Sunday, April 30, 2006

Your Blog Sucks

And so does mine.

Here's an idea. People need to stop attempting to pass judgement on what other people choose to do with their blogs. I often hear people say "It's your blog, you should do what you want." But that only seems to apply to when someone wants to post something stupid or contraversial. When they want to post an ad or something that might increase traffic, suddenly they are acting like a greedy whore.

Yes, I have ads on my blog. I blogged for about a year and a half before I received a dime for blogging. If I had never gotten any ads or referrals, I think I would still be blogging.

Yes, I checked my pagerank. I never even knew what pagerank was two months ago, but at that point I wanted to know what mine was. Yes I check statcounter to see how many hits I get. Yes I check to see what searches I get. And yes, I have posted words and phrases SPECIFICALLY TO INCREASE MY BLOG TRAFFIC.

So I guess that totally invalidates anything I have done on this blog to entertain someone for a few seconds. Because I DARE to care about the success of this blog I guess I am a whore and I don't deserve any respect.

That is fucking bullshit. There is absolutely no connection between caring about whether your blog gets a lot of hits and whether you publish anything worth reading.

Nobody is more opinionated about blogs than I am. Another blogger LOVES to ask my opinion about all kinds of blogs because 1) He knows I read them all, and 2) He knows I've probably formed a pretty strong opinion. His favorite of my common responses is "That guy's a fucking psycho."

And while I have even openly criticized what people have put in their blogs in my "You might be a donkey if..." posts, I never begrudge their willingness to put their words out there for people to read.

As far as A-list, B-list, Z-list or whatever, that shit absolutely exists, but it doesn't make a difference who is on what list. There are blogs I LOVE that wouldn't make anyone's B-list, and there are some A-List blogs that I CAN'T STAND.

Anwyay, if you want to improve your blog traffic, I have two pieces of advice for you.

1)Post every day. Post as often as you can. If you post, they will read.

2)Let everything else take care of itself. Links will take care of themselves. Other people's opinions will take care of themselves. If what you are doing is worth reading, then your readership will take care of itself.

That's just advice, you're probably better off if you ignore it. Especially if you ignore anything anyone else has to say on the subject as well.

Friday, April 28, 2006

How to Dodge the Low Level MTT Donkeys

I'm not really much of a Multi-Table Tournament player. I'm too tight, afraid to bluff into the nuts, always coming from a small stack. My cash cow is ring games, but I have had some moderate success at low level SNGs. "Low Level" being the key, I just let the morons take each other out and then shift gears to hopefully take advantage of a tight table image. If I can tight my way into the money or heads up, I like my chances no matter what the chip stacks are.

I have had some limited success in MTTs, in fact I have profited overall from them. But I feel like I have to get lucky to get to the final table. At least one major suckout is required, or you have to win WAY above 50% of your coin tosses, which is essentially the same as a suckout.

So when I play MTTs I limit myself to the $10, $20 and $26 tournaments, mostly on PokerRoom.com or Full Tilt Poker. Party has tons of tournaments at that level, but you have to commit to 4 or 5 hours of poker if you make the final table, and you'll need to beat over a thousand players to get there. At Full Tilt Poker you will only face a couple of hundred, and at PokerRoom.com you will see even less. I just don't see investing a lot of time and bankroll into a chance to get lucky. It's too much like playing the lottery. Why do that when the cash games are a sure thing?

Because they're fun, that's why. The prospect of a big score is fantasy inducing, but at the $10 level against 200 or so opponents, even a "big score" isn't very thrilling. Final table will usually get you around $100, and winning can only net you $1000. Not that a grand is something to sneeze at, but if you're going to invest so much time and effort and play enough to increase your chances to "get lucky," you'd like a big score to be a BIG SCORE.

One answer is satellites. A low buy in of $5-$10 can usually get you an entry into something humongous, like a WSOP main event seat or a $200,000 guarantee tournament. But I am not a big fan of satellites where the payout structure is so top heavy. You can't plod along with a small chip stack, hoping to double up occasionally to hang on compared to the average chip amount. You have to be out there slinging chips, taking big risks and hopefully building a stack that will propel you into one of the top two or three spots. And that just isn't my style.

