KyleBits

Have you ever come across a blog or news site that you wanted to keep up with, and you just made a mental note to return later? Maybe you bookmark it, maybe you don’t, and sometimes you just plain forget how to get back there, or forget to check back, and you miss out on stuff. There’s a simple technology called RSS that makes all of this easy … and will allow you to keep up on my blog, if you’re interested in that sort of thing.

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As mentioned previously, I have been playing a lot of poker. I went through plenty of ups and downs in terms of bankroll, but in the end, I always came out as a loser by the end of the month. Clearly, I need more practice. The trouble is that people playing on the “play money” tables don’t play real poker… they play a game called “re-raise to the river, hope to get lucky, and ask for more chips when I lose”. That’s no way to learn poker.
Then, I found Poker School Online. For $15/month (actually, I immediately upgraded to an annual membership for $150) I get to play on “play money” tables with people that are playing as if it’s real money. Everyone there fiercely protects their bankroll. There are a lot of poker lessons on the site, very informative forums, and decent software (though they need a decent web design guy!). I like it. And, it limits my losses to just $150/year
If you check it out and decide to join, please use this link … I get referral credit. Good luck!

I’d like to extend a personal thanks to the engineers at Nordic Track for making their treadmills so friggin’ heavy and hard to assemble. Laura and I just bought a treadmill that took Hurculean effort to get up the stairs, and took forever to put together. Now that it’s together, it’s pretty darn cool. We bought an additional piece that uses IR to control it via workout CDs from ifit.com. Now I just have to get my fat ass out of bed every morning to use it. I think maybe I’ll tape the receipt to my alarm clock.

Well, here it is. This is the weekend Laura finally moves to Texas. She graduates on Friday, then we pack up the car and drive from STL to OKC on Saturday, continuing on to Dallas on Sunday. She starts BAR/BRI on Monday morning. Hopefully she’ll have energy enough in the afternoons to go find us a house, because I don’t want to live in this apartment for very long. It was sized perfectly for me when I moved here, but not for 2 people.

Blame Paco. I had been planning to buy an old, cheap notebook to experiment with Linux. But, Paco had to go and discover an impressive piece of equipment at Fry’s Electronics… a Compaq Presario R3160. It’s much more expensive than I had planned on, but boy, is it sweet. It has an AMD 64 bit Athlon, 80 GB hard drive, 512 MB memory, and a 64 MB nVidia GeForce4.

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When 802.11g came out, I didn’t jump on it right away. I figured until my laptop at work and my TiVo could use g, I would stick with b. But, I always had it in mind that I would pick up the Microsoft 802.11g gear when I bought a house. No more. Microsoft just dropped the product line. Oh well, the whole reason for buying the Microsoft gear was that it was supposed to be easy to use and compatible with all the desktop games, but I suspect it doesn’t play as well with Linux as I’d want it to.
Speaking of Linux, Suse 9.1 is out. I know what I’ll be doing this weekend.

My wife, Laura, finally finished Law School yesterday. It’s two weeks to graduation, after which we jump in her truck and drive down to Dallas (she lives in St. Louis for school). So, we’ll finally get to act married. You already married people can tell me whether that’s a good thing or not.

I just got promoted at work, to “Director of e-healthSOURCE Development”. e-healthSOURCE is our marketing term for all the infrastructure and architecture that power our healthcare apps. I had been team lead already, but this gives me management responsibility.

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Lately, I’ve been spending too much time playing Texas Hold’em. I admit to being one of the millions of suckers that didn’t know a thing about this game before the Travel Channel started showing the World Poker Tournament every week. Now I’m hooked. I play on ParadisePoker.com. Come find me; my username is prionkyle. My only regret is that it takes time away from my Linux escapades. Oh well… see you in the No Limit rooms!

Welcome to the Internet. I know you’re really excited to be here. Here are a few pointers from those of us that have been around a while:

1. You know that funny-as-hell joke you just got in your email? We’ve all seen it already. No need to forward it.
2. You know that warning you just got emailed to you? The one that is passing on information that is really very important and you must forward to everyone you know! … don’t. It’s a hoax. I guarantee it. Oh, and on the one in a million chance it’s not a hoax, we’ve all seen it already. Don’t forward it.
3. There is no rich Nigerian national that will give you money, simply for returning his email. There are, however, lots of people that will steal money from you if you give them your financial information.
4. Microsoft, McDonalds, Disney, and Gap are not going to give you money for forwarding email. They have no special super-duper email tracking program. It’s a fake. See #2.
5. That “critical windows update” that just got emailed to you by Microsoft? It’s a malicious worm. Microsoft doesn’t email software out. I promise. Do not open it.
6. That other file that was sent by a non-Microsoft person (cool screen saver, great picture of someone famous, etc)? That’s also malicious. Don’t open it.
7. I mean it. Don’t open files sent to you unless you’re expecting them. If it’s from someone you know, ask them about it before you open it.
8. Go get yourself some good AntiVirus and Spyware Detection software. Yes, it costs money. Yes, it is worth every friggin’ penny.
9. Go get yourself a firewall for your cablemodem or DSL modem. Yes, it costs money. Yes, it is worth every penny

I’m basically trying to get two things across:

• People who have been on the ‘net a while have already had funny/disturbing emails sent to them 100,000 times. Don’t be 100,001.
• There are people out there that want to do your computer harm. A lot of them. Protect yourself by not executing their programs, and not making your machine available to them while you’re online. Don’t learn this the hard way.

Now that I’ve scared you, welcome to the Internet. Use your brain, don’t trust you don’t know personally, and you’ll be fine.