I Go BOOM!

And A Chapter Of My Life Has Closed

2006-06-02T23:34:00.000-04:00

Today I ended a chapter in my life and on Monday I will begin a new one. When I left Kendle this evening at the conclusion of my work day, it marked the end of my first full time, 40-hours a week job. Kendle was the first company I ever worked for after graduating college so this whole concept of switching jobs is kind of new to me.

For me, this feels a lot like graduating high school again. You get so comfortable with the work you're doing and the people around you, but then all of a sudden it all ends and you move on to higher places and experience new things with new people. At the same time, there are a few people that you've known before whom you'll see there and you'll still keep in touch with your friends from before. Only this time, instead of going off to college I'm going off to Pfizer. Still, it is a pretty big change and a change that I'm looking forward to.

On Monday I get to go through the "New Hire Orientation" process where I'll be introduced to the company and the campuses in Groton and New London. I'll get to fill out a bunch of paperwork and then eventually meet my new co-workers. I've been talking with my new boss via e-mail for the past hour or so and I'll be having lunch with her and the rest of the people on the team at noon on Monday.

I'm finding it kind of odd that when I submitted my application and resume I wasn't nervous. When I went for my interview I wasn't nervous. When I went through the background check and the urine screening I wasn't nervous. Yet I am starting to become a nervous wreck about this first day on Monday. I guess it's because for the first things mentioned above I had nothing to lose. Now I have a job to lose if I severely fuck up, but I'm pretty sure that's not going to happen. I like to prepare for the worst but expect the best. From what I can gather, my new boss is a great person and I appreciate all she has done for me thus far to help make that awkward first day a little less awkward.

With this chapter now closed, it's time to start the next chapter of my life, and hopefully an even better chapter than the one before.

Career Change.

2006-05-10T22:04:00.000-04:00

Within the next few weeks I will be making the first major career change in my life. I went to school and got my degree in Forensic Chemistry, but never found a job in that field upon graduation. I didn't yet own a car or even know how to drive (thanks to some pathetic parenting), so I didn't have much of a choice in terms of jobs. My only option was to get a job someplace a family member could drive me. I found that job and it was at Kendle International in Old Lyme. I joined Kendle in September of 2002 as a lowly Data Entry personnel. Emotionally, that kind of hurt me because I had this fancy degree in Forensic Chemistry but I was sitting around doing data entry work for not a hell of a lot of money. On the bright side, many of the people I worked with were great people and while the work was monotonous and boring, the people made it worth coming into work every day.

In March of 2003 I was made a permanent employee which meant I got benefits such as vacation and 401k plans. I began to save money thanks to payrate increases and by September of 2003 had purchased a car and learned how to drive using my own resources. Now I could start looking elsewhere. I applied for a job at Pfizer to be a chemist, but wasn't too confident in my ability to do the job as I hadn't done chemistry in a while and never excelled in organic chemistry. (My field was more analytical chemistry as opposed to organic, and the only open position was in organic). Finally, the hopes of working at Pfizer failed when they formally announced a merger with Pharmacia Corporation and all outside hires were put on hold. By February of 2004 I began to look outside of Pfizer for chemistry work. I found a place in Plainfield, CT called BST Systems which was a battery manufacturing company and was ironically the main competitor of the company Crazy Joe and Klacky worked for. I put in my application and resume, and received an interview quite promptly. A few days later, I received a phone call from them thanking me for my time but stating that I was "too qualified" for the positions they had open. I was stunned. Too qualified for them, and not qualified enough for Pfizer. At that point I decided that perhaps chemistry wasn't going to be in my future and that I should just try to excel in what I was currently doing; "Data Management".

June of 2004 hit and Kendle decided to promote me to a CDA 1 position. That felt great as I was finally in a position where my analytical thinking and "questioning" could be put to good use. The position required a lot more use of the brain than data entry did so it felt good for me. In addition, the move from hourly to salaried pay was a lot better as was the overall payrate. I was working with a great data manager and a great group of people and learned a lot about what data management was all about. I gained a great deal of experience really quickly and was put in charge of a few studies all on my own. It was in 2005, I believe, that the first database lock of a study I was lead on occurred. Soon, I was working on studies in every aspect of the study process. I had learned my "shit", so to speak, and was now a very competent individual. At that point, I was shocked to learn that the data manager I worked for was leaving the company. He had a long commute from Massachusetts to Old Lyme every day so I can't say I was completely shocked, but I was still pretty stunned since though I felt confident in myself, I still wanted to have a safety net there.

That is when my next data manager stepped in. She had worked in Clinical Data Management for quite a bit of time and she REALLY knew her "shit". I was able to pick her brain and learn every little aspect about every part of a study. I learned how databases are built, how procedures are created, how procedures run, how to test a database, how to fix a database, etc. etc. I soon learned exactly how to create a study just by reading a protocol. Pretty soon I no longer needed to have a safety net as when I gave an answer to the client I knew I was giving the right answer. Kendle surely noted this as I was receiving nice pay-raises and bonuses every year. Things were going great. Things got even better when a good friend of mine from downstairs in Data Entry made the move upstairs. I'd gone to high-school with him and knew him back then, but never realized how good a worker he was. He finally made the move upstairs and I got my first real taste of how to train someone. Thankfully, he trained quite readily and was able to pick up things just about as quickly as I had. He was on my team and we both worked under the same great data manager who continued to teach all of us how to be the best at our positions and work efficiently and effectively.

I continued to receive a great deal of praise from our client and even received personal e-mails and letter of thank you for the work I did. I couldn't have felt better about what I was doing. Then the ton of bricks hit. My Data Manager was leaving the company to go work at Pfizer in a new position that had been created. She'd be leaving in two weeks. Myself and my teammates all sat there stunned at that piece of news. We couldn't believe it. All of us had been learning so much and learning more and more each day, but now our teacher was going to work elsewhere. Not only was she a great Data Manager, but she was just a great person to work with. To have someone know so much, be able to teach that much, and be great to work with is not a common trait. I now wondered who my new Data Manager would be and how I would be able to handle it. (Or more importantly if he/she would be able to handle me). Thankfully, Kendle did a little re-organization and I was reporting to another good person to work with. Still, having my old DM gone was a bit depressing. This was when I first thought about making a change.

I heard that she had gone over to Pfizer to fill a new position they had created and kind of wondered about whether or not there were similar positions open. I didn't think I could handle it at the moment so I didn't pursue it too much, but I did keep it in the back of my mind.

About a month had gone by after her departure and I had continued to put all that I had learned to good use while still learning more on my own. I had my old DM's contact information so I could still have her confirm things I was uncertain about. Time went by and I had been doing very well. Then one day one of the other Data Managers at the company came up to me and pulled me aside. She wanted to tell me about how great a job I was doing and how she wished I was on her team. Then she asked if I had thought about applying for the position my old DM had left. She told me how I met the criteria and since I know my "shit" I should be able to do the job. I thought about it for a bit and said "Hey, what do I have to lose?". So I went to my supervisor and told her how I wanted to apply for the job. She smiled and said "Sure thing" and helped fill out the proper documentation. I was informed a couple of weeks later that I would be interviewed.

On March 17th I had my interview for the DM position at Kendle. I felt that it went well and that everything went without a hitch, but I also kind of understood that the corporate office may not be too keen about promoting me from CDA 1 to DM without going through CDA 2 or Senor CDA first. I was talking with my old DM and kind of jokingly asked if there was an open position there at Pfizer. She asked me if I was serious, and after thinking about it for a bit I said "Yes, I am." What could it hurt to apply at Pfizer? If they say Yes I'd have a great job in a great company, and if they say No I'd still have a great job at a great company. So I asked her if she could provide me a reference and she was able to do so. I submitted my resume and let things go as they may.

Meanwhile, I still hadn't heard anything from Kendle about my DM job. I still worked like always and didn't get too concerned about it. Meanwhile, a promotion to Senor CDA did occur so it's not like I was being ignored. I thought that was pretty nice, but by now I felt as if the Clinical Data Coordinator job I applied for at Pfizer would be a bit better. The final week in April I decided to take off as I needed a physical and mental break from work. On Thursday, April 27th I received a phone call from the HR Department at Pfizer. They were very impressed with my resume and wanted me to come in for an interview as soon as humanly possible. I told them that I could come in the next day and they set up the interview for the following day. I was ecstatic. Then I realized I didn't have a suit to wear so I quickly dashed out to the mall to pick up a suit. All the while, nobody at Kendle was fully aware of my potential job situation at Pfizer. I wanted to keep it secret since if I didn't get the job at Pfizer I didn't want this "maneuver" to affect my chances of getting the DM promotion. I also didn't want to add stress to any of my team members in an already stressful time.

April 28th came by and the interview went GREAT! I spoke with a bunch of people whom I was already familiar with and got a chance to show off everything I knew about the systems and Data Management in General. Everybody who interviewed me was incredibly amazed at all I knew and was impressed by how comfortable I was. (Again, with nothing really to lose I wasn't nervous at all). The interview went great and I was able to see my friend/former DM again and talk about things. Now the waiting began. I filled out the formal application and they had to go and check and make sure that it was all correct. I figured that would take two or three weeks and those weeks would be the longest of my life.

This past Monday, May 8th, I got an outside phone call at work. It was from one of the people I had interviewed with and the first thing she said was "Hello Justin. I have some great news for you." Pfizer was officially extending me an offer for employment as a Level 2 Senior Clinical Data Coordinator at a salary that blew my mind. (It was actually HIGHER than what I had put down as a requested salary). She went on to explain that everyone was super impressed with my knowledge and how I carried myself and that Pfizer cannot wait for me to start. All I had to do was submit a urine sample for a drug screening and let her know when I could start. (Which would be after I gave a two weeks' notice to Kendle). Today I went and provided the urine sample and the results will come back as clean in 24-48 hours. At that point I will make the official notice of resignation to Kendle.

This is a huge career move for me. Had I stayed in chemistry an gotten my PHD, I probably still would not be making the money I'll be making, nor would I have the benefits. This is a dream come true for me. Even though it's not in the chemistry field, I am working at Pfizer just like I figured I would when I was in college. Even better is that I'll be working with a friend of mine over there so that awkwardness of starting a new job will be lessened. I'll have four walls, a door, and a giant shit-eating grin on my face for years to come. I finally feel as if I've made it. This job will allow me to expedite my savings for a new home and will truly make me independent. I will certainly miss working at Kendle because of all the good people who work there, but I'm sure I'll still stay in touch with many of my good friends there. (There is still poker and golf in this world. ;-) )

Lessons Paying Off?

2006-04-29T19:01:00.000-04:00

Last night I had the first golf lesson of my entire life, and already I am seeing it pay dividened. The instructor, who is a pro over at Cedar Ridge in East Lyme, helped show me what I was doing wrong and just how horrible my set of irons really is. The biggest adjustment that was made was in relation to my posture when addressing the ball. He told me that I was hunched over way too much and that my balance was horrifically off at address, in the backswing, and through to the follow-through. At the end of my swing, I was falling backwards and away from the ball which is completely wrong. If you are going to be falling after a swing, you should fall forward towards the ball.

The first thing he did with me was adjust my grip. The grip I was using was causing my hands to separate on the swing which was causing me to lose all control of the club-head. In my new grip, the index finger of my left hand interlocks with the pinky finger of my right hand. This is completely comfortable and keeps my hands together throughout the swing while giving me complete control of the clubhead. The next adjustment was in my stance.

He had me start over from scratch with my swing. I now begin each swing by standing straight up and letting the club come to rest on the ground. I grip the club and bend at the waist so that I am leaning forward. At the same time, I move my ass-end backwards as if someone is pulling on the back of my pants. I let me knees "break", but don't bend them. I then straighten up my upper body while still leaning forward over the ball. This has caused the weight to be perfectly balanced in the middle of my feet. In the backswing, I take the club up so that my left hand is in a "thumbs up" position and no further. Meanwhile, I turn my left shoulder inwards which torques my body. (This is something I couldn't seem to do in my previous swing). I am now able to swing downward with authority while swinging at a less than 100% rate. I am now making contact with the ball and the weight naturally transfers from the back foot to the forward foot. With the follow through, my right foot is on it's toes and my belt buckle is pointing DIRECTLY towards where the ball is going. I swing with less force but am able to get the ball to go MUCH further than before. (I'd say that I'm now up two clubs from before. So if I was going to use a 7 iron, I'd now use a 9 iron).

Today I went with Crazy Ivan to Pequot to play a long course. I still cannot hit my driver (and the instructor said I shouldn't even try since it is such a bad driver)so I went and used nothing but my irons today. As you all know, on a long course I typically shoot somewhere between 135 on a good day to 150+ on a typical day. Today, I shot a 118. :-) I even shot par on a par 4 after reaching the green with my second shot. My five-iron was working wonders today, as were my 6-9's. The 3 and 4 were a little bit of a struggle at times, but since they are longer clubs that is to be expected. All I know is that the lessons I got last night took about 20 strokes off of my game. I am very comfortable with my new swing and very happy to see it work. I'm still amazed at just how far I can hit the ball with such little effort. I can't wait to have another lesson just to see how much more improvement I can get.

There's Simply No Explanation

2006-04-25T19:04:00.000-04:00

I have to say that Golf is a sport which is a lot more mental than people believe. If you have too much on your mind, you can't make a proper shot. Many times people say to "clear your mind" before each shot and only concentrate on the shot at hand. For me, I'm trying to figure out what mental aspect of the game is causing me to play so poorly in a twosome, but in a threesome or foursome I play remarkably better.

Case in point is today. I went out golfing and planned on going to Cedar Ridge to play 18, but league play prevented me from doing that so Birch Plains was my only option. (Ugggh). On the front 9, I was playing just with Crazy Ivan and I shot a horrifically shitty 54. On the back 9, however, we caught up with Jeff F. and we joined as a threesome for the back 9. On the back 9 I shot a 42! A freaking 12 stroke improvement?!!!! I honestly don't know why I play better when I'm in a group of three or more. Perhaps it's because of the slower pace, or some other difference. Whatever it is, I'd like to figure it out so I can play better in a twosome as well. It's just a really eerie coincidence that I'd like to find out why it's happening.

Twice As Good As Last Year?

2006-04-18T19:45:00.000-04:00

Could it be? Have I gotten twice as good as I was last year? Well if you look at the overall score above the answer may not be obvious, but if you saw the play as it happened you may be inclined to say "YES!"

Since it's early in the season, there's many parts of my game that I seriously need some work on. My putting is just horrible this year, but I think that's a result of the shitty greens I've been playing on. Birch Plains has the WORST greens in the history of golf. If they're charging $21 for a round of golf, they better put some immaculate greens down before they get another one of my pennies. Shennecosit(sp?) has better greens, but for all the hype that course has received I really didn't see greens all that impressive.

Cedar Ridge, on the other hand, has some pretty immaculate greens. Very well groomed, all grass, and no random lumps. It's actually fun to putt on, but difficult if you're used to playing on patchwork greens. At $19, I think this is the best option for golfing right now. You can play a challenging Par 3 course, use most of your clubs, and improve your game. That's something I plan on doing many times this year.

Today, my overall score of 101 isn't that great, but as I said before my method of getting to 101 is pretty pleasing. My problems now aren't really due to horrific play. My problems are due to not knowing just how far I can hit the ball with each club and what club I should choose when making my next shot. Many times I'm so confused as to which club I should choose that I'm not free and easy with my swings and it's resulting in off shots. My short game is getting better as I'm making better and better chip shots, but I still think I could take five or six strokes off of my game if I'd learn to putt better.

So to the main point of the post here. All of last year I had but ONE birdie. It was on the 14th hole at Birch Plains when I hit a pretty good tee-shot and then putted in for a birdie from the fringe. I didn't score another birdie the rest of the season and never came close to one at Cedar.

This year, while playing a game very early in the season at Birch Plains, I pulled off the 2nd birdie of my career. On the 16th hole I took out my six iron and hit the living hell out of the ball. It went right into the water but the overspin took it out of the water onto the "fairway". I then used my six iron again and did the same thing, only this time the ball went right into the sand and the overspin rolled it up and out and right into the hole for a birdie. A tainted birdie as there were no good shots involved, but a birdie none the less.

Today, I went and doubled my total birdie output in one game at Cedar Ridge. It all started on the 3rd hole. I had a HORRIBLE 2nd hole as I kept hitting the ball off of the trees and rocks in the woods as I tried to make a miracle shot instead of a safe one. That resulted in a pathetic 10 on the second hole thanks to horrible shots and 5 putts. The third hole at Cedar is a downhill hole of about 177 yards, though today it was about 172 I'd say. I took out my 6-iron and teed it up. I then went and hit one of the most beautiful golf shots I've ever hit. The ball went high up into the air with a gorgeous fade on it. At first I thought I hit it way too far left, but the natural fade on the shot went and curved it back towards the green and it landed just off the green but right near the pin. I'd say I carried the ball about 160 yards or so on the tee shot and got about 8 yards of roll on the course. I approached my ball with my pitching wedge and really de-lofted it hoping to get a little hop on the ball and roll it towards the hole so I could putt in for par. In a sense, my de-loft was to make my PW kind of like a lofted putter. I struck the ball and hit it EXACTLY like I wanted to. It bounced initially on the green then rolled and curved right towards the putt. I knew I'd easily make par, and was then realizing that the ball was going to go in the hole! KERPLUNK! A birdie at Cedar Ridge. The birdie happened on the 2nd toughest hole on the front 9, and 7th toughest hole on the course.

I was happy with that one birdie as it was my first at Cedar Ridge and it was thanks to two incredibly perfect swings on my part. It was great golf and a great result. This is why what happened on the 18th hole was even more spectacular. Crazy Ivan teed up first and hit the ball a bit long. It bounced up to my car, rolled under it and wound up behind my car on the road outside of the golf course. I think he hit it a bit too hard there. ;-) I then decided to break out my 6 iron because although the hole is only 127 yards, it's deceptively long. It's kind of V shaped so the initial contour is downhill, then VERY sharply uphill. The hole plays a bit longer than it really is. So I took my 6 iron and hit an "okay" shot. My clubface opened up just a little bit and the ball wound up on the right fringe about 8 yards from the hole. Not too spectacular, but a good chip shot would give me a chance for par.

I took my pitching wedge and did the little de-loft thing I had been doing all day to get my ball close to the hole and do it with some accuracy. I approached the ball and hit it with what seemed like a good amount of force. It jumped up onto the green and started rolling right towards the hole. I was getting VERY happy. I saw that there was a very good chance it would wind up within a couple feet of the hole and give me an easy chance at shooting par on the last hole. But today the golf gods were smiling upon me. They decided to send me home a happy man. The ball continued to roll and went right into the hole. I yelled out in glee as I had my SECOND birdie of the day. In one day, I managed to match my career output in birdies. That's something that I may never do again, but for today it felt GREAT. I finished up the round with a birdie and my last memory of golfing today is the ball falling right into the hole.

My overall score of 101 isn't the best one I've ever had, and at the tail end of last year I was routinely shooting in the mid 90's at Cedar. However, at the tail end of last year I think my body was in tune a bit better and able to handle a full course without getting fatigued. In addition, my swing was almost all arm last year and this year I'm swinging properly and using my full body. As a result, the swings and the shots are better but it takes a bit out of me. I'm a MUCH better golfer when I'm in a group of three or four people, probably because there's a bit more time between each shot and my body will rejuvinate itself a bit more. The slower pace does help me out a bit. It's still April though, so there's a lot of golf left and a lot of strokes that will fall off my score. All I know is that I've had a golf game where I've birdied multiple holes. :-)

Some Things Are Just Too "Wrong"..

2006-04-16T20:16:00.000-04:00

Ummmm......... What can I say? Someone should have thought of a better name. Anyway, here are some common reviews of this place:

"All the food smells like fish".

"You can get crabs there".

"All the food on the kiddie menu tastes like cherries".

"A lot of people like to eat out here".

"Some days it's very tight in there, but most of the time it's pretty wide open".

"You can come inside as a couple, but you'll leave as a family".

"Periodic Themes every month. Free Bloody Mary's are served."

"If the entrance is filled, you can always come in the back door."

"You can even get a Foot-Long in there!"

"Always pleasant on a Summer's Eve".

Vicarious...........

2006-04-15T22:23:00.000-04:00

As mentioned in my previous post, Tool is coming out with their next album on May 2nd, and it's titled '10,000 Days'. They have also anounced that on April 17th, the first single from that album will be played by radio stations across the world. Well in order to play that single, the radio stations need to have the song on CD. Thanks to the many radio disc jockeys out there, that single is already available for listening on the web. I have obtained a copy of Vicarious, and all I can say is HOLY FUCKING WOW!!!!!!!!!! This song sounds incredible! It is 100% completely Tool, yet there is something "different" about it that I can't put my finger on. Whatever it is, it's great to my ears as this song clocks in at an impressive 7-minutes and is audio bliss the whole time. I simply cannot wait for May 2nd to get here now.

10,000 Days........

2006-04-09T12:51:00.000-04:00

Tool has to be one of the best rock bands in existance. I've listened to them ever since seeing the music video 'Sober' on Beavis & Butt-Head all those years ago. Their music is just really surreal and has this ethereal, yet hard sound to it that is just incredible. I went to see them play back in 2002 when they were on tour and stopped in Amherst, MA. It was the greatest concert that I have ever been to in my life. Only made me wish that they would tour again.

Perhaps the only "bad" thing about Tool is that they release albums so very infrequently. There was a VERY long wait in between their previous two albums and it almost made the release of Lateralus seem like it was a fake. When it came out, back in 2001 I believe, it was no joke and it was one of their greatest albums. I still kick myself to this day for turning down a chance to see them play out in Philadelphia when they were on tour. Instead, I remained at my college apartment and took part in various other "rituals" that college kids take part in. (Hehe. I can't say that I didn't have fun though).

So today I was looking around the web and decided to do a search on Borders.com to see what I could get with my $10.00 Gift Card that I received from working at Kendle. I looked up 'Tool' to see if there were any new DVDs released and came upon the news that '10,000 Days' would be released on May 2nd and it was a new album for Tool. AWESOME! I've pre-ordered it and will hopefully receive it soon. In addition, I also ordered the Schism and Parabola DVDs to get a few more of their sick videos on DVD to go with the ones I got on Salival. The DVDs should arrive sometime early next week. May 2nd is going to be sweet!

WHAT THE FUCK???!!!!!!!!

2006-04-05T09:11:00.000-04:00

Mother Nature is a cantankerous, schizophrenic little freak. Today is the 5th of April, and currently it is SNOWING! There's already a 1/4 of an inch on the ground out there. Just one week ago it was in the 70's. Now it is snowing. I do have a tee time tomorrow at Cedar Ridge, but I may not be able to make it if the course is covered in a layer of snow. This is nuts. I don't mind the snow, but I do mind it when it is coming down in April. Jesus.

In other news, I spent all night last night trying to remove one fucking nasty virus/trojan from my computer at home. VOBLAIZDUPLA.EXE. I really have no clue how it got on my system, but I'm thinking that it got there when a family member decided to use my computer. I do share a household with some people who aren't really "in the know" about viruses and trojans and can activate some really nasty ones.

This VOB virus is an evil little rootkit virus that does a damn good job of hiding itself from virus-scanners. The only way I knew I was infected was when my McAfee software stopped a series of e-mails from going out as the virus attempted to send something like 200 e-mails out in a short period of time. I stopped the little bugger and was able to see some signs of the infection in my WINDOWS\system32 folder. (The authors were good at hiding it from virus-scanners, but not good enough). Anyway, there is one piece of software that is able to find this piece of shit. It's called Prevx1 and is VERY efficient at finding nasty little malware programs and virii/trojans. The software is free for a period of 90 days, then it costs $20.00 for the full version. You can still use it if you don't pay, but you just can't get updates for it. Frankly, for what it does the $20.00 is NOTHING.

You can download it from their homepage here. The program takes a LONG time to load and install, but when it's all set your system will be well-protected. This stuff is able to find the nastiest of spyware/malware/virii/trojans on your system and helped me get rid of this little rootkit bitch.

Doesn't The Captain Have His Own Blog?

2006-04-04T21:12:00.000-04:00

Kind of odd how two posts in a row here are at the request of The Captain, but I'm a nice guy so I'll appease him anyway. The Captain came across this photograph today and asked me to scan it into my Blog in honor of Crazy Ivan. I must say, that's one big fucking bear to have taken it down with a Bow and Arrow. I'd have thought a nice .50 caliber slug through the skull would do a good job, but I guess a thin, well-aimed arrow through vital organs will do the same job. :-)

Per The Captain's Request.

2006-04-03T17:56:00.000-04:00

Per The Captain's request, below is photographic proof of the miracle of miracles which happened this past Saturday. Now the debate can begin; Has Crazy Ivan just deteriorated in skill, or has Senor KABOOM improved tremendously over the off-season?????

Is It True?!!!!!!!!!!

2006-04-01T13:54:00.000-05:00

Today is April 1st, 2006 and no, this isn't an April Fool's Joke. This evening we set our clocks forward one hour which allows for more time in daylight at day's end, which also means that Golf Season is 100% fully active. This past week I've spent four days at the golf course. First game on Tuesday, then a game on Thursday, one yesterday, and an unexpected one this morning. In all four cases, I was joined by Crazy Ivan who eats, sleeps, and breathes golf.

Last year was the first year that I had EVER golfed in my entire life, and I will be honest in saying that I really had no clue what I was doing. I didn't understand what a golf swing was and what I was doing wrong and what, if anything, I was doing right. It wasn't until late in the season that I finally started to make strides in my game. I started the year shooting in the mid 100's at Birch Plains and finished shooting in the upper 80's. I was just starting to figure things out when the season ended and winter made residence. Still, I was always itching to find nice days where I could go out and take some swings. Earlier this year I was able to do that during a nice day in January, and once again a few weeks back I went out to play a few rounds. (I even made a birdie on Hole 16 at Birch Plains which thrilled me to no end). Amongst the group of people I typically golf with, however, I was still way behind and not really "competition".

So this morning comes along and all things changed. Captain Kirk gave me a ring, and while politefully apologizing for calling so early in the morning, really didn't need to say "sorry" because anybody can call me at any time to go out golfing. He asked if I felt like shooting a round at Birch and I said "HELL YEAH!" So I arrived at Birch Plains to meet Captain Kirk, Crazy Ivan, and Klacky who made a surprise appearance. With the four of us golfing on such a beautiful day, it reminded me of the thick of the golf season last summer. The only thing missing were the Jager shots. :-) We head up to the tees and my first shot is a nice one right onto the green. I think it kind of took everyone by surprise that my golf swing had improved so much since my horrendous whacks of the prior season. Throughout the day, the compliments on my swing were nice to hear. It's nice to be competition and not just another body tagging along. Hehe.

Klacky and the Captain decided to put some dollar bills on the line while myself and Ivan just decided to golf. Today was a good day for me, aside from the putting on the piece of shit greens there, as my tee shots were good, my swing was solid, and mechanically I was sound. I should have stretched a bit as my right groin started to feel tight and sore as the day wore on, and I think that was messing with my swing a little bit. Still, I was actually playing a bit better than Crazy Ivan was in terms of score. Through the first 9 holes, I was one stroke ahead of Ivan! That couldn't be true! Could Senor KABOOM actually be playing better golf than Ivan? We'd have to go through the back 9 to find out.

Ivan, whether it's from his new clubs or just too much golf too soon, had the consistancy of gravel. When he'd take a swing, you just wouldn't know where the ball would end up. Meanwhile, my tee shots were all pretty damned nice, and it was only club selection that determined if it would wind up close to the hole or not. I routinely shot 4's or 5's on the holes to keep my overall score pretty damned low. There were at least 5 or 6 holes where I could have either birdied or shot par, but just couldn't do it with the shag carpeting, pot-hole filled greens (yellows) at Birch Plains. It wasn't until the 18th hole that I was able to sink myself a par to finish off a great day on the course. On the front nine I shot myself a 45 to Crazy Ivan's 46. On the back nine I improved to a 42 while Ivan shot a 44. Overall, my 87 trumped his 90 by three strokes.

At the end of the day, I beat Ivan on the front nine, the back nine, and overall in regards to score. This is the first time I have EVER beaten anybody from our group of golfers in terms of score. Finally, I can be considered "competitive" and not just the tag-along person. Even better is that this is the beginning of the season. Just wait until the middle of the season approaches and I've made some improvements in my swing. :-) I'm just happy to have gotten out there today and had a great time on the golf course. There's nothing better than having nice weather, hanging with your friends and have a great time. I look forward to more of that this year.

Death By Diamonds......

2006-02-22T10:18:00.000-05:00

Here's a nice quick entry. This past Monday was our weekly poker event. Participants were myself, Captain Kirk, Mr. Hand, Crazy Joe, Tom D., Tom W., Crazy Ivan, and Klacky. On this hand in particular I was the dealer. I don't know who was involved except the people who showed down, but I do know that I folded pre-flop.

Anyway, I had dealt Mr. Hand two cards, and Klacky the Ace-King of Diamonds. Some pre-flop raising went on and bets were called. The flop came down 5d-6c-7d. This gave Klacky a beautiful nut flush draw. Betting thusly ensued. Being the dealer, I knew what card would be coming next. I joking said to Tom D. "I'll be turning the four of diamonds next". I burn and deal the turn and BAM. It's the 4 of diamonds. There are now four cards to a straight on the board and three to a flush. Klacky has made his lovely nut flush and some betting ensues. Now Mr. Hand is battling Klacky to the river. What would that river card bring?

I dealt the river and it was the 3 of diamonds. There was now a straight on the board, four to a flush on the board, and four to a straight flush on the board. I jokingly said 'Boy, that six of diamonds looks real good against that Ace of diamonds.' With his nut flush, Klacky bets out four. Mr. Hand thinks and raises four. Klacky re-raises another four. Mr. Hand raises four, and now thinking that he might be in trouble Klacky just calls. The cards are turned and Klacky shows his AK of diamonds while Mr. Hand shows his pocket red sixes. He flopped trips, turned a straight flush draw, and rivered the nuts. He had 12 out to beat Klacky's flush so it's not like he was really far behind. Still, to win with the straight flush that's deal runner-runner is always a nice one to have.

That Little Thing Called "Kickback". :-)

2006-01-22T21:06:00.000-05:00

On Sunday, January 22nd, 2006, Senor KABOOM learned what true "kickback" is in a firearm. I had previously fired the pistols and revolvers at the pistol training course last weekend and saw some pretty vicious kick coming out of the larger caliber rounds. Crazy Ivan, meanwhile, slyly laughed at my tales of "kickback" and said 'I should let you shoot my rifle. THEN you'll know what kickback is'. I, of course, agreed and he said that he'd be shooting it that coming Sunday at the Shooting Range at the Sportsmen's club. Not having any real plans I said that I'd be there and just needed to know what time.

Meanwhile, I have been talking to my father about my recent interest in guns and he seems pretty happy about that. My Dad and I never really did anything together as his temperment isn't all that great and anytime he's not winning he blows up and starts yelling and shouting. (Hmmmm.... That sounds REALLY familiar). So as a kid and growing up I didn't really want to do anything with him since I didn't feel like listening to him bitch. Over the past few years he's tried to slowly be a "dad" again but it isn't exactly working. However when I told him about my trip to the shooting range last week and my planned trip for this week he actually lightened up. My father is into hunting and firearms more than Crazy Ivan is so when he saw that I was showing an interest I think it made him feel good. He went into his stash of goods and pulled out this fancy set of ear-muffs which are electronically operated. (They magnify the sounds of someone talking and all other noises, but sounds above a certain decibel level are cut down. This way you can talk and hear people normally with them on, but the gunshots don't deafen you). He also gave me some eye protection and some other little flyers he had. I guess one of these days I'll have to make him happy and ask him if he wants to go out shooting.

Okay, sappy interlude aside I showed up at the club this morning bright and early. Crazy Ivan arrived and after some breakfast and talking with other club members we went and got some targets and he introduced me to the rifle and the rounds to be fired. A nice case of 7mm Magnum Load Rife Cartridges. These are powerful mother fuckers! After setting up the targets, using duct-tape no less, Will loaded up the rifle and fired the first few rounds. GOOD GOD! I figured the noise to be pretty intense but you could feel this one hit you in the chest. I was a good 6 feet from the rifle and felt it like someone kicked me in the chest. That felt and sounded damn good, and then the smell of sulfur oxides, nitrogen oxides, and everything else associated with burned gunpowder filled the area. God I love that smell.

We checked out the targets and headed back to the firing station. Will loaded up another one and said "Yer up." I got in position and looked through the sights of a rifle for the first time in my life. I looked through the crosshairs and lined them up with the target. The rifle butt was jammed against my right shoulder and the safety was taken off. I squeezed the trigger and KABLAM!!!!! It felt like someone punched me in the shoulder and the shot was nowhere near where it should have been. I missed the target by a good margin. lol. (Though I did pierce a tire in the background pretty solidly. heh). After that first shot, however, I was kind of hooked. I like the immense power coming out of that gun and the feeling that if I could get used to how the gun reacts I could fire pretty effectively swept over me. As I fired more and more rounds (We alternated sets of three to let the gun cool off and check the targets) I began to get more and more comfortable with it. Soon, I could barely even notice the audible sound from the gunshot and could only feel it in my arm. The kick on that thing is pretty intense. It felt as if someone was punching me in the shoulder each and every time I fired it. There's quite a bit of force coming back at you, and the laws of physics demand that the more powerful the gun the more intense the kickback will be. It's pretty easy to see now why this gun can take down huge bear and antelope with one shot.

So my accuracy was getting better and better and my precision was pretty decent. If I was missing, I was missing consistantly which is something that can be corrected. As I got to my 7th or 8th shot I began to get a good sense of how to handle the gun and at the end I was nailing the kill zone on the target from a good 100 yards away. That was a satisfying end to the shooting. After firing that rifle, when I get back to firing pistols the kick back will seem like a pop gun to me. My right arm is incredibly raw right now but that's a pain I like feeling. Thank you so much Will. I had a literal blast today. I hope to do this again in the future. :-)

Senor Kabbom + Firearms = :-)

2006-01-16T08:49:00.000-05:00

This past weekend, thanks to some information provided by Crazy Ivan, Senor Kaboom began the journey towards obtaining a pistol permit here in our lovely state and eventually purchasing a handgun. I've wanted to own a handgun for a long while now as there's something about the look of a chromed out double action revolver that just screams out "Woah, that's some sweet shit!" The thing is, I've had no idea what was involved in getting the gun and how to get a permit and all this other junk that one needs to do. As we are all aware, Crazy Ivan is big into all this gun stuff and is a member of a local club. He forwarded on to me an invite to a Pistol Permit Training Course held down at the Groton Sportsmens Club. The class was held on Sunday the 15th and I had a GREAT time.

My history with guns is pretty much non-existant. I already knew a great deal about handguns in regards to the types of guns, the calibers, and which ones were the more powerful guns. (A .50 caliber handgun will pretty much take down anything). I had only fired a gun ONCE before in my lifetime and that was when I was in college. My criminal justice course was taught by a high ranking State Police officer and he had said that if any one of us ever wanted to come down to the shooting range that he'd be more than happy to show us what to do. So on one of the class days we actually went down to the barracks and he showed us the guns and gave us a VERY quick lesson about what to do and what not to do. It wasn't very detailed, but I figured since we were in the police barracks he didn't really have to be all that specific. (He basically just said "Treat every gun as if it is loaded and don't touch it until I say so".) He had a bunch of old school guns there and I remember picking up the Ruger Magnum. It was a .44 caliber gun and when I got a chance to use it the gun kicked me flat on my ass. I was NOT prepared for the kickback on it and the cop kind of laughed as a look of "WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT?!" came across my face. Suffice it to say, I didn't fire any more. :-) I would have liked to have taken more advantage of the firing range down there, but at that time in my life other things were pre-occupying me and those things, when mixed with guns, is not such a great idea.

Fast forward to modern day. I still want to get ahold of a revolver similar to the one I fired when I was down in school. The nice, chromed finish and the wood grain grips on the gun just seem incredibly appealing to me. In order to get a gun, however, I need to have a permit from the state and my town saying that I can do that. The first step in that process is taking a safety/training course taught by a licensed teacher. Thanks to Crazy Ivan, I was able to take that course. The course was a five hour class that went over the laws in the state of Connecticut relating to gun ownership and anything involving a gun, the proper storage and handling of a gun, the mechanics of how a gun works, and the mechanics behind how a bullet is constructed and fired. Most of it was stuff that I had already known about but the regulations require that it all gets taught. At the end, there was a written exam which you had to pass in order to successfully complete the course. I easily passed it as the instructor basically set it up so only a retard couldn't get a 100% score on it. :-) Finally, the best part of the course was the firing of four types of handguns down at the shooting range. If there was anything bad to say about the course it was the temperature. The heater wasn't working and the classroom was icy cold. My feet were killing me by the end as they were frozen solid. It must have been about 36 degrees at the maximum in the classroom. Down below on the shooting range it was even colder. It's VERY difficult to accurately aim a gun when your arm is shivering as severely as mine was and when you can barely feel the gun because your hands are ice cold. Still, I persevered and fired away.

Down at the shooting range we fired four different guns. The first was a Blue Steel .22 Caliber Revolver. The second gun was a Chrome Steel .357 Caliber Revolver. Third was a Chrome Steel .357/.38 Special Revolver. The final gun was a 9mm Berretta Pistol. We each got to load and "unload" a full set of bullets except for the Berretta where we were instructed to only load five cartridges into the magazine. The target was a piece of 8.5x11 paper with a bullseye and numeric circles printed on the paper. The target was put out about 20 yards from us.

The .22 caliber revolver was the first gun I fired, and the first gun I had fired in about 6 years. The coloring was very nice but the bullets seemed laughable. I've farted and had bigger particles of shit come out my ass before. Still, I could respect the power of the gun and treated it like I should. The revolver was loaded with the 9 rounds of ammo and then locked. When told to commence I pulled back on the hammer and began to fire away. I have to say that the "bang" from the .22 caliber gun was not all that much. I've had cap guns give more of a bang than this thing. On the target, my first few shots were way off as I was shivering way too much and wasn't using the site properly. After sucking it up and using the site correctly, I was able to nail the area right around the bullseye pretty effectively. I fired my last of the nine shots, unloaded the gun, tossed the casings and pulled in the target. Not that bad, but the bullet holes were tiny and looked like someone used a BB gun to fire them. Not all that impressive. When I get my revolver, it DEFINITELY won't be a .22 caliber gun. (This thing might have trouble killing a hamster).

Next up was the .357 Chrome Steel Revolver. This gun just oozed power. It was the classic revolver that you'd see in an old western movie where someone got bluffed out of a hand and started a gunfight because of it. It had the classic double action trigger/hammer and made a beautiful clicking sound as you cocked the hammer backward. As soon as I picked it up I loved it. In addition, the bullets that were placed in the 5 chambers of the cylinder were substantial in size too. These things, from inside their cartridges, looked like they would do some damage. I guess I would soon find out. :-) The revolver was loaded and locked and firing commenced. WOW! The firing of the gun gave off such a deep "BOOM" that you could feel the vibration in your chest. There was a nice flash of blue flame from the barrell of the gun and the kickback, while intense, was incredibly smooth. The smell of gunpowder in the air was immediately noticed and I had no trouble firing off the five rounds. I nailed the center of the target each time and when I pulled it back in saw that these bullets meant business. There were MASSIVE holes in the paper where the bullet just ripped right through it. I felt incredibly comfortable firing this gun and was pretty damned accurate with it too. :-)

Next up was a "hybrid" of sorts. A revolver that would fire both a .357 bullet as well as a .38 Special. It was a six chambered revolver that we were to load with alternating bullets. One chamber had a .357, the next a .38S, then another .357, etc. etc. When fired, you could readily tell the difference between the .357 and the .38S rounds. The .38 Special had quite a bit more kickback to it and left a MUCH bigger hole in the target paper. When I pulled my target in, the center of the sheet was just torn to shreds. It looked like someone had put a fist through it. I was really impressed with that gun especially in how it could fire both types of rounds. Again, the kickback was at a perfect level and I never once felt as if I wasn't in control. While having a .44 magnum is nice just to say "I'm a man", I really think that the .357/.38S is a nice in-between that combines power with functionality.

