Blue Wave

All I know is that if I worked in a restaurant I would be very afraid if I had to serve Karl Rove, because if he used THE MATH to calculate my tip, I'd probably get stiffed big time. I hope he never lives that one down.

There has to be a term..

I'll look it up later, but there has to be a term to describe the mad rush of a iPod neophyte who discovers iTunes and begins to grab every single CD they own to rip it and put it onto his/her iPod. It's like a whole new world revealed. I even went over to my dad's house to round up his CDs as well so I could put them onto this iPod. I mean, I have only 150/7,500. 7,500!!!! that's a lot of songs!!!

It's also heartening to see that the most downloaded podcast is "This American Life." It almost reaffirms my faith in America, almost.

Can't write more, I need to surf the podcasts and rate my music.

Double Header

Scrabble Games 100 & 101 last night

Game 100: Tmo: 417 - Mrs. Tmo: 346
Game 101: Tmo: 344 - Mrs. Tmo: 322

To the elected government officials of the United States...

Screw you all.

What Internet Gambling has to do with Homeland Security beats the hell out of me. Thank you for yet another questionable law that will stay on the books forever. The only people to really win out will be the lawyers who will litigate this one day. Of course no one will try to strike this one down for fear of offending their conservative constituents. Now I guess I'll just have to burn up lots of fossil fuel to drive to my closest Casino.

politics suck. People who slips non-related bills into other bills should be punished.

end rant.

So I'm talking with Ted Forrest...

More on how these pictures came about later, but here are a couple of pictures from a night that included an open bar, the Voo Doo Lounge, Light, Doyle Brunson, Dutch Boyd, The marketing manager for Pokerblue.com, Pamela Anderson, Gavin Smith, and many more.

Me and Yosh Nakano

Me and Ted Forrest

Latest Scrabble Score:
Me: 339 Mrs: 315

Patriot Poker

so the other night I was playing a sit-n-go on Ultimate Bet. For those of you who haven't played on UB, you can select which country you "represent." Most tables are full of Americans, and an occasional Canadian. BO-RING. I like to mix things up a bit. Sometimes I like to represent the Isle of Mann, but lately I've been playing for the Holy See. That's right, I represent Vatican City. Why? Mostly for shits and giggles. And maybe for a little blasphemy thrown on top. Once in a while it's a conversation starter. People ask if I'm a priest. Do I know the Pope? etc. etc. I don't lie, I usually tell them that I'm not even Catholic.
The other night some guy starts harrassing me because I'm not representing the good ol' U.S. of A. I asked him if he was more of an American because he represents the US and he tells me that I'm less of an American because I'm not. wow. I was half tempted to change my country to Iraq but unfortunately I was knocked out. Next time.

I am a scrabble geek

SWMBO and I play a lot of scrabble. Since getting the Scrabble deluxe version last September, we've played 58 games, of which I've won 35, or 60%. I've never dipped below 60% actually. Why do I know this? Because I've kept a spreadsheet, of course. What kind of person, you may ask, keeps an excel spreadsheet of their scrabble wins and losses? me.

Tonight's match:
SWMBO: 273
Tank: 404

2 bingos for our hero.

Oh. And I won a 10-person sit-n-go at the same time. Woo hoo.

I've made it

One of the first poker bloggers I started reading was Linda G at Pokerworks.com. Not only does she post day in and out, she provides a unique perspective from the epicenter of the poker world.

So I went to Vegas. More on that later. For now i'll just say I finally got to spend a little time chatting with Linda and am now imortalized in the annals of Pokerworks:
http://table-tango.pokerworks.com/2006/02/20/690/#more-690

Oh, and I took 6th in a tourney over at Caesars.

So close

I'll be the first to admit that I'm a fairweather fan. But when your home team makes it to the Super Bowl, you have to watch. I didn't really watch much of the regular season since most of the time we didn't TV, so I was willing to believe the line on the game. Like my friends I watched the game with, I was just hoping for a good, close game. But that game just left a bitter taste in my mouth. You hate to blame the game on the officiating, but how can you deny that it might have made a difference in the outcome? The final score really doesn't do justice to the way the Seahawks dominated the first half. I just have to say, we're lucky we're not a lot of other cities because there would probably be riots tonight if we were.

Of course you can always say this when your team loses, but the Seahawks really have nothing to be ashamed of. Little consolation to the way they feel right now I know.

-tmo

Doctors and People who work in Las Vegas

What to these people have in common? I never know when to call them.

My friend is a doctor and my cousin works in a Casino in Las Vegas. With both of them, I never know when to call. With most people, I think calling between 9AM and, say, 9PM is acceptable. But doctors fresh out of medical school work crazy hours so I hesitate to call even at 1:00 in the afternoon afraid that she's just come off some hellish 24 hour shift and collapsed into bed right before being rudely awoken by me.
And my cousin works all different shifts so who knows when she's sleeping?

