It’s last night. I’m playing poker in the card room at Canterbury, which is significant because I haven’t been there since December 2005. I’m in the four seat, and this other guy is in the two seat. He’s a complete prick.

He has to be right about everything. So maybe the dealer got a detail wrong relating to missed blinds when the player hasn’t yet sat down. Is that really a reason to keep bringing that up during each of the next eight hands? On a couple of occasions, a player mucked his cards at the showdown and the reprobate demanded to see the cards. Once again, that’s technically legal (perhaps to prevent collusion), but it is considered rude.

We play for several hours. The sleazeball wins a small pot and proceeds to stack and count his chips while the next hand is being dealt. All of a sudden, he grunts to the dealer, “You over-raked that pot,” to which the dealer responds, “I… I don’t think I did, but you should have said something before the next hand.” The two-seat retorts, “No, the pot was $32. You raked $4 and it should have been $3.” The dealer asks him how he knows and the guy presents as evidence the chips that he claims represent the prior pot. The dealer once again points out that he should have raised the issue before the next hand. Not satisfied, the guy starts demanding that he get his extra dollar, so the dealer calls for the floor. The floor walks over and the lowlife starts going off about the dealer not knowing what he’s doing and continues his demands for his dollar. The floor, obviously wanting to shut the guy up, tells the dealer to take a dollar from the next pot and give it to the two-seat.

You’d think that would be the end of it, but you’d be wrong.

After the floor walks away, the caitiff, who has the hygiene of a vagabond, starts ripping on the dealer and telling the dealer to “learn how to do his job.” Mind you, this is all at a $2/$4 hold ’em game. Fortunately for the dealer, a shift change comes due. As the dealer is tidying the table for the next dealer, I toss a $1 tip to the dealer and say, “[This is] for having to put up with that,” as I point to the two-seat. The dealer smiles and is obviously amused. On the other hand, the two-seat is pissed.

He looks at me and rumbles, “Was that a rip on me?” to which I cheerfully respond, “And how!” The guy’s rotund face is now beet red. He growls, “When I write my book, I’m going to include a reference to some punk kid with an attitude!” I smile, give him a wink and a thumbs up, and tell him, “You do that.”

The guy is seething, the dealer is happy, and the rest of the table is amused. As play resumes, it becomes apparent that the two-seat is on serious tilt. It seems the incident really got to him. Fantastic! I stay in for the rest of the orbit, gather my chips, and leave. When I stand up, most of the table gives me a hearty goodbye. Not surprisingly, the two seat keeps his mouth shut and his eyes glued to the table.

I normally don’t revel in the misery of others, but that was a notable exception. Oh, it was grand.

Two days ago, there was a sign in my office building’s lobby congratulating my division for exceeding its first-quarter revenue goal. Numerous delicious cookies and bright balloons accompanied the sign. Yesterday morning, my company’s stock opened about 3% higher than the previous day’s close on heavy trading thanks to a favorable reimbursement statement from a government agency.

Yesterday afternoon, my company issued an earnings warning. Its stock dropped nearly 11% in after-hours trading.

Today, at least three major investment institutions downgraded the stock. The stock closed down over 15% compared to the previous day’s opening, reducing the market cap by almost $10 billion.

On the upside, my company remains strong despite the miss. The options chain suggests that investors expect a rebound in the stock price in the not-too-distant future, so this is probably a buying opportunity. The company has weathered worse hits; 22 years ago, the stock dropped over 16% in a single day. Nowadays, the stock trades roughly 10,000% higher (split-adjusted) than that 1984 low. I’m not worried, just a bit frustrated.

I suppose it could be worse.

Last night, I attended Minnesota’s premiere drum corps event: Drum Beauty. Six corps performed: three senior corps and three division one corps. Minnesota Brass impressed the crowd with their creative program and tight execution. Of the D-I corps, I found the Cavaliers‘ show the most appealing. Titled “Machine,” a nod to their nickname “The Green Machine,” the Cavaliers’ show featured their trademark visual precision and musical prowess. When the show starts with the drum major doing the robot, you know it’s going to be good.

From what I understand, drum corps competition is highly political; thus, the winner of a contest can often be predicted prior to its start. So, when the scores were being read at the end of Drum Beauty, a murmur when through the crowd when the Cavies took silver. The winner? It was the Blue Devils, who beat the Cavaliers 86.080 to 85.500.

At 2:05 p.m. today, just after I sat down for a meeting, the power went out at my building. We tried to continue the meeting, but as the discussion centered on some complex flowcharts that were to be projected, we soon abandoned the effort. Twenty minutes later, word spread around the building: the powers-that-be were sending us all home for the day.

As I left the parking lot, I looked down the road and saw the likely culprit: a utility pole was leaning at an alarming angle over the road.

It can’t compare to the Auckland power crisis, but it was inconvenient nonetheless.

I just got my cable modem installed, and it’s great to be back. For the past few days, I’ve been mooching off of my neighbor’s wireless connection with my laptop. Now I’m back to my much-newer desktop computer, and it’s sooooo nice.

Comcast requires new customers to run some custom software in order to activate the connection. I tried to avoid it, but they seem to have things locked down pretty well. I sacrificed my laptop to the task and installed the bloated software. When that was done, I tried plugging my desktop computer into the cable modem in place of the laptop (my router hasn’t arrived yet). No dice. It seems that Comcast locked the connection to my laptop’s MAC address. Bah.

After a quick dive into the recesses of Windows on my desktop, I had my desktop’s NIC spoofing my laptop’s MAC address. Translation: internet internet internet!

Good times. It’s hard for me to imagine a world without the internet. I’ve been using it since 1994, and BBSes since 1993, so from my perspective it’s always been there. Granted, those first few years were experienced at a blistering 2400bps pace, but slow connectivity was better than no connectivity. I can remember spending an hour to download a 500kbyte file from a BBS. Nowadays, downloading a multi-gigabyte file at 500kbyte/s is no big deal.

I can’t wait for fiber-to-the-home.