Thesis Defended!

So I am now in the final stages now of finishing my masters degree in computer science. Today I passed my thesis defense -- which is a pretty nerve wracking event, even though I knew there wasn't a lot of reason to worry about it. It is like an interview with multiple interviewers trying to think of hard questions to stump you with. I was actually pleasantly surprised by how simple it was. The questions that were asked certainly made me think, and there were times I overthought the questions asked. But all in all, it went fairly smooth. So now that I'm done that major hurdle, all that's left is make the final revisions and get the thesis printed and bound and the final paperwork done. Is this ever exciting!

So yay for being done. Someday I will have a party to celebrate. It probably won't be until February though - this weekend is too soon to plan a party, and next weekend is the department ski trip!

Heraldk

New Monitors!

I went and picked up my new monitors this morning and got home and quickly unpacked them. They are now installed and let me just say that I am very happy with them. I love having all the desktop space, and I'm really looking forward to playing some poker with no overlapping windows!

Sweet huh?

Heraldk

Defending!

So in 48 hours, I will be defending my thesis. If all goes well, I'll have obtained my second university degree! Hoorah! My supervisor assures me he expects no trouble. Of course, I'm still getting nervous trying to think about questions I might be asked. I'm sure it will go fine - but as the day gets closer, I'm starting to feel my nerves. Hopefully things go well. Wish me luck!

Oh, and my monitors got here today, but I was at the university when they arrive so I'll have to go pick them up tomorrow morning. It figures ... I've never had a package delivered in the morning before ... and I was going to be home all afternoon to receive it!

Oh well ... I'll go pick them up tomorrow morning.

Heraldk

On Doing Good Business

It seems to me that there is a certain subset of businesses operating in today's world that just don't seem to get it. If your business treats me with respect, then I will be far more inclined to do business with you. If, on the other hand, you treat me like an idiot, then I will avoid your business like the plague. Take, for instance, the numerous credit card offerings I get in the mail. The chances are, if you have sent me 20 previous offers for credit cards, I will refuse your latest one that presents no added benefits compared to the previous bazillion other offers. So STOP SENDING THEM! I don't care that I get a low interest rate if I transfer an existing balance to another card. The reason I have good credit and can get a platinum card if I want to is because I'm smart enough not to carry a balance!

I also find that many advertisements on television and the radio seem to want to go out of their way to annoy me. I know that creating a good advertisement is a difficult and expensive proposition. But so is running a good business. Put in some effort to make the ad effective without being annoying. If ads start to annoy me, I start to actively avoid going to those establishments.

The thing I like to see businesses do to gain my respect and my money is for them to display a strong image taking the high road. If you treat your customers well, have a good product that you support very well, and don't annoy me or treat me like an idiot, then I will likely do business with you!

Examples of the wrong way to do this:

• CapitalOne credit cards (the reason I'm ranting about this to begin with)
• anyone doing telemarketing calls (particularly the pushy ones)
• companies that utilize those automated dialing systems (the ones that call you and saw "please hold for the next available service representative" ... YOU CALLED ME! Please tell me you've got enough time to deal with your valued customer)
• Annoying ads that say the same thing at the same time slot every morning. Good examples of this are the ads that are placed in between news segments on The Bear radio station. I will never buy a mattress from Sleep Country, Jeep-Dodge-Chrysler, or the handful of others that had ads that I didn't want to listen to EVERY morning when my alarm went off. (kinda defeats the purposes of advertising if I don't go buy stuff from you).

I really like how there are some really upfront companies that treat their customers with respect and do a good job doing what they do. Examples of these companies (note that I am not paid by these companies for saying this ... they are just an example of what I mean. The PSO link does give me referrals if you signup with them, but that is their standard referral program):

• Poker Source Online has gone over and above their call on many occasions. I'm not as active a member there since I've finished nearly all the promos they offer, but as long as you follow the instructions for each promo they will take care of you.
• NearlyFreeSpeech.net is my current webhost, and they do an amazing job. Unlike many web hosting services that attempt to offer packages which do not suit the needs of the person buying that package, nearlyfreespeech only charges you for what you use. Their FAQ and other documentation is incredibly refreshing to read. They tell you exactly why they feel they deserve your business and do not cut corners or fudge the truth. If you're looking for a good webhost this is certainly the way to go in my opinion.

