Count Thy Blessings

Nothing like spending 36 hours or so in the ER/hospital room to make one appreciative of the finer things in life, both large and small. ScurvyWife had a nasty stomach virus and ending up getting pumped full of fluids and what-not for a day or two, before they kicked her loose last night, and is feeling better, and all that good stuff.

But sweet Jebus, what an absolute clusterfuck health care is in this country. Yes, indeed, it's nice to have neato-o gadgetry and laptops to wheel around, and bar code scanners on patient wrists that help nurses track what meds have been given, but, at the same time, it's more than a little nuts when you have to wait 12 hours for an actual doctor to come by, due to the fact that they're a rare, endangered species and cover 6 different hospitals and spend most of their day physically driving around.

I think I'm more surprised that people were surprised when Neteller announced that, umm, all your monies are in fact belong to us, locking down all accounts due to the investigation and lawsuit that the good ol' US of A is pursuing against them. I'm about as far from all knowing as possible, but there's a reason I cashed the hell out last October when the UIGEA crap hit the fan, when I could have been making $1-$2K/month whoring sportsbooks.

If you're willing to completely write off any money you have in poker sites, electronic wallets, and/or checking or savings accounts linked to those electronic wallets, then by all means, game on. If that sum of money is too large for you comfortably kiss it goodbye forever, should the worst case scenario come about, then you need to cash out funds until it's a sum you're comfortable with never seeing again.

And yeah, I'm fear-mongering again, by mentioning "any savings or checking accounts linked to those electronic wallets". I will freely admit that anyone coming after funds (or freezing them while investigations are pending) in your linked account is an absolute worst case, nuclear scenario, but it's one you can easily avoid. Open a separate account just for gambling stuff if you're still going to try to play the game these days. While it's 99.5% likely to never be an issue, why would you evertake even a 0.05% chance and link your primary checking/savings account to an e-wallet of any sort in this day and age?

Why people continue to make it easy for the renegade US government to mess with them, I do not know, especially when all the warning signs have been writ large for anyone to read. If you understand the risks and continue to pursue degenerate activities because the potential reward is acceptable, more power to you. But if you're taking on risk, ignoring the warning signs, and crossing your fingers that all of this stuff will work out okay in the end, well, my condolences.

In other news, man, what a sloppy Super Bowl. I'm glad we don't have to endure any more Manning choker stories, but watching Grossman wallow around out there wasn't much fun at all. I'm far from a guru analyst, but I don't think anyone should be too surprised that Sexy Rexy's I'm-going-to-close-my-eyes-and-chunk-it-downfield-somewhere approach wasn't, in fact, quite good enough to win a Super Bowl. Somewhere out there Trent Dilfer is nearing the endgame of one hell of a bender, knowing that he'll hand onto the crown of Worst Quarterback to Wina Super Bowl for at least one more year.