Lately
I haven't written anything for a while, and figured I should just do an update. Mostly to get the writing muscles flexing. So with that here are some things I have been doing with myself.
Peppermill Poker Palooza
This is my favorite series, hands down. The vibe at the Peppermill Palooza in general is good, the people are fun, there are enough small tournaments and satellites that make the fields pretty soft. I generally do well during the series and I took most of the week off to play.
Final table of the Peppermill Poker Palooza 2026 - Monster Stack (Photo Credit: Dan Ross)
That being said I got wrecked pretty bad, while I did cash 3 times, one of those being a final table, I did not do so hot the rest of the time. Needless to say the players and dealers as usual made it a fun time. Part of the reason was definitely due to a side bet I was a part of, which involved Player of the Series points. Not to get too in the weeds about it, but the basics are you get points whenever you get in the money in a tournament for the series, and the points you receive are based on your placing and tournament size. The hunt for points led me to buy-in to more tournaments than usual, as well as fire more bullets than usual, to which the result was being more stuck than usual.
I did finally learn how to play a bunch of the lowball triple draw games, which I have been wanting to play for a while. I feel like tournaments are a good place to experiment with these other poker variants because you can cap your losses a bit easier than playing cash.
Monterey
After the series, my son had his Spring Break (feel a bit odd saying that, since he is 3, and his preschool has a spring break), so I took a bit of time off and went with the family to Monterey, mostly to go see the aquarium. I feel like I have been before, but after going I am not sure if I had. In any case it was pretty cool! We stayed at a hotel, right next to Cannery Row and were able to walk to the museum.
Something I learned, Cannery Row was named after Cannery Row by Steinbeck. I guess it was a nickname by the local population, but after the book the street was officially renamed in 1958.
Aquarium notes for people visiting, get there early, and ask the staff when feeding times are. My personal favorite was the Open Sea feeding time.
Other things I would recommend is Hulas, get a tiki drink and the jerk chicken and Recycled Records if you're into vinyl, a small but stacked record shop.
WSOPC South Lake Tahoe
After the Peppermill series I was definitely a bit burnt out, but I figured the weekend following some family time was a good enough rest for me to get back in the saddle. I was planning on just playing one of the smaller $400 turbo ring events that happened nightly during the series, on the last weekend while the main event was going on.
Prior to this trip I found there was some interest in people wanting to buy action for the main event. The main event buy-in was a bit out of my range, $1700, but I figured if I could sell about 30% it would make the risk manageable.
I was able to sell 30% and had more on deck if I needed a second bullet. Luckily I did not need that second bullet, but I also didn't end up cashing. Making it to 60th out of the 290 for that flight. Though it was the largest buy-in I have played the competition was similar to other events in the 800 to 1.2k range that I am used to, with a few outliers including some pros/grinders that I haven't seen around too often. The WSOP live app is great to get quick reads on your opponents, since it tells you is sitting at your table and how much they have made in WSOP tournaments.
Overall played well. Highest I was able to get my stack up to was around ~140k, but the majority of the night it was a roller coaster bounce back and forth from around 100k to starting stack at 40k. Next day I came back around to play the $400 turbo, to no avail.
Projects
Reliquary
I have not released this yet, but the basic idea is Calibre... but modern, and built server-first. For those not aware, Calibre is an application that helps you manage your ebook collection. Yes, I know about calibre-web — it's solid, but it still relies on Calibre to manage the library. I wanted something that started life as a server. Once I get this to MVP I'll post the code to github, and hopefully we can get some traction as a community project.
DAx
DAx has changed a lot since my first post, but the bones are still there. I really need to put up a post about my agent/skill stack. Sneak peek of my agent's names:
- Tuvok
- B'Elanna
- Jake
- Uhura
- Garak
- Bashir
Each one handles a different domain. Tuvok for security review, Garak for threat intel, B'Elanna for adversarial critiques. All orchestrated by DAx so I never manually task-switch between roles.
Beyond, that I am currently (finally) setting up OpenClaw, for full time DAx access.
What's Next!
Will be hitting up the Monster Stack next week at Thunder Valley, and still figuring out when I am heading out to Vegas for WSOP.
I have a bunch of stuff in flight, that I want to tell you about, but it's not quite time yet so stay tuned!