CNN.com - Land war goes before Supreme Court - Feb 21, 2005

Keep a close eye on this one... Let's hope they make the right decision for private property rights.

CNN.com - Land war goes before Supreme Court - Feb 21, 2005

PLAYING POKER FOR A CHANCE TO WIN A SEAT IN A WSOP EVENT

Well, it appears that I'm not doing too badly at poker. I won my second tournament and let me tell you...THAT was a ride. There were 19 people in this one and we were playing for entries into the next WSOP (World Series of Poker) satellite which is this Saturday. 1st and 2nd place automatically get entered into Saturday's tournament without having to pay and 3rd place got like $24. Whoever wins Saturday's tournament gets a prize package to play in a $10,000 +$200 WSOP event in either Las Vegas, New Orleans, or Lake Tahoe which will be televised on ESPN. Plus the winner gets $1800 in travel expenses, dinner with some of the professionals and a bunch of gear. At this point, even 7th place gets about $440, so there's a little money to be won.

At first, all I was wanting to do was play well, and I didn't want to be first out. The first 5 dropped quick. Before I knew it, I was 11 out of 14, then 7 out of 9, then 5 out of 7, 1 out of 7 and back to 5 out of 7. And then there were 5. We played for a while with 5. The blinds were increasing fairly rapidly and I was 4 out of 5 and then 5 out of 5 for quite a while. The chip leader had about 13,000 to 14,000 chips. At this point I was at about 500 and there was a sizeable jump from me to the next highest. So I figured I'd be out next, but finishing fifth wouldn't be too bad for this being my first real tournament against more than one other person. I forgot what I had, but it was something playable, and I had to post the big blind, which was $200, so I had $300 left. I called another bet and I had $250 left. I won and was back up to $1500 or so, so I was back in the game.

From there, I just kept gaining and gaining. Even though I was still had the lowest number of chips, we ended up with four people left after a couple went all in. I had already folded. So now there were four. I was still in last place as far as chips go. I won a few more hands and now I was in third place as far as chips. This was my most interesting hand, I believe. I had pocket tens and I had posted the big blind. 2 people folded and it was me and the person with just a few less chips than me. The flop came up 9,10,9. I now had a full house, so I started raising. He called, and he raised me. I called him. The turn card came up a 2. He checked. I went all in. He called. Since we were both all in at this point, we showed our cards. He had pocket aces. But by this time, when he saw my full house, he knew there was nothing much he could get to beat me. With pocket aces, I probably would have done about the same thing he did. It just didn't pay off for him. So then there were 3.

Now I was up to $14,000 in chips and I was leading by at least $5000. We took a break. The one guy was pissed because he'd seen I had $500 that one time, so he tried to bust me and now I was in front. I took him out with 3 of a kind and he typed a whole bunch of obscenities at me. Hell, he got $24, so I don't know what he was so upset about... Then it was 2 of us and I had $20,000 and he had about $5000. We both had aleady won entries into Saturday's tournament by now so it didn't really matter who was first or second, except for bragging rights. We were posting $800 blinds and $25 ante as well. A few minutes later I had him all in and I took it. It may not have mattered who was second or who was first, but I wanted to be #1 and I knew I could take this guy since I had $15,000 more in chips than he did.

So yay! I won! I won! *jumping up and down* Now the hard part starts. Saturday's tournament won't just have 19 in it. It will have a little more than 60 people. And most all of them got there the same way I did, fighting their way up in a smaller tournament. Still, no matter what, I think it's going to be fun. It was easy to be a little aggressive in this tournament, because it was easy to scare people off. However, I doubt it's going to be quite as easy to do that Saturday, but we shall see.

So who knows? You might end up seeing me on ESPN sometime.

TIME FOR A BEER.

It seems like it ought to be Friday today. Usually Fridays are not that great for me and I don't look forward to Friday as much as other people do. For one, I don't mind working. I hate to be bored. But I think this week, I may actually look forward to Friday. It's been a hectic week and I'm starting to get a little tired.

11 or 12 hour days aren't that big of a deal to me, but it makes it difficult to get anything else done. Then again, I'll have a nice fat paycheck from the overtime I've had to work. But tonight I'm going out for a while, especially since everyone will be coming over tomorrow night, so I'll be staying in tomorrow.

Today I had a couple of new things come up at work that once again, I knew nothing about, but had to take care of them anyway. Then I had to put a couple of 'fires'. One of our major builder clients is doing their closing next week and we are still missing one cabinet that is holding up the installation (and their closing). They don't like to be held up on closings. It turns out my boss had already faxed corporate last week about not having received this one cabinet. Evidently they stuck it in a file and forgot about it because I had to email two or three different people to explain to me why it wasn't shipped when it was on the order. I got the typical answer that I would have to contact 'some other department' about the problem. Several hours later I actually received an email back from the person who dropped the ball on this and they admitted to it. I didn't gripe at them, especially since they made some calls and I'll have the piece in Monday. I was going to send someone from my office to go actually go and pick it up so we could have it sooner, but Monday will do. So we should make it in time for closing, but it's gonna be close.

