My oh My

My oh my, it has been a crazy couple of weeks hasn’t it? The BBT3 fields have been unbelievable so far, and we have not even had a $10 NLHE game yet! I think I’m almost afraid to play the Mookie tonight with the size it will probably end up being, that and the miserable cold that has me in bed by 10 PM. Speaking of Mookie, congrats to you and Ms. Mookie on the birth of your 108^th daughter. Think about it sir, in just a few years time you and your girls will be ½ the field in every blogger event!

On the flip side, sympathies go out to PokerEnthusiast on the loss of his father. It’s never a good thing to lose someone you are close to.

Also sadly, yesterday gamers the world over are shedding a tear for the loss of Gary Gygax, co-developer of D&D. Like so many others, I spent a good portion of my teenage years in the basement with some friends on a dungeon crawl. Thank you sir for the gift you gave to many a gamer geek.

Politics, well I for one am less than pleased with the results of the Democratic elections, especially Ohio. Personally, I think that if Ohio had been much closer, Clinton would have to had given serious consideration into dropping when you take her narrow win in Texas (assuming she takes the caucus there as well). With some luck, Obama will take some big wins in the near future and make it pretty much a done deal.

And now for my own little political commentary, Clinton has been going on and on about how she is ready for the big military decisions that will need to be made and how over 30 former and current Generals and Admirals back her for Commander-in-Chief. Now here is a question for you all, if you were one of those Generals/Admirals, who would you pick, someone who may well question your recommendations and methods and actually think before giving the orders, or someone who you feel you can most easily influence to do what you want and is afraid to “look weak” if a decision is not made at a moments notice. If I were the Brass, I would only recommend someone who I felt could get the job done, i.e. do what I say, when I say then get out of my way so I can go blow things up. (much like the current situation). If you ask me, the last thing we need now is another puppet for the military/DHS to take advantage of.

New PC=Back at Last!

The old puter was just getting on my nerves. It was down to a crawl, frequent crashes and freezes, spontaneous reboots for no readily apparent reason; such things test a persons limits. My last time on the virtual felt was back in early/mid January at a Mookie. It had been happening like clockwork for months, about 15-20 minutes into the game and it would start lagging. The cards would be dealt, and I would only see one of mine with the other frozen mid-air. I could hear the chips being slung for hands folded, but my screen would be frozen. Then about five seconds after my warning buzz, my card would finally “fall” and I would have about 5 seconds to look at my card, analyze the action thus far and then decided what to do. Once this starts, every few minutes it happens more often. It takes about 15 minutes before it’s happening 3-5 times per orbit, puts me on pc tilt, makes me spew chips for a bit then I do a reboot. From the time I tell it to reboot till I would have the game back up and running….five minutes, if it was a good day.

That machine has been pass on to a friend now (and yes, I wiped the drive five times and reformatted it before reinstalling the OS) and the new machine has thus far been a dream. I ordered all of the parts over a period of about 3-4 weeks, moved all of my files to my external eSATA drive on Thursday, built the new machine on Friday and installed the new OS Friday evening and spent most of that night applying updates and installing drivers. Saturday was for software installs and file transfers, oh and the live poker game. Sunday was actually using the new rig and getting used to it, I went with the 64 bit OS as I will be bringing it up to 8GB of RAM in the next few weeks.

The big test will be tomorrow and Wednesday, as I return to the virtual felt for the BoDonkey, and the Mookie. With the new 22” wide LCD I can fit four tables up without having to resize the tables and only minimal overlap on them. Hell, now that I’m thinking about it, I just may have to play the Skillz game just to see how everything goes.

Case: Antec P182

PSU: Antec TPQ-850

DVD: Asus 20X DVD w/ LightScribe

Speakers: Logitec X-540 5.1

Monitor: Samsung 226BW 22"

HD Tuner: KWorld TV Box 1680ex

MoBo: GA-X38T-DQ6

HS: Thermalright Ultra-120 Extreme

Fan: Scythe SSF21F

CPU: Intel E8400 (Core 2 Duo, 3.0 GHz, Wolfdale core)

Thermal: ArticSilver 5

RAM: OCZ Platinum 2 x 2 GB DDR3 PC1066 7-7-7-20

Graphics: PowerColor HD3870

OS: Vista Ultimate 64 bit

WebCam: Logitech 9000

HHD: WD2500KS x 4 (250 GB ea., 16MB cache, SATA II) in a RAID 10

Keyboard: MS 4000

ExtHDD: 250 GB eSATA/USB 2.0

Reader: Rosewill Multi w/ FDD

Next weekend will begin the adventures in overclocking the system. I figure I should be able to get it up to 4.0 GHz without too much effort, but I will probably set it to 3.8 GHz for everyday settings.

Last nights Blogger Skillz PLO game was just long and painful. Who knew that one can be card dead in Omaha for damn near two hours? There were very few hands that I could play, and about 90% of those wiffed on the flop, it was quite sad. Evy on the hand could not miss. If she had four cards she could see the flop, and damn if she did not hit it. every. single. time. It was quite the sight to behold. Would have been nice to take at least one person out for a bounty, but no, that was not to be. I think Waffles was just playing to get tilted last night, he was in excellent form for sure!

Note to self, Nyquil at break, not a good idea. After my glorious bust-out, I went to the couch to watch some recorded tv and promptly fell asleep. I think I woke up around 1:30 and dragged my ass to bed. I'll have to see if I have it in me to try the Mookie tonight, but I doubt it. Hell, I'm half asleep right now so I should be on the cusp of a coma by the time it starts at 9:00. I'm pretty sure I'm on the tail end of this cold, so hopefully by next week I'll be off the nyquil and able to stay awake for a full game.

Gigli 2008!!!

Now that is the way to start out the new Mookie season! I got there a bit late, about four or five minutes into the game, after dealing with the critters and found myself with QQ. TheCloserX5 (did I get that right?) raised it up to 105, I think I made it 280 or so, got reraised to 850ish and saw a pretty damn raggy flop. I check, TheCloser pushed, I called, found myself facing down AA and ighn 63 of 63 and taking the title of Gigli 2008 for the Mookie! Now that I have that title out of the way, that means I can look forward to 51 final tables and 48 bubbles for the 2008 series of the Mookie. Hummmm, 2008 series of the Mookie, so lame, how about M2K8, I think that sounds better.

As for my game, well, all I can say is I rushed to get there after dealing with the critters, sat down to a decent hand, did not get into a poker frame of mind and button mashed my way out in one hand. After that I chugged 1/2 a bottle of NyQuil and was passed out before the first break. Is it just me or does everyone feel like a NyQuil zombie the following morning, even if you get 8 hours of sleep? I still feel half asleep even now, after lunch I'm doomed. Only one thing for it, lot's of Bacardi 8 and diet tonight at the bar before, during, and after the game. If I'm blitzed enough I should be able to feel immune to my cold and take down the final table at the same time. That's my plan for tonight and I'm sticking with it!