January

Well, January looks like it has slipped away without much in the way of blog updates from us! The last couple of weeks haven't been particularly eventful in terms of fun stuff. But I haven't updated with what we've done since the turn of the new year. On New Years Eve we were over at Darse and Xan's for a rather fun evening of party games. In the first of several of these games, we all wrote down names of 4-5 famous people in a hat. The game proceeds by going through the hat three times. The first time, players try to get their team to guess the person using any words not on the paper. The second time through, you only get two words to get your team to guess, and the third time through you have to do charades to get your team to guess. The game is naturally comical, and this night was no less so than expected.

This game was broken up by the countdown to zero for the beginning of the 2009. We were out on the balcony and got to see fireworks going off all around us. I'm not entirely sure where everyone would've got them, but they seemed quite plentiful. It reminds me that this kind of behaviour was happening on Halloween night here in Dublin too.

We finished our game, and then moved on to play another one. In this one, each player writes down a famous person on a slip of paper, which is then taped on the next person's head. That person now has to ask yes/no questions about that person until they can guess who they are. Thankfully, Darse gave me someone I knew, so after a little while I managed to guess mine: Kurt Cobain. Diane had a little more trouble with "the artist formerly known as Prince", but she got it. The toughest one that was eventually given up on? Genghis Khan.

We had a bit of trouble getting a cab, so we settled into playing a game of dictionary pictionary until something like 5am at which point we finally got a cab to come pick us up and take us home.

On the 2nd of January, one of the server guys had got tickets to a Rugby match: Leinster vs Connacht. So a group of us server guys went to go see this clash of Irish rugby teams. Before going, I spent some time trying to read up on the rules, which helped me know a little bit of what was going on, but I found it extremely hard to follow exactly what was happening. The thing I had the most trouble seeing was some correlation to the penalties being called and what was done wrong by the offending player. The other thing that I expected was that the game would flow more than american football -- but that turned out to not be the case. There was many more stoppages than I had thought there would be. Still, it was a fun time, and it was a great atmosphere to watch the game!

The last few weeks have been relatively quiet for us. I've been working, and not getting to bed early enough on a nightly basis so by the weekend I'm ready to sleep and laze around. The weather also hasn't been all that cooperative for doing fun stuff on the weekends. On one particular Saturday afternoon, the clouds were dark, it was raining, and the wind was blowing harder than we've seen here.

The next day wasn't too pretty either, but we were invited out to go have dinner and see a movie called Slumdog Millionaire. Dinner was at a place called Indian Summer for some rather tasty Indian food, and then we wandered over to the movie. The movie was about a guy who gets on India's version of who wants to be a millionaire and makes it deep. They suspect him of cheating, and through interrogation (and flashbacks for the audience), they discover that he actually knew the answers through a series of unlikely events. It's a moving film, as it shows many harsh conditions which the man had to live through when he was a boy.

This week, Diane and I went in to take our driver's theory tests. We had spent some time studying for it over the week and both came out with 100%. So after we take an eye exam, we'll have the necessary paperwork to get ourselves a provisional Irish drivers license. When that happens, we'll have to wait 6 months before we can take our practical test. It's weird having to go through this process again, and a little awkward too! I'm not sure why there isn't a faster route for someone who already knows how to drive to get a full license here. Oh well.

There's another party that we're going to tonight, and it looks like our social schedule is starting to fill up again!

Morgan

Year in Review 2008

This has been a very busy year for Diane and I (to put it mildly). Any year that you get married or move to another country or score a decisive victory for computers against humans is bound to be a pretty busy year ... but these were just a sampling of some of the things that happened to us during the past twelve months. This is my year in review. (You can find my year in review from last year here and Diane's here). The outlook on 2008 was pretty exciting. Diane and I had become engaged in May of 2007 and our wedding date was setup as the June 7, 2008. So one thing we would be spending a bunch of time working on for the first half of the year was planning that. I was still working at the university for the computer poker research group. Having come so close to beating some very good poker players the year before in Vancouver, we were itching for a rematch. Finally, two people I knew were already working in a company in Ireland, and I had started to consider what it would be like to do the same.

So lets get started, shall we? Early on in January, a group of us ended up at the museum to do some photographing. With how the busy the year would become, I'm sad that we didn't get more outings like this because it was a lot of fun! Later on in the month, the annual department ski trip to Jasper was once again a highlight of the year. The people from the CS department at the UofA are a lot of fun to hang out with, and at this point I definitely suspected that this would be my last trip to join the department for the forseeable future.