Yoyo seems to have come up with the perfect compromise for me. The Teir one and Tier two token SNGs on Full Tilt Poker. For a $4+.40, $6+.60 or $8+.80 tournament you can win a $26 token fairly easily. In the 18 player matches they pay out 4 or 5 tokens, with a decent save for fifth and sixth place. And getting into the top 4 or 5 is genuinely EASY. Getting to the final table is a simple matter of letting the morons beat on each other till they are all gone, then it's a STT where 6 out of 9 make money.

I played at $8+.80 Turbo 18-player and I won a $26 token by playing only ONE HAND TO SHOWDOWN. My AK vs J2 I had covered, he called all in pre-flop. Flop was A22, but I rivered a K high flush. Best hand found a way to win. From there I let the donkeys panic because of the turbo blinds and boom, I had my token.

The next level is a $26 18-player Tier two where the top 5 win a $75 token. The play was considerably tighter and much improved over the $8 turbo, but I hit some big hands and took the chip lead. I only made one "mistake" when I played Ace-Ten vs Jack-Queen with a medium stack. I thought I could push him off of it because he limped fromthe small blind, but he called all-in pre-flop. He rivered the straight and I was in a small amount of trouble, but I doubled through a few hands later and cruised into the top 5, securing the $75 token.

So now I can play in a slightly larger buy-in tournament, hopefully mitigating the donkey play a little bit. And I am basically only risking the $8+.80 that I bought into the Tier one with.

I have to admit I was completely wrong and Yoyo was completely right on this one. My argument was that instead of playing for tokens you can just pay for cash and buy into the bigger tournaments with the cash, or just keep it. It's more flexible that way, and the money and the fees are all the same anyway. But what I hadn't realized was that the token tournaments are SO EASY to win. The competition is horrendous and the play in the end game is ludicrous. You often see two big stacks battle on the bubble, when neither of them has anything to gain but everything to lose.

Between the two of us we have played around 10 and won tokens in maybe eight of them, usually without much effort. Maybe we have just been getting lukcy, but if you play them smart, I don't think the expected win rate to be much lower than 60-65%. Thanks Yoyo!

(Bonus points to those who get why the picture applies.)

Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Poker Comic #72

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Life Lesson

Don't put off reading Grubby for a day. I love his blog so much I sometimes save it for when I have time to really enjoy it. This time it cost me free ice cream. And I really like ice cream.
/pout

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Blinders can keep you from seeing a good time

While the DADI event last night was a good time, there's always at least one person who has to be an asshole and screw things up.

At one point in the tournament, a short stacked blogger played the hammer against someone called "Blinders" who claims to be a blogger but I've never heard of him. "Blinders" had KK and the flop had a deuce and an ace in it. Some other bloggers at the table, including me, begged for a seven in the chat. We got our seven on the river, but unfortunately the board paired aces on the turn and the hammer got cracked.

Even though we typed "come on seven" in the chat before the ace came on the turn, it all went by quickly. "Blinders" said "seven wouldn't help you idiot." I'm not sure who he was talking to, since several of us were rooting for the seven. When I pointed out that we said that before the turn paired the board, he replied with "your gay."

What.a.fucking.asshole.

The hammer playing blogger was short stacked, and "Blinders" was leading the table. I'd guess that at least 70% of bloggers would be rooting for the hammer to win in that situation even if THEY were the one with the kings. (We'll call this the Iggy type.) Another 29.9% of bloggers would be rooting for their kings to hold up, but would totally understand that all the other bloggers at the table were rooting for the hammer to suck out, especially when the short stack wouldn't make a dent in his chip stack (We'll call this the SirFWALGMan type.)

That leaves the final one tenth of one percent. This asshole. He can't be satisfied that he is playing a game where someone will willingly risk his entire stack with 72 vs KK. No, this sperm receptacle has to get pissed off when the table roots for the hammer to come through. Then just to top it off, he has to follow it up with the gramatically incorrect and third-grade level insult "your gay."

