Hey guys, how about fixing your configurations to allow email notification to follow up on comments? Blogspot changed everything over and wiped out that little checkbox that used to be there but there is a way to get it back. Gary, you’ll probably have to fix it for VJ.
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Forget about that post I was going to write dealing with my day at Pocono Downs on Sat. It can be summed up very succinctly. It sucked. Actually I will describe my last hand. I was playing LO8; 4-8 w/ half kill. The half kill is in effect. I flopped nut straight. On the turn I improve to nut straight, nut low draw (no low out yet) and redraws to a decent flush and ass backward boat (2 pair rather than trips) On both flop and turn I raise. River is the one card that can kill me, the dealer pairs the 9 on the board. No low, no flush and straight just went down the tubes to someone’s boat. Since three people are calling my raises I know it’s out there. It was. That, boys and girls summed up my session in a nutshell. After a lot of great flops I saw so many bricks on turn and river I was beginning to think I was the third little pig.
Even better summation of my entire day was the trip home. I had dropped the girls off that morning at the meeting place, a truck stop off I81. I usually tank up there for the drive home but since I was going right down the road to Wilkes-Barre I figured I would wait since gas right off major highways is usually more expensive. I drive down in to town and guess what? Gas is a dime higher in town. Not only that there is no variance between what few stations I ran across. Make it better I’m driving along a road that is commercially developed, malls, strip malls, fast food places and in 10 miles I saw only 3 gas stations and my needle is nearing E. I just had to push it. I hit the casino and have my screwed up session and so when I head to go home I start looking for an Exxon station so I can use the credit card as I prefer not using what little cash remaining to fill the tank. I find a lot more gas stations, just no Exxons and still all the same price. After doing a bit of searching I say to hell with it and pull in to a station and use half my cash to pump enough to get me home. Now I head for the Turnpike and home. Since the casino is halfway between 2 exits I decide that I will head to the lower one rather than backtrack to the one I used coming in. Only been this way once so turn on Yachiru, my GPS. It tells me to take a right as I come out of the gas station. Wouldn’t you know half mile up that road there is an Exxon. And gas there is 2 pennies cheaper. To add insult to injury just before I get on the Turnpike there is another Exxon and it is 13 cents cheaper than the other one, 15 cents better than all the other places. Sums up my day, my month, my year so far. Come on 2013.
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Hadn’t been on Twitter in awhile and hopped on to kill some time while waiting for a few video files to process. Looking at my timeline and see a tweet from Disney/Pixar. Now where the hell did that come from? I don’t follow Disney. Then I see a little note under it that says promoted by Disney/Pixar and followed by OhCaptain. Promoted by? Sounds like an ad. And what the hell does the fact OhCaptain follows them have to do with anything. So of course my bump of curiosity starts itching and I have to see what this is. Wasn’t hard, search took me right to the Twitter site that explains it all. And what an explanation. Seems that it is an ad but really it isn’t according to Twitter. Whoever does the Disney tweets puts it out there as a regular tweet to all the regular followers. Then they can pay to promote it, which means it gets sent out to others who couldn’t give a rat’s ass about following Disney. So it’s advertising. Not really according to Twitter. Since it starts out as a regular tweet it’s not really an ad in their opinion. I don’t follow Disney, I don’t want their tweets unless I decide to follow them and so it looks like a frikkin ad to me since it’s cluttering up my timeline without me asking for it. They even explain the OhCaptain bit. These promoted tweets don’t go to everyone, at least not yet, another reason they don’t consider it true advertising. According to them the only time a user gets a promoted tweet in their timeline is if it is likely to be interesting and relevant to them and they then go on to explain how they determine this including that who one follows is part of the criteria. Holy horsefuck Batman, because one guy I follow follows Disney they determine that the tweet is interesting and relevant to me? Talk about your damned slim justifications. Either that or I could be one of the small percentage they have chosen to experiment with who will receive all these things while planning to roll it out for everyone in the future. I can picture Twitter if that ever happens. If any of you can remember the Internet before the Web was developed when you needed a government or educational account for access and then what happened to those boards as soon as everyone with something to sell got access you have got perfect before and after of Twitter in the future. You might be able to pick out the relevant tweets from your friends between all the ads but have fun doing it. Not that I’m such a big fan of Twitter that I can’t do without but I do find it useful at times but sounds to me like someone is looking for a sure way to fuck up a good thing.
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Take the girls back on Sat. so whilst I’m up there will probably hit the Sun/Pocono Downs on my way home. Hopefully the 4/8 LO8 w/1/2 Kill will be running. Hopefully my luck will still be too. These kids are expensive for a guy on a fixed income. We’ll see how things go. Wonder if I’ll run into the VJ with pecker while I’m there?
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Made an AC daytrip yesterday and finally broke my losing streak at poker. Was about the only part of my year long streak that broke however, rest of the day sucked so except for the bright ray of sunshine that was the Pink game the year just keeps rolling along, miserable as usual.
