All-in, the gentle method.

I have an “ALL IN” button. I don’t like to speak when I’m in a hand. One way to go all-in is to say “All in”. The only other commonly-recognized way to go all in is to shove all your chips across the line simultaneously. But doing that means you have to spend time gathering them up on the outside of the line then push them all across. Since I buy in for the maximum amount of chips, I often have too many chips to make that an easy thing to do, so I use this button that I bought days ago. I just flip it over –I keep it by my stack on the “CALL” side – and push it across the bet line to declare an all-in.

Well, I used it last night. I decided all-in was right, so I delicately flipped it over and flicked it across the line. You might not have even noticed I’d done it unless you were looking down. One of the people at the table rhetorically exclaimed “Wow, he’s got his own all-in button. Where can I get one of those?” He then said something about it being like a “Jedi All-in” (I had earphones in my earholes so I couldn’t hear much more.) but I got this mental picture of a Jedi going all in…sitting back, arms crossed and the chips just start moving by themselves towards the center of the table. It made me laugh inside my poker head. Here’s the button – both sides. End of story.

Wally World

What exactly does Wal-mart mean by this?

The Move: The Sequel

Moved to a new apartment on Halloween. It's about the same size, but $200 cheaper per month and 30% closer to work. I think it was a good move.

In Vegas

So I made the move to Las Vegas back in April 2011. The drive took me three days with a UHaul trailer in tow. If I had known it would be this easy, I might have kept a few more of the items I sold off on eBay and Craigslist. Nah...I don't want more stuff. I'm tired of owning stuff.

Once I arrived, one of the things I noticed was that the games seemed a little harder than before -- it stands to reason. Fish stop playing once they realize how much it's costing them (I assume). And those left behind are the strong ones. It's just plain Darwinism. I've made some adjustments to my play lately and I'm feeling good about it, but time will tell. The sample size is too small to come to any decent conclusion.

My apartment lease is up at the end of October. I need to move closer to the strip. I'm seven miles away from it now and I don't like the drive.

A Note on Being Resourceful

Here's a little something for all those helpdesk people who end up with someone in their cube/office asking for help on something that has a manual. Just print it out and point at it next time they come staggering in.

Dude, where's my stuff?

So the vast majority of my possessions have been sold or otherwise disposed of; couches, chairs, loveseats, kitchen table, coffee table, end table, TV bench, motorcycle, power-tools, firearms, hunting equipment, golf clubs, crucible furnace starter kit, air-compressor, pneumatic tools, cigar humidor, Texas Hold'em Poker table, Roomba, old-school Sony Mavica, candy vending machine, DVD player, old computers, old computer parts, 100MB switches and wireless routers of dubious functionality, desk/table, office set, high-back desk chair, TVs, dishes, plants, liquor, wines (disposed into the local sewer system after human filtration), BBQ grill, dog beds, lamps, Gorilla Ladder, lawn chairs, old shoes, old clothes that don't fit anymore anyway, fans, excess cleaning supplies, a suit, extra sheets, extra towels, et cetera, et cetera.

Here's a collage of some of it. Good times...good times.


I'm really liking the feeling of owning less crap -- or having less crap own me.

I still have the Vizsla (first column, third row) and I'm not quite settled on what to do about that.

Seasoning Iron Skillets

I've had these skillets for a while now. I believe I seasoned them once right after I bought them. They were new and didn't need it, but I was really gung-ho about becoming an iron skillet owner and wanted to try it myself. Over time, they've become, well, nasty. I still use them because nothing nasty is going to survive on a 400°F surface, unless it's an extremophile and since I've got a "No Extremophiles" sign in my kitchen, I'm safe.

Anyway, I read online about how to clean off the old seasoning and decided to give it a whirl. It involves "auto-cleaning" an oven with these things inside and it works well. I put them in the oven and started the three-and-a-half-hour auto-clean cycle at about 6PM. It didn't generate any smoke in the house, but by 7PM, I'd decided that my eyes were stinging too much and my home had become temporarily untenable. I turned on four bathroom-type fans around the house and left.

I ended up at Fry's where I bought a breakout box. I'd always wanted one, but never remembered enough to go get it. Here's what a breakout box looks like. It's for "decoding" what pins are doing what on a serial connection. In the picture, you can see some of the LEDs are lit up. Those are the ones that have some signal on them. The other end of the cable is plugged into my computer's Com1 serial port. I can't wait to use it. I do have a use for it in the near future, just not at the moment. Once that was acquired, I headed over to On the Border for some beef quesadillas.

Back to the skillet.

I got back home at 10PM and opened the oven to get a peak. I was amazed at how clean they'd become when I pulled them out, even though they were coated with what looked like a rust powder. You can see the original gray color of the iron shining through the rust powder. It's not often that I see iron in an un-oxidized state. I think that the original seasoning had bonded with the oxidation in or on the pans prior to being extracted by the auto-cleaning cycle. When the heat forced out the original seasoning molecules, each one had a rust-buddy attached to it. The lines on the big one are where I pushed the powder around with a spatula prior to taking the picture. Not much more came off of it with that scraping, so I decided I needed to scrub them under hot water.

Usually, we're told never to scour cast iron with something as abrasive as steel wool, but I'm pretty sure that only matters if the seasoning has already been applied. Since I'm about to re-season these, it shouldn't have mattered. I didn't have steel wool, so I had to settle for one of those green scour pads. A few minutes under hot water and some elbow grease and the clean iron surface shone through brighter than before. Still some rust on it, but that's edible right? We all need iron in our diets.

Once they were mostly rust free, I could start the actual seasoning process. I decided to use bacon fat. I live in the South, so I have a coffee can of bacon fat. It's how we roll. I pulled out a few chunks of the refrigerated fat from the coffee can and microwaved it. Once in a liquid state, it could be applied easily to the cooking surface of the skillets. There's no real need to season the underside, but you can if you wish. It may help to stave off rusting from moisture in the air I suppose, but I also suppose that the flame or heat on the underside from normal cooking is enough to wreck the moisture barrier too. So, I didn't bother seasoning the underside. In this photo, only the left pan has had the grease applied. I suppose it's like spraying water on white cement and it turns brown. Colors are a mystery.

So, I finish applying the grease to the other one and put them in the oven at 250°F. Another round of "oh-my-eyes-sting" ensues and then after two hours I pull them out. They've still got some grease pooled in them so I wipe that out, let them cool and all is done.

Here is the final result of all the breakout-box buying, auto-cleaning, rust-scrubbing, seasoning and eye-stinging;
Two black, shiny oh-so-clean iron skillets not to use while I continue eating Subway sandwiches and cereal. Pretty nice.