The final gun was the 9mm Berretta. This was an actual pistol and not a revolver so it was quite different from the previous three guns. In addition, the 9mm caliber bullet required a much bigger charge so the kickback was MUCH more exaggerated than in the previous three guns. Loading this pistol was a bit difficult as I wasn't 100% sure of the orientation to put the bullet in the magazine, and I also didn't want to force any cartridge and risk having it go off in my hand. After being told that it's damned near impossible to get a bullet to go off when inserting it into the magazine I felt confident and finally loaded up the gun. For the love of god was the kickback insane. I was definitely not expecting it to push back that much, nor did I remember about the shell casings being forcefully ejected from the gun. Heh. It took quite a few firings before I got it under control but I do have to say that the 9mm would take quite a lot of getting used to. Of all the guns I fired, I did the best with the .357/.38S and will look into getting me one of those.

The class is now completed successfully and I have one calender year to get my permit from the state and the town I live in. That will require about $90 worth of fees to get done and quite a bit of time as they do the background check and all the other stuff required by law. I figure it will take a good two months before everything is taken care of and I can legally go and purchase a gun. In the meantime, I'll just pick up some ear muzzles to protect my ears when shooting and some good shooting glasses. I'll then look into some guns to pick out one that I want to purchase. My tax return should be plenty large enough to help finance the purchase of a nice revolver. I just can't wait to get back out on the shooting range again. :-)

No More Small Town Life

2006-01-14T23:51:00.000-05:00

Just listening to the news which is on in the background, and apparently some HUGE corporation is in the process of purchasing a large chunk of land near the Mohegan Sun Casino and building the living fuck out of it. Condominiums, "upper class" shops and restaurants, and a golf course are in the plans. This makes "Small Town" Montville cease to exist and I fear what the traffic will be like on Route 32 because of this. Right now, that road is a giant bumble-fuck thanks to the casino, but the addition of a shopping center, condominiums and a golf course will only make it worse. However, if the Golf Course is nice it might make the entire ordeal worth it. :-)

Another Year Gone, Another Year Started.

2006-01-04T08:13:00.000-05:00

With 2005 over, I guess I can look back and see what I accomplished last year and what I hope to accomplish this coming year.

In 2005 I did many things that in retrospect were pretty remarkable for me. I climbed Mount Monadnock out in New Hampshire despite nearly wanting to die about half-way up. I forced myself to deal with it and finally made it up to the summit. The rush of euphoria helped me forget about the 40 mph winds up there or the fact that my legs couldn't move. Sure the next few days were complete and utter hell, but I can now say that I've climbed a mountain.

While playing poker I was able to profit $401 and vastly change the way I play. When I first started playing I was nothing but a calling station who would chase every draw possible and overplayed each and every hand that I had. Stevie Wonder could read me like a book. All it took was a vicious loss to Tom D. when I actually made a flush I was chasing but lost to his better flush. That one hand really made me re-think what I was doing and helped me change my play. I went on a tear in the month of March and profited $470 in that one month alone. The rest of the year was a battle of ups and downs as I tried to adjust to the constantly changing group of players. However I do believe that I can make the adjustment and patience has actually paid off.

Last year I also made some big additions to my collection of the elements. I was able to get ahold of honest to god pure uranium metal. My first "truly" radioactive element in my collection. I picked up a few shavings of the metal as well as a solid metal lump which really makes the Geiger counter go crazy. It's amazing stuff and I'm happy to have it. I was also able to get some red selenium, unoxidized sodium, a large slab of lithium, a one ounce button of iridium, ruthenium, and rhenium, one ounce samples of palladium and gold, and most impressive of all is an ampoule of fluorine gas. Sure the fluorine is MOSTLY helium with a little bit of the pure F2 gas mixed in, but that percentage is greater than 10% so there is some pure F2 hanging around. (The glass ampoule isn't frosted so the F2 has not yet attacked the glass). So to have pure uranium and fluorine samples is amazing to me. Two elements I never really thought I'd have.

In 2005 I also succumbed to peer pressure in many, many ways. It started in the early spring as Mr. Hand and Captain Kirk routinely would talk about their exploits on X-BOX and how I should got and get one. I had won the football pool from the previous year so I had the money to spend, but I feared that if I got an XBOX I'd play it for a few weeks and then do nothing with it. Still, Fight Night sounded like a great game so I caved in and bought the XBOX along with a good number of games. As expected, I played it for a few weeks with great intensity then got bored with it and now only use it to watch DVDs or on rare occasions play a game or two of Madden. Oh well.

The other cave in to peer pressure happened to affect me in a much larger way. It seems as if the game of golf is a common trait amongst all those I talk to. While sitting in Mr. Hand's office conversing over lunch, 11 times out of 10 that conversation would wind up moving towards the game of golf. I had always been intrigued by the sport and wanted to play since high school, but I'm not athletic and was always too worried about messing up the course and embarrassing myself. In addition, I had no clubs and had no clue where to go so I avoided it. Captain Kirk, however, said that I needed to start playing so I of course caved in. I went out to Birch Plains with Klacky and Kirk and played a round of golf. Good Lord did I suck. A 144 on a par 54 course! Uggh. Still, I had a blast doing it and getting out in the sunlight and fresh air. Soon enough, I had a set of clubs, a set of golf shoes, and an addiction to a wonderful, wonderful game. I simply can't stop golfing now. During the summer and fall I must have played at least four times a week. Slowly but surely, I began to make improvements and soon enough my average score was in the low 90's and at the end of the season the mid 80's. That quite an improvement indeed. I've now begun to read numerous golfing magazines to figure out how to further improve and have been watching golf lessons on DVD to get my swing consistent. This coming year should be fun.

Aside from the golf and XBOX, the introduction to the fine taste of Bourbon/Whiskey/Scotch was also impressed upon me. I learned to love the taste of a good Bourbon or Scotch as in the past all I had ever tried came from a plastic bottle and that is DEFINITELY not good liquor. So Maker's Mark, Johnny Walker and Jack Daniels' Single Barrel has entered my lexicon of good drinks. My liquor tolerance is higher than ever (As last night I ingested a six pack of Guinness and two glasses of Jack Daniels and it didn't affect me at all) which is either a good thing or a scary sign. Heh.

In 2005 I saw my best friend get married and took a wonderful trip down to the Gulf Coast. I partied on Bourbon Street in New Orleans about as much as you can at this time and enjoyed my trip away from the Northeast. I think I'll have to take a vacation someplace that's not here every year from now on. Last year I also did the shocking thing and dated for a while. It was a pretty good time but in the end both her and I realized that we didn't have much in common and that the relationship just wasn't working out. We parted on good terms and I went back to being single. Truthfully, being single doesn't really bother me at all.

That pretty much sums up what I've accomplished in this past year. There are things I've left out simply because I don't feel like having to write them up or because I've just forgotten about it.

In 2006, I hope to accomplish the following or will do the following:

1): Come March I will be an Uncle which is really kind of odd feeling. That really makes me feel old.

2): I hope to have another good year at the poker table and improve my game even more.

3): I hope to bring my average score at a par 54 course down into the 70's, and at a normal course into the 100's. I want to make it so that when golfing with friends and coworkers at a normal sized course I'm no longer the "pity invite". The guy who invite only because you need four people but would rather golf with someone else.

4): I hope to continue saving money towards purchasing a home and will try and get at least 5% of the cost saved up. (If I set about 180,000 as my max, that would mean around 9,000 saved by year's end).

5): I would like to try and get into some type of physical shape. My gut is expanding a bit and there's more pudge on me than I'd like. I'm just in such poor shape that any physical exertion makes me want to throw up so it's hard to get going.

6): I want to expand on my element collection a bit and improve some poorer samples and get some new ones. I still need to get amorphous silicon powder and there's a remote chance that I may get a gram of Technetium metal and a few ingots of Thorium metal. If those sources come through, then I'll also need to build myself a new lead-lined box. I will also plan on purchasing a watch hand that has been painted with a promethium chloride paint in order to have a sample of the element promethium.

7): I just want to finish the year without any of the lows that I've had in 2005 or any other year. There was a period this past year where I felt as if nothing could go right and I was destined to live a meaningless, miserable life. I've never been suicidal because frankly I'd probably screw it up and make life even worse, but at times in 2005 I did think that maybe it would be a good thing. Thanks to some friends and some help from some people I've gotten through all that, but now I just need to be prepared in case those times come back.

Anyway, Happy New Year to all and may you achieve all that you want to achieve.

Family Guy Is God.

2005-12-22T14:02:00.000-05:00

The characters in Family Guy are from Rhode Island, so for those of us who live in the Northeast there are a lot of subtle little jokes that we will get but some others may not. For those of us who golf frequently, we can now say that we've golfed at a golf course shown on Family Guy. Meadowbrook Golf Course, a course in Rhode Island, was the background for a 'I've Got James Woods' musical montage in Family Guy. Here's the proof:

Our Neighbors To The North Just Got Closer To Each Other.

2005-12-21T16:31:00.000-05:00

Canadian court lifts ban on ‘swingers’ clubs
Group sex among consenting adults not a threat to society, it says

Updated: 2:33 p.m. ET Dec. 21, 2005
OTTAWA - Group sex among consenting adults is neither prostitution nor a threat to society, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled on Wednesday as it lifted a ban on so-called “swingers” clubs.

In a ruling that radically changes the way courts determine what poses a threat to the population, the top court threw out the conviction of a Montreal man who ran a club where members could have group sex in a private room behind locked doors.

“Consensual conduct behind code-locked doors can hardly be supposed to jeopardize a society as vigorous and tolerant as Canadian society,” said the opinion of the seven-to-two majority, written by Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin.

The decision does not affect laws against prostitution because no money changed hands among the adults having sex.

‘Bawdy house’ proprietor's appeal
The court was reviewing an appeal by Jean-Paul Labaye, who ran the L’Orage (Thunderstorm) club. He had been convicted in 1999 of running a “bawdy house” — defined as a place where prostitution or acts of public indecency took place.

Labaye — who is still running L’Orage despite his earlier conviction — said he was relieved, and would now go ahead with a new venture with backing from a group of Florida investors.

“We hope clients will be more calm. This will probably lead the way to a good future,” he told reporters, saying he was looking at adding a Jacuzzi and a swimming pool.

Labaye said he had about 2,000 regular clients who paid around $20 ($17 U.S.) a year for a membership card.

Lawyers for Labaye and the owner of another swingers’ club in Montreal argued that consensual sex among groups of adults behind closed doors was neither indecent or a risk to society.

The Supreme Court judges agreed.

“Criminal indecency or obscenity must rest on actual harm or a significant risk of harm to individuals or society. The Crown failed to establish this essential element of the offense. (Its) case must therefore fail,” McLachlin wrote.

In indecency cases, Canadian courts have traditionally probed whether the acts in question “breached the rules of conduct necessary for the proper functioning of society”. The Supreme Court ruled that from now on, judges should pay more attention to whether society would be actively harmed.

Deviant, maybe, but not dangerous.
This seemed to ensure there could be no repeat of Labaye’s original conviction for causing “social harm” by allowing degrading and dehumanizing group sex to take place.

The judges said that just because most Canadians might disapprove of swingers’ clubs, this did not necessarily mean the establishments were socially dangerous.

“The causal link between images of sexuality and anti-social behavior cannot be assumed. Attitudes in themselves are not crimes, however deviant they may be or disgusting they may appear,” the judges said, noting that no one had been pressured to have sex or had paid for sex in the cases the court considered.

“The autonomy and liberty of members of the public was not affected by unwanted confrontation with the sexual activity in question ... only those already disposed to this sort of sexual activity were allowed to participate and watch,” they said.

They also dismissed the idea — raised during Labaye’s original trial — that group sex was dangerous because it could result in the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.

“Sex that is not indecent can transmit disease while indecent sex might not,” they ruled.

Copyright 2005 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters.

Ummmm..... Sounds like the world has a new Spring Break location.

Videogames. They Ain't What They Used To Be.

2005-11-28T08:58:00.000-05:00

This past Thanksgiving holiday, I got into a discussion with a friend of mine over the release of the XBOX-360, the latest BUY ME, BUY ME, BUY ME electronic gadget put out by the Microsoft Corporation. Seeing all this unwarranted hype for a 'NOW PLAY THE LATEST FPS GAMES HERE ON......' system again, it got me thinking about how videogaming was back in the good days; the 1980's.

I was born in the dawn of the 1980's, so when I was growing up videogaming was in its "prime". Home consoles were becoming more common place, and the industry was starting to specialize as you'd now see stores like 'Electronic's Boutique' taking off as they dealt with nothing but videogames. As a kid, things couldn't be better. Not only did you have the videogames to play at home, but arcades were a huge attraction with their incredible graphics and sound, and an experience you just couldn't get at home.

With the home consoles, early on all you had to choose from was the Atari 2600, or the Colecovision. This later went on to become a war involving Nintendo (NES) and Sega (Sega Master System). Nintendo appeared to win out with their multitude of classic games such as Super Mario Brothers, Zelda, Metroid, Castlevania, Tecmo Bowl, etc. As a child, I will never forget what it was like that Christmas when I opened up that giant box and contained within was the Nintendo Entertainment System. I rushed to rip it out of the packaging and hook it up to the old TV in our spare room that was no bigger than a piece of paper in terms of screen size. With help from my parents, it was eventually hooked up and I spent DAYS playing Super Mario Brothers and Duck Hunt. I'll never forget the feeling when I first beat Bowser in stage 1-4 only to find out that I 'The Princess Is In Another Castle'. Hehe. Ahh the memories.

Back then, the internet didn't exist and the only way to find out about the games yet to come out was through one of the few gaming magazines out there. The pinacle of all of this was Nintendo Power. A gaming magazine that came out shortly after the NES did and was filled with information and previews of every soon to be released game. It showed you pictures of these upcoming games and whetted your appetite without spoiling the entire game. It made you want to play the game more and more, yet didn't spoil it by giving you a screenshot-by-screenshot account of the game. The magazine also had articles and cheats and contests and any other tidbit an avid gamer would want. Soon, magazines like GamePro and Electronic Gaming Monthly (EGM) would come out and give even more sneak previews of not only NES games, but arcade games and Sega games as well. There was no internet, no chatrooms, no message boards, nothing.

Today, that's all there is. YEARS before a game comes out, you've seen movies, screenshots, and played demos up the wa-zoo. Every secret the game posseses is already detailed for you long before you can buy it. Why spend money on a game when there are no secrets to discover, or storylines to follow? Oh, that's right. It's because the media says you have to buy it. Today, within hours of a game's release, there will already be message boards and gaming sites filled with accounts of the games' ending and how to find the secret whatnots, etc. etc. There's no more discovery. No more suspense. No more surprises as you get to the final dungeon and solve the final puzzle. Today, the internet and the media have completely spoiled the surprises. There's no need to put any time and effort into finding out how to beat a game. If you want to see something, just go online and download a movie or view a screenshot.

In addition, the increased graphics and audio level of these new consoles have completely killed the arcades. In the past, the joys of the arcade were seeing these awesome graphics and sounds. Things that your modern consoles just couldn't handle. It was great fun to go and pop a few quarters into Street Fighter 2 and play against some person you've never seen before. To throw some tokens into the Mortal Kombat machine and rip your friend's head off. To team up in Gauntlet or Double Dragon and try to beat the end boss. Those were things that you just couldn't do on the home consoles because those games really didn't exist. When systems like the Playstation and XBOX came out, however, the power of those consoles soon equaled, or even surpassed, the arcade machines. With the online play, why would you bother going to an arcade when an even better machine was right in your own home? As a result, the arcades died out and that part of our culture is now gone forever. The closest you'll get is playing an emulator on a home-built arcade machine. (Something I would like to do someday).

That brings me to another point; variety. There is simply NO variety in games these days. There are only three types of games out there; First Person Shooters, Sports games, and Real Time Strategy games. THAT'S IT. Those are the only games that game developers are putting out because the general public flocks to them like lemmings. I'm not sure if it's because there are no more genres to use, or if it's due to a lack of imagination by the developers. When gaming was going through its "Golden Age", you had games like Metroid, Dragon Warrior, Castlevania, and Zelda coming out which were all seemingly 'new' games with new concepts and new secrets. How many of us can forget what it was like to get that silver arrow and pierce Gannon's heart in the Legend of Zelda? Who can forget what it was like to see the timer go off after you slaughter Mother Brain? How about finding Edrick's Sword in Dragon Warrior? Back then, doing these things were all new to us. Now, you almost come to expect these things when you play a game. There's just no more novelty in the games that are coming out.

Though I am bashing current gaming severely in this post, it does have some good things. Online play has allowed people from all over the world to play against each other. You can battle against someone from the opposite side of the planet, or someone right down the street from you. This is something that just couldn't be done before. The increased graphics and audio also immerse you into the experience like never before. Today's THX Certified games squash the 8-bit synthesizer sounds present in the older NES/SMS games. (On the other side, this also means that the player's imagination isn't needed. As a kid, I'd always imagine what it was like to be that character in the game while I was playing. It led to a very immersive experience that forced my brain to work. Today, there's no need to imagine because of the detail present on the screen in front of you). Another benefit to gaming today is that BECAUSE of all the previews and whatnot, there's no risk in plopping down your hard earned money on a dud. Back when I was a kid, there was a very big risk that the game you just purchased would be utter shit. It could be an absolute piece of trash, or it could be golden. You just never knew. Today, that is less likely to happen thanks to all the coverage on the web and in the media.

I'll close this lengthy "essay" out by asking a somewhat rhetorical question. Has gaming itself changed as drastically as I think it has, or have I changed and 'grown out' of videogaming? I think both parts are the correct answer. Kids today will never know what it was like to be a gamer back then, and I myself will never know what it's like to be a kid today. Perhaps the experiences are different, but the results and feelings are the same? Maybe I am just getting too old. I mean, my friends are now married, I hang out now with people who are much older than I am yet are considered my "peers", and in a few months I'll be an uncle. God it's amazing how quickly time flies. One final thought; When Super Mario Brothers 3 came out in the early 1990's, the hype it had going with it was ENORMOUS! I pre-ordered my copy months before it came out and stood in line for hours in order to pick it up. The game set a world record for number of copies sold. (In excess of 15 million). The hype that was generated, however, wasn't from the media or the game manufacturers. It was from the public who knew that it would be great and really wanted to play it themselves. Today, when a system like the XBOX 360 comes out, is the hype it has associated with it created by the public because they want it, or is it created by the public because the media and Microsoft flood them non-stop with commercials and radio ads and product placement so intense that you can't take a shit any more without an XBOX-360 add showing up?

The 100th Post.

2005-11-11T09:17:00.000-05:00

I'm not a man who likes commercials, so it's kind of painful to see all the advertising going on in my blog comments. Ah well. This is my 100th post, however, so I might as well make something of it. Too bad there's not a helluva lot to discuss.

On Sunday I'll be driving out to New Jersey to catch the Giants/Vikings game. Got a free ticket from a buddy of mine and all I have to do is drive. I think it will be worth it. Got to see a GREAT game at Yankee Stadium earlier this year, so now I'll add a football game to go with it. The bitch will be driving out there, but it's not like I have to weave my way in and out of NYC. I'm certain I'll get through it just fine.

In a little over 3 weeks I will be making my trip down to New Orleans to take part in my best friend's wedding. Can't believe he's getting married. We've been friends since we were both about 6 years old so we've known each other for nearly 20 years now. I couldn't be any happier for him and the trip down there will be fun. I'm leaving here on December 6th and flying out of LaGuardia in NYC at 7:30 A.M. I have to drive to Norwalk where a friend of the person I'm flying down with lives. She'll then drive us both to LaGuardia. It will be quite an early morning there. The flight arrives in Dallas, Texas at around 10:30 A.M. and our flight to New Orleans leaves at 11:00. The Wedding is on the 10th, but in the meantime myself, my best friend, and the other dude who's flying down with me will just party like crazy for a week in New Orleans. The cost of the round trip flight and the rental car for the week is only $235 so that's not bad at all. I've never really been out of the northeast as I only made a trip to DisneyWorld when I was five, so that really doesn't count. It's just hard to find the time and money to take trips.

Finally, this past week I've been working a few extra hours trying to get shit done at work. While it's not like I'm burning the midnight oil, when you are mentally prepared for an 8 hour work day and you wind up working 10 hours, it can kind of get to you. So when I left work at 6:15 last night I decided to hit up Foxwoods when some ass-holes on I-95 made it impossible for me to safely get onto I-395. I decided to stay on the highway and just drove to Foxwoods where I figured I'd spend twenty bucks on the slots. I also figured I'd take advantage of the free drinks. :-D I have no idea where it was in the casino, but I took my $20 and went to the quarter slots first. Surprisingly enough, I didn't lose it all. I just basically broke even. So after a little while I moved up to the dollar machines. I thought I'd make it quick and just drop my twenty there. I put a dollar in and got a few dollars back. Wow. That's pretty nice. I then went over to a different machine where the maximum was 5 bucks. I put the five bucks in and pulled the handle. It started making noise and a whole crapload of coins started tumbling out of the machine. I looked at the screen and I had just won $300! There were 300 of those new dollar coins in my tray. I was very happy to see that. I put them in my bucket, went to the cashier and got three Ben Franklins. At that point I left. hehe.

I've since deposited the money and frankly, spent it. This year, the Royal Canadian Mint is making an addition to their Platinum, Silver, and Gold bullion coins. I already own a one ounce Silver Maple Leaf, 3 or 4 1/10th ounce Gold Maple Leafs, and a 1/10th ounce Platinum Maple Leaf. I'm sorry my American counterparts, but the Canadian Maple Leaf coins are far better looking than the American bullion coins. Not only are they made out of 99+% pure metals, but the design is simple yet stunning. This year, for the first time in their history, they are also making a one ounce Palladium Maple Leaf. With the cost of Palladium rising, for the $265 asking price I went to www.apmex.com and bought one of the Maple Leafs using my winning. Can't wait for it to arrive.

Is Poker Really Skill Based?

2005-10-24T21:35:00.000-04:00

As everybody knows, Poker has become the latest 'craze' in America and around the world. Everybody wants to be the next young phenom, and everybody wants to go and win it all. All those who play think they know every in and out and that they make no mistakes. A great number of people also claim that poker is not a game of chance. It's a game where skill predominates and those who have more skill will win and those with less skil will lose money. I too used to believe that more skill will result in more wins while playing poker, but I am now wondering if that's really the case?

Is poker a game of chance like a slot machine or 'war', or is it a game of skill like chess? Those who claim that it's a game of skill say that in the long run, the statistics work out so that if you play a certain way over a length of time, you'll win money. What those statistics don't mention, however, is that even if you play a hand perfectly, you can still lose if certain cards don't come. Let's say you have pocket aces; the supposed best hand in all of Texas Hold'Em. Let's say that someone else has 8-6 of hearts. Sure your pocket aces are good, but what if three hearts come on the flop? What if 8-6-x comes on the flop? What if the flop is 5-7-9? Aces are only good if the other person doesn't make their hand. EVERY SINGLE CARD in the deck has the EXACT SAME CHANCE of coming down on the board regardless of what it is. That flop of 6-7-3 is just as likely to happen as that flop of A-K-Q. The proponents of skill say that if you know these 'odds' and bet accordingly, you can make money from those who don't know the odds. I still say, what happens if those cards do or do not come out like they should?

If you flip a coin twenty times, statistics say that 10 times it will be heads and 10 times it will be tails. I guarantee you that it will not happen that way. Statistics assume 'perfect' conditions and that there are no other variables occuring. Statistics also assume a VERY large amount of occurances. The thing is, when you're playing poker each hand is different from the last and it's not repeated over and over and over again. As a result, this 'over the long haul' bullshit really doesn't hold true. If you sat and played hundreds of thousands of hands in a night, then perhaps the stats might start to approach their mathematical values, but the reality of it is that as soon as one poker session ends, those stats reset back to zero.

Many people right now are probably thinking 'how can poker be mostly pure chance if people like Annie Duke, Howard Lederer, Phil Helmuth, Doyle Brunson, etc. etc. are making so much money?' Tell me something; how many tournaments do you constantly see these people winning? What is their bankroll? Is poker the ONLY thing they do? No. It isn't. If you have a large bankroll, you can afford to play in many 'high buy-in' tournaments and if you're lucky to win a few you'll make some dough. Then if your name gets known, you can start to market yourself and become a human billboard. The majority of these 'poker superstars' you see today make their money from the marketing deals they make. They don't have to play a single hand of poker ever again if they don't want to. They make enough money by selling their new books, advertising their new 'poker DVDs', etc. etc. If poker was mostly skill with a little bit of luck, then you'd have a lot more people doing nothing but playing poker for a living. How many professionals do you see out there who do nothing but play poker? How many do you see who didn't start with a multi-million dollar bankroll? Not a whole lot, do you? Do you think Doyle Brunson has made the majority of his money playing poker, or do you think he did other stuff in order to build up his bankroll?

People want to believe that they can play cards for a living and not have to do anything else. That is not the case. If you do nothing but play cards, you better have one hell of a bank account to cover the fact that the 'statistics' don't mean shit. You want to know some poker stats? Well let's take a look at my own play this year. I have played consistantly in the same manner for the majority of this year. I started out playing very loosely and as a result was throwing money away left and right. I then decided to 'play smarter' in mid February and bumped my winnings up to a max of around $600. Since the middle of February I've played the exact same style of poker yet I'm currently only up $289.00 thanks to our friend 'probability'. If poker is mostly skill and I've been playing the same way, explain to me how I can profit $600 then lose half of it? How about some examples of these so called 'you played right' hands that resulted in a loss of money.

Hand 1
Myself: Ace(s)-9(c)
Player 1: 4(d)-5(d)
Player 2: 8(s)-8(h)
Player 3: 8(c)-9(h)

Preflop, these are the percentages of each player winning:
Myself: 31.6%
Player 1: 23.5%
Player 2: 34.5%
Player 3: 10.4%

The flop comes down A(d) - 5(c) - A(h). Let's take a look at the percentages now.
Myself: 88.5%
Player 1: 5.4%
Player 2: 4.3%
Player 3: 1.8%

So according to those percentages, I should win this hand the vast majority of the time. Now what happens to those percentages when the turn card comes as the 6 of diamonds? Well, here they are;

Myself: 72.5%
Player 1: 17.5%
Player 2: 2.5%
Player 3: 7.5%

Oddly enough, I became less likely to win as more cards came down. Still, about 3 out of four times I should win. What those numbers don't tell you, however, is that 3 out of 4 times I'll win if the exact same cards are dealt to all of us in the exact same manner. In reality, that will never happen. So what did happen on this hand? Player 3 caught a MIRACLE 7 to straight on the river and take the entire pot. There were only three cards in the deck that would let him win. ANY other cards and he loses. Yet in this instance the game of 'chance' came through and his 2% chance of winning after the flop happened. So poker's a game of skill, eh?

The Hardware Upgrades........

2005-10-22T22:36:00.000-04:00

The true sign, no, the true right of passage for any modern 'geek' is to build their own computer from various parts and not through an online builder. (I.E. Gateway, Alienware, or Dell). There's just something about doing all that research, picking out just the right parts, finding the best deals, then waiting for all the stuff to arrive. Then finally, when all the parts are there, you slowly start to unwrap everything as the intoxicating smell of new electronics overtakes you and everyone in the area. It's at this point that you realize you just spent close to two-thousand dollars on all of your parts and that they are currently outdated by better parts and what you bought is now half the price. That's just the pain that every computer user has to deal with. Technology will never stop. You just have to learn from your mistakes and try not to repeat them.

For me, that introduction to computers came about five years ago. In my freshman year of college I was introduced to the software MAME which emulates arcade machines. A nice side benefit is that you can play those emulated games. I had grown up a HUGE Mortal Kombat series fan and wanted to play MK2 and MK3 on my computer. Sadly, the 1.0 GHz CPU I had wasn't nearly fast enough to play the games well. In addition, my Dell was just old and unable to be upgraded. It's at this point I decided to build my own. My spring semester of my senior year of college was a paid internship. I got a paycheck every other week and in that spring semester earned $3,000 of which two/thirds went to my computer. (The other grand went to booze and various other 'college expenditures'. hehehe.)

The computer I build had the following components:

Pentium 4 'Northwood' 2.8 GHz CPU running at 2.94 GHz.
2x256MB PC2100 DDR SDRAM.
MSI-6398 845 Ultra-ARU motherboard.
Cheap Floppy Drive
10x DVD-ROM from Sony.
52x CD-RW from Lite-On.
Network Card.
Soundblaster Audigy 2 soundcard.
Visiontek Xstasy GeForce4 Ti-4600 Videocard. (Highest end card at the time).
Enermax 431 Watt Power Supply.
Generic ATX Case.
Keyboard.
Trackball Mouse.
Seagate Barracuda IV 40GB 7,200 rpm drive w/ 2MB Cache.

I used my existing monitor which eventually was upgraded to a Dell 2001FP LCD monitor last year when my Trinitron died, and I added a Sony 8x DVD+/-RW drive last year too.

This computer was treating me just fine, but the video card was starting to get WAAAAAY out of data as seen by some lower quality when playing Doom3 or Half-Life 2. My hard drive was filling up and the computer was just getting 'old'. Still, I didn't think it was time to ditch it and start building another one. The nearly 3.0 GHz CPU is working just fine and perhaps some minor tweaks could help out. I don't need a top of the line video card as something in the mid ranges will do me just fine. Thanks to NewEgg.com, I've gone ahead and made a few upgrades.

1): I purchased a 120 GB Seagate Barracuda Hard Drive at 7,200 rpm and an 8MB cache. That cost me about 80 bucks and the drive upgrade went very smoothly. I now have plenty of free space on my hard drive and the 8MB cache will undoubtedly help out in terms of loading times for some games. I've wiped out my old 40 GB drive and have sold it to a co-worker to recoup some cost. ($20 bucks worth). Net cost = $60.

2): After upgrading the hard drive, I thought that it would be about time for me to upgrade the RAM. I have 512 megs, but could probably use a full gigabyte now. I went online and got two 512 meg sticks from Corsair to give me a GB of PC3200 DDR SDRAM. That should be a nice upgrade for only $120 bucks. Possibly less if I find a purchaser for my current RAM. (Looking to get $40 for the 512 megs). Net cost if current RAM sells = $80.

3): My video card, which has lasted me about 5 years, has finally been replaced. I just now ordered an eVGA GeForce 6800 card with 128MB vRAM for $190. The card has a $30.00 rebate, so overall I got myself a VERY good card for only $160. Not sure if I can get ANYTHING for my current video card since it's five years old, but the new one is going to be a nice upgrade and should allow me to play any of the games that I want to. Total cost of all upgrades = $300.

For three hundred bucks I've been able to extend the life of my computer another good four or five years. The joys of building your own. :-)

I've Got The Joy, Joy, Joy, Joy Down In................

2005-10-11T09:39:00.000-04:00

If ever there was a night of cards to see people's hopes and dreams crushed right in front of them; to witness more suckouts than a Hoover convention; to see player after player buy-in and go home; it was last night. Each member of the regular poker crowd witnessed, suffered, or pulled off a vicious beat at some point last night. Statistically some were worse than others, but monetarily they all seemed pretty severe.

My introduction to the 'bad beat' began early in the evening, though I wouldn't exactly call it a horrible beat. It was more like bad luck. I was able to take something positive out of it, however, as I acted on my read and saved a good deal of money. I had been playing tight pretty much the entire night up to that point and I don't think I was involved in more than one or two hands total. I look down from Under The Gun and see A-A. I raise two bucks and everybody folds but Reggie. He calls the two bucks without blinking an eye and down comes 5-7-9. A beautiful flop for me as that could not possibly hit anybody who would be calling a two dollar pre-flop raise. He checks and I bet four bucks. Reggie then starts shaking a bit and raises me another four. I had $1.75 left and suddenly felt as though my aces were behind. Going on my read, I just went all-in and Reggie turned over 6-8 offsuit. (WOW.) He flopped a straight. Oh well. I didn't do anything wrong there so I'm not going to let it bother me. On the turn I opened up a flush draw for myself, but the river brought nothing and I lost about 7 bucks on the flop. Not really a big deal. Yeah it sucks when aces go down, but I was still able to take a positive out of there.

The very next hand I had pocket threes but had to piss. There was a raise before me, as well as a re-raise I believe. Pocket 3's suck ass facing a raise and a re-raise so I folded them and took a piss. When I got back, I see that a three fell on the flop as well as the turn. I mucked quad fours and would have gotten paid very well based upon the pot size that was there. Ah well. Those miracle shots aren't always going to happen and if facing the same situation and a 4+ dollar raise pre-flop, I'm folding. Later on in the evening quads burned me again, however, as my pocket tens died when Tom D. flopped trip jacks and then turned that into quad jacks against my jacks full of tens. Ah well.

However, I would say that the most stunning, and most painful, beat of the night happened between Klacky and myself. Klacky had not been having a good night. He had won but maybe one or two hands the entire evening, and his biggest hand was a split with me when we both had Ace-Queen, ironically enough. (Though we did get some of Joe's money on that one). Klacky had been folding just about everything and had nothing to show for it. The cards were colder than a witch's tit. Crazy Joe had raised a buck or so pre-flop and Klacky, Reggie, Myself, and Joe saw the flop. The flop was 4-5-6 giving me top pair with a 9 kicker. However, that flop also was very co-ordinated and ripe for a draw. In early position, I checked to see what others would do. Joe checked and Klacky bet four dollars. Reggie called and I did too. I had the top pair with a mediocre kicker, but this was the type of flop that people with a strong draw would bet out into. Crazy Joe called the four also making the pot close to $20 at this point. The turn then came down as yet another six. I now had trip sixes. Reggie checked and I bet small with my trip sixes (As I didn't want to bet too much just in case I was behind a flopped straight). Joe called and Klacky then raised four. Reggie called and I started thinking. Why the hell would Klacky bet out strongly on the flop then again when a potential scare card came down? Since he had seen utter shit all night long, I wondered if he had a pair of 8's or 10's and bet out initially in order to get drawers out while he had an over pair. With the second six coming down, maybe he had two pair at this point and just wanted to take down the pot? If the cards are cold all night long, there's a greater chance of you thinking that your pocket pair is stronger than it really is. I know. I've been there before. Because of this, I decided to raise another four to let him know that I was strong and was not bluffing. At this point Joe gets out and it's up to Klacky. He re-raises ME four bucks! Reggie dumps and I start thinking.

Is it possible that he flopped a straight and is now protecting it? That could be likely, but then why would he bet so hard on the flop where there wasn't much to scare his straight with? Is it possible that he had trips and now had a boat? With the 6's on the board, I figured it could be a possibility, but even then I wasn't drawing dead. I then wondered if he could have a six as well. For that to happen, he'd have to have the case six which although possible, isn't that likely. At this point, I felt as though I could possibly be in the lead, but I could possibly be behind. I put the odds of me being behind or ahead at about 1:1. So half the time I'm behind and half I'm ahead. Either way, the pot was so huge by now that I'd be a fool to muck my trips. I called the four bucks and the pot was now GIGANTIC! With my money in the middle, I kept thinking to myself "Pair the board or give me a nine". If the board pairs, I have a virtual lock on the boat, and if Klacky did by chance have a six then we'd have a split. If it's a nine, then I'm 99% certain that I've won. Mr. Hand was dealing, and he burns and turns the river. Before putting the river card down, he waved it around the table very quickly. I couldn't see what the card was, but I saw that it was NOT paint and it was small. The chances of it being one of the three cards I was hoping for was pretty high. He finally puts the card down and states that it's a 9. I felt elated. Everybody looked at the card and laughed it off as it didn't seem to help anything. I immediately, and sternly, bet out four bucks. The Vault reacted best when he just furrowed his brow and said 'What the fuck?!' Klacky called the four and I turned over my 6-9 for sixes full of nines. Klacky looked dejected as he showed his 6-King. Apparently he did have the case six and actually had me dominated until that 9 came. I took down a $40+ pot and was in awe at the magnitude of the beat. I know how Klacky feels, so I just tried to keep silent and let the others do the ribbing. I will give him credit for one thing, however; he took the beat pretty well which is something that I'm not known to do. :-)

Later on in the evening we saw some more nasty beats. Mr. Hand had pocket queens and flopped trip queens, betting VERY strongly the whole time, while Crazy Joe had nothing but a draw. Of course, the king that fell on the river completed his draw and Joe took down the pot. In another (in)famous hand, The Vault had AKo while Reggie had 9-10o. The flop came down 8-J-Q giving Reggie the straight. The turn came a ten, however, giving The Vault the nut straight and Reggie a painful second best. Intense betting and raising went on, and in the end The Vault took home a gigantic pot. Another suckout happened on the second to last hand of the night. I had pocket Jacks and bet four bucks to try and take the two bucks sitting in the pot. Crazy Joe, who was trying to dump his money however, called. The flop came down 8-10-8 with two diamonds. I bet four and Joe looked at me wanting to go all in. Eventually, he was all-in. He then turned over 6-8 for trip 8's. I simply had my jacks. I needed running diamonds or a jack or a running straight. The turn was the 7 of diamonds. That was a GREAT card as now a 9 gives me a straight, a jack gives me a nut-boat, or a diamond gives me a flush. Crazy Joe started demanding that a diamond fall on the river and I wasn't going to argue. On the river, the 4 of diamonds came down and I had a jack-high flush. :-)

It was simply a stunning night and I was happy to walk away a head. The Vault made a miraculous comeback and wound up ahead too. The finally tally was:

Crazy Ivan: He can buy Lisa dinner.
Crazy Joe: He got what he was hoping for and donated it all.
Reggie: Fought hard to stay even but walked out broken.
The Vault: Nearly lost it all but took a great hand down and walked away ahead.
Tom W.: Was hot, then cold, then hot, then cold, then out of money.
Tom D.: Steadily stayed in the red and left while ahead.
Klacky: Went down in a blaze of glory as the poker gods were cruel to him.
Mr. Hand: Had some horrible beats, had some nice wins, had to have been up at night's end.
Myself: Took some beats, gave some vicious ones, won the big pots, lost the small pots, was up big at the end.

Damned Rain.

2005-10-10T09:35:00.000-04:00

We went the entire summer without a drop of rain, and now the rain just won't seem to stop. What miserable weather we're having. I'd like to go golfing once more before the cold, harsh winter here in New England arrives, but it's not going to be easy dodging the raindrops. Oh well. Perhaps this coming weekend the skies will clear up for a day and a game of golf can be had.

