The Hetzel sisters came into town last weekend. They spent the night at my place on Friday night and then went out to enjoy life on the Strip Saturday, returning back home on Sunday. We went out for breakfast at a place called Blueberry Hill, located on Green Valley just north of Sunset. I must say that it was a pretty good breakfast for a pretty good price. It's definitely on the list of places to take people for breakfast in the future (and they do diner-style lunch, too).
My parents were also in town this week. We went out for breakfast at another restaurant, called The Omelet House, located on Boulder Highway near downtown Henderson. The omelets were tasty and gigantically huge, so I wouldn't recommend it unless you're a huge eater (or can otherwise preserve the leftovers for another meal).
Last week, Daniel suggested that we start playing some backgammon along with the other games that we play against each other, and so I've spent a lot of time this week trying to learn the basics of backgammon strategy.
My officemate is close to breaking the top 100 all-time for backgammon (yes, there's a backgammon circuit), and so he has lots of pointers and things for me to start to learn about. He loaned me a book called "Backgammon Boot Camp" which has been an interesting read. The first time I read the first chapter, I discovered I had no idea what it was trying to say, so I went online and found a basic strategy article (Link), and then tried reading it again. Now it makes sense and I'm starting to get a feel for the strategy involved.
It's really quite a fascinating game. Kevin used to play it a lot back at UCSB, and as soon as I told him I was starting to play the game, he jumped in and we've played some games online. I've actually recorded them to use as study material and as stuff to show Jason to help me learn solid strategy.
I've uploaded the video files and am putting the links here more for the convenience of being able to look them up and download them on campus than anything else. I guess if you want to watch backgammon, you could do that... but it's really not all that exciting.
March 1, #1 - 100 Megs
March 1, #2 - 75 Megs
I won my final regular season HULA match, finishing with a 3-2 record. Overall, it's hard to say much because of the wild variance in the game. If you run cold for 30 minutes, you lose, and there's very little you can do about it. But my previous HULA adventure, I was 2-3, so I guess I've improved. We're waiting for the last few matches of the regular season to be played. If our captain wins, we clinch second place and an automatic win of 30% of the prize pool to be shared by our team ($20 per person, 6 teams of 6 players = $720 prize pool). The finals will then become a freeroll between two teams for the remaining 40% of the pool (30% to each team for making the finals).
It's not really about the money; instead, it's about the chance to learn to play a different type of game than we normally do. But the money is a nice side benefit of winning.
And on the topic of poker, last month was not good for my poker bankroll. I ended up the month down significantly from where I started. I lost about 30% of my bankroll, which is unfortunate. I'm not quite in a place where I need to stop for a while, but I am going to shift my poker playing to online for a while to get more experience and get myself back in the poker mindset. I've got spring break coming up in a couple weeks, and would definitely like to get out to the strip to play. But if I continue to run poorly, I might have to stop for a while and build up some more money online before heading back out to the strip.
I have decided to dedicate the free money that the government intends to send me towards my poker playing. It's money that I wasn't planning on needing, and there's not a whole lot I would be able to do with it. Sure, I can put it into savings, but I'm well on my way in that area and this influx of $600 doesn't really do a lot for me.
I also did my taxes this last week. I actually have two different computer programs to help me do it: TurboTax and CompleteTax. Using the CompleteTax program, I get a refund that's several hundred dollars larger than through TurboTax. So I'll file with that one. I owe California a little bit of money, but it's not much. The state of Nevada has no personal state income tax, which is nice.