It's especially stupid to make an asshole out of yourself in a tournament like this when if you win, you'll be playing in a WSOP event that will be attended by ALL THE PEOPLE YOU PISSED OFF. That's a very clever way to get yourself jumped in a parking lot.

I can understand if someone looks at this tournament as a great opportunity to get a seat at the WSOP for $30, but I think that would be an error as there were some pretty fine poker players in that tourney. Like someone said in the Yahoo chat, he played in a Party Poker 50 player WSOP tourney and there were more players out in ten minutes than in the first hour of the blogger tournament.

Don't come to that tournament if you're going to be a fucking asshole like this guy. It's called the "Donkeys Always Draw Invitational" for a reason, moron. These tournaments are all about having fun and bullshitting around with a bunch of bloggers. Unfortunately there always seems to be an buzzkill like this to ruin the fun. If that is the attitude you're going to bring to the tournament, next time please just don't play. You are sincerely NOT WELCOME here.

Monday, April 24, 2006

Action Junkies

I've been playing a lot of NL right games and tournaments lately, and often I run into the "action junkies" that are playing every hand, involved in every pot, ramming and jamming. The results of this style play are nearly inevitable, and I've concluded one thing:

If you are playing poker to satisfy your craving for action, you better enjoy the action because that is all you're going to get out of it.

Thanks for the chips.

Saturday, April 22, 2006

My Hero


I know. Yours too.

How to Generate Traffic to your Blog

Last night I was hanging out in chat with a few well known bloggers, when one of them decided to start a new challenge of playing 100 Heads-up matches for profit (details here.)

I decided to watch one of the heads up matches and the opponent was a huge fucking jerk. He started right off by calling the blogger "fag," "bitch," "jew" and "kike." In other words a very classy individual. It should even be noted that he was winning the match when he started this foul tirade. I decided to "participate" with my usual tilting comments like "Aren't you late for a klan meeting?" or "Is it hard to see the cards through those holes in your white hood?" Also very successful were "why do you keep talking about fags, are you looking for a date?" and "Why all the gay talk, did your boyfriend just break up with you?"

There would have been more except that the blogger wasted very little time in reaming him and ending the game. He took his defeat gracefully, with a spewing of profanities specifically designed to evade the word filters of PokerStars.

I guess I got to the guy, because he searched my name and came here to this blog to leave a lovely thank you note in my comments (since deleted.) Even though it was only three words long, he still managed to squeeze in a grammatical error.

And to the horrible playing guy who left the eloquent comment, I only have one thing to say: Thanks for the traffic!

Update: Traffic indeed! I tracked his IP via searches on StatCounter, and the guy stayed and read every one of my poker comics!

Friday, April 21, 2006

Grinding Away at More Banners

One of my all time favorite bloggers, Life's A Grind, requested a banner. This is what I came up with. Go visit his blog by clicking on the banner. He rulez.

LAG

First Day of sorts

In many ways, today is my real first day at work. They guy I'm replacing is gone, his last day was yesterday. It is all up to me now. My lifeboat is gone. Sink or swim. The system is mine. It is endlessly complex, and I think that by the time I have it adequately figured out, they will tear it out and replace everything, which should be in less than a year.

The system is incredibly complex for no reason. There are common systems thoughout the company that I am familiar with, yet they have used a local unique solution in every possible place. I sort of know how it works, but the level of complexity is at least 20 times what is necessary. Every problem, every issue, every question will take hours of digging to find out how things really work. And I feel like I'm dealing with a house of cards that will come crashing down if I breathe on it in the wrong place.

I told you the guy I replaced got the job I was trying to get in Austin Tx. When I interviewed for the job I thought it went really well but they suddenly changed the requirements. When I met the guy and he told me he was getting the job, I was amazed because I didn't think anyone would meet the crazy new requirements, but this guy seemed to fit the bill pretty well. Someone speculated in comments that they probably tailored the requirements to meet a specific person they wanted to hire. I thought it was really odd that the requirements changed so drastically, and the skills they wanted were strangely specific, but I didn't want to leap to any conclusions.