In other news, Iron Mike Canizzarro made an appearance at the poker table this past Friday Night. It was a harken back to the older days of poker just a few short months ago. As is typical, I got drunk, won some money, and don't remember who else won. If it was typical Iron Mike poker, then Mikey lost some money while various other people took home some dough. I do remember playing a bit more aggressively than I typically do and it was paying off. Hands that I normally see for a minimum raise or no raise at all were being raised a good 3 or 4 dollars. Even if I had nothing, sometimes I'd raise big when I sensed weakness from everybody. This was all working out for me as my reads were nearly dead on all night long. It's a skill that I hope I can continue with as time goes on. (I'd say my read % was about 85% which is pretty good). Of course, by me saying all this there's a good chance that I'll be fully wrong tonight and lose a ton of money. Ah well. That's life.

Now I can just sit back and delete the 30 spam comments that I typically get on my blog entry. To anybody who thinks about posting spam, if I don't recognize the name, the entry gets deleted immediately. Your commercials will get you zero business from my blog. If you still want to post spam, then start sending me a paycheck for all the business you get.

Quick Update

2005-10-07T13:24:00.000-04:00

Haven't posted an entry in god knows how long, so I figured I'd add one today. Not much has gone on lately except I've been playing golf, playing poker, and been a bit more mentally unbalanced than normal. I lost my golf swing a while ago and got incredibly frustrated, but last night I went out golfing and the person I golf with noticed something. I was hitting the ball VERY hard, put putting so much overspin on it that the distance it travelled was very short. The guy I was playing with noticed that I wasn't transferring my weight from my back side to my front side. When he mentioned it, I noticed it too and made an adjustment. On my next swing, I ensured that my weight transferred to my front side BEFORE making contact with the ball. As a result, I started getting loft again as well as distance. My pitching wedge also had a great deal of loft on it, and when it hit the green it actually stopped and didn't roll another 20 feet. Hopefully this little adjustment will help me out in the future. Hard to believe something as simple as a weight transfer could be holding me back.

You Fucking Liar!!!!!!!!!!!!

2005-09-20T08:18:00.000-04:00

Poker is a game about information. The more of it you have that your opponent doesn't puts you in a big advantage. Making your opponent think you have something that you don't is a huge advantage. These 'tells' help poker players determine what hands they might be up against and what their chances of winning are. At any poker table, you'll typically see a lot of talking and a lot of conversation going on. Many times, these conversations are attempts to garner information about an opponent. It's common to say things like 'So you got a flush?' when there are three of the same suit on the board. By looking at how your opponent reacts, you can see if they do indeed have that flush. However, you also have to be careful about false information.

Bluffing is a key aspect to a poker player's arsenal, and using it sparingly and in the right situations can make it a powerful weapon. Take last night, for example. I was involved in a hand with Reggie which is where I either lied like a fucking bitch, or bluffed with great success depending on your point of view. I had something like King-Five or King-Ten offsuit. I can't really remember what my kicker was. I called the one or two dollar raise which happened pre-flop, though it may have been free, I'm not 100% sure. Anyway, the flop came down Q-Q-7. Reggie was first to act and he checked it. It was checked all the way around to me and I decided to make a stab at the pot. I bet out and was called by Reggie while all others folded. On the turn, a 9 came down. Reggie was first to act and he checked. Sensing weakness, I bet out four dollars. Reggie then looked at his cards again and it was apparent that he wasn't that strong. He looked at me and said 'So is your pair bigger than my pair?'. He wanted information from me. He wanted me to look ill or make some type of facial/body motion indicating that I had nothing. Instead, without changing my expression, I said 'Possibly Reggie. It possibly is'. I was now certain what I needed to do to win. I had to either continue to bet strongly at the risk of losing a big pot if he calls, or I had to catch a King or a 9 on the river. (As the river would give me 9's and Q's with a king kicker while he'd have 9's and Q's with a 7 kicker if my read is correct). The river came down as a meaningless card, but it was higher than the lowest card on the board; the 7. Reggie checks and I decide to go for it. I bet out four dollars. Reggie now put his cards into his hands and said 'It's yours Justin' while showing that he did have a 7. I breathed a sigh of relief, turned bright red and showed that I had nothing but King high and had bluffed my way to the win. Immediately, everybody at the table started spouting off 'he's a liar' while I collected my chips.

Now am I a liar or did I just bluff? You see, if I sat there and said 'No, I do not have a pair higher than yours', then I take away nearly all chances of winning the hand. When playing a game, why the hell would you take away any chances you have of winning? That's like removing cards from the deck before each hand. It just doesn't make sense. Whenever I'm in a hand and you ask me information, chances are I'm lying. That's not a shock. That's good poker play. If you can see that I'm lying, then it's to your advantage. If you can't, then it's to my advantage. Once the hand ends then I have no reason to lie as it's not going to help me out any more. But if the hand is still going on and I have a chance at winning, I'm going to say whatever I need to say to win if you ask me a question. (Now if Reggie didn't say anything and I just said 'I have two pair', then that would be a flat out lie. Instead, he tried fishing for information and caught a poisonous fish). So Reggie, sorry about that bit of misinformation, but this is a competition. If it weren't, then we would just deal the cards face up. :-)

The Lab Results Are In.

2005-09-15T17:35:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago I had my quarterly doctor's appointment, and at the appointment the doctor noticed that I haven't had my cholesterol, liver function, thyroid function, and kidney function tests done in a while. (It's been three years since my last cholesterol test). So he worked up a lab sheet for those labs and I had the blood drawn. I was curious to see how this would all turn out as I don't exactly treat my body like a shrine with all the alcohol I take in and all the crappy food I eat. Well, even I can be wrong as the tests came back today and look GREAT!

I just received a little postcard thingy from the doctor stating that the kidney/liver and thyroid tests are well within normal ranges for a healthy individual, so I have nothing to be concerned about. The tests he DID mention, however, were incredible.

Blood Pressure: 106/68 at my last visit.
Total Cholesterol: 177
HDL (Good Cholesterol): 90 (Ideal is greater than 45)
LDL (Bad Cholesterol): 68 (Ideal is less than 100)
Triglycerides: 44 (Ideal is less than 200)
HSCRP (A measure of blood vessel inflammation): 0.8 = VERY good = Little to no risk of heart disease.

So this alcohol guzzling, fried food eating, sit-on-the-couch-and-do-nothing bastard is in GREAT shape in regards to his heart. Doesn't seem right, does it? :-)

Can It Be True?! Did He Actually Do That?!!!!!

2005-09-07T20:32:00.000-04:00

It's almost too unlikely to believe. In a golf game involving The Vault, Senor Kaboom, and Crazy Ivan, could Senor Kaboom golf well enough to beat his competitors? Well, no. He didn't. However, he only got beaten by one of his competitors and that was by a mere 3 strokes.

The evening began with a meeting at Cedar Ridge Golf Course in Niantic, Connecticut. Myself, The Vault, a co-worker and his friend were going to meet there at around 4:15 and do a round of 18. The Vault had also invited Crazy Ivan to participate as well, though Crazy Ivan must have misread the invitation and didn't show up. Upon getting to Cedar Ridge, we were told that due to the shear number of golfers out there today, there's be NO way we could get 18 holes in. We could golf 9 holes if we wanted to, but it would be dark by the time we got 18 in. Our co-worker Jeff and his buddy decided to go the 9 holes, but the Vault and myself really wanted to go for a full round of 18. As a result, we ditched Cedar Ridge and went to Birch Plains instead.

On the way to Birch Plains, I thought about how funny it would be if Will decided to show up there instead of Cedar Ridge like we had instructed him to. Sure enough, as I pull into the parking lot I see Crazy Ivan sitting there smoking his pipe. Hehe. The fact that he went to the COMPLETELY wrong golf course turned out better as at Birch Plains there wasn't even half the people there was at Cedar Ridge. So Will, Kirk and Myself headed out to the first tee after paying our greens fee and getting ready for the round.

I was third to act and teed up my ball and pulled out my 9-iron. With the adjustment to my swing, I've found that my ball is going a LOT further than it used to and I didn't know if I should go down to my pitchign wedge instead. The thing is, I have lost every last bit of confidence in using my pitching wedge as I can never hit it straight, nor with loft. So I stuck with the 9-iron and promptly hit it over the green. Fuck. I kept the 9-iron in my hand and punched the ball back onto the green within 6-feet of the hole. I should have sunk that putt for par, but came up about three inches short and wound up with a bogey. Ah well. Time for the second hole.

Hole number 2 is where I usually explode and drop a 7 or an 8 on my score card. Today, I was feeling pretty good so I stuck with a five iron and hit the ball half decently. I had a little bit of trouble when I then knocked the ball over the green a few times and was lying 3 on the green. I wound up two putting and had a five. Not too bad. I'd like to improve a bit and keep those fives and sixes down, but I'll deal with that.

Hole number 3 is an optically challenging hole. The hole looks a LOT longer than it really is, so club selection is crucial. The hole is also surrounded by a dense forest on three sides, so you need to keep your shot straight. I took out my seven iron and took a few practice swings. Crazy Ivan was able to take some video of my practice swings, and when looking at the video later on I was quite shocked. I had good balance, good backswing, good downswing, and a good follow through. I actually looked like a golfer! When I actually hit the ball, however, I rushed a bit and opened up far too soon. This resulted in me hooking the ball severely and being in the trees on the left hand side. :-( I had to punch the ball out and was lying three on the green. To top things off, I wound up three putting when my second putt stopped on the edge of the cup and refused to go in. They need to make those cups a few inches bigger. Hehe. So I had a bad 6 to put down on my scorecard and said aloud 'I will not shoot higher than a six again today.' The Vault nearly broke out into a fit of laughter and said 'You want to bet?' Feeling confident in my self, I said 'Yes. Let's do it'. So we bet a dollar that I would not shoot higher than a 6 for the rest of the evening. To Kirk, that must have felt like an easy dollar. To me, it felt like an easy dollar too.

This is when consistancy kicked in. With a swing that was fluid and felt good, I shot the following on the front nine;

4
5
6
5
6
4
5
5
5

Total = 45 with 18 putts.

This was good for me as I always shoot better on the back nine, so my chances of shooting under 90 were pretty good. On the downside, on holes 1, 6, and 8 I muffed some shots and should have had par on 1 and 6. On eight I should have at least gotten a bogey.

Now comes the back nine. I was certain that I'd shoot well, and really only had to worry about a few holes in terms of hitting above a six. Holes 10, 11, and 16. On hole ten, I took out my pitching wedge and was a bit timid. Still, I'd have to learn how to use it and teed up anyway. I hit the ball and hit it pretty well and stuck myself on the right side just off the green. I chipped up there within about 6 feet of the hole, but fucking three-putted as my first putt was a bit short, and my second one stopped AGAIN right on the lip of the cup. I finished with a five on the hole and a little frustration.

I think the frustration was getting to me as I severely fudged my tee shot on the 11th hole even though I hit it hard. I had to punch out of the woods and was lying five when I finally made it onto the green. This was where the pressure started. If I missed my putt, I'd be a seven on the hole and owe Kirk a dollar. With the pressure on, I lined up the putt and easily sunk it preserving a six on the hole. I would never shoot that high again. :-)

My back nine played out like this;

5
6
4
4
4
4
5
3
4

Total = 39 with 15 putts.

I had quite a few one putts, and on I'd say four of the holes I two or three putted when I should have had one or two. (Holes 5, 12, 13, 14 should have had one less putt). Still, I managed a fucking 39! Even the day I shot an 81, I didn't shoot under 40 for a set of nine holes. Today, I FINALLY broke that 40 barrier. I was able to shoot a 39 on the back nine to go with my 45 on the front nine. A total score of 84 and a VERY consistant day of golfing. Now had I not muffed all the putts that I had muffed, I would have wound up with a score of probably around 78-79. However I'm not going to argue with an 84. I just want to do it again. :-)

So what's so special about me shooting an 84? What's special is that Crazy Ivan only managed to shoot an 81 today. He beat me by a mere 3 strokes and that's it. Even better is that The Vault had no real game today and only shot an 84 as well. So I tied KK out on the golf course. What's worse is that I know I fucked up a few putts and should have shot better. If it weren't for those one or two flaws I'd have beat Kirk. Then again, if I did that he may never want to golf again and we'd have to put him on a suicide watch. :-) So today was a VERY good day for me and is amazing considering where I started. I hope to do this again on my next golfing trip, and I have a feeling I will. When I shot this past Friday it was when I first started toying with this new swing and I think I shot an 88 or 89. I then finished strongly at Meadowbrook on Saturday with a 61 on the back nine. Yesterday I went to the driving range to reinforce this new swing, and today the work I did paid off. The Vault paid me the dollar he owed and probably made the statement of the year to me. He simply said 'I have never seen you that cool, that calm, and that collected before for a two-plus hour period of time. You didn't even have any alcohol in you!'. hehehehehe. So true. So very, very true.

Overflowing Monday Night Poker

2005-09-07T09:34:00.000-04:00

It's been a while since my last poker blog entry, and with a request from the newcomer Reggie, and I'm sure a request from long departed Mike 'The Italian Guy', I'll ignore all the people who tell me to quit wasting their time by writing little novels every single day. :-)

Last night we had quite the gathering at the poker table. The game this week was on a Tuesday night at 6:30 instead of Monday night at 6:00 due to the holiday weekend and a business meeting which occured before hand. As a result, the following group was there and ready to play:

Reggie
Tom W.
Klacky
Tom D.
Mr. Hand
The Vault
Senor KABOOM
Crazy Joe
Sane 'Stranger' Joe
Crazy Ivan

So as you can see, not everybody could sit down and play. In the beginning, Reggie had not yet arrived and Crazy Ivan already had a seat so The Vault stayed out and played the role of banker. Sane Joe was just getting used to our table and how we play things, and I must say that he picked up things pretty quickly. He kind of fit right in which is a scary thing. Early on I took down some pots as I kept hitting top pair/top kicker on the flop, or I'd turn a straight or a flush. I took down a very nice pot early on when Klacky had King-3 offsuit and hit the three on the flop while my Ace-10 hit the ace on the flop. I bet strong the entire time and Klacky even tried to raise me. In the end, he called my sizeable river bet and seemed pretty embarassed to realize that I wasn't full of shit and my Ace had his King-3 dominated. Kind of shocking from Klacky. Kind of seems like a bout of cerebral flatulence. My stack built up pretty quickly which was greatly needed when the first 'big hand' of the night happened.

I had in my hand some pocket tens and was facing a pre-flop raise from Crazy Joe. (Yeah, I can tell you're all shocked). I called and a few other people did as well. The flop came down 9-7-2. A good flop for me as my tens were an overpair. I bet strongly and Klacky called. Crazy Joe then raised it and I called as he probably was raising with the top pair, or with any pair at all. The turn was another blank and I bet out, Klacky folded, and Joe raised. I reraised and he called. The river was an ace which had me a bit timid, so I just check called. Joe turned over pocket 9's. So I lost a big chunk of money there but what can you do? Playing against a person who plays any two cards in existance can be tough at times. I guess the only thing I could have hoped for was to have a couple of overcards on the flop.

Eventually Crazy Ivan got blinded away and was done with his twenty dollar investment. I don't think he played any hand incorrectly, but just got utter shit for starting hands. It happens. When CI left, The Vault took his place at the table. There was no doubt about it that the seat he was in was colder than a witches tit in the artic summer. Even The Vault was getting whittled away and he eventually decided to just pack it in when Reggie arrived needing a seat. Meanwhile, 'Sane Joe' was doing alright for himself while Crazy Joe was yo-yo-ing all around the place. Tom W. was quietly amassing a chip stack, then making it go away, then building it back up again. My large chip stack was slowly dwindling away as I was really playing loose. It was a nice return to my older ways of poker; the non-profitible ways, but the really fun ways. 'If they were sooted, I played'. Hehe. Mr. Hand was very quiet at the tables last night, and I only recall him being in hands that resulted in bad beats against him. He may have played ten hands all night and suffered a bad beat on about half of them. Ouch.

After being in for sixty bucks, I decided to channel the spirit of Crazy Joe and start blind straddling. What a rush! It was like the greatest beer buzz you could ever have, and the adrenaline rushing through my veins was nuts. If I lost, I didn't mind as I didn't know what I had until the very end. I was moderately successful at first, but then came the hand that really sticks out in my mind. I don't recall what position I was in, but I had about three bucks left total. I said to myself 'Just go all-in and don't look at your cards. Go by feeling'. So I did just that and blindly put my money into the middle stating 'All-in'. After doing that, I reached for my cards. With my right hand I touched the card on the right and felt nothing. It was utter emptyness. With my left hand, I touched the card on the left and got a bit of a tingle. It was a sensation like if you get a mild electrical shock where you feel a bit of a buzz but it's nothing too severe. So either I was having a heart attack/stroke, or this card was going to do something for me. At that point, I just said 'I have a feeling this card is going to win it for me'. The flop came down with two hearts on it and a wide range of rankings. I felt really good as I now probably hit that since there were high, middle, and low ranking cards there as well as two suited cards. The turn came down as another mid-level heart now putting three hearts on the board. Surely I couldn't have two hearts in my hand, could I? The river was yet another heart. Now I just need ONE heart in my hand. At this point in time, my only opponent whom I believe may have been Mr. Hand, showed his cards. I think he had a pair of sevens but without any hearts. All I needed was to show one heart, or one of the two overcards on the board. Not being able to wait any longer, I decided to look at the 'tingle' card first. The card that gave me a feeling at the start of the hand. I turn the card over and it's the 8 of hearts. I won the pot with a flush. The other card was indeed crap that didn't hit anything, so the card that I said would win it did just that. From that point forward, things kind of turned around for me.

I started winning more and more sizeable pots and built my funding back up. Two people bought chips from me, so I went from being in for sixty to being in for twenty. The night progressed on and I decided once again to just go by feeling and let the cards do the betting for me. Crazy Joe had opened up with a pre-flop raise of two bucks. I called as did a bevy of other people, including Mr. Hand. The flop came down Queen-Ten-Junk rainbow. I felt really strong again, but so did Mr. Hand as he opened the betting with a pretty sizeable bet. Two people called, but Crazy Joe folded. Having to go by feeling, I just called. The turn was a 6 which I didn't think did anything for me. I tried to get a feel of my cards, and once again that left handed card gave me a bit of a tingle. I now knew that the card I was touching would win it all for me. Mr. Hand now bet out very strongly and got all but myself and one other player to fold. I just couldn't fold now and knew that I'd be putting down a pretty significant beat if I stuck around. While I'm sure Mr. Hand wouldn't like it, I just had to do it. However, I would have to look at my cards now to see if I had any shot of pulling this off. I look at the non-tingle card and it's a black jack. Hmmm. That's a pretty nice card as it opens up a lot of possibilities for me. I then went and looked at the card that gave me the tingle. It was a red king. I was open ended. NICE! So the river card comes down and it's the 9 of spades. My open ended hit and I just said 'I have the immortal nuts. Don't be into me'. Sane Joe, the other person in the hand, took the advice and checked. I bet three bucks just out of habit, and Mr. Hand and Sane Joe quickly folded. I showed the King-Jack for the nuts and took the pot down. Once again, the 'tingle' did not lie. The jack alone didn't win it. The king along with the jack won it. :-)

I was now close to even and decided to just play it that way. In the meantime, we saw Mr. Hand take down a petty pot with quad aces, and some other pots go around the table. Perhaps the best hand of the night, however, involved Crazy Joe and The Vault standing in for Klacky. Klacky had to go get some booze or piss or something, and had The Vault play his hand for him with Klacky's money. At the time, that seemed like a pretty smart thing to do, but in retrospect Klacky really wishes that he didn't. :-) The Vault opens up the pre-flop betting with a raise which Crazy Joe obviously calls. The flop comes down Queen-9-7. Nothing too special there. Joe bets out, and The Vault raises him. Joe reraises and The Vault calls. The turn is an offsuit 8 and The Vault bets strong again. Joe calls. The river is a 4 making the board Queen-9-7-8-4. Jack-10 can't lose. Joe bets, The Vault raises, Joe raises, and I think The Vault may have re-raised. Anyway, a lot of betting went on and the pot had grown quite large. Joe happily flips over a 9-4 offsuit to show a miraculously rivered two-pair. The Vault calmly says 'I straighted' and flips over Queen-Ten. We then look at The Vault as if he was spawning retards left and right as there is no way in hell he had a straight. He only had a pair of tens. Insane laughter then ensues as Klacky realize that The Vault lost him a LOT of money and Crazy Joe took it all down. I guess there's something about filling in for Klacky that makes you think your hand is stronger than it is. Remember folks, you need five cards for a straight, not four. ;-)

The final hand of the night was a good swing hand for me. With almost no money left, Klacky raised it three bucks pre-flop all-in. Crazy Joe calls as do I and a bunch of other people. I had King-3 offsuit, but called anyway. The flop came down King(clubs)-8-3(clubs). I flopped myself two pair. I bet VERY strong to get people out, and only Joe calls. The turn is the 8 of clubs, and Joe says that he now has trips. I believe him but call anyway hoping for a miracle King. The river is another club giving me nothing but a painful end to the night, while Klacky took down the main pot with a flush. It was eerily similar to the viciously painful beat I took last week when I flopped two pair with my Ace-King only to lose when the only card I didn't have paired the board, thus boating someone else and flushing another person. That's two times in a row that my two pair couldn't hold up, but fuck it. I'm not going to change the way I play it because the statistics state that flopping two pair will pay you off quite frequently. If that hand had held up for me, I'd have finished up pretty good for the night. Instead, I was down 7 bucks which isn't all that bad since the number of hands I played properly can be counted on two fingers. Hehe. I had fun though and was able to relax quite a bit. Now it's time to concentrate on my golf game......................

How Good Can A Phone Call Be?

2005-08-31T23:30:00.000-04:00

As many of you are aware, my best friend is living in the Gulf Coast region of Mississippi where one of the worst hurricanes in U.S. History hit this past weekend. The City of New Orleans is now 80% flooded and the devastation is just horrendous. After seeing pictures of the destruction, I just prayed that my friend, his family, his fiance and her family were alright. I've been trying to call him for a while now but just kept getting a 'All channels are currently in use. Please try back at a later time'. So my bit of worry continued.

This evening, I was at my computer playing some poker (I made sixty bucks profit doing it), and the phone rang. I looked down at the caller ID and the name was that of my friend Keith. Thank god. I picked up the phone and was happy to hear that everyone made it through the storm okay and that nobody was hurt. He said that it was the most sobering thing to have to go through and that words cannot describe the complete and utter destruction down there. He was amazed at seeing entire trees uprooted from the intense winds, and houses blown over like paper bags. He had evacuated the city where he lived and weathered the storm up north a bit where he still said it was horrible. When he came back to his house yesterday, he said the houses next door to him and across the street had huge gaping holes and the roofs were gone. His house only had some strips of siding missing. The structure and the roof stayed intact. He was spared. Simply remarkable. I have never been a religious man, but from what was described to me the only way I can believe it is to say that an angel was watching over the house and kept it standing.

Such a load has been taken off of my shoulders, as now I know that he is safe and that while the area is literally a warzone at this point, they'll be able to pull through. It will take a bit of time and a lot of help from many people, but everything will eventually come back to normal. (He also mentioned that New Orleans is absolutely trashed and that they may be out of power in the city for 2-4 months!).

So right now, if you can donate blood or donate money, or even donate toiletries/food, there are hundreds of thousands of devastated people down south who could use your help. Instead of eating out on Friday, donate that money to the Red Cross. If everyone could pitch in a little bit, we can help our fellow countrymen get through this disaster.

Hurricane Katrina Ravages The Gulf Coast.

2005-08-29T13:13:00.000-04:00

As I'm sure everyone is aware by now, Hurricane Katrina made landfall as a Category 4 Hurricane at about 6:00 A.M. this morning in Southeastern Lousiana. (Hurricanes are rated on a scale of 1-5 with one being the weakest and 5 being catastrophic. Hurricane Andrew was a Category 5). On Sunday the 28th, forecasters predicted that the storm would make landfall as a Category 5 storm with sustained winds of over 170 miles per hour. The landfall would also occur smack dab in the middle of the city of New Orleans. New Orleans, LA is actually below sea level and is protected by levees which are about 18 feet high. The storm surge was predicted to be about 25 feet high. (Storm surge is how high the water level rises above sea level in the wake of an approaching storm). With that information, the city of New Orleans was pretty much doomed as the intense winds, heavy rains, and insanely high storm surge would completely submerge the city.

You may wonder why I'm mentioning all this, and I'll tell you why. This coming December, I plan on going down to New Orleans as my best friend is getting married at the end of the year. I've know the kid since I was in first grade and we've been best friends ever since. He moved down to Pascagoula, MS a few years ago with his family and we've still kept in touch. (Pascagoula is a moderate drive east of New Orleans. It's right on the gulf coast). So with word of this approaching hurricane, I actually became a bit concerned. If New Orleans got wiped out, I'd have to make different plans on getting down to visit my friend and his fiance. I was relieved to find out that at the last moment, Hurricane Katrina weakened to a category 4 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of only about 140 mph. Still, that's an INSANELY high wind speed. In addition, the storm moved east of New Orleans and spared the 'Big Easy' the brunt of the storm. As a result, while NO still suffered major damage, the devastation wasn't as catastrophic as had been predicted. One of the levees broke which sent about 8 feet of water onto the east side of the city, but overall the city was not submerged and the damage can be recovered.

Now for the bad news. The center of the storm moved to the west of Pascagoula, MS which puts the incredibly powerful and damaging winds of the eye wall right over the city. It has apparently caused widespread damage which makes Hurricane Andrew look like a spring shower. :-( Sustained winds of 113 mph were reported before the reporting stations ceased to function. A storm surge of 25+ feet was reported in the area meaning that anything along the gulf coast is under a massive amount of water. Structural devastation has already been reported and basically an entire city has been wiped out. I pray to god that my buddy Keith and his fiance and their families were able to get out of there. Possessions and buildings can be rebuilt. For a couple that is ready to get married this type of destruction cannot be good for them. I desperately want to call my friend to see if he's okay, but I know that the phone lines in the area need to remain open for the emergency personnel in the area. I just hope that everybody was alright and that nobody got hurt. :-(

Golf is frustratingly fun.

2005-08-26T11:02:00.000-04:00

It's been a bit since the last golf posting, so here's one now. My past three games of golf have all resulted in the same score; 92. That's pretty much my average now as the golfing season starts to wind down. Now don't get me wrong, there's plenty of golf left to go, but not nearly as much as there was a few months ago. I look forward to next spring because a new season will start and my plan on taking some professional lessons will kick in. I bantered about taking lessons now, but with the winter season approaching I don't want to learn something and then lose it all over the winter. I can kind of start fresh next spring and hopefully go from the low 90's at Birch down to the mid 70's by the end of next year, or better.

This past Wednesday I went out golfing with Crazy Ivan, The Vault, The Vault's son as a caddy, and Crazy Joe's son as a caddy. I shot a consistantly bad game which resulted in a score of a 92. I couldn't really putt all that well and I think I had a few four or five putts. On the bright side, I had a few swings with my five and six irons that were REALLY good. On the 15th hole, I took out my five iron and had a great feeling swing. I looked up and saw my ball carrying over the green there, so my shot had to have gone about 160-170 yards. That is VERY impressive for me, and the look of utter shock on the Vault's face and Crazy Ivan's face was nice to witness. :-) On the 16th hole, I was able to do a similar thing with my six iron this time while KK made a nice 'ker-plunk' into the water. Overall, I lost badly as I ususally do with this group, but this is my first year of golfing and I've brought my average down from a 140 to a 92. I'll live with that.

When I went golfing last night, the evening started out very promising. I used my 9-iron on the first tee and I hit a nice shot which landed right on the green. I had about a 10 foot putt for birdie, but came up short and just sunk a gimme for par. How nice would it have been to be able to say 'I'm one under for the round thus far'? Ah well. I thought that starting with a par was a good thing and felt a lot of confidence. Confidence, however, isn't what I need. I approached the second tee and didn't set myself up properly and shot a 7 on the 2nd hole followed by some pretty piss poor scores on the 3rd and 4th. My front 9 was a HORRIBLE 48 and my mind had basically given up at trying to get a good score, as I'd really have to work my ass off to get below a 90. The frustrating with my pitching wedge got to the point where I had to physically throw the fucker, and this frustration moved onto my putter which I really didn't need to get pissed at. My putter now has an extra little bend in the shaft, but oh well. Once I calmed down, everything started to work out for me. (At one point, I one-putted five holes in a row). My back nine score of 44 was pretty good, but had I not fucked up badly on the 16th hole I would have shot in the upper 30's on the back nine. (I scored a supposed 8 on hole number 16. I had two shots go into the drink, and after giving up on the hole, the three of us determined that I'd just double the score for the hole and add my two penalty strokes which resulted in an 8. If I had been able to score a four or a five, my back nine would have been a 40 or 41 which I would have been happy with). However, my play wasn't the story last night. The story last night was the play of Mr. Hand.

There are days where the gods up above are simply smiling upon thee and do what they can to help you out. On the first hole, it looked like the gods were there to make Mr. Hand's game a pain in the ass as he shanked his first tee shot onto the road and was forced to tee up again. He made a recovery on the second hole, and then came hole number 3. Hole 3 is that great little hole that heads towards the road and the green is surrounded by wooded areas. Mr. Hand tees up his shot and hit's the living crap out of it, but WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY to the right and into the forest. He quickly yells 'FORE!!!!' as the people on the next hole were in severe danger of being killed by that shot. Mr. Hand looks away in disgust, and suddenly I see this white thing come flying from the right hand side and land right on the green. As I get closer, and the people on the next tee confirmed, his ball that he hit so unbelievably poorly hit a tree at the back edge of the golf course and then bounced back towards the third green. I've said before that I'd rather be lucky than good, and I think Mr. Hand agreed on that one tee shot there.

Even more impressive had to have been holes 6-8. Once Lady Luck fell on his side, Mr. Hand's own personal skill took effect and he birdied all three of those holes. After the first two birdies, I jokingly said 'How are you going to approach your next birdie shot?' as he was teeing up. He wound up shooting it far over the back of the green on hole number 8, but hit an amazing chip shot right into the cup. Another sickening birdie. Very impressive and very well done. Mr. Hand finished the night with yet another birdie on the 18th hole. This one was a great sight to see. He teed up his shot and hit a beautiful arcing shot with plenty of loft and perfect distance. It hit the green an rolled a little bit before coming to a stop a mere 6-inches from the hole. A 'gimmie' for a birdie, and half a foot away from a golden hole in one. Hand was smiling like a little kid on Christmas and just had to take a picture of the shot. Even Crazy Ivan went and got a photo of the immaculate tee shot. I'm sure the photo will be on one of their blog's soon. Amazing.

For me, I had a much better back 9 as my tee shots were getting better and better. The number of tee-shots I had which went on the green or even over it was probably about 60%. On a few holes I hit the ball solidly and it just carried over the green, or landed next to the green a few yards. I was making great contact and could even see a few fades on some of my shots. The difference beteween a fade and a slice (Or is that a draw? I can't seem to remember), is that the ball will move away from a straight path, but not very much at all. Overall, the ball will go straight but the little bit of movement helps control it when it hits the ground. I did that on a couple of occasions and was very happy with the results.

The shot of the day, for me at least, happened on the 187 yard Hole 11. Mr. Hand teed up first and hit a nice shot that landed directly on the green. With Crazy Ivan tee-ing up next, I was a bit worried that he'd hit the green and I'd owe them both a beer as I have no chance in hell of hitting the green on that hole. (For those that don't know, if you are playing in a group of three or more and everybody but one person lands on the green, the person who misses the green owes the other players one beer). So CI tees up and I jokingly say 'hit it over.' Ivan swings and the ball lands short by about 10 or 15 yards. PHEW! When the game started, I mentioned this beer rule to the two of them in hopes that they'd say 'nah, let's go without that rule' as I figured with their skill level I'd be owing a lot of beer to people. So I tee up my ball and say 'I hope I can keep this out of the woods'. I pull the five iron out and take a practice swing or two which feels great. I step up to the ball, start the backswing and follow all the way through. THWACK! Mr. Hand suddenly goes 'Wow. Great shot!' I then look up to see a beautiful shot that had great arc, a little fade to it, and perfect distance. The ball lands in front of the green, rolls up on to the green, and stops on the green. I fucking hit the green on my tee-shot on that long ass hole. Crazy Ivan was the only one not on the green, so he shockingly had to buy a beer for Mr. Hand and myself. That felt really good to once again hit my five iron a good 160-170 yards.

Statistics Be Damned.......

2005-08-23T09:01:00.000-04:00

Last night proved that statistics are just that; statistics. They have no bearing on what will actually happen, but they can make what does happen seem all the more shocking. We saw what had to be the highest number of statistical 'bad beats' last night than we had EVER seen at our table. We had a player get at least 5 or 6 full houses as well as quads, yet still be down for the night. Another player never won a hand his entire time there and plunked down a cool $100. Yet another player dropped a Franklin whom we never would have expected to do that, and everybody felt a rollercoaster ride throughout the night. I'm sorry that I can't recall the exact details Paissano, but there was just too much to deal with.

The crew for last night consisted of myself, The Vault, Mr. Hand, Crazy Joe, Tom W., Klacky, Debski, and Reggie. I was down fairly significantly early on as I was getting shit to play. However, I decided to tighten up severely and only play when there was a good chance to take down a big pot. This worked out to my advantage as I was able to bluff at some pots, and legitimately win quite a few more. (Thankfully, my pure bluffs weren't called so I didn't have to show. Hehe). It was early in the night that we first started to see how the stats were going to bend everyone over and fuck them. Tom W. was in a good number of hands as usual, and I think his luck began when he found himself some pocket aces. He slowplayed these things to perfection and got Klacky involved in the hand. Klacky was betting out strongly indicative of two pair or top pair with a good kicker. W. raised a bit or just called, but I don't remember the specifics. Anyway, the river came as an ace and Klacky once again called any bet. W then turns over his aces to show trip aces and a rightfully embarrassed Klacky turned red and smirked while mucking his cards. Nobody put W. on aces, and while statistically it wasn't a terrible beat, I just wanted to mention it. :-) A few hands later, W. goes in with random junk and is way behind on the flop as multiple people had already paired. However, with the odds of him winning the pot down to about 5%, he caught runner-runner two pair and took everything. A sign of things yet to come.

The first really horrendous beat happened when Tom W. went heads up against Debski. The pre-flop raising was pretty intense, and W. was doing it without looking at his cards. Debski knew what he had (KQ) and was happy the get the callers. (Crazy Joe was also fueling the fire). The flop came down Q-x-x rainbow. No straight draw, no flush draw, and Debski had top pair. Large bets went out and Crazy Joe went away while W. continued to call. The turn was a King giving Debski Kings and Queens and a seemingly insurmountable lock on the hand. (On the flop, Debski was an 86% favorite. After the turn, he was a 93% favorite to win). So the betting got really heavy and W. now looked at his cards. The river was an Ace. Debski really didn't think too much of the ace since he had two pair, but when Tom W. turned over AK of spades to show the stunning runner-runner two pair suckout, the disbelief flooded the table. EVERYBODY at the table was just stunned. WOW!

The next nasty beat I can recall happened to Klacky. He had Queen-Ten and was up against Mr. Hand who was playing tighter than a fully cranked vice-grip. If he did play, it was 'four dollars'. So there was a minimal pre-flop raise from Mr. Hand and Klacky called. The flop came down Q-10-8 giving Klacky top two pair. Klacky bet hard and Mr. Hand re-raised him four dollars. Klacky called. The turn was a blank, and Klacky bet hard again while Mr. Hand re-raised again. Klacky called and the river card came down. Another blank. This time, Klacky checks and Mr. Hand leads out with four dollars. Klacky calls and Mr. Hand turns over trip 8's while Klacky wonders what the hell just happened. All of this was happening before 7:30 in the evening. Poor Klacky just couldn't catch a break. The only time he did take some chips down is when he won a side pot after Crazy Joe had gone all-in. Four clubs came on the board with the Ace of clubs being on the river. Crazy Joe had gone all-in already and had the King of clubs, so he immediately took down the main pot before everyone else had bet. This is kind of borderline 'not nice' to do as it could affect the other bettors currently in the hand, but it really didn't matter. Klacky had the queen of clubs so he took the side pot from Tom W., but that was the only money he would rake in all night long. Every other time he was donating money, and when 8:30 rolled around he was in for $100 and just couldn't stay any more. Lady luck was not kind to Klacky last night, but hey, at least Klacky can afford to drop $100. :-)

By this point in the night I was down about $40 but was doing okay considering how many failed draws I got involved in. There were just too many times that I'd have a flush and/or straight draw from the flop, but couldn't get the card(s) I needed. At other times, I'd flop a pair with a great kicker, but someone else would have flopped trips. (The case card was coming down all night long for everybody). I did get pocket aces once and they held up to give me a moderately sized pot, and I also was able to represent a meager pair of sixes as something much more. In fact, the sixes are what I thought was my best play of the night. I was in middle position and found 6-6 in my hand. I just called the bet as I didn't want to raise here until I knew what others would do. Thankfully, somebody raised a meager amount before it got back to me, so when it did I raised four dollars as a sneaky call-raise. I wanted to represent a strong hand. Most of the table folded after this maneuver except Tom W. and Crazy Joe. (Reggie may have stayed in, but I don't think he did after my raise). The flop came down 10-7-10. I bet strongly to make people think I had an overpair. If they had a ten, they'd probably raise me anyway. In the end, everybody folded to my bet and I took down a VERY nice pot. It was then revealed that Klacky had a ten and my huge raise forced him out before the flop. :-)

It was around this time that I remember my first nasty beat. Crazy Joe and I had the same amount of money left in our trays, and I had AK offsuit. I raised pre-flop and only he called. The flop came down K-8-J. Joe said 'I hit that' which probably meant he had a jack or an 8, but I was hoping he had a King. He bet, I raised, he called. The turn was an 8 so I bet out the maximum four dollars and Joe just called. The river was that fucking jack. Joe bets four, and at this point there is so much money in the pot that folding would be a bad move since even if he's bluffing only half the time, the overall expected value of calling is a positive value. I called, he showed the Jack for one of his MANY full-houses. At this point I was in for $60 and tightened up again.

I'm not sure how I did it, but I was able to climb back up into the positive. I started playing the situation and not the cards as on far too many occasions to remember the amount of money in the pot really made calling with ANYTHING profitable. I got a few sneaky straights, top pair, flushes, and flat out bluffs to take down pots. When I did go to a showdown, I typically won. One of those nice ones was when I was in a pot versus Tom W. and Reggie. The flop was 3-10-8 and I just had an Ace high, yet decided to call any reasonable bet. The turn was a 10, and the river was a 3. W. bets out pretty strongly on the river and Reggie mucks his hand. I call and W. says 'Ahh you got it' and showed nothing but a queen high. I showed my Ace-5 and took down a HUGE pot, believe it or not. Reggie then looked ill as he had an 8 and mucked it in fear of one of us having a ten or a three. :-)

My next bad beat was when I took down Kirk by playing abso-freaking-lutely retarded. I had 3-6 of spades and decided in my head to call ANY bets that were made. My stack was up decently at this point, but not high enough to make ANY of my calls good ones. So pre-flop, I called the raising that went down and saw a flop that had two spades on it. Tom W. was first to act and bet three. Crazy Joe calls as do I. Kirk then raises it four bucks. W. calls and I do too. (I told you, I was a retard). On the turn, a 10 of diamonds came down which didn't help me out at all. W. bets 3, I call and Kirk says 'Let's make it 7'. W. calls and I do as well. (I think at some point there may have been another person in the hand because the pot was absolutely gigantic by now). The river comes down and it's a spade that doesn't pair the board. WOO-HOO! Everybody checked at the river which may be a bad move on my part, but with only a 6 high flush I couldn't be certain that I was the winner. Sure I had flushed, but there is a chance that someone else stayed in with a higher flush draw as well as a pair. (There was an ace on the board). If I bet and get raised, then it could cost me even more money to find out that I had lost. If I just check, I can see if I'm the winner without it costing me a lot of money. While Kirk said that he would have called any bet, I still felt as if a bet wouldn't have much of a positive expected value there especially with all the strong betting going on. So I showed my flush and everyone involved in the hand looked ill/shocked/frustrated. That pot was HUGE and was the main reason why I was up at the end of the night.

