Hacked? Try Rush

My WoW account got hacked this weekend. Totally my fault, I installed something I knew was questionable. Apparently they are so backed up with requests from people that got hacked that it will take a week to get my account restored. They should take security more seriously, mostly by making it hard on the people that make hacking accounts profitable. But then they would sell less of their "for profit" solution to security. Go free markets.

People are calling to comfort me with ideas on what to do in the meantime. It's just a video game people, it's not like my whole world revolves around it. Some time off will probably be good for me.

Of course when I can't play WoW, I play poker!

I tried out Rush Poker on Full Tilt. If you don't know what that is and you care, eleventy million bloggers have talked about it already.

I guess it's fun, it certainly makes single tabling a lot more action packed. I never really dug that multi-tabling thing. This is like infinite-tabling.

It's perfect for people who play the "oh shit if I had stayed in with my shit hand I would have won" game. Since you never see anything after you fold you never know what you would have had.

Once in a while I folded in a multi-way hand and wondered how it turned out, but I never got to see because I was "whooshed" away to another table before the final player acted. Kinda frustrating.

You get lots of big hands. Because you get LOTS of hands, the big hands come much faster. I flopped quad queens that paid nothing past the pre-flop raise.

It really makes you consider your starting hands very carefully. Since you are in fold-fold-fold-fold mode until you see something that interests you, there is a tendency to stretch out your requirements to start a hand, especially in position. And since opponents seem more likely to fold it tends to make you a bit more aggressive.

I fear that it will take away from the donkeys at the non-rush tables, since rush is apparently crack for donkeys. But I guess I can always go play at Poker Stars instead.

Late Night

I used to watch a lot of late night television. Before Dave moved to CBS, I was a die-hard Letterman fan. Late Night with David Letterman was the greatest late-night talk show of all time, bar none.

If you don't know the story, here's what happened. Johnny Carson was the undisputed king of late night. The other networks were so intimidated by his numbers they didn't dare program similar shows. They cross programmed, showing "Macmillan and Wife" and "Columbo" reruns. Johnny surprised the network by announcing his retirement live at an affiliates meeting. He had been working 3-4 day weeks for a while and had several "guest hosts" such as Bill Cosby and Joan Rivers, but lately the seat had been most often filled by Jay Leno.

David Letterman assumed he would get the Carson show when Johnny retired. The network had other ideas. Letterman got insane numbers for a show that started after midnight eastern. NBC was very greedy and didn't want to lose those numbers, so they gave the Tonight Show to Jay Leno.

Letterman was pissed, and chose to leave the network. There were some back-room deals where NBC would agree to give Letterman the show if Jay faltered, but Letterman decided his best deal was to take a show opposite the Tonight show on CBS.

Letterman regularly beat Jay Leno in that time slot for 3 years, but Leno steadily built his own audience and eventually took over first place in the ratings. "The Tonight Show" was "the show" for late night once more.

Letterman never did a show as good as "Late Night" again. He tempered his comedy for the older audiences that watch the earlier show. He changed his style, lost his edginess. "The Late Show" has always been a watered-down version of "Late Night."

Five and a half years ago Jay Leno announced he was going to retire in five years. NBC wanted to avoid the unpleasantness that occurred when Johnny retired, so they signed a deal to give Conan O'Brien, who had built a very solid show with good ratings and excellent demographics "The Tonight Show." Conan's viewers, much like David Letterman's original show, attracted YOUNG PEOPLE. People over a certain age LITERALLY DO NOT COUNT to advertisers. In other words, Jay Leno's audience.

Conan's deal was that he'd get "The Tonight Show" or NBC would pay him $40 Million. NBC figured it was no big deal to make the number crazy because Jay was going to retire and by then his show would have fallen in the ratings. Conan would continue to do a successful show for five years and then he would step in for the faltering Jay Leno with a younger more desirable demographic. What could go wrong?

Jay Leno changed his mind. He didn't want to retire. His numbers were still fantastic, even better than five years ago. And Leno is a workaholic. Unlike Carson he never took nights off. He never stopped working on the show to make it more and more popular. He had taken Johnny's show and made it his own. He wasn't about to give it up.

So NBC was in a tough spot. They simply couldn't afford to give Conan forty mil, especially during a recession and with NBC last among networks, by far. There are literally no successful shows on the network after Heroes, The Office and 30 Rock. Nothing.

Someone at NBC came up with a brilliant idea. We'll give Conan "The Tonight Show" and avoid paying him $40 Million, and we'll replace all the failing 10pm dramas with Jay Leno. Yes, we will not get great ratings, but we aren't anyway and this show costs 10% of all those pricey one-hour dramas. Problem solved!

