I, Shane › Shane Adams’ personal weblog

For those who don’t know, Tuesdays are POKER NIGHTS. Last night, the fellas got together over at Casa de Adams (the younger one) and we played some $10 buy-in hold ‘em, as we usually do.

8 fellas played and I felt that I should play aggressive, something I don’t normally do and it worked out well for me. I hit everything I played. I even cracked Mike’s Rockets when 2 jacks hit the board and I had J♦10♦. It was fun for me.

And then it turned ugly.

I was dealt Q♦Q♣ and raised pre-flop 3 times the big blind. The flop came out mostly crap: 6♥4♥2♠ or something like that. Coop was under the gun and bet 1200 (my original raise). I raised him 2500. The two other players folded. River came out another heart. John went all-in and I called. He’d made his flush with 8♥7♥ and chopped my stack in half.

Ouch.

After playing pretty tight for a while, I was down to where my stack was about 4 times the big blind. I had to make a move soon, so when I saw K♠J♠, I figured it was time. I raised a bunch pre-flop and got a couple people out and it rolled around to Jordan who put me all-in. I pondered it for a sec, but figured he had a middle pair or he just thought I would walk away from the hand. I called and I was somewhat relieved when all I saw was A♥8♦. I was even happier when the flop brought me a jack. The poker gods snatched my happiness right away by bringing me a king on the turn, giving me two pair, but giving Jordan a gut shot straight draw since a 10 had also come on the flop. 4 cards in the deck can save him.

Guess which one came…

Q♠

Ouch again.

Still…just made me want to play again. Until next time…

So last night, Alli and I held the 2nd Annual Olathe Community of Christ Young Adult Oscar Party. It’s a great time watching the show with a bunch of friends and competing over who wins the awesome prizes provided by Brad and June.

Alli successfully defended her title as Best Prognosticator of Awards and unsurprisingly, I came in second once again. There were several great moments, some confusing moments, and some downright surprising moments.

My favorite moments:

• Forrest Whitaker’s speech
• Scorsese finally wins Best Director (and receives it from Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, and Steven Spielberg)
• The cool dance troupe segues that formed the interpretations of the Best Picture nominees.
• Ellen’s opening monologue - totally spot-on, perfectly self-deprecating and not insulting to the nominees at all (do you hear me, Chris Rock and Whoopi Goldberg?)
• In fact, the Errol Morris opening nominees montage was really cool too.
• Ellen overall - she did a great job hosting, in my opinion. The part with her dropping off the script to Scorsese was priceless.
• Will Ferrell, Jack Black and John C. Reilly’s song - awesome.
  

Confusing:

• Jack Nicholson’s bald head
• Jaden Smith and Abigail Breslin’s presentation
• Dreamgirls getting all but shut out (2 wins in 8 nominations)
• Chris Connelly. I can’t stand this guy and I can’t figure out why they had him backstage if he was just going to pass by the stars. Pointless.

Surprises:

• Eddie Murphy loses Best Supporting Actor. Not a bigger meltdown since Russell Crowe’s for A Beautiful Mind. Guess releasing Norbit when you did wasn’t such a great idea, huh Eddie? I was very happy for Alan Arkin though.
• The Departed wins Best Picture. I had it 3rd on my big board, behind Babel and Little Miss Sunshine.

Overall, it was a decent night. I was glad to see Scorsese win, but I think that it showed that the level of films this year was just average. The Departed certainly is not Scorsese’s best film to date, but for some reason, he wins for it. That seems to happen a lot (see: Denzel Washington).

I’m hoping that the next year brings some better movies and a more competitive race. As good as Jennifer Hudson was in Dreamgirls, I doubt we’ll hear much more from her ever again.

In honor of Rainn Wilson hosting Saturday Night Live tonight, I have to post the awesomest music video ever…THE DWIGHT SCHRUTTE MUSIC VIDEO.

I’ve decided to bow to the web overlord that is Google and submit to its greatness. I’ve been a Bloglines user for a long time now. I always felt like it was the first and best option when it came to reading RSS feeds online. Turns out I was wrong. Leave to the geniuses at Google to come up with something better.

Google Reader is still a part of Google’s “Labs” project, but it is totally sweet. One of the nice things about it is that I can access it from my personalized Google front page and there is a nifty toolbar notifier for the Mac that is a lot more useful than the crappy Bloglines one. (The Google one actually previews the items for you).

I’ll probably keep my Bloglines subscription for a while, but if I can get into the habit of using Google Reader, I imagine it will be all I use.

I’ve really been lacking in the book category this year. I haven’t been particularly inspired to read anything in particular (although I scanned through The Brand Gap and I’m about 2/3 of the way through The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing.

For my first attempt this year, I wanted to read Love Monkey by Kyle Smith, the book on which the failed TV show (which I loved) was based.

I have not finished the book yet because I want to punch the main character in the face. There are characters you are supposed to dislike. And then there are characters that are supposed to be liked, but fail miserably because they are complete wanks.

