Stratovarius coming to EDMONTON????

Wow. So anyone else who'll be in Edmonton on October 2nd needs to pay attention. Stratovarius is coming to town! For those who don't know, Stratovarius is one of Europe's biggest names in the melodic metal genre - they have something like 11 CDs currently out with a 12th one being released in the near future. The band is apparently deciding to finally try a North American tour - and they are hitting *several* Canadian towns. This is a band that is used to playing huge rock concerts with thousands of people cheering for them on the big stage. So to catch these guys in a city where a lot of people have never even heard of them is pretty crazy. Especially in the small Starlite Room venue!

If you haven't heard of Stratovarius, but like some heavy metal music without the screaming, check them out. If you're interested, you should check out the show - its only $25 a ticket, and there's no telling whether they will be back or not!

Heraldk

Long time no write

Ack - it happened again. I do mean to keep this blog up to date - but its been so crazy this month that I haven't been adding posts. Sorry for my *ahem* faithful readers (umm ... if you exist). What have I been up to? Diane and I made a trip to Vancouver a couple weeks ago for my friend Ryan's wedding. That was pretty fun - I had never done the drive there on my own before. We stopped in Kamloops on the way there to visit Diane's Aunt, Uncle, and Grandmother. They are some really nice people! We camped at Lac La Jeune campground, which was a really nice place to stay - I'd definitely go back.

As a sidenote, the bc provincial campgrounds have an awesome online registration system - you can book your site as soon as a couple days in advance through http://www.discovercamping.ca. They charge a fee to book the site, but the nice thing is you can simply pay in advance, and you don't have to worry about having cash on site to pay for your campsite. Plus, you don't have to worry when you'll get there that all the sites will be full because you'll already have a site booked!

We stopped at Rolley Lake the night before the wedding - a little campground about an hour out of Vancouver. Then on the day of the wedding we drove in, checked into our hotel room and changed so we were all fancy for the wedding. It was a small affair, but nice - and soon Ryan and Jazz were off to their bed and breakfast off the coast. Fancy!

We stopped at Lac La Jeune again on the way back. Its a really long drive from Edmonton to Vancouver so we felt it would be better to do the trip in a couple shorter legs. Probably a good idea!

What else has happened? My family went down to join the Getz family reunion. For those interested, that's my Grandmother's side of the family. I didn't know that many people there, but it was good to meet some of the people who I'm related to. Diane actually came down for the trip, and it was kinda cool to introduce her as being attached to me ;-).

Yesterday, Mike moved all his stuff into the condo. Its going to take some adjusting to get used to someone else being in the place - but that's not a bad thing. Being by myself was kinda nice, but its also nice to have someone else to talk to - I can imagine it would get kinda lonely after awhile by myself. Plus, with all the furniture and stuff Mike brought with him, the place feels a lot homier (is that a word?) than it did.

So that's exciting - life is just trucking along.

Until next time, Take care!

Heraldk

Shakespeare in the Park

Tuesday night was a busy night for me. After work, I met up with Curtis and we bought supper which we carried down to Hawrelak Park where we were going to see Love's Labour's Lost. Its part of the Rivercity Shakespeare "Shakespeare in the Park" festival that they put on every year in our fair city. We ate supper and then played frisbee for 45 mintues or so. Then we got in line because it was pay-what-you-will night and lots of people come out for that since it is cheaper than the normal nights.

The show itself was really well done. The script is not word for word from Shakespeare - they tend to put some more modern stuff in there to help people understand it better. The weather was crazy though. About half an hour before the show started, it started rain on us. The organizers took pity on us and let us in under the tent earlier than they normally do, and we grabbed seats. A couple minutes later it started to POUR! I had to go back to the entrance to go meet Diane and give her the ticket I bought for her - luckily Curtis' fiance brought an umbrella and I was able to steal it to go meet my sweetheart :)

The weather brought some interesting sound effects. There was a couple of particularly well timed bits of thunder when one of the characters was talking about power and what he was going to do next. The whole audience laughed a lot during that. The play was really well done, and since most of the audience was under the big Hawrelak tent, we stayed dry to enjoy the show. Good times!

The next couple weeks look nice and busy. On Saturday, PSO is holding a freeroll for reaching 10,000 members in their forum. The first place prize is a trip to Atlantic city and a $10,000 buyin to one of the biggest tournaments of the year next to the WSOP. Isn't that crazy? Wish me luck! I wouldn't mind going to Atlantic city for a big poker tournament!

