I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker!

The WBCOOP is an online Poker tournament open to all Bloggers.

Registration code: 361954

This could be fun.

A lot of fun. Go 8-game mix!

Yesterday, Mirko and another guy (I couldn’t figure out his name) came in to my office for help. They said that they didn’t understand the thing with vector spaces, which is like what I talked about for a few weeks… So I tried to give a brief synopsis of what’s going on, they flipped through the book and asked questions, and elected to have me use the “strange colour chalk” to explain to them. They stayed for an hour, and I enjoyed the conversations that took place, and it was good.

Today, Louis and another guy (I figured out from the list of pictures that he was either Drew or James, guessed Drew, and got it right…turns out that they know James, but he is better known as Cameron among them…why am I including so many strange details?) came in while I was having lunch…heh. They said that they didn’t understand the thing with vector spaces (sounds so familiar…), and we went through some textbook questions to clear things up. It makes me wonder if I truly did an awful job at explaining the vector spaces, or perhaps this is simply a topic that is difficult to learn anyway. In any case, they also elected to have me use the “strange colour chalk” to explain things to them. I kept getting zapped by static electricity on the blackboard…it seems funny to them, though…heh. They stayed for two hours! As much as I enjoyed the conversations that took place, it was getting a bit tiring. And they plan to come back tomorrow! Awesome!

No news from the BC jobs. The good news is should I stay in Waterloo, I have guaranteed housing. But I don’t even know if I will stay in Waterloo… On the other hand, I might take a flight to somewhere (near or far) to get to Air Canada Elite status…heh. I must be bored.

I finally got my first large poker tournament win! (Sort of.) It was an 8-games tournament, with 204 people playing. I somehow managed to get into the top 2, and got a 50:50 deal that sided towards my favour (as I was lower in chip count). It was an amazing rollercoaster ride that was very intense. I was in the bottom two when there were 40 people remaining with 30 getting paid. I thought I might not even make it into the money…but things turned around very quickly! Along the way, I had nice chat with other players, like winny38 who was also on the brink of the bubble, and both of us were joking about how the “dealer” is just teasing us with these all-in wins and not let us lose. Eventually he was eliminated without cash, unfortunately. There was also hd_heart who was at my table right from the start, and he got very lucky and built up a huge stack. He claims to be from Luck, Wisconsin, so who knows. He finished in 4th, and stuck around to actually cheer for me while heads up! That is very interesting. He also mistaken the gender of my heads up opponent, which was funny. At heads up, I was kind of tired, and he was the one who suggested the chop, which the other player quickly agreed to. So that was great, as I have destined myself to second place. What an experience! Sitting down for about 5.5 hours and finally got deep into tournament poker. Very nice.

Yesterday’s Amazing Race is just so sad!!! Toni and Dallas is my favourite team, and to see them lose like that was just so heartbreaking! Even though they lost their money and passports, they were calm enough to deal with the situation head on. And the mom is so sweet. That was definitely one of the most difficult episode to get through in Amazing Race history.

No jobs yet.

Last lecture! But it wasn’t as good of an ending as I have hoped it would be. Started out with some more properties of the characteristic polynomial and eigenstuffs. The problem there was I tried to rush through things quite a bit because I had other things to tell them. So, a rushed job is always a bad job, most of the time.

In any case, once that’s finished, I went on to show a powerpoint on my trip to Belarus and some of the puzzles. They had some good laughs with the “Cafe Royal” sign, of course, and for some reason they laughed at a picture of Will Shortz. I didn’t get to say much about the puzzles, because I was running out of time. But I guess that was ok.

Finally, I showed them the final exam. Yes, the actualy exam itself. Well, I sort of scrolled through the file very quickly, so that got a good laugh. Then I showed them the abbreviated version. Hopefully they do well. And that’s it for the lectures! I’m going to miss some of these students…I got to remember a lot of names now, but probably not enough. I doubt that I would see them again after the course is over, unfortunately.

It was a crazy day two Saturdays ago. I was supposed to help somebody from church prepare recording stuffs for her concert. I was supposed to go in the morning, then go to sushi buffet where Li Zhen was treating wedding helpers, then come back to the concert to record. Unfortunately, that didn’t go as planned. There was too much noise in the recorder that Roger and I had to go to the music store a couple of times, try and try and try to get rid of the noise. That meant that we had to skip lunch, and be super hungry. But in the end, the recorded thing isn’t too bad, so that’s a plus.

But that’s not it for the day… During the evening, I hosted Bible games for the fellowship. There were plenty of laughs, and that’s good. Seeing people crumble under light pressure was also funny. I think everyone had a good time, but I was definitely exhausted.

Last night I had a terrible dream…I dreamed that I was getting married to a girl from the church in Taiwan, and I didn’t even like the girl…horrible.

I felt good about this lecture. I was doing how to find eigenvalues and eigenvectors through the characteristic polynomial. Did a couple of examples, explained more theory, and that’s all pretty good, I think. Having prepared examples also helped with this one…heh.

It was interesting how during the office hour, Andrew came in and asked if I can write a recommendation letter for him in applying for optometry. Not now, but maybe down the road. Hmm…I don’t think I have enough credential to do that…heh. But it’s a nice thought.

One last lecture to go!