I got my iPod!! Hooray for me!

I love this thing. It’s awesome. There is so much shit you can do with it that I didn’t know. The coolest thing I found so far is that it has a built in trivia game that plays a snip it from one of your songs in your library, and you choose the name from a list. But you only have a few seconds to guess it. Tight as hell. And I love the touch sensitive controls. This thing rules.

Sorry about that. I haven’t updated my Blog in a little while. It’s a busy time.

Well, the holiday season is almost over. The little Christmas break we had was nice, but there is so much running around going on that I hardley felt like I had any time off. I’m back to work today, then off again until January 5th. I think this next break will be better because there isn’t much going on. Besides, we only have a skeleton crew running today, so it should be pretty casual. Although, I think I have to be here till 4:00. For some reason I thought we’d only work till about noon or so. If Jim’s around, he still might call it early, I don’t forsee us being very busy.

Christmas was good. The best part about it was hanging out with family. I had a good time hanging out with everyone. Busy, but nice.

So now it’s Monday morning. I’am at work. This is the first time I’ve ever tried my alarm code here. It didn’t work. So my first time opening, I set the alarm off. Hilarity ensues. That’s a great way to start my day. While the alarm was going off, and Susanne and I were trying to figure out what to do, it hit me. I remembered what GP’s code was. Punched it in, and the alarm shut off. It only went off about 3-4 minutes before we got it turned off. I called the alarm company to get everything straightened out. The lady asked me for my code, I gave it to her, and she said “no, your code to talk to me”. I was like, “look lady, I don’t even have a working alarm code. Do you think I have one to call you with”? She said we were within our schedule, whatever the hell that means, and that everything was fine. Great fucking Monday so far.

ROTK
I went and saw Lord of the Rings: Return of the King with Clay over the little break. What a great flick that was. If you hvaen’t seen it, go. But make sure you see the other two first. I’ve talked to a few people that said they were going to see it, and when I asked them what they thaought of the first two they would tell me they’ve never seen them. What are you thinking?

Heres a pic of the TV in my truck. I took this on the way in this morning. Just testing out the picture mail. It’s blurry because I was driving while I was taking it.

Also, that’s Oceans Eleven I’m watching.

EDIT
I just realized I had the camera settings on ghetto mode. I’ll have to take another one with the higher res setting.

So I’m reading the Screen Savers website and the cast have posted their Christmas lists. So here is mine. Although it’s more like a things that I can’t afford list.

HP iPaq 2215 Pocket PC
Man, I would love to have a compact flash slot again on my Pocket PC. I miss it so much.

Apple iPod
The ultimate in MP3 players. Period. Hard drive based, and will hold every MP3 in my collection. Plus it’s small form factor makes it the best. I’ve been looking at cheaper alternatives lately, but when it comes down to it, this is the only one that will make me happy.

Burton iPod Snowboarding Jacket
I need a new ski jacket anyway, and if I’m getting an iPod I might as well get the Burton iPod jacket. It has soft controls sewed into the arm, so when I’m ski boarding, I’ll have easy access to all my tunes. How cool is that?

Shuttle SB61G2R
My next computer upgrade will be a small form factor rig. And Pentium based. I was an AMD guy, but Intel is just plain better. Ok, so I don’t need the Special Anniversary Edition shuttle, but this is an un-obtainable list, so why not?

Sony 61″ XBR Plasma WEGA Hi Def TV
I know, it’s 20 grand, but come on….

20″ Rims and Tires
Why you ask? Because it’s just about the last step in making my Explorer look perfect. I don’t want Sprewells or anything, just something nice.

Thats about it for now. You guys better hurry up, only 4 days till Christmas!! Besides, it’s midnight, I’m typing this in bed, and I just got dirty look number two from the wife.
Goodnight all.