Next week, Diane and I leave for Vancouver to go see Ryan and Jazz get married. We're making it our summer holiday ... a chance to spend a few days together on the road, go visit some of her family in Kamloops and otherwise enjoy the mountains for a few days! I'm so excited!

Heraldk

Busy Weekend!

Well the chaos of the last few days has finally subsided a bit as the busiest weekend of the summer has now been finished. At least, I hope it was the busiest weekend of the summer! Thursday night was Jon and Leanne's wedding rehearsal, and since I was in the wedding party, I had to be there. It went smoothly and we then all went over to Leanne's parent's place for a BBQ. Mmmm ... steak! On

Friday, I packed most of the unpacked items into boxes and then was picked up at the university by Paul and we met up with the rest of the groomsmen at Jon's new house. That evening we had some pizza, went to the Canada Day Barenaked Ladies concert at commonwealth stadium, and then returned back to Jon's for more pizza and beer. It was a fitting day for Jon's last day being single.

Saturday was the big day. The groomsmen were all sleeping over at Jon's so we got up, washed up and got dressed in our fancy tuxes. Jon got us all these fancy pocket watches, which were pretty sweet! The wedding day is all a blur for me now as the day was packed with busy times. First the ceremony, then the pictures, then the reception, and finally the dance. Crazy busy were we! The dance was the most fun for me - Diane and I haven't been to a dance in a very long time and were excited to get out on the floor. Unfortunately, the DJ didn't really know what a waltz was, and I think he only played one all evening. And we missed it. So we didn't get our best/favourite dance in :( I suppose I should say more about the happy couple. The entire day went really well - no problems to speak of, and both of them seemed very happy with the day. The reception food was all finger food - which was kind of cool ... and then they had an ice cream sundae bar for dessert (for those who know Leanne, this is totally appropriate!).

Sunday was the gift opening, which Diane and I went to. It was pretty neat to see what people decided to get from the registries. One of the most innovative gifts was an ice cream maker with a bathroom scale! After the gift opening, Katherine, Madeleine, Diane and I all went out for dinner (Madeleine is one of our friends from high school). It was a lovely dinner at Japanese Village (its been tradition every time Madeleine comes to town).

Monday I officially took posession of my new condo. The guy I bought it from was super duper awesome and stayed around after I got the keys to make sure everything was going to be straightened out. They even left me a bottle of wine! I was so amazed by the effort he put in to making me feel at home. Its good to know there's people like him around! In the afternoon, Madeleine along with a couple of high school buddies I hadn't seen in awhile, came to see the new place. Hoorah! In the evening, my parent's neighbours helped me pick up my grandparent's futon that they were giving me. We brought it into the place that night and we returned home so I could finish packing up the last of the stuff.

Tuesday was a long day. It was *really* *really* warm and that was hard to deal with as we moved my huge amount of stuff to the new condo. Luckily, there was lots of help so it didn't take too long. After moving everything in, I got everyone some pizza and we relaxed - played a game of poker and then played some pictionary and Jenga. T'was fun!

Yesterday I stayed at the condo to wait for the telus and cable guys to come hook up my internet and phone. I was glad that they made it - I really wanted to have those there so I could have those conveniences.

And now its today, and I'm back at the university finally to do work! Hooray! :)

Heraldk

Fort Edmonton Park and a Surprise for my Sweetheart

After dropping Diane off late after the games party on Saturday (which was excellent), I headed home and got a little bit of sleep before a big day on Sunday! It was Diane's surprise birthday/graduation party and it was my job to try and distract her while the appropriate arrangements were made in the park. Also, one of my friends from high school who is now living in Montreal is back to visit for a couple of weeks. So we plotted and planned and decided to take Diane to Fort Ed to spend some time at the Aboriginal days event they were holding there.

It was pretty fun - I haven't been to fort ed as a tourist for quite awhile, so it was cool to go and wander around looking at all the old things. We had a couple of questions answered like why there were polar bear skins on some of the beds ... and it turns out that Edmonton was a major hub for the entire northwest fur trading - so while polar bear skins weren't common, they did come through on occasion. Neat!

We made some bannock at one booth, which is something I haven't done a couple years - mmm ... bannock :) And pretty soon it was time to take Diane back "home for dinner". We drove into the park and I was surprised just how many people her mom was able to get out to celebrate the occasion. It was pretty cool!

I got introduced to a whole bunch of people, and I must say that while I really do have trouble remembering people's names and faces, I do remember being very proud to be introduced as Diane's "new guy". =D. One lady even said she "saw sparks" ... oooh sparks!