This was supposed to be another VJ road trip but thanks to Southwest’s incredible timing, and businessmen who don’t care how much a flight costs as long as the company is paying, that got scotched. Josie was supposed to fly in on Thu, we would head on down, play Thu and Fri then leave Fri afternoon and head to Wilkes-Barre for some poker at Mohegan Sun/Pocono Downs Fri night and Sat morning then up the road around 12 to pick up my daughter. Of course due to the fact that Southwest hadn’t been able to dent the business market on the Boston to Philly run they decided to close down that run last weekend leaving only US Air making the run. Of course given the monopoly situation the price of the trip jumped to over $500 which is a bit much to pay for a weekend poker jaunt. So the major poker weekend was out. Just as well because I was laid up with a throat infection most of the week and my ex decided that instead of Sat a Sun drop off worked better for her so it would have been a major cluster fuck all around.
Booked out at about 10 am. Pink game doesn’t start until about 11-12 so that time puts me at Harrah’s AC about 11:30, just the right time for the game and avoids the morning traffic. As I needed gas and planned on stopping for a couple of bagels and coffee I figured on getting down there about noonish. Things started off well, Einstein Bagels was empty so two onion with a schmeer took no time and Wawa has been serving my favorite coffee, their Kona blend, on a regular basis lately. Decided to hold off on the gas as the prices around here have sky rocketed lately and Jersey prices are about 20 cents cheaper. Thought I might be cutting it close for AC but figured I could stop anywhere once over the bridge. Trip down made me think it was the time of the full moon. Traffic was moving along at a regular clip but was fairly heavy yet at least 3 times some asshole driving on the far left zoomed all the way across 4 lanes of traffic at the last minute to zoom off to the right hand exit. Smart. Even better was the character that was going down the middle lane at 40 mph. Massive traffic scooting along anywhere between 65-75 and this character is going pokey-pokey fuck-fuck right in the middle of it. And I don’t mean he was just going slow I mean 40 mph literally, I was stuck behind him for long enough to measure.
Didn’t have to stop for gas so I pull up at Harrah’s in AC right about 12. Find a parking space with no problem and run in to the thundering herd while waiting for the elevator in the garage. I’m on the second floor which has the casino entrance via walkway over the road. There is an escalator down to the main floor from there. Unfortunately I don’t do down escalators too well these days, up is ok, and so I ride the elevator to the street and cross there. Yesterday though I get there as everyone is checking out. This means a horde of people and of course they all want to go up, I’m the only idiot riding the down express. Even though I had pressed the down button a couple of times some folks always beat me in to the car and rather than run the gamut of going up and down I waited until the car right in front of me popped open, got in first and told the folks following me in I was headed down and thus made it to the street. Cross the street to the casino and head in and over to the promo kiosk. One of the reasons I wanted to head down yesterday was that Harrah’s was offering between 4 to 15 times on comps and I was hoping for the top multiplier. Of course when I swipe my card I get the bottom but what the hell, even 4 times is good. Add in the bonus comps and tier points for the Pink game and it’s a good way to start out the year. Then head over to the Rewards section as it’s been so long since I’ve played that I misplaced my card case and was down to the card I keep in the car for the free parking so figured I’d better get some extras. (Sorry Josie, your card was in the case so hope lightening is keeping your comps up to date for ya) Luckily the area is right around the corner from the poker and while the general gold card section is packed there is no one in the platinum line so I’m in and out quickly and off to the poker room.
Unfortunately the Pink game isn’t going yet so I put my name on the list. I notice that they have added a kill to the game. Yikes, 15-30 stakes with the kill. That’s a bit pricey for me but figure I’ll see how it plays out, if and when. In the meantime there is a 4-8 mini blind game going and I settle in. For those who are wondering it’s a 4-8 limit game but instead of the normal 2-4 blinds it’s played with 1-2. I mention this because I caused a bit of controversy a bit later. The game was ok but not what I drove to AC for. Bunch of regulars who were having a good old time and the table talk informed me of a few changes since I had been down last. Since the new year had started it seems Harrah’s was tightening up on things. Found out that you now need to be Diamond level to ask for premium liquors or to even get what you order served in a regular glass rather than plastic. (Sorry VJ, looks like the Grey Goose might be out when you head to Caesars) Not only that but it seems that they want waitresses reporting if a Diamond member uses his card to get the better stuff for someone else. One guy mentioned that that is squeezing the waitress. She can get in trouble if she gets caught not reporting but reporting someone can put her in a bad light with the customers and since the waitresses work mainly for tips they are stuck between the rock and the hard place. Not to mention the policy in general pisses of the customers, especially any Diamond member who are their better playing patrons. Talk then turned to the bad beat jackpot. Harrah’s combines the payout to all 4 of their AC poker rooms unlike most that just payoff the table. Because of this they are looking for bigger jackpots so once it is hit the minimum for a bad beat jumps to 4 queens and drops a level every week or that is how it used to be. One dealer said they have now changed it to quad kings to start and it’s only going to drop every other week. Couple of the players didn’t appreciate that. Dealer said the casino was in the red on the jackpot. That I find hard to believe. How can they be in the red when the jackpot is funded from a rake of the pot? If the money isn’t raked why would they pay it out? Not only that most states that allow a BBJ allow a “maintenance fee to be cut from the pot. Don’t know about NJ but I think it’s up to 10% in PA. Casinos do not go in the red. Anyway the consensus was that Harrah’s might wind up losing