Can someone help me download PT4 for Windows?
lhr0909, Jun 01 2016
For some reason I just couldn't get PT4 for Windows downloaded into my computer. Admittedly I am in China and the Chinese Internet is fairly walled off. Despite my proxy server in Japan, Korea and San Francisco, I still couldn't get it to download. Could someone help me download and share it via dropbox/Google Drive so I can pull it down? Cheers!
Video Games Goal Achieved, Spin and Go Time!
lhr0909, Aug 08 2015
Hi,
Haven't been playing poker for months because of this:
Now that I got Hearthstone out of the way, I am going to play some poker now lol.
Have been talking to SemPeR a bit about poker when he was switching out of poker into software engineering. But I didn't really take his poker coaching benefit until July when he came in and visit from Vancouver for a week. I asked him what is the best way to learn poker fast (lol) and he told me to get into heads-up. Played a bit of HUSNG and got tons of advice from him.
The HUSNG traffic is terrible in the States, so I found my way to play on stars again. But instead of HUSNG, I feel like Spin and Go's are probably more fun to get into. So we will see! Will post some graphs soon.
Also been going to TI5 every day :O I still got work to go to, so my schedule has been getting up at 6am, go to work from 7a-4p, and just go straight to KeyArena and watch some dota 2 with a beer in my hand (YES). Definitely tired after this whole week. Today is the finals, hope I get to see some good DotA 2 games.
Life Advice Needed for 2015
lhr0909, Jan 05 2015
TL;DR - I have a 100k USD/yr job but my US legal status is expiring, at the same time I am thinking about doing a startup company in China with my friend, and I need advice on which is more +EV. Thank you in advance!
Haven't been able to stably play poker for the rest of 2014 since last blog post.. Was pretty sad about that. I think I was breakeven for the most part from September to December, which doesn't sound too good lol. But this is not the purpose of this blog post. I think I am going into a turning point in my life, so I need some advice from all of you smart individuals. I would love to hear what all of you would do if you were in my shoes.
Just to give more background on the spot, I am currently working as a Software Developer at one of the biggest tech companies on the west coast of United States, making about 100k USD/year (picked up poker just for fun, but some serious fun lol). However, I am a Chinese National instead of a US citizen. And one of the biggest problems I am facing is that, I don't have a stable immigration status to stay in the US for good. I am currently on a student visa with a post-graduation training permission to work for a company until December 21, 2015 (Did undergrad here in the States from 2009 to 2013).
In order to stay in the US/my current job, I do have several options. I have a chance to grab my work visa (H1-B) by getting into a government lottery system on April 1, 2015. Last year there were 180,000 people squeezing their heads into 85,000 spots (20,000 for graduate students, which I don't get). This year it will be around the same, and more towards slightly worse (more and more people try to get the visa every year). If I get the lottery, I will be able to apply for the visa and be back on stable status in the US and be back on track. Otherwise, I will still be able to work with my company and hopefully have them put me in either Vancouver, Canada/Beijing, China for 1 year and come back into the States with another type of work visa (L-1). Of course pay will be adjusted, so definitely preferring Vancouver for the $$$ over Beijing.
If the problem were this easy I don't think I would be writing this post lol. Having been working for a big company for a little over a year, I am feeling a little bit burnt out, and lost. I have always loved programming since age 11 and programming has been my biggest passion of my life, until I started working. 8 hours of work each day is slowing chewing me away and I started to hate it. Work is often times pretty dreadful, despite doing "creative work" for the most part. I don't have the motivation to get better at programming outside of work, and the technology stack we use is behind compared to, say, the startups. I really miss the days at school where I learn some cool languages and stuff outside of classes and do something fun with it, and now I need to use some ancient/company-specific stuff like Perl/Java every day and do repetitive tasks like bug fixing/pulling data from other teams and rendering into HTML, etc. I guess I am either not getting challenged, or my job has been a bit too stable. 
Recently I took a 3-week vacation to come back to my hometown in China. Talked with one of my best friends who quit UC Berkeley with 1 semester left and came back to China to start up his own tech company. He has been messaging me while I was in the US, saying that he would love me to join his company, as a partner. And this time we finally get some face-to-face time and we talked about everything about the company, things that happened in 2014 and game plan for 2015. He has been doing lots of reading and researching on everything, and he really wanted me to join him and build the next big thing, mainly wearable electronics. Currently the Chinese market is booming at a ridiculous rate in terms of internet business and comsumer electronics like smartphones and wearables. He told me that I would be leading a team to research and develop that next big thing. It is definitely not easy, and it is quite a gamble, since I won't be having much income working with him during the research phase. The company will also be doing software consulting, building websites for various clients on the side. Last year the company made about 300k-400k CNY in 2014 with just 1 project and had about 200k CNY left after all the operational costs. He ensured me a spot of partnership and I will be getting around a third of the company stock (we have another good friend of ours and he is currently a co-founder, but he is still working on his PhD at Harvard so he is not doing much of the business for the company).
3 of us met in high school and we built our 1st robotics team for our high school, and we made 1st place city-wide and state-wide competitions for the first time we did it. We had the synergy to run a company, where my buddy is full of ideas, and I am very good with tech, and the PhD buddy is great on the business side of things. I really missed the time we were together as high school kids building robots. I feel like we could do something big together.
As we talked, I also learned that he was miles and miles ahead of me in terms of the cutting-edge technology that he knows. He got to use the latest Web Technology on the projects that he worked on, and he had a very deep knowledge about it as well. I suddenly felt very behind because I didn't have the extra time to look at these new things, didn't get to use them at work, and more importantly, working at a big corporate killed my drive of learning more about programming every day. Although I would love to admit that I also learned something during my time at the company, but more in terms of stability, maintainability, scalability and performance of my code. I just feel like the things that he has been doing is way more interesting and challenging to me.
One thing becomes very clear that joining him means I will be giving up my corporate job, and the current pay level, which I think I am okay without. But I feel like I do need some contingency plan - If I decide to come back to China, I will do my best to get myself promoted to Software Development Engineer II (SDE2) title before leaving the States. With that on my resume, even if business fails in a year or two, I will still be able to get back into a big company with good pay again. There are 3 big companies in China I can get into, Baidu (the Chinese Google), Alibaba (the Chinese Amazon, which is way better than amazon.cn), or Tencent (the company that bought League of Legends, also does other things), or I might even be able to come back into the States if I wish.
On the other hand, I have a girlfriend and we are together for about 7 years now. We met since high school and I think it is about time for us to seal the deal and get married soon. She is currently working at a company on the east coast, and she is on the same boat as me in terms of immigration status (needs to get the same lottery this year in order to stay in the States). I talked to her briefly about my thoughts on partnering with my friend back in China, and she didn't like that because she didn't think we are (especially I am) experienced enough to run a startup company. Also talked to my parents about coming back to China and I think they were supportive, as long as I am ready.
Alright I think I have enough background for you guys and hope you guys can give some solid advice. Will be doing a poll below so you guys don't have to necessarily comment 
Poll: What would you do LP?
(Vote): Stay with big company and suck it up
(Vote): Partner with my buddies and build our own business
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