Yesterday I found out that the guy that was doing the job search is THE BROTHER of the guy I replaced here that they hired. Uh, yeah. I think he may have had someone specific in mind when he came up with those crazy requirements. I wish if they were pulling shit like that they wouldn't waste everyone else's time and energy and just hire the motherfucker they want to hire. They might have well added that the candidate they are looking for is Turkish and has a stutter. Then this guy is the only one who would have bothered to apply.

Thursday, April 20, 2006

Cleaning Up and Getting Even

Sorry for the long and pointless post yesterday....while it may have looked like I was just pimping the Poker Comic archives, I was actually trying to clean up my template a little bit. Listing every comic in the right hand column was getting to be annoying because it was so long and having to update every page in the blog every week was getting time prohibitive. You know that part when you republish and it says "If you have a large blog this may take several minutes..."? They are NOT kidding! Republishing this blog, depending on the connection, can take a good chunk of time.

So I put the archives in a post, which can be updated easily by editing the post, and linked to it in the archive spot. The "click here" part looks retarded, I know. I need to come up with something better, I just wasn't in the creative mood. Also, every time I edit the archives post I guess it will show up in bloglines, which will get annoying for those folks that read through there. Is there a way to stop that?

Getting Even

I finally got even with Veneno yesterday when I talked her into another heads-up battle. She maintained her overall record because I missed the first game. I tried to jump into the heads-up match with her on Poker Stars but my connection in the hotel is just not that zippy and someone else jumped in ahead of me. Very frustrating, but Veneno took care of him. After four hands and a giant pile of profanities from her opponent, our match was on. (I am NOT exaggerating...four hands!) THAT made me feel really confident in MY chances!

But I did manage to even up my record with her in heads-up matches to 4-4. I got down early and she nearly had me out, but I doubled through when I had QQ on a board of QJ2. YoYo held J2 and pushed. That got me slightly ahead and I pushed on from there for the win. YoYo is a very aggressive player and she almost always takes an immediate lead putting constant pressure on her opponent. Most of her opponents tighten up against her and try to trap, but that is exactly what she wants. She eats tight passive opponents for lunch. That's why my favorite nickname for her is YoYo. If you are going to play her well, expect an up and down match where large amounts of chips will go back and forth between you and her.

She has a great solution for all the bloggers that beg her for a link exchange. She tells them that the best way to get a link on her blog is to play her heads-up, which will get you on her heads-up results chart, including a free link. I told her she should add a little white flag next to the bloggers who refuse to play her anymore. And that she should put a little white flag on her side for me, because after my comeback victory she said she didn't want to play ME anymore. But I have a feeling I will be able to talk her into just one more match to break the tie. And just ONE more after that. And just....well...I can be persuasive.

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Poker Comic Archives

Poker Tells

The Poker Comic

Poker Tells
by DuggleBogey



Poker Comic #1
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Bonus Poker Comic
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Poker Comic #150
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Poker Comic #179
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Tuesday, April 18, 2006

Poker Comic #71

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Monday, April 17, 2006

No Antidote

I had a great weekend of poker, pushing my bankroll over another plateau that I have been working on for a while. My PLO8 game had gotten a bit stale, meaning that I wasn't playing with the patience that the game requires. That means LOSSES! So I switched to the NLHE tables for a while on Full Tilt. Table after table of push monkeys! Why raise $8 pre flop when you can push in with $90 to try and win those $3 in blinds? Especially when you're holding Ace-Ten? It makes sense when you think about it. Why play No Limit if you're not going to take advantage of being able to put all your money in by PUTTING ALL YOUR MONEY IN PRE-FLOP AS OFTEN AS YOU CAN. We need some kind of hybrid word for these Push-monkey/donkeys. PMDs?

Fear the Poison But much more importantly I witnessed a masterful poker performance by the one and only Veneno. I tuned in as she was nearing the money in an MTT at Poker Stars with 944 victims. I rang her in chat and she told me it was her last bit of money on Stars and that if she didn't cash here she was not going to re-deposit. So I cheered her on as she made the money, tore her way up to third in chips, patiently waited at the final table until the big stack took out all the other players, then methodically bestowed this guy a new rectum when they got heads-up. This poor guy has no idea what hit him. He probably thought he had first place wrapped up when he got heads-up with a HUGE chip advantage, but he hardly had a chance.

