gets Named

Microsoft has provided a real name for their next version of Visual Studio, which is Microsoft's computer programming software. It's called "Visual Studio 2008" -- obviously, very creative. Of interesting note, visualstudio2008.com is already registered. But visualstudio2010.com is not *yet*.

Tivo and Amazon Unboxed!

Awesome! Tivo and Amazon have joined forces to deliver new movies and tv shows directly to Tivo owners. There's no monthly service fee, you just have to pay a rental fee (.99 to 2.99). Amazon will upload our purchases directly to our Tivo.

Our Home Office

We recently remodeled our home office. We purchased new furniture, including a desk, chairs, and a small television. The flat-screen LCD monitor, wireless keyboard and mouse we purchased earlier. Our phone is a Nortel 9516, which may just be the world's smartest phone.

Our Upgrade To Windows Vista

A few weeks ago, we upgraded our desktop computer at home from Windows XP Pro to Windows Vista - ultimate edition. Everything worked right away, for the most part. We didn't automatically get the new Aero interface, which was suppose to be the best part of Vista. We upgraded our video card. We got an ATI Radeon 9550 AGP video card for 70 bucks at the Nebraska Furniture Mart. That increased the speed of our video capabilities, and Aero automatically turned on.

Local TV station commercials

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. But somewhat funny.

Alexis' Volleyball Game

Yesterday, Alexis played her first YMCA volleyball game of the season. This is her 3rd season playing. Her team won 2 sets out of the 3 played. She did really good. A few times she hit the ball over the net and earned an immediate point for her team. Most, if not all, of her serves went over the net. I don't think any of them were returned ("volleyed"). This year, she's playing single serve attempt. Last year, they got 2 chances to serve the ball. This year, just like in regular volleyball, you only get one attempt - so she made them count. There are 9 girls on her team, and I think they all showed up!

(BTW, mom got to do the coaching for this game).

Lost Season 2 & 3 are coming!

On September 5, Lost Season 2 will be released on DVD. Yippie! We didn't start watching the show until way into the 1st season. When we realized how good it was, we bought the entire first season on DVD. We watched the entire season right before season 2 started airing on television. We've recently watched the entire 1st season AGAIN, in eager expectation of the release of season 2 on DVD, and the airing of season 3 on ABC. If you haven't caught the Lost fever, you should check it out.

Here's a few links you should start with:
http://abc.go.com/primetime/lost/
http://www.oceanicflight815.com
http://www.thefuselage.com/

We enjoy LOST!