In February, Sonata Arctica -- one of my favourite bands, came to town so I was ecstatic to check that out. Later on that month, we went on a ski trip to Lake Louise and Sunshine with a couple of friends. That was a great trip, and filled with many good photographs.

In March, my grandparents celebrated their 55th wedding anniversary and my grandpa turned 80. To help celebrate, we went down to Rimbey to surprise my grandfather with a big party. My sister played her harp, and it was a lovely time.

April's big event was going to Dublin to interview at PocketKings. The company generously flew both of us out to Dublin to meet the team I would eventually join. It was a packed 5 days, with two of those days being travel. I spent two days in the office and a third wandering around Dublin with Darse, Xan, Mike, MK, and Aaron. We were out for dinner all three nights we were there, met quite a few people, and saw a lot of things. Not long after we returned home, I was offered a job with them and pretty soon we were not only planning a wedding, but planning moving our lives across the Atlantic ocean to Dublin, Ireland.

In May, we had a packed social schedule which combined with getting ready for the wedding made it a busy month! Nightwish, another one of my favourite bands came to town, we attended dinner parties, brithday parties, and got out on another photoshoot this time in Edmonton's river valley. I also attended a meetup of Edmonton Flickr people, as well as a separate outing with Edmonton Twitter members. May was a very busy month!

The big highlight of June was our wedding day on the 7th. Thanks to the help of many, many people, we were able to put together a pretty good day I would have to say. Diane was radiant all day, and we both managed to get through the day with no bigger mishaps than us forgetting to write a speech for the dinner. Highlights from the day are in this post, but really the highlight of the whole thing was of course being married to such a wonderful person in Diane.

Because of the computer poker research group's efforts to have a rematch against some top human players in July, work prevented us from leaving on a honeymoon right away. Instead, we settled in and attempted to get some of the details for moving to Ireland sorted out. We also attempted to see as many people as we could, which meant that one thing we had to do was go see my grandparents in Rimbey. As always, it was quite a pleasant trip. Lots of food, games and good company. I really don't see them enough!

On July 1st, we left for Las Vegas, where for the next several days we would prepare, run, and eventually win the match against several very good human players including one of the best in the world: Matt "Hoss_TBF" Hawrilenko. It was a lot of work building up to that point, but it was a wonderful bit of closure to get before I left the group. A week after we arrived in Vegas, the work portion of our trip had ended and the vacation/honeymoon part of it started. We spent a few days hanging out with some of the research group members in Las Vegas before flying to San Diego where we spent a day at the San Diego Zoo before getting on our honeymoon cruise.

The cruise was a 5 day affair starting from San Diego and stopping in Cabo San Lucas on the way down the west coast and then in Ensenada on the way back. The highlight of the trip was the excursions, where we did a zipline and climbing wall excursion down a canyon in Cabo, and a kayaking trip in Ensenada. The food on board was pretty good too...

We returned to Edmonton where we had just a week left to pack up all our belongings and spend as much time with our families as we could before heading off to Dublin. It was a pretty surreal experience packing all our stuff up and saying goodbye to everyone. Late in the week we had a party at my parent's place where we had a huge number of friends and family over to say goodbye to. It was a lot of fun, and I'm glad so many people turned out! Before we knew it, we were packed up and on a plane to Dublin, Ireland!

In our first weeks in Dublin, in late July and early August, we had a bunch of hoops to jump through in order to get the required documents to stay in the country, and find a place to live so we could get a bank account and all those other little details. Thanks to a bunch of help from Darse who had recently made the transition, we got everything sorted through in record time. Within two weeks of our arrival we had an apartment, internet, a bank account, and immigration cleared for our first year.

Also in August, we went on our first road trip with Darse and Xan who took us to the Powerscourt gardens. We would do several more trips with them including exploring Killiney hill right here in Dublin, going to county Wicklow in September, the Southern coast of Ireland and the Irish National Stud in October.

Work got busy in November, which made me feel like not doing too much on the weekends other than relax. But December was an eventful month! It started off with our friend JR coming to visit us for a couple of days. We showed as much of Dublin as we could while he was here, and hope he enjoyed it! Just after he left, we were off to Kilkenny where the company held one heck of a Christmas party. A couple weeks later, Diane and I were at the Dublin airport crazy early for a holiday in Austria. We spent 10 days there over Christmas, and enjoyed ourselves immensely (the posts for the rest of our trip are coming still, I promise!).