Tomorrow is another travel day, back to Tennessee. It's been a nice relaxing weekend as Easter is not a big holiday at the Bogey household. I never did understand how someone who can't be killed, died, then came back, but then didn't stay. If he was dead, where did he go? Don't dead people go to heaven? Isn't that where he went? So the celebration is that he's alive, but he's in heaven, where he would be if he was dead? It's all so confusing. That's the way he rolls I guess. Whatever. Anyway, I hope you all had a fun Pagan Rabbit/Egg Hiding Day.

Friday, April 14, 2006

Travel Daze

Yesterday was a travel day, Nashville to Dallas back to Oklahoma City. Dwight Yoakam was on the plane from Nashville to Dallas, about three rows up across the aisle from me. Some weird looking grey haired dude wearing a "Harley Davidson" T-shirt was sitting next to him, looking very odd in first class.

Other than that the trip was boring. I tried to watch a movie on my computer during my layover in Dallas, but somehow the 3 hour layover wasn't long enough to watch a 2 hour movie. Maybe "The Great Raid" is longer than 2 hours. Or maybe I shouldn't have stopped for fast food chinese first. What kind of chinese restaurant runs out of rice? I've never heard of such a thing. That was an error in judgement.

So I'm home in OKC for Easter weekend, and then it's back to Tennessee on Tuesday for work and house hunting. We have picked out a few from the internet to look at. I will check them out, but I can't get an agent yet until a lot of paperwork is done at work. I feel kind of like a perv, lurking about checking out locations. But at least I will be able to tell an agent specifically where I want to go. Because you shouldn't make them work any harder than they have to for their scary huge comissions.

Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Poker Comic #70

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Tuesday, April 11, 2006

It's About.......Marketing

Try Free Poker Money at PokerSourceOnline.com!

Funny part is, I rarely get search engine hits for Shana Hiatt, but I get tons of hits from Shanna Hiatt, Shawna Hiatt and Shana Hyatt. Especially ones with the words "naked" or "nude" attached. Lately I have been getting hits for the word "pichers" too. I guess this place is really a haven for illiteracy.

Anyway, if a search for Shanna, Shawna or Shana Hiatt brought you here, enjoy!

Monday, April 10, 2006

This...

is hilarious.

online poker simulator

Sunday, April 09, 2006

Mo Pichers

Click on the banner to visit the blog.

process1

process8

fish soup

Free Bonuses at Party Poker

PokerNow and Intertops Poker have closed down for good, finally. If you had an account at PokerNow or Intertops Poker, you can transfer whatever balances you had at them to Party Poker, and they'll give you a bonus. I transferred a few hundred from Intertops Poker and got a $75 bonus and I had $.80 at PokerNow and that massive transfer netted me a $25 bonus. 10x raked hands apply, but they let you play with the bonus money, you just can't cash it out until you've cleared the hands.

Infested

The Country is infested with Poker Bloggers.

First it was Kansas City. I wasn't even a blogger yet just a lowly forum poster, but I found out about a poker blogger and fellow poster named Life's A Grind who lived in the same town as me. I eventually met him on a Poker Cruise and we had a blast.

When I moved to Oklahoma City and began blogging properly, I met the lovely and talented Maudie from Poker Perspectives. She was as sweet as can be, funny and interesting. Soon after I met GCox25 from Low Limit Grinder, a very cool guy who invited me to several home games and other events. It never worked out that I could attend because my work schedule was so wacky, but he always accepted my refusals with aplomb. The time we did play together was nothing but enjoyable.

On a random trip to Las Vegas, I had the pleasure of running into Pauly and Felicia. While I didn't spend nearly as much time with them as I would have liked, they were very gracious and seemed genuinely pleased to meet me.

