memoryloot

The Memorial Day holiday brought a great opportunity to pay another visit to Las Vegas for the 3 days off. It was also a birthday celebration for Chanthou as well as a celebration for me being debt free. We left for Vegas Saturday morning and did not arrive until 5pm. The traffic wasn’t too bad. There was some delay’s on the way to Hesperia, but it was negligible considering we did not experience major traffic from that point on.

I played some craps and a $50 1-2 NL game when we got there. Unfortunately lost about $150 before we even went to eat dinner. We enjoyed a nice dinner at an Asian noodle place in the Hilton (our hotel). Did some saki bombs and saki shots for Chanthou’s birthday. After dinner I went back to the 1-2 NL game and bought in for another $50. At the end of the night I walked away with $377. So I was up $177. We spent the next morning eating dim-sum in Chinatown Las Vegas. Because I had won the night before, I decided to give everyone a treat and paid for the bill. We then went to see a magic show at the Tropicana hotel. This was my first Las Vegas show I’ve ever experienced. The show was okay and I’ve always enjoyed watching magic so it was a good experience.

After we finished the show, we went back to the hotel. Rich and I decided to lay-out at the pool. It was nice. The pool was cold and the weather carried a breeze towards the end of our 2 hours out in the sun. I did get a bit of color, but nothing to really brag about.

We get back up to the hotel room and discovered that the girls had received comp dinner at our hotel for signing up with a player’s club card. Sweet! We stuffed ourselves with all sorts of buffet food. There was even free alcohol at the buffet.

After dinner, we went to see Fremont Street, the original “Las Vegas Strip” in Downtown Las Vegas. I really liked it there. It was also a first time for me being there. We settled down at the Binions Hotel and played some craps. Lost another $140 there. We left Fremont at 11pm and went back to our hotel. Obviously I had to visit the card room once again after the successful night I had before. With the initial $50 buy-in, I had slowly accumulated about $650 and became big stack in a matter of 5-6 hours. Unfortunately, I had lost $400 in a matter of 2 hands afterwards. The second place chip-leader had busted me with a set of Q’s. We actually both had Q’s and I thought I was good since my cards were Q-10. Unfortunately, he had Q-A. That hurt. I grinded out my last $200 for another 3 hours until I lost it all. I rebought w/another $100 and played all the way till 5am this morning. I lost it on busted up flush draw against another Q top pair. The cool part about both poker nights, I came across a couple of regulars who were very receptive of me. The first night I had an older gentleman who joked around with me and told me all the regulars that played with us that night along with their style of play. This morning, the guy who beat me w/top pair Qs shook my hand and said, “I’ll see you in the circuit.” He thinks that I play professionally! A great confidence booster to a down weekend. At the end of the trip, I had only spent $300 of the $600 I brought. Not bad considering I had treated for dim-sum and paid for other expenses besides gambling.

Yes I finally did it! Finally reached one of my financial milestones. I’ve finally become debt free. This afternoon, I just dropped off the last check to pay-off my student loan. No more student loan payments, no more car payments, no more credit card interest payments. Well, maybe for a mortgage, but that’s it!

Here is a picture of me and my final check and letter to my loan company.

Here is me depositing my letter in the post office.

Here is the last look of the letter going down the post office box.

And finally, my Dave Ramsey declaration in MP3 format.

No I did not call into his show. I just made my own audio file. Yes I’m lame, but I’m also debt free!

Radiohead’s performance of Arpeggi in Copenhague this year is absolutely incredible! Check it out for yourself.

I’ve read that there’s another boring version of this song out there. This one is remade to be a bit more upbeat. Hopefully we’ll find it in the next RH album. In the meantime I’m waiting for Thom’s The Eraser album.

Reminder: Tickets for Radiohead’s LA shows go on sale tomorrow morning at 10am for June 29th and 30th. Go get your tickets! I can’t wait to buy mine.

