I got my first ever straight flush! I held 9h Th and the flop comes 7h 8h Jh. I swear I went over the hand 3 or 4 times before I actually believed it.

It was a total and utter waste though. It was me and the big blind, and he didn't even call my tiny bet on the river. So I won a total of $0.45 for my trouble.

But still! Straight Flush! Read more for the whole log.

I had originally wanted to post this following the Patriots awesome last second victory on Sunday. It really captured the moment. But somehow that post got lost.

I'm in ActionScript hell at work right now. I'm the only one in the engineering department with a decent amount of flash experience (mostly because I've been here so long and flash development was among our responsibilities in the past). Not only is it hell writing in this language, but the code base does not have very rigorous coding standards applied to it. A nice double-whammy there. And of course everything is on a tight deadline. What can you expect.

Russ has a theory about King Richards Faire. When you first get there you're all psyched up about it; ready to take in a joust, watch the crazy fire-eater, eat a leg o' meat. You're excited. Then each time you buy a sheet of food tickets, pay a few bucks to go through the torture "museum", or get taken in on the carnival games your level gets knocked down a notch. Then you get to the joust, which ends in what appears to be an abruptly stopped all out brawl (to be continued at the 5pm showing), and your level gets notched lower and lower. Then you leave disgusted that you spent so much on food, and suspecting a scam at every turn.

Ha ha HA! Christina hates it when I take pictures of her. But she's just going to have to suffer, because I like this one!

Team Iron Monkeys stormed into first place this week. Of course we had nine people. There was grumbling, and the rules (stupid rules!) dictated that we take 2nd place.

I've also come to the conclusion that it just isn't worth drinking crappy beer. I never had any sort of buzz going on. The beer didn't help me relax. And the next day, it still made me feel a little sick. What's up with that. Premium stuff for me from now on.

Check out the extended entry for some cool pictures of the golden retriever that my family had while I was in high school.

Story at 11. Siobhan was a year ahead of me in High School. And now I see that's she's doing well as a musician in NYC. Notice the good fortunes that befall people when they leave provincal little Rhody.

There is at least one other "famous" musician from SKHS.

There were two articles on boston.com about the end of the housing bubble in the Boston area. First is an article about conditional offers, and second an article about the increasing supply of single family homes in the suburbs.

To my untrained eye, it seems like maybe the bubble is beginning to burst. It sounds like sellers are starting to have a harder time, and either have to wait for 6-7 months, or cut their prices to a more reasonable level (and probably both!). With an increase of conditional offers, one greedy seller can put a whole series of sales on hold as he tries to squeeze the most out of his overpriced property.

Not all is gloomy though. It sounds like condo sales are as strong as ever. Still, I'm glad we ended up passing on those condos last year. It would've been a tough situation had we gone with 100% financing like we planned, and we were forced to sell in order to move into a bigger place. Since then, we've moved into a cheaper apartment, and we're making good strides to saving a reasonable down payment. Still, there's no way we'll ever be able to afford a house in the northeast, so when the time comes we'll probably have to try our luck elsewhere.

I've been at my current job for a record setting two and a half years now. I had my semi-annual review yesterday, and it went about as well as can be expected. Full bonus, no raise, no promotion.

I'm a little frustrated with the no promotion bit. The position that I wanted to be promoted into was basically eliminated, and it won't exist until the engineering department expands. I am assured that in the coming months the department will either expand or cease to exist. I can't really see the 2nd option happening, this company has way too much potential.

I'm even more frustrated with the no raise. Its hard to say whether the company is just being cheap, or if the budgetary pressures are so tight right now that they just can't afford it. Either way its been a year and a half since my last raise, and I think my performance has definitely improved in that time. I hope that they can reverse this trend in the near future before I can easily make the same salary elsewhere.

Laura and I took a trip up to Jordans and picked out our new sleeper couch. This is the color we got. It was cheaper because they keep it in stock, but given the choices we probably would've picked this anyway.

We just got rid of our other couch, and we weren't even planning on replacing it any time soon, but we realized that we needed a decent place to put guests, and an air mattress just wasn't going to cut it.

I find out on Tuesday if I get my semi-annual bonus. I have a feeling that I will, but you just never know until you finally get that check in your hands.

A strange thing is happenning to me. I used to hate tomatoes with a passion. I would even pick them (along with the pickles) off my fast-food. Once I gagged on a tomato eaten on a dare at a dude ranch. Then suddenly my ... err ... tounge has been opened to the perfectly ripened tomato. Now I can even enjoy a great tomato salad like the one pictured.

This whipped up really quickly, and is a good way to chow down on those pints of cherry tomatoes you have sitting around. The dressing is milk, yogurt, mayo, salt, pepper, and 1 clove of garlic. The salad is a few slices of (fake) bacon, 1 avocado, 1 pint of cherry tomatoes, and 1 head of Bibb (or Boston) lettuce. I could eat this thing every day.

It seems that I've finally given up on trying to take a picture every day. For real this time. I do things like this all the time; start projects keep them up for a little while, then drop it like a hot potato. I'm still going to bring my camera when I "do things". Lately my social life has been non-existant. This is mostly because I have a big deadline at work. One that coincides with the date of my semi-annual performance review.

For those of you wondering how to take better pictures with your point and shoot camera, take a look at morguefile's photography lessons. Some of the lessons don't apply, but you can get the basics of composition in Lesson 1.

My biggest tip for everybody is this: know when its appropriate to use your flash. I find that I'm hardly ever satisfied with pictures when my flash is the single light source. Then again, I don't have a tripod so my attempts at slow-sync flash photos don't usually turn out very well either.