Ugly poker day yesterday. And that's about all I have to say about that.
It's going to be interesting where we are tomorrow morning at this time, as far as election results. The Democrats taking the House is a done deal, but I don't think they're quite going to be able to get over the hump in the Senate. Missouri and/or Virginia is/are going to decide it, and I just can't see both going the Dems way. Arizona is suddenly getting closer, though, and how freaking sweet would that be, if Kyl got the heave-ho.
I've definitely been more involved in the races this go around, and have definitely enjoyed reading assorted scribblings out there in the blogosphere about politics and what-not. Repeated, increasingly shrill assertations that the polls are not trustworthy due to the fact that smart, savvy Republicans are lying to pollsters have been good for more than a few belly laughs, which are always appreciated. I'm sorry, kids, but, umm, no. Hold up any measuring stick you want and the last six years falls horribly short. Epicly short. Maybe even unprecedentedly short, in the relative wee history of our country. That's why the polls are what they are. That's why the people feel the way they do.
I find it amusing, too, that the Republican defense of late has shifted away from a debate of any real issue, and devolved to: "Well, if you think we've screwed up so badly, what's YOUR plan for doing better?" And to be fair, I do agree to some extent. There's nothing more annoying than someone standing there, criticizing you for doing the best you can at whatever job it is, without ever lifting a finger themselves to help you.
But that doesn't mean that you get a free pass, either. If you're the absolute worst pitcher in the major leagues, with a 28.92 ERA and a 0-14 record, you're terrible. I get to boo you and talk about what a bum you are. Defending yourself by saying "I'd like to see YOU get out here and do a better job," isn't really much of a defense. Of course I can't do a better job; I'm not a major league pitcher. Criticizing the minority party (who as such has no real ability to set or enforcy policy) for not crafting better foreign and domestic policies is sort of a silly, circular exercise, no?
Lest anyone come throw me in a cell existing somewhere on an unmarked map and pull out my toenails, one by one, if I had to go down a checklist and mark my response to assorted Republican/Democrat issues, add them up, and have the majority determine your party affiliation, I'd probably end up Republican.
I think anyone should be able to have as many guns as they like, am for the death penalty, believe in privatizing Social Security, and generally agree that we get more economic bang for the buck through business incentives than in doling out welfare checks. The less guvmint, the more better.
I'm doomed to consider myself a Democrat, though, for a relative handful of issues that I'm at complete odds with the Republican party about, including abortion rights, religious tolerance, stem cell research, and gay marriage. Pretty much all of the touchy-feely people stuff, where the Republican party seems to insist on attempting to legislate the decisions that we should all be free to make, as tax-paying citizens of an age of majority. The louder you insist that you're right, damnit, and that it's for my own good, and that Jebus will ultimately hold me to his bosom, the faster I will slide over to the Democrats side, despite the fact that I probably agree with you on more of the hot-button issues that commonly get bandied about.
So, umm, yeah. Go vote.
Tuesday, November 07, 2006
Sunday, November 05, 2006
How the Crizzap is it Monday Again?
Logged a ton of SnGs since Friday, and have managed to stay good and stick to the $60s. I still haven't quite calibrated my variance and/or bad beat meter yet for SnGs, but Saturday was truly ridiculous. Time after time after time after time I'd get all my chips in the middle late with AKs versus A2o and, as certain as the tides, a 2 would flop, with nary a K in sight. KK versus 88? Boom, there's your 8. AhKh versus AsKc? What's that, villain, you want four spades on the board? Here you go, buddy. Enjoy.
I managed to get stuck nearly a grand fairly quickly, clawed back to -$200, then donked my way back down to -$800. I nearly shut it down for the evening but ran one more set of four SnGs, won a couple, then stuck around to grind my way back, barely, to the positive side. I had two different streaks of nine straight non-cashes, which is, umm, fun. My only saving grace was that I was winning most of the ones I cashed in, managing to eke out a profit despite a pretty pitiful ITM%.
Sunday seemed destined to be more of the same, getting buried right off the bat, but I caught fire in the last 8 or so I played, finishing up +$800 or so on the day.
It's kind of odd looking back at my stats over the last 300 SnGs at the $60 level, as I don't feel that I'm running particularly that well, but I'm sitting at just about 10% ROI and have some extra dollars in my accounts to show for my time. I suppose it's the whole calibration thing, as I tend to focus on individual streaks too much, especially the negative ones, and chalk up the times that I notch four or five 1sts in a row as lucky flukes and not reproducible nor sustainable. And sure, they aren't, but that's not really the point. It was just as unlikely that I had eight straight 4th place finishes, yet I tend to dwell on those and accept them as par for the course. The glass is half empty, damnit. Look at it.