Suddenly I was away from Oklahoma City searching for a new job, and I found myself in Lansing Michigan, and even though I was there for only three weeks total, I got invited to a day of poker and ponies with Boy Genius from Random Thoughts and Thoroughbred Selections and THG from Res Ipsa Poker. It didn't work out that I wound up in Lansing, but if I had it made me feel really great that there were some kindred spirits up there.

So here I am in beautiful Tennessee for less than a week, and I have already been welcomed by several folks by email and I hope to meet some of them very soon.

Blogging may be gay, but sometimes it is really fucking cool too.

Friday, April 07, 2006

Taking the Plunge

I've made my commitment to move to Spring Hill Tennessee and take a permanent position. We've started the transfer paperwork and the relocation process. The relocation is the painful part.

To celebrate, we had tornadoes come through the area. There was no wind damage, but golf ball-sized hail damaged every single car parked in the lot. Thousands of cars have hail damage to the hoods and roofs, many have cracked windshields. We hid in tornado shelters for about an hour as the storms passed through. My rental car looks like a pincushion on the hood, roof and decklid. (Decklid is what geeky car manufacturing types call your trunk cover. Remind me later to tell you what a "Plenum" is.) The entire employee parking lot looks like a giant beer cooler.

So I'll have to call the rental car company in Nashville and see what they want me to do. They may want the car back right away, or they may want me to drive it until I was supposed to. I'm not sure if I'll be forced to drive around the thousand-dent car for another week, but a lot of people around here will be driving one around for a lot longer than that.

Thursday, April 06, 2006

I'll Get Plenty of Sleep When I'm Dead

At some point you realize that hitting the snooze button and getting that extra nine minutes of sleep isn't going to help much when you didn't go to bed until 4am and the alarm went off at 7.

I stayed up way too late playing online poker, and I really should know better than to start a tournament so late when if you make the final table it is going to make you beg for merciful death the next day at work. Yet it's almost a guaranteed way to make a final table. Even when you get it all in on the bubble shortstacked with AQ vs Mr. Giant Stack's AK, if staying up later will make you miserable the next day, that miracle queen will come on the river. At least it did for me.

Fellow bloggers are no help either, especially those who don't have to get up for work the next day. They are the enablers. You know who you are. How do you get 25 professional poker players into a phone booth? Toss a black chip in there. How do you get them out? Toss in a bar of soap. Nyah Nyah.

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

Poker Comic #69

Sponsored by Free Poker Money at PokerSourceOnline.com

Poker Comic brought to you by Free Poker Money at PokerSourceOnline.com!. Free Money at Titan Poker! Free Money at Party Poker! No Deposit Required! No Credit Card Required! (New Players Only) Click Here for more info!

It's Funny How Things Work Out

So yesterday I'm hanging out with some of my brand new coworkers and I ask the question "so where is (the guy I'm replacing) going? I know he's leaving the company, but what company is he going to work for?"

They said "He got a really great opportunity he couldn't turn down. In AUSTIN TEXAS."

A light bulb went off. "I know exactly what job he is taking, and I know exactly WHY he is taking it."

Yes, this is the guy they hired for the job I wanted in Austin. The good news is this guy actually fulfills a lot of the unreasonable requirements they added to the job. The bad news is that this guy is a piece of work, in that Mad Scientist "Professor Farnsworth" kind of way.

It worked out well for me in the end, just not in a way I imagined. I don't get the Austin job, as lucrative as it is, but I get a fantastic opportunity within my own company when the guy they actually hire leaves a void that absolutely terrifies management. Expectations are much lower (so is the pay, unfortunately) but it's a situation I am much more comfortable with. Now I can dazzle them with my brilliance.

Oh, and I can wear jeans to work every day.

Life is good.

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

Okay, enough is enough

It has been fun, but it's time for the truth to come out.

I am Poker Champ.

Monday, April 03, 2006

What time is it?

Sunday at 2am I'm in Lansing Michigan, and Eastern Standard Time changes to Eastern Daylight Time, so the clocks go ahead an hour. Six hours later I head for the Airport and back to Oklahoma City via Detroit, where I set the clock right back again to Central Daylight time.