Maybe I was a little too hopeful. I loved the show and thought it was a traveshamockery that it got cancelled. Tom Cavanaugh (of Ed fame) was brilliant on it and the casting was really great. After reading the book, I realized that they only took the characters and then a much better writer than Smith actually made them likable. Because the book namesakes are downright loathsome.

Not only that, but the main character doesn’t work at a cool record company, but at a tabloid (Smith works for the New York Post). You’d think it might make him that much more interesting, but it just makes him even more unlikeable.

Now I’d like to say that I’m not biased, but after I read about the crack that he laid on my boy Kevin Smith (see here near the bottom of the page), I lost a lot of respect for him. And then, after reading some of the reviews that Silent Bob came up with about Love Monkey’s original release on his site…stuff like:

“(Kyle) Smith has clearly taken lessons from a few successful writers of chick lit, but his boy version of Bridget Jones lacks the key ingredient: a sympathetic protagonist.” - Publisher’s Weekly

“In his first novel, Smith, the book and music review editor of People magazine, tries too hard to be clever (like Tom himself), piling witticism upon witticism and referencing numerous “in” people, places, and events. Consequently, the book seems facile rather than meaningful, at least to this reviewer, who is neither male nor thirtysomething nor a New Yorker. Libraries looking for lad lit to satisfy this demographic should purchase. Others can safely pass.” - Library Journal

“The monologues are nothing a smarter-than-average Maxim reader wouldn’t come up with” Kirkus Reviews

So anyway, maybe I’m a little biased because when you go after Kevin Smith, you offend me a little bit, but these reviews were more than telling. I’m not even sure if I want to finish it. It’s stalling me from getting to any other books, and now February is over and I’ve read ZERO books this year. That’s poor. Last year at this time, I’d read TEN.

So sad.

Kyle Smith, it’s all your fault.

I had the absolute best nap today. Alli and I got home from lunch after I spoke at the Leavenworth congregation this morning and we were tired. It’s been a while since we’ve taken a good nap on a Sunday.

Since we didn’t have a lot of responsibility today (me: nothing; her: choreograph a dance), we laid down at about 1:30 and slept until about 3:15. It was so restful and I woke up feeling so rejuvenated that I did something I probably wouldn’t normally on a Sunday…I worked out.

Yep. I went to Bally Total Fitness for about an hour and a half while Alli worked on the dance. I watched some poker while I worked out, listened to some Daughtry and had maybe the best workout I’ve had in the last two months. It felt really good to sweat.

Let’s see how I feel tomorrow.

OK, so I heard something that bummed me out. The current design of this site does not work in IE 7. BLECH.

So, I’m going to be doing some tweaking. Bear with me. I doubt it will be anytime soon before I jump into creating an actual theme like the one in my previous post, but we’ll see.

Did you know that the translation of Beck’s title track from his last album is “What’s up honky?” At least that’s something I heard.

So…save a couple of random posts here and there over the last couple months, I’ve been absent from this here blog. I’ve been anxious to talk about lots of things, but I’m running into a couple problems.

1. I can’t figure out where to start
2. I can’t figure out what to leave out
3. I can’t find the time

As far as #3 goes…I have time this evening. I’ve been playing around on my computer with a new design for my blog…maybe I’ll start there. Check it out and let me know what you think.

OK, so that accomplishes #1 above. After looking at it a little closer, I recognize that it has some similarity to graphicPUSH, a deisgn blog that I admire very much…it wasn’t intentional, but you’ll see the similarity a little, I think.

Once I decide to make the switch, I’ll have to learn how to create a theme in Wordpress. That will be an interesting exercise, I think.

I’m about 2 weeks away from 3 months at my new job and I’m really starting to hit my stride. The other day, my boss complimented me on something I said in a meeting. He said, “I really was impressed by your understanding of the business when you said that.” Maybe not a direct quote, but that was pretty close. Anyway, that made me feel good and like I am contributing…something I certainly didn’t always feel at my last position.

So that is good.

I love my new home office. It is so awesome to have a great space at home to work in. I don’t have any pictures uploaded yet that have it with everything in it, but this should give you some idea:

That is also good.

February has not been the best month for Alli and me health-wise. I went to the hospital last week with chest pains - fortunately it was only Costochondritis, an inflammation of the cartilage that connects the ribs and sternum. That wasn’t fun, but it did impress me how quickly I was attended to by the ER doctors when I mentioned I was having chest pains. The following day, Alli spent another few hours at the ER with her sister and then unsurprisingly, caught what her sister had. She is just now getting over it. Unfortunately, she had to miss the church retreat last weekend where her dad was the guest minister. He did a great job and I know that the congregation was very appreciative.

I’ve been speaking out in the Mission Center quite a bit these day and it is certainly taxing. I’ll be off to Leavenworth this Sunday and next month, I’ll be taking a 2-hour trek to Holton, Kansas. I’ve certainly seen a lot of Kansas since I joined the ranks of traveling speakers, but I like it. Alli is always willing to go with me too, which is great.

I have lots more to say, but for now, I’ll sign off. I know that only, like, 5 people read this…I hope I didn’t lose you.

Thanks for the talk last night. You guys are awesome and I love you.