in play what they are saving in expenses if they keep it up. Number of the players said they were going to have to start going to Borgata more often. As for me and poker it was nothing fantastic. I was up about $40-60 but it should have been more. I flopped the freaking nut straight 5 times and wound up getting counterfeited on the river on 4 of them for a chop. Game was fairly tight and most of the pots were small. I seemed to be involved in a lot of the bigger ones but kept coming out second best usually flopping flush and straight draws and then bricking out. They finally called the Pink game but only 3 people showed. One guy wanted to start with 3 figuring it would get going and he was probably right but at those stakes I won’t play with less than 5, blinds come around 2 fast and you are basically just generating rake. Besides I’ve played with this guy a couple of times. He’s a male version of VJ at this game. Call or check ain’t in his vocabulary, especially in a short handed game and since you need to see flops or extra streets in the split game it can get very expensive. So I went back to the 4-8 and proceeded to lose my winnings and then some. Went from plus approx $50 to minus $140 or so. Ain’t nothing worse than second best cards. My big aces kept hitting TPTK and losing to crap 2 pairs. In the meantime I created a bit of a stir at the table. I was in the SB with a white chip out there and a raising hand I throw a red out to join the white making it, in my mind, 6 to go. In the mini blind game raises are still $4. The big blind checks and the dealer says I raised but the table says no, it wasn’t a raise. Huh? They said I didn’t call it so not a raise. Didn’t call it? There are multiple chips out there so calling it not necessary IMHO so I ask for the floor and he first agrees with me since I didn’t pull the single back. A couple of the regulars say that in a regular game this is true but because of the nature of this game you have to call that raise because the situation can give rise to angle shooting by waiting for reactions. One can toss the red and delay pulling back the white and decide if it’s a raise or not after seeing how folks react. Floor thought about it but couldn’t seem to make up his mind after that. I decided not to push it even though I thought it over thinking the situation and exchanged the red for a white. Saved me money because I whiffed on the flop anyway.
About 3 or so thy call the Pink game again and this time it’s a go. Of course I’m in the middle of a mini rush taking 3-4 hands in a row at the 4-8 game. No really big pots but it brings me back some leaving me down about $80-100. I take my red chips up to the cage and exchange them and some greenbacks for a rack of pink chips. Ain’t poker a colorful game? I take my seat at the table, the 8. Usually I like the 4 but decided to change things up a bit since my luck hasn’t been so good. We looked like we were starting off with 5 but another couple racks of pink appeared and we started with 6 but filled up within 15 minutes or so. While waiting I got to talking to the guy on my left, Bob. Bob’s a regular at the game and must have recognized me from some of my other appearances as he comes over to my table when he sees me down there to ask if I’m playing the Pink when they are trying to start it up. I gather it is harder to get going in the winter as a couple of the regulars are snowbirds, heading down to FL once it starts to turn cold. Bob reminds me of the TV version of the Vietnam vet, tall, thin, long grey hair and beard. He’s a pretty nice guy and willing to help folks out if they don’t understand things. It was while he was explaining something to the guy on his left that I found out Harrah’s had cut even more. Used to be the pink game brought in $3/hr in comps, or so I was told and 60 tier credits/hr as opposed to 20 for regular games. Seems that has been cut by a third to 2 and 40. Figures. I also find out that the kill only applies to the LO8 half of the game and needs a $150 pot. That works. At least it ain’t that $75 that the 5-10 game at Taj uses where it’s more kill than not, especially with VJ in the game. Told Bob that and he couldn’t believe the number was that low for a 5-10 game. $100 is the usual pot size for those stakes.
We kick off with Stud 8 which is always my preference. I find it easier to throw away starting hands in stud as opposed to O8. There is a quiet guy in the 1, an older gent in the 3, an Asian girl in the 4, VJ with a pecker in the 5 and to my right thank the poker gods, me in the 8, Bob in the 9 and a middle aged guy named Chip in the 10. Find out the guy in the 1 was also named Bob and so does a guy who later sits in the 7. Popular name. BTW, seems someone else snuck in and we started with 7. Guy in the 1 was so quiet that I really didn’t notice him much until he was raising. Seemed to be an ok player. The older guy in the 3 was a calling station and lucky enough to make it pay off. The girl in the 4 I’ve played with before and she has cost me. She thinks nothing of raising preflop with only A-2 and raising a multi way pot with lock low. Sweetheart, any one ever explain the word quarter to you? Not surprisingly she wound up being the first one felted. In number 5 we have Josie’s male counter part. Hyper aggressive young guy who plays this game like it’s tournament holdem. He loves to raise preflop, usually with nothing. He’ll bet or raise his draws. He’s the kind of player that can cost you money big time in this type of game. Somewhere along the line he’ll start bitching about everyone check calling him. Bob finally told him that he should take the hint. They were only check calling him. He wasn’t going to force people out with a single bet because they usually know he’s bluffing or at best drawing. Why should they bet when there’s an 80% chance he’s going to or knowing if the bet he’s raising and the hand might be worth a raise. Besides if the hand is a good one it gives them the opportunity to get a few extra bets in the pot with a check raise knowing that people are going to call him. Thing is, he gives the impression he knows the game but just doesn’t want to give up that aggressive style. Think he should stick to the NL tables given that. Bob in the 8 is a solid player whose luck wasn’t the greatest yesterday though he did come back a bit just before I left. Chip I had never played with before. Nice guy though he looks like the weight of the world is on his shoulders, kind of like a human bloodhound. Ok player though I think he chases a bit too much and puts too much faith in mediocre hands.