What they didn't count on was rebellion from the affiliates. While NBC didn't care whether Jay's 10pm show got ratings, the affiliates live and die off those 10pm dramas for their lead-in audience. See, it turns out nobody actually chooses to watch one local news program over another. I know, you think you have your favorite, but in reality Americans are too lazy to reach for the remote and change the channel. They watch whatever news program is on after the 10pm program they watched.

And Jay Leno's lousy ratings were killing the local news broadcasts. NBC can't have their affiliates upset with them, so they did the predictably chicken-shit move and gave Jay Leno his time slot back. How they are going to pull five hour-long dramas out of their ass to fill the spots is beyond me. They haven't successfully had one since ER, and they rode that pony for twenty years. Michael Crichton is dead. Now what, NBC?

And Conan has to hit the road. He will settle for something between 20 and 40 million dollars from NBC (Go General Electric stock!) so don't feel too bad for him, but he isn't likely to get another 11:30 talk show, not if he has to compete with Letterman AND Leno for an audience. Fox is crazy, but I'm not sure they're THAT crazy.

But who knows? Maybe an 11:00 Fox show will actually beat the shows delayed by the local news. I mean, the local news is really shit, right? I don't know anyone who likes it. Everyone says they hate it but they have to know the weather. NOAA.GOV anybody? Srsly.

And what do I watch? I only really enjoy one late night comedy show, the incredibly self-derisive Craig Ferguson vehicle "The Late Late Show." He even calls himself "the Scottish Conan guy." The thing I like about Ferguson is that he's funny. He's led an interesting life and when he talks about himself it's more interesting than anything else on the show. His experiences from being a musician, being on the Drew Carey show and his alcoholism are all interesting and very entertaining. He's very cynical about show business while enjoying the hell out of himself in his small part of it. He seems to have genuine joy in silliness that he surrounds himself with.

Screw Conan, Jay, Dave and both Jimmys (Had I known that Kimmel's show was directed by Bobcat Goldthwait I might have checked it out.) Check out Craig. He's an acquired taste, for certain. But he's genuine. I like genuine.

Edit:

It's true that Jay Leno never really wanted to retire in 2009. When NBC made the deal with Conan Jay agreed to step aside because that's how Jay is. He's always done whatever NBC wanted. That's how he got the job over Letterman. NBC/GE felt he was "more loyal." It might have had something to do with Letterman calling GE executives "pinheads" every night on their own network.

Jay was too nice too say in 2005 that he didn't want to give up "The Tonight Show," and when he got some leverage in 2009 he said as much. But, still being the NBC lackey, he agreed to this 10pm strategy as a consolation prize.

A Day

I almost didn't have a day today. I drove to work at the normal time and just before I arrived, 35 minutes into the trip, I realized that I had left everything I need for work at home. So I turned the car around and drove back home, then set off for work again.

I almost decided to just stay home and call in sick. A mental health day. It wouldn't be a lie because I knew I would be in a poor mental state after driving a hundred miles before going to work, arriving two hours late.

But I decided to tough it out and called in to say I would be late and probably retarded. They asked how being retarded would be different from any other day and said no problem.

When I got to work I got good news about a job opportunity I was interested in with another company. Then I got good news about a job opportunity to stay with the company I currently work for. Then I got good news that GM is considering re-opening the plant.

None of the news was conclusive. Just possibilities. But as bleak as things have been looking lately, possibilities are a vast improvement.

And to think I almost missed it for a "mental health day." Turns out going to work today was much better for my mental health.

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Eldrick

June 26, 2009 - Smoke filled back room.

Mark: Whew. I'm glad we finally got to close the book on that one.

Stan: You used Propofol? That is brilliant.

Mark: Blamed it on the doc. I knew it would work after we built up the oxygen tent story. Everybody believes that musicians are into drugs.

Stan: I thought we were never gonna get that guy. How could he still be so popular after all the work we did on him? I thought just accusing someone of being a child molester was enough to finish someone these days.

Mark: No kidding! You'd think that brainwashing all those kids to testify would turn the public against the guy so we wouldn't have to resort to this. I guess he just had more resources than we thought.

Stan: We couldn't afford another OJ. Look at all the work we had to do to take care of that one. Faking the robbery and hiring thugs to pretend to be his friends. Undercover work is too expensive and risky.

Mark: And that first failure will be a black mark on my record forever. No pun intended.

Stan: Well OJ was small time compared to this one. Football records and Rental Car commercials are one thing, this guy thought he could be the king of pop! We had to make sure the job was finished.

Mark: Well he's finished all right. What's next on the agenda? There's got to be another one of them that doesn't know his place.

