John Turner

Depending on how you look at it, I’m either fortunate or unfortunate enough to work for a company that shuts down for almost two weeks during the Christmas holidays. If I don’t work I don’t get paid, which sucks, especially around the holidays, but then again, it is nice to have all that time off.

One of the things I did over the break was go down to Motor City with my buddy RC to play poker. I’ve pretty much given up playing online, and have decided to focus on playing in live games and tournaments this year. Aside from home games, I’ve only played against strangers live at a casino once before. Motor City has a tournament at noon every day, so we went down there last week and bought in. The buy-in was $65, with $15 going to the house and $50 going to the purse. I know, I know, $65 isn’t the big time, but there’s no reason to spend $200-$500 when you’re just getting your feet wet and practicing playing live.

So $65, it ended up being 40 people, no limit hold ‘em. [Read more →]

Whew! Today’s edition of Cool Tools was a good one. I especially liked the entry on live blogging conferences and the entry on the Personal MBA. I’ve been thinking about grad school quite a bit the last few years, or even law school, but just haven’t been able to justify spending $600 a credit hour and anywhere from $15,000-$50,000 total to get a grad degree, not to mention spending 4 hours in a class two or three times a week after working 8-9 hours. Reading the Personal MBA site has given me a lot to think about. If my employer were to offer tuition reimbursement, I’d go for a grad degree, no question. But without it, I can’t see the ROI anytime soon, especially with the economy tanking the way it is.

Happy New Year! Haven’t posted in awhile, been busy, blah blah blah. I’ll do better this year, I promise.

Recently, I’ve been spending more time trying to understand how people are making money off of their blogs. Some folks are making several thousands of dollars a month, just by posting! Don’t get me wrong, I like my job, but [Read more →]

Painless upgrade to WP 2.3.1, and a new theme. Yay!

Finally, a company has released a PC-related peripheral that is functional and practical, and not just another “me, too” product. The SATA HDD Stage Rack lets you use any SATA hard drive as extra storage, quickly and easily without having to unscrew a case and hard-mount the drive. For about $47, it is a steal, and any computer ninja worth his/her salt will pick one up.

I bought Yet Another Song From A Commercial (YASFAC): this one is the Flaming Lips’ “The W.A.N.D.” from another Dell Inspiron commercial. Someone at Dell’s agency has pretty good taste in music. Hard to believe The Flaming Lips are still going strong…I remember buying their CDs back in the 80s. [Read more →]

All reports say that Michael Vick intends to plead guilty to the charges against him in federal court. I knew he was guilty…everyone with half a brain knew he was guilty. A number of people chastised me for saying he was guilty, telling me “everyone is innocent until proven guilty”. Guess what? They’re wrong. [Read more →]

The latest song that has grabbed my attention is used in a Dell commercial: Devo’s “Watch Us Work It”. In the commercial, I dig the color scheme and the juxtaposition of something mechanical like an engine and something electronic like a computer. I was a big Devo fan back in the day, but I had forgotten all about that song until I heard it on the commercial. Fun.

Today, CNN had a headline that said “Goldberg joins The View”. The first thing that popped into my head was “The View” had hired Bill Goldberg to replace what’s-her-face. And I thought “hmmm…maybe I’ll have to start checking that show out”. Imagine my disappointment when I realized they were talking about Whoopi Goldberg. Bummer.