So the party was a rousing success, with lots of people coming and going. We started a game of ultimate frisbee later in the evening and that was really fun. Afterwards, a few of us went to red robin to have a snack and hang out a little longer. Overall it was a very cool event. I think (hope) that Diane had fun :)

Heraldk

Condo Papers go to Land Titles

Well, the lawyer called on Wednesday morning asking me and my dad to come in and sign some paperwork for the transfering of the land title to my name. He also needed the money for the downpayment in the form of a bank draft. This set off a quick flurry of activity to get the funds in place so that we could order the bank draft as soon as possible. The trouble was that if we didn't get the bank draft in to him as soon as we could then there was the possibility that the papers wouldn't get through land titles in time meaning the money from the bank wouldn't come in time and thus meaning I would have to pay rent to the owners of the condo at a rate of $24 a day. Ewwww. That stuff is all settled now, and now I'm just packing boxes in preparation of the big move! I'm really getting excited now :)

Heraldk

Double Date

Well its been a long time coming, but finally Diane and I managed to steal JR and Shelly away for a double date. We've been trying (though not very hard, I must admit) to get everyone together to do it for over a year, and finally we managed to find a day and actually do it. We went to Sam Wok for dinner which is a really good chinese restaurant. Not only is the food really good, but it doesn't cost all that much either - a good combination! After that we ventured over to say hi to Leah and get some ice cream at the Marble Slab. This ice cream place is nuts - they make their ice cream fresh in store, and then roll it out on a marble slab mixing in one type of fruit or candy into it. Then they plop it into a waffle cone or a bowl for you and you get some of the best tasting ice cream I think I've ever had.

Mmmmm... ice cream. I think I'm going to have to go back there. Which could be dangerous. Or perhaps Dangeresque.

After ice cream, we went to JR's place where we watched indiana jones. All in all, a nice relaxing evening ... and really, who can complain with that?

Heraldk

Condo Update

So I called my real estate agent yesterday and I finally know my posession date for my new condo! July 4th is the magical day that I take posession and I have an elevator slot booked for moving in between 1 and 5pm on July 5th. Hooray! Now I've got to make phone calls to all the utility companies so I can get power, cable and telephone hooked up. How exciting!

Heraldk

Whose Line in Edmonton!

For awhile, the only TV show I watched was the improv show "Whose line is it anyway?" that generally promised a great deal of amusement put into a half hour TV show. So when my friend Kepi told me he had an extra ticket to cast of whose line coming to Edmonton, I jumped at the opportunity. Its really cool to see these guys live after seeing so many episodes of whose line on TV. The entire cast was there except for Wayne Brady and Drew Carey. The evening was fast paced and its really difficult to remember any of the specific jokes that were the funniest. Perhaps the most amazing point in the evening was the last game before the encore where they did the "greatest hits" game. The songs were a lot longer than the ones on the show in part because there were three singers this time around. The amazing thing was that the songs they sang could probably have been recorded and passed off as the real thing. They certainly are good at making stuff up on the spot!

So it was a very lovely evening and I quite enjoyed it. I haven't laughed for two hours for awhile now so that was nice :)

Heraldk

Priority Golf Tournament

Saturday was Priority Printing's 9th annual texas scramble golf tournament (Priority is the company my dad works for). Since my mom was not able to play (taking my sister to harp gigs), I took her spot in the tournament. For those unfamiliar with the format, texas scramble tournaments are run in a style that is meant to make the game fun and exciting even for players who do not play regularly. Each player tees off like normal, but then the team decides to pick one of the balls as the one they like the best and everyone moves their ball that way and hits from there. A slight strategic twist happens when the tournament requires that each team takes three initial drives from each player. The format allows players who are not skilled at golf or who are inconsistent like me to have a competitive chance to win. Plus, its a lot more fun to be able to make par on a hole or even the occasional birdie because a player on your term makes a fortunate shot or two :)

Our team consisted of my dad and I along with two others that I had just met that day - Guy and Joane. My dad and I aren't all the great, but Guy is a really good golfer which would definitely work to our advantage. The weather was looking like it might rain on us, but we started up anyways and had a lot of fun. There really was only one amazingly good shot I made ... on one of the front nine holes, I made a full 9-iron stroke that not only landed on the green, but it was less than 6 inches from the hole. Amazing! We birdied that hole! Other than that, I was pretty rusty (since the last time I had golfed was last year sometime) so I struggled with my drives all day and was lucky to get my 3rd good drive on the 18th hole.

We finished with even par as our score which we were really happy with. Not only that, it was good enough to win the tournament! That was pretty cool. As a prize, I got a book on Wayne Gretzky that was signed by Al Hamilton (a former Edmonton Oiler who's number 3 was retired in the last couple years).

