• My First Time Playing Poker in 5 Years

    My First Time Playing Poker in 5 Years

    My friend Todd was visiting Vegas from Japan for the past few weeks. When I asked if there was any Vegas stuff he wanted to do while he was here, I was surprised to hear him say that he wanted to play poker. I hadn’t played in about five years and hadn’t really even thought…

  • Home Automation

    Home Automation

    One of the projects I’ve been tinkering with constantly for the past nine months or so that we’ve lived at our new house is home automation. I’ve been into home automation since about 1996 and have had a fully automated house ever since 2003 or so. Even my RV was so automated that it unlocked…

  • Superhuman 4.5 in August

    Superhuman 4.5 in August

    My live event, Superhuman 4.5, will be held in Las Vegas on August 14th and 15th (with an optional meetup the night before). Reflecting on the changes brought about by the pandemic, one of the things I missed most was doing these Superhuman events. They’re a ton of fun and very gratifying for me to…

  • Why I Switched Back to WordPress and What I Learned

    Why I Switched Back to WordPress and What I Learned

    If you read the blog through the web you may notice that, for the first time in about a decade, it looks different. If you get posts by email you hopefully don’t notice anything, but since it’s a whole new system… who knows. A little over nine years ago, my good friend Todd and I…

  • How to Get Maximum Enjoyment From Cruises

    How to Get Maximum Enjoyment From Cruises

    It’s no secret that I absolutely love cruising. Every year I organize a few cruises and try to get as many of my friends as possible to join me. The only limit I have on how many days per year I spend at sea is how many days I can convince friends to cruise with…

  • Variance and Investing

    Variance and Investing

    One of the best things to come from my career as a professional gambler is a deep unconscious understanding of risk, odds, EV, and variance. The downside to this is that I see people make fundamental errors all the time, especially in investing, and it really bothers me. Usually I notice these errors not because…

  • You Have More Options When You’re Weird

    You Have More Options When You’re Weird

    In many ways my life is very weird. Sometimes when I’m about to make a statement like that I try to think of a relatable example of how I’m not weird in some way, but it’s hard to come up with one. I wear clothes like everyone else… except I only have one set. I…

  • How I Make Purchasing Decisions

    How I Make Purchasing Decisions

    Despite being a pretty severe minimalist for a long time, I think I’m now known a lot for what I buy. I worry about this a little bit sometimes, because I don’t think being a great consumer is very meaningful. On the other hand, buying the right things is a good substitution for buying a…

  • The Best Food in Hilo, Hawaii

    The Best Food in Hilo, Hawaii

    I don’t really consider myself to be a foodie, but the food in Hilo is SO good that it’s one of the things I most look forward to every time I visit. I’ve been to the major Hawaiian islands and have had great food on all of them, but Hilo is definitely in a league…

  • Attainable Excellence

    Attainable Excellence

    By strange coincidence, I know a lot of people starting restaurants. Some are friends, some are family members, and some I’ve just gotten to know because I eat at their restaurants all the time. One is a world class chocolate company, another is a pizza place, another is a shave ice stand, and another is…