Went to Kel’s work Christmas party on Friday night. It was at the Towsnsend in Burmingham. Beautiful hotel, and a pretty cool party. (as far as company christmas parties go)

The food was excellent. The had these food stations. Italian, Mexican, Dessert, and one other one we didn’t go to. The italian food was fantastic. You picked your pasta, and whatever you wanted cooked with it, and the chef cooked it right there in front of you. Good times. We hung out with Debbie, Eric and Kelli so that was a good time. I always have fun hanging out with them.

Let’s throw together a buyin game
Talked to Billy today, and we decided to try and throw together a quick little buy-in poker game. 7 guys total played.

Little Rob
Rob’s buddy Willie
Steve “big Dog” Gardner
Peter
Kenny
Billy “Red Devil”
and myself

We started playing at 9:30, and at 1:00am I took Billy out. Sorry bro….no I’m not.
Back to Poker Night at the Palmers!
We’re back to our weekly poker night at Bonnies again. Yipee! I like watching Survivor, but I missed playing poker with everyone. Glad we’re back to it.

Maybe I’m being selfish. Maybe I’m being a dick. I don’t know, maybe I should be greatfull for the way I’ve been treated at this point.

Or maybe I set myself up for dissappointment. Visions of what we thought we deserved, or at least the rock bottom of what we would actually get.

I’m talking, of course about, our bonuses.

Is it the fact that we stay later than everyone else? Maybe. We don’t knock eachother over at 4:30 like the sheep do. How about the fact that we are now responsible to show up earlier than everyone else to open up? Possibly. More responsibility, longer hours, and of course, salaried employees.

All these things into consideration, you can imagine how shocked I was when I found out that we got a smaller bonus than everyone else. The warehouse staff (some deservably so), Ken and myself all got half of what the rest of the company got as a Christmas bonus.

Is it a good bonus? It’s not bad. Is it less than what we expected? Sure. Did we think we’d get totally fucking jammed, and get half then the people that we repeatadly outshine on a daily basis? THE THOUGHT NEVER CROSSED OUR MINDS.

Ken and I are in the same boat now. Left wondering. Why. Why did we get screwed on our bonus? It doesn’t make sense. It just doesn’t make sense.

Kel and I got new cell phones yesterday! No more Nextel for us. I gotta say, I LOVE the two-way feature of Nextel. One of the best things ever. But they were just too expensive. So we went with Sprint. We got two Samsung VGA1000 phones for dirt cheap. So we couldn’t pass up the deal.

The phone has a camera with built in flash (640×480 res), external picture caller ID, and all kinds of other stuff. We can even get streaming TV channels if we want to pay for the service. That’s good times.

Finished our shopping yesterday!
We finished our Christmas shopping yesterday. At work, we buy presents for poor kids for Christmas. Kind of an “every kid gets a Christmas” program. So yesterday I went out and bought for the little boy I got. I had a good time. I spent a little too much on him, due to what we’re supposed to spend, but I got him everything on his list so I’m happy about that. We actually still have one more thing to get, for one person, but thats no big deal. So technically I guess we’re not done, but whatever.

Bonus day tomorrow!!
We ARE getting bonuses from work. Woohoo! I just have no idea what it’s going to be. I’ll find out tomorrow though.

Congratulations Bonnie!! With Sandra winning Survivor Pearl Islands, Bonnie is now the new survivor champion.

Sandra deserved to win. She answered almost every jury question perfectly yesterday. The best part was when Jeff (the host) decided at the reunion to switch Sandra and Jon, to see who would have won. And the jury showed that 4 of them would have voted for Lil. Jeff called it a “$900, 000.00 mistake”. I didn’t like Lil, and her crying all the time. I’m glad Survivors over for one simple reason. I couldn’t stand to see Lil without her pants on again. Seriously though, what the hell was that about? She NEVER had pants on. And she’s gross. Bleh.