I'm beginning to see my desk again. There's always a chance I might decide to come in for a little bit on Saturday, but then I have so much else I need to do at home, so I don't know if I will.
Well, I really don't have much else to say right now, except more work related stuff and I'm sure reading about my work is probably pretty boring for most people.

Therefore, this is the end of this post.

WEEK FROM HELL CONTINUES

The week from Hell was off to a good start yesterday and seems to be continuing quite well. I've had all kinds of stuff thrown at me in the last two days. I'm talking mind boggling. It might have been just a wee bit easier if anyone had shown me how to do any of it. I received a 'crash course' in how to place a 'typical' order, and I mean 'crash course'. I think it took all of 5 minutes because that's all the time she had.

The only problem is that I have yet to receive a 'typical' order. Everything has been thrown at me as though I'm supposed to know exactly what to do with it. Some of our builder clients follow regular procedures, some don't. Since I had no idea which ones don't, I have questioned everything when I don't have all the required paperwork, which I'm sure the clients haven't liked. "We always do it this way" is what I've been hearing. Yeah, right. I'm sure it may be the case with some of them, but I know every single one of them puts pressure on getting stuff ordered without having a signed agreement. Or they want to change things, affecting the pricing, without signing a new or revised agreement reflecting that.

On the good side, I did help manage to thwart a $20,000 mistake because of the fact I wasn't going to let them rush me into placing an order sooner. Even though I've gotten orders, reorders, add-ons from Jacksonville, St. Augustine and here and 99% of them are not anywhere close to 'typical' orders, I feel I've handled everything fairly well for not knowing any of this and having to basically learn as I'm going along. Besides, I like challenges, right?

On the bad side, I'm having to try to get these orders placed, make sure contracts are signed, know when everything is expected to arrive or to be sent out to job sites, what everyone else is doing, what items we are short and follow up on those, approve and email order requests back all while answering the phone, and everyone else expecting me to drop what I'm doing to take care of THEIR problem right away or proof their stuff right away or fix their computer problems, email problems, fax machine problems, credit card machine problems and make decisions on whether or not to go ahead and order stuff for one of our clients who hasn't made the customary 50% deposit yet. Oh and of course approve billing for the accounting department and make sure the bill outs are done. Corporate gets a little testy if we don't have enough bill outs getting done.
And someone just asked me yesterday what it is I do, or what my 'job title' is. Hell, I don't know. I have to make sure the right things are ordered off the design drawings in the right colors, amounts, door styles, etc. Before I order, I have to make sure I have a signed contract and unless it's one of our major clients, a deposit before I order. Generally on the major builder clients, I have to track down a notice of commencement for the property in case they have to put a lien against at some point. All of that gets scanned and emailed to corporate. They send me back what I ordered, because they have to key it in for some reason. I check it again, approve it and say that it's OK to order. I wait to receive a confirmation that it's been ordered, approximate date it should arrive at the warehouse or wherever it's going. Then I do the same thing for counter tops if they are needed. Once stuff arrives, it has to be checked off (I have someone else physically do this) and a tentative install date set for our subcontractor. We have to make sure we have an installer available when the builder wants it installed and make sure all the items are delivered to the job site as well. Then I have to make sure installer invoices are paid, counter top invoices are paid, bill outs are done and send the service guy to inspect the work and sign off on it. Well, at least that's normally what I do when everything goes perfectly smoothly, but we all know that doesn't normally happen. This is all what happens on one job, or one file. I have a little over 50 sitting and waiting for different things and I have to be able to tell anyone anything about any of those files at the drop of a hat. Plus, we get new ones every day. Today alone, I have gotten about 10 new ones.

Salespeople are fun to deal with too. They are just as bad as the builders about wanting to push things through without appropriate CYA (cover your ass) paperwork. I don't do sh-t if I don't have it in writing. The answer is exactly the same as when you called the last 5 times today. And also, if you didn't stop me by calling so many times, I might actually make more progress on your file.

Add to this that I've had some personal things on my mind lately that are bothering me somewhat and the fact that it's that time of the month for me, which tends to make me a little more emotional or crabby. Also yesterday I was here for 12 hours, no lunch, because the best time to actually make some progress is early in the morning or late in the afternoon when everyone else is gone and I know I won't be interrupted.

It's only Tuesday. It's gonna be a fun week. Yep. Piece of cake...

POOL FACING TOWARDS BACK OF HOUSE

FISH TANK FOR HEADBOARD

KITCHEN

LIVING ROOM AREA LOOKING TOWARD POOL