Christmas and such

It's been nearly 3 weeks since I've posted anything, and that's mostly been because there's been very little going on lately. Christmas was of course this past week and it was a fun one, with time spent with family for most of it.

Christmas Eve I went to my aunt & uncle's place as usual, this time with my cousin Graham rather than my mother (who didn't go at all). Turnout was smaller than past years, but there were a few people on vacation (like my cousins Ryan and Amy), or ill. It was fun as usual with a great dinner.

Graham and I left there about 9, so I was home by 9:30. For the rest of the night, until about 4:00 a.m. I played cards (canasta and crib) with the people upstairs as well as my step-brother Dallas (who's recently bought a house about 2 blocks from here). I drank too much (gin & OJ, yum) and played too late into the night, but it was fun despite getting beaten more than winning.

Christmas Day was spent at Dad's place (at least, after I'd mostly recovered from the excess of alcohol the night before) where it was just Dad, Willi and Janita since Janita's boyfriend was in Calgary with his family and Lindsay & Treleana didn't come to town for Christmas. It was a fairly sedate day, with a good chunk of it spent watching football. Dinner was wonderful as always and of course I ate too much. For gifts I got a pair of shoes (which were very much needed), some movie passes and a Chapters/Indigo gift card. I broke in the shoes last night and my feet were hurting a bit, but that's what new shoes do. They'll be fully broken in soon enough, then they'll feel alright.

I've of course been doing the movie thing a lot lately, watching as many as 5 flicks a day some days. I go through so many one blurs into the next and I can barely remember what I've watched. Yesterday, however, was a little different in that I went to the theatre to catch a couple flicks. My friend Jean-Paul was in town from Calgary so he and I went to see The Departed (which was wonderful and very Scorcese-like) at the cheap theatre before meeting up with a couple other friends for dinner then going to see Casino Royale after dinner. Casino Royale was somewhat disappointing (it was unnecessarily long and the writing really left a lot to be desired) but The Departed was fantastically acted and directed and held together well, though it could have shaved about 15-20 minutes off without losing any plot points (that is to say, it had some pacing issues).

That's about where things are at now. New Year's is still up in the air... I was invited to Dad's place but I opted to not go, rather intending to spend the night with a few friends or something. It looks like the front-runner is a shindig happening at Dave's place, meaning we'll hunker down with some craps or poker and video games and the like... or, it'll be drinking our faces off. Either or. Nothing's been finalized yet, but I imagine something will get sorted soon.

And to leave off with a joke, here are some rejected concepts for Wii games:

No Poker

It seems that due to unforeseen circumstances, I'll not be going to the poker game tonight. That sucks as I was sort of looking forward to it, but on the other hand it means my buy-in is safe for now.

Yesterday I popped over to Dave's for a while to play some craps. For the first time, those of us there decided to put a few bucks on the game. We didn't have a lot of people playing (4 the first round, 3 the second), but nonetheless I succeeded in losing my money. I only *just* missed out on getting paid the first time around (I lost by a buck), and the second time around I had a good chance to cash if Paul had rolled the point.

Dough aside, it was still fun. However, the huge-ass cigar I had yesterday when we were on break is still bothering me today... and I didn't even finish the darn thing. Nothing some ibuprofen and vigorous tooth-brushing can't fix.

Out and about

So today was the grand opening of the newest casino in the Edmonton area, the River Cree Resort at Enoch. I took a spin over there with my friend Rob and we took a look around and marveled at the place. It's actually quite nice, and has a good variety and amount of gaming there. Like every casino I've been to (save one in Vancouver), it was dominated by slot machines. It's no secret that casinos make the most money from slot machines (despite some of them offering guaranteed payouts in the high 90% range), so that's to be expected.

I didn't look closely enough to see what more esoteric games were available, but there were no shortage of Blackjack or Baccarat tables. I saw one Three Card Poker table and two Craps tables as well, along with a handful or Roulette tables, but I didn't notice things like Pai Gow or Caribbean Stud there. I'd like to think those were represented, but I just didn't see them if they were.

The place has 3 or 4 restaurants, a couple bars, and two ice rinks. I didn't bother to sample the fare since we weren't there for an extended period of time, but it's good to know there are choices nearby (especially considering the place is in the middle of nowhere relative to other commercial operations; there are no nearby fast food places for instance). I can't say I cared for the prices, at least the ones I saw on the menu for the poker room, but nothing was really out of line compared to most sit-down establishments.