The Horn one-uping TO?
One of the greatest football moments in recent years was when TO (Terrell Owens) scored a touchdown, pulled a sharpie out of his sock, signed the ball, and gave it to someone in the crowd. That was so entertaining, cocky, and fun to watch. Well Jo Horn of the New Orleans Saints pulled a stunt yesterday that might have been better. Might being the opperative word. After scoring his second of four TD’s yesterday, The Horn lifted up the padding around the goal post, and pulled out a cell phone. Flipped it open, and pretended to make a call. Cocky? For sure. Fun to watch? For sure. Better than the TO autographed ball incident? Probably not. It was good, but TO’s still on top in my book.

Good poker weekend overall
Played again Saturday night. Actually twice. The first game ended real early, so we decided to go again. Clay took down the first game, I took down the second. Not a bad average at all. I played in 3 games, and one headsup. I won 2 games, and the headsup. Decent take for the weekend overall. I love this game.

Did I spell that right? Ah, who cares.
Poker. I love that game. I’ve always considered myself a pretty good poker player. Not great, but not bad either. And poker has always been good to me. I usually play with the same group of guys, every once in a while getting some “new blood” in the games. When you play cards against the same people over and over again, it gets easy to play them. That doesn’t mean it’s easy to win, eventually you’re going to have to have the cards. But it’s easy to see how the games going. If you’re not a poker player, you wouldn’t understand that.

I think I’ve gone up a level in the hierarchy of poker players. I was invited to a game last night. 8 players. No limit Texas Hold em’. I knew one, of these 8 players. The one that invited me. Normally, I think of a game of “casual” players as a loose game. Meaning, bluffing is hard to do. Most “casual” players will call on nothing, just to see the next available cards. Play tight in a loose game, and vice versa. Well, after the first hand I noticed that it wasn’t the case at all. These guys were there to play. When 4 out of the 8 guys folded on the blinds in the first hand, I knew I was going to have to take it from these guys. So I did. Long story short, I took it down. Got home around 1:15am with a heavy wallet. Good night.

I feel, when you can show up to a game where you know no one, and handily take it down, you have graduated to the next level. I think I’ve hit that level.

So, Nate comes over today. He wanted to borrow my poker table for the “dead money” game on Sunday. I won’t be there, so I told him he could. While he was here, he wanted to go heads up against me. Nate likes to play against me. I taught him how to play poker. I’m also number one on our tour. Both in money, and top finishes. If Nate and I sit down and play, and he beats me, it’s sort of a satisfaction for him. He’s beating the guy that taught him, and a guy who generally knows a lot about, and loves the game. I feel the same way when I take a “natural” poker player down. Except today was not Nates day. 10 large each, 50-100 hold em, and we went at it. It was a damn good game, and if I wasn’t playing it, I would have loved to watch it. There was a lot of chip movement. Nate is an aggressive player. I play towards the game. So with those two factors in mind, there were a lot of chips flying back and forth. But in the end, I took him out.

Poker has been nice to me. This weekend especially, lol. Nate called my “second job”. I just simply call it, a nice, fun, suplimental income.

Yup, that’s right. My Survivor reign is over. Last night, Burton made one of the dumbest decisions in Survivor history by taking Johnny Fairplay with him on the reward challenge. What in the hell was he thinking?? That idiot just blew the game, as evident by the fact that he was voted out last night.

And with that vote, out goes my dreams of my third championship in a row. Crud. So, Bonnie, Ron and the Astros all have people left. One more show on Sunday, which is why I can’t play in what has now become known as “The Rayl Industrial Dead Money Hold em Tournament”. It’s called that because of all the “dead money” or bad players, that are going to be there. Thats ok though, I’d rather be at Bonnies.

Besides, in the game I was in on Tuesday, I got the invite to a poker game tonight. Small buy-in for the main game, decent payouts. Plus the option of smaller cash games on the side. Sounds like a plan to me. Now if I could only decide whether to go there, or to Marianelli’s with Kel. Why am I so indecisive? What the hell is wrong with me?