Thirteen hours after my flight lands I go back to the airport to jet to Nashville via Dallas. What the hell time is it here? Same as OKC, apparently, but none of the clocks at the hotel have been reset yet. I literally have to stare at a clock for a bit just to try and figure out what time it is where. Especially when talking to someone on Pacific time.

On my first trip to Lansing I missed my XM Radio so much I brought my Roady2 with me on the second trip. This time it's built into the rental car, a Chevy Impala. It's about time I started rending GM cars to drive to GM plants. Last two were both Nissans, and I took some crap for it.

For anyone travelling via the OKC airport (Hey, I thought of another airport that has the same name as a guy who died in a plane crash....JFK....it wasn't named after JFK Jr., but hey...) if you're in a hurry and you can't wait in the line for security, just go into the bathroom right next to the security station on the right side. When you come out, just walk to the right and you'll be directed down a hallway to the additional security stations. Just a little travel tip from a suddenly frequent flyer.

American Airlines this time....the Poker Players' choice. AA, the only way to fly. My goal is to have just enough frequent flyer miles on each airline so that I'll never actually get anything for free. So far I have a round trip and a half on united, Half a trip on Northwest Air, and half a trip on American. Plus a cancelled reservation on Delta. If I work it just right, I can do the same deal with hotel stays. The only thing I've done consistently is car rentals, and I didn't join their club for the $50 fee. I think I would have made the $50 back in free stuff by now too.

The Dallas Airport is really nice. Cool tram between terminals, and when I got off the plane I was thirsty and I spied a Pepsi Machine. No Diet Mountain Dew, but 20oz bottles were only a buck. In an airport! I couldn't resist and I was parched, so I got a diet pepsi. Every single machine I saw after that had Diet Dew in it.

All the TVs in the Dallas airport were tuned to Headline News. When a news report came on about a study about how poorly customer satisfaction was with airlines these days, the channel suddenly changed to CNN. Unfortunately for them the same story came on CNN ten minutes later.

I had some time in Dallas so I checked out the duty free. They had liter bottles of SoCo for $17. If I had any way to get it on the plane, I would have bought one and drank it here in Nashville.

The idea of SoCo brings me back to my first attempt to attend college. I was old enough to buy beer (That kinda gives away my age. I got ID'd for cigarettes once, and I replied "Back when I was too young to buy cigarettes, there was no age limit for cigarettes!" ) but I had a fake ID from D.C. that said I was 21, so I could by hard liquor. I was "the source" at my dorm in South Dakota, where it was against state law to have alcohol on campus. I'm pretty sure I made "double secret dormitory probation" before I dropped out. This will make Al cringe fo sure...I liked to drink SoCo and Mountain Dew. Hey, it can't be any worse than "SoCo Lime" that is all the rage now. Plus you can do some extreme skateboarding whilst drunk off your ass.

Whee!

Saturday, April 01, 2006

Poker Goddess...just for you today....enjoy

eva

I would appreciate your help again in all of my upcoming Heads Up events. And in winning a WSOP seat!!! You are the Best!

--Veneno

Hurry Up! Wait....Hurry Up!

Yesterday was a wild mess. I had to finish my work here in Lansing, but they need me as soon as possible in Spring Hill. I finally talked to someone there, and they want me fast. So I need to get back to OKC this weekend and fly to Nashville on Monday. I made a flight reservation for OKC for Saturday morning at 6am, but that became more and more unworkable when I missed the Car Rental agency closing and I still had to get my stuff together. Not to mention that the flight would be about an hour from NOW.

I couldn't really go straight to Tennessee from Michigan because I brought jeans and stuff for a construction environment, and I'm sure they're expecting business casual in Spring Hill.

So I changed my flight from Saturday to Sunday. At first I balked because Delta wanted over $1000 to fly on Sunday, but NorthWest will do it for less than my Saturday flight. Go NorthWest Air! Less than $300 for a flight at a more convenient time anyway.

That gives me Saturday to get my crap together here and Sunday to get it together again to head for Tennesse early on Monday. I'm excited about the whole deal.