There are a few other companies that should stand out here. I'm a fan of Apple, Nintendo, and Blizzard - companies that release great products with a great eye for detail and quality. They also tend to have top-notch support which certainly doesn't hurt!

So ... if you want to impress me and earn my hard-earned money ... keep this in mind. I'd also urge you to not support the business models I mentioned earlier. I don't believe we'll see a change away from these terrible things that annoy me so much, but its nice to dream!

Heraldk

Happy New Year

Well we've now reached 2007. For some reason, it doesn't feel any different ... then again, that's what I usually say for most milestones. Diane and I hit two of the several parties we could have attended. I was hoping to hit another, but we didn't have time. It is a shame that we couldn't spend the evening with all of our friends, but it was still fun. We ended up at a party that was held at a community hall - there was games and music and fun to be had be all.

Speaking of milestones, today marks the 3rd anniversary for Diane and I since we started officially dating. To be honest, it is surprising just how fast time has gone by. Three years is a long time, but it feels like a very short time in many ways. It has been a wonderful time and hopefully we continue to add more good years to our memories!

I hope everyone has a great 2007!

Herald

ICGA Journal Vol 29 No 3

Darse was nice enough to give me a copy of the ICGA journal that our paper appears in, and boy is it a nice issue for me to own. Not only is our DIVAT paper in this journal, the writeup for the Hex competition in Italy, as well as the writeup for the AAAI poker competition are both present in this issue. I don't think this will happen again, but my name is all over this issue somehow! Its almost enough to make me feel important. Too bad our hex program didn't take first. That would've been real nice for this.

Heraldk

Cell Phone Enabled

Ugh. I hate these things. At the same time, over the last few months I've realized just how handy having one would be. So yesterday Diane and I got ourselves cell phones on what appears to be a fairly decent offer. It's a free incoming calls shared package with free evenings and weekends. It combines quite a few free minutes all over the place making it very unlikely that we'll actually touch our 200 minutes of shared time. It should be a pretty good fit I think! If you know me and didn't get the email I sent out today with my new number, send me an email and I'll update you. Chances are I just skipped over your name accidentally when going through my address book in gmail.

Heraldk

Busy Times

Over the past couple of weeks I've been pretty busy. My thesis continues to get a facelift as Darse gives me low level feedback on it. I think my thesis will be a whole lot stronger due to his help. In other news, I should have a confirmed defense date set soon! Admittedly, the prospect is a little nerve wracking, but we'll see what happens with that!

The ultrasound I had returned with "results being normal". I'm not too sure what that means since my stomach still isn't the happiest camper in the world. Oddly enough, it appears the foods that my stomach has the worst time with is milk and cheese. I really hope I'm not lactose intolerant all of a sudden! In general, I'm finding that I can eat most foods with no trouble outside of that category, so life isn't all that unpleasant at the moment. I still very much miss milk and cheese though! My mom convinced me to call my family doctor, someone who I haven't seen in ages, and book an appointment. Surprisingly, I was slotted in on Friday. So we'll see what he has to say about the whole issue.

I saw Stranger than Fiction a few days ago, and was rather surprised at how much I enjoyed it. It is definitely a very different movie than the standard run-of-the-mill ones. Personally, I found the film quite enjoyable so I recommend you take a peek at it. In other flicks I've caught, I saw I Happy Feet with JR, Shelly, Andrew and Leah a week or two ago. It was a pretty fun show all in all, though it got a little weird for a children's film near the end. Oh wells.

Also, Battlestar Galactica continues to impress. That is all.

Heraldk

Wii Enabled

Success! My friends and I got in line at the ungodly hour of 4:20 to try and get ourselves Nintendo Wiis at the South Edmonton Common Walmart. Lucky for us, we were early enough to earn us each a ticket to buy one of 75 Wiis available at that particular store. In reality, we could've joined the line maybe an hour later and still got them, but it would've been a lot closer and more worrisome for us. We ended up getting tickets number 37 through 39. So now all 3 of us now own Nintendo Wii consoles, a second controller each and a copy of Zelda. Jeffu also picked up a copy of Rayman, while Curtis and I decided to wait for awhile before deciding on future games.

What do I think about the Wii? It is awesome! Wii sports has some hits and misses. Of the games, Bowling and Tennis are the most polished and feel like the most fun. Tennis is also not too bad, but I'm looking forward to a full fledged Mario Tennis like game. Baseball and Boxing aren't as much fun for me, but I'm also not all that interested in either game in real life either! All of the games on the Wii sports disc are pretty easy to pick up, and there should be several parties coming up where we have some serious tournaments!

