So Candlewood Suites apparently offers free broadband internet to its patrons now (new this year!).
Yay!
It is kinda cool. I've been in hotels that had broadband in the rooms, but it's never been free before.
Oh and Mary, notice the proper use of "its" and "it's" there...
So yeah, I'm bored. Quite, quite bored.
So I figured I'd share my boredom with you, my insanely hot, imaginary fanbase.
I'm down in the Philly area this week on both business and pleasure.
Spent the Easter weekend with Mary's fam in South Jersey. This is quite a big holiday for them (and honestly, not a very big one for my family), so it seemed a good time to make the trek.
And let me say, I had a great time.
Her family is, to quote my departed grandmother (Banana), a "hoot". I immediately felt welcome. Heck, they even made up a (HUGE) personalized Easter Basket, just for me.
We went to Catholic Mass Easter morning, where I once again forgot that their version of the Lord's Prayer does not end with "For thine is the kingdom..." I got several words in before I noticed I was the only one talking.
I then sat there, in shame, while 99% of the congregation went up for Communion (talk about Catholic Guilt! Hey-yo!) for I am naught but a filthy Protestant...
Dinner afterwards was, to put it mildly, gargantuan. Every bit of it massively tasty, but I couldn't even begin to squeeze it all down.
I also met parts of the extended fam, and some friends, and talked about all sorts of things, including, oddly-enough, extended talks about Civil War history (a favourite subject of mine).
Okay, this is starting to sound like some sort of weird book report, or "What I did over Easter Vacation" essay (am I at 500 words yet?)
And now I'm in a hotel room outside of Philly, as I'm working in our office down hereabouts for a few days (since I'm in the area anyway).
And I'm bored, bored, bored.
Oh, and can I just say that my opinion of CNN can not drop any lower? It has become the all Terri Schiavo, all the time network. Oh, peppered with riveting updates on the Michael Jackson case...
Yuck.
Thank god for the Family Guy (the watching of which just caused me to pause in my typing for several minutes).
Ah well.
Not much more to do here. I guess I should get some sleep.
And that's what I did over Easter Week.
The End.
Came across this log entry in my daily crawl across the blogosphere...
Scientific American Gets Snarky.
It so sums up my view of the idiocy that is journalism today.
Of course, Jon Stewart makes comments along these lines every day, but I can hardly link to a TV show, can I?
I'm just glad to know there are others out there who think things are getting as massively absurd as I think they are.
Yep, that's right, this blog is officially one year old!
I never even would have realized it, except that I've been upgrading the software for it (with some difficulty, see this post for a bit more on the subject) and noticed the date of the styles.css file.
Yeah, that's boring, I know.
A few musings about the past year below the jump.
So... a year of highly-intermittent ramblings to an imaginary (and increasingly attractive) audience.
And no sign the rubber-room bridge is enroute! Yay!
Looking back through the first two posts on the site, I can see I was actually pretty spot-on with my topics prediction, although I got the order pretty wrong.
However, I was wrong in saying that I'd have more substantive posts and less "witty reparte with myself". Clearly I can't get enough of witty reparte with myself (I may go blind soon!)
In the past year, many things have changed and many others have stayed almost exactly the same.
I'm still a techie geek and a gamer. I still have the same job. I still play poker. I'm still a wannabe, unpublished writer (and still because I don't do anything about it). I still live in the same area.
What HAS changed?
I play BETTER poker (arguably), and online now, to boot!
I own a house (dear god, he's an adult!)
My politics, if anything, have gone even farther to the left while I simultaneously get increasingly disgusted with the whole process.
I have met an amazing, gorgeous, intelligent and challenging (it's a good thing, trust me) woman, and have somehow convinced her to date me for more than half a year. Though of course, after reading that paragraph, she might change her mind...
I've opened my mind and my heart up to all kinds of new things, and people, and learned things I never thought I could.
Hell, I LIKE chinese food! That alone is a blockbuster of a revelation. Next thing you know, I'll be growing tree-like vegetables and eating them!
No, no. That's mad. Quite-quite mad.
So yeah.
A year. Wow.
Doesn't seem that long (except, possibly, to those poor few souls who actually read this dreck).
Dunno how it will be possible, but I hope the next year is even better!