First hand cost me a bit. Established a pattern that was common in the stud game for me that day. I would get 3 low, usually suited or connecting, good opening hands. 4th street would usually pair one of the cards. Not great but as long as no big pairs on the board worth another bet, sometimes a 2 bet from MVJ. 5th street would then come an off suit 9. Always the 9, like it was saying, “Screw you, it can’t even be an 8 to keep you in for low”. Of course there was usually a bet or raise which then brings about a muck from me. That’s how the first hand started and that pattern continued all session. Didn’t sink too low to start though but it did take me awhile to gain some traction. Once I took a decent pot though I never looked back. Worst I was at after that was even. Dumb mistake on my part paid off for me. Dumb mistake on Chip’s part paid off for him and cost me big time. Both were in O8 and both were the same mistake. Mine was first. I thought I had hit a wheel and raised the turn and got two callers, MVJ and Dan, a young guy in the 2. He was aggressive but not up to MVJ’s level. River bricked and they checked to me so I bet with Dan calling. When I turned my cards up and called the wheel someone said that there was no wheel. Damn he was right, was missing a card. Had a decent low but not great and a pair of 6s for high. Great, just pissed away $45 on those last two cards. Next thing I know I’m getting a couple nice pink stacks and a kill button. Have no idea what Dan called with but the pair of 6s was a good high and my low also held up. Un-frikkin-believable. A bit later I was looking at my O8 pattern hand. I would get an ace and two paint cards then when a 2 or 3 would make it a raising hand I would get a 4. Happened at least 8-10 times and exactly in that order every time. This time I was in the pot with Bob, Chip, Dan and MVJ. With those latter two in it was shaping up to be a good one. Flop brought me flush draw and 2nd low possibilities. Turn was a blank and chip bet out with a raise from MVJ. Thought for awhile but decided I was looking at second nuts both ways and it wasn’t worth 30 and mucked as did Bob. Chip bets out the river blind and it’s a low spade giving me second nuts all around. Dan and MVJ call and Chip declares a wheel which he doesn’t have. 2 pair took high and the low was a chop with second nuts. If I had seen that river I would have grabbed high and a third of the low. Chip’s misread and bet on the turn won him ¾’s of the pot. MVJ and his raise got nada. Bob had wound up folding the nut flush. Who said mistakes were always bad? Funny thing is the pattern broke on one hand all day. I was button and it came in A-K-J-2, double suited. Yahtzee, a raising hand. Of course wouldn’t you know it folds around to me? Even when I’m winning I can’t win. I could still raise and maybe make a few chips off Chip but unless he’s got a monster I know Bob will fold considering I haven’t raised preflop all day but I decided to be a gentleman and tell them I’ll let them chop the blinds and fold the hand face up. Bob looks and says he owes me one. If they hadn’t been such decent guys I might have played but how much was I really going to make and even then I still needed to smack the flop. My luck a 2-7-9 rainbow hits so I go for the good karma instead. Must have worked because the next round of O8 I’m in a hand with straight and flush draws on the turn with no made lows out there and the dealer groves one down the middle giving me my gut shot straight flush. Unfortunately it was heads up at the time so while I scooped it was a decent, not great pot. I only took one kill pot all day but that’s only because it only played in O8. Most of my big pots were in Stud 8, which I’ve usually considered my best game. Amazingly the game, which usually breaks around dinner time, was still going strong when I decided to leave at 8. I was tempted to press my luck but I was a bit tired and still had to drive home. I wound up racking up almost 3 racks of pink which put me nicely ahead even counting the money lost in the 4-8 game. Carrying 3 racks though was kind of hard given my bad left hand. Thankfully the guy who took my seat helped out, buying enough of my chips to take it down to a single rack to carry. Cool.
After I cashed out I remembered my brother gave me some coupons to play for him in the slots. Away from the pink table and the world starts pissing on me again. I am not a slot player and I usually play only one machine, Shinobi. It’s not a popular one so there aren’t a lot of them around. Chester only has 3. AC only has one I know of but it’s right outside the poker room so I head in that direction. It’s taken and the guy playing it has 60 some bucks in it. Sit behind him for a few minutes hoping maybe he’ll decide to cash out but he’s hitting enough that his balance ain’t moving much so I figure he ain’t leaving any time soon. I get up and wander looking for a machine that will “talk” to me. My brother’s coupons must have talked to me because I wound up wandering through the video poker section and the smoking section. Both places my brother goes to. I wandered all the way to the doors without seeing anything that interested me and wound up walking up a side path. Finally found a machine that semi appealed to me and had the added advantage that no one was near it. Place was fairly crowded by this time. Here I got another surprise. Usually I play out the coupons, take the cash, add it to $20 of my own then play. If I win I split the money proportionately. What I usually do though is pull the card after registering the coupon and playing a spin or two and insert my own. I figure I’ll get any comps credit since I’m doing the work. Never had a problem before. Yesterday however I decided to just put the coupons in with my money rather than see what cash they brought. Put them in, spun it a time or two, put my card in and 20 bucks and started playing. After a few spins I looked down and saw that the coupon money had vanished. Great. I try putting my brother’s card in again but the bucks are gone. When did this shit start? I go on to play my $20 figuring I’ll give him a share if I hit anything. Dicked around until I hit the bonus. Started off real good. 12 free spins of which the first 5 got me nada. I did hit close to $50 on the last 7 though so cashed out and headed for the door. Only wasted an hour screwing around with the slots but it wound up paying for my gas.
