Normally, I won’t join my colleagues for their poker games, but today is an exception. It is Daniel’s birthday, who usually host the game. The big group first have dinner together at Abadeen Center, then head towards daniel’s place. Me and Pat went to Mondo to have icecream after dinner, Verona has a sharp eye and spoted Mondo offers free icecream to birthday boys. We phoned Daniel to tell him the good deal. He did not believe there is such a good deal, but came down anyways and got the icecream for his wife. At Daniel’s place, some of us played poker and had red wine, a very spoiled life style. Some others who don’t gamble played a much more educational game, scrabble. The poker game we play is a variation of 7 cards hi-low stub, with an option to choose go high or go low after the last card is deal. I am lucky tonight and won a small amount, but Pat taxed 50% of my profit. I start to understand the trick in this game. Going low is always better than going high, which it the reverse of other poker games. You can’t calculate your opponent’s hand when you go high, but you can easily see your odds when going low. Since the pool is split evenly between the high and low winner, the risk of going low is actually smaller. When in doubt, and your cards on the table permits, always go low. The other key is know when to fold, never chase any card. In fact you don’t need to chase any card when you are going low. Gambling is not very good after all, so I only allow myself play at most once a month, probably on the monthly long weekend gathering of the group.

I have been using no-ip.com for my DNS redirection for many years. It basically maps the my domains (www.horace.org and trishama.no-ip.com) to the IP address of my webserver at home. It is a free service and very reliable. I don’t expect my free account will actually expired. This unexpected link failure disturbed the service to my website for a few hours today, until I figure out the problem. I know there is no forever free lunch. It seems the no-ip service require the user reactive their accounts once a while. If it becomes too much of an annoyance, I think I will pay $20 to upgrade to the enhanced service to save all the troubles. I even briefly think about moving my main domain, horace.org to no-ip.com for the $25 package. Although it is $75 cheaper than the hosting service I am using, no-ip.com doesn’t provide webspace nor mail service. It costs another $45 to add a mail server to the package, and only comes with 20MB storage space. My deal at readyhosting.com is pretty good, 500Mb of mixed use space, unlimit email account, umlimit data transfer, web email access. The only obvious drawback is SQL database not included, an extra $25 for the database is more than I am willing to pay. I think the best solution is keep everything as it is. Continue to host the website in my linux box at home, and use the static domain just as a front channel all the traffic to my home server. I am lucky to have my own toplevel domain. I noticed horace.com and horace.net is up for sale and the seller is asking for over $1000. It seems these two domain is owned by cyber squatters at the moment. Those companies accumlate common expired domains and hoping to cash them out some day. I used to know the owner of horace.com, even asked to buy his domain. I wonder whether he sold the name to those cyber squatter or he simply forgot to renew his domain register. If I knew he will give up on his domain, I may ask him again. I guess I am willing to spend up to $500 for that name. Isn’t it ironic that you have to acquire the right to use your own name in the cyberworld?

I had a real badminton game today since I had stopped playing badminton in the summer. Last time didn’t count as a real game, I only played for 30 minutes due to the stupid AC said they will deliver my lost luggage on that night. However at the end, I waited them until 11:00p.m., I could have stayed for the whole game. Then the following two weeks, we had the teachers strike in Vancouver. All schools are closed including the one we rented the gym for. I think we should joined the Tax player association to sue the teacher union for compansation. We should get back $2 per night per person, or at least entended our court rental 2 extra weeks for free. My badminton skill is kinda rusty due to lack of practice, and I am not very good to begin with. Tonight I rediscover a few techniques that I had forgotten. First, In order to increase your reaction time, don’t trace the birdy, trace your opponent’s racquet, which points to the general direction where the birdy will fly. Second, return the birdy with back-hand, don’t hit the birdy in front of your body, hit on the side, so that you can have more follow through movement. I never had any badminton training at all, I only learn by observing others or some pointers from friends once a while. I think I need some formal badminton training, especially on the leg movements. It is necessary to break through the ceiling of my current skill level.

We had our 2nd match of the foosball tournament today. Both me and Anson did exceptionally well in the match. In the first game, we lost to the other team 5-0 straight. It is partly due to we were distracted by some other bad mouthed players before the game, and partly we tried new roles, Anson plays offensive and I play defense. I was afraid we will be the laughting stock around the foosball table if we lose two games straight. In the second game, we changed back to our normal strategy and we were able to win 5-2. The other team got confused in the 3rd game and switched their roles. The result is not very good for them and we won 5-3 in the end. It was a very tense game, and I am glad we won at the end of the day. Our first two opponents are relatively weak, I don’t think we will be this lucky next week. During the game, a player from other team made pretty harsh comments on our skills, he said how come he didn’t get to play either of us so that we can score an easy win. I was too concentrated on the game so I simply ignored him, but his comments really bothered Anson. I know we are weak, but I think we may have a chance standing up aganist them if we practice more. If we meet them in the play off games, I will definitely get even on them of making such comments if we happened to won the game.

I have been feeling very rush since Sunday. No only the tape-in date is getting close at work, but also I have encounter unexpected problems in my thesis after work. It like I am continuously chasing something, couldn’t slow down and take a breath. I don’t have mood to write my blog today, and I had skipped it yesterday. I had already formulated an article I have to write on my review section but couldn’t find time to type it out for a few days. I have a small book called slow-down therapy, maybe I should reread it several more times to slow down myself. However, slowing down cannot help getting all the work done. My focus should be getting all the piles in front of me cleaned up, and not adding any new pile at the time.