It was a pretty cool day that's for sure!

Heraldk

Star Wars Episode III

Last night I was able to go see the new star wars movie as part of Nolan's birthday gathering. The critics generally agreed that this movie restored some of the former glory to the star wars franchise. Episode one was terrible, and episode two was better but still not as good as the classics. Now that I have seen the movie I'm not too sure how much I enjoyed it. My overall impression though was that the movie very smoothly made the transition from the end of episode two to the start of episode four. My problem is that this transition was almost too smooth. The movie hits all the points along the way, but there are no surprises along the way. I got the feeling that many of the events in the movie happened "because they had to" rather than for the value of that particular scene.

So while the movie was a nice close to the series, I was overal kind of unimpressed with the movie. Perhaps the problem is that we all know what has to happen to get us to the proper place for episode four... but still, I felt that the movie was missing some excitement that could've been there.

Anyways, that's what I thought.

Heraldk

Collective Soul

The night was Saturday, May 21st. The occasion? To see a band that I have grown to love - Collective Soul. They played at Red's for their second concert in Edmonton in less than 6 months. I missed their first arrival here in December and was kind of annoyed because I had really wanted to see them, so I was really glad when they announced another date in May! The group I went with included Mike, Nolan, and my girlfriend Diane. We had supper at the Old Spaghetti Factory beforehand and then wandered down to Red's where we proceeded to wait for the show. The doors opened at 7:00, but oddly enough the show didn't start until 9:30. So we wandered around for awhile. Mike got some game tokens to play in the arcade with. We played some air hockey, foosball, and table hockey. T'was good fun.

When it got closer to show time, we went to try and find a spot to stand an watch the show. We got lucky and found a spot that we got an excellent view of the band at. The house was packed - the concert had been sold out for a couple of weeks. As usual, the show started late, but finally the opening band The Waking Eyes took the stage and I was pleasantly surprised by how good they were. Aside from their known garage-rock style, they brought out a few surprises including a piece where they ditched their conventional guitars and the bassist picked up a stand up bass, the lead guitar sat down at a keyboard and the singer/rhythm guitar took up a trumpet! They proceeded to play a jazzy sounded track with a quite catchy bass-line. Very cool!

Finally though, Collective Soul took the stage. Its been awhile since I was last at a rock concert, but it was probably the most intimate rock show I've been at. All my other concert experiences were at the Shaw conference center or Rexall place - both of which are very large venues. Red's is quite a bit smaller than either of those and as a result created a very nice atmosphere for being up close to the band.

The thing with Collective Soul is that they have a *huge* number of hit songs, and for them to just play all of these songs would take them quite a long time. They played all these songs plus a couple of songs off their new album. It was pretty incredible - hearing the hits like Precious Declaration, Why pt2, Gel, Where the river flows, Heavy, and Shine. The years in the business of touring has obviously made them very good at what they do. The show was very very well put together with a proper buildup to a rocking and loud conclusion to the concert. The encore was three songs long finishing with the song Shine - where everyone in the audience was singing "Oh oh oh oh - heaven let your light shine down". I always like it when bands give the audience a chance to sing :)

All in all, it was an amazing evening. There are many unpleasant aspects to the concert experience ... but the part that matters was amazing. For the others, here's hoping that the no-smoking bylaw gets passed this year like planned!

Heraldk

Research

In the fall last year I started my master's degree at the University of Alberta. This program means I spend a full two terms of masters level courses and then I get to work on a research project in preparation of writing a thesis. My first semester of courses saw me take CMPUT 603 (Teaching and Research methods), CMPUT 642 (Network Protocol Design), and CMPUT 657 (Heuristic Search). It was a pretty cool semester - particularly 657 where the course had us write a program to play lose-checkers. A variant of checkers where each player tries to make the opponent win. We also wrote a program to solve a solitaire game of cards. The course took over my life for that semester - but it was really rewarding. I learned a lot :) Networks was not as exciting, but it did teach me that I didn't want to do networks research (a valuable lesson - its hard to shave off areas of potential interest when trying to pick out a research topic). 603 was not a fun course, but it was required so I made it through it.

The second semester is the one that just finishe a couple weeks ago. I only had two courses - CMPUT 672 (Graph Theory) and CMPUT 681 (Parallel and Distributed Systems). 672 was difficult (as any computer science theory course tends to be). 681 was a really good course where we spent a lot of it reading research papers of the prof's selection and then discussing them in class. Our project was to try and solve hex positions in parallel. While we got something working with decent speedup on a small number of processors, there's a lot more work to be done to make it work well. For those who don't know, hex is a 2 player game that I've done some previous research on. Its a very interesting game, and you can read about it at Jack's hex page.

