Interesting concept over at eSnipe. It's an automated server that allows you to place bids on eBay items, however, it waits until the last possible moment to actually place the bid.

What a great idea! I've wasted plenty of time refreshing my eBay screen at some ridiculous hour in the morning to make sure I won an auction. No more late nights or being annoyed when someone schedules a meeting that overlaps an auction end.

I can't decide how I feel about this site: Japander. It's a website that shows all of the Japanese commercials that American celebrities have pimped themselves for. I have conflicting emotions between highly disturbed and highly amused.


D'oh!

For example, these advertisements using The Simpsons are, well, what the hell are they?

Now that we’re in the new house, it’s time to start breaking in the huge kitchen!



Burger of the Gods. Oh my, this certainly does live up to its namesake.

The downside of this recipe is that you need to grind your own meat, and that requires a good food processor. Good food processors are not cheap, but after eating these hamburgers, the cost of one is certainly a value. Of course, there’s a myriad of other things to do with a food processor, but grinding up your own beef easily is a task that it excels at.

The other downside is that the meat will be more expensive than the traditional ground beef that is in the supermarket. But I really don’t see how I could ever make a hamburger again out of that stuff. There’s really no comparison.

After seeing the Good Eats episode where Alton Brown makes these hamburgers, he suggests that the first time you try them, to only use mayonnaise and some pepper on the toasted bun. Okay, I’ll give it a shot.

Wow. The juices from the hamburger mix in with the mayonnaise and make a sauce of its own. I assume from now on that I’ll be using the regular hamburger trappings because they will make the burger that much better, but it certainly doesn’t need any help!

And now to figure out what to make next!

It seems that you really can't do much of anything these days in California unless you're a celebrity. We've got a celebrity governor and now the unheard of: a celebrity poker champion.

Yep, it's true, Ben Affleck won the California State Poker Championship.


California Poker Champion, Ben Affleck

Poker is certainly undergoing a tremendous amount of growth these days. I like the game, and have been playing in various California casinos for about 3 years now. I've never played at more than a $3-$6 game however, because I'm certain better players lurk at higher limit games. I will say that with the influx of all the new players, it has become easier and easier to walk away from a couple of hours of play with at least a 20% win.

I'm a tight-agressive player, and while I do get my share of bad beats, it almost always works out that some players will just call all the way to the river with absolute crap in their hands. I guess that it all works out in my favor in the end, and there's nothing I like more than to be verbally attacked for check raising some guy that is trying to see if his offsuit A-2 is going to somehow magically pay off.

I have been playing more and more online for a variety of reasons:

1. It's easy to get in and out of games.
2. There's plenty of bad players online.
3. I have a chart that I use to quickly evaluate hands, and I can use it in an online game, but not at the casino.
4. I can take notes on each players play, and when I get in a heads up situation with any of them, I have some very accurate data on which to make my decisions.
5. I can play at two tables at once. This one can bite you, as you can catch two good hands at once which leads to some quick decisions, but with tight-aggressive play, you end up throwing 80% of your hands away before betting, so this generally works out.
6. Play is much, much, much faster than in the casino.
7. You can play with a 4 color deck which makes reading a mix of clubs and spades as a flush absolutely impossible.

Anyway, if you're interested in playing online, I'm really enjoying myself at Party Poker. Go check it out! If you make a deposit, make sure to tell them that "sgtdilbert" sent you! :)

While attending that conference in Vegas, which included several information systems auditors, I learned of a vulnerability of the 802.11b wireless protocol. If you’re using a wireless router somewhere, you most likely are using the 802.11b protocol.

What I found interesting, as the auditor explained, was that the flaw was in the actual protocol itself. That doesn’t happen much to something as widely used as 802.11b.



After returning from the conference, I did a little reading on the subject, and I’m not certain that this flaw is a major problem, albeit an annoyance. First, no data is at risk here (although the security encryption inherit in many wireless routers has been cracked for sometime now; that’s another blog entry).

Here’s how it works: a hacker is able to issue instructions to their wireless card on their computer to send out data in a specific manner. The wireless router then interprets this data as interference. This apparently takes all of 8 seconds to accomplish.

The 802.11b protocol goes about its business until it encounters interference. When it does, it stops network traffic for a bit and then resumes. However, the hacker doesn’t just hit the network with one burst of bogus data. Instead, the bogus data is sent constantly, which essentially prevents the wireless network from working resulting in Denial of Service.

So how is the industry reacting to solve this problem? They’re not, according to this article. Go figure. Since the hacker needs to be within a few hundred feet of a wireless router, most companies are hoping that these malicious folks won’t be hanging around their offices causing problems.

Don’t these folks think that someone out there is going to invent a virus that finds wireless cards and forces them to send out the bogus interference data? That’s my prediction: sometime in the next six months, someone is going to release just such a virus, and it’s going to cause some serious connectivity issues.

Vegas, baby, Vegas.

I like Vegas, a lot. I really enjoy playing craps, but rarely do I get out to Nevada to enjoy the game. In fact, it’s been a couple of years since I’ve been, and for some odd reason, I ended up going to Vegas twice in one week last week: once for a good friend’s bachelor party and again two days later for a technical conference.

Although I didn’t play much, I did become closer to my friends and to my colleagues at work over the time I spent there. On the second trip, we enjoyed a fine dinner at Gallagher’s at New York New York. They have steaks that are aged for 14 days, and since I had never had one these before, I gave it a whirl. Outstanding, but bring your appetite!


Before dinner at Gallagher’s

The other highlight of my time there was watching my soon to be married friend’s brother play trumpet in a very good lounge act at the Bellagio. His brother has been able to make a good living playing in Vegas in a variety of shows, and has had steady work for the past six years!

As always, each trip to Vegas results in the impression that this town will never stop growing. How many hotel rooms is enough? I don’t know, but they apparently haven’t reached the limit yet. Practically every large resort on The Strip had some sort of ongoing construction project.

Enjoy your weekend and thank a Veteran if you get the chance.

The joy of ownership or just how insane is the Southern California housing market?


The new house as of last Saturday, May 8th

So, it's been a scant 10 weeks since I signed the purchase agreement for this house. Today, in the mail, I received a listing of new houses that have been released in this same tract and they are a full $20,000 more than what I paid.

So, I've learned two lessons:

1. The housing market in Southern California continues to be nutty. Proof positive is that my home has already increased in value by $20,000 and it's not even completed yet!

2. The sales people don't even care who you are, because even after dropping a bundle on my house, they still call me and send me mail as if I'm a prospective buyer. I guess buying one home from them isn't enough!