Speaking of gas I still needed to tank up before heading home so I headed for my usual Wawa figuring on getting the gas along with some coffee and a couple doughnuts. Stopping there had been a ritual when I was driving down a couple times a week before PA opened the poker rooms. It even carried the Kona coffee as a regular item when the other stores didn’t. Get there and first surprise, gas has gone up a nickel since I drove by on my way down. Second surprise, there is a closed sign on the Kona coffee pot. Accckkk, no Kona. Have to settle for Brazilian. Third surprise, head out to the pumps and there are orange cones in front of all of them. They’re closed? Just saw one of the pump jockey’s in the store. WTF is this? I see a Sunoco sign across the way and head that way. Nice surprise there, they haven’t raised their price to match Wawa yet so I save a buck or two. Now how do I get out of here? This area used to have a traffic circle where 5 or 6 roads came in and you went around the circle until you reached the exit you wanted and headed that way. New Jersey’s answer to excess population. There’s been construction going on there the last few months so I figured that they were getting rid of the circle. I was half right. They bisected the circle with the main drag but the circle is still there. If I had stayed on the main drag there was no problem. Crossing it and coming out of gas station on one of the other side roads now means dealing with the circle and the cross street. Yes, there are traffic lights but the way they are set you don’t know exactly where you are supposed to stop. Lots of fun. Just confirms my long held suspicion that they recruit the people in charge of road construction and traffic patterns from insane asylums. I finally get on the expressway headed home. Traffic up to Philly isn’t bad but as we come near the bridges it starts to thicken. As on the way down it’s heavy but moving. Moving that is until I’m about 10 miles from home. There, I shit you not, must be the brother of the guy I got caught behind headed down. He’s in the left hand lane doing 40 with a mile or two of traffic backed up behind him and 5 miles of open road in front. In-frikkin-credible. I finally am able to find an opening on the right and squirm past this douche and get my ass home. Great you say. Not really.
I decide to do some video editing and set up the system to convert a bunch of files while I sleep. Spend 90 min doing the editing and am on the last file and the program crashes. Please let all the files still be stored in the batch job. Please just let me have to redo the last one. No such luck. So I redo all the files and start the job and I notice the first file is converting at a god awful rate. Now my new computer is fast but not that fast. I look and when the program crashed the system reverted to the default output file type and I never noticed it. Under normal circumstances it never changes unless you do it manually which I did at the start of the process the first time. So I abort the batch and change the file type to plain mp4. Start and it reverts back again. Obviously once the file is in the batch the parameters can’t be changed. Great. Delete and redo a third time. About 3:30 this morning I finally get the batch file running and hit the sack. It seems the gods gave me a small break yesterday but they ain’t quite through pissing on my head.
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Does any one wonder why the same type of conservative Republican who wondered if JFK was elected if he would be more answerable to his country or the Pope are now the biggest supporters of Rick Santorum?
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And if Waffles goes all Little Mary Sunshine on me again, as crippled as I am, I’ll stick a foot up his arse. I don’t go Pollyanna on his rants do I?
It’s gotten slightly better since I last posted but only slightly. Have had some decent weather, usually sunny and warm for this time of the year so the pain and immobility has been in check so far this winter. Of course I decided to take my doc’s advice, make that orders, and have started a walking program. Not a whole lot so far. House sits on 1 ¼ acres so have started doing a circuit of the property. First couple days were ok, made it up to twice around. For you normal people that ain’t much but when you have as many genetic defects as I do, not to mention the stroke, it seems like a marathon to me. Unfortunately I’ve hit that part of a new workout regime that kills you. First couple days are ok, muscles may be weak but they haven’t been doing much so they are fresh, and so you can keep improving a bit. After a while though the muscles are not only weak but tired and so you wind up going backward. Instead of a 20 minute walk you crap out at 10 or 15. If you keep it up you break through eventually, I hope, but it is frustrating and destroys your mental state. Since I’ve gone through the symptoms before, when I was a habitual gym goer, I know what to expect so hopefully it doesn’t get the better of me. Only problem is that was before the stroke and while I was still on my Remicade, have no idea as to whether this is that early wall at the beginning of routine or if it’s my body just telling me to fuck off. Will know by next week I guess, just have to try and tough it out. Either way it ain’t helping my mental state.
My broker didn’t help things either. Sent in an order in my IRA to sell a few shares and send me a check to cover the unexpected expenses and to start another poker bankroll. I put down that I’m disabled to avoid the penalty tax. Been doing this a couple times I raided the account since the stroke. This time I get an email back saying my distribution was refused since there was no proof of disability. After 3 years they pull this stunt. It figures. I fired off a not so nice email in reply and they did apologize and said they straightened it out. I did find my copy of the Social Security letter saying I was disabled and sent them a copy of it later just so this doesn’t happen again though I think I sent it to them once before. Just can’t catch a break these days.
