Chris Halverson’s Blog

Mrs. H’s Birthday

Well, we changed things up a bit and went back to the sushi place (Nami). We did this instead of the steak house was because the other day my mom said that the family should celebrate me getting my Master’s degree by going out for dinner. She said I could pick anywhere except sushi. Therefore, I’ll pick the steak house for that and the Mrs. and I went for sushi.

See our previous experience at Nami.

Why go back after that you ask? Well, basically the food was awesome.

So knowing how the situation worked, we went in and decided to game the system a bit. We would order drinks right away, then appetizers, and after finishing the appetizers we would then order our entree.

This system worked great. We had edemame and a tempura platter for appetizers. We then both had the combo nigiri platter (Mrs. H had the 7 peice, I had the 10). All of the food was awesome. The waitress even checked back on us often enough that we each had a couple (or three) drinks.

The only bad part of the night was when it came time for dessert. They had none. WTF? Last time we were there they didn’t have their own either, but they had some from another restaurant. This time it was only ice cream. Ug. When you charge $20+ for an entree, you should have dessert available.

We still had a great time. The food was good and the conversation even better.

IRC

Since people have been asking me were the über cool l33t people are hanging out. To stop the emails and comments, here it is: #wpbt on Efnet. I’m on as chrisdhal. If you use Windows and want a free IRC client, download free XChat from silverex.org. Trillian also has IRC capabilities.

Per Maigrey, the requirements for jumping in are: you have a blog, or you have a good story about Helixx.

New Year’s

Everybody please have a safe New Year’s. Hope 2005 was good for you, here’s looking forward to 2006.

Hope everybody had a good Christmas. Things went well here at Chez Halverson. Christmas eve is my family’s “present” night and it was nice if a bit overwhelming (just from people, nothing bad or anything). It was all good though and it was a good time.

Christmas day brought a slight miscommunication between us and my wife’s grandparents, which basically left us with nowhere to go during the day. This was nice though as it gave us some time to relax and such.

As a Professional Poker Player™ I decided to jump on IRC to lend some credibility to the channel. I joined a 100NL game at Party and proceeded to lose about $80. I had some decent chat with Alan and Mourn. I then jumped onto Second Life for a bit, attended a dance with a friend while doing a little web research, then decided that all the tourney talk in IRC was inticing (m? WTF?).

To Party for a SNG!

I join a $20 NLHE SNG and on the first hand almost double up. From that time forward I was at worst second place and went on to win the thing. This basically made me even for the night and I had a good time. Maybe I should look at those again. I had some nice success in those for a while and I do enjoy them.

Mrs. H’s birthday is this week therefore I need to get more gifts because I totally spaced this year. A nice dinner at one of our favorite restaurants (Capital Grille) is on tap for the end of the week. Hopefully I can find a gift or two by then

OK, I just heard about Daddy from Snaitrax hanging it up…Geez…First people going on hiatus, talk of maybe stopping, etc. C’mon people…Yes, blogs are gay; yes, poker sucks; but come on, suck it up.

Big news of the day:

(Click on it to see it better, looks like crap small)

4 point Oh beetches. My Master’s degree is now complete. w00t!!

Slid into work for a bit today to fill out 3 months worth of expense reports, finalize my tuition reimbursement papers and just shoot the shit for a bit. I’m now done for the rest of the year. Woo hoo!

How can you tell you don’t travel much? When you leave all your socks at home instead of packing them. Thankfully it was only a couple of days that consisted of sitting around all day. sigh

Just wanted to take the opportunity to say thank you all for stopping by here, I do appreciate it and I hope you all enjoy it at least a little. Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Well Wishes, or whatever makes you happy at this time of year

On that note, I think I’ll join the ranks of, oh, all the other poker bloggers of note and go on hiatus for a while. I’ll be back. I’m ok. Etc.

Just kidding. Is that getting old yet? Heck, at the rate of my postings lately I could go on hiatus and nobody would notice

Have a good holiday weekend!

It was -10 F when I left home on Monday at 4AM to travel 2.5 hours North to attend some training for work. When I arrived it was a balmy -1F. Joy. This is ostensibly “Developers” training. Here’s how bad it is (from IRC this morning):

chrisdhal: damnit
chrisdhal: ok, i’ll ask again: why are 80% of the people in this “developer” training not developers?
chrisdhal: and there’s only 4 of us here
chrisdhal: so, err, 75%

• chrisdhal is getting dumber by the minute
  maigrey: heh
  maigrey: i hear training does that too you

I’m on the shores of Lake Superior in the frozen metropolis of Duluth, MN. Dinner options? Limited. Last night I asked the channel the odds that the Indian restaurant would be any good. The responses ranged from 0% (since it’s Indian), to coin flip. Well, I’m happy to report that it was good. We went in and noticed there were real Indian cooks, which is a good start. I had the Rogan Josh, hot. Now remember, we’re in Minnesota where ketchup is considered a spice. This, however, was actually a decent “hot”, and the manager even brought out some extra spices in case I didn’t think it was hot enough.. The garlic naan was very garlic and the kheer was refreshing. Overall, Taj India is recommended.

I actually played a little poker on Tuesday night. I didn’t get back in time to hang out with Mrs. H online (she got tired) so I hung out with a friend in Second Life for a bit, then went to play a little poker.

Poker is teh suck by the way.

It was good to donk around a bit, even if I was playing more or less seriously. Less since I was chatting with the Princess in IRC. Ah…I guess there’s not really a “more”.

Back home on Wednesday. Life back to normal. Just in time for Christmas.

The smell of two stroke engines fills the air in the suburban Twin Cities as people try to come to grips with the fact that we once again actually have snow in Minnesota. Every year it’s the same thing. You’d think that people would figure out how to drive and how handle a little snow. I took last week off again in order to burn more vacation that cannot carry over. I basically did nothing which was nice.

Saturday night found me sitting in IRC and being goaded by Daddy, Hel1xx, Blood and Maigrey into playing in a $10 Razz tourney at Full Tilt. Geez, what was I thinking? First off, this is stud. I’m of the All Hold ‘Em, All the Time school (winks at Felicia) so I was lost right away. Then it’s that lowball stuff. OMG, the pain. I busted out 41st out of 60 or so, which was among the first of the IRC’ers. Oh well, it was still a good time and the commentary was fun. I’ll definitely have to do that again.

I will be travelling to frozen Duluth on Monday morning for three days of “training”. Nice timing, huh? The week before Christmas and it’s off site training. sigh At least there is Internet in the hotel. Of course, I don’t really have Christmas presents bought yet either. Ug.