This blog is way to long as it is, so I'll just make a quick mention of the results. Klacky, Reggie, and The Vault were the main donators to the table. While The Vault did wind up with a hand that would have turned into quads if people called his bet, he just couldn't make things stand up. Tom Debski, who received numerous vicious beats from Tom W., took down some huge pots at the night's end to wind up in the black by a good $11. Tom W. and Myself finished up in the black at an even $80 a piece, and Mr. Hand was the big winner taking home over $100 in profit. Crazy Joe, however, was mystifying. He had at least 6 full-houses (Aces full of 3's, 3's full of aces, jacks full of 8's, tens full of fives, etc. etc.), when we got down to four handed, he found himself some pocket queens and got a flop of queen-5-queen to give him quads. (Later on, I mucked 9-5 pre-flop due to a two dollar raise, but had I stayed I would have wound up with quad 9's. ARRGGGHHHH. Frustrating, but 'tis better I fold that crap than play it as I was substantially up at that point). But with all those insane hands that Joe was getting, he still couldn't come out in the black. Simply stunning. So there you go Mike, I hope you liked this novel as you're probably the only one who will read it. :-)

I Did It!

2005-08-21T20:22:00.000-04:00

This may be VERY hard to believe, but Senor KABOOM has actually accomplished a physical feat. I climbed Mount Monadnock all the way to the top. At many points I wanted to quit on my assult of the mountain simply because I could no longer go. About 1/3rd of the way up, my legs just started to act funny and I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to reach the summit and climb back down. I sat there for a while just wondering if I'd ever get the energy and how badly I would mentally feel if I let the mountain beat me. After thinking about how dissapointing everything would be, I said 'Fuck it. Let's go' and started to climb again. From the reading, albeit short reading, I did on the mountain it seemed like a little bit of a challenge but not too bad of one. Still, I was a little bit shocked by just how very vertical the thing was at points. At certain points, it was like looking at a wall it seemed. I still managed to pull my sorry ass up there and was able to reach the summit.

So here we have a shot from almost at the top of the mountain. It's a great looking view as the fog cleared away for just a moment of time. Even though I was hurting bad, it was nice to see the top.

Here we have a nice shot from the top of the mountain. For a brief moment, the fog/clouds moved away and I could actually see things. It would have been nice if the clouds weren't there so we could see as far as we possibly could, but beggars can't be choosers and at least the rain held off.

And here we have Klacky standing on top of the mountain with the wind and drizzle blowing right in his face. Even though the mountain top is only about 1/3rd of a mile higher in elevation than the base, the difference in temperature was noticeable. It was a lot cooler at the top and it was a helluva lot windier. I had a hat on when we first reached the summit, but that soon got blown away from me.

Now here we have me at the top of the mountain. :-) I honestly didn't believe I'd get up there, and when Vishnu took this picture of me my legs could no longer hold up my body weight and the combination of the high winds, my wobbly legs, and the sudden feeling of vertigo all made me a bit funky in the head. Still, I finished the climb and had made the summit. The initial adrenaline rush really helped me keep going as I now realized that I had a 2 mile trek down the mountainside before I could reach the bottom. I spent most of that time flat on my ass since I couldn't reliably stand up at all. Sure I looked like a fuck-tard doing that, but I got down to the bottom and lived to tell about it. I've had sore muscles before that made it difficult to move, but I have NEVER had muscles so damned sore that I couldn't walk even if I wanted to. My calf muscles, my knees, my hamstring, my ankles and my quadriceps were all killing me and just not responding to the nerve impulses. I had severely drained every electrolyte out of me and now I was paying for it. The big adrenaline rush I got when I reached the summit was nothing compared to the one I got when I reached the bottom. hehe.

I will fully admit that Mount Monadnock kicked my ass, but it didn't beat me. I climbed to the top and have proof. But the pain in my legs today and the pain I'll feel tomorrow won't be that nice. It's actually kind of sad that my legs were disabling me so badly yesterday as I really wanted to check out the golf course, but I simply could not swing a club since I couldn't stand up. Instead, we did get some information about the course and they do have packages there where you pay something like $100 a person and you get lodging for a few nights and unlimited golf for the two days. I don't remember the specifics, but it sounds like a nice trip. At about 2.5-3 hours for the drive, it's definitely doable.

After getting back from the mountain, we decided to have some more fun with sodium metal. The night we arrived, I quickly took one of the many 10-gram logs of the stuff we had and heaved it into the lake. For a good while it just hissed and fizzed out there and didn't do all that much. Klacky then said 'Well that was a dissapointment'. I kind of chuckled because I knew what was coming. A short while later there was an incredibly loud KABOOM!!!! and a bright orange sparkling fireball rose up into the air along with a nicely shaped mushroom cloud. Pieces of molten sodium then fell into the water again and hissed and then popped. It was incredible. So on Saturday night we decided to chuck more of it. With my legs hurting, I didn't feel safe heaving the sodium so we let Klacky do some of it. Not a good idea.

Here we see Klacky after he had spilled about 10 mL or so of mineral oil into the lake. We had our own little Exxon Valdees(sp?) here as the multitude of colors quickly spread. When Klacky first dropped the oil, he let out an 'Uh-Oh' which really scared me. When someone says uh-oh and you're working with things that explode, it's never a good thing. Then I saw the funky colors and weird patterns and realized what he did. hehe.

The colors and patterns that the oil was making was incredibly neat looking. I couldn't believe how much it moved and swirled and just looked really psychadelic. Neat shit.

Image quality sucks on this for multiple reasons. One is that my legs weren't stable because of the hiking we did earlier, and the second is because this picture was taken right when the explosion first happened and the flash just passed. The mushroom cloud was forming and the sudden shock made me move back a little bit. So the picture itself kind of sucks, but you can see the explosion happening from that ~10 gram chunk.

Finally, here's a picture of some sodium exploding at night. It's VERY hard to get a photograph of the actual explosion since you never know when it's going to happen. Sometimes it explodes immediately, and sometimes it takes forever. On this instance, I got the photo at the tail end where you can still see the fire from the initial explosion and some random pieces on fire blowing around. God that was fun. :-)

Click on any of the pictures for a slightly larger image.

He's Baaaaaaaack................

2005-08-16T08:22:00.000-04:00

Well sort of. Last night there were a couple of surprises at the poker table. The first surprise was the confirmation that Crazy Ivan would be making his presence known at the table that evening. CI has been absent from poker quite a bit lately as he has admitted defeat and stated that he needed to change some things. With last night's results, I think this change has worked out has made him a better player. No more crying calls at the end when he knows he's beat. No more outrageous calls just for the hell of it, no matter how poor the pot odds are. No more sticking around for 8 bucks trying to catch that miracle ace. It was a smart brand of poker played by CI and a welcomed change. I think Ivan learned that he can stay at a poker table for three or four hours and not be financially ruined.

The second surprise came from the mouth of The Vault himself. We all found out that not everything involving KK is Vault-like as the newlywed made the announcement that a new disciple will be brought into the world. As he mentioned this, you could see the little grin forming in the face of the proud papa. The announcement kind of came out of nowhere, and if I recall right I had just made a typical out of place comment at the table which seemed to silence the crowd. Still, congratulations Kirk and Lauren, and my condolences Lauren for now you'll have to deal with two infants; one real and one in the form of KK. ;-)

The third, and final, surprise of the night was an unexpected appearance by a long lost friend. Iron Mike "....." Cannizarro showed up out of nowhere as he happened to be in town for the week. It was nice to see the old chap and hear that everything is going just fine for him up in Vermont. He stated that he couldn't get a poker game going quite yet since all he could find were dopes willing to part with money but unable to play. After explaining to him that it's just what he wants when starting a poker game, he kind of caught on. We hope. Take their money now! I mean, why else do you think we invited you to our game Mike? ;-) Anyway, Mike showed up and played as expected. A little loose, a little tight, some reckless abandon, and just an urge to have fun.

Overall, the night went pretty well. We saw what the statistical gods would expect us to see in regards to the flops and hands holding up. I was on the poor end of catching 3 of a kind a few times as my trips-questionable kicker died to trips-Ace kicker on at least two occasions, and I also lost a pretty big hand when my 5-7 of hearts, which turned into trip fives on the turn, died to a Jack high flush on the river when that third heart came. (I could have played the hand much harder from the get-go, but I honestly felt that my pair of fives was good, which it was, and that my trip fives were even better, which it was, and that my flush was just icing on the cake. Cyanide laced icing). On a few hands I laid down what I thought was a dead hand and was happy to see that I was right. There were many occasions where I honestly could not put a read on people so I called down to the end to try and get information. About half the time I wound up winning, and the other half I lost. I think the only times where I just mucked my hand and honestly didn't care about calling was when the river bet just didn't make calling to win $1.50 worth it. What shocked me the most was the level of respect my raises were getting. Early on, I played VERY tight even for my standards. I had only brought $40 with me for poker spending but didn't want to announce that. I just wanted to see if I could make do with $40, so I had to play tight early and try and make the most of my situations.

I think that all of the early folding set into people's heads the fact that I was playing a different type of poker, so when I would raise pre-flop or after the flop, people would think twice about showing resistance. This also let me know that when there was a good deal of resistance, the 'resistor' had already made a hand. As a result, I took down many hands with my pocket pairs that normally could be crushed by a flop (Pocket 10's, Queens, 9's, etc). Perhaps the best result of this tight play involved a bluff of Crazy Joe. This was well into the night and I had already shown that I was playing tight poker. Pre-flop, Joe couldn't do his crazy straddling so instead he looked and immediately raised the pot. I had pocket 6's and wanted to see the flop, so I called as did Crazy Ivan, I believe. (I can't remember if Klacky or Ivan was in the hand too). The flop came down 9-K-4 giving me some trepidation as my 6's didn't look so good anymore. Ivan/Klacky checked, as did Joe. Now I could have checked here, but it would have given me jack shit in terms of information. If I bet small, I'm likely to just get called. If I bet large, it may represent a king based upon my earlier play. As a result, I bet four bucks. Klacky/Ivan, who I figured may have a King, thinks for a while and folds. At this point, I feel pretty good about the hand. Joe, who normally would call a bet like this, thinks for a while and looks puzzled. I know he doesn't have a King. After thinking, he mucks his cards face up and says 'great bet'. The cards he mucked were pocket Queens. I was actually able to bluff Crazy Joe out of a pot with good betting and tight play from earlier in the night. That was really the most memorable hand I was involved in all night. Other than that, I wound up winning another large hand later in the night when Reggie and Joe were feeding into me with failed draws and I had a made hand. Overall, the night ended with me making a profit of $36. KK was cleaned out, as was Crazy Joe. Reggie was down $1, and Klacky was the big winner. The exact numbers are not known to me at this point, so the blog ends right here.

Thank God Birthday's Come But Once A Year.

2005-08-15T08:40:00.000-04:00

Ouch. That's all I can say. Ouch. This past Thursday I was treated to an annual occurance of birthday celebration. Klacky and The Vault set up an outing that my brain can hardly remember but my body will never forget. It started out with an evening at the Tropical Golf Course known as Birch Plains. Myself, Klacky, The Vault, Mr. Hand, Mr. Hand's Brother In Law, and Crazy Ivan were all there to take some swings. Sadly, the weather was so poor that by the time the 14th hole came around, it was so foggy that you couldn't see where your ball was going. That made things quite uncomfortable. The whole time, KK shot the best game of golf in his entire lifetime to beat EVERYONE that evening. I shot an 89 and lost to Crazy Ivan by 1 stroke. He was visibly upset over that matter. :-) Throughout the golfing, I must have dranken about 4 or 5 beers. While this was over a long period of time and really wouldn't alter my sobriety, it would surely effect my tolerance level as the night went on due to the constant background influx of ethanol. (On Friday, I could feel the beer and everything else just 'sitting' in my stomach, so it wasn't all being absorbed right away). After golfing, most everyone else headed out to Sneakers to catch dinner, only to find it horribly crowded. So the group went out to The Spot while I headed back to Kirk's place to take a shower since the B.O. I was exhibiting was kind of nauseating. KK met me there as well, and we each did a shot of that really fucking strong banana liquor. The stuff is like banana syrup that burns the fuck out of your throat on the way down. After one of those buggers, I could feel my extremeties tingling. I now realized that I needed to get some food in me if I wanted to last the night.

At the Spot, I really wasn't too hungry so I just downed some fried cheese and about half of my Caesar Salad. What was really odd feeling is when everyone paid for my dinner and the 25 ounce Guinness I had. While I am a cheap, money grubbing little bitch, I always feel awkward when people pay for things for me. I know it was my 'birthday celebration', but still, it just felt strange. I appreciate the generosity and kindness of my compatriots, but it still felt weird. (Especially after the waitress made KK take a bath in Salsa. hehehe). So we all finished up dinner and then headed out to bowling. By now, the alcohol was giving me that nice social buzz I wanted, but knew I couldn't maintain.

At the bowling alley, the first thing I did was get a Long Island Iced Tea. I downed that and then began working on the pitchers of beer that always seemed to be there. I also joined in on the Jagrmeister shots that we were partaking in. Liver be damned, I was going to get drunk. And fuck yeah did I get drunk. I don't remember how many games we bowled, but we drank the entire time. I was absolutely shit-faced and spending a lot of time on the bowling alley floor as Senor Kaboom had lost Senor Balance and Grace. Eventually, we all got a little bored and I think the two of us who were drinking were starting to get tired. Now remember, drunk people don't get tired. They just pass out. So Klacky rounded our drunk asses up and we headed back to The Vaults. This is where everything gets fuzzy.

I remember sitting on the couch that was facing the air conditioner and getting that tunnel vision syndrome where my vision was coming and going and everyone was talking like Charlie Brown's teacher. I then remember KK standing up and leaving the area while telling me how to turn off the TV. It was then that I totally passed out and my memory becomes shot. I woke up a few times, the first on the couch that was facing the TV. I then passed out again and woke up on the floor of Kirk's living room with every muscle hurting and a vicious rug burn on the left side of my face. I got my sorry ass up and looked at the clock to see that it said 8:30. I crawled back up onto the couch and fell asleep again until about 10:00. At this point I fully woke up and suddenly wished that I hadn't. lol. My head was fucking throbbing like someone had thrown a bowling ball at it. My muscles were hurting all over my entire fucking body, and my stomach just felt really nasty. I took some Advil to slowly work the headache out, but the general malaise was still there. Even worse, I had another party to go to later that night. My liver and brain just seemed really pissed at me. Still, I got myself together and just tried to rehydrate myself as all that booze did a real number on my body. I may only be 25 years old, but I certainly cannot drink like I was 18 years old. It didn't seem like I had a lot to drink, but the beers during golf really lowered that tolerance level as they provided a background amount of ethanol in my system. On most nights, the drinking I did during bowling would make me feel very buzzed, but not retard drunk like I was.

Still, I had a good time and the scars will heal. I just want to thank everyone for their generosity this past Friday and for the good time that was had. This weekend there's a trip to New Hampshire planned. I've passed out in the states of Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland. Looks like it's time to add New Hampshire to that list. :-)

Star Wars and Poker are the same?

2005-08-09T12:45:00.000-04:00

After a recent lunch discussing the members of our poker 'crew', I have come to the conclusion that our weekly poker game is simply a real-life example of the film series 'Star Wars'. The 'Jedi' are composed of those players who play a tighter style of poker in an attempt to have overall domination. They have situational agression and just kick ass when the time calls for it. Their brutal enemy is the 'Sith' who play with wild and reckless abandon and can destroy what the Jedi are trying to accomplish. They will play random crap and manage to hit the one or two outs they have left to take massive amounts of money from the Jedi. The Jedi simply cannot fight back in those manners as they will not give in to 'The Dark Side'. So which members of our crew are which?

Crazy Joe: The Emperor, a.k.a. Darth Sidious, the lord of the Sith. Joe will play any cards just to see the effect it has on other players. While many players will come to the weekly game to try and have fun and make money, The Emperor's plans are always set out before hand and he's willing to sacrifice anyone and anything to acheive those goals. His style of play is the complete opposite of the Jedi and even if he loses a hand, as long as he's made the Jedi uncomfortable he is happy with the results. His goal is to get everybody over to the dark side.

Iron Mike Cannizarro: Anakin Skywalker. Mike started out on the side of the Jedi by playing smart poker and having controlled aggression. He was mentored by Obi-Wan on the ways of the force and began to display those ways at the table. Sadly, he was influenced by the dark side and soon began to show those dark and evil ways. He began to play questionable hands and then use twisted logic to try and explain why he did it. He ignored the teachings of Obi-Wan and felt that Obi-Wan was holding him back and not allowing him to achieve his destiny. He began to feel the influence of the Emporer and soon changed drastically. The last memory of Anakin was drawing out for one of the two outs available to him to take down a memorable pot. After that, he dissapeared forever.

Reggie: Darth Vader. When Anakin dissapeared, a new figure appeared in his place. This figure was solid in the ways of the dark side, but was still getting used to his new found role. The Emporer beat on him severely in the beginning, but only to teach him the ways of the Sith. Soon enough, the Emporer had full control of Darth Vader and is using him as a new found weapon. Only time will tell if this imposing presence of the dark side will turn on the Emporer and find the ways of the Jedi.

The Vault: Obi-Wan Kenobi. Obi-Wan is all that is a Jedi. He follows stricly in the ways of the force and wants to train everybody he can to be a Jedi. Even when that training really isn't warranted, he'll insist on completing it. His main trainee was Anakin Skywalker, so when Anakin turned on him the backlash was devastating. Obi-Wan can provide some serious ass-kicking on the table, but only when provoked. One thing is for sure, however. A fight to the death with Obi-Wan can leave some severe emotional scars.

Mr. Hand: Yoda. Yoda is a quiet reserved fellow who is VERY strong in the ways of the Jedi and knows all there is to know about the dark side. He commands utter respect at the table and actions taken by him generally control the flow of everything. He avoids confrontations, but generally when he is in a pot he has a massive hand. He never gets emotional as strong emotions are not becoming of the Jedi. While he knows the ways of the Sith, he would never stoop to their levels.

Klacky: Chewbacca. Chewie is an odd fellow. He's not really tied to the Jedi or the Sith, but only really tied to himself. He makes a ton of noise at the table, and when he's not winning you generally hear a lot of screaming and crying. He hates to lose and thinks that he should win every time. When on a roll, he can be quite the force at the table and take down everyone without blinking an eye. When beaten back enough, however, he will just let out shrill cries and whines. His main goal at the table is to make himself happy.

Tom D: Lando Calrissian. Lando is a fellow whom you may have trouble understanding. At times, he appears to be a member of the Jedi, yet at other times he plays by 'not so nice' methods. You have to be very cautious when playing against Lando since he can just as easily slit your throat as he can lend you a crutch. He appears to get the most fun out of toying with the Emporer and other members of the Sith.

Tom W: C-3PO. 3PO is never really out to get anyone. He can be a hard character to understand at times as the hands he plays aren't really consistant. He seems to be able to wipe his memory at will and forget the bad beat or two he has taken. He holds the record for the most money won in a night, but on other nights he finds himself broken down into spare parts. In the end, he always comes out freshly gold plated without a scratch on him.

Senor Kaboom: Han Solo. Han doesn't really care who he hurts or who he makes friends with. His main concern is himself and his money. He'll go by way of the Jedi just as easily as he'll follow the Sith. Whatever works out best for him is what really matters. He can get emotional at times and may say things that just aren't appropriate, but in the end he gets the job done. Many people wonder how he can accomplish what he has based upon his style of play, but they can't help but respect the fact that he's done it. A crass individual who tends to side more and more with the Jedi as time goes on, but is not afraid to turn way of the Dark Side if needed.

The Replacement Player...... (and a long entry for Mike)

2005-08-09T08:01:00.000-04:00

As I'm sure you're already well aware, Iron Mike 'The Jew' Canizzaro sadly left us last week when he unexpectedly passed away........... oh wait, he didn't die he just moved to Vermont. Well, in a sense then he did pass away. ;-) Anyway, that left open a spot at our poker table. There were a few candidates we could bring in who would be able to play with as since they did in the past, but they weren't really people we could 100% count on to be a 'regular' like Mike was. However, leave it up to Crazy Joe to find that replacement.

Two weeks ago, Joe arrives bringing with him the 'Mike replacement' Reggie. Reggie arrived looking to play some cards and meet the people at the table. He claimed that he had played some poker in the past and knew what he was doing. Joe, meanwhile, decided that he'd do everything he could to make sure Reggie lost money. As anybody who knows Joe is aware, when Joe says 'you aren't going to win' he does everything in his power to make sure of that. As a result, Reggie lost all his money but appeared to have fun doing it. We just weren't sure if he'd be back.

Well, last week arrived and Reggie was right there. This time, his play was a bit different. He was far more aggressive in a passive sort of way. You couldn't really bluff him out of hands since if he had something he was staying no matter what. (I swear this is Joe version 2. hehehe). As a result of some good fortune and good play, Reggie was able to take home a great deal of money as well as cement himself as part of the crew by asking Kirk on multiple occasions to put in his blind. While he wasn't officially given the 'regular' position yet, it became only a matter of time.

Last night was quite the night. For the first time in god knows how long, I actually came away in the black. I was up $30 hence my writing this blog. Generally speaking, the nights where I lost money nothing particularly big stood out and my talking about my losses just sounds like a little baby bitching because someone shit in his happy meal. The night started out alright as it quickly became apparent that Crazy Joe and Tom W were unable to put the silver bullet in my brain. My hands were holding up and my, thankfully cheap, draws were panning out. Many times a flush draw was found on the flop, and while the right percentage of them hit, when they didn't hit I was at least getting one pair by the river and able to bet people out. (Most of those draws remained hidden as I didn't feel like showing them. I only really showed when I had to, or when my draw did hit). So that helped build up my bankroll nicely. Meanwhile, Joe was dipping into his kid's clothing fund in order to stick around, and when he was in for $100 things were looking bleak. When he pulled out another $20, things were looking even worse. So in the beginning nothing too spectacular stood out as pretty solid poker was being played by everyone.

Early on, The Vault was getting pocket 8's like they were going out of style. It seemed as if on every hand he showed he turned over the snowmen. On some occasions they won, on some occasions they lost. Statistically speaking, they were doing what they should. For me, A-K was in my hands on many, many, many occasions. I can also say that I played them very well all night. The first time I got them I was heads up against Crazy Joe. Joe had blind straddled and called my raise. The flop comes down as a miss for me and looks like something Joe might have hit. Still, he had the same chance of hitting that flop as I did, so it's still 50-50 as to whether or not he did. Without looking, Joe bets and I just call. The turn is again another dud as it didn't hit either my ace or king. Joe bets out and I call. The river is yet another dud, but it puts 4 to a straight on the board so this is a scary flop. Joe now looks down at his cards and makes his standard 'hehehehehehehe laugh' and looks at me and calmly says '3 dollars'. At this point, a siren went off in my head. About four weeks ago a similar situation came up when I had K-Q heads up against Joe and didn't hit anything. I was calling his blind bets the whole way until the river when I didn't hit anything and needed to call 3 bucks to showdown. Since I didn't have an ace I couldn't win with high card so if Joe had something crazy like A-2 he'd win. As a result, I mucked the hand and he flipped over 10-2 offsuit for a vicious bluff that took down a huge pot. This current situation was EXACTLY the same which is why it probably set off a siren in my head. This time, however, I did have an ace so I made the call. My feelings were right as Joe had but a queen high and my Ace high trumped him and let me take down a nice sized pot. This was a nice case of me being able to remember past hand history and be willing to risk money to find out if the read was right or wrong.

Another good hand with my Ace-King involved myself and Tom D. I had been in the Big Blind, I believe, and had Ace-King while Tom D had raised pre-flop two bucks with his pocket queens. Not knowing what he had and wanting to isolate, I raised four dollars which got everybody else to fold. Tom plays with a large stack of chips and then decides to call. I figured that if he had pocket aces he'd easily re-raise me and I'd know where I stand, and if he had pocket kings he'd probably re-raise as well to see if I had Aces. But with him only having queens, he had to think that MAYBE I had a higher pair. So the call was good there. The flop comes down K-x-x with two diamonds. With his pre-flop raising, I didn't put him on a flush draw and figured him for a pocket pair. I had top pair with an ace kicker, so I felt very confident as only aces or kings could really have me beat there, and the other cards were so low that Tom wouldn't have stuck around with a pocket pair of them facing my 4 dollar reraise. I thusly decided to slow play and try and get as much money as I could. In the end, my kings held up as Tom showed that his queens were beaten. I was very happy with the way I played that hand as I cannot think of any way that I could have gotten more money out of there.

One hand that seems kind of shocking to me was when I took down Joe, yet Joe seriously thought he had one. He misread the board and legitimately thought he won the hand only to have it explained to him that he didn't. Joe was doing his pre-flop raising and I had 6-7 of spades. With Joe not knowing what he had, as long as you have multiple ways of winning a pot it's a good idea to call unless someone else is re-raising. With suited connectors, you can win with a flush or a straight in addition to the other ways two cards can win. So I called and again was heads up with Joe. The flop came down 9-5-9 rainbow giving me a gutshot straight draw. Joe bets a buck without looking and I call. The turn is an offsuit 3. Joe bets a little bit more and I call. I need the river to help me out as I surely cannot win with 7 high. The river comes out as a 7 giving me 7's and 9's with a 6 kicker. Joe finally looks at his cards and bets hard. I call and Joe excitedly flips over his cards and yells 'Two pair!'. The thing is, he showed a 7 and a 5. I then turned over my 7 and 6 and said 'The 6 plays, I win'. Joe honestly didn't realize that the 9's on the board trumped his 5's. I eventually explained all of this to Joe who finally realized how he had lost and felt sick about it.

Now we can get back to Reggie. Reggie arrived at around 7:45 after taking care of family business before poker. Now the common rule when playing poker is to not play that first hand you're dealt unless you're forced to because you're the big blind and it's limped around. Well another situation where you should play your first hand is when you get what Reggie got; pocket aces. That's a pretty nice way to start out your evening and he got paid quite well. Reggie then went on a 'rush' as he started taking down hands with good calls and good fortune. I attempted once to bluff him out, and it may have worked if he didn't two pair on the river. Ah well. He made the nice call and was able to take down some money. I think the only person Reggie didn't beat on was The Vault simply because 'The Vault' didn't play a helluva lot.

One hand that Reggie took me out on was quite painful at the time. Tom D had declared 'last hand' and wanted to stay in cheaply. I would oblige, but I looked down and saw pocket tens so I had to raise. I raised two bucks and got called by Joe and Reggie. (I think Mr. Hand may have called but got out on the flop). The flop came down as 10-K-7 giving me trip tens. However, the 10 and 7 on the flop were spades. I'm the dealer so after Joe bets two I raise four. Both people call and I know that I'm facing some drawers. The turn comes as a 4 of diamonds. Again, I bet four bucks and everybody calls. ARRGGGH!!!! I deal the river and it's the fucking ace of spades. I bet four, Joe fold and Reggie calls turning over the 6-8 of spades for a flush. I honestly don't know how someone can repeatedly call four dollar bets and raises with a 6-8 of spades, but he did and took down a HUGE pot. If only the final spade was a king or a four of spades. ;-) Anyway, I lost the hand but can't argue at all since there was nothing I could have done differently. I bet strongly and made it as expensive as it can get for anyone to draw out. At least later in the night I was able to put down a vicious beat of my own and even out that loss.

It's the end of the night and I'm up, but only by a few bucks. Before the flop, there's some banter going on from Joe trying to incite a response from Mr. Hand. When it gets around to Mr. Hand, he just states 'I raise four dollars'. Now under any ordinary circumstance, I would take that bet seriously albeit wondering what the hell he had that was worth 4 bucks pre-flop. In this case, however, it just sounded like a big pile of bullshit and Jon just wanting to isolate against Joe. Joe calls the four dollar raise and it gets to me who has 8-10 of spades. I really wasn't sure what to do and thought that I could at least see a flop and if it didn't help me then so be it. I'd be even for the night and that's that. If the flop was a good one, I'd have a lot of fun extracting money. I call and Joe begins to deal. He slowly flops the cards one at a time. First card is the two of spades. I like it. The second card is the 6 of spades. I now think to myself "There's no way ANYBODY is getting me off of this hand." The final card is the Jack of spades giving me a flush. Inside, I'm jumping up and down as my hoped for flop did hit and I would probably be paid well. The only thing I didn't want to see was another spade or the board to pair as I figured that with the strong raising even if Mr. Hand and Joe had shit, they could have the Ace, King, or Queen of spades which would trump my flush. I bet two bucks and everyone cries out 'flush draw'. Hehe. Mr. Hand and Joe call. The turn is a red queen. I bet two, Mr. Hand calls and Joe raises. I call and Mr. Hand calls. The river is a red King. I'm golden. I bet four, Mr. Hand folds now and Crazy Joe calls. I flip over my flopped flush and take down the pot. I'm now up fairly big for the evening and just coast to the end.

When all is said and done, Mr. Hand is cleaned out, Tom W. is cleaned out, and Tom D is down a bit. KK seemed to be about even and I was up $30. Reggie was the big winner taking home over $100 from the table and finally confirming that he is now a regular. (We also made him aware of our golfing addiction and he too has the same habit, so now we have another golfer to shoot with). The big story, however, was Crazy Joe. He bought $120 worth of chips and left with $116 worth. Overall, he lost only four bucks even though he hit rock bottom at one point and was almost ready to go home. Congrats Joe. That was an AMAZING comeback.

So that's it for this week's entry. If you read this all the way through, you can now get up and take a piss. So Mike, is this long enough for you bitch? ;-) Hope you're liking Vermont and I can't wait to see the poker room.

The Stories You Can Find...

2005-08-05T13:23:00.000-04:00

Man, I have sick ass friends who somehow find stories and things on the web that I just cannot comprehend. The following story put me in tears.

ASS HAIR

I have recently made a mistake in my life, and I offer my story to all though tasteless, that you may learn from my error. It all started, as many things do, with me having trouble pooping. No, I was not constipated; this was not a regularity problem but a matter of technique.
It seems my ss-hair had grown to such a length that tiny grogans were constantly getting tied up in the matted jungle between my asscheeks. It led to much frustration, with me KNOWING that I still had something to drop, but unable to shake the tenacious turd loose from its butthair dwelling.

Eventually I would have to do two things: either reach down with somepaper and try to pinch off the lingering loaf (which required careful precision to avoid smearing the creature all over my rear, especially since I had no way of seeing what I was doing) or just go for broke, start wiping, and hope that I could remove all the leftover fecal matter before the toilet paper reached its Can't-Be-Flushed threshold. I was contemplating this problem, when I had what seemed at the time to be a bright idea. "Hey, this is my butt and my butt-hair, right? So why don't I just eliminate all the hair, and then my grogans will flow out like beer from a keg!" I said to myself. It is a statement that will go down in history with a lot of other regretted statements. "How many Indians could there be?" said by General Custer. "Looks like a good day for a drive!" by JFK. "There! America On-line now has complete Usenet access!" by some idiot system tech. Such was my anal shaving idea.

I performed the operation that night, with a cheap disposable razor and a towel to sit on. Starting from the bottom, and shaving from the crack to the cheeks, I began the arduous process of ridding my ass of hair. Occasionally, I would have to clean the razor of accumulated hair, which I did by wiping it on the towel. Slowly, my twin mounds and the between-ravine began to resemble the hairless cheeks of a newborn babe. Finally, I wiped the razor one last time, and surveyed my work. The towel was covered with a pile of hair. My ass was smooth as ivory. I smiled, satisfied, thinking my troubles were over.

Little did I know. I now have a great respect for anal-hair. Like everything in this world God created, it has its mighty purpose in existence. It was only after I had removed it that I started to learn how much I had been taking it for granted. For one, it provides friction. I learned this the next day, when I walked out into the sun heading for class. After climbing two flights of stairs and starting to sweat, I started to notice something unpleasant. The sweat was accumulating in my crack, and was causing the unpleasant sensation of my two asscheeks sliding past each other with every step. I thought about going to the bathroom and wiping it off, but had to get to class. Eventually, I
thought, it would dry. Unfortunately, it did dry, but only after mingling with the microscopic poop -molecules lingering around my brown starfish. When I stood up after class, my cheeks were stuck together with a slimy sticky poop/sweat combination. As I made my way back to my dorm, it started to itch. God-DAMN, did it itch! Felt like a swarm of ants was making its way up and down my crack. Fighting to keep from jamming my hand down there
and scratching away, I rushed back to the dorm. Unfortunately, this exertion caused me to sweat, and when I finally
reached my room, my cheeks were sliding back and forth against each other like a pair of horny cane-toads. I quickly dropped my pants, and attempted to dry my ass off by sticking it in front of a fan and spreading my cheeks.

As I pulled the two mounds of flesh apart, a horrible stench burst free and filled the room. Every dog within a 4 block radius started to howl. I had it worst of all, as the ripe aroma of festering poop/sweat went into the fan and blew back into my face. I fought to keep from heaving. And as I sat there, fighting vomit, my ass cheeks spread and dripping, with the concentrated aroma of my body odor mixed with the tangy smell of my own poop blowing right into my face, I had only one thought: "It will be like this until the hair grows back. Weeks." Later on, trying to deal as best I could, wiping my ass at every opportunity, I discovered another wonderful use for ass-hair - ventilation. I attempted to launch a fart, only to have it get stuck between my asscheeks.

Apparently, with no hair, the two pink twins can get vacuum sealed together, and the result was a frustrating fart that slid up and down between my cheeks like a lost gerbil. As if that wasn't
enough, I am now enduring further torture. As anyone who has ever shaved anything knows, when hair is first growing in, it comes in as stubble. Imagine your ass having the texture of a brillo pad.

Well, that is what I am dealing with now. It is a hellish torture, and there are many times when I just look out the window and contemplate why I shouldn't just jump out and get it all over with in one fleshy splat, rather than endure this constant agony.

Friends-DON'T SHAVE YOUR ASS-HAIR!

New York, New York.

2005-08-01T08:30:00.000-04:00

Oh what a day. I will post pictures eventually once I go through the dozens that I took and weed out the poor quality ones, but trust me, there's a lot. If you are to go to one baseball game each year, yesterday's game had to be the one. Even Jason L, who really could give a shit about baseball, was engrossed in the game and spent all 9 innings in his seat watching the game instead of back in the stadium club. Anyway, here's a recount of the day.

I woke my sorry ass up at 6:30 in the morning and got everything I needed before heading out to meet Jason L. I arrived at about 7:30 and we headed out to pick up another one in our group, Jason W. We picked him up and headed out the train station in New Haven to catch the Metro-North train to 125th street in Harlem, NY. Being warned that the prices at Yankee Stadium are simply outrageous, we decided to 'pre-game' before heading out in hopes that it would kick in and we could just maintain a good level with one or two drinks. It worked. We got on the train and were feeling just fine. We also met up with the 4th member of the group, Justin. So the 4 of us, Jason L., Jason W., Justin, and Senor Kaboom got on the train and took it down to 125th street. A bit of a trek, but for the price of the roundtrip ticket I really can't complain. If you drive to the stadium, you'll spend that much on gas and parking fees alone. We arrived in Harlem at about 10:30 after taking the 8:57 train out of New Haven. Upon arrival, we walked a few blocks to the nearest Subway station in order to catch the 4 train to Yankee Stadium. Going into the Subway the smart ones there, myself included, purchased two Subway passes so on the way back we didn't have to wait in line at the Stadium. The 4 train came, we got on it and we were on our way to the Stadium.

We got to the stadium at about 11:00 and checked out our seats. GOLDEN! Good lord those seats were incredible. A perfect view of the action and a good place to see everyone warming up and whatnot. I couldn't have asked for anything better. After checking out the seats, we went right to the Stadium Club. One thing I can say about the Stadium Club is that it is WELL kept and I almost felt a bit underdressed wearing my Yankees Jersey and shorts. Everything was high class and I only wish I remembered to take pictures there. We sat down at the buffet and then went and loaded up the plates. I engorged myself on french toast, prime rib, bacon, sausage, home fries, omlettes, and anything else I could eat. It was all you can eat, and I made sure I did. All of us stuffed ourselves like we've never eaten before, then went to the bar to get some booze. I went to the bartender and asked for a Long Island Iced Tea since I thought the nostalgia would be nice of ordering an LIT while in NYC. The bartender then said $65 as they charge per shot of liquor, and each shot is $10.00. I politely said 'no fucking way' and changed my order to a gin and tonic. I felt that would suffice. This was where I was introduced to Yankee Stadium liquor prices. Unless you're Bill Gates, there's no way you can afford to get drunk AT the stadium with prices of $10 per shot. I downed my drink and then we headed out to our seats.

The seats, as I mentioned earlier, were beautiful. The temperatures was nice and the cloud cover and gentle breeze cooled you off when it felt hot. I took out my camera and started taking pictures of everything. I got a bunch of Jeter and A-Rod and Cano and Sheffield and Bernie Williams warming up. I also got a good number of photos of Randy Johnson pitching and Mariano Rivera pitching. I took pictures of every angle of the stadium and I just pray that they turned out alright. I think I moved my hands a bit on too many of them, and I hope that it isn't bad enough that Photoshop can't fix them. If they're good, I'll upload them here to see. Another neat thing is that because July 31st is the Hall of Fame induction cermonies, the ticket stubs from the game can be used as free admission to the HOF any time in the calender year 2005. I've been meaning to head up to Cooperstown, so that's a very nice surprise.

The national anthem played and it was time for the first pitch. In the first inning, the leadoff guy got a cheap single, but was promptly picked off by Randy Johnson. It was great seeing it from my angle. He was absolutely dead. Early in the game, however, RJ didn't look all that sharp, but he was good enough to get out unscathed. In the bottom of the first, Jeter hit a solid basehit to right field to start things off. By the end of the game, he was 4-5 or 4-6, I can't remember. Either way, he had four solid basehits to right field, one which was VERY crucial. The top of the second went by without a hitch, and then the bottom of the second came. Two outs were quickly made when Jason Giambi stepped up to bat. A few pitches went by and I think the count was 1-1. Then, on the next pitch, there was a swing a sweet sounding 'crack'. The ball took a looping arc towards the short porch in right field and bounced off of the top of the wall and into the stands. A HR for Giambi and a 1-0 NY lead. :-) This was all fine and dandy until the top of the 4th when Randy Johnson lost it.