Stan: Well that golfer's raking in way too much cash. That qualifies as 'uppity' if you ask me.

Mark: That boy's squeaky clean. What angle do we take?

Stan: We'll start with that sham of a marriage. He really thinks he can be married to one of us? We have a lot of women on the payroll right? So here's what we'll do...

Not Frogger

Frogger made by Neave Games

Southernisms

A coworker of mine has three buckeyes on his desk.

We were having a conversation about sayings like "don't look a gift horse in the mouth" when he asked me what you would be looking for in a horse's mouth. I said I didn't know and he told me how you can tell a horse's age by looking in its mouth.

A woman who was standing nearby doing inventory asked "Have you told him about the buckeyes? If you give them away it's bad luck. Like if I give you one now, you will have to keep it forever or you'll have back luck."

"That doesn't make sense," I replied.

She turns to my coworker and says "Give me one of those," and points at his three buckeyes.

He hands her one and she hands it to me and says "now you have to keep it forever or you'll have bad luck."

My coworked chimed in and said "but now you will have bad luck for giving it to him!"

Then I stunned him by saying, "Didn't you just give it to her?"

Hoy Knows Sports

Hoy is really a sports expert. The only reason he was so wrong on the World Series predictions was because his judgment was clouded by his being a Phillies fan. Of course that is enough to make someone wonder...

So I kept track of some of his football picks to prove that other than Fan Blindness, he knows what he's talking about.

1. Green Bay Packers -10 at Tampa Bay Buccaneers. I absolutely love this game, even though I would like 9 points a heck of a lot more than the 10 this game is currentiy sitting at.

Result: Tampa Bay 38, Green Bay 28. Even with his generous 9 point line this is a 19 point miss.

2. Miami Dolphins +10.5 at New England Cheatriots.

Result: New England 27, Miami 17. Nailed it! Cleared it by a half point. Niiice. But I think your fan blindness is creeping in here.

3. Houston Texans +9 at Indianapolis Colts.

Result: Indianapolis 20, Houston 17. He was all over this one by 6.

4. New Orleans Saints -13 vs Carolina Panthers.

Result: New Orleans 30, Carolina 20. Damn those field goals.

5. San Francisco 49ers -4.5 vs. the Tennessee Titans.

Tennessee 34, San Francisco 27. Whoops.

Now you can look at these picks and say he got two right out of five, that's almost half! But he picked two favorites giving points who both lost on the field, and squeeked one in by a hook.

So it's not just the Phillies, and not just Baseball. I'm not claiming to be able to pick any better, because my Fantasy Football results prove I know nothing about pro football.

But Hoy's just as wrong as me, and seems to think he's some kind of expert that can pump out PAGES AND PAGES of this garbage. Just shut up already.

Spoiled Rotten

Are people tougher than they were 50 years ago, or weaker? Seems like all the old-time Olympic records have been absolutely eclipsed by modern records. The modern athlete is faster and stronger than his earlier counterparts. Even without performance enhancements.

So why do I keep hearing the stupidest fucking term ever when people talk about the world series? The phrase "three-days rest" has been overused so much I may vomit if I hear it again.

Until fairly recently there was no such term as "three-days rest." Because three days was the NORMAL rest time. All teams used four-man pitching rotations with three days between every start. Not to mention that most of this time was before the advent of frequent relief pitching. So all pitchers had three days between nine innings of pitching, more if the game went into extra innings.

Now a guy has an "effective" start if he pitches at least six innings every five days? Did all major league pitchers become spoiled rotten little wimps? They're not pussies, they're professional athletes.

Both of these pitching staffs will have a hundred days rest after the series is over, and I'm thinking that will be after tonight.

Update

An update about me? Okay, you asked for it.

I'm still enjoying World of Warcraft. My guild is pretty cool and laid back, nobody gets upset about much. One guy was pissing people off so I decided to be the bad guy and kick him out. That's me, asshole-at-arms.

Fantasy Football is a train wreck. Not fun. Don't do it. If you want some advice on it, here goes; everyone is always wrong. Always. No exceptions.

I upgraded my netbook to Windows7. There are some things I like, some things I don't. It's slightly unstable, I did get a bluescreen once when looking at some video from a networked hard drive. It's very, very pretty. Cool sells, and it is cool. I predict it will sell. Big time.

Work is still very up in the air. The plant shuts down on Thanksgiving. There will be 15 or so jobs left for people here after that, and there are around 26 people working here now. So I have a shot. Better than most I think. My closest coworker is interviewing with "another automotive company" today. I don't want him to go because he is my closest friend at work, but I want what's best for him and if he goes that's more chance that everyone else around here can stay.