The game of the minute, day, hour, month, ... year ... is definitely Zelda. I haven't got too far in yet -- just to the entrance of the 2nd dungeon. So far though, the story line is much more engrossing than any previous Zelda I've played. The plot is enhanced a great deal to some very well made cut scenes.

So far, the game is a little more linear than I expected - but I haven't made it far enough to see if that trend continues. Overall though, I'm really impressed with the game. It is extremely fun, and will likely take up a great deal of my free time as I attempt to work my way through the game!

Heraldk

Nintendo Wii-ness

So it looks like a couple friends and I are going to attempt to get the new Nintendo Wii console tomorrow morning. It sounds like there's a lot more Wiis available than PS3s, so it looks like we've got a pretty good chance at grabbing one. I'm really excited about the system. I'm getting increasingly tired of the same repetitive games. I'm not really into first person shooters, so "the next halo" is not something that particularly interests me. In a lot of ways though, the gaming world seems to be all about the next revision of the already successful games. Thanks to Nintendo, we may finally see some new innovation in console gaming. Plus I'm very much looking forward to the new Zelda game!

Hopefully I'll be able to talk about how fun the Wii is when I next post!

Heraldk

Stomach Problems

So the past couple weeks have been uncomfortable for me of late. A little while ago, I started feeling uncomfortable -- my stomach was unsettled and I couldn't really sit still. On Thursday the 2nd of November, I had a lot of pressure build up in my stomach while I was talking to one of the profs at Darse's free beer. The pain started around my waistline up to my chest. I excused myself and went to the bathroom where I relieved some of the pressure by throwing up. I still was in a lot of pain so Diane and I ended up catching a ride from campus security over to emergency where I would sit for 4 hours waiting (yay emergency!). By the time I had to talk to anyone, the pain was already fading and by the time I actually got to see a doctor the pain was just about gone. The doctor concluded that I didn't have anything serious like appendicitis because the pain went away too fast. Over the week since then, I was unable to keep much in the way of food down. I threw up three times over the week, and finally went in to the medi-centre on Thursday morning. Another couple hours later, the doctor I saw now has me booked with an ultrasound to check for gallstones. That appointment is set for the 22nd so hopefully we find out what the deal is.

The good news? The doctor gave me some anti-acid pills which seem to have helped me out. I've been able to eat some more complicated foods than chicken noodle soup, and have been feeling decent afterwards. I also haven't thrown up since then, so that's another good sign. So hopefully I'm on the way to getting better!

So now you know why I haven't really felt like updating the blog. I want to get back to it soon, so hopefully you'll be able to read more about my last couple weeks!

In the meantime, be sure to check out the new webcomic my friend JR and I are starting. It's the new webcomic link on the right: http://www.guiltypleasure.org. Comments are welcome of course! Heraldk

Thesis Progress

So Jonathan returned my thesis to me on Tuesday with modifications almost entirely fitting into the minor modifications category. So for the rest of the week I made the appropriate modifications and talked to Darse about the sections that needed a little work. So now Darse is doing a full read of my thesis and hopefully that goes well for the state of my thesis!This weekend I was notified about giving the GAMES meeting talk this week on DIVAT, so I'll be working on the presentation all this week. On the whole, however, my thesis is getting close to finished. Soon I'll be defending and then on to finding a job (scary thought).

In other news, this past week was crazy busy even though it was shortened by Thanksgiving (a Thanksgiving, I might add, that I had a dinner on each night!). On Wednesday, one of the new grad students hosted a games party with the idea of holding one on a weekly basis. I'm excited about the chance to play some of the games that don't really belong at games parties. On Thursday, Mike Smith had his free beer for successfully defending his masters thesis. So Diane and I joined him and several others for drinking beer and watching the oiler hockey game. A very exciting game, I might add! On Friday we played our second session of a Serenity RPG. Its interesting, though I'm having a little trouble getting into it.

Saturday was the games party at Michael Buro's place. It was really fun - I played three new games ... one of which was a new party game of Curtis'. Its kind of a cross between apples to apples and Balderdash. Lots of fun was had by all!

So life has been real busy lately. I'm trying really hard to keep the distractions from killing my productivity. Let's see how I do!