He got two relatively easy outs and was left with a runner on second base. He walked the next guy, and after a lengthy at-bat threw a meatball to the guy at bat. Before you knew it, the crowd was restless and the Yankees were losing 3-1. :-( In the next inning, the first pitch Johnson threw was taken deep for a 4-1 deficit. Things weren't looking good, especially since Anaheim has the best bullpen in baseball. After that, RJ settled down and shut down the Anaheim lineup. Meanwhile, the Yankees were doing nothing against the Angels rookie pitcher. During the 7th inning stretch I decided to finally take a piss. I went and took a leak and as soon as I came out of the tunnel and into the seating area, I heard 'CRACK' and a roar from the fans. I then saw a baseball flying into the right field stands. Giambi had homered once more. 2 homeruns for the day and the deficit was now 4-2. Could this be another great comeback?

In the top of the next inning, the Yankees went to their bullpen about 3 different times. None of the pitchers really did anything and the Yankees let the game get away. Anaheim scored 2 runs and took a 6-2 lead. At this point, many people left the game and I was thinking about heading to the stadium club and doing the same. Boy am I glad I didn't do that. In the bottom of the 8th, some incredibly poor defense by the Angles and timely hitting by NY led to a couple of runs scoring. The Angels' bullpen came in, but they couldn't stop the bleeding. Good hustle by the Yankees on the basepaths and some clutch hitting by Derek Jeter resulted in a 4-run outburst and a 6-6 tie. Then 'Enter Sandman' started playing and the crowd went wild. Mariano Rivera was coming in to stop things right there in the top of the 9th. Without any effort at all, Anaheim went down 1-2-3. In the bottom of the 9th, NY threatened but did not score. Extra innings baby!

Leading off for the Angels against Mariano Rivera was Chone Figgens. A short little dude who can freaking fly! He worked the count in his favor then sent one BARELY fair down the right field line. Sheffield played it poorly which resulted in a triple. A leadoff triple is not good in extra innings. The infield was brought in and the next guy hit a liner right to the first baseman who made a tremendous play for the out. The next guy up was Valdimir Guerrero; a freaking incredibly good player. The count was worked to 3-0 as NY as seemingly pitching around him. I thought they should walk him and setup a double play so that the go-ahead run couldn't score. Instead, Rivera threw a fat pitch down the middle that went into centerfield for a basehit. The first pitch to the next batter was a line-drive that Robinson Cano turned into a double play. Still, Anaheim took a 7-6 lead and things looked bleak.

Leading off the bottom of the 10th was Bernie Williams. He worked the count and sent a laser beam up the middle that the second baseman barely got a piece of. As a result, the ball slowed down tremendously, and the center fielder who had to play deep to prevent a double was unable to come up with it. Bernie hussled into second base for a leadoff double. Posada then came up and struck out. :-( With Tony Womack now running for Bernie, Jeter came up and worked himself a walk to put runners on first and second. Robinson Cano, who is a great rookie, continued his HORRIBLE day at the plate by going 0-6 and making a weak out. It was now up to Sheffield. With runners at second and third now, a basehit wins the game and anything else means it's game over. :-( Sheffield comes up and shoots a rocket right towards the shortstop. At this point, I'm thinking 'ah well, another loss'. Instead, the ball takes a wicked hop and the shortstop can't field it cleanly. The run scores and the game is tied at 7. A-Rod then made the final out of the inning, but the game would go on.

In the next inning, Tom Gordon came on to pitch for the Yankees and shut Anaheim down 1-2-3. Meanwhile, a foul ball was shot off in the direction of our seats. I could see the stitches on the ball and read the markings on it. It was heading RIGHT FOR US. My first instinct was to reach up and grab it, but if I did that I'd have a broken hand and probably no ball. Instead, common sense kicked in and I ducked. It his the seats about two rows behind us and bounced right into the lap of Jason L. who couldn't field it cleanly and wound up kicking it into the row in front of us. We should have had that ball, but it was not meant to be. Instead, we probably all got on TV and the entire nation saw Jason L boot an easy catch. hehe. It was the second or third ball hit in our area, but the only one that was legitimately close. Anyway, the Angels went down easy and Hideki Matsui was leading off the next inning.

On of the first few pitches, he creamed the ball and sent it flying towards the center field wall. It hit maybe one foot from the top of the wall and bounced past the centerfielder who misplayed it badly. As a result, with the score tied at 7, Matsui led off the 11th with a triple. The outfield now came in; the infield came in; and the Angels even took out their center field and had him play on the infield. The only real way to score this run would be to hit a flyball. With Giambi now up, the Angels were scared and walked him to put a guy on first. Also, Andy Phillips, who pinch ran for Tino Martinez, was now up to the plate and this kid can't hit anything that isn't a fastball. As a result, he struck out. :-( Now a ground ball means a double play and the Yankees don't score. So up comes Tony Womack. Tony's a REALLY fast guy, so he'd have to hit the ball quite hard in order to turn a double play on him. With a 3-2 count, Tony swung and ripped a hard hit groundball right through the shortstop for the game winning run. The Yankees won the game 8-7 and it was the most entertaining game I have ever seen. They mobbed Tony at first base and the Yankees had a come from behind victory by scoring 6 runs off of the best bullpen in the game. AWESOME game!

We then got our asses out of the stadium, back on the 4 train and back to 125th street. I took a piss in the station there, and now I need to hit a VD clinic to make sure I didn't pick anything up. Good god was that place dirty. Soaked in sweat, we waited for the MetroNorth train to take us back to New Haven, and from there we caught a bite to eat and it was time to head home. I finally made it home at around 11:00 p.m. and caught most of the game again on TV, but I was too tired to watch it all and finally conked out. One HELL of a great day.

Those crazy two and three outers......

2005-07-29T08:17:00.000-04:00

Ahhhh, the joys of statistics. Statistics and probability are key to helping a good poker player make the most of his money, but they are also key to helping the good poker player wonder how the fuck he just lost a hand. :-) Last night was a mighty prime example. On at least three occasions, I went into a hand with a dominant lead and bet appropriately to make as much money as I could off of that hand, and take any legitimate draws out of there. Based upon the results, I did just that and got any legitimate draws out of the hands and put as much money in there as I could to reap the highest rewards. Unfortuneately for Senor Kaboom, the one or two people who remained in the hand believed that any draw is a legitimate one no matter what the cost is, and they were fortuneate enough to catch a miracle one or two cards to win it all.

Example #1: I have in my hands King-5 offsuit and am first to act. Wanting to get in on some action, I limp in and the entire rest of the table follows suit. The flop comes down 5-6-5 rainbow giving me trip fives with a King kicker. I check this to allow anybody with a 6 to put money in the pot so that I can take it. Of course we get one person who bets, I call and everyone else folds. The turn comes down as a 10. At this point, I decide to make my move and raise the initial $2 bet in front of me to $6. Oddly enough I get a call. The river comes as a 6, and wouldn't you know it my calling opponent held 6-7 and caught one of the only two cards in the deck that gives him a winning hand. I lose a lot of money, and move on.

Example #2: This beat came down from our dearly departing friend Mike. A part of me got upset with the fact that I lost, but a part of me smiled inside based upon the 100% pure Justin Logic that he used in this hand. Even his attempt to explain his actions sounded like a tape recording of me. How sweet. :-) Anyway, I had King-Queen and Mike had pocket threes. He makes a minimal pre-flop raise and I call. Flop comes down King-8-5, or something to that effect. He bets small, I raise moderately, he calls. Turn comes as crap. Betting ensues and the next card is dealt. Now mind you, every card on the board was above his pocket 3's and there were no straight or flush draws on the board. Still, he keeps calling and catches the miracle 3 on the river. One of only two outs left to him. Again, I put my money in when I was ahead but those evil things called statistics came back to bite me.

Example #3: I'm in early position and get myself K-10 offsuit. I make a raise pre-flop and get called by a few people. The flop comes down K-2-K with one club, giving me trip kings with a ten kicker. Beautiful flop for me. I make a small bet and get raised. I then go over the top of the raiser and just get called. The turn comes as the Queen of clubs, and I bet strongly as I want to make the most off of my trips. The caller just breaks out chips and calls. The river then comes down as the 4 of clubs. Since I had no clubs at this point I just went into a call mode. The opponent bets and turns over pocket fives, one of them being a club. He catches runner-runner club and calls large bets the entire time to take down yet another hand where I was a dominant leader. Ah well. What can you do?

Example #4: This one's not a bad beat. This one's just a costly misread and some piss-poor play pre-flop. I'm in big blind and see 2-5 offsuit; a really shitty hand. Neighbor Rich is to my left and he raises 3 bucks. Everyone else folds. For some reason, my instincts said that Rich had AA, KK, QQ, JJ, AK, AQ, or AJ in his hand, and even though the odds for me were HORRIBLY wrong, I thought I'd see what the flop is since a lot of shit had been hitting the board today and I needed to just do something 'different' so that the ability to read me wouldn't be as great. The flop comes down 6-5-2. GOLDEN! The flop was just what I wanted to see. If he had a high pocket pair or two overcards, I was going to dominate him. If he had a high pocket pair, he'd also bet out over this shit flop and never be able to put me on two pair. I sensed a big pot coming up. Rich bets four, as I expected, and I raise four. He calls. The turn is a King, which had me a bit timid, but I still bet out anyway as the chances of him having two kings in his hand was pretty small. The pot is now gigantic as he's either or calling me or raising me every step of the way. While it is true that I could have slowed down and saved money, I truly thought that I had the best hand so why the fuck would I slow down? I was up against a relatively loose player who is likely to bet strongly with any two suited connectors or two paint cards. This was a great situation for me to be in. The river comes down a 7 and the high betting ensues again. I turn over my two pair and he turns over pocket 6's for a set of sixes. What the hell am I supposed to do? I guess this is the poker gods' way of saying 'don't ever play 5-2 offsuit'. Still, the pre-flop action indicated a very high pair or two very high cards, especially from Rich, not a middling pocket pair. That's probably the one hand where I lost the most money.

The rest of the evening was pretty come and go. I won quite a few small pots where I'd take down the blinds, but I lost a small number of gigantic pots that each cost me at least 15 bucks, if not more. The one thing I can say is that I really played the hands as well as I could. I bet out strongly when I was in the lead, or at least had a legitimate reason to think I was in the lead. I simply lost when the miracle one or two outers hit on the turn and/or river. I will continue to play the same way because statistics do even out, and those who want to draw out for their miracles will just wind up giving me a TON of money. We've already seen that happen before, and if their poker play stays the same we'll definitely see it again. :-)

Some here might be wondering if there's a KABOOM story coming out of this. There isn't. I see no reason to KABOOM over last night. Sure I'm financially 'teetering' at the moment, but KABOOMING won't do anything except make Klacky feel all warm and fuzzy. Perhaps my personality has changed a bit, but in reality I believe it's my thinking that's changed. What is a KABOOM going to accomplish? Do we want to chastise people who make downright wrong decisions in poker? These are the people who give us money. It's because of these foolish decisions that I am well into the black for the year. How are we going to make money if we yell and demand that they play better poker? All that will accomplish is making us lose money playing poker. Instead, I'll just keep my mouth shut and let them put their $20 into a hand where they have a 5% chance of winning. 95% of the time, that will earn me quite a bit of money. :-) As it stands now, the only way I'll KABOOM is if someone combines completely foolishy retarded play, catchs a miracle card on the river to take down a huge pot, then starts gloating over how they took down a massive pot and are sore winners about it. In that situation I probably will blow up and say some things that I'd regret later. With that situation, the actions of the 'suckout' are far more against good etiquitte than my explosion would be. At our poker games, however, our players are all beyond that type of action and would only do so to try and squeeze out a KABOOM. So it looks like the 'KABOOM' won't be happening for a good long time, especially if one didn't happen last night. :-)

Golfing in the tropics, and a feathered friend........

2005-07-27T20:51:00.000-04:00

Wow was the air thick tonight. It was like walking around in a deep sauna. The fog on the ground so thick that you could see the circular disk of the sun out in the sky, but you could see little to no sunlight. A VERY muggy day out on the links. Thankfully, the temperature was fairly low so it wasn't all too bad. Still, it was very uncomfortable out there and the mosquitos were out in full force. I wasn't sure how I was going to do today as I can only put my best effort out there when I'm nice and dry and my mind is free. That wasn't the case this evening as my body was soaked with sweat and I was itching all over thanks to those damned mosquitos.

I noticed early on that my swing was there. I was hitting the ball MUCH further than I thought I would, so I spent a lot of time behind the green after my tee shot or second shot took me way over the hole. My 9-iron generally doesn't carry 120+ yards, but tonight it did. That caused me to have to make some tough club choice decisions. Sadly, because of all the distance I was getting on my drivers, I spent my time on the putting green worrying about how far I was hitting. This resulted in some HORRENDOUS putting on the front 9. My overall score was a 48 with 24 of them being putts. If I did some solid putting and with a slightly better short game, I probably would have shot a 39 on the front 9 which would have been a personal best for me. Instead my 48 was on the scorecard and I felt that adjustments should be made in my swing............................... WRONG!!!!!!

I started the back 9 absolutely atrociously. I lost a few balls into the water as I was trying to change something that was working just fine. Instead of dealing with my new found solid contact, I was trying to change the way the swing was working. This resulted is some horrible shots and I wound up shooting a 9 on the 10th hole. Uggh. Happily, I just went onto hole 11 and forgot about hole #10. I teed up my shot and decided to use my driver. In reality, that wasn't that good of a choice as I really did not need to do that. I made SOLID contact with my driver and it then started to slice on me. With great velocity, it hit a tree on the right side and bounced into the middle about 15 yards in front of the pussy tees. I broke out my 7 iron and hit a nice shot to the edge of the green. I then chipped and it went over the green. :-( I chipped back and eventually sunk the putt to give me a 6 on the hole. Up next was hole number 12. I took out my pitching wedge and hit a high lofting shot which hit in front of the green, then bounced on the green, then went off the green. I headed out to my ball and broke out my putter. Now my new putter is nice because it has such a high mass club head that it can kind of be used as a chipper. As long as I'm within a few feet of the edge of the green, I can use it to 'chip' my way on with better control than I can with my pitching wedge. So I putted up next to the hole, then sunk my two foot putt for par. Very nice indeed. A nice tee-shot, a nice chip-shot, and a nice putt for par. Overall a good hole indeed.

At hole number 13 I screwed something up and scored a 6. I don't really remember how I screwed up, but the three mosquitos engorging themselves on my blood probably screwed up a few shots. The bug spray was doing nothing. Now comes hole number 14. The tees were back by the flag for the hole, so it was a legitimate 136 yards or so from where I teed off. Looking through the fog, I decided that my 6-iron would work well for me here as it would give me some good distance and still had some nice loft to it. I teed my ball up so that it was sitting high enough to be resting at the top of the grass. I took a few practice swings and they felt REALLY good. With confidence, I stepped up to the ball, relaxed, and swung. WHOOOOOOOSH, THWACK! A BEAUTIFUL shot that started out to the left and drew back towards the right. It landed right at the edge of the green and made a small bounce to the right, placing it about 14 feet away from the cup and about a two feet off of the green. It really was a nice shot to see and it felt great getting it out there. Hole number 14 is one of those holes where I've never really been able to get a good tee shot off. This is either due to the large tree on the left side, the hard to judge distance, or the trees over to the right. Still, it was a great tee shot and I was happy to be able to chip up and give myself an easy par.

I head over to where my ball is as Crazy Ivan, who was golfing with me, went over to the left side of the fairway to chip his ball towards the green. He chips it towards the green, but comes up a bit short, so I'm waiting for him to chip. As I approach my ball, I see something that I've never seen in person before; a queen bee walking around my ball. I've seen pictures of queen bees, but never actually seen one in person. It was very easy to identify her, and I guess she must have been out looking for a new hive to start. Crazy Ivan chipped his shot up there, and I mentioned to him that there was a queen bee hanging around my ball. CI then proceeds to squish the queen bee. lol. Ah well. With my putter in hand, I line myself up so that I can hit my ball through the grass and get a good roll towards the cup so that I can sink an easy one for par. I went ahead and took my shot and the swing felt great. I see the ball going in the exact straight line that I had set up for. I then see that it's getting closer to the hole. I then see that it's lined up directly with the hole and is at the perfect speed! I THEN SEE THE BALL GO IN THE HOLE FOR A BIRDIE!!!!!!!!!!!! I couldn't fucking believe it. I BIRDIED A HOLE!!!! A perfect putt from off the fringe that went directly into the hole. Even Crazy Ivan was a bit stunned, as was the rest of New London country as everyone must have heard me yell 'AND THAT'S A BIRDIE!' KK has been golfing for quite some time, and even he does not yet have a birdie. What makes me truly happy about it is that I didn't have to putt for my first birdie, so when I hit a tee shot that lands on the green, I won't have the pressure of sinking my first birdie on my shoulders.

Overall, I shot a 94 which is a little bit above my average, but this is the first time I ever had a birdie and in addition I also had a par. My swings felt perfect and if the weather wasn't so nasty I'm sure I would have done better than 94. :-)

BTW, I got my first birdie. :-)

A Farewell To Arms.......

2005-07-26T08:25:00.000-04:00

Some time ago, a stranger arrived at our poker table to see what this new 'craze' was all about. I don't know how he was informed of our game, or even why he was informed of our game. I just knew that it was easy money that we could take from time and time again. In the beginning, this was all true. This 'stranger' would routinely drop money and never really posed a threat. However, this 'ATM' kept coming back. We couldn't seem to do anything to him that would make him not want to come again for next week's game. He even put up with my silly logic on how to play poker and my crude, and often misplaced, comments about pretty much anything you can think of. Still, he kept coming back.

Fairly quickly, the 'ATM' was learning things about the game of poker. He started playing smarter by playing less. He no longer married his pocket cards, although at times he would fuse his DNA with them. He was able to take great strides in his game and soon became a competitor and a regular. He was a stranger from outside our 'clique' and managed to work his way in and become a part of the "family". (God damn that sounds like some type of Mafia thing). For the poker regulars, we had a new member of the group. A new person we could shoot the shit with about why we played King-Ten suited the way we did. A new person we could care about and wish the best for. A new friend.

In honor of Mike's departure, I will keep this blog short. No detailed accounts of the hands, no transcription of Paradise Lost. Just a little rememberance of how far Iron Mike 'The Jew' Cannizaro has come along. ;-)

1): How can any of us forget the 'Superbowl of Poker'? A competition between Iron Mike and Crazy Joe to see who could finish up the best after 5 weeks of poker. In the beginning, Iron Mike simply dominated the competition and took a massive lead over Joe only to choke severely and give it all back. With the overall position dead even, the two of them decided to call off the bet. While the overall payout never happened, watching Mike sweat under the intense competition was fun for all of us. :-)

2): Kirk Channels Joe. One of the funnier hands we'll ever see. KK was having a pretty bad night, so at the end of the night he decided to channel Crazy Joe and did some betting without looking at his cards. Iron Mike was the only person providing resistance. On one hand, KK wound up with quad fives to take down Mike, but that was nothing compared to the final hand. Mike had J-J with one of them a club. KK had an ace-queen, with the queen being a club. Mike flopped himself another jack, but with runner-runner clubs KK pulled off the miracle flush. Mike jumped up in victory, then sat down in defeat, then thought about victory again, only to see that he lost. He collapsed on the ground in a shriek of terror reminiscent of Phil Hellmuth at every game he's ever played. It's okay, however, as a few months later Mike took down Kirk's pocket aces when his pocket kings runner-runner flushed.

3): Justin Logic. As much as Mike may hate to admit it, the theory of 'Justin Logic' has crept into his soul. 'Justin Logic' is simply put, a retarded string of logic used to defend why you played your hand the way you did. Generally speaking, there is no sound logic there, only messed up logic. However, this logic does tend to result in big pots that are taken down when you win. Justin Logic is like salt; a little bit can enhance most everything, but in certain situations using it makes you look like a retard. Thank you for absorbing the Justin Logic there Mike. Take it north with you and spread it around the state of Vermont. It's like herpes; once you get it you can never get rid of it and you wind up spreading it to everyone around you.

So have a safe trip up north Mike. Thank you for the beer and pizza last night, and for the food served at your final BBQ here in CT. It's been fun playing cards with you and playing golf that one, solitary time. Tis a shame that you won't be able to head out to the course again before you leave, but I'm sure when we ransack your home up in Vermont there will be a golf course nearby. You have survived the Monday Night Poker crew and come out stronger than ever. While many have lost it all to us and rarely return, you persevered and stayed strong. Keep in touch my friend. It's been one hell of a time and I wish you and your family the very best.

"The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry" -Ernest Hemmingway

Found this online and though it was hilarious.

2005-07-23T21:21:00.000-04:00

If World War II Was Fought by Online Gamers.

*Hitler[AoE] has joined the game.*
*Eisenhower has joined the game.*
*paTTon has joined the game.*
*Churchill has joined the game.*
*benny-tow has joined the game.*
*T0J0 has joined the game.*
*Roosevelt has joined the game.*
*Stalin has joined the game.*
*deGaulle has joined the game.*
Roosevelt: hey sup
T0J0: y0
Stalin: hi
Churchill: hi
Hitler[AoE]: cool, i start with panzer tanks!
paTTon: lol more like panzy tanks
T0JO: lol
Roosevelt: o this fockin sucks i got a depression!
benny-tow: haha america sux
Stalin: hey hitler you dont fight me i dont fight u, cool?
Hitler[AoE]; sure whatever
Stalin: cool
deGaulle: **** Hitler rushed some1 help
Hitler[AoE]: lol byebye frenchy
Roosevelt: i dont got crap to help, sry
Churchill: wtf the luftwaffle is attacking me
Roosevelt: get antiair guns
Churchill: i cant afford them
benny-tow: u n00bs know what team talk is?
paTTon: stfu
Roosevelt: o yah hit the navajo button guys
deGaulle: eisenhower ur worthless come help me quick
Eisenhower: i cant do **** til rosevelt gives me an army
paTTon: yah hurry the fock up
Churchill: d00d im gettin pounded
deGaulle: this is fockin weak u guys suck
*deGaulle has left the game.*
Roosevelt: im gonna attack the axis k?
benny-tow: with what? ur wheelchair?
benny-tow: lol did u mess up ur legs AND ur head?
Hitler[AoE]: ROFLMAO
T0J0: lol o no america im comin 4 u
Roosevelt: wtf! thats bull**** u ***s im gunna kick ur asses
T0JO: not without ur harbors u wont! lol
Roosevelt: u little biotch ill get u
Hitler[AoE]: wtf
Hitler[AoE]: america hax, u had depression and now u got a huge fockin army
Hitler[AoE]: thats bull**** u hacker
Churchill: lol no more france for u hitler
Hitler[AoE]: tojo help me!
T0J0: wtf u want me to do, im on the other side of the world retard
Hitler[AoE]: fine ill clear you a path
Stalin: u arsshoel! WE HAD A FoCKIN TRUCE
Hitler[AoE]: i changed my mind lol
benny-tow: haha
benny-tow: hey ur losing ur guys in africa im gonna need help in italy soon sum1
T0J0: o **** i cant help u i got my hands full
Hitler[AoE]: im 2 busy 2 help
Roosevelt: yah thats right biznitch im comin for ya
Stalin: church help me
Churchill: like u helped me before? sure ill just sit here
Stalin: dont be an arss
Churchill: dont be a commie. oops too late
Eisenhower: LOL
benny-tow: hahahh oh **** help
Hitler: o man ur focked
paTTon: oh what now biotch
Roosevelt: whos the cripple now lol
*benny-tow has been eliminated.*
benny-tow: lame
Roosevelt: gj patton
paTTon: thnx
Hitler[AoE]: eisenhower hax hes killing all my ****
Hitler[AoE]: quit u hacker so u dont ruin my record
Eisenhower: Nuts!
benny~tow: wtf that mean?
Eisenhower: meant to say nutsack lol finger slipped
paTTon: coming to get u hitler u paper hanging hun ****socker
Stalin: rofl
T0J0: HAHAHHAA
Hitler[AoE]: u guys are fockin gay
Hitler[AoE]: ur never getting in my city
*Hitler[AoE] has been eliminated.*
benny~tow: OMG u noob you killed yourself
Eisenhower: ROFLOLOLOL
Stalin: OMG LMAO!
Hitler[AoE]: i didnt click there omg this game blows
*Hitler[AoE] has left the game*
paTTon: hahahhah
T0J0: my teammates are n00bs
benny~tow: shut up noob
Roosevelt: haha wut a moron
paTTon: wtf am i gunna do now?
Eisenhower: yah me too
T0J0: why dont u attack me o thats right u dont got no ships lololol
Eisenhower: fock u
paTTon: lemme go thru ur base commie
Stalin: go to hell lol
paTTon: fock this **** im goin afk
Eisenhower: yah this is gay
*Roosevelt has left the game.*
Hitler[AoE]: wtf?
Eisenhower: **** now we need some1 to join
*tru_m4n has joined the game.*
tru_m4n: hi all
T0J0: hey
Stalin: sup
Churchill: hi
tru_m4n: OMG OMG OMG i got all his stuff!
tru_m4n: NUKES! HOLY **** I GOT NUKES
Stalin: d00d gimmie some plz
tru_m4n: no way i only got like a couple
Stalin: omg dont be gay gimmie nuculer secrets
T0J0: wtf is nukes?
T0J0: holy ****holy****hoylshti!!!111
*T0J0 has been eliminated.*
*The Allied team has won the game!*
Eisenhower: awesome!
Churchill: gg noobs no re
T0J0: thats bull**** u fockin suck
*T0J0 has left the game.*
*Eisenhower has left the game.*
Stalin: next game im not going to be on ur team, u guys didnt help me for ****
Churchill: wutever, we didnt need ur help neway dumbarss
tru_m4n: l8r all
benny~tow: bye
Churchill: l8r
Stalin: fock u all
tru_m4n: shut up commie lol
*tru_m4n has left the game.*
benny~tow: lololol u commie
Churchill: ROFL
Churchill: bye commie
*Churchill has left the game.*
*benny~tow has left the game.*
Stalin: i hate u all ***s
*Stalin has left the game.*
paTTon: lol no1 is left
paTTon: weeeee i got a jeep
*paTTon has been eliminated.*
paTTon: o ****!
*paTTon has left the game.*

Getting Fucked Up The Ass By A Horse?...

2005-07-21T10:42:00.000-04:00

Okay, this is one of the worst things I have ever read. Those people out there in the great northwest REALLY need to find something better to do. UGGGH!

Man Dies From Perforated Colon.

Falling In Love With A Club......

2005-07-21T08:41:00.000-04:00

Oh that wonderous, beautiful thing called a club. Yesterday I cemented my love for my 1-wood. I went out to Birch Plains and met Crazy Ivan there for a round of golf. I wanted to try out my new putter to see how it would work, and I also wanted to see if my driving ability was legitimate. I quickly found out that both were in full working order. I LOVE my new putter. I didn't exactly putt like a pro, but when I would actually line up my shots and give some effort instead of just hitting it and hoping it goes in, the putter held true and the ball moved as smooth as silk. With the club head being so heavy, I don't have to give it as much 'oomph' to get it to go which is a good thing for me. I think this will help out tremendously on faster greens too. The heavy club head also allows me to putt from much deeper fringe grass and do that quite successfully as well. On the second hole yesterday, I sunk a putt that was a good 1-1.5 feet into the outer fringe of the green. I just have a much better feel with this putter than I did with my other ones. It will be interesting to see how well I can do on a faster green surface with this new one.

On the front nine I managed to pull down a 44 which, believe it or not, beat Crazy Ivan by two strokes. That REALLY shocked me like you wouldn't believe. I can't tell if overall I beat him as on the back 9 he just kind of let out the 'Crazy' in his name and started firing balls left and right. I couldn't keep track of which shots were the legitimate ones and which ones were the 'I'm bored so I'm going to hit this fucker' shots. :-) I still think my overall score of 88 was a bit too close for comfort in Crazy Ivan's mind.

Hole number 16 is where I really got to try out my 1-wood. This is the hole with the big pond in the middle that I always seem to find on my tee shot. A 150 yard hole which isn't bad if you can get over the pond. I tee up and take some practice swings with my club. I then address the ball and let her rip. THWACK! Perfect contact on the ball. The golf ball goes sailing into the air and far over the hole........ both of them. I actually hit the ball a good 10-15 yards beyond the flag which means the drive went around 165-170 yards. I wasn't even trying to hit it as hard as I could. I was stunned. I simply could not believe that I could drive the ball that far. My Big Bertha was slicing like hell on me, but this 1-wood was staying nice and true, with maybe a tiny little curve to the right. Nothing too spectacular. My other stunning shot was out of a sand trap on hole 17. They had just put in some new, 'fluffy' sand in the trap and my ball found it's way in there. I break out the sand wedge and let her rip while making contact 2-3 inches behind the ball. The ball and a large blob of sand come flying out of the hole. I see the ball sail over the green and look away as I go to get my pitching wedge figuring that I hit it too hard and sent the ball well over the green. I come around the side of the green and see a golf ball a good 2-feet from the fringe right on the green. That isn't mine, is it? Yes it is. Apparently, I put some vicious backspin on the ball and when it landed, it rolled back towards the hole a good distance. Crazy Ivan confirmed this, and I just sat there amazed. I don't know how I did it, but I liked it. :-)

After finishing up with my 88, I got a small bucket of balls and hit the driving range. I wanted to work out that slice on Big Bertha, but couldn't seem to do it. I could hit the ball a good 190-200 yards with her, but not even close to straight. I'll have to try and figure out that problem before Saturday at Meadowbrook. I did, however, get more swings in with my 1-wood. Good god I love that club. EVERY time I swung it, the ball went far, it went straight, it went perfectly. There is no better feeling that addressing the ball and knowing that you're going to hit it well. Then taking your backswing, making contact and having a beautiful follow through with the club behind your head, your torso pointed towards where the ball is going, and your right foot looking like you're about to take a step forward. The ball is high in the air and traveling 180 or so yards in front of you. On many occasions, the ball was hit so well that I could go back to my bag, get another club, and go back to the mat before the ball landed. Being able to admire those shots feels great. The woods that gave me so many problems before are now my child. If only the irons could behave as consistantly. It will be fun this weekend on my first long course. :-)

Easy Come, Easy Go.

2005-07-19T09:20:00.000-04:00

After last weeks sleeping with the angels, this week wasn't as kind to me. Early on, I got some good cards but just didn't get paid all too greatly as nobody really had anything to go after me with. Later on, I got a lot of second best hands which took some good wads of cash from me. (As I only had one or two possible hands to worry about my opponent having, it was proper for me to continue on in the hand. Sadly for me, my opponent did have those one or two combinations of cards that had me beat). So some bad cards fell for me and I was unable to repeat my $167 gain from last week. Instead, I went in for $60 but still managed to not be the biggest downer for the evening. Mr. Hand contributed some money as well, and Crazy Joe even shocked himself when he realized that he was in for about $160 and down about $70 for the evening. I've never actually seen Joe cringe at the amount of money he's put into an evening of poker, but you could physically see some angst in what went down. Ah well.

In other news, I hit the driving range before work and just fell in love with my drivers. I can hit those fuckers far with only the slightest bit of effort required. I have a little bit of trouble getting consistant hits when the ball is right on the ground, but as the session went on I progressively tried to set the ball lower and lower until it was resting just on top of the mat. The muscles have really memorized what to do, and nothing feels better than seeing a ball go flying over 200 yards and bounce its way to the back of the range. Too bad my irons couldn't do the same. The irons area at Birch Plains is so full of divots and holes and random patches of grass that it's impossible to get any practice there unless you go through an entire bag of tees. After about twenty fruitless swings on that crap, I just moved on and spent the rest of the day with my drivers. I swung by replay sports on my way to KK's to pick up some golf balls and also found me a new putter that I hope I can try out soon. Anyway, this will be my shortest blog ever as I REALLY have to shit right now and I can feel the turtle head poking it's way out...........

Family Guy Still Going Strong.....

2005-07-18T09:13:00.000-04:00

Family Guy has to be one of the funniest cartoon series ever put into production. There are no limits to what they will do or say, or to whom they will insult. Every race, religion, 'clique', and anything else in existance is ripe for the pickings. Fox foolishly cancelled the show after its first three seasons as they claimed 'it isn't generating high enough ratings'. Of couse those ratings can't appear when the fanbase has no fucking clue when the show will air. (A great example of this was during season 3 when they aired a promo for a new show the night AFTER it had aired. Good job Fox). So the show got canned and fans like myself had to wait until DVD to see it again.

When the DVDs came out, Fox realized their mistake as it was a HUGE seller and the fans clammored for the show's return. Fox oblidged and the show returned to the airways this year for season 4. Many people, myself included, were concerned that the show might not be the same as it was when it first aired a few years ago. Would it still be as random and 'wrong' as it was before? After the first couple of weeks, the answer is a resounding YES. They have made fun of retarded people, asian people, handicapped people, you name it. If it can be made fun of, they'll do it. They've also been a bit more 'crude' than we've seen before, and that makes them even funnier. Last night was a beautiful episode.

The Griffens were shopping in a grocery store (Stop & Shop) when Chris went to pick up a thing of milk. When he reached for the milk, a crudely drawn "scribbled" hand reached out and pulled him in. The crude drawing was that of the Ah-Ha video 'Take On Me' from back in the 1980's. They played nearly the entire song with Chris replacing the chick from that video. I was almost in tears laughing at the joke. Such classic memories and well placed within the show. At another point in the show, they're still in the grocery store and Lois goes to grab something and leaves Stewie in the cart with a plastic bag. To piss of Lois, Stewie tries to put a plastic bag over his head and 'do what that INXS kid did'. (God that was in poor taste. lol). The thing is, Stewie's head is so big it can't fit into the bag. As a result, he spouts out 'Either Lois had a C-Section, or she's wonder woman'. lmao. A very crude, but funny line.

Another 'over the line' moment dealt with Meg. The scene played out like this:
Peter: "It's not so bad Meg. It's like when you found out your Gynecologist never finished med school".
[cut to Meg in a doctor's office]
Doctor: "Hi there Meg. Let's a take a look at your Fur-gina."

I almost fell over laughing. So crude and yet so funny. I am so happy that this show is back on the air and will be releasing a direct to DVD movie this fall. In other news, it appears as if the other Seth McFarlane show 'American Dad' has been canned as Fox hasn't shown it in about a month. Oh well. It wasn't that great anyway.

Golfing With Jesus.

2005-07-18T08:08:00.000-04:00

You know how I had my nice blog entry about my beautiful 81 and how well I hoped to do the following evening? Well at Cedar Ridge I fucked the pooch and had a comparitavely horrendous game. (I shot a 99 which is really frustrating after shooting an 81. Especially when I wound up with 45 putts as I couldn't stick to the fucking green if I had crazy glue on my golf ball). So after the glee of Thursday I was stuck with the horror of Friday. I had a couple of good shots, as I actually hit my seven iron with loft and distance. Looking at the club face after the swing was amazing as you could see how I hit the ball exactly in the center of the club. Before poker tonight I'll hit the pro shop and driving range on 184 to try and work on the swing again. I also need to buy a new putter as I banished my current putter to the depths of someone else's golf bag. The style just wasn't suiting me well. I need a relatively small club face with a fat back to it as opposed to these long rulers attached to yardsticks that I've been using.

Aside from me wanting to hurl my clubs about 500 yards into the stratosphere, there was one hole that I will never forget. The golf gods must have felt bad for me and all the balls that I've sent into the water hazards. That's the only way I could explain this event. I have never seen anything like this, and I never will. It just simply doesn't make sense how this could happen, but it did. On the 10th hole, I teed up and used my 6-iron as I wanted to get some distance to my shot and get me close to the 10th hole. The problem is, I topped the ball a bit and gave it some MASSIVE overspin which shortened the loft and the distance. The ball started sinking immediately after contact and went right into the water. There was a perfect splashdown and a great looking ripple effect. I felt disheartened as I realized that I just lost a stroke and a ball. (I'm beginning to run out of golfballs). So Kirk and Will tee off and while Kirk sends his over the water, it's a bit right and Will's shot finds the forest to the left of the hole. I start heading down looking for a new golf ball to use when Kirk says 'Your ball is right here. It jumped out of the water'. I couldn't fucking believe that. The ball was submerged in the water. I saw it go in and I saw the splashdown that it made. Kirk, however, kept exclaiming that it walked on the water and was safely on the other side. I didn't believe it until I came closer and saw it with my own two eyes. The ball was a good 12" on the other side of the water and on a good lie. My only explanation is that it hit the bottom of the pond and bounced out due to the overspin. Otherwise, Jesus possessed my ball and made it walk on water. Simply remarkable. I addressed the ball and shot a very nice recovery shot which put me on the green. Sadly, I three putted the living hell out of the hole like I did on every hole that back 9. Still, the Jesus ball was there and I don't think I'll ever see that happen again.

Distractions Are A Golfer's Worst Enemy

2005-07-15T08:04:00.000-04:00

I have finally found the reason behind my poor golf play. That reason, my friends, is YOU! Now don't take that personally as I don't mean it with bad intentions, but some part of me just can't swing right with people I know watching me and golfing along side of me. How do I know this? Well let me recount a simply remarkable game of golf I had last night.

I went out to Birch Plains to hit the driving range and try and get the feel of my drivers. I've found that feel and hit an entire small bucket of balls straight and true. Maybe 5% of the balls weren't straight like I intended, or had the height that I had hoped, but they sure did have the distance. I also tried hitting from right on the grass/mat itself to see if I could hit my drivers off of a clean cut fairway. Yup. I didn't get as much height as I did off of the tees, but I nailed those fucker far. After the driving range, I was fucking giddy and really wanted to try the swing out on the regular course. Therefore, I plopped down the $12 bucks and hit the greens.

I had sent out an e-mail earlier to a few people seeing if they wanted to golf as well and that the time would be 5:00. I didn't receive any replies, so at 5:15 when the crowd had moved along I went ahead and got out on the course. Never before has my short game and long game been in sync with each other until last night. I was driving the fuck out of the ball and chipping when I needed to and making putts where I needed to. I can only recall a handful of shots that didn't do what I wanted them to do. Here's my front nine tally:

Hole (Yards): Score-Putts
1(107): 4-2
2(170): 4-2
3(148): 6-2
4(228): 6-2
5(206): 3-1
6(124): 4-2
7(113): 5-2
8(137): 4-2
9(129): 4-2

That's right my friends, on the 206 yard Hole #5 I parred with a beautiful tee shot that landed right on the fringe of the green. I putted to within half a foot of the hole and sunk the putt for par. I had a lot of 2-putts on the front nine simply because I would get onto the green and need a good distance to drain the putt. I went with the somewhat passive approach with my first putt and just made sure that the second would be a gimmie. Overall, I shot an un-fucking-believable 40 on the front 9 with only 17 putts! Now it was time for the back 9 where I was hoping to stay sharp.

On the front 9 I teamed up with a few people here and there, but set out on the back 9 on my own. This group of two came behind me and asked if I wanted to head out with them the rest of the way. Two really nice players who were incredibly good. Every shot they took landed on the green, and they were just a fun group to be with. The fact that they had beer they were offering made it even better. :-) So I teamed up with them and teed off on the 10th hole. It was a horrible shot. Uh-oh. A very high, lofty shot with my pitching wedge, but well left of the hole. It took me three shots to make it onto the green, but my putter saved my ass as I drained a 4 foot putt for bogey. Was this a bad omen of things to come? I thought so, but a lot of that 'bad feeling' was just because these guys I was playing with were shooting par golf and making some sick tee shots. Never seen that many pars in my life. Anyway, here's the back 9 tally:

10(105): 4-1
11(187): 5-2
12(108): 6-1
13(147): 6-3
14(136): 4-2
15(164): 5-2
16(150): 4-1
17(155): 4-2
18(156): 3-1

Again, a beautiful set of 9 holes where I had 15 putts and scored a 41. I parred hole #18 to end the day on a beautiful note, especially after a nice 2 foot putt to sink the par. On hole 16, I drove right over the big pond and for the first time made it across without losing a ball or going around the pond. It was a great day overall as I had a mere 32 putts (less than 1 putt per hole) and an overall score of 81. A FUCKING EIGHTY-ONE??!!!!!!! Good god it was a great game. I hope my swing is still there tonight when Cedar Ridge comes calling. :-)

Slowly Getting Better.......