This weekend was super hectic, but in a good way, as I got much done. Mowed and fertilized the lawns at both houses, finally finished weeding the gargantuan rose bed at the new house, and knocked out another big chunk of painting in the living roomm/dining room, and started on the guest bedroom. I've been taking the piece-meal approach to painting this time, as I fear I'd go nuts if I tried to finish it all in one fell swoop, given that it'd take me a week or two of ten hour days to finish it, so I've been plugging away for a few hours here and there, etc. Still a bit overwhelming, especially at the new house, as the list of projects remains pretty ginormous, but getting everything painted inside would be a pretty big job knocked out.
I managed to get stuck nearly a grand fairly quickly, clawed back to -$200, then donked my way back down to -$800. I nearly shut it down for the evening but ran one more set of four SnGs, won a couple, then stuck around to grind my way back, barely, to the positive side. I had two different streaks of nine straight non-cashes, which is, umm, fun. My only saving grace was that I was winning most of the ones I cashed in, managing to eke out a profit despite a pretty pitiful ITM%.
Sunday seemed destined to be more of the same, getting buried right off the bat, but I caught fire in the last 8 or so I played, finishing up +$800 or so on the day.
It's kind of odd looking back at my stats over the last 300 SnGs at the $60 level, as I don't feel that I'm running particularly that well, but I'm sitting at just about 10% ROI and have some extra dollars in my accounts to show for my time. I suppose it's the whole calibration thing, as I tend to focus on individual streaks too much, especially the negative ones, and chalk up the times that I notch four or five 1sts in a row as lucky flukes and not reproducible nor sustainable. And sure, they aren't, but that's not really the point. It was just as unlikely that I had eight straight 4th place finishes, yet I tend to dwell on those and accept them as par for the course. The glass is half empty, damnit. Look at it.
This weekend was super hectic, but in a good way, as I got much done. Mowed and fertilized the lawns at both houses, finally finished weeding the gargantuan rose bed at the new house, and knocked out another big chunk of painting in the living roomm/dining room, and started on the guest bedroom. I've been taking the piece-meal approach to painting this time, as I fear I'd go nuts if I tried to finish it all in one fell swoop, given that it'd take me a week or two of ten hour days to finish it, so I've been plugging away for a few hours here and there, etc. Still a bit overwhelming, especially at the new house, as the list of projects remains pretty ginormous, but getting everything painted inside would be a pretty big job knocked out.
Friday, November 03, 2006
NanoBlahMo
This NanoWriMo thing is hard, yo.
I need to get of my normal mindset when it comes to the writey stuff, as I tend to dwell a good bit and get things pretty much to my liking before inching along, which ain't going to cut it with the whole write-a-novel-in-a-month thing. As the good doctor mentioned in advice earlier this week, you're pretty much doomed to crank out crap, and the real point is to get into the swing of writing things down, consistently. I'm a bit north of 3,000 words but I need to get a move on as I'm going to lose some time to travel for Thanksgiving and all that jazz.
Have had a solid day so far as the $60 Sngs, clocking in a little shy of +$500 for the day. I'm probably going to be a wuss and shut it doqn for the day, as I've still got a crapload of painting to do that I haven't even touched. I should just plow through the silly desire to book a positive day, as this is pretty much the sweet spot for me to grind out poker time, but I've already gotten in 50 or so SnGs, so I'm probably done for the day.
I need to get of my normal mindset when it comes to the writey stuff, as I tend to dwell a good bit and get things pretty much to my liking before inching along, which ain't going to cut it with the whole write-a-novel-in-a-month thing. As the good doctor mentioned in advice earlier this week, you're pretty much doomed to crank out crap, and the real point is to get into the swing of writing things down, consistently. I'm a bit north of 3,000 words but I need to get a move on as I'm going to lose some time to travel for Thanksgiving and all that jazz.
Have had a solid day so far as the $60 Sngs, clocking in a little shy of +$500 for the day. I'm probably going to be a wuss and shut it doqn for the day, as I've still got a crapload of painting to do that I haven't even touched. I should just plow through the silly desire to book a positive day, as this is pretty much the sweet spot for me to grind out poker time, but I've already gotten in 50 or so SnGs, so I'm probably done for the day.
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
Rewind
I want a do-over on today so far. Living 45 minutes from where you work can be a pain in the ass, especially when a wreck in the morning stretches the drive to work to 2 hours, and then you have to hop into the car an hour later and make the round-trip yet again. Bah.
Living in the country is kind of fun, though, come Halloween time. Many, many trick-or-treaters, and we got cleaned out of candy by 8 PM or so. It was fairly crazy driving down a street next to our house, as the neighborhood apparently goes all out with scenes and mini haunted houses and what-not, and it was pretty much pandemonium with many hundreds of peoples running around, freaking out.