Heraldk

On Unsportsmanship

Sometimes, I shudder at the state of humankind. Last night I played a late rec-soccer game on the Lister Hall fields. Our team plays in the semi-competitive division of the intramurals and were obviously outclassed against the team we played against. Fine, that's all fine and dandy. It was tied 1-1 after the first half but then the other team scored 5 unanswered goals to win the game. Good for them.

But it was the actions of a couple of their team members that really had me shaking my head. One of the players in particular, wearing a Beckham soccer shirt nattered throughout the second half ... including comments involving the word "pussy" and stuff like "I don't want to make you guys cry". Well, I'm crying all right ... crying out that something isn't right. It is a friggin' rec soccer league! These actions don't belong in a rec soccer league ... one that has in its name "recreation" (I would argue these comments don't belong in any league).

One of the guys on our team commented that I must not play much soccer. He said that this sort of thing is normal. Why the hell is something like this considered normal? It makes me seethe with rage that for all I can tell is impotent. What exactly am I going to say that will change things? Nothing. In fact, anything I say will just be mocked with more of the same. Ugh. I enjoy playing soccer for fun and some good natured competition, but when players make it a place to act with unsportsmanlike qualities, I stop having fun and start wondering what's going on.

Heraldk

Sorry …

for the lack of updates. Between all the hectic things going on, I haven't had much of a chance to actually post anything of interest in the last little while. Let me summarize what I've been up to, and I'll promise to try and get some more posts up. I want to finish my bankroll building series before too long because the longer I leave it the harder it will be to sift through my neteller transaction history to determine what I won and lost where! Anyways, so my most recent news posted was my iPod purchase which I have already received. The entire process lasted a week from clicking the "purchase" button to arrival of my new electronic gizmo. I submitted my order last wednesday, it shipped on Friday with the free engraved personalization already completed. It left Shanhai, CN (I assume that means China??!) and arrived at my place Tuesday afternoon! Incredible. I love it already by the way. It is nice having more than enough room for all my music plus some space to cart files around if I wanted!

My thesis is coming slowly.  Jonathan has read a draft of my thesis that was missing a couple of sections. He is now expecting a draft for the 4th of October that has all the sections complete. This is a deadline that I'm hoping to meet, but there's been some other distractions working against me. The one in particular (no, it isn't WoW ... I only play that in the evenings) is the condo builders have finally started working on the deficiencies and warranty work in my condo! This is super exciting for me because finally I won't have to deal with the problems that have been particularly annoying for me. The carpet has been patched so it is no longer an eyesore, the t-caps between carpet and lino have been installed finally so those transition areas look finished and no longer hurt people's feet. Now the wall patches are being done and a significant change to my kitchen view is also being done! So things are happening very nicely on that front. However, this means I have to "work" from home while the people from Clark builders come and fix up my place. Of course this means I either have the distractions of my computer and the internet in front of me, or I'm watching the repairs being done to make sure I like how they are done (plus I like to think it's a good idea to watch and learn how they do some things).

So that's what I've been up to. I need to run to a CS games meeting. There were a couple other things that happened that I want to write about, but they will have to wait until later I guess.

Heraldk

iPod!

I have purchased a new iPod. Thanks to that $1K winnings from the mansion risk-free bet, I decided that I needed a new iPod. My previous (and first) one has now reached the point where its battery doesn't last a full day's worth of writing-my-thesis time. Between that and Tuesday's announcement of the new 80 GB iPod, I just had to purchase one.

So yesterday I placed my order for a brand new 80 GB black iPod with custom engraving provided for no extra cost. It should ship early next week and be in my hot little hands in about 2 weeks total. Hooray!

Yesterday, I was playing with my music library in iTunes 7. The new iTunes has some pretty nice features two of which I like a whole lot. The first is automatic downloading of album art. This is such a cool feature that now I needed to double check *all* my album tags to make sure that they all have the correct album and also add the album art for all the songs that iTunes couldn't find the art for. I think I made it up to 'D' in my library before I had to head out for the night. It's gonna take me awhile to get through my library! The other feature I really really like is one called "gapless playback". This automatically does a scan of your library and makes sure it knows if two tracks should be played with no gaps. I don't know how the software works, but it is damn cool. No more gap between the Rhapsody songs "Epicus Furor" and "Emerald Sword"!