2005-07-13T08:19:00.000-04:00

Went out golfing again yesterday afternoon and realize that I'm slowly getting better at this game. Now, I think the mental aspect is starting to play a larger role than the physical one. My main problem before was just making sure I made solid contact and sent the ball in the right direction. My current problem is making sure I choose the right club and use the right force.

Before hitting the greens last night, I spent some time with a small bucket of balls down at Birch Plains. In the past, I'd make solid contact and hit the ball properly about 33% of the time. The rest of the time I'd hit a worm burner that would go about 60 yards. Well last night the ball was going the distance that it should go and my 7-9 irons were being driven about 100-140 yards on average. I still had some problems with my lower irons, however, as I was simply swinging them like a pimp. (Constantly hitting hookers). They had the right loft, I.E. very little, but after going forward about 80 yards or so they'd take a sharp left hand turn which was really puzzling me. As a result, I decided to try out my drivers.

I have ALWAYS had trouble with my drivers and just couldn't figure out why. I'd either sky the living hell out of the ball and send it ten yards, or I'd top it and only get it about 50 yards. Yesterday, I "MAY" have figured it out. I decided to address the ball with the ball/tee in line with my front foot. I thought that if I teed it up enough I'd hit the ball on my upswing and give it the proper loft as well as distance. Sure enough, it worked like a charm. Everything was straight and true, and hitting 200 yards was no problem. It was really neat seeing the ball come off of the club like that and go the distance it did. I did this for about 12 swings in a row and felt really good. Even if I mis-swung, I was able to get enough contact with the ball to send it a good 100 yards or so. Now I just need to learn how to hit the ball when it's lying on the ground so that I can try out a 'long course'.

The neat thing to see while at the driving range was how my distance lowered as I got tired. In the beginning, my high irons were going 100-140 yards. By the time I finished the bucket, they'd be going about 80-100 yards. Next time I'll just have to shoot half a bucket before I head out on the greens. Mr. Hand showed up and I honestly think he was a bit surprised at my swings. It's just a damned shame that my short game was horrendous last night as I wound up shooting a 99. If my pitching wedge was working like it had been the past few games, I'd have shot in the low 90's to high 80's. (At least my sand wedge was doing great. I had some nice recovery shots from the bunkers). I'm also happy to say that I did not lose one single ball. Even on the infamous Hole #16, I funked up the tee-shot but it landed right at the edge of the pond. I then took out my 9 and hit a beautiful shot to get me over. It wasn't my best game, but I had some of my best swings.

When NOTHING can go wrong..........

2005-07-12T08:09:00.000-04:00

Wow. That is all I can say; WOW! Last night I saw the greatest run of cards I have ever seen in a long, long time. In addition, the rest of the crowd were getting good cards as well which resulted in some hefty pots. Sure I lost a couple, but I'd say that I won about 85-90% of all the hands I put money into. I only recall a few specific hands, but I do know that early in the night, and I mean VERY early, Crazy Joe was able to take me down with a fairly large sized stack. His son Aaron quickly said 'You know dad, whenever someone is ahead early they tend to lose it later on'. How prophetic that was.

My assault started with Klacky raising $3 from the UTG position. That $3 screamed out 'high cards and I don't want to deal with a flop'. I was mulling over whether or not to call that raise, but knew that I needed at least one caller in order to have borderline odds with my Q-9 offsuit. Of course, everybody folded until it got around to Joe who thought for a good long while and then said 'What the heck?'. Joe puts his money in and now I figured with my Q-9 I'm getting 2:1 on my money and the flop will determine if I go any further. I decide to call. The flop then shows up with a beautiful queen on there as the high card and not much else. I bet out in order to get information and get called by Klacky and Joe. The turn comes up as a blank as does the river. Some moderate betting ensued and Joe got out after the turn. When all was said and done and all bets were called, Klacky turned over A-10 to show a pair of tens with an Ace kicker. I turned over Queen-9 to show a pair of queens and take down the pot. I was very happy to see that my read of Klacky not having a Queen was correct, and I got paid off nicely for it. Joe made it seemingly worthwhile for me to call the pre-flop raise, and in the end that was the big decision.

On the very next hand I look down and see K-7 of spades. There was a moderate raise by someone at the table, I forget who, but it wasn't enough to make me get out especially with all the callers. So I stick around and catch two spades on the flop. Either the turn or river generated the third spade to give me the very high (but not the nut) flush. I take down the mightly big pot. When the next hand is dealt to me, I look down to see Ace-6 of spades. I couldn't hit a flush two hands in a row, could I? Well, the answer to that was 'Yes' as I turned the flush and extracted a good deal of money from Joe. My chip stack was growing bigger and bigger by the moment, and for the most part I was folding when I knew I was completely dead and the money just wasn't right. Meanwhile I was extracting the most that I could from my winnings.

I cannot list all of the hands I had which resulted in huge wins, as the Internet doesn't have enough bandwidth for that. Instead I'll just shoot off a list of the ones I can remember:

1): I have pocket tens and raise pre-flop. KK calls with AJ. Flop comes down K-2-J. My hand looks crappy, but KK doesn't bet all too hard. (I put him on something like A-Q and figured that he didn't hit). I call the small bet. The turn is an Ace. I now know that I'm dead, but KK only bets 1 dollar as he's seemingly short on chips. I call as he's giving me a chance to catch a miracle queen or ten on the river. River comes down as a queen giving me broadway and the winner while KK's A-J burns up.

2): I have 6-9 of spades and get to see the flop quite cheaply. TD has 10-8 offsuit. Flop comes down 6-7-8 rainbow giving me the low pair with an open ended straight draw, and giving TD top pair with a gutshot. If either of us two-pairs, the other one straights. Sure enough, when the river comes down it's a ten and my straight draw hits giving me a very nice pot much to the dismay of TD.

3): Again, I have 6-9 of spades and Crazy Joe raises $1 while Mr. Hand re-raises another dollar. That didn't seem all too strong of a raise from Mr. Hand, and with Joe a raise can mean anything so I just looked at it as a one dollar raise from Hand and a mystery raise from Joe. Flop comes down 6-4-9 with the 4 and 9 being hearts. I flopped the top two pair and felt as if I was in a strong position. I bet hard, Joe raises hard, and Hand calls all the way. So Mr. Hand must have had a great pocket pair and Joe must have had two cards. The pot was huge and Joe was all in praying for a heart. On the turn, a heart hit which gave Joe a flush and a chance to win a huge pot. There was a tiny side pot which Mr. Hand and I both checked...... until the river. The river came as the case 6 giving me a full house and the entire pot. A good $30 pot I'd say. My 6's full of 9's took down everything and Joe sat there stunned. At this point, I too could not believe the luck that I was getting. It was a strange feeling. I didn't feel bad, but I didn't feel happy. I could actually say that I almost felt embarassed because every hand I had was turning up gold.

4): I get pocket tens again and go heads up versus Joe. Flop comes down Jack-Ten-Crap with two clubs. I bet my trips quite strongly and Joe ponders calling. With the way things had been going for me, I just said "Joe, I've got trips. Do you really want to try and suck out? You can still beat me, but it may be hard". Joe then mucks his hand as I show my trip tens.

5): VERY next hand, I look down and get pocket tens once more. Betting ensues and my tens hold up to take down yet another pot.

6): I have pocket 9's and make a moderate pre-flop bet. Crazy Joe and Mr. Hand call. The flop comes down 9-5-x giving me top set even though there were two clubs there. Joe bets 4, Mr. Hand raises 4, and I re-raise another 4. Pot is getting gigantic at this point. The turn comes as a blank, and this time the betting is stopped at my initial four dollar bet as nobody wanted to re-raise. River is once more a blank and four more dollars go in. Joe turns over a failed flush draw, I turn over my pocket 9's to show trip 9's and Mr. Hand becomes ill as he mucked his hand which were pocket fives. I take down another huge pot.

7): I have pocket sevens and go in against a group of people as I didn't raise pre-flop. Flop comes down 7-4-Q of clubs. Yeah I flopped trips, again, but the flush draw was very not nice. Knowing that I'd get called by anyone with a club, I only bet a buck as I felt as though it would be nice to juice the pot if my hand holds up, and would be easy to say 'buh-bye' too if the club came. Everybody called. The turn came down as another queen and now the flush was no longer a worry. I begin to increase my betting and actually got some minor raising from others. NICE. :-) The river came down as yet another club. Now more betting ensues and I re-raise a tiny bit so as not to scare people away. KK turns over the ace of clubs for the nut flush, and I turn over my pocket sevens to show the full house.

Those are just 7 of the hands that I can remember. There were far more where I seemingly couldn't lose. I initially thought that I had broken the record of $185 set by Tom W. a while ago, but I miss-counted my stacks of $20 and only earned a profit of $167. Boo-freaking-hoo. ;-) Still, a good night was had and my emeraled Country was nice to see. It feels really good when everything is going your way. Funny how a few weeks ago the exact opposite was happening........

A Farewell To A Friend

2005-07-09T11:35:00.000-04:00

As any of you who read my ramblings know, Iron Mike, a poker regular, is leaving the land of CT to become a professor up at the University of Vermont. While we'd all like to see him stick around and continue to give us his money.......... err.......... play poker with us, the needs of the family far outweigh the needs of the friends so the departure is a must.

Because of this move, KK, TD, Mr. Hand, Crazy Ivan, Klacky, Crazy Joe and myself all got together to surprise Mike at his house and take him out for one last evening of fun with the guys. We all arrived at his house in Joe's "Big Red Van" and the look of shock on Mike's face was priceless. The poor guy turned redder than a heavily rubbed nipple. To say that we surprised him is an understatement. Happily, Mike got his senses together and jumped into the van amidst the tropical downpours we were experiencing. Into the van we all went and out to Mystic Pizza we would go.

By having a designated driver, the bulk of us were able to booze up as much as we wanted to. I, of course, began to down as much beer as possible. :-) At Mystic Pizza I was able to consume about 4 full glasses of beer and three slices of pizza. The warmth was coming over me, and now it was just time to decide what to do next. The original plans were to go out to a bowling alley and get completely drunk while bowling. Crazy Ivan, however, has a bad back and Mr. Hand had knee surgery in the past ten years, so neither of them were too keen on bowling. Mike, who was a little down about this past Thursday's poker game being cancelled and not being able to make it to the game on Monday, suggested that we head back to The Vault's and play some poker. So after stopping by the packy to pick up more beer, that's exactly what we did.

We had 8 of us, we had money, and we had all the time in the world. So the poker gaming began. I'd like to tell you more about what happened, but it was at this point that I really started downing the beers. By about 11:00, I think I had a dozen or so beers in me and my mental capacities were shot. The only hand I really remember was when I called a $1.00 pre-flop raise by TD with a Queen-Ten of diamonds. The flop came down Q-Q-6 and I started betting hard while Crazy Joe was doing the same. The turn was a 2 and again I bet out hard while Joe raised/called. The river was a 9 and Joe bets out hard, I raise, he re-raises, I call and we turn them over. Joe had the nut boat with Q-9 while I just had trip queens. He was able to get one of the only 3 outs he could get to win the hand. Impressive. A big chunk of dough went his way, and all I could do was say 'nice hand' because if I were in his situation there's no way I'd be getting off of that hand either. I guess I just seem to have bad luck with trips lately. (On Monday my trip Kings lost to another trip kings with a better kicker).

After the hand, I just kind of blacked out in regards to the specifics. I know that I was playing really good poker as my chip stack was pretty big, and I know that Crazy Joe was putting up a large stack as well. I then remember heading over to the couch just to get some rest, and then passing out. lol. Whenever a drunk person says or thinks 'I'm going to take a small nap because I'm tired', it really means I'm going to lay down and not move for another 6 or 7 hours because the amount of alcohol in my blood is way too high. :-) So I passed out and was shown some nice hospitality by KK and his family. Very much appreciated. I finally regained conciousness at around quarter after 5:00 and regained my senses and drove home. I picked up the $41 in winnings I had made playing poker, went home and slept for another 5 hours or so. (As passing out really isn't sleep). A tee-time has been scheduled for a bunch of us down at Cedar Ridge today at 4:40, so my poker winnings will be used to play a round of golf.

I've been meaning to show off my poker spreadsheet for a while now, so here's my chance. Below you will see the chart of my overall winnings/losses for the year. Click on the smaller image to bring up a full sized image.

It's kind of nice being able to see how my bankroll has changed throughout the year. It's quite obvious that I was not playing well in the beginning of the year as the amount in red was pretty staggering. Then an epiphanny of sorts happened in March as I started to play better poker and my winnings went through the roof. Getting good cards in addition to the good play also helped big time. Recently, there have been some statistical 'evening out', but my winnings are still improving. I'm very happy that I began to keep track of my poker play via a spreadsheet. Microsoft Excel can be a huge help. If you click on this link, you'll be able to download the entire spreadsheet and see the numbers behind the chart. Enjoy!

Oh Good Lord I LOVE Golf!

2005-07-05T21:31:00.000-04:00

Today had to be one of the greatest days of my recent life. After getting burned to a crisp out on the course at Cedar Ridge yesterday, I was hesitant about going out and golfing after work today. However, I ended yesterday on such a good note that I wanted to try out the course I usually play at, Birch Plains, today. So I gave Crazy Ivan a call and he agreed to meet me there at about 5:00. I arrived at the course a bit early, but CI was already there. He was talking to the guys who run the place, and they've gotten to know him since he's constantly there. As a result, they said 'Why don't you guys hit a bucket of balls while you wait?' (CI's son Mike was scheduled to join us as well). So they gave us a large bucket of balls and I got to warm up by trying out my drivers. Today they didn't feel as 'right' in my hands as they did yesterday, so it took me a while to grow used to them. Finally, I just stopped as I didn't want to fatigue myself and I wasn't confident that I had my 'driver swing' today. I was just hoping that my 'iron swing' was still there.

Mike then arrived as we finished the bucket, and we headed off to the tee. My first shot was pretty nice, but it came up short as I was a bit tentative. I still managed to use my pitching wedge to get me up to the edge of the green, and a simple two-putt later and I was in for 4. (If I was used to the slow greens, I'd have parred the hole). Then came hole number 2. It's a longer hole (170 yards) so it can cause a bit of trouble. My tee shot wasn't that great, and neither were my iron shots. I was a bit too far from the ball at address and this was resulting in some bad shots. As a result, it took me five shots to get to the fringe of the green a good distance away from the hole. I wasn't too happy about this, but my ball was lying on top of the grass fringe and in a direct line to the hole. I put some 'oomph' into the put and the ball rolled right into the hole. I sunk it for a 6 when the hole was looking to be a 7 or an 8 for me. Plus, it didn't count as a putt since it was not lying on the green. (I only count strikes as putts if they are lying on the green. The long fringe grass is not the green, so I don't count it). I continued on and consistantly shot a 6 on each hole until hole number 6 where I returned to the sub-six level. Even better was hole number 8 where I managed a par thanks to a long put which I had sunk.

On the front nine, I was able to make the quick adjustment with my iron swings to get the distance and loft I was looking for, and my pitching wedge was my best friend. I really figured out how to get the right distance with it, and I kept chipping the ball right near the hole from a variety of distances. When I need to give it some gusto, I was able to do that as well and get some nice height to my shots. I REALLY felt great with my pitching wedge, so all I needed on the tees were decent drives. I also was at one with my putter on the front nine as I used a TOTAL of 14 putts on those nine holes. Below is how my scorecard looked on the front nine: (Hole, yards, score, putts)

1(107): 4-2
2(170): 6-0
3(148): 6-2
4(228): 6-2
5(206): 6-2
6(124): 4-2
7(113): 5-1
8(137): 3-1
9(129): 5-2
Totals: 45-14

So a 45 on the front 9 with only 14 putts. I couldn't believe it. I felt GREAT and my swing was working just how I wanted it to. I could still use some work on my power and my aiming, but overall I was very impressed.

Now we set out on the back 9 where my putting kind of dissapeared. In the end, this loss of my putting ability is what really hurt me, as I probably could have shaved three or four strokes off my game if I just made my putts. I'm not sure if it was fatigue or lack of concentration, but that part of the game slowly went away. Still, my driving was okay and my short game with the pitching wedge was amazing. I've never had that much confidence in a club before. I still had my little 'yip' on hole 17, and as a result I played the hole from the opposite side of the tree-line yet still managed to wind up with a 6. Again, my pitching wedge helped me there as I was able to move out of the sand-trap by the second green. lol. (I probably should have just dropped back on the 17th hole's 'fairway', but I don't think it would have altered my score). So here's my back 9 score:

10(105): 5-3
11(187): 4-1
12(108): 5-2
13(147): 5-3
14(136): 5-2
15(164): 5-2
16(150): 6-2
17(155): 6-2
18(156): 4-2
Totals: 45-19

Final score: 90-33!

I shot a 45 on the front nine thanks to some great putting, and a 45 on the back nine thanks to some improved driving. I simply cannot believe this score! A FREAKING 90! In fact, my back 9 score of 45 actually beat Crazy Ivan's score of 47. Overall, his 81 had me beat, but when I first started playing golf and was averaging a 140 for total score, who would have thought that I could finish with a 90? My worst score for this game was a 6 on a few holes, but I had a lot of bogey and double-bogey holes. I was consistant, and I was doing well. I am so happy with myself and look forward to the next few years as I learn more and more about this game. (So for the day I averaged a score of 5 on each hole, and I putted an average of 1.83 times each hole. Basically, I had three driver shots and two putts on each hole. I played double-bogey golf!) :-)

When Poker Thinks It's A Yo-Yo....

2005-07-05T08:10:00.000-04:00

Last night was quite interesting. For the first time in ages, I played a round of poker without drinking any beer. I think this past Sunday I met my beer quota for the next few days as my body was still recovering from the overconsumption. (By the way KK, thanks for the invite to the party). Earlier in the day I went outside to play a round of golf down at Cedar Ridge and shot a 98, which is the best that I have ever shot. Even more impressive is that my back nine score was an improvement over my front nine, and the back nine at Cedar Ridge is far more difficult than the front. Anyway, I had forgotten to cover my scalp when out golfing, and as a result I now have a very painful sunburn on my scalp. The burn actually made me feel a bit nauseous, but I wasn't sure if that was leftover hangover, or illness from the bad burn. As a result, I took some water and Ibuprofen and concentrated on cards.

The poker god didn't seem to helping or hurting any one person throughout the night. They seemed to be moving around to random places as people would have massive chipstacks, then lose most of it, then gain it all back, then lose it, etc. etc. (Actually, I take that back. At the midway point of the evening the gods decided to shit on Tom W. as the guy was getting fucked left and right by bad cards or lack of cards). Early in the night, however, Crazy Joe set the stage with what I would consider one of the best bluffs we've seen.

Some craziness was going on with the betting, but nothing too severe. Joe made his standard $2 raise and I looked down to see K-J offsuit. It looked good to me and Klacky was obviously going to fold, so I figured it would be nice to see heads-up. The flop comes down and I completely miss it, but I bet out a few bucks anyway in order to show strength. Joe then raises a few bucks. At this point in the evening, however, a raise from Joe really doesn't mean all that much as he's trying to get a feel for the table as much as you are. As far as I was concerned, Joe could still be beat as he may not have anything, but again it was too early for me to be sure. So the turn and river come down as apparent blanks, although after the river only one card was needed to make a straight. My king and jack were both left without pairs. At this point, Crazy Joe bets out the maximum $4. Now here's where I really have to think. The entire time I was betting out strongly Joe was calling and/or raising. Now at the end where just one card makes a straight, he's betting hard. I have no pair, and if he just has a naked ace he wins the pot. If he has any of the cards sitting there on the board, he wins the pot. If he has pocket twos, he wins the pot. The number of hands where I'm beat were fairly high, and although the pot was big I just wasn't confident than my king high would stand up. After much thinking, I go and fold my two cards and Joe flips over a 10-2 of hearts. Joe was able to bluff me out of a big pot, but since it was early it didn't really bother me much at all. I just knew that if the right situation came up, knowing that he would be willing to bluff that much money could be a huge financial gain for many. ;-) (Nice bluff Joe.)

As the night went on, I saw a few more hands that were good to me and I got an average payoff for them. Pocket Jacks earned me a nice profit, as did my pocket queens when they held up. Pocket tens visited me a few times, and if memory serves me right they held up also and paid nicely. Where I was getting beat was when my kicker was being bitch-slapped and a nice hand was going down. This happened when Mr. Hand casually played his Ace-King versus my King-Queen and two Kings happened to fall on the board. Of course I didn't think he's have the final king, let alone an ace to go with it, so I bet out and he calls down to the end where I smartly decided not to re-raise his bet. (Something seemed fishy when he bet out strongly for the first time when a three fell on the turn. I then wondered if he had King-3 perhaps, or maybe even pocket 3's?) With that 'fear', I just called his bet and saw that his A-K took me down. Meanwhile, Klacky was desperately trying to get me to emotionally explode, but it just wasn't going to happen. I just don't do that any more as what point does going 'KABOOM' have besides making me look foolish? I have more fun watching you try everything you can to make me go boom. :-)

Now we can mention poor Tom W. Earlier on I mentioned that nobody was getting fucked by the poker gods, but at the end of the evening W was just getting ripped. He had pocket kings, which when you're getting shit all night look like piles of gold, while Klacky had himself some pocket aces. HEAVY betting ensued, and when all was said and done Klacky took down a massive pot as the aces held up and W. was cleaned out. However, that's not the worst of it. Later on W bought in for another 20 to play a bit more. He got himself some pocket queens while I had pocket jacks and Joe was betting like crazy. Thankfully for W, his queens held up and he took home a nice pot. This allowed him to get all his money into a hand versus Joe where Joe had Queen-x and W had K-crap I believe. The flop comes down queen-crap-crap. Joe has his queens and W now has to rely on one of the three kings remaining in the deck. Klacky deals the turn and there is a king. W now was in a huge position to win as his king trumped the queen and now Joe had to rely on his kicker pairing or another queen falling. W is in glee knowing that he can stick around for a while longer, but then the inevitable happened; Klacky rivered a queen and Joe now had trips and W was done. Simply brutal.

Overall, it was an interesting night. I was in the black $5, KK earned himself $6, Klacky had a black reading of about $57, and Mr. Hand took down approximately $36. Therefore, the only two people who were unable to bring home money were Crazy Joe and W. Hard to believe that Crazy Joe could be down $44 for the evening after the way his chip stack was burgeoning like it was earlier in the night. Perhaps he should have had his son with him for an extended period? ;-)

Fun On The Fourth Of July.

2005-06-30T12:08:00.000-04:00

Ahhhh. The 4th of July. A holiday here in America where it is commonplace to become incredibly drunk and blow shit up. A holiday where people who work in an ER really get their money's worth as they deal with the firework concoctions gone wrong, the 3rd degree sunburns, the food poisoning from poorly cooked meals, and the hundreds of thousands of people who think that because it's the 4th of July they can't physical get alcohol poisoning. For me, the 4th of July is a great day because it's the one day of the year in which you can blow something up and not attract unwanted attention. On most days, if there's a loud KABOOM! on your property, people will come running over and/or call the cops. On the 4th of July, if there's a loud KABOOM! people will wait to see if there is any screaming, and then continue on their way. God Bless America. :-) This means that this coming weekend I need to decide on how I'm going to celebrate our independance by blowing apart a small chunk of our country.

Now before I get going on what I plan on doing, I should just state that ANY type of explosive is inherently dangerous. There is no such thing as a 'safe' explosive. If it was safe and wasn't in danger of going KABOOM, then it wouldn't be a good explosive. An explosive compound must have some stability, but overall be inherently unstable so that it can transfer its energy into a great deal of heat, light, and sound. Also, the chemicals used to make these compounds are generally never very nice and the whole process of making the stuff, if it doesn't prematurely explode and kill you, can make you very ill and/or kill you in and of itself. (This is particularly true with metal fulminates and fulminic acid). There's also the part about explosive compounds being illegal. Heh. The stuff I do is on a teency-tiny scale for numerous reasons; One is that the chemicals themselves aren't dirt cheap or a piece of cake to get. Two is that too much of it doesn't provide any more thrill and just increases the dangers at an exponential rate. Three, and most importantly, is that as these experiments are scaled up the associated dangers increase at an alarming rate. So I just want to state that if anybody even tries to duplicate what I'm talking about in this blog, make sure you know what you're doing.

In the past years of my life I've had quite the bit of fun on the 4th of july. I generally do the simple things as I don't want to have to put too much time an effort into an experiment just to make something fun. The really simple ones are just throwing large chunks of alkali metals into water. (Generally sodium is used as it's much cheaper and easier to get than potassium, although potassium has a really neat looking lilac flame when it goes KABOOM!). This is always a thrill and is always nervewracking as well since the molten sodium metal can be flung quite far from the water and you never exactly know when it is going to go BLAMMO!

The other quick and easy 'KABLAMMO' experiment is making gunpowder. Just get some potassium nitrate and grind it into a very fine powder in a ball mill. So fine that it looks like powdered sugar. Then you do the same with some sulfur and some charcoal. Finally, you mix them all together so that the components are intimately mixed. The finall mixture is a black powder which we all know as gunpowder. If you confine it into a small paper-mache ball and ignite it from a nice far distance, you get a nice little bang and the lovely smell of a freshly fired gun. If you just put a trail of the stuff on the ground leading to a bigger pile, you can light one end and watch the fire trail move towards the bigger pile where it will suddenly ignite with a nice little display of smoke and sound. A nice simple thing to do, but still not as impressive as my next item.

Nitrogen Triiodide monoamine. What a lovely little compound which, even though it has been known about for centuries, is not really 100% defined. However it is defined really doesn't matter. The fact that it will explode violently into a cloud of purple iodine vapor if you so much as fart anywhere close to it is what is impressive. Nitrogen triiodide is a trihalide compound of nitrogen. NF3, NCl3, NBr3 are analagous compounds with NCl3 and NBr3 being very unstable explosives. The trend amongst the group is that the further down in the column you go, the less stable the trihalide is. This property is quite true as nitrogen trifluoride is actually a pretty stable compound that will not explode at all. NCl3 is a very unstable compound which will readily explode if slightly provoked. NBr3 is so unstable that it almost doesn't exist. If it forms, it immediately decomposes so you never really have any of it hanging around. By this trend, NI3 shouldn't even exist at all. The instability of the nitrogen trihalides is mainly focused on the fact that the halogen atoms are so much bigger than the nitrogen atom that they have a hard time remaining bonded to the nitrogen. This would explain the loss of stability as you move down the group and why NF3 is so stable. (The fluorine atom is a tiny little bugger). But then why does NI3 even exist? It's not really known why it is able to exist, but the fact that it is completely stable when in an ammonia solution makes one believe that the surrounding ammonia molecules are able to provide some type of thermodynamic stability to the compound. Remove the ammonia by allowing the triiodide to dry, and you have a frighteningly sensitive high explosive.

So how do you make this nitrogen triiodide stuff? I had been asking that question for years when I first found out about it by watching the cheesy 1980's movie 'The Manhattan Project'. (In the movie it was used as a practical joke on the class dork). I went online and read a bunch of sites claiming how to make it, but based on the other shit they were talking about, I doubt they knew how to make water from ice. So instead I hit the library and looked through some chemistry demonstration books. It was in those books that I found out how to make it.

Nitrogen triiodide is made from a reaction between aqueous ammonia, elemental iodine, and iodide ions. The iodide ions are present to help the iodine dissolve in a solution of water and to help it chemically react with the ammonia. You let this mixture sit for a while and pretty soon the red-brown-purple solid will settle at the bottom of the vessel. Filter the solution through some paper towels and be sure to rinse all the crystals out of the vessel. Let the powder dry where you want to detonate it, and once it's dry any little movement of air around the crystals will make them explode violently and loudly into iodine vapor, ammonia vapor, and nitrogen gas. For every molecule of NI3*NH3 you wind up getting half a molecule of nitrogen, 1.5 molecules of iodine, and one of ammonia. When properly balanced, one solid molecule of NI3*NH3 will give you 1 molecule of N2, 3 molecules of I2, and 2 molecules of NH3. So you get 3 times as much gas as you do starting solid. This is a high explosive my friends. :-)

In order to make NI3, this is what I have done in the past and will hopefully be able to do this weekend and get some pictures of it. I have plenty of iodine from my element collection, but no ammonia or iodide salts. I have plenty of sodium metal, so I can just make sodium iodide from the iodine and sodium. The ammonia is easy to get from a grocery store. The first thing to do is concentrate your ammonia. The more concentrated the ammonia is, the faster the reaction proceeds and the greater your yield. So take some of the clear ammonia you got from the grocery store and place it in a bottle with a narrow opening. On this opening, attach a teflon lined tube into another small container with a little bit of water in there. Now heat pretty strongly the bottle with the ammonia solution. You'll drive the ammonia out of the solution and it will be forced into the other container with the little bit of water in there. (Ammonia EASILY dissolves in water, so when it gets into the other container it will quickly dissolve). Keep heating this for a good while, and pretty soon the majority of the ammonia will escape the original ~5% solution and concentrate a great deal in the tiny bit of water in the other bottle. Just be careful with your concentrated ammonia because it stinks really bad and is quite corrosive.

Now it's time to make some sodium iodide. Take a spoonful of iodine crystals and place them into a heat resistant, wooden or plastic bowl. Now take a small piece of sodium metal out of the oil it's stored in and carefully remove the oil and oxidation from all four side. Quickly put this tiny piece of sodium into the pile of iodine and cover it completely. Using a torch, ignite the pile of sodium/iodine. It should immediately flare up and the iodine will vaporize into a caustic purple vapor. Make sure you do this in a small quantity, as not much NaI will be needed and you don't want the reaction to get out of hand and throw your NaI all over the place. When all the reaction is done, there should be white crystals mixed in amongst the unused iodine in your reaction vessel. Collect all these crystals and scrape them into the jar holding your concentrated ammonia. Now throw some iodine into the ammonia solution. About half a teaspoon full should be plenty. Mix it around and let it react for a while. After about fifteen minutes, filter this solution with plenty of water through some paper towels or a coffee filter. Make sure you are upwind of the fumes and wearing safety goggles and gloves. You don't want any of this getting on you.

Take your wet filter paper filled with the dark crystals to the area you want to detonate this in. Something in the sunlight is preferable. When it dries, just throw a rock anywhere near it from a good distance away, and KABOOM! The entire pile will violently explode with a loud bang and a huge cloud of purple vapor. :-) It's really a sight to see. I hope to be able to take some pictures of the explosion if the weather is dry enough. You need dry weather for this otherwise it will take forever for the pile to dry, and the sodium will be hard to work with in humid weather.

Re-inacting the Retard..............

2005-06-27T23:12:00.000-04:00

It happens every now and then. Something distracts our brain and we get sidetracked from the task at hand. Most of the time, this little momentary lapse of 'normalcy' doesn't harm anyone. Sometimes, however, it can cause severe injury to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. If this 'lapse' happens while driving, people's lives can be ruined forever. If it happens while dealing cards in Texas Hold'Em, someone's full house can get whisked away thanks to a deal gone horribly wrong. We'll get into that later....... (Even for my standards, this blog will probably be quite long. Hope you've used the bathroom and have your coffee with you).

The night began as I arrived at The Vault's residence. I entered the poker room to the heavy, hot air that was slowly trying to be cooled off. The poker table was set up, but the chips were nowhere and the room was eerily quiet. KK must have been taking his poker nap, so I just grabbed myself a beer and admired all the spa chemicals that were laying around the room. (What can I say? Chemicals fascinate me). I could have gone around looking for Kirk, but walking around a dark, quiet house of somebody else is just not smart. I'll let him wake up and greet the guests. The next person to arrive was Mr. Hand. He walked in with a new supply of Triple Sec and Sour Mix to create the marvelous concoction known as a Long Island Iced Tea. While the old gangsters would drink Manhattan's while playing cards, Mr. Hand is ushering in the new era of the LIT. (The abbreviation is a-pro-po as after having three or four of them, you WILL become LIT. hehe). Once Mr. Hand shows up, KK awakes and begins to count out chips. Soon thereafter, Crazy Joe D and Tom W. arrive as well. With 5 people at the table, poker night can begin. First, however, we were commandeered to help KK move his hot-tub around on his back deck. The thing is quite heavy, but with 5 of us there to turn it 90 degrees it wasn't very difficult to do. So the table was turned, the money was collected, and the evening to remember (or forget) began.

For myself, the first two cars I saw were junk so even I folded them. Crazy Joe and some other unidentified players remained in the pot. I do not recall the details of the hand, but Crazy Joe wound up taking it down. He proceeded to exclaim about how good his night was going as he had won the first hand. I was quick to caution him, however, about how last Monday I won the first hand of the evening with my AK only to lose a massive number of hands as the night went along and wound up donating $110 to the table. Joe did not feel the same would happen to him, but those poker gods have a weird sense of humor I tell you. The next hand is dealt and I'm under the gun. I look down and see King crap so I fold the shit into the muck pile. I haven't had to put any money in there yet, so it's not that big of a deal to muck this shit. W. calls and eventually the action gets around to Joe in the big blind. Oddly enough, Joe didn't raise. Strange. The flop came down as something awkward like 2-4-A. Joe bets out, W. calls. The turn is a blank. Joe bets out strong, W. calls. The river comes down as another blank, and Joe bets strongly and W. calls without hesitation. W. turns over a 2-4 and Joe just exclaims frustration as he mucked his cards. A big hand that took away from his chip stack. Sadly for Joe, that was only the beginning.

The very next hand I look down to see 3-5 offsuit. Nothing special, but I'm in the big blind so hopefully nobody will raise. Thankfully, nobody raised and I was able to see the flop. The flop was a rainbow 4-6-9 giving me an open ended straight draw. Joe bets and I call. (I don't remember if other people were involved). The turn comes down as a 7 giving me the straight 3-4-5-6-7. Joe bets, I raise, Joe calls. The river is a blank and Joe checks it to me. I bet out and Joe calls. I turn over my 3-5 and take down the pot as Joe is frustrated once more and throws his cards in the middle; shocked that a 2-4 and then a 3-5 could beat him. (Man that just reeks of brutal irony). Once again, my friends, this wasn't the last time that Joe got crushed.

The very next hand, I'm in the small blind position with Joe dealing and I see A-10 of diamonds. A very nice hand in my opinion all depending on what the flop does for me. It's called around to me and I juice the pot a little bit and get some callers, Joe included. The flop comes out with K(diamonds) - 5(diamonds) - X (something). So there were two diamonds on the flop and I had an overcard to the King. I bet two dollars to get some information and possibly a steal, and everybody folds to Joe who raises me two. That tells me that he either has a King, or two diamonds as well. I call and the turn is the Ace of clubs. If Joe was on either of the hands I put him on, I win. So I bet strongly and this time Joe just calls. The river then falls as the 8 of diamonds. Now I have the nut flush and cannot lose this hand. I bet out strongly and Joe calls. I turn over my flush, Joe lets out some anguish and the pot is mine once more. My chip stack was very healthy at this point and Joe was buying in.......... again.

By this point I think the table was filled with Iron Mike, Klacky, and Tom D arriving to the table. Joe was steaming a little bit from the losses, and the aggression he typically shows was pushed back as his funding was severely running low. He could no longer call any raise, or raise just for the hell of it. He had to have legitimate hands in order to bump up the pots. This made him a tiny bit easier to read, and was very helpful in terms of information. It was at this point that I started to see my pocket pairs. Good ones at that. (10's or higher). This was also when I began to foolishly throw away the money I had earned earlier in the night. The cards were dealt and I looked down to see K-10 of spades. There is some raising, not to strongly, and I call as does quite a few other participants. The flop comes down with two spades and an ace on the board. The Vault immediately goes into 'call this and die you fucking bitch' mode and bets four dollars. Everybody calls which happily and sadly gives me great odds to call out my draw with. The turn comes as a blank, and the obligatory four goes into the massive pot. (At this point, betting strongly to get people out is just useless as nobody who had a legitimate reason for being in the pot up to this point should be folding). Most everybody folds (??!!!!!) except me as what I had stated earlier applied to me. The river was the King of clubs so my flush draw failed but my king did hit. At this point it's a 50-50 proposition on whether or not I have the winning hand, so I just check call here. Kirk did have an Ace and he took down the pot. Even though I gave away a LOT of money on that hand, the pot odds and implied odds for me high enough to force me to call. If it was just heads up from the get-go, then four bucks would have been too much and I'd have had to have folded.

The next hand that drained my account was when I was unfortunate enough to have four tits in my hole cards while KK had his aces. Of course I raise, he re-raises giving me information that my queens might be dead, and I retardedly call. (I pulled a Justin). The flop comes down as garbage with a Jack being the highest card. I bet out, KK does the 'get the fuck out' four, and I call like a retard. The turn is crap, and the same betting pattern ensues. The river is paint, which makes me really happy for a brief moment, until I see that it is a King. KK bets again and I foolishly call even though I'm absolutely sure that I'm dead. Sure enough, I lose the hand and the Vault has a MASSIVE stack of chips. (A couple of Emerald Cities there, and the chip bank was nearly empty).

At this period in time, I slowly see my initial buy-in of $20 eroding away to about five bucks. I simply cannot believe that my massive stack had been fluttered away on two foolish hands. I relax, take a deep breath and tell myself to just play smart poker and everything will turn out alright. Thankfully that was correct as I slowly built my chips back up at the expense of Joe D. (Good lord was I his kryptonite. He just could not beat me all night long). By now, Joe was borrowing from Klacky to get more chips with which to play, and setting a record by having bought in for at LEAST $130. WOW! So I'm building my chipstack back up when I come across pocket 10's. I play these strong and get married to them in a bad way. I'm heads up against Iron Mike and the flop comes down A-J-Crap. I bet strong, Mike calls. The turn and river were inconsequential, and Mike was calling my bets the whole time as I was doing to his bets. The showdown happens and I show my 10's while he shows his Queens. We BOTH played the hands absolutely wrong, but when two people play hands horribly wrong the person with the better starting hand will win. Mike takes down the pot and begins to spout out some random logic about why he was making the calls. The logic really didn't hold up and was just funny to hear. The funniest part, however, was when KK said 'You just used Justin logic'. I started laughing along with the rest of the table, and Mike turned bright red and just hung his head. Ya see, before I really learned the game of poker I used some of the most fucked up logic on Earth to try and explain why I played in such retarded ways. 'But they were suited' was the most popular one as I would chase every flush draw to the end. It wasn't until I learned how to actually play the game that these false paths of logic changed. (Mostly due to a low flush being crushed by a higher one and me losing a ton of money. I then realized that just relying on a flush won't work. You need to at least be able to make a pair that will hold up). My other false logic was holding onto pocket pairs no matter what is on the board. Now I tend to do that only when the pot odds say it's ok, or when I am attempting a semi-bluff. So Mike took the hand and his pride was taken by everyone. hehehehehe.