First off, I want to come right out and state that were I to go into a coma, or otherwise be basically completely mentally incapable of continuing any vaguely normal sort of life (that is, something like Terri Schiavo) and there was no medically reasonable chance that I would ever get better, then I would want the plug pulled.
I say this both to be clear on my stance and because I'm basically too lazy to craft a living will.
Having said that, can I say that I find this whole Terri Schiavo case fairly disgusting?
And probably not for the reasons you may think.
Keep her alive, let her die... whatever. Not my life, not the life of anyone related to me (either familially or emotionally), not my call.
WHY IN GOD'S NAME is the government getting involved in this?
Oh wait, I think I, sadly, just answered my own question.
God.
In government decision-making.
Yeah.
Smaller government, except in how people live their lives, huh?
These state and now, sadly, FEDERAL government types should get the hell out of this matter.
It's a family's decision. LET THEM FUCKING MAKE IT!
If they have a dispute, let it be either settled by them or... hrmm... if only we had some sort of constitutionally-mandated place for disputes to be settled...
A Schiavo Google News Search (http://news.google.com/news?sourceid=mozclient&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&hl=en&edition=&q=schiavo) is absolutely depressing to me.
Ah well, that's pretty much all I had to say.
Hey ya'all...
I've been all kinds of active on this here bloggy-thing, huh?
I've even gone so far as to upgrade dat dere software version for it!
Which trust me, is a mixed blessing at best (the management interface is real screwed up right now; I'm currently typing this entry into a text box about 8 characters wide by 2 lines high... FUN)
Anyway... More about poker.
Figured I'd provide a summary (as promised) of how my play is going currently.
First, the money numbers:
Total Net Profit: $110.33
Net Profit (minus bonuses): $35.33
Bonuses Cleared: $75
Current Online Stake: $185.33
And some statistics on my play...
Summary:
Percentage of Hands Won: 10%
Percentage of Showdowns Won: 52%
Percentage of Flops Seen: 30%
Percentage of Flops Won, if Seen: 37%
My actions:
Fold: 47.49%
Check: 18.77%
Call: 17.84%
Bet: 11.12%
Raise: 3.11%
Re-raise: 1.67%
Where I fold:
Pre-Flop: 74.03%
Flop: 12.19%
Turn: 5.07%
River: 1.21%
No Fold: 7.49%
What does it all mean?
Well, basically, when I play a hand (past the flop), there's a good chance that I will win (more than one in three times).
The stats also tell me that I'm a little looser than I'd like (seeing 30% of flops is a bit much, even counting from the blinds). I imagine that if I can get this down about 5-8%, I'll probably markedly increase the amount I win (or rather, decrease the amount I lose).
I don't have stats for the rest, but I'd bet that the raise and re-raise percentages are a bit lower than they should be, indicating that I'm a bit too passive. I would be interested in knowing that one for sure though.
So overall, I'm doing fairly well. Up a bit in actual winnings (up almost 50% of my original buy-in) and up a good deal in bonuses.
I guess I need to keep plugging away!
Okay, so. As my prior post indicated, I've started playing online poker finally (after some prompting from a few friends and a good deal of thinking on the subject).
I'll be doing a summary post of how I'm doing thus-far at some point (a hint - it's good), but I figured I'd start off with a far more amusing tale...
As the title of this post indicates, my first day of online poker was, to be blunt, painful. And that's just for my friends! (assuming they're still talking to me, of course).
*****************************************************************
Having read my prior post (I'm talking to YOU, massive [and inordinately sexy] imaginary fanbase!), you know that my first night of poker was far from pleasant.
It started out okay. I'd taken care of the details of setting up the various accounts, depositing the monies, etc, etc a few days prior. So all was in place for me to dive right in and play!
I sat down in the mid evening and fired up ye olde poker program (Absolute Poker) poked around the tables for a bit, then picked a .25/.50 cent limit ring table.
Now, I'd read Lee Jones twice before all this, so I had, in my mind, a fairly good idea of what I was going to do. Namely, assume you couldn't ever bluff, that you'd be called down every time and to only start with premium hands (on a sliding-scale based on your relative position).
Easy enough, right? Those starting hand tables of his were burned into my brain, so I could do this in my sleep.
Hmmmm... yeah. Must have a word with Mr. Jones at some point...
What isn't mentioned is the level of patience required, nor the amount of variance you could see.