Sitting here deciding whether to take a lorazepam or not. Don’t know what it is but every so often I get hit with something similar to anxiety attacks. Get the sweats, teeth clench, jaw and neck muscles tighten, head hurts, etc. Can usually make it go away without drugs if I lie down and meditate for awhile but in the middle of fixing dinner so may need to resort to pharmaceuticals tonight.
Speaking of fixing dinner that’s also got me in a pissy mood. Decided I need to drop some tonnage and figured I had to stop eating with the folks. For one, Mom makes way too much. It’s easy to say don’t eat as much but when it’s there in front of you… Also they eat way too damned early. Fine for Dad as he hits the sack around 10 if not sooner but along about 10-11 I start looking to munch. Figure dinner between 6 and 7 will curb the munching. So I go to cut up my chicken and grab my favorite knife and it’s as dull as a limp dick. Ditto with every other one in the block. Years ago tired of the cheap, stamped sheet metal blades my family seemed to favor I started buying myself some good knives. I mean good, $100 a blade good. Since the stroke however I’ve barely touched them. Don’t know who dulled them but it’s pissing me off. Now I have to find a knife sharpener as I’m not going to be able to use a stone with only one good hand. And by sharpener I mean a person, not a gadget so it’s going to cost.
There is also good news and bad new on the computer front. First the external hard drive. Mailed that off to the company last week. Post Office said $20 for priority with a Thursday delivery, $13 for parcel with a delivery today. Sheesh should have seen if it would have fit in one of their flat rate boxes. Probably not with the packing needed. Anyway glad I didn’t spring for the $20 as the package got there early. Unfortunately the drive was fried. They were willing to ship it back if I wanted to try and get the data recovered and then ship it back to them for replacement but I said to hell with it. Except for a couple of files there wasn’t anything that couldn’t be replaced except a lot of man hours extracting the files from the DVDs. So they’re shipping a new drive out today. Hate losing those files but no guarantee they’re recoverable so no sense spending more money. At least there was no argument about a replacement.
Picked up the new computer yesterday. Win7 sucks donkey dick as does Windows Media Center. My 10 year old system did a much more efficient job. Between Mr. Softy and its over bloated code and Hollywood and its rampant paranoia about people stealing its movies it is taking me 3 times as long to set up my videos as it had on the old machine.
(2 Day break as that seeming “anxiety” attack was something a bit worse and I spent a night and day in bed then I spend an inordinate amount of time getting the new computer set up to do the simple tasks my old one did)
So my frustration is even greater thanks to Mr. Softy. Windows Media Center is the most useless piece of frikkin software I ever came across. It records in over sized file formats that a lot of video programs can’t interpret. It has so much copy protection that it won’t record a lot of premium TV stuff. Was going to say it might be useful for recoding and watching it on the system except it’s not even good for that given its recording limitations. Also I noticed that when it does record it isn’t smooth, a lot of the actions are out of sync and herky-jerky. I guess it’s WMC because I’m running a top of the line processor with 8GB of memory and the recorder is the only thing going so it shouldn’t be taxing the hardware. Besides my other recoding programs aren’t having that problem. Yes, other programs, and weren’t the fun to play with. Tried a bunch of various freeware programs and couldn’t get most of them to work right. Then decided to go with Hauppauge WinTV which was supposed to be included with my tuner card. Small problem, instead of an 1850 card my man put an 1850-MC card in the box. That’s right, MC as in Media Center. No Win TV included though I could purchase it for $10. So I decide to purchase it. No download, need to wait for the CD. Just frikkin great, I’m already 2 weeks behind and it wants me to wait some more. Also it’s now Wed night and some of the series that I’m recording on a pay network turnover on Wed with the old episode dropped and a new one added which means I’ll have a hole in the middle of my series. So I call Hauppauge and they tell me to send them some info and they’ll authorize a download so I can get up and running. I’m glad some people no what customer service means. While waiting for the download to come through I’m fiddling with one of the free programs again and somehow get it to work. Cool. So I get a couple episodes on disk and while transferring the file to the external the damned USB connection is lost and hangs everything up. (I only put 3-4 episodes in each file so the transfers don’t take all day then break it down in the editor to take out the extraneous stuff, screenshots as I switch on the pay networks, commercials if it’s broadcast stuff). Anyway Win7 does not handle these situations well so I need to reboot. Get started again and I can’t get the recording program to frikkin work. Unbelievable. Ready to give this machine to my brother and stay with my old one. Finally the download comes through and after installing it takes another eternity to get the damned thing configured. Somehow I finally get a picture on the screen and start recording. Unfortunately I fuck something up so the first 90 minutes are shot to hell. Eventually work out the kinks and get a couple more episodes done but by now it’s after midnight and the premium channels are shut down for their weekly switchover of shows. Not only can’t record but can’t even watch anything on demand and the regular schedule just sucks. So what else is new?