Over the past few weeks (About 8 to be exact) I had not seen pocket aces once. Sure I'd seen them in other people's hands as they were taking down my chips, but I had not looked down to see AA in my own hole cards. Finally, last night I looked into my cards and saw AA. Immediately I became a bit nervous as I was truly afraid that they might get cracked. However, I told myself that I'd be fucking stupid to worry about all that and went and played them like I should. I raised two dollars expecting to get one or two people to call. Instead, four or five people called! That is NOT what I wanted, as the more people there are in the hand, the greater the chance of my aces being crushed. So everybody called and the flop came down pretty meaningless with one piece of paint on there. I bet strongly each and every time and get called every step of the way until the river, where the one remaining person finally says 'okay, you've got it'. I then show my aces and take down a huge pot. It wound up helping that I got all those callers, but it still had me a bit nervous. Strangely enough, later on in the evening I got pocket aces again! Talk about feast or famine. This time I raise 3 bucks so as not to be predictable, and I get a bunch of callers again! WHAT THE FUCK?! Once more, however, things turned out alright for me as the flop came down A-2-5 rainbow. I had nut trips, and with the strong betting there was no way someone was going to be in this pot on a low flush draw. Again, my AA paid me off very well and my chip stack continued to grow.

As the night went on, my chips continually got better as pocket pairs were holding up, and semi-bluff attempts into me never panned out. I was able to take down pots with strong betting and players not confident in their hands, and overall I just played good poker and got some good cards as well. The Vault, meanwhile, was slowly being drained away as he caught a nasty case of 'second best' syndrome. The condition no poker player wants to be in; catching good cards only to have them be second best at the end of the hand. Being involved with a handful of those will surely screw up your chip stack and mess with your psyche as well. Perhaps this explains what happened next with The Vault.

Klacky and Iron Mike were involved in a hand with Kirk as the dealer. I don't recall the exact betting specifics, but I know that it was heads up between Iron Mike and Klacky and the pot was HUGE. (Probably about a 30 dollar pot at the end). The flop is seen by the two of them and it is J-9-4 all diamonds. Klacky bets it and Mike calls. The turn is the 9 of clubs. Klacky thinks for a little bit and then bets $4.00. Inexplicably, Kirk then proceeds to burn and turn and puts the river Jack on the board before Mike even had a second to decide whether or not to call Klacky's bet. I mean, as soon as Klacky put chips into the pot the river card was shown. Everybody exclaims 'woah, woah. Wait a minute there Kirk'. Mike puts his money into the pot as Kirk says 'The Jack is the burn card too' and proceeds to put down a 5 of clubs. Klacky fires four bucks again and Mike calls. Klacky turns over A-8 of diamonds showing that he flopped the nut flush. Mike shows a 9-something winding up with trip 9's. Had The Vault waited until Mike had made his decision, the Jack would have come on the river giving Mike the full house which would have taken down the entire pot. Because of the overanxious deal, Mike lost the entire pot and a good deal of money. I will give Mike a lot of credit, however, as he took the loss quite well and didn't start calling people names or getting angry at the dealer. He just became quite sullen and visibly not happy that his winning hand was nullified. If there was a small wait, Mike could have perhaps said 'call' and then it would not have mattered. Since the river was unexpectedly turned immediately, however, he had no chance and lost it all.

I have since asked a few people who routinely play at casinos what the proper way of handling that situation would have been. In reality, the house rules overtake everything, so if the house rules were laid out saying that a card turned early is automatically burned, then that stands. Generally speaking, however, one of two things will usually happen. 1): The card remains on the table and the person who didn't get a chance to take action could either call or fold, but could not raise. 2): The hand is immediately nullified and the pot is split evenly amongst the two parties involved in the hand. Those are the actions typically used by casinos with action number 2 being the more commonly favored ruling. However, as this was KK's game he could decide what rules would take effect no matter how badly they hurt another player. (Again, to Mike's credit he didn't let it bother him too much and wound up winning some big pots later in the night. If he was all-in on that hand, however, then it truly would have been disgusting what had happened). Now Klacky wanted me to title this blog entry 'Kirk plays the role of the retard', but that's a bit mean. Sure The Vault screwed up the deal, and he admits that, but it's not like it was done intentionally. I'm sure that an apology was made at some point, as no blood was drawn and no feelings were hurt. :-)

Overall, it was a VERY fun night at the table. Nearly every pot was huge and chip stacks constantly moved up and down. W. was in for nearly everything at one point, only to make a VERY strong comeback and wind up with a good evening. Mr. Hand was VERY quiet last night as he probably wasn't catching anything in terms of cards, and when he did somebody else beat him. He bought in for another bag very late in the evening, but didn't give it away like many people (myself) have done before. Iron Mike, despite the botched hand, did very well for the evening and cashed out well in the black while Tom D, who was also pretty quiet, dropped a few dollars at the table. Joe D had the complete opposite of what he had last Monday, and the complete duplicate of what I had last Monday. He bought in for at least $130 and wound up taking about 10-15 from the table. So he contributed well over a hundred to last night's funding. Klacky did alright for himself, but I think he was down a little bit for the night. The Vault really had a rollercoaster evening with his chips. Because of the two hands he won against me, he had a HUGE chip stack in the beginning. As the night progressed, he slowly gave it back to the table. At the end of the evening, I don't recall if he was able to get most of it back or not. Still, I don't believe that he was up at the end as much as he was up at the beginning.

As for myself, it was the complete opposite of last Monday. I was getting great cards all night long, and the VAST majority of them were holding up. Draws were hitting, high pairs were holding up, two pairs were making shitty kickers golden, and aces were paying me off quite well. I still lost some big pots, but ended up the night in the black by exactly $90. I closed out the month of June in the black by about 50 dollars. One of these days I'll have to upload my poker spreadsheet for all to see. Microsoft Excel is really a neat tool to keep track of your poker winnings with.

Fuck the Bellagio..... We've got 'The Debski'.

2005-06-24T09:22:00.000-04:00

I haven't had too much profanity in my blog titles, so I figured I'd go for one today. Last night, poker returned for an evening of fun at 'The Debski'. For the first time in a long while, there was no need for a fire as the warmth from outside kept the poker room at a comfortable level. That, as well as the quantities of fermented hops and barley ingested to help warm things up. :-) After my debacle on Monday night, my goal for this past night was to win at least one dollar so that I could lower my losses for the week. I knew that there would be no way I could recover the 110 I lost on Monday, so I just tried to not focus on that and simply play a good game of poker.

The roster for last night consisted of myself, The Vault, Debski, Tight Joe G, Jay Carey, Iron Mike, and Neighbor Rich (a.k.a. 'Intoxicated ATM'). In the beginning, the table was short as only myself, Debski, The Vault, and Jay were at the table. Early on, there wasn't much hitting for anybody and really just became a game of position and willingness to bet. If you had position and a willingness to bet anything, you would win the hand. I did this a few times, and on occasion actually had something and was able to take down the pots when someone else caught something as well. With the table that short, it also became possible to play somewhat crappy cards as long as I had at least one good card. (So hands like K-x, A-x, etc. etc. as well as suited cards and legitimate connectors like 8-9 and 9-10 became playable). As more people arrived, however, that level of playability had to drop a bit as those hands just don't hold up at a big table. So I was able to build a chipstack while the cards were falling right. In retrospect, that was very important as later in the evening the cards fell all wrong for a while.

I don't remember the specifics on too many hands last night, probably because I wasn't involved in too many 'key hands' in terms of chipstack. I lost some money on a couple of failed draws, as well as a few hands where I saw a pre-flop raise and then exited the pot after the flop failed to hit. On a few occasions I did hit the flop and bet accordingly, but lost out on the turn or river. On those hands I did lose money, but I was ahead all the while when I was betting so I cannot complain very much at all. I was also happy that when I was getting reads that I was beat on the river, I was able to fold my previously 'winning' hand and avoid losing even more money. I did this a couple of times and have been really proud of myself for doing so. Avoiding those 'crying calls' can save some money. Now we can get into my first 'key hand' of the evening.

When looking at my 'key hands', I honestly feel as if 'Crazy Joe' was possessing me in regards to the eventual outcomes. On this first hand, I was in the dealer position and looked down to find 5-5 in my hand. I raised two bucks and everybody folded around to Jay Carey who looked at his cards, thought for a little bit, and proceeded to call. The flop came down 4-4-2 which is a GREAT flop for someone like me who has a low pocket pair. Carey was first to act, and he makes a bet of 3 dollars on the flop. To me, that sounded like a lot of bravado as I was fairly certain that if it took him so long to call me pre-flop that he just had two overcards and wanted to take the pot down right there. With little to no hesitation, I reacted to my read and raised him 4 dollars. As I was the one who opened up the betting pre-flop, that certainly would make him think and the only way he'd call me is if he had a really good pocket pair, or had boated on the flop. JC looked a bit disgusted by the raise and decided to muck his hand and throw it face-up in the middle. The two cards he showed were 6-6 which undoubtably beat my 5-5. He seemed a little miffed by his incorrect read, but with the information available to him and my raising pre and post flop, it was very, very, very difficult for him to make that call. (As I wanted him to think I had a high pocket pair, and if I did have a high pocket pair he was drawing almost dead). So I took down that hand and had a nice chip stack going. Then Neighbor Rich showed up.........

Generally speaking, when Rich shows up he likes to imbibe a bit and play cards. He admits that freely and willingly and has no problems if he loses. He doesn't play crazily like The Vault's neighbor Joe does, but he also tends to stick around and call bets that are placed in front of him. So if you have a good hand, you can make some money off of him. Last night, however, the cards were very fortuneate to Rich and he was catching hand after hand despite the odds against him. He was getting the miracle cards he needed in order to boat, flush, straight, trip, and come up with virtually any winning hand that is needed. Even more sneaky were that his pocket cards were low cards as well so it was hard to put him on anything. His first victim was Iron Mike, I believe, and he also took me down a few times by catching that miracle on the river. (Again, however, I was able to make some good reads and only bet when I was ahead and folded when I knew I was behind and the pot wasn't big enough to risk a call. That saved me some big bucks as many times it was the river card that saved Rich). I lost a pretty good portion of my chip stack to the river flushes and boats as my hand was in a dominating position up until that final card came down. Because of that, I made it expensive for Rich to draw but he did so anyway. I'm not going to complain about that, because if someone does that every time it will payoff for me in the long run. :-)

As the cards were going cold, I eventually lost my burgenoing chip stack and returned to a familiar territory; buying in. I could not complain about the buy-in, however, as our host for the evening had the same luck with cards that I had on Monday and was dropping money left and right. So being in $40 was not a big deal when someone sitting across from me was in for $80.

Back to my second 'key hand'. This is a hand that Joe would have simply killed for, and everything fell perfectly for me. I was against Rich heads up and knew that he's stick around due to the cards he was getting and the way the board was turning up. I looked down and happily saw my 5-5 again. The same suits, if I recall correctly, as the previous time I got pocket fives. I raised two and everybody but Rich folded pre-flop. The flop came down 6-7-9 which were all above my pocket fives, and could potentially kill me if I tripped. Still, I felt that the pocket fives were the best hand at the moment so I bet with them knowing that an 8 could help me if it fell. (Though in all seriuosness, I figured an 8 would only hurt me as then only a 10 is needed for a straight). Rich looks at his cards for a while and then calls. That immediately tells me that he had something like Ace-8 and was calling his open ended straight draw. That also told me that if I trip, I'll be in a bad position. The turn comes down and it's one of the two remaining fives. :-( I was happy to see the trips, but the happiness quickly turned to disgust as I remembered the hand that I had put Rich on. I can't recall if I bet or checked when my five came down, but Rich immediately went over 4 bucks with his hands shaking like crazy. If you couldn't tell that he straighted, then you were obviously quite blind. I now think that I had only checked when the five came down because I thought for a little bit about the size of the pot before making my decision on what to do. Calling 4 bucks would be like betting two bucks on the turn and on the river, as I knew that my hand would be made or dead when the river card came down. So unless I made my hand, there was no way in hell I could call. After thinking about that and seeing the size of the pot, I went and made my call anyway knowing that if I did make my hand Rich would pay me off quite well. I also thought that if an 8 fell down I could possibly split the pot. When making my decision, I knew that my only outs were the 3 8's, 3 7's, 3 9's, 3 6's, and 1 five giving me a total of 10 outs to win the hand, and 3 outs to just not lose the hand. Not bad really, even though I knew that I had to beat a straight in order to win. Still, the Joe D power of the fives and 8's were in my hand. Iron Mike was the dealer for this hand, and the only thing I was thinking about was the board pairing and me boating. If the board pairs, I win. Simple as that. Mike looks at the river card and says 'Uh-Oh'. When he said that, I felt great because it meant that it was a card which could only help me in the position I was in. As he started to turn the card over, I saw that the board had indeed paired. But what's this? The board paired alright, but I did NOT have a full-house. I had freaking quad fives!!! The LAST remaining five in the deck came out give me quads thanks to runner-runner fives. Joe would be in his glory if this happened for him. Calling a huge bet knowing you're behind, then getting runner runner fives in order to have a massive hand. With my quads I bet 3 bucks and Rich happily called. He turned over 8-Something and happily said 'straight'. I turned over my hand, while taking the chips, and happily said 'Quad Fives'. There was a roar at the table as nobody could have put me on quads. A boat? Yes, that's highly likely, but quads? If felt really good and was made even better by the reaction at the table. It was a good hand and kept me in a position to win for the evening.

As the evening came to a close, I caught more good cards and took down some big pots in order to wind up in the black for the evening. I bought in for 40 and took home 58 giving me a net profit of 18 bucks. With the 110 I lost on Monday, I was only down 92 bucks for the week which is not a record for me. The Vault couldn't catch a cold last night and was done after 40 bucks, while Tight Joe G dropped 20. Carey let go of 20 dollars, I think, and Debski................ well............ he was the big 'non-winner' of the night. Iron Mike took home the most cash, followed by Neighbor Rich and then myself. It was a fun night, and pocket Aces eluded me once more. It's been so long since I've seen them that I'm getting this weird feeling that when I do get them, they'll cost me a ton of money due to a vicious suck out. Oh well. If I do get the aces I'll just play them properly and deal with what happens.

An Evening Of Unfortuneate Events.........

2005-06-21T08:26:00.000-04:00

Last night was just a compilation of unfortuneate events which ate at my soul and................ what the fuck am I talking about? LAST NIGHT SUCKED MAJOR HAIRY BUG INFESTED MONKEY ASS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! There. That's better. Not much can be said by me except that I can count the number of pots I won by using only one hand. I sat down for the evening to look at AKo which held up and took me down a pot, but then I failed to see anything nice the rest of the night. With Crazy Joe at the table, no flop was going to be for fifty cents, so if my cards weren't good enough for a four dollar raise then they just weren't good enough to play. With my array of Q-2, 3-6, 4-2, 7-8, K-2, J-7 and various other pieces of poker shit, I had nothing to play with. When I did have a hand like Q-10, A-10, K-J, hands which in reality aren't that great, they looked like heavnely angels sent down from above. Of course when I played those cards Lucifer and his minions would rape those angels while holding nothing back as a sneaky straight, or a clever set, would impregnate the darlings and turn them into prostitutes of Satan himself.

As for who was playing the role of Lucifer, that cannot be stated. There was no one person taking down the pots with me involved. It was a higher power that was giving me a playable hand every now and then and of course making it 'second best' when it all counted. As difficult as it is to do, the 0.25-0.50 blinds were whittling away at my chip stack as I just couldn't get anything. If I did happen to flop the top pair, someone else had a higher pocket pair or had a higher kicker. A-A eluded me again, but with how last night was going that may be a good thing as my mental psyche would be wrought with horrific images of cherubs being slaughtered by a razor blade encrusted hand of death if those aces were found and got cracked by 10-5 offsuit. Last night was definitely not good, and while I could have cut my losses by about 50 or 60 bucks, that would mean going home early and the battle to decide whether losing my pride by leaving early or losing my money by sticking around had begun.

In the end, I decided to stick around because what the hell else was I going to do? Go home? Yeah right. At that point I was still downing my extra dry martini so there was no way I could drive anyway. I hung around like a retard at a laser light show and proceeded to donate $110 to the table. That loss kind of hurt since on my poker spreadsheet I had just hit a yearly high of $391. With last night in the books I am now down to $280. In the grand scheme of things, however, I cannot bitch. Seeing the chart I made is a bit refreshing as I can see how low I was at the beginning of the year and how I've made a comeback. In statistics there's a little thing called variance, and I think last night was a prime example of that. Having a winning year thus far has helped temper these losses as I can look at my spreadsheet and see that my wins outnumber my losses and that in the long run I am up for the year; a sign of a good poker player. All I can say about last night is that it's over and the ass-raping demons of hell have returned to their graves only to find a new victim to bend over the card table and violate in the cruelest of ways.

It's All Par For The Course...............

2005-06-17T08:19:00.000-04:00

What a night of golf last night was.......... when we were able to actually play Golf. During the day on Thursday Klacky and myself planned on going to Birch Plains to play a round of Golf after work at 5:15. Later in the day Crazy Ivan also sent out an e-mail stating that he'd be at the golf course at about the same time, so we planned on our trio going out and playing golf. When I arrived at the course, however, the parking lot was PACKED! Apparantly the course held a tourney that day which began at 3:00 p.m. and the last set of tourney players were just heading out. At the same time, a league decided to have their league play during the same time frame, so there was a major bottleneck from the get go. (It didn't help that the league players we were stuck behind weren't exactly Arnold Palmers). I arrived at around 4:45 and met Will in the parking lot. He lent me some water, a scrub brush and a towel and I was able to finally clean my clubs. I think that might have been a huge help to me as I was now able to invoke some spin on the ball thanks to the clean grooves in the club, plus I was able to see where I made contact with the ball and help correct my swing.

Klacky eventually showed up, and upon seeing the crowd just said 'no way'. He didn't feel like putting up with the slow course that evening and I don't blame him. So he just hung around while Will and I teed off and then headed home. Perhaps a Sunday gathering will be a bit better. (More expensive, but possibly faster moving). Will teed off first and just muffed the shot sending the ball not too far onto the 'fairway'. Meanwhile, I had taken some Ibuprofen before heading out in order to loosen up my stiff/sore upper back, and it was feeling just fine. I addressed the ball, took my back swing and hit a nice straight shot that landed nearly on the green. It wound up in the sand trap just to the left of the green, but an easy to chip lie. I broke out my sand wedge and chipped it up onto the green a makeable distance away from the cup. Will was having some trouble getting his swing going as the codeine for the back pain hadn't kicked in yet. When it came to putting, I muffed my par shot and wound up with a 4 for the hole. That's the best I've ever done on that first hole. Then the waiting began.

Ahead of us was a group of four, and ahead of them was another group of four. The group that was in front of us was just bad and seemed to lack the proper golf etiquette for playing on a crowded course. When balls would go out of bounds, instead of dropping the ball they'd spend forever looking for it and then try and hit it out. They be writing their score down while still standing on the green and they never seemed to have the right club with them. To top it off, they weren't very good at all as it would take them forever to make the green and then forever to putt it in. It seemed as if they were taking out a measuring tape to determine who was furtherst and who would shoot first. When the course is that crowded, you need to speed things up or let other people through. (Because of the long wait, we even had a crowd waiting behind us. When there are two groups of people waiting to tee off behind you, you need to hurry up). Sadly, because of the wait and knowing that there were people behind us, I started to rush my shots and all the good feeling I had from the initial hole went down the shitter. On holes 2 through 5, I shot a 6-7-8-7. It wasn't until hole 6 that I was able to calm down and just say 'fuck it. I'm here to golf I don't care how long people have to wait behind me'.

So on hole 6 I settled down and brought myself back down to a 5 thanks to some better drives. This set me up for hole #7. Hole 7 is a 113 yard hole that is really pretty easy as long as you don't go over the green. The green is on a hill and if you shoot it over, it's like a vertical wall in front of you and it becomes very difficult to keep it on the green. Because of the short distance, I decided to use my pitching wedge which is more like a 9.5 iron. I took one or two practice swings and felt really good. I then addressed the ball, cleared my head and took a beautiful swing of the golf club. I heard a 'whoosh....thwack' as the club hit the ball squarely and sent it soaring. I looked at the clubhead and saw contact was made right on the sweet spot. The ball took some major loft and landed right on the green. It rolled a bit towards the hole and stopped within 8 feet of the hole. I was on the green in one shot. :-) Will, unfortuneately, was not happy with all the waiting and decided to call it a night after hole 7. His back probably couldn't handle the 10 minute wait in between each hole, and overall it was just frustrating because of the group in front of us. So he said that he'd stick around to finish this hole and then be taking off. So Will took his chip shot onto the green and wound up with a 5 on the hole, I believe. (I can't honestly remember. I was too busy thinking about the shot I just took). I then went up to my ball with my putter knowing that perhaps I could birdie this hole. I lined up the shot and took my swing only to come about 1 inch short. It was frustrating, but I had a gimmie for a par. I FINALLY FUCKING MADE PAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That felt incredible. I was finally able to make par on this course. Even better is that it wouldn't be the only time.

After the hole, Will took off like he said he would and I just continued on with the group of three ladies who were playing behind us. (Now hold you thinking you dirty bastards. These were very nice women who were probably around my mother's age, so there was none of that 'business' going on. Perverts). These were nice ladies who were learning the game of golf and just wanted to take some shots. So on the 8th hole we became a quad and began to play. Just as I was about to tee off, however, a mother deer came running out of the woods along with 3 baby deer. It was kind of strange to see those animals up so close. While the ladies went 'Awwwww. How cute.' I was thinking 'Boy, if Will were still here he'd pull a crossbow out of his golf bag and we'd all be eating deer meat for dinner'. hehe. Still, it was a bit neat to see and quite unexpected. Anyway, I finished off the front nine by shooting 6's on the final two holes to wind up with a score of 52 on the front nine. This is the second stretch of 9 holes in the past week or so in which I have played great golf by my standards. Things are looking up.

Now we get to the back 9 and the infamous water hole. Hole number 10 used to own me. Every time I played this course that damned hole would take a few of my golf balls. However I have overcome the mental block and now I own this hole. I teed off and made it right in front of the green. A chip shot away. Meanwhile, I began to wonder if I was on a wildlife show because right in front of me a mother duck and 4 ducklings waddled by quacking as they walked. It was really odd to see that, especially after the deer went running by a short while earlier. I looked into the woods wondering what else would be running by there with their offspring. I finshed hole number 10 with a 4 and moved on to hole number 11 as the rain began to fall. Hole number 11 wasn't that great for me as I shot a 6 thanks to some mental screwups while driving. I took my eye off the ball and muffed a few shots which really hurt me overall. Plus, some rumbles of thunder were heard in the background which isn't good to hear when you're playing golf. So after hole 11 I told the 3 ladies that hole 12 would be my last as it was not only getting dark, but the weather was turning sour.

On hole 12 I teed off and decided to use my 8 iron on the 108 yard course. I took my swing, and just like on hole 7, made great contact as the ball went high in the air, landed just in front of the green and bounced onto the green about 20 feet away from the cup. Another great shot and another ball on the green in one shot. :-) I went up to my ball and prepared to putt as the rain started to fall pretty steadily. I took my chances and went for the birdie with the 20 foot putt. Once more, I fell about 3 inches short of the cup but had an easy tap in for par. That's my SECOND par for the evening! As the ball went in the hole, the heavens opened up and the rain poured down. That was it for me last night, but I ended on a great note. I have achieved par twice in the same game. Simply remarkable.

So yesterday I learned one important thing; it's crucial to have your back feeling good while you golf. My back felt great and my game was spectacular. I figure if the slow people weren't in front of us, I may have finished with a score right around 100 if not lower. From now on, my pregame ritual will involve cleaning my clubs and taking some Ibuprofen. :-)

A "Vaultless" Monday Night

2005-06-14T08:56:00.000-04:00

Last night we played poker minus a key component; The Vault. With KK out in northern Maine on a relaxing vacation, we perhaps saw a preview of things to come with Kirk not at the table. (Then again, last night may also have been a Carbon Copy of the tail end of the previous two Mondays. hehehe). All kidding aside, The Vault was gracious enough to allow us to use his house for our weekly poker event even though he was not there to take part in it. Don't worry Kirk, nothing burned too severely and that wet spot in the corner is NOT my fault.

The crowd last night was the typical Monday night crew with only one real change. Klacky, Iron Mike, Crazy Joe, T-W and myself were there, and we were also joined once more by College Matt who has been at the table when some of the more severe beatings have occured. (Either he was involved in the beating, or he was there to initiate it). Finally, at the end of the evening Crazy Ivan made a return to the poker room on his own self-limited bankroll which he stuck to and was able to play cards with for quite some time.

The main theme of last night was the draw. On damn near every hand there was a legitimate draw of some sort with connectors and suited cards dominating the flop. Oddly enough, nobody flushed until about halfway through the evening despite all of the tastey draws. Because of all these failed draws, there were numerous 'big pots' last night which helped people swing back and forth in terms of the profit/deficit for the evening. As for the 'big hands', there are about four of them that I distinctly remember.

1): Iron Mike Vs. Crazy Joe
This was the first hand of the night, I believe, and it didn't bode well for Crazy Joe. I can't recall if there was a lot of betting involved pre-flop, but looking back on the hand there probably was. The flop showed up with some high cards and some crap there, so both of them must have hit. Betting ensued and then the turn came down which was a 7 of diamonds, I believe. Crazy Joe had been saying that he needed a 7, so when it came he bet the living hell out of it. Iron Mike took a little bit of time and then re-raised Joe. Of course Joe went and called. On the river, a blank card came down. Joe and Mike both bet fairly hard and Joe excitedly turned over two pair (6's and 7's, I think). Meanwhile, Mike calmly turns over his cards to show the nut straight. He had basically slow played the living hell out of Joe and took almost all of his money. A HUGE hit for Joe's bankroll, and a momentum giver for Iron Mike as he had trouble losing hands for quite some time after that. (My apologies for not having any more specifics on these hands. It was the first hand of the night and I can't recall all the details).

2): College Matt Vs. Senor KABOOM!
This second memorable hand involved myself and College Matt. College Matt is what I would call an Agressive Tight player. He doesn't play a lot of crap all too often, and when he does play he's fairly aggressive. This makes it difficult to get a good read off of him and also means that you'll either lose a lot of money, or win a lot of money if you get into a hand with him. On this particular hand, I had myself an Ace-7 of clubs and was on the button while Matt was first to act, I believe. He raised the pot to $3.00 total and got everybody out but me. I thought about re-raising pre-flop, but decided that the benefits of re-raising weren't all that great compared to the risks. So the flop comes down with some high cards on there a mid-level card. Only one club showed on the flop. As expected, Matt bets a significant amount and I call. On the turn, another blank for me comes down and Matt bets again. This time, I raise a small bit to try and get a read on what he may have. If he raises me, then he probably has a pair or better and I could be drawing dead. Instead, he just calls my raise which tells me that he probably doesn't have a pair, or if he does he's not very confident in it. On the river, another blank comes down and Matt thinks for a little bit and checks. I then bet $4.00. A look of disgust shows on Matt's face and he decides that the $4.00 is too much to call and he mucks his hand. During all this betting, Crazy Joe kept putting me on trips or two pair and thought that I had a dominant hand. When the hand was over and I was raking in the big pot, I showed Joe my cards and he simply said 'Academy Award Caliber'. Later on in the night Matt said that he just had an ace high as well, but either way, he still seemed ill when he mucked that hand. It was a big pot and really helped me get through the cold spell I would later go through. Up until hand #4, that was the best bluff of the night.

3): Klacky Vs. Klacky
Poor Klacky had been going through a rough night. He was getting better cards than he was last Monday, but as a result he was losing a lot more money since his better cards were causing him to see flops but were not improving. (Crazy Joe was also sucking out on him pretty severely and creating some really bad beats. Funny to watch, but painful to go through). So in this particular hand I was involved in it, but in reality it was Klacky versus himself. I had myself some pocket 8's and decided just to call and not do any raising since the only other person in the hand was Klacky and he was bound to play anything above an 8 in his state of mind. The flop comes down Q-Q-7 so I felt pretty good. Klacky makes a really small bet and I call. The turn and river come down as garbage, and each time Klacky makes really small bets. (He never showed any strength at all, and thankfully I was a bit nervous about a Queen so I never bet out strongly). At the end, he turns over his pocket sevens to show that he flopped a full house, but the whole time he was exclaiming about how nervous he was that I had trip queens. I guess he thought that just by having trip queens I'd have a better full house. lol. It would have been brutally painful for him if an 8 came on the turn or river to give me a better full-house simply because he didn't bet it out strongly. So Klacky did win the hand, but that was almost as much a surprise to him as it was to the rest of the table.

4): T-W Vs. Crazy Joe Vs. College Matt.
THIS, my friends, is the bluff of the night. T-W had been on a roller coaster ride of chips and this hand here cemented him on the upswing. All night, he just could not catch a break and was losing pot after pot. Still, he remained cool, calm and collected and didn't seem to let it affect him. He'd go all-in when it was a good idea to do so and would generally come out smelling like roses. On this particular hand, T-W opened up the betting with a strong $2.00 raise pre-flop. With T-W, this generally means a good pocket pair based upon what we have seen from him in the past. Everybody folds except for College Matt and Crazy Joe. They both call the $2.00 bet. The flop comes down and there's nothing spectacular. Once again, T-W makes some strong bets and gets some caller. The same is said for the turn and the river. On the river, T-W once again bets out strongly. College Matt and Joe both state that they are going to fold and show each other their cards. Each of them had nothing but a King high. So T-W starts to take down the pot and Joe asks 'What did you have?" T-W thinks for a little bit then turns over 8-10 of hearts. He had nothing but a 10 high. Both Matt and Joe just looked stunned as the best bluff of the night was revealed. It's difficult enough to bluff out one person like I did earlier, but it's even more impressive to bluff out two people at the same time. WOW!

When the night came to a close, I found myself ahead by $48. T-W took in about $60, I think, while College Matt was cleaned out and Klacky was down by $7 or $8. (I can't recall what Mike and Joe were out). It was a good night overall and the fire didn't put a damper on anything. ;-)

That Wacky Game Of Golf.

2005-06-12T23:01:00.000-04:00

This is a sport that can just fuck with your mind like there's no tomorrow. No matter how much reading you do or how much practice you get, there will always seem to be something beyond your control that affects your game. As an example we'll look at this past Friday. Myself, KK, and Klacky all went out for a round of golf at Birch Plains. On the first hole, KK did his typical slice into the right hand trees, Klacky lost one in the trees on the left hand side, and I had a nice drive off of the tee right next to the green. Sadly, my chipping and putting skills were nowhere to be found and I wound up shooting a 5 on that hole. Still, it's the best I've ever done on the first hole and I had a REALLY good feeling about the day. Boy was I ever wrong.

As hole 2 approached, I lost everything. I couldn't make solid contact with the damned ball and each 'drive' was at most ten yards. It was taking me forever to get to the green, and when I got there I couldn't sink a put if the cup was ten feet wide. It was getting really frustrating as I kept having to write down 8 or 9 for each hole on the front nine with a 3 put at the minimum. I was disgusted with my play. I couldn't drive the ball no matter what I did; I couldn't chip the ball and put it anywhere near the cup; I couldn't putt the ball at all and was adding a lot of strokes onto the green. The frustration was really building up because I had done so well in my previous few games and had seen major improvements only to lose it all on Friday. Finally, on the 8th hole when I stood up to the tees I once again muffed it badly and the ball went a mere 8 yards in front of me. In anger, I took my 8-iron and just flung it forward not giving a damn about it. I had a 'KABOOM' moment. KK and Klacky, who each had been having struggles of their own, just laughed a bit and continued on with their play.

The funny thing is, I think all I needed was that 'KABOOM' because my second shot took me right onto the green and I wound up shooting a 5 or 6 on that hole and then one stroke better on the 9th. I had found my driving ability as well as my ability to chip the ball and putt. The bad thing is, looming ahead was the 10th hole which has become the grave of far too many of my golf balls. I have never been able to tee off there without putting it in the drink. Last time I was here, I had a good shot to start off the hole, but it was a low liner and got gobbled up in the drink. At the time, Mr. Hand said that if I had used a tee I probably would have had a beautiful shot there. Remembering that advice, I used a tee this time. THWACK! I hit a BEAUTIFUL shot that went right onto the green and landed a few feet behind it. I beat the water and yelled out in victory. I wound up with a 4 on that hole. For the rest of the back 9, I had everything. I found my chip shot and putting skills, and my drives were markedly improved. On no hole did I shoot above a 6. This was in marked contrast with my front nine where my 64 was one of the worst front 9's I've ever put together.

In the back 9, I wound up with a score of 48. The first time in my golfing life that I've ever put down less than a 50 on any 9; front or back. I totaled 18 putts as well for the back 9 which is an average of two putts per hole. Considering where I was with my first putt on the green for about 3/4 of the holes, THAT is a great score. (In fact, on back to back holes I put together 1 putts to give me scores of 4 on each hole). So in the back 9 I shot the best golf of my life to give me an overall score of 112; 6 strokes better than my previous best. About four weeks ago when I first started golfing, I put down a score of 141. I have now taken nearly 30 strokes off of my game. I can't wait to get out there again on Tuesday and/or Wednesday to see if I can carry this good play into my next game.

Monday Monday..................

2005-06-07T09:34:00.000-04:00

Well well well. It's been a little while since my last poker blog entry, so to keep things in order here I go. Yesterday was the first time that I had combined my two latest hobbies into one evening; poker and golf. After work I met up with Mr. Hand at Birch Plains golf course and we played 14 holes of golf before heading over to KK's for the Monday night poker game. On the golf course, I had one of my better days ever. On the front 9, I shot a 53 which is about 8-9 strokes lower than I typically shoot there. I had numerous 4's and had a chance to par a few times but just fudged the puts. On one hole, I had a beautiful chip shot that came within a few inches of the cup. My swings were much better throughout the front 9 and my only downfall was the mental block which exists on holes 10+11; the water holes. (I just can't seem to mentally get away from the water. Once I can quit thinking about putting a ball in the drink, I should be okay). In the end, I finished up on a good note shooting a 6-5-4 on the last three holes. The final hole was a great one for me as I had a good drive, a much better approach shot, and some solid putting to give me a 4 and put me out on a good note. I look forward to the next round of golf.

Now onto the poker. The night began in an auspicious manner for myself and KK. I had 8-J and called the pre-flop raise of $0.50 from Mr. Hand. (We later find out that he meant to raise a dollar, but forgot to put in the $0.50 call. As he didn't say 'I raise a dollar', he had to just accept the fifty cent raise). So KK calls with his 5-7 offsuit. The flop came down 8-8-6 rainbow. I felt great! I flopped trip 8's with no 'real' worry out there. I bet two bucks and got callers all around. Hmmm. Perhaps someone here had an 8 as well? The turn then comes down as a 9 giving KK a straight and myself some questions. HEAVY betting ensues and I decide to get out after putting in four bucks to call the initial round of bets, but folded when I needed another 4 or 8 bucks to see the next card. The final card is a 10 which really did nothing. More heavy betting ensues and KK turns over his straight to the ten, while Mr. Hand turns over pocket 9's. Mr. Hand took down a massive pot with 9's full of 8's and KK and myself became severely short stacked. Looking back on the hand, I wonder if perhaps I should have raised four bucks on the flop instead of two? I'm fairly certain that the four bucks would have gotten KK out of there, but I don't know if Mr. Hand would have mucked his over pair.

KK then went and bought more chips to be ready for his next possible hand, while I looked down at my stack and decided to fight with it instead of giving up. Thankfully, I was able to successfully fight and didn't have to buy in for a good while after that initial beating. I doubled up a bit and was able to keep fighting. I finally went and bought in after a particularly rough hand involving pocket 10's. I had the 10's in my hand and raised two bucks UTG. Everybody folds except the BB who calls the two bucks. The flop comes down 10-9-5 with the 10-5 being clubs. I flopped the top trips. I bet moderately ($2.00) as in reality I wanted a call there. To call 2 bucks from the bad position the BB was in, he'd have to possess a lower pocket pair than the tens, something like a J-10, K-J, Q-J, A-Q, A-10, etc. Even though I had two tens in my hand, there was a possibility that my opponent had hit the ten on the flop with a good kicker. (I ruled out AA, KK, QQ, JJ, and AK as he would have, or at least should have, raised me pre-flop with hands like those). So TD calls and in my brain I'm fairly certain that he had hit the ten and had an overcard as well. He probably put me on a pocket pair lower than the 10's so if he hit a 10 or anything higher he'd feel pretty confident. So when the turn comes as a Jack and he bets out strongly, I put him on two pair. I figured it would be very likely at this point that he played J-10 as he would have had the top pair on the flop and would feel very confident now that he has two pair, and I can guarantee you that me having trip tens was not even close to being on his mind. So I call his $4 and feel good doing it as any hand I could reasonably put him on based upon the betting thus far is inferior to mine. The river then comes down as an 8 and now just a queen is needed to straight, so suddenly I'm not feeling as hot about my hand as I did before. TD makes his standard four dollar bet which he makes when he feels he has the lead, and I call. TD then turns over KQo. It was the nut hand, but not something I would expect someone to play from that position with a raise pre-flop and a bet of 2 bucks post-flop. However, he did play that hand and his gutshot came. Ah well. It was a stumbling block in the night for me, but it didn't take me down. It just made me buy another baggy and Hellmuth over how I could flop trip tens again and once more lose out to a straight. (Last time I flopped trip tens I lost to four people who straighted on the turn).

After that buy-in, I once again came perilously close to losing all of my chips, but just decided to play a bit tighter and make sure that when my chips went in there was a high probability that they'd be coming back. Thankfully, the cards I was getting helped me out there as I took down some large pots initiated by the large stacks trying to bully me out of a pot. Thanks Mike and Joe. :-) I persevered through their betting bravado and just went with my gut instinct. I find that my gut instinct is generally correct at the poker table. It must be subtle tells that people have which aren't conciously picked up on, but subconciously my brain takes note of them and gives me that 'gut feeling'. More often than not, the feeling is right and last night it was successful again as I called Iron Mike's bluff with his pocket 8's and took down a large pot with the jack I had flopped. (Had Mike won the pot, he would have been forced to use the vacated tray that Debski left in order to store his 3rd tray full of chips!) At the end of the night I made my final push on the final hand. I looked down to see pocket 8's and just called the betting as there weren't a whole lot of people in the pot. It was just me and Joe. So the flop comes down 9-7-4 and I bet strong as does Joe. The turn comes down as a 10 and once again Joe and I both bet big. The river then falls as a blank 2 making the board 9-7-4-10-2. Now against Joe, he could have anything. He could have a 9 or a 10, or he could have straighted with something like a 6-8. However, with two 8's in my hand the chances of him having another 8 is pretty slim. So we turn over our cards when the betting ended and he shows an Ace-King while I show my pocket 8's. My pair takes down the pot and gave me an $81.00 takehome, minus the $40.00 buy-in, which equates to a nice profit of $41.00. That will pay for a couple of rounds of golf for me this week. :-)

For the rest of the crowd, Iron Mike was the big winner profitting a cool $87 I believe, while TD took home $14? Clacky just stuck around and did quite well considering how shitfilled his cards were. I believe he was down $9 for the evening. Mr. Hand, after his huge start, kind of cooled off at the end but still managed to be up for the evening. The 'donators' at the table were Crazy Joe, Tom W. who was very quiet most of the evening but when he got involved he had a monster, and The Vault. KK, shit happens. I used to take home oodles of cash on Thursdays and just squeak by on Monday, but now the opposite is happening. Sometimes you just go through stretches where lady luck is pleasuring someone else while passing herpes onto you. The best you can do is just tough out that streak and try and move through with as little damage as possible. If you were to look at my graph of poker winnings for the year, it would look like a freaky roller coaster. I plummetted down a few hundred at the start then skyrocketed up a few hundred. Lately I've just been moving up a bit, down a bit, up a bit, down a bit. It's just the way the cards come out. All you can do is hope that you don't lose too much when the bad luck is happening, and hope that you can maximize your winnings when the good luck comes back.