What I don't like? iTunes 7 seems to have broken the scroll wheel functionality ... at least on my windows computer. No longer can I scroll down my list of songs with my mouse scroll wheel. Since I've gotten so used to doing it, this is really really annoying for me and I really hope they fix it soon. Also, they've managed to make iTunes take even more memory which is annoying because yesterday I found it running with over 70 MB of memory. Why does it take up that much? It's just a music player! Worse yet, for the first time ever, iTunes' playback was crackling when I was doing something else on the computer. It wasn't even something all that intensive... just opening up new tabs in firefox!

Ugh. So I hope they fix these issues soon - the release is quite nice and I'm pretty happy with some of the new features. I just hope they have these issues fixed before I get too annoyed with it.

Heraldk

I caved

Yup, I caved. I have re-purchased world of warcraft. My first copy fell out of my hands into my sister's when I stopped playing ages ago. And now, I have caved after months of holding out even when everyone around me was playing. What made me do it? I'm not sure. I'm a little frustrated with poker at the moment. I need a break - I'm not playing my best and I'm playing break even poker even though I know I can do better. That's not entirely it, but it is a start for how I'm feeling.

It's a very odd feeling not playing something that everyone else is playing. With normal games, it isn't too bad. A week or a month pass and no one is talking about it anymore. WoW is entirely different though. It's been out for how long??? And *still* everyone talks about it. As soon as someone talks about it, everyone playing starts talking about it. Increasingly, it has made me feel uncomfortable ... and you'd think that would drive me away from the game.

I have fond memories of playing the game. It is an amazingly fun game - and that is a big reason why so many people are playing it and talking about it for hours and hours ... and hours. I watched my sister playing in the battlegrounds for awhile. I even mentioned to her that I was not all that interested in the battlegrounds because I prefer the content side of the game rather than the PvP play. She wasn't even playing a part of the game that I wanted to play! And yet tonight I was so tempted to go out and purchase the game that I did half an hour before the store closed.

I'm not worried about slacking in my responsibilities. I am too interested in my own success to simply waste my opportunities. My thesis is reaching a first draft stage and will be on its way with my supervisor tomorrow afternoon as he heads to Ottawa. Because I didn't finish in time for the end of summer I needed to pay for another semester anyways which means I've got a ton of time to finish up (not that it will take too much longer). And beside all that, I feel like I need something other than poker to occupy my time. I don't see myself being able to sit down in front of a computer all day playing poker just because I can make money at it. It is fun, but not *that* fun.

So here I am ... installing WoW. It'll probably be another 15 minutes before its installed. Until then, I will ponder why I finally caved...

Heraldk

Building Computers

Well apparently I've gotten in a habit of building computers for people. Odd. I built a computer a couple weeks ago for Diane, and yesterday I put together a new one for my Dad. It is amazing to me the amount that the cost of computers has dropped over the last few years. The fact that I can easily put a value system together for $500 impresses me to no end. Anyways, once again I need to make more of a push on my thesis. Lots of work to do, and I want to get it out of the way so I can do other stuff. I'm getting to the point where I need to start filling in details, and that is gonna be harder to do than the basic exposition that I've been doing for the most part so far.

Lots of bonuses in casino/poker land. I'm working on the new PSO promo room DreamPoker, plus one of boogster's promotions for play65 (backgammon). That and I did a couple of casinos last week but broke even on both of them. *sigh*.

Time for me to go in to school. Take care everyone!

Heraldk

Busy

I have no idea why I feel so busy. I have had a fair amount of free time at home, so that's not the issue. Maybe it's because I didn't get enough time to sleep in this past weekend which has made me feel a little moody at the moment. *shrug*. Speaking of this past weekend, I got up early and Diane and I went down to help my friend Jon build a deck in his backyard. We didn't quite get it all done, but we made some really good progress. They provided us with some really good lunch (homemade paninis!) and supper which was really nice.

On Sunday, I returned a picture frame I had got from Ikea which meant a big trip down to the southside. My mom and I took my sister down for a harp gig at the Coast Terrace Inn, and while she was there we did the return and stopped at Indigo books where I used a gift certificate I originally received for Christmas last year. I picked up Angels and Demons, the sequel to The DaVinci Code and a book called The Professor, The Banker and The Suicide King which is about an amateur poker player who has a bankroll that he can use to play against professional poker players for crazy high stakes. Should be some good reads.