This year has been amazing, and it's hard to imagine that 2009 will top it. I closed one chapter of my life (working at the university), and opened several more (getting hitched, moving to a new country, starting a new job). That said, Diane and I have the opportunity to explore Europe while we're young and we're sure planning on doing as much of that as we can in the coming year. Work is going well, and I'm happy with how much I've been able to contribute. So we're excited to see what 2009 will offer us!

To close out, here's some maybe interesting numbers from this year:

• I took around 10,000 photographs with my camera this year, far surpassing the previous year's total of less than 7,000. From that selection of photographs, I uploaded 1448 to Flickr for your enjoyment. I hope you've gotten a chance to take a look at my work.

• Despite having not had much time to play poker this year, I still did better than 2007 in terms of total profit. I earned $6300 in online poker in 2008, bringing my lifetime earnings to over $12,000.

• My passport has been stamped 11 times, 8 of which happened in 2008.

• We've posted 55 times (not including this one) to this blog, and these posts have accrued 33 comments. All but two of those posts happened in 2008.

• Number of countries I've been in this year: 6... four of which were knew to me: Mexico, Ireland, Austria, and England (albeit only in the London airport).

• Number of months living abroad: 5.

Any other numbers you can think of that might be interesting that I might be able to rattle off without too much counting? If I get some good suggestions I'll add them to the post.

Lastly, here's some of my favourite photos from 2008:

Megan finally let me photograph her for her recital poster.

A beautiful shot of Irish countryside with no one around.

A duck in St Fiachra's Garden near Kildare, Ireland.

A sight seen on the Hofburg palace grounds in Vienna, Austria.

Beautiful lighting over Pichling lake in Austria.

David Thue is the one in the pipe, and he makes a fun silhouette with his hat.

I took photos of these flamingos for quite awhile before getting this shot.

One of my favourites from the wedding photos that Jason Kasumovic took.

A view of Sunshine mountain village.

A scene from Canmore, Alberta.

I hope everyone had a good 2008. Whether you did or not, I hope that 2009 is a good year for you!

Morgan

Busy at Work, Election, Games

This past week was insanely busy. At work, I had a project that needed some help to get it all the way to completion, and it needed to be done by Friday. So I worked pretty hard this week trying to get it all done. As a result, there wasn't all that much free time to do much else than go home and laze around on the couch a bit before going to bed. But we did get out a little. On Tuesday night, a bunch of the American employees went out to a bar to watch the election results come in. It had been a stressful day at work, and I thought it'd be a good idea to get out of the house and de-stress a little over a beer or two. So Diane and I joined the party around 11:00pm and hung out with what turned out to be quite a few people! The group of us maxed out at about 25 people or so all with varying interest in the actual live results coming in. After awhile, a game of Chinese poker broke out -- a game that I've had a little bit of interest in lately. I joined in, and we ended up playing until 2am!

Thursday nights at the office are geeky board game nights, so I stayed late at the office to play some games. This week, one of the guys had just got back from the States with a pile of games eight or so boxes high -- many of which I had never seen before. We played Ticket to Ride Germany, the tutorial for Galaxy Trucker (a game I don't think I'll really like in full, but it's kinda neat), and Wizard (a game that looks like it has got some major interest). Dave also explained the rules of a couple of his new games.

It has been a busy week, and in some ways I'm glad it's done. Not that it'll get any less busy at work. I've got some bugs to fix and I gotta get back to working a project that won't be released until January, but needs a fair amount of work to get it finished. But even with how busy I've been, we're still making time to do some fun stuff!

Morgan

Settling In

It's a little crazy to think that we're fast approaching three months in Ireland! It's been a big move, and we totally miss seeing the people we're used to seeing all the time. Thankfully, with this being the internet age, we're able to video chat with people. If you'd like to hook up with us on the video chat, we're on skype and AIM. Give us a shout and we'll organize a time to meet up. It's been pretty nice to be able to chat with both Diane and my families back home. Anyways, back to point form updates (since I'm tired and it's time for bed):