I supposed the same would hold true if I knew a firefighter or police officer.

-tmo

three-three

the last time I posted i was 32. Now I'm 33. Doesn't feel all that different. In fact, it doesn't feel different at all. Am I wiser? doubtful. Am I more mature? probably not. The only thing I can say now is that I'm a third of the way to 100. next stop I guess is halfway (unless you want to count 7/20 or 2/5). That is assuming, of course, that I'm going to make it to 100.

Since Monday was a holiday from work I decided to venture to a card room up north and play in a little daily tournament that they have. The structure is horrible, you start out with T4000 and the blinds begin at T100/200. By the time the second round comes around, the BB is 1/10 of your stack (assuming you haven't won anything). Ridiculous. You need to win your first hand or you're in trouble.

First hand of the toruney I get QQ and pop it up to T1000 and pick up about T500. The next hand I get 55 and pick up the pot after the flop comes 23J. I don't catch anything for a couple of rounds when I find KQd and raise it. By this time I had been blinded down so much that I should have pushed all in, instead like donkey I only doubled the BB and of course had the SB and BB come along for the ride. Flop comes A-K-rag and I know that one of them has an A and fold to the BB's bet on the turn. He folds to the SB's all in showing KJ. Had I pushed all in pre-flop there's no way the SB would have called with her A7o. After that I only had enough to cover my blinds and had to shove with crap at the same time that someone caught QQ. Chalk it up to a learning experience.

-tmo

Don't get me wrong

I like NPR, listen to it every day. And today being MLK day here I've enjoyed listening to the recordings of Dr. King's speeches. The man was a great orator. At times as I'm listening I think "man, he's kind of rambling" but then all of a sudden he ties it all together and it hits you. It all makes sense.

His last speech ("I've been to the mountain top"), the one he made just days before he was killed, was really eerie. Maybe it's just coincidence, but his last paragraph almost sounds like a challenge to those who are plotting to kill him. If I knew there was a plot to kill me, I don't think I could stand in front of all those people and deliver such powerful words.

So I'm listening to this speech and when it's over NPR decides to play "In the name of love" by U2 as a musical interlude. huh? I like the song. But in that whole song there's one mention of MLK. Of all the songs they choose to play, that one? Kind of put a damper on the whole thing.

-tmo

No ark

Of course as soon as I posted about the rain it stopped. SWMBO was very excited at the prospect of a rain free day while I was hoping it would rain. I mean, we were less than a week away from breaking the record of continuous days of rain (33). Maybe it rained somewhere else in the city today so the streak is still on. I have to admit that it was pretty nice with the sun shining today, but still....

start building the ark

it's rained for 26 days straight here and there's no sign that it's going to let up. I don't really mind it but the missus is not digging it. If it's raining, that means the temperature is at least in the 30s. And you don't have to dig rain.

-tmo

unsung

You'll never see my name in the credits, but in some small way I associated with the Iron Chef America. My friend J works at the Food Network as a researcher for the show and every so often he asks me to help with an obscure ingredient that one of the Iron Chefs requests.

Not that I'm even a big fan of ICA, it lacks that certain passion that the Japanese Iron Chef show had, but I like the challenge of trying to figure out what these foods are.

The first challenge is trying to figure out what they hell the IC is asking for. Apparently his English writing skills are pretty bad, because the ingredients are invariably misspelled.

One of the latest ingredients was called "shutou," (originally spelled "syutou" when given to my friend) which after some searching I discovered to be the "salted offal of bonito."

uh.

From dictionary.com:
"offal:
n : viscera and trimmings of a butchered animal often considered inedible by humans"

Often considered inedible. But apparently not always, because someone had the brilliant idea of salting it and eating it. Supposedly this is something that is often consumed with copious amounts of alcohol. I know I would need to be very, VERY drunk to even consider eating this. I would need to be so blitzed that when someone told me I was about to eat offal I would need to hear "Waffles" and my brain would need to be so far gone that I could not recognize salted fish guts sitting in front of me. And hopefully if I was drunk enough to eat this, I would have already passed out.

-tmo

it's funny....

I only read a few blogs regularly, and even then, I read a lot fewer since we got our house. So I was reading the Tao of poker and decided to randomly click on a few links and see what's out there in the world of poker blogs. The first one was a 404. The second one was a guy whose last post was July 2005 and the next was even earlier then that. The second blogger began with "it's been a while." It's kind of funny because I've been there too. Probably 80% of us bloggers start and then eventually give up. Just like keeping a journal. Which makes those who keep it up week after week really amazing.

-tmo

My first dream and a good start

2006. Wow.
The first dream i remember having this year was of getting a speeding ticket. I hope that isn't an omen of the year to come.

Something I do hope is an omen of things to come is taking 4th in my first online sit-n-go tourney this year. Sure, it wasn't first, but in the money isn't bad.

Happy New Years to all.

-tmo