I'm Gooooooooooolfing In The Rain.........

2005-06-01T09:54:00.000-04:00

Last night I FINALLY had myself a good golf game. During my lunch time at work, I happened to find a website based in England which gave detailed descriptions and drawings about what a good golf swing should be and what bad golf swings look like. After reading through the lengthy descriptions and seeing all those pictures, I realized that I was doing EVERYTHING wrong. I thought that the feet were the most important part of the stance and that you had to keep your hips perfectly still. This only resulted in me swinging with only my arms and making me top the ball and miss the ball quite frequently. There was no consistancy there and the only thing that resulted from those shitty swings was a lofty score, sore wrists, and blisters on my hand. Now those problems have been corrected.

I learned that the most important part of your body in a golf swing is your left arm. (If you're a righty). The direction of the swing, some of the power of the swing, and consistancy of the swing comes out of that left arm. The right arm is just their for guidance. I read that when addressing the ball, you should hold the club straight out in front of you and you'll see your arms buckle a little bit at the elbow joints if you're holding the club properly. (Which I had already been doing. My grip was fine, but my swing was horrible). You then bring the club to the ground and you'll see how far away from the ball you need to stand. At this point, bend your knees a little bit and lean forward to give yourself good balance. Now using your left arm, you pull backwards until your chest is blocking further movment. Now your shoulders turn, your hips turn, and your left leg turns inward. This coils you all up and leaves your shoulders and hips in an 'X' position while coiling your torso and putting your weight on your back end. When doing this, you also have a very difficult time moving upwards or downwards so your swing remains in the proper path. Finally, you start bringing your left hand/arm forward and you will uncoil in the proper manner. Contact will be made with your hands out in front of the ball, and when your wrists come through the swing the most force will be placed on the ball. I tried doing this yesterday, and even though I wasn't hitting the ball as far as I would have liked, I was hitting it straight and without knocking up huge divots or skimming the top of the ball.

It was simply amazing how good I was feeling with my swings. I was getting loft and if I had the cajones to actually swing a bit harder I'd have had the distance I wanted. The best thing of all was that my shots were as straight as can be. My only reason for being off target was aiming in the wrong direction. The next time I play, I'll put a little more hutzpah into the swings and I should be able to hit the greens on my first shot. Overall I did a lot, LOT better than my previous two golfing experiences. I would have done even better if it weren't for mother nature. Ya see, after the 4th hole the skies turned dark and some rumbling could be heard in the background. I thought it could just be a car on the highway, but then the skies opened up and the rain began to fall. KK had just sliced a ball waaaaaaay to the right on the fifth hole when I began to tee up. Suddenly, to my left I see a huge bolt of lightning and an immediate 'KA-POW!' of thunder. With me holding a metal club in my hand, I quickly paid heed to the warning sirens going off on the course and hustled back to the clubhouse. It was just a passing T-Storm, but on a golf course you don't fuck with that shit. We waited and the storm went away, but the rain turned the sand traps into cement, and the lingering showers made it VERY difficult to concentrate. My first two holes after the thunderstorm were horrible and drove up my score considerably. However, I eventually came back down and played pretty solidly again. Overall, I shot a 118 which is 24 strokes better than I did my last time. When I hit the links again on Friday, I plan on doing even better..........

Improving on Golf.

2005-05-28T17:52:00.000-04:00

Improving your game of golf is something that just about everyone says they know how to do, but few can actually do that. On Friday I thought that I could improve my game of golf after a good session at the driving range earlier in the week, but in reality I was worse by 1 stroke. I started out the evening doing very well as all my muslces were loose and I was able to concentrate on my swings instead of other things. (I think my initial drive on the 1st hole kind of shocked many as it was a pretty decent shot). At the beginning, I was doing quite well and almost guaranteed myself an improvement on my previous score. However, I was also spending a LOT of time trying to fix my golf bag/cart. For some reason, the wheels would not lock into position and every ten yards or so the wheels would contract inwards and I'd have to either carry the golf bag on my back, or bend down and carry the cart at a low angle. Because of all this bending down and force exertion trying fix the bag, my lower back started to fire up on me.

I've had back spasms before and was incredibly concerned about my back going out on me and putting me out for the weekend. As a result, when taking swings I was very cautious so that I wouldn't hurt my back and I was not paying attention to what I was doing. This resulted in topped balls and drives that were lucky to go 30 yards. As a result, I went through a period of about 6 or 7 holes where my score averaged about a 9 for that set of holes. This blew up my total score and resulted in me shooting a 142 which is 1 more than my previous 141. On the 16th hole, however, I finally figured out how to get my golf bag to 'lock' the wheels and I no longer had to bend down to fix the fucker. My back loosend up a bit because of that, and my game improved a good deal on the 17th hole. I wound up with a 6 on the 17th, and a personal best 4 on the 18th. The 18th was nice for me. I had a nice, straight, good distanced drive that was about halfway to the green. My second shot was a chip shot which took me into the rough behind the green. I then chipped again and got up onto the green within about 9 feet of the cup. Finally, I had a great putt and sunk it for a 4; the best score I've ever had on a hole. (Mind you all holes at Birch Plains are par 3's). Yesterday we were also golfing with the 'golf expert' at our company who I have not played a game of golf with yet. But to put it frankly, this guy (Mr. Hand) shoots for a total score better than what I shoot through 18 holes. lol. So on hole 18, when he shot a 5 and I shot a 4, I kind of made a big deal out of me actually doing better than him on a hole. For someone like me who sucks, you have to start out with small goals. One of my goals was to do better on one hole than the resident pro does. That was accomplished. Next time I golf with someone of his caliber, my goal will be to outshoot them on two holes, then three, etc. etc. Eventually, this will result in me shooting a good game. So Jon, yes you crushed me overall in terms of score, but that hole 18 was a personal victory for me. It's nothing personal, and hopefully I'll eventually get good enough to be actual competition for you. :-)

Sometime during this coming week I'll be hitting the driving range and/or the course again to try and get some more improvement. I've read a few things about typical problems that amateurs make, and found that most of those apply to me. I'm going to try the tips I was given and see if that helps me improve. My biggest problem at the moment is that I'm swinging only with my upper body and not shifting my weight properly. Also, my hands are behind the ball at the point of contact instead of being out in front. I'm also bending my knees too much when setting up for the swing. Watching some golf on TV today, I saw that many of the 'pros' have a pretty vertical position to their legs when setting up for the swing. There's some knee bending during the backswing, but they aren't sitting there like they're on the shitter. If it wasn't so late at the moment, I'd be out at the driving range trying out some of these things. Maybe tomorrow I'll give it a try........

Short Table Hold'em

2005-05-27T08:13:00.000-04:00

Last night was a 'different' short table poker game at The Vaults. There were five people there to play cards; Myself, The Vault, College Ryan, Jay Carey, and Jason L. We all started playing cards as soon as we arrived, and frankly, I think we all played very well last night. Ryan was the main donater in the beginning of the night as he played too tight, if you can believe that. He was very easily read and very easily bet out of pots. In poker, you're not going to hit on every hand you have, so it's crucial to portray an image that makes people think you did hit, or have a very good chance of hitting. By coupling this image and the proper sized bets, you can make it VERY difficult for people to call your bets unless they have an absolute monster.

Another thing that is needed when playing cards is some type of luck. You do not want to have good cards that hit when everyone else has crap. What you need is to hit a nice hand and have someone else hit a similarly nice hand. We saw evidence of this last night on a few occasions. On one occasion Jason L had QQ, College Ryan had KK, and I believe Jay Carey had 88. Of course the KK held up as no cards higher than a 7 fell on the board, but the pot was fairly huge and it was a classic example of good cards needing other good cards. The other example of the evening was when the flop came down A-A-J. I had an A-8 in my hand, but little did I know that Jason L had A-10 in his hand. A 7 and a 9 came on the turn and river, so I was outkicked and gave up some dough. Ah well. But those hands are just proof that in order to take down a good sized pot, you need your opponent to have cards as well.

Another lesson learned last night was how to play with sub-standard cards. Face it, we're not going to hit the flop every single time so we have to make do with what we have. It's VITAL that one pays attention to their opponents betting habits on the flop and adjusts accordingly. It's also crucial that you alter your playing style a bit at times to really confuse your opponents. If they can't put you on a hand, and the board has some scare cards to it, you can probably bet and take down the pot with a good sized bet. However, this method will NOT work if you have a reputation of calling/betting with anything just for the sake of catching that miracle. If you've built up that reputation, you just need to change your playing style for a few weeks so that people won't look at you as nothing but a calling station. However, you can change this reputation as I have done that myself. A mere 8 months ago, I was pretty much the table artist as I would draw to anything and I couldn't be bet out of a pot. This was costing me money on the nights where I didn't hit my miracle, and it also prevented me from taking pots unless I did actually have the winning hand. I couldn't bet people out, and when I'd get good cards people would be able to draw out since they didn't think I was that strong. So I just tightend up quite a bit and now it's about halfway in between which is great. People still aren't sure exactly what I may be playing, but they do have to think long and hard before calling a bet or raise I have made. If they do call or raise me, then it gives me all the information that I need. At this point I just need to make good on that bit of information.

As an example for above, late in the evening last night I had a J-8 suited from the last position against The Vault who raised 0.50 from the BB. I've seen KK do that before and it almost always means a pocket pair, or high suited connectors. (AKs, KQs, etc). However, KK was being a bit more jovial after making the bet, so I then knew that he had a pocket pair and realized I was behind. However for 0.50 I'd call just to see the flop. At this point I even called KK a dirty little bastard because of his little suck out betting. He laughed and turned a bit red, so I knew the flop was good for him. (The flop being K-7-4 rainbow). So KK either had aces, queens, potentially kings, or some pocket pair higher than the 7's. He bet a dollar and I called still knowing that I was pretty much dead since my flush wasn't going to come and neither was my straight. This is the point where I should have gotten out because I had all the information I needed. Thankfully, neither a jack or an 8 came on the turn or river so I only wound up putting in a few more bucks to confirm my read. (The Vault did have kings to give him a set of kings. It hurt to see my money go away, but it felt good to get confirmation that my read was correct).

In other news, we saw a continued improvement in the play of Jay Carey, as well as a tiny little bit of inebriation. He wasn't drunk, but you could see that the alcohol was making him feel all warm and fuzzy inside. heh. (It was either the alcohol or the hot sauce that Jason L brought to the table. That hot sauce is potent stuff but has AMAZING flavor to it. The heat gets to you slowly, then lasts a while but it doesn't knock you dead like Dave's Insanity Sauce does). Carey was playing good poker last night, and when the gods are smiling on you they are smiling large. I think he flopped top two pair at least half a dozen times last night, or he was looking down to see kings, tens, or various other pocket pairs. As a result, he was the big winner going up $51 for the evening. Still, he does need improvement in some areas. He was having a very difficult time making a solid read on me last night as each time I bet or raised into him, he'd turn ghastly white and suddenly lose all confidence in his hand. Eventually, he would make a call but not one time did he feel that he was clearly the winner. Making the calls was the good part, but the path he took to get there was not. If you're going to make a call of a reraise or strong bet into you, you absolutely must have confidence in your hand. If you are lacking confidence, you will probably just do a lot of cold calling and minimize any potential winnings you might have. Plus, if you do have that poor confidence and call only to see that you are beat, it will affect your play for quite some time, and suddenly you'll be afraid of every bet on the river. Jay was fortuneate last night to avoid some scary situations on the river and have his cards stand up, but if he continues in this 'scared call' type of manner, it's not going to help him. Come on Jay, don't be afraid of me. :-)

Replay Sports Is Fucking Awesome!

2005-05-24T17:15:00.000-04:00

The title says it all. With the weather being pretty shitty, after work today I decided to go and get some golfing gear instead of hitting the driving range. I had never been to Replay Sports before, but I figured that if I'm going to just go and get gear I shouldn't spend more money than I need to. I don't need some fancy-shmancy $100+ to tote around my golf clubs in. I just need something with wheels, storage compartments, and a handle to pull it along with. Today I found that bag.

I went to Replay Sports, and for $66.32 I got the following:

13 BARELY used Titlest Golf Balls: $0.09 (I now think this was an error as I thought it was 9 bucks for the golf balls)
A bag of Tees: $0.50
Medium White Leather Left Hand Golfer's Glove: $11.99. (I think my hand is in between a medium and a small. The smalls were WAAAAAAAY too tight, and the medium here seems a smidge too large. Either way, the glove fits and the practice swing I took in the parking lot felt great).
Golfer's Bag with Cart: $49.99. (This feels like a GREAT deal as the bag is still in good shape, albiet a tiny bit dirty. It has four 'compartments' up top where I have my woods/drivers, irons, putters/wedges separated nicely. There are NUMEROUS pockets in there to hold my tees, my glove, my golf balls, water bottles, etc. I think I got a really good deal on this, and if I were to power clean it with a steam cleaner it would look brand new. I saw no rips or tears in it, and hopefully this weekend I'll give it its maiden voyage).

So overall I think I did VERY well and got a good deal of stuff for not too much money. Even better is that when/if I upgrade clubs/parts I can sell them back to Replay Sports.

Monday Night Poker....

2005-05-24T10:49:00.000-04:00

Monday Night Poker has come and gone again, though without the massive fanfare and shock that we saw last week. Crazy Joe was back to his normal self this week, but not catching cards left and right like he did all of last week. Still, I think Tom D would argue otherwise. ;-) There weren't too many memorable hands in the evening, though we did see a flopped set get beaten down by a turned set and in the same hand blinded pocket Kings lost big time. (It's probably a good thing Joe didn't look at his cards and went all in 'on a feeling'). The start of the evening featured the use of cardboard cards from the Marlboro corporation that were harder to read than the dead sea scrolls. Still, those cards were giving some great flops to some, and horrible flops to others. Every flop contained at least one type of draw in it, and on numerous occasions someone wound up flopping a nice straight. Still, the cards were pretty bad and cannot compare to the nice plastic cards. (Even if they were free).

For the shocking moments on the evening, there are a couple that spring to mind. One was the fact that Mr. Hand had to buy in a mere ten minutes into the gaming last night. An odd thing that is noticed about Mr. Hand and his poker play is that when he takes a period off of more than one week, he doesn't seem to do all that well upon his return. It seems as if he is not able to get the good reads or get rid of his hands when he should and it winds up taking a good deal of money out of him. Now if he plays multiple sessions in a row and doesn't miss too much time, he's able to make those reads properly and lays down at the appropriate moment. So what can I say about that? I just say take some time off Mr. Hand. We like your money. ;-) (Seriously though, it does seem as if you play a bit more loosely when you haven't played in a while).

The other shocking moment came during a hand involving KK and Crazy Joe. As we all know, KK is a fairly tight player who rarely makes an all out bluff unless he is 100% confident that his opponent will fold. This is why his maneuver against Crazy Joe was so stunning. You can't really bluff someone who cannot fold his hand. Anyway, in this particular hand Joe was UTG and KK was the Big Blind. Joe did his standard $2 raise without looking at his cards, and everybody folded around to KK who actually called. The flop came down 2-4-5 rainbowed. With the five there, Joe giggled and bet 2 bucks from which KK immediately called. The turn came down as a Jack, making the board 2-4-5-J. KK bets out, I believe, and Joe now looks at one card. He sees one card and giggles and then calls the bet. I immediately say 'Uh-oh, Joe has a 3' to which Joe blatantly agreed to. KK noticed this, which I believe set him up for his next move. The river came down as either an offsuit 10 or Q, I cannot remember. Whatever it was, it did not help any draws out there. So KK bets out 4 and Joe looks at his other card and I think he raised 4. KK thinks for a little bit and calls the 4. Kirk then turns over 6-7 offsuit. WTF?!!!! KK is a VERY solid player, but to be calling and betting like that at the end with a 67o is a bit questionable. Why is it questionable? Well, there is only ONE combination of cards that KK can beat, and that's 7-3. Any other combination of cards has Kirk completely dead as it would have to be a pair or a higher card than a 7. Also, since KK had one of the 7's, the chances of Joe having a 7-3 was slim to none. Of course, Joe wound up having an 8-3 and won the hand with an 8-high. While I see no fault in KK trying to bluff at that pot with his open ended straight draw, I question his simple call at the end. When faced with that re-raise, the cards on the board and the cards in his hand, I think the only valid moves are to fold or raise another 4 bucks. Calling was not a good thing to do since the only way you could possibly win was to get Joe to fold, or pray that he had the ONE hand that you could beat. At first KK tried to deny the err in his play, but later on I believe he realized what had happened and will probably not err like that again.

For the final totals, I recall that TB was up 118 and I was up 74. I don't recall the rest of the totals for the night, but I do know that a few people were down a decent amount of money overall.

Senor Kaboom Takes Up Golf.....

2005-05-23T10:25:00.000-04:00

What can I say? I'm a sucker for peer pressure. If enough people around me are doing things and talking about said things for a long period of time, I'm bound to latch on and do the same. I guess I'm just thankful that the people around me talk about poker and golf and not heroin and cocaine. :-) So yes, I have now officialy begun to take up the sport of Golf which had been bantered about like crazy by Mr. Hand. Going into the round of golf, I was a bit nervous as I have NEVER before in my life even picked up a golf club outside of Gym Class (which I usually skipped) and miniature golf. So I was as new to the game as you could get. As a result, the first introduction was on the driving range.

On my first swing, I sent the ball directly to my left in the bushes. I don't know what physics were involved to send the ball there, but that's where it wound up landing. lol. Quickly into the driving range session, I learned that I was going to have a really tough time hitting the ball with the way I was swining. I was tearing the skin off of my left hand and both hands were cramping up from holding the clubs too tightly. I also was tapping the ball and not driving it. I got absolutely no loft on the ball as I was either hitting the top half and bouncing it maybe ten yards in front of me, or I was digging up a 10 pound divot and not hitting the ball at all. Of course I then received about thirty novels worth of advice from everyone I was golfing with, and almost none of it was helping. I think I'm just going to need to hit the driving range a few times during the week until I can get a comfortable, repeatable swing that works. As a bright side to the golfing experience, my driving was getting better as the day progressed and on the 18th hole I hit a VERY nice tee shot and a good drive with the nine iron to get me to the green in only two shots. (Of course that second shot was over the green and I was forced to chip and then two putted when I screwed up my first put). The course at Birch Plains consists of 18 par-3 holes to give an overall par of 54 strokes. I shot a 141. :-)

As a result of all that swinging (Nearly 54 holes worth), I woke up on Sunday a bit sore. My right hamstring and groin area are really sore and tight; my left lower back is a bit sore; my shoulders are both a bit tender; my forearms are a bit sore, and both of my hands are sore. However, this soreness will soon go away and the more I golf the less sore I'll be. If I can get my driving to a non-embarassing level of talent, I'll do just fine. I had very little trouble with my putting or my chip-shots, so that's a very good sign. (On Saturday I made a beautiful chip out of the bunker to within a couple feet of the hole. I also sank a gorgeous 15 foot putt to save double-bogey on one of the holes as well). I wound up with a couple of good tee-shots, most of which came towards the end of the day. My best one of all was a solid drive on the 18th hole that was straight as can be and had plenty of loft and decent distance. I could still improve on that, but it was better than I had been shooting all day. My next time golfing will definitely be better.

On Saturday I was joined by Clacky and The Vault. Clacky was kind enough to donate some raggety old clubs that he had which he was going to donate to Goodwill. However, since I had no clubs he decided that I would be a charity. Since I suck so much ass at Golf, it doesn't really matter to me how good or how bad the clubs are. I'll slowly upgrade. So for the generosity I will have to owe Clacky a couple of beers someday. The Vault held his own and had a couple of REALLY bad shots, but overall the good shots outweighed the bad. (He hit one off of the tee that wound up directly to his left and a little bit behind him. He also had a shot from behind a tree that hit the tree and went over his head behind him once more. He did, however, sink a masterful chip shot from the rough behind the green that bounced once on the green then rolled straight into the hole). So Clacky and The Vault did alright and I was just horrible, but again, it was my first time golfing so I'm not going to complain. Later this week the driving range will be visited by me, and next weekend perhaps another round of 18 to see if there is any improvement in my game.

Thursday Theatrics.

2005-05-20T09:50:00.000-04:00

Yesterday Senor Kaboom decided to take a day off of work. It's the first time all year that I've taken a day off just because I felt like it, and not because I was terribly ill. On my day off I got a few thing accomplished that I wanted to get done. I was able to get my car washed and my oil changed and filters replaced which is a chore that needed to be done, but I just didn't have the time. I also went out to Westbrook Cinemas to catch that new Star Wars flick. I like the Star Wars movies, but I'm not a gigantic fan of them like some people are. (I.E. I didn't got into a reclusive shell for years just because the first couple of prequels didn't live up to the impossibly high hype they were given. I also don't give a shit if the 'original movies' are changed by George Lucas. I have better things to do than have a hissy fit because 'Greedo shoots first'. Give me a fucking break guys). I went and caught a noon showing because I figured that would be the least crowded, and I was correct. There were maybe two dozen people in the theater, and only one 'dork'. It was the stereotypical plump, zit-faced teenager who thought the world was Star Wars. He brought in a plastic extendo lightsaber and trying to act out things. While he probably thought everything was cool, everyone else in the theater was just laughing like crazy at him.

Overall, the movie was pretty good. Kevin Smith (of Clerks, Dogma, Mallrats) fame is a big Star Wars geek. After the first two prequels, he basically said that George Lucas was an idiot and that those movies sucked more ass than a cheap Vegas whore. For this movie, he simply said 'It's fucking awesome'. I really can't argue. It was a great, dark, loose-end wrapping up movie. It did a really good job of bringing everything together and setting up the original movies. It also showed that the first two movies almost HAD to suck ass like they did in order for this third one to work so well. I thought it was worth my time and money and it's a movie I would definitely reccomend to others.

Later in the evening, it then became time for Poker at the Debski. Last night's event was one of the most well hosted poker nights ever. The fire was going, the music was playing, the atmosphere was great, and then the food was tremendous. About halfway through the night, Kay came down and brought in a plate full of freshly made sausages, breads, condoments, and onions and peppers which were roasted over the fire right there in the poker room. We all took a break and had some fantastic sausage, peppers and onions sandwiches. The freshly prepared sausages were so tender and free of stringy casings and unneccessary grease. It was unexpected and VERY welcome. All who were in attendance were very happy with the food provided. As for the cards themselves, nothing too spectacular happened. It was simply your standard game of poker. I lost 50 bucks, but I didn't play any hands terribly at all. If I did play a bad hand, it was an attempted bluff that I wasn't so sure was a full blown bluff in the beginning of the evening. It was pricey, but it was the only real mistake. On many occasions I took down pots with far inferior hands, but with the cajones to make strong bets and give people the impression that I had stronger hands. I do not believe it was very easy to read my cards last night based upon the looks and improper guesses of my competitors.

If there was one hand last night that was pretty remarkable, it was a hand towards the end of the evening. Jason had raised a dollar pre-flop and a few people, myself included, called. The flop came down K-9-6 and I held a suited King-9 giving me the top two pair. I immediately began betting hard and re-rasing 4 dollars when Lambek decided to raise me. With top two pair, I had almost nothing to fear. The turn them came down as a 10 and this time Lambek checked so I again bet 3 or 4 dollars while he called. The river came out as another 10 which kind of put a dagger in my heart. I had believed that Lambek would be calling me down to the end if he had something like a King-Jack, King-Queen, or Ace-King. The top pair with a very good kicker. When I flopped two pair, I didn't care about his kicker since I knew that at that point he was dominated. (Which I came to find out that I was correct about that). When the ten paired the board, however, the power of my King-9 suddenly vanished as now a King-Jack, King-Queen, or King-Ace, one of the three hands I put Jason on, would beat me. Jason, however, only had $3.75 left so he put it all in basically forcing me to call. (Even if I was pretty certain that I was beat at that point, $3.75 into a $25+ pot is a must call). So I put the money in and Lambek shows a Queen-Ten. The lucky son of a gun caught running tens in order to trip out on me. I REALLY had him dominanted on the flop with my two pair since the only way he was going to beat me was if he got runner runner. (On the flop I was a 4:1 favorite, and after the turn it shot up to 6.35:1). However, Jason had the balls to put his entire bankroll on the line in order to catch the jack he needed. (As I'm sure counting on running tens hitting the board wasn't what he was planning on, but was happy to get). So that hand pretty much resulted in me being down about 50 for the evening instead of being down about 20, but ah well. I would glady be in that situation again as more often than not I will take down the pot and the draws will not hit. I played the hand without flaw so I cannot be upset with anything. In poker, that's all you can hope for.

So the evening was fine and today I have the luxury of still smelling the combination of smoke, sausage, onions and peppers which infused into my jacket as the food was being cooked over the open fire. Thanks Tom and Kay!

Food Poisoning Update.

2005-05-18T21:42:00.000-04:00

Last week I posted about how I went to McDonalds and got some food poisoning there which I believed was Salmonella. Today I had a doctor's appointment so I brought up the food poisoning incident with my doctor. After describing the symptoms (All onset within 2 hours of consuming the nuggets; violent emesis, weakness, lightheadedness, visual anomalies), he said that it could not be Salmonella. Salmonella food poisoning is a bacterial poisoning which occurs when the bacteria proliferate and attack your body. The onset doesn't occur until about 16 hours after eating the food and lasts for quite a few days, while generally including a fever. What he said was most likely was a Staphylococcus aureus contamination of the food. That type of food poisoning results from the toxins produced by the bacteria and not the bacteria multiplying. (The bacteria are generally killed by cooking, but the toxins remain). The onset is VERY rapid, like I experienced, and makes people wish they were dead. (Like I did). So my food poisoning was caused by some infected douchebag who was working at McDonalds that day and decided to wipe his open sores and pus into the food I then ate. I hope the dirty fucker is dead.

High Stakes Monday Night Poker.

2005-05-17T08:12:00.000-04:00

Well, well, well. What can I say about last night? I don't think there is enough bandwidth on the internet to cover the massive amount of destruction witnessed that evening. Crazy Joe was like a flesh eating zombie. Even if you shot him down or cut him in half, he would still come crawling after you craving those sweet, juicy brains. The beats he was pulling off against legitimate, good hands was astounding. Never before have I seen 2-3o, 4-5o, etc. etc. pull down so many HUGE pots like I did last night. At one point in the evening, I was literally stunned at how nasty some of the beats were. Take the 'pocket eights', for example.

Tom D and Crazy Joe were in a hand with the obligatory $1.00 raise pre-flop. (We had maybe 3 or 4 pots where it only cost 0.50 to see the flop). The flop comes down 8-K-5. Joe, seeing the 5, bets hard. I think Tom W was in at this point and Crazy Ivan may have been involved as well. While nobody can really remember exactly what the specifics of Tom's hand were, I believe he had an Ace-King on this one. So Tom raises, CI calls, Joe calls, and I think TW may have called too. (My memories on the exact details are really hazy on this). By now, the pot is pretty huge. The turn comes down as a 10 and the same pattern of betting happens. Meanwhile, Crazy Joe STILL hasn't even looked at a card yet. So the pot gets even more engorged; like a leach on an unconcious victim. The river comes down and it's another King giving Tom D trip Kings. This time around, TW gets out of the hand as Joe bets and Tom D raises while CI calls. Again, the pot is pretty massive and a good deal of TD's chips are in there. The hands are shown as TD shows his trip kings with an ace kicker while CI disgustingly mucks his hands into the middle. Meanwhile, Joe hasn't looked at his cards yet. Based on the odds, TD rightfully begins to think that the hand is his as the big mess of chips are slowly stacked together. At this point, Joe flips over an 8. So he has Kings and 8's. What are the chances that he has the last King in his hand or another 8. (Not very good as that leaves him with 3 possible cards to win). Well last night the gods were on his side as he flipped over ANOTHER 8 to take the pot with 8's full of kings. He had pocket 8's the whole time and didn't even know it! THAT, my friends, is proof positive that the gods were smiling on him last night.

Later in the evening, however, TD did get some vindication as he wound up with Quad Queens while Joe had Queens full of fives. The size of that pot was pretty much up there so things kind of evened out. All night long people were getting crushed by some horrific cards on the turn and/or river, and while Clacky managed to avoid some of these horrific beats for most of the night, as the evening drew to a close even he managed to get killed by the fates. I guess the one good thing about the night was that since every pot was a huge one, even if you lost a big pot it wasn't the end of the world. You just needed to get some luck on your side and you could make back what you lost in a few quick hands. Also, since everybody at the table was suffering the bad beats, you weren't alone. All you could do was just sit back and marvel at the way the cards were falling. There were no 'boring' hands at all as each one had some level of excitement involved as you wondered who was going to be the victim on that particular hand. The term 'you got raped' was associated with each hand like 'Amen' is associated with a prayer. Even if you weren't involved, you could at least have some fun.

As for the money tally last night, there were two winners; Crazy Joe D who took home $168 in profit, and myself who took home $31 in profit. Everybody else was down for the evening. My entire night turned around in an all-in situation where I was either going to be in for a maximum of $60 if I won, or I'd lose and have to buy in for $80 if I lost. Thankfully, a MIRACLE 7 came on the river to give me a nice big pot and the ability to stick around. Thankfully, I made my wins count and my beats not count as much and took home some dough. I only wish I could have recorded last night's events, because I still think people would pay to see that type of crazyness.

Food Poisoning.

2005-05-13T19:18:00.000-04:00

The Entire Franchise of McDonalds can burn in hell, and I fucking hope that not another sale is made at the shit house residing on Flanders' Four Corners in Niantic, CT. Thursday for lunch I decided to hit McDonalds for some chicken nuggets. I picked up three 4-piece nuggets for $3.18 but have paid faaaaaaaaaaar more in terms of my health and welbeing. About 1 hour after eating lunch, I started feeling a little bit nauseous. At first, I thought it was just from the soda I had been drinking, so I took some pep-tums tablets hoping it would go away. Sadly, it just kept getting worse. Finally, at 3:30 I knew that I had to leave work otherwise I might start yakking while driving home. I drove home and as time was going by I was feeling worse and worse. I prayed that there would be no traffic jams as I could feel my stomach churning. Finally, I got home and puked liked you wouldn't believe. I threw out some muscles in my back and ribcage from throwing up so much. I have NEVER vomitted with that much intensity before in my life. Sadly, even after throwing up like that I didn't feel any better. I had plans on going out and playing poker that evening, but I just felt way too weak and way too nauseous to even stand up. (In fact, I even fell down a couple of time simply from lack of energery). I got no sleep last night as my muscles were killing me and I couldn't keep anything in me. I've spent all day today just trying to get some rest and hoping that the advil will get rid of the intense muscle pains. I feel weak, nauseous, and light-headed. I've got some energy back, hence my ability to write this entry, but I still feel like I'm going to pass out at any moment. I almost feel like hitting the hospital just to get confirmation that it is food poisoning and not some random stomach bug, but with all the circumstances associated with me getting ill, there's no way it can be anything but food poisoning.

FUCK YOU MCDONALDS! How about you tell your workers to wash their fucking hands after playing with their shit, and keep a clean place to work. You will never see another cent from me you fucking ass-tards. Go fuck yourself.

Daniel "Confucious" Negraneau

2005-05-09T08:26:00.000-04:00

If anybody saw the 'Heads Up Poker Tournament' on NBC this past weekend, then you surely saw a feat of psychicness that only our Crazy Joe DiCarlo could appreciate. This is the Heads Up tournamnet sponsored by NBC which is basically like an NCAA Final 4 tournament where 64 poker greats go heads up until a winner is made. On Saturday, Daniel Negraneau showed a feat of fortune telling that one could only dream of.

This was towards the end of the match and Negraneau's opponent was all in with the Ace of diamonds and junk. Daniel called with the Queen of diamonds and Jack of something. The flop comes down 9d-10d-7(black). So Negraneau puts his opponent all-in with an outside straight draw. He gets up from the table and jokingly says 'Let's see that 8 of diamonds to make things interesting'. Before he could finish his sentence, the 8 of diamonds falls on the table. Now his opponent had the nut flush draw and a diamond would keep his tourney hopes alive. However, Daniel now had an inside straight flush draw, so a jack of diamonds would give him a straight flush. (He already had the straight with the 8). He notices this and says 'Why don't you put up the jack of diamonds?' Of course, the dealer complies and Negraneau advances on with his straight flush to the queen. His opponent was both stunned, depressed, and amazed at the same time. He called TWO cards getting both the suit and rank correct. Simply amazing!

The Reactions Of Poker

2005-05-06T08:18:00.000-04:00

Here's just a little addendum full of observations I have made about how people tend to react to certain situations in poker. Most of these reactions take place after all the betting is done or don't really involve the current hand, so this really isn't a series of tells. The one thing I've noticed is how people react when the cards are not falling their way. I think it can be divided up into about 4 different categories.

1): The Silent Victim: When this type of person starts to lose big pots and pots that they felt they should have won, they tend to become quite silent at the table. When they aren't suffering painful losses left and right, they tend to talk a lot, egg people on and make bigger stabs at the pots. As the losses mount, however, they suddenly aren't talking as much nor are they making giant stabs at the pot. Their aggressiveness wanes a little bit, and they are more apt to get out of hands if facing one or two big raises. (More so than they used to as now the fact that their luck isn't going so well they are a bit more hesitant).

2): The Explosion: The Explosion is the type of player who feels as if he was destined to win the hand and cannot comprehend how he got beat and why the beater stayed in. He typically will claim that they played the hand perfectly and did nothing wrong and that the person who beat them played like a fool. They tend to react out of pure emotion without any thoughts put behind their words. To an unaccustomed player at the table, it can be a bit intense, but once this person has been labeled as 'The Explosion' the rest of the table realizes that it's just frustration spilling out, and they then will try to goad him on into bad play. The Explosion can also result in a slam of the chips on the table or a near aneurysm in the head. After a while, the BP returns to normal and if the person can pull down at least one hand where they were 'ahead' the everything levels out. This type of player may be apt to start playing a few more 'not so good' hands as they feel that since one person has beat them with an inferior hand that they can do the same. On some nights, this can result in a nice comeback, while on most nights it results in an empty wallet.

3): The Stun Gun: This type of player typically suffers a bad beat and then appears to be stunned for a couple of hands. The look in their eyes shows some frustration as well as bewilderment as they think about what could they have done to not suffer that beat. Unlike The Explosion and The Silent Victim, this type of player only displays these traits for one or two hands before returning to normal. During those few hands, The Stun Gun may be apt to play any two cards just to try and steal pots when he can. However, if this fails and he loses more money, it does not seem to affect him in any way shape or form.

4): Mr. Perfect: Mr. Perfect doesn't believe that he did anything wrong. He just gets sick to the stomach when he sees his massively dominating hand get crushed by a far superior hand. Amidst the raised voice level and increased blood pressure, he constantly spouts out about how he did nothing wrong in the hand and that it was all pure luck that resulted in his demise. On some occasions he is right about this. Sometimes luck does overpower the play of the players. Mr. Perfect tends to display a miriad of the 'traits' listing on this entry. It can be pretty amazing watching the different personalities show through as one minute he's out there proclaiming about how stupid a hand was, then the next he's utterly silent. One thing that is a standard feature of Mr. Perfect is that the beats last throughout the night against him. If he suffers a few bad beats early in the night, ANY other bad beat will push him back over the edge unless he's had some major winnings to soften the blows.

Frankly, I think everybody shows a little bit of each of those traits in them at some point or another. Anyone who has been to our weekly poker games can assign those traits to every player at the table. I only mentioned the losses here because when people win, they all tend to react the same. They become more talkative, have a bit more of a smile on their face, and tend to play well enough to stay ahead when they are winning. (Unless alcohol gets involved in which they can then cut into their winnings with some foolish plays). Now these traits aren't set in stone and may not apply to exactly everybody. There are exceptions to every rule, but these guidelines seem pretty good to me.

Thursday Night Poker Replay.

2005-05-05T23:02:00.000-04:00

It's late as I just got back from Poker at the Debski so I will try to keep this short. After all of the activities of this past evening, your's truly wound up with $73 more than he started with. A good night indeed where every draw that I wanted to hit did, and every draw against me did not. The evening started out 'okay' for me as I got taken down by a few well played hands from Mr. Hand and Debski. So my chips amount was dwindling, but with a few wins it was starting to move up again. Then the infamous full-house hand occured. I had a King-Ten offsuit while KK had pocket fives. I believe some betting pre-flop occured, but I can't recall who initiated it. The flop comes down 7-7-5. So Kirk flopped a boat, but not the nut boat. I have two over cards so I bet a dollar to try and get some information. I wanted to see what KK could possibly have had. He simply calls which puzzles me. I then think, does he have pocket aces, or does he have over cards like I do? Anyway, the turn comes and it's a King which gives me Kings and Sevens with a 10 kicker. I feel pretty good about that so I bet out again. KK proceeds to raise $3, I believe it was. I'm now seriously wondering if he also had a King and was waiting for the King to fall. I now think that the only hands he could possibly have that could beat me would be King-Ace, King-Queen, or King-Jack. Otherwise, he has pocket aces and I'm really drawing almost dead. So the river comes and it's a 7 giving me 7's full of Kings and him 7's full of 5's. I "drew out" and got my boat on the river, when really I was only about 50:50 on whether or not I was beat. I absolutely did not put him on a full-house there on the flop. There were very few combinations of cards that could have come on the turn and river to give me the hand. Amazingly, one of those combos came and I took down a big pot and had an omen of things to come.

The next memorable hand of the night has to be known as "The Flush Hand". This was a highly improbable hand where three people flushed at the same time with 'good' flushes. I had an Ace-Two of diamonds, Debski had a Jack-Ten of diamonds, and I think Barbarich had a Queen-Seven of diamonds. On the flop, two diamonds hit as does a ten. So Debski flops a ten with a pretty good diamond draw. Barbarich and I both flopped a good diamond draw with overcards. (Little did either of us know that the other two players involved in the hand had two diamonds as well, making the likelyhood of a diamond falling almost nothing). The turn comes down and it's the King of Hearts. In reality, it's a blank card but some betting ensues. The pot is now pretty big at this point. Finally, the river comes and it's a diamond. The board was not paired so I knew I had an unbeatable hand. I check and Barbarich bets 3 bucks. Debski calls and I raise four as my check raise was successful. With the other two players having high flushes as well, they really couldn't fold their hands and were forced to call. I then showed my nut flush and took down a huge pot and never looked back. I spent the rest of the night taking down mid sized pots and on occassion playing some REALLY stupid hands just because I felt like doing it and knew that if I lost the hand it wasn't going to hurt me. (The power of the big stack). As the night ended, I just made sure that I won as much as I could without risking to many of my chips.

Now it's time to go and get some grubbing in my stomach and call it a night. It's been fun and I'm sure that I'll make some more posts as my memory of the night freshens up a bit.