I'm going to try out Ooma for VoIP phone service. I am currently using Vonage and Ooma reviews make it sound better than Vonage for less money. It's worth a try, I can always go back to Vonage. Thanks to Google Voice my number will not change. GV rocks. Get an invite if you can.

I still play poker occasionally, baby stakes of course. According to PTR I am up $1 overall on Full Tilt. Go me. Good thing they don't show Poker Stars. Whew!

Other than that nothing is going on. Very boring life, but I like it.

Go Yankees!

Mr. Wrong AND Mr. Quiet

Hoyazo, that man of a thousand words (especially when ten will do) has made a lot of noise about the Phillies, especially after they won game one of the World Series.

Now he's silent.

Let's review his picks for the series.

He picked the Yankees to win game one. Wrong, but he sure seemed glad about it.

He picked the Phillies to win game two. Wrong again.

He picked the Yankees to win game three. Finally a winner. Hope he didn't go broke on games one and two.

Game four, he picked the Phillies. Wrong again, all the while totally silent.

He has the Phillies winning game five. He better be right or there is no game six to pick.

As far as where my allegiance lies, there shouldn't be much doubt. I will point to the most impressive play in game 4; Johnny Damon steals second in the top of the ninth. The play is not even close so the man who covers second base due to the Teixeira shift is actually the third baseman, and he moves forward to cut off the throw. Damon sees this and takes third with no play because NOBODY IS COVERING THIRD. Lidge can't bounce a curveball because Damon scores on a wild pitch, so Alex Rodriguez lines a fastball into the left field corner.

They just do everything right. They're the Yankees.

Conservatives: Boycott the NFL!

Yes, this blogger has called on all conservatives to BOYCOTT! the NFL because of the unfair treatment of Rush Limbaugh by hmm... well, I guess by the consortium that he was a part of.

But anyway, the BOYCOTT! is ON! This will show them!



I suspect this boycott will be much more popular with fans of: Oakland, Tennessee, Cleveland, Buffalo, Kansas City, Tampa Bay, Carolina, Jacksonville and oh yeah, St. Louis!

Spit

Someone spit on my car last night.

I'm working the night shift, 3pm to 11pm. So I missed the Monday night football game where my fantasy football opponent's running back (T. Jones) scored two touchdowns to put him ahead by 2 points. I scored the second most points in the league for yet another loss. I lost by half as many points last week.

And when I got out to my car around 11:30, someone had spit on the windshield.

I guess I'm asking for it, parking a Mazda in the lot at a GM plant. A GM plant that closes the assembly section in about six weeks. But I find it hard to believe that my 1994 Mazda really affects the sales around here. Do they think I'm the type to trade in my 15-year old sub-compact in on one of these $40,000 monstrosities with air-conditioned seats?

The plant is closing on me too. I went broke when I moved here two years ago to work at this plant, and I have no idea if I will have a job come February 1st. I hope I do, and I think I will, but nothing is certain. The part of the plant I mostly work in is continuing production, but that doesn't mean I get to keep my job. They could easily fire me and put someone with more seniority (read: kisses WAY more ass) in my spot.

And now I'm working late again tonight. For free of course. Starting November first it's for 20% less actually. When the company I worked for got bought, they reclassified every employee. They say some people got raises and others got pay cuts. Everyone I know got cut, 20% minimum. Some even more. A lot more. It's quite a clever way to reduce staff without having to pay severance. Just keep cutting pay until everyone who can find another job quits. Of course what's left are people who can't get another job, so you're sure to keep all the incompetent people. The very best? They're gone.

I'm so angry I could spit.

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Please SHUT UP

Republicans are trying to pass a resolution called the Czar Accountability and Reform Act of 2009.

At least look up more shit that I do before you do dumbass stuff like this.



Why do Republicans suddenly have a problem with this?

Ow.

RIP Patrick Swayze

I was watching "Today" when I found out Patrick Swayze died. The two stupid holes were talking about him like he was in two movies total. "Some actors are only lucky enough to appear in one iconic movie, and he got to be in two!"

The stupid chicks were talking about "Ghost" and "Dirty Dancing." Both of these ditzy morons were in their 20s.

Mr. Swayze, we remember you from "Roadhouse" and "Point Break." We remember you from "Youngblood", "Red Dawn" and the most hilarious skit ever from "Saturday Night Live." Don't let the 20-year old chick flick loving dizzy bitches fool you, we loved you for all your work.

Rest in peace Patrick.

Glen Beck Not a Murderer

This site is hilarious: Did Glenn Beck Rape and Murder a Young Girl in 1990?

Nobody thinks that rumor is true of course, but until he proves the rumor is false, it's possible, right? He doesn't even deny it!

Play around with it

Nashville at Night