Only got in 10 or so SnGs last night but I managed to post a nice little $300 profit, which was a welcome change from the junk-kicking of the previous two days. I also finally got a response from Full Tilt support about the whole site taking a dump on me the night before, which was a little underwhelming.
Starting with the positives, the did actually read my email and claimed to review the SnGs I was involved in. They also added a $24+$2 token to my account, which was nice. And that's pretty much it for the positives.
It took them nearly 24 hours to get back to me, though, and they didn't really address my issues, seemingly shuffling me off into the category of someone trying to scheme money out of them and get refunded for the SnGs I was in when I lost connection. In my email I made it really clear that I was NOT asking for a refund, and that what I really wanted was clarification on whether or not they were addressing the widespread connectivity and client issues they've been having of late, and how they handle SnGs if the site goes down completely in the middle of one. The only quasi-answer I got was that when I sign up for a MTT or a SnG on their site, I'm fully responsible and assume all risk of what might happen if I lose my connection. Which, umm, I understand, but that's kind of a poor line to take, methinks, especially when I pointed out in my email that they were in danger of losing me to PokerStars, if I couldn't be sure that their site would allow me to complete SnGs that I signed up for.
More annoyingly, they claimed that after reviewing the games that I only lost connection for a minute and a half. That's just simply not true. I wouldn't have blinded off in all three if that were the case, aside from the fact that it was well over 15 minutes before I could reconnect. I have to assume that it's an honest mistake on their part, but even so it doesn't instill me with much confidence, as far as similar issues in the future being addressed appropriately. Again, I wasn't asking for a refund, so they had no reason to downplay how long I was unable to reconnect to the site.
It's cool they gave me a free $26 token, which they didn't have to do, so give them credit for that. It's not cool, though, that their client is still really buggy and prone to taking a dump, and not cool that people are still having connectivity issues that they're unable or unwilling to openly address. I'll still probably straddle PokerStars and Full Tilt for the near future, but one more incident like the last one will probably cause me to give Full Tilt the heave-ho, as there's no reason to flush $240-$300 in SnG entries down the toilet each time I have connectivity issues and can't log in, get blinded off, etc.
Living in the country is kind of fun, though, come Halloween time. Many, many trick-or-treaters, and we got cleaned out of candy by 8 PM or so. It was fairly crazy driving down a street next to our house, as the neighborhood apparently goes all out with scenes and mini haunted houses and what-not, and it was pretty much pandemonium with many hundreds of peoples running around, freaking out.
Only got in 10 or so SnGs last night but I managed to post a nice little $300 profit, which was a welcome change from the junk-kicking of the previous two days. I also finally got a response from Full Tilt support about the whole site taking a dump on me the night before, which was a little underwhelming.
Starting with the positives, the did actually read my email and claimed to review the SnGs I was involved in. They also added a $24+$2 token to my account, which was nice. And that's pretty much it for the positives.
It took them nearly 24 hours to get back to me, though, and they didn't really address my issues, seemingly shuffling me off into the category of someone trying to scheme money out of them and get refunded for the SnGs I was in when I lost connection. In my email I made it really clear that I was NOT asking for a refund, and that what I really wanted was clarification on whether or not they were addressing the widespread connectivity and client issues they've been having of late, and how they handle SnGs if the site goes down completely in the middle of one. The only quasi-answer I got was that when I sign up for a MTT or a SnG on their site, I'm fully responsible and assume all risk of what might happen if I lose my connection. Which, umm, I understand, but that's kind of a poor line to take, methinks, especially when I pointed out in my email that they were in danger of losing me to PokerStars, if I couldn't be sure that their site would allow me to complete SnGs that I signed up for.
More annoyingly, they claimed that after reviewing the games that I only lost connection for a minute and a half. That's just simply not true. I wouldn't have blinded off in all three if that were the case, aside from the fact that it was well over 15 minutes before I could reconnect. I have to assume that it's an honest mistake on their part, but even so it doesn't instill me with much confidence, as far as similar issues in the future being addressed appropriately. Again, I wasn't asking for a refund, so they had no reason to downplay how long I was unable to reconnect to the site.
It's cool they gave me a free $26 token, which they didn't have to do, so give them credit for that. It's not cool, though, that their client is still really buggy and prone to taking a dump, and not cool that people are still having connectivity issues that they're unable or unwilling to openly address. I'll still probably straddle PokerStars and Full Tilt for the near future, but one more incident like the last one will probably cause me to give Full Tilt the heave-ho, as there's no reason to flush $240-$300 in SnG entries down the toilet each time I have connectivity issues and can't log in, get blinded off, etc.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)