This morning I run in to file transfer problems again necessitating another reboot. Finally figured it out, bad cable, so at least we got that problem fixed. Thing is I fire up the recorder again and no picture. WTF? I thought only the poker gods fucked with me like this. Fiddle fart around for about an hour, nada. Decide to go to a different type of connection, S-Video instead of coax. This is lots of fun because all my connections on this setup are to my left side, the bad side. Finally get it hooked up and configured and still no picture. Am getting sound but the picture is just lines of static. Great. Reconnect the coax and wonder of wonders it is now working. Someone is enjoying jerking me around. Set up to do some recording. Decide to watch the latest episode of H.O.T.D. so after I get the recorder going I switch back to the TV as the sound is a bit better over that connection. After watching I decide to record some shows I’ve already watched while I come out and finish up this post among various and sundry things on my agenda. Record, or so I think 3 more episodes and after the last one decide to start a new file. Flip back to the computer input and guess what? Yup, blank screen. Check the file and it crapped out halfway through the first episode I was recording. 2 hours of recording shot to hell. So get it running again and this time I left it on the computer input. So far first episode went well. Enough to give me another damned stroke.
My walking routine took a hit too as we had a pretty good snowstorm the other day. Been so warm it didn’t affect the roads but it did put a few inches on my grass track.
Top everything off I had planned a poker road trip. Next Friday Harrah’s AC is giving me somewhere between 4 to 15xs comp rate. Harrah’s AC is home of the pink game which has a rate of $3 an hour in comps. Given those numbers I was planning an overnighter in AC for Thu and Fri then head up to Wilkes Barre on Fri evening to spend the night and hit the LO8 game at Mohegan Sun since I have to pick up my daughter and possibly her friend for a vacation down here. Told VJ of the plan and of course she was in. In until Southwest screwed her up. Southwest is discontinuing its Boston to Philly run this weekend. Without Southwest only US Air is making the trip and the cost went from under $100 to over $500 which is a bit much. Southwest says they weren’t making any inroads in to the business traffic between the cities so they are shutting it down. Guess some people don’t care how much it costs to fly as long as they can charge it to work. So looks like I’m on a solo trip rather than playing chauffer next weekend. Hate to say it but was looking forward to another poker road trip with Joe.
So my year has still sucked majorly. If it gets any worse, what am I saying, it can’t get worse. Hey, 3 shows recorded and system still up and running. Daughter coming down in another week, maybe things are looking up.
Thanks for the listen.
8 comments.
I’m not even through January and I’m already ready for 2013 to begin. This year sucks with a capital S and unless I magically make it to the WSOP somehow and cash the next 11 months probably aren’t going to redeem it. Blew what was left of my poker bankroll on Christmas gifts for the family figuring to start fresh tis year to start rebuilding. Maybe I’ll get a chance to start, in October.
It didn’t start off too bad, didn’t even have to argue too much with the ex to get my daughter down for a long weekend. She did have a few things to say about it but what the hell, I was in such a good mood that I was willing to concede her points, to some extent. I did give her short notice on the visit, didn’t see that weekend being a holiday one on the calendar until the weekend before and even less notice on having her miss an extra day of school but that was only because she decided she couldn’t drive down on Friday afternoon but needed to wait until Saturday. A Friday pickup and I wouldn’t have needed a Tuesday return. Anyway things went peachy keen until that Tuesday. Bad enough I had to take the daughter home but when I get back to work on my video editing I find that my brand new 2 TB external hard drive is no longer working. Still under warranty but I just spent the last month copying my DVDs to it plus editing a bunch of TV shows and storing them there. Who knows if the data can be recovered not to mention how long it might take them to repair/replace it.
Next up is my printer. I move it so thyat it is in a more convenient location, not to mention it gives me more room in my library. Problem is that I only have one Cat 5 running in to the room and need it for the computer there as it’s the Internet games one and the wireless card kept cutting out. Printer is network capable so using that to make it available to all the computers in the house rather than attaching it to a single computer and trying to share. Have an old 4 port hub stored somewhere but of course now that I need it I can’t find it. Figures. I did find an old router that I no longer used and tried to configure it to use as a switch. Worked for getting the computer its connection but no one could find the printer. in fact half the machines could ping the router but half, including the computer hooked directly in to it, couldn’t even do that. So today at the computer store I shelled out $15 and bought a new switch. So far still no printer. That’s my after dinner project.
Continuing my jolly saga I was having problems with the Net connection to my video computer. This one is hooked up to my bedroom flatscreen. It’s an old system but one that was so start of the art in its day that it still serves its purpose which is to record and edit video and now to play my DVDs off the hard drives rather than buying a new DVD player. Thanks to the old tuner/capture card I can no longer use it as a total DVR, recording one show while watching another but I can record shows I’m watching or record something when I’m not around. Not perfect but it served. That is until Monday. The wireless card was so old in it that it couldn’t handle my network security so I went and got a USB wireless dongle. Problem was, even though I disabled the old card, and eventually did a uninstall in the device manager it kept coming back and knocking the new dongle off the system. Pain in the frikkin ass. Decided I needed to physically remove the damned thing. Normally not a big deal but i tried to shortcut it. Rather than disconnect and lay the computer on a workbench I just popped the side, unscrewed the card and took it out. Problem was that there were some cables running over the card and somewhere along the line I disconnected one that was necessary for the additional USB ports. Normally no big deal but running 4 external hard drives and a radio controlled mouse/keyboard plus the wireless card I need every port I have. Thought I reconnected the cable right but ports still weren’t working so i disconnected everything and put it in the car to take to my repair man. No big deal, just a pain in the ass.