I buy into tables with around 24ish Big Bets (at .25/.50, that's $12 or 1/6th my online stake). This is, to my understanding, a fairly standard buy-in level.
The first table I sat down at (.25/.50), I played for about 20-30 hands (3-4 rotations), getting up a couple of bucks ahead when the table suddenly tightened-up.
I then moved to a second table (.25/.50 again) and played about 10 hands before leaving because I also found it to be too tight for my tastes. I left that one down a buck or two.
Now let me pause a moment to explain that when I say a table was "too tight" for me, what I mean is that every hand is being folded around to the blinds, and occasionally even the small blind is folding. A great table for bluffing at, but I was trying for more "Lee Jones" poker, so this was no good for me.
At this point, I took a break, read a few pages of one of the books I'm reading right now, had a snack, then came back, ready for more action!
"This is EASY" the deluded scotsman thinks to himself, a grin of vulpine cunning forming on his lips.
NOW we get to the meat of the post...
So I sits down, see, and, Lee Jones every foremost in my thoughts, begin playing poker. Natch.
The third table (.25/.50 again) was the mix I was looking for. Several loose players (but no real maniacs), a rock (by all appearances) and one or too people who were probably around my skill and target style. A veritable Lee Jones paradise, see?
I then proceed on what can only be classified as the worst run of cards in the history of my poker career. I mean, REAL stinkers. 82o, 94o, 72s, J3o and, of course, the ever-present Q4o.
Towards the end of the session, I swore to the sweet lord god above, lover of the sick, comforter of the dying, eater of children, that if I saw another Q4o, that people would begin dying around me. Not my fault. It was god's will. He sent the bitch and her little quadruped minion. I was merely making good on my promise to HIM. We should always keep our promises to the great spirit in the sky, right?
It was over 150 hands of pure, unadulterated crap. And I don't mean normal crappy cards. I mean the droppings that crappy cards leave after a large chili-and-cheese meal.
By the end, I was cursing and howling, shouting imprecations at the flaming effigy of Lee Jones that I'd whipped up and truly frothing at the mouth.
See, he never mentioned this stuff!
I didn't stop playing until the last cent of that particular buy-in was gone ($12, down the drain; a travesty that caused all my penny-pinching scottish ancestors no end of pain, I have no doubt). I then fired up the email program and shot off a missive to the aforementioned poker friends, in an attempt to draw on their years of sage wisdom to help me understand what the fuck was going on!
I was, sadly, in a foul mood at that point, so I wasn't the most pleasant person in the world in the email. Mind you, I wasn't abusive to them or anything, I was just in a foul mood and used descriptive language regarding Absolute poker, poker in general and all those who helped conceive the very notion of poker (I think I even railed against the use of pokers in fireplaces somewhere in there...)
I should pause and note to you, my loyal and sexy fans, that what was frustrating the hell out of me (besides the run of bad cards), was not losing the money. $12 isn't chump change, but it's hardly going to hurt me, come rent time. No, what was bothering me was the dawning fear that it WASN'T the cards that were causing the lose-iosity; that I was somehow a far worse poker player than I thought, even though I've put no small amount of time and effort into improving my game.
After the electronic equivalent of peeing liquid frustration into email form was done and sent off, I stalked off and watched a few comedic programs from my Tivo lineup (Mr. John Stewart, my deepest thanks. You sir, are the comedic equivalent of a box of pixie stix!)
I came back a bit later, more centered, and read the response emails from poor Berna and JD. They were kind, comforting, and remarkably free of restraining orders. They gave the sage advice I'd hoped for; tips on how I could have played some things better, and most importantly, with the strong advice that patience is paramount in online poker. A MUST, even!
Thus calmed, I endeavoured to make one more fray into the poker world before bed.
I tried for another .25/.50 table, but they were all full, so I sat down at a .50/1 table, thinking I'd leave in a bit and try the .25/.50 tables again. I was pessimistic and cautious, expecting more bad cards and bad play.
So yeah, I got up a few hours later up $15.75 (and thus up about 2 bucks for the whole evening).
The cards were a bit better, the table ever so slightly tighter (I like that, I have now found) and, most importantly, my play was more relaxed. I'd run with the hot streaks, loosening up my play a bit until I took a hit, then tightening up a touch.
I played better and frankly, had more fun.