As far as poker goes, it was nice to see they had the largest poker room in the area (that I've noticed; I've not yet been to the Yellowhead casino to know if it's any larger), and they also had a nice mix of games going. While they had options such as 1/2 No Limit, 4/8 Half & Half and an uber-cool 6/12 Dealer's Choice, I went to my regular haunt, the 3/6 straight hold'em table. I didn't fare overly well, winning about 4 or 5 pots for the time I was there, but after buying in with $100 and playing for well over 4 hours, I finally left the table with $98, down only $2. It of course would have been nicer to leave when I was up (which I was a couple times, but never more than $35 or so), but it's not often you can spend over 4 hours doing any sort of recreational activity and depart with $2 less than when you began.

Still, there were some definite and serious flaws with the poker room. I'll grant that it's early days yet, being the place had been open for less than 6 hours when I sat at the table, but some of the things wrong were frankly inexcusable even for a new establishment.

Firstly, there was a lack of consistency when it came to new players sitting at the table and whether or not they should post. The rule in play, according to the houseman, is that anyone sitting down needs to post the equivalent of the big blind unless (a) they've come from another table, (b) are sitting in the seat that would otherwise be getting the big blind, or (c) they're sitting under the gun for the next deal. Some people who came to the table wound up posting, and others did not when they should have per the rules. Something as basic as that needs to be enforced and done so consistently.

Next, there was an issue regarding the kill button. There was one pot where the player had won, and it was their second pot in a row. The procedure at most places I've played has been the second pot needs to be $30 or greater (including the rake); the dealer announced kill after shipping the pot to the winner, and I questioned whether or not that was the correct course of action given what I'd seen elsewhere. After conferring with the houseman, the rule there is that as long as the second pot won has a flop, then the kill is live.

Thirdly, the dealers at my table were mostly far too inexperienced and in my eyes received insufficient training. The one male dealer was fine and knew what was going on and how to proceed at all times, but the two female dealers had less of a clue. I'm not gender-bashing here, but when a dealer doesn't know that two cards need to be dealt face-down for Texas Hold'em there's a problem. Other issues were at play as far as procedures, realizing which was the winning hand, and so on as well.

The largest complaint I had was that there were no free beverages in the poker room. It's standard fare (and frankly expected) that you can get up and grab some free coffee or soda in the poker room, but no such things were available at River Cree. There was a nearby bar charging $1.50 for a soda (and I'm not sure how much for a coffee), but that's just not good enough.

Still, it was an enjoyable afternoon out, and while it would have been nice to see Rob fare as well as I did, if not better, I was content with my play and had fun. However, since all I'll play at a casino is poker (although I keep meaning to hit the craps table when I go), I think I'd prefer to stick to Palace Casino at West Edmonton Mall. As I write this, the staff at Palace are on strike (and have been for a while), so I won't go there while the strike action is going on (I'm not overly pro-union, but I've mostly worked union jobs in my life and I respect the rights of the workers). However, when things are settled and back to normal I'd certainly consider going there before I'd consider returning to River Cree.

Other transpirings

My father, his wife, and my sister, are finally moving. It took what seemed like forever, but their new house is nearly ready. I was over there on Sunday helping to shift some boxes and smaller things that the movers wouldn't be taking. My legs and back are not thanking me for it, but it was a fun day.

My sister's iPod is dying, a little more so every time I ask her about it, so I'd mentioned to her that Futureshop was having a sale Sunday night featuring, among other things, 10% off iPods -- which was reasonably remarkable, as it seems iPods never go on sale. Couple that with there no longer being an educational discount for iPods (which would have been a valid option for Janita as she's at the U of Eh), and I thought it'd be a good time for her to pick up a replacement since her unit is unfortunately out of warranty. Alas, she'd spent the early part of the afternoon at IKEA buying various items and she maxed out her credit card, so an iPod was not in the works for her. Ultimately that might be okay, since the 6th generation, so-called "true video" iPods are quite likely to surface either at MacWorld Expo San Francisco or shortly thereafter. If her iPod lasts another few months then she'd probably be better off with the latest and greatest as a replacement.