Tuesday dawns bright and sunny and I head out for a doctor visit then the computer place. Had heavy rain Monday night, a situation which sometimes causes car problems. When it gets soaked the car gets tempermental and takes a process of driving a bit, stopping for 5 minutes and starting her up again before she’ll run above 35. Fortunately she started like a champ on Tuesday. Unfortunately she decided to crap out on the expressway. Halfway to the doc’s office my speed takes a nose dive from 65 to 35. Just what I needed. I limp along the shoulder to the next exit. Run down a side road for about 5 minutes or so, pull in to the parking lot and kill the engine. Call the doctor to explain what happened and that I’ll be a bit late. Fine, they’ll fit me in. Don’t like that. last time I was there I was on time and waited close to an hour, who knows what to expect now. After 5 minutes I start her up,head towards the office on backroads,just in case, but car is running like nothing happened. Get back on the expressway and am only 15-20 minutes late. Luckily noone there so no wait, a unforeseen bright spot. Of course the doc chews out my ass. Had to give up my gym membership due to cost and he doesn’t like that. Also I go in to funks at this time of year as followers of this blog may have noticed so I really don’t feel like doing squat until about April. So I’m getting bawled out for not exercising enough. I need this? He’s thinking maybe anti-depressants but last thing I need is more pills. It’s a frikkin winter funk, I’ll get over it, always do. So he let’s it pass for now and I head out to see about my computer.
I’m driving down the expressway, sweating my balls off due to the sunshine, when that self same sunshine causes me to notice the lower right side of my windshield. Frikkin A, there is a 16 inch long scratch or crack running about 5 inches above the base of the windshield. When the fuck did that happen? It wasn’t there on Friday when I parked the car. Might have been there that morning but due to location and above mentioned problems I might not have noticed it. of course it might have happened while I was in the doc’s. Who knows? Just know I didn’t notice it until the sun hit it on that drive. Just great. Please be just a scratch. No such luck. Get to the computer place and check it. Crack. Great, need a new windscreen. Fan-fucking-tastic.
Get the computer on the workbench, fire it up, no problems, ports all working perfectly. It’s good news but i’m thinking about all the work I did getting the damned thing down there. That and that windshield ain’t letting me jump for joy. While i’m there I ask my man Jiash to give me a price on a new system. This one is 10 years old after all. Anyway pack it up, and head home.
Get home, hook everything up again and now I have no sound. I check every connection, look in every piece of audio software,Windows and Intel, and even check the TV. When I first hooked this up a couple months back I had no sound and later found out that the TV has a seperate setting to enable PC sound. About as useful as tits on a boar hog but there it was. This time it was still set to yes. Just to be sure I hooked the laptop up to the TV and there was sound. So we unhook everything again and it all goes in the car. Unfortunately a big storm was moving in to the area and I was stuck in bed the next day thanks to the pain.
Today I head back to Jiash’s and again we hook it up and again everything is working, even sound. WTF? Next thing you know though a BSoD hits and after the reboot the sound has again vanished. We tried various things but no sound and a couple more BSoDs. This gives Jiash to think that the registry is corrupted and it’s going to need a reinstall. Screw that, at least for now. I have to find all the driver disks, the software stuff, etc. Forget it, what was the quote on the new one? He works some numbers and comes in below 4 figures, quite a bit below in fact and this thing will have hi def capability, bigger hard drive, better processor and a lot more memory not to mention faster acces times to the externals. Great, build it, then I’ll worry about redoing the old one and using it as a dvr somewhere else. Was hoping to get a new laptop first and even then hold off for another couple months but screw it.
So there is my week, month and year so far and it’s only Thursday. And Oh Yea, that crack got bigger while driving so I’m without a car until it gets repaired. So new hard drive, new computer and new windshield all in the space of 4 days. So much for rebuilding a poker bankroll. Fuck You world!
Don’t you all want to just listen to a bad beaqt story now. Thanks for the listen.
7 comments.
Been jonesing for some play so I fired up one of the online sites that is still working and I still have some funds on, one Power Poker. Reason I still have funds there is because I hate the frikkin interface. Not only does it annoy me in general it has a habit of locking up not to mention that when I power it up for some reason it would bring up the folder containing the files for the program every time I rebooted my computer and I would have to dig around in the registry to make it disappear. Basically it sucked so I avoided it even after the big three went down. Degeneracy got the better of me however so I finally fired it up to play a bit.
Nothing has changed since the last time I played online poker. Site and interface still sucked though they did fix the folder issue. Cards sucked and players sucked worst of all. First orbit of the table I got no card higher than an 8. Played mainly tourneys. Best finish was 4th in a PLO8 game which broke me even for the night. Kind of pissed me off because I dominated the game most of the way and got rivered back to back by a flush chasing holdem player. Major damage was done when he called my pot sized bet on the turn with nothing more than bottom pair and a whopping 10 high flush draw. I proceeded to meet his brother, who styled himself as awesome going by his table name, the following night. It was a bounty tourney and I shoved my set and was called by this character with nothing more than the 8 of hearts in his hand and 3 hearts on the board. Of course the 4th one fell and Mr. Awesome must have truly felt he made an awesome call. And the stellar play continues on as I have just been knocked out of the latest tourney when my shove with A-K was called by an A-9 and they spiked a 9 on the flop. Why the hell did I ever think I missed online poker?
Thanks for the listen.
2 comments.
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