So both days this weekend I didn't get a lot of sleep which is adding to the not much sleep I got all last week ... and the trend seems to be continuing. I think I'm gonna need to get myself to sleep sooner one of these nights!

My thesis has come a long way over the last week. This week, the progress has been much slower but I've still managed to get quite far. There are some less pleasant sections to write yet though (because they are more technical and harder to write), so hopefully they don't take too long.

With regards to the changeover of this blog, it appears that everything made the switch okay. If you see anything odd, let me know though! I want to spend some time playing with the layout - I'm not sure if it'll be a complete redesign or not, but we shall see. Suggestions are always welcome of course!

Heraldk

Thesis Trucking along

Well I've finally managed to put together several days of productive thesis work. My thesis is now flirting with the 40 page mark, and there's still a long way to go, but it is coming. It helps that since I did a lot of discussion with Darse concerning the ICGA paper and his thesis, I now have a pretty standard graph format I can use so I don't really have to figure that out. In fact, most of the graphs I just have to reuse as is! I'm gonna be tackling a hard chapter here tomorrow. Its the one that involves the theoretical proof that the tool I've been working on is unbiased. That section is going to be the hardest to write for several reasons - the most difficult thing is laying the proof out so that it is clearly true, but also so it is understandable and easy to follow. This really isn't my strength.

At any rate, I've realized that there's a limit to the productivity I can have on my thesis on a given day. If I'm able to keep up my current rate of writing though, I'll have a pretty decent start on it by the time my supervisor gets back from holidays. Hopefully he likes what I've managed to come up with! In the meantime, while keeping that pace up, I think I'll actually have some chance to play some poker in the evenings. The insanity of the past few weeks seems to have passed and things are starting to get back to more-or-less of a flow (which is good for my thesis writing!).

Heraldk

Long Weekend of Unworkfulness

But it was fun! This long weekend was filled with food and fun and very much a lack of workiness (take that Stephen Colbert!). Friday night I helped Diane unpack several of her boxes and got her setup so she could actually stay her first night at her new place. Saturday, we headed to Rob Holte's games party which was a lot of fun. There's a new Ticket to Ride game that is, in my opinion, the best in the series! And there's a new blockus game that I rather enjoyed as well.

On Sunday, my family went to Heritage days which was packed this year. They are saying it was record attendance, and I'm really not surprised. The weather was fantabulous and there was a bazillion people out to take in the different cultures of our very multicultural city. Unfortunately, I had two major complaints about the food. First, the food was way too damn expensive to really make me feel comfortable paying to sample. Second, the portions were too large for us to sample many different tastes! The whole idea (I thought) was to offer tastes of the different cultures so you could wander around and taste something from many different booths. But not only could we not afford to do that (at an average ticket price of 5 tickets, with each ticket worth almost $1), there's no way one person could eat that much food! *sigh*.

I ended up not eating very much and let most of the tickets go to the other family members who ate quite a bit. Afterwards, we went to my Aunt's place for dinner where we enjoyed some crab *and* lobster. Sweeeeet! This particular night was very odd because there was games being played. I honestly can't remember a time when I felt more comfortable at my Aunt's place because I was able to do something. We played some frustration rummy and then a poker game broke out that was pretty entertaining. My Uncle Kong is pretty funny when he plays poker even though he doesn't really know how to play.

Yesterday was a rather full day. My mom and dad picked Diane and I up and we went down to Ikea to shop for a bed frame for me and some bookshelves for Diane. I found myself a nice bed frame that wasn't too expensive so I got that. Afterwards, we stopped at memory express to get some computer parts for Diane's new computer. It took a little while, but then we went to my Uncle Kong's place where we had another big BBQ. Mmmm ... food!

Afterwards my mom dropped Diane and I and our day's purchases at my place and I put together Diane's computer. I had forgotten how much fun it was to put together a new computer ... it is oddly entertaining, I'm not too sure why! Maybe that comes from my geeky side.

Today I got quite a bit done on my thesis. Its starting to take some shape, but its really got a ways to go yet before its ready to submit. Hopefully I can make some strides to get the bulk of the writing done in the coming couple weeks. I don't think I have much hope to graduate for this deadline, but if I get as much done as possible, I'll be in good shape to perhaps add some value to my thesis or contribute to the poker group some more!

Heraldk