• Last weekend Darse and Xan got us out of our house to go check out Kildare. The main attraction there is the Irish National Stud which is a thoroughbred horse breeding operation of apparently some fame. (I don't exactly know much about horse breeding, but I learned some). We did a guided tour of the grounds, and saw some of their stallions. The most expensive one's stud fee comands €75,000! The grounds there are actually quite lovely, and we got a chance to check out a couple of gardens -- a Japanese garden, and Saint Fiachra's Garden. I got quite a few photos that I'm actually quite happy with, and it was fun to get out of the city!
• Work has started to get busy. Lots of projects are under way now and I'm starting to get into the thick of things. There's still a few moments where I don't feel particularly useful, but on the whole it's starting to feel like I'm settling in okay. Lots of stuff to learn though, that's for sure! This week, we released a new version of the software which introduced matrix tournaments. They're a new format of poker sit and go tournaments, but you play 4 tables at once. Not only do you compete for individual prize pools on each table, but how you do at each table contributes to how you rank for the matrix tournament as a whole. I haven't had a chance to try playing one yet, but it's a pretty cool new feature.
• There's been quite a few nights spent late at the office playing games. In addition to playing poker with Chris Ferguson, he's stuck around a bit longer to play some geeky board games with us. So there's been a few late nights of Ticket to Ride, Blokus, Medici, Aquaretto, Carcassonne, and other fun board games. Chris really liked quite a few of them, so hopefully he'll be back soon to play more of them with us.
• Thanksgiving isn't really celebrated here, so we were a bit envious of the food our families were going to be enjoying this past weekend. It's a bit weird not spending thanksgiving with the folks. It was nice to be able to chat with family over the weekend though!
• The desk that we ordered from Argos came this week, so our place is getting a little bit better organized. We also got blinds several weeks ago, so our home is starting to feel a lot more like home.
• The weather here has actually been quite good for the past couple weeks. There's been some rain, but not as much as we might've been led to believe. As a result, we've had a chance to take in some rather pretty sunsets, and some beautiful weather for walking around a bit.

That's all I can think about from this update. Be sure to check out the photos from our visit to the Irish National Stud!

Morgan

Playing Poker With Jesus

This past week has been a insanely busy. It's been a week filled with parties and late nights which has made it a bit hard to keep posting to the blog. There was even a party tonight that Diane and I passed on just to spend a quiet night relaxing a bit for the first time in over a week. One of the noteworthy events of the week has been that Chris "Jesus" Ferguson has been in town. He played in the WSOPE and had another big tournament in London last Saturday. So he stopped by the office and I got a chance to add another poker pro to a list that's getting pretty long.

Anyways fast forward to last night which was a scheduled company tournament: a €50 deep stack buyin tournament. Since Chris was in town, he was happy to play, which meant the tournament drew a good crowd. In all, 36 players registered which was a really good turnout. Warning: lots of poker lingo coming your way from this point on.

The tournament started out real slow for me. Apart from picking up one pot a few rotations in, I basically sat and folded a lot of hands while several players at the table spewed chips at each other. After the first break I was starting to get pretty short stacked. I picked up A6o on the button and raised, but the small blind pushed. I didn't have many chips left so I called and didn't like seeing my opponent flip over AQ. Luckily for me, I hit a 6 along with an Ace on the flop to double up. Not too much later, The 2nd table broke, and guess who got seated on my left? Chris Ferguson.

The next big hand in my memory happened after we had got down to the final table of 9 players. I picked up KK on the button and make a decent raise. The small blind reraises me and I pushed allin and got called by AJ of diamonds. The flop was rather exciting when two diamonds landed, but thankfully I dodged another diamond and won a monster pot -- which made me chip leader by quite a bit.

The tournament got down to three players -- Chris, me, and another guy that I didn't know but who played very well. The stack sizes started to get pretty close to even, although I still had a small chip lead. Chris had a €50 bounty on his head, but unfortunately I was not going to be the one to earn that. The other guy at the table would do that when he flopped trip queens and busted Chris out in 3rd place. I guess that means I can say I beat him!

On the first hand of headsup play, the other guy limps on the button and I check with J4 of diamonds. The flop is 578 with two diamonds. I bet out, get raised, and I decided to push. I get instantly called, and get shown 78 for top two pair. I miss my flush and gutshot outs to lose the hand. So I finished a respectable 2nd place for a payday of €440. Not too bad for a couple hours of play!

So that's how it went down. It was an honour to play with Chris, and it's pretty cool to be able to say I beat him. I'm under no illusions that it was anything more than luck that made that the case, but I feel pretty good about most of my plays during the tournament. I probably missed a couple of plays and didn't play all that well when we got to three handed play, but all in all I can't feel too bad with my showing.

It's been a really cool week, but in a way I'm glad it's over. I've been out every night this week until at least midnight and it's starting to take a toll on my ability to stay sharp.

Oh yeah, there's new photos up on flickr too if you want to go check them out!

Morgan