So now I'm finished my courses requirement for my master's degree and I've started working on my research project. Get ready for a big surprise here ... I picked the poker project! The UofA has had a strong poker group, which has given rise to several impressive outcomes towards the goal of creating a poker bot capable of beating world champion caliber poker players. The AI that they've worked on are now integrated into the commercial product Poker-Academy.

My role in the project is to work on expanding some of the ideas that the group has come up with for 2 player poker and apply them to the multiplayer case. It should be very interesting - particularly since the ideas that they came up with for heads up play are much stronger than previously known. So if these ideas are adaptable, then there is potential to have an extremely strong multiplayer bot. That's what I'm working for.

Heraldk

Poker-esque

Like the rest of the world, I've been sucked in. The game of poker is taking the world by storm and there is an amazing array of people who have become interested this intriguing game of strategy and gambling. Why is it so interesting to me? I have to admit that I find gambling fun. The problem is that I hate losing - and any money gambled at a casino is not money you can expect to have very long. Poker represents to me a chance to gamble with money, but also to have the potential to win money in the long run.

I started playing poker for money in November when I heard about the poker promotions offered at Poker Source Online. For those unfamiliar with the site, its an affiliate site with many online poker rooms that offers free gifts for signing up with them. They have the best customer support I have ever dealt with and bend over backwards to try and make sure that you get the gifts you are promised (as long as you follow the instructions). To date, I have received several hundred dollars worth of free stuff from them. If you want to play online poker, there is no reason to not sign up through these guys! I will post later about the PSO promotions and the details on what they offer later so stay tuned if you are interested.

Anyways, I started playing for real money due to this online promotion through PSO and since then I have never looked back. Most players who start making money at poker go through an early learning transition phase where they lose some money before learning the mistakes they made. My transition phase was not very long - I lost about $30 in the first PSO promotion I did, and then broke even on the second PSO promotion. From there, I started making money playing poker online! To date, I'm up roughly $1300 US since November of 2004. Not too shabby for someone who just started playing poker at these low limits!

That monetary figure does not include an amazing run that I had in January. PSO sponsered me and several other people here in Edmonton for the Canadian Poker Tour. I had only been playing poker for money for a couple months at that point, but due to a good run of cards, some good coaching from a local expert, a little skill (I hope), and a lot of luck, I made the finals and finished in 6th place for a prize of $3490 canadian. It was an incredible rush, and I really want to be able to do it again - but unfortunately, even though PSO sponsered me in the followup even in Calgary, I was unable to repeat my performance. Maybe I'll get another chance at it later!

So poker has been awesome for me so far. I'm really quite enjoying myself and the best part is that I can gamble with my money but win money in the long run - which beats blackjack or roulette anyday!

Heraldk

Condo!

I'm excited. I've been wanting to move away from home for awhile. Its not that my family is terribly constricting or anything, but I want to get out and experience life on my own now. About a month or two ago, I purchased a condo! Its a brand new unit that is being rebuilt after it burned down last year in one of several really big fires. Thankfully, the new building is being built to today's stricter building codes. Anyways, my real estate agent called me the other day and said that the construction is on schedule for its end of may completion! So I get to move in to my new place in only a few short weeks. Woohoo!

The condo is pretty impressive. It is literally right next door to Clareview station which connects me to downtown and the university through a very convenient train connection. The neighbouring amenities include a superstore, a wal-mart, a blockbuster video, an east side mario's, and many other stores and restaurants. Inside, the condo is a 1000+ square feet layout with 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. It comes with all the appliances including insuite laundry (which was a real selling point). I can't wait until the move-in date now! :)

Heraldk

My New Blog

Hello and welcome to my new blog! I have had several blogs in the past, but all of them have been on my own server, and when something went wrong with the server I never really cared enough to save my previous blog entries. Now, I'm kind of annoyed that I lost all those entries, so that's the reason I've decided to start a blog that is hosted at blogger ... so now I have no excuse to delete it! :)

This blog will hopefully develop into a regularly updated, interesting read for those who share similar interests to me. I tend to peruse the internet for interesting stuff all the time, and the links that I think are shareable will be posted here. As well, I've gotten into playing poker on the internet, so I will likely share some stories or some poker knowledge I have learned as well!

So I hope you enjoy the posts here - feel free to leave me comments!

Heraldk