So a word of advice to all you kids out there getting ready to play poker:
First, Marlboro's are the cigarette of choice for all "cool" kids.
Second, she can't get pregnant if you do it standing up.
And, oh yeah, third, Patience, Patience, Patience is the name of the game in online poker.
So yeah, this is long enough. I'm stopping now. Dinner and all that.
Have a good evening, you sexy things!
Just started playing online poker tonight.
Mixed results thus far (never seen a worse string of cards in my life, and that's saying something).
I'm taking a break, having emailed some friends for their impression of where my expectations should be (hi Berna, hi JD!).
In the meantime, some reading and relaxing and mulling over the game... My frustration at the lack of hands is what really killed me (made me play a few marginal ones I shouldn't have).
I need to work on that some more, it seems.
Here's the current stats on my online poker stake, after 2 hours play:
Starting deposit: $75
Immediate Bonus: $25
Rake-based Bonus: $26.50 (currently uncleared; 28% of the way to clearing the first $10)
Net Gain/loss for play this evening: $10.45
Current Total (discluding uncleared bonuses): $89.55
Depending on how I feel (and the answer, if any, to my email tonight), I may take another stab at it before bed. We'll see...
...I have returned.
I think this may be my longest absence yet. Oh how all you non-existant readers must have quailed and gnashed your teeth!
So anyway, a quick catch-up (wherein the reason for my absence may become clear).
Firstly, on my last post. It seems I was right in my pessimism. Social Security, Alberto Gonzales, the Bankruptcy Bill, John Bolton, horrible judicial nominees redux...
He took the lowest of the low road. It saddens me. It's good to see the Democrats at least trying to be a real party again in the face of it (hell, their back is against the wall now; did they have a choice?). Though I am still an ardent independant, they have my support as the only viable voice of opposition (though where in hell that voice was during Gonzales and the Bankruptcy bills is anybody's guess).
Enough of that.
First and foremost among what's gone on in my life.
Mary.
What can I say? She's more important than I ever thought another person could be to me. So much so that I've broken my own ban on mentioning my dating life in this blog. 'Cause frankly, it's not really dating anymore.
You may recall her from this post on poker awhile back, as the girl who was "an issue for mostly different reasons".
Yeah... that's putting it mildly. She's literally changed my life. But I'm not going on and on (and I could), because she's actually going to be here in about an hour, and my place is an absolute mess.
Suffice to say that, if I have my way, she'll be getting mentions in the Monologue for as long as it exists.
Work... steams on as usual. Great job, great boss, great fun. Had to do a drive to Syracuse (from where I live, near Boston) a few months ago to do a crash install of a router. It was 12 hours of driving and installing fun! I made movies on my digital camera to pass the time, which are quite strange. Sadly, you shall never see them!
Poker... after a self-inflicted slump just before the turn of the year, my game has picked-up considerably. I credit it to luck, a renewed focus on actually improving my game (instead of just having fun) and reading Lee Jones' book, "Winning Low Limit Hold'Em" (twice).
This is a great book, and a must read for any novice or intermediate hold'em player. Thanks to Berna and JD (and Mary) for suggesting it.
Since the upswing started, I'm up about $180 ($150 of that coming from a second place finish in a 50+ person poker tourney). I have another monthly game tonight, at which I hope to continue my winning ways.
I've now taken that $150 and set that aside as my "poker bucket". The hopes is I will never run out of it. If I do, I'll revisit my methods of play and whether I even should play (depending on how fast I burn through it, fun has a price in my head, after all).
After much soul-searching, I've also taken half of said bucket (aka, $75) and deposited it at an online poker site, for use in low-limit games (.25/.50, .50/1, 1/2, and maybe someday 2/4). I haven't actually started playing yet (I just deposited it yesterday), but I have some hopes.
I intend to keep track of how I do there on this blog, both as a writing exercise and an exercise in self-control (I have fears of losing much money doing this). Chances are, if I run out of THAT $75, that will be the end of my online poker career.
We'll see how it goes ;)
The house is doing well, though unpacking, which paused its asymptotic approach to completion sometime in september, still remains incomplete. Must do something about it one of these days... (shyeah, right).
So yeah, I'm just sitting here, more happy and content than I thought I could be.
For those in the real know, can you imagine how I would have reacted to hearing this outcome 7 years ago?
It is to laugh.