Its a sad sad day. Both teams I’ve been rooting for has been knocked out of the NBA Playoffs. My San Antonio Spurs lost in OT against the Dallas Mavericks and the Phoenix Suns ran over the LA Clippers by 20 points. Now its Dallas Mavericks vs. Phoenix Suns. Both team have similar playing styles. But I have to say Dallas has a much deeper bench and a better all around players. The Suns are way too small in my opinion to go heads up with Dallas. I’m picking Dallas for the West. As for the East, the Detroit Pistons revealed some weakness during the Cleveland series. Miami Heats needs to see what Cleveland did right and attack that. My pick for the East goes to the Heats. And finally Heats as the NBA champs. The East is much stronger than the West so I’m sure East will win the championship regardless.

For the people that I talk to on a day-to-day basis, you would know that the one show that I’ve been secretly keeping up with is The OC. Yes I am a 29-year-old-in-the-closet-OC-fan. Although I did sort of lose interest of it in Season 2 but have been watching it ever since the character Oliver was gone. I just watched the season finale tonight for Season 3 and finally realized they killed off one of their main character, Marissa Cooper, played by Mischa Barton. Like many of the OC fans out there, I did not like Marissa at times. She was always the damsel in distress or the reckless party girl who was on a path of self-destruction. But after watching this episode and realizing that they killed her off, I’m kinda sad because her character grew on me. Yeah it was kinda of lame this season when she went off with yet another guy and initiated a self-destruction phase of her life after her friend Johnny died and finally realized that she messed up in a single episode to come back into the good girl getting set to go to college. I’ve been scouring the discussion boards reading on what people had to say. Most people was actually upset and crying. I assure you I have yet to shed a tear but I am in disbelief. I am in awe and kinda of in denial that she’s dead. Its been awhile since a show has actually given me this kind of a reaction. I’m definitely going to be there for the next season’s premiere. Thank you Fox and Josh Swartz, you’ve sold me on this one.

My second playoff game came sooner that I had expected. Because of some unfortunate reason, I was offered the opportunity to see the Clippers again last night against the Suns in Game 6 of their series. Again the Clippers was victorious and forced a deciding Game 7 at Phoenix. It was very entertaining and our seats this time was at center court but still at the nose-bleeds. Thank goodness it was the Staples Center since it didn’t matter where we sat we were still in the middle of the action. I brought my Adalyn to her first NBA game ever. She was excited. Everything was fine until near the end when some dude 2 rows back fell over and push the guy behind us on her. She’s a little banged up on the shins, but I think she’ll be fine. What a way to enjoy the action after a nail-biting conclusion to my Spurs’ game the night before where they inched by the Mavs by 1 point to foce a Game 6.

On another unrelated note, I finally put 59% of my position into cash. My trailing stop-loss mark was actually met today so I had to make that switch to cash to reduce further damage by this recent bearish market. Hopefully I’ll have to see if my move was right. Moving your money out of position seems a bit overwhelming. I am worried about the fees and tax implications. But since its in a roll-over IRA, I don’t think I have any issues with tax since an IRA’s capital gain does not impact my taxes since this is tax deferred. Also the money market mutual fund’s overall fee is only 0.13% per year. That’s about just a meal a year so no biggie. Now I have to do the same with the remaining 41% of my portfolio. Unfortunately, this one is in my 401K so I have to wait for a recent transaction I initiated. On May 12th, I moved the majority of that portfolio into a Small Cap and International Fund. Both sectors suffered a 6% decline so far since then. I would have only lost about 4% if I left it the way it was in multiple funds. Oh well, live and learn. I’m willing to move that into cash as soon as we hit about 10-12% stop-loss. Hopefully this will happen later since I can initiate another transaction. Only crappy part in dealing with my 401K is that you’re only allowed 2 transactions a month.

On a positive note, I’m looking to be completely debt free next Friday. I think I’m going to have it on video of me screaming, “I’m debt free“, much like how those Dave Ramsey callers do it on his radio show. Hopefully I can post that on here when it happens.

I never thought my first NBA Playoff game would be for the Clippers of all team. Thanks to Shon, I was treated to a very good basketball game between the Phoenix Suns and the Clips. Even got a “Clipper Nation” tshirt. To top it off, the Clips beat the Suns! What a series. Now its tied with 2 games a piece heading back to Phoenix for game 5. Clips in 6!