That being said, I took the plunge and ordered another iPod for myself. My 4th generation 40GB model is going strong, but even as small as iPods are they can sometimes be cumbersome and seem huge. I've been taking my iPod to poker games and such for a long time now, and I figured that with the Futureshop sale and the sheer size (or lack thereof), it was time to grab an iPod Shuffle. The new version comes out in a week or two, so I preordered one from Futureshop. The upside is it was 10% off; the downside is that you can't elect to pick up preordered items in-store, so I had to spend $2 to have it shipped. Throw the GST in there as well and I've saved all of a buck (versus MSRP) on the unit. Still, with it being so tiny, and with the funky Autofill feature of iTunes, the Shuffle should be a great companion for me when I play poker (be it at the casino or home games), craps at Dave's, whatever. I'll post a mini-review of it when it arrives. I hope I can live with the 1GB capacity, which is very tiny given I'm used to far more space (both now and when I had my original first generation 5GB iPod). I'm thinking that since it's going to be for specialized uses it'll be okay; I doubt I'll need even the 240 (or so) song capacity most times.

Way past bedtime

It's after 4am as I begin to write this, but I would like to get something going with this thing, and the only way to do that is to actually sit down and write something. So, with nothing better to talk about, I'll run down my day. It was actually one of those few days where I did something other than laze around and watch movies or the like.

After I got up and ate, I watched last night's Battlestar Galactica. I was highly disappointed at how the second season ended, moreso after watching it again on DVD, but I'm starting to like the New Caprica thread that was introduced (now that it's getting fleshed out a little bit). I'm on the edge of my seat to see what happens next, although there's a good chance I can guess what's going to happen (at least in part), if for no other reason than there are only so many ways this plot line can play out.

After that, I grabbed the iPod and the MacBook Pro (after spending 3-4 hours reinstalling Windows XP, updates, Office, etc. last night) and trundled off to Dave's place. I didn't want to bring the laptop, but I was meeting Paul there and we had sort of talked about maybe playing some Rise of Legends over there. I guess Dave recently got a new video card (GeForce 6600), which was a good thing as his machine ran RoL like crap the last time I was over there with Paul and our respective MacBooks. Alas, although I didn't see RoL in action, Dave said the new video card wasn't much better than what he had before (whatever that was... I don't remember what the old card was, and I didn't ask). As it turned out, I should have listened to myself and left the MacBook at home as we never did get around to playing any RoL. We did, however, play craps for a while. Rob H. was also there, and with Dave playing croupier the three of us proceeded to battle it out for play dough at Dave's craps table. Initially all of us had a good early run, myself more than doubling the initial stake (which is something that rarely happens for me... I tend to play conservatively and never fare overly well), Paul making a bit, and Rob cleaning up on Paul's 6 successive 7's coming out, laying big money on Big Red and getting paid big time. Starting with a $100 (play money) stake apiece, Rob quickly ran his stack up to over $2500 before giving most of that back on some unfortunate rolls (made by all of us). By the time we stopped playing, I had broken even, Paul was up about $500, and Rob was up a little over $700. I took over the dealer role for a bit so Dave could play, but he blew his wad in a short amount of time, making him the loser overall I guess.

So, after that, we settled in to some GameCube action. Since buying a 360 half a year ago, I've barely touched my Cube, so it was nice to revisit some games. We started with Super Smash Bros. Melee, a game I never really cared for, but after some embarassing deaths I eventually won a few matches in a row to salvage something out of the experience. The biggest thing to know about that is to not play Dr. Mario, as he royally sucks. So, after the Melee action, a few matches of Mario Power Tennis came about, with Paul and I versus Dave and Rob. Save a few games, Paul and I cleaned up, ultimately not losing a single set. After that, Rob left for a date, and Paul and his girlfriend Soonil (who came by later) headed out, so Dave and I broke out the Donkey Konga and bongoed it up for a good couple of hours. Thanks to me, he's now finished off the gold status for Duet Chimp mode. We tried to make some similar headway for Gorilla, but failed miserably. I don't think we got a single Gorilla song done on gold. Oh well. It'd been a while since I'd played the game, and I still have my touch.

After all that, I headed home (catching some good luck with timing and buses), grabbed some supper, and settled in to some more TV. I had a back episode of the Professional Poker Tour to watch, so I watched it; as well, Warren (a friend from way back when) and his buddy released their latest Doctor Who podcast, a commentary for the series 2 finale, so I gave that a listen (mainly as an excuse to rewatch the episode). I still don't overly care for the episode, but their commentary was enjoyable. I wound up going on a bit of a tirade on Warren's blog about some things they brought up, but it was all meant well.

So, after that, and after finishing off some downloads (the latest week of Corrie, yay!), I've arrived here, and now that that's happened, it's time to crash.

hasta la vista