Hella Hold'em

I just want to say that I love Bloglines.com. They rule. My entire web surfing and poker blog reading life revolves around Bloglines and Google, and since I got this new Blackberry PDA/phone, I've been experiencing the sometimes excruciating display of web pages on a handheld device. I never much worried about it - even as a web programmer - but now I see clearly why it is such an important issue. Most sites look like shit on a handheld.

So - one of the first sites I tried to go to on my Blackberry was Bloglines, and I was thrilled that I could view it and log in... until I realized that, as a frames page, I couldn't view my feeds because my handheld browser doesn't support frames. Well, crap. So I emailed Bloglines today to ask if they've considered a non-frames version of the site for PDA's, since I saw no such link on their site.

They replied a few hours later with a link to their mobile site. Woohoooo! I can surf Bloglines on my handheld! So happy. Apparently, there is a script in place to attempt to detect handheld devices. I'm wondering if, since I set my handheld browser to IE emulation, that is preventing correct detection. I'll try changing it back.

At any rate, here's the link to Bloglines' handheld edition: http://www.bloglines.com/mobile

Sweet.

In other news, I reloaded FTP and have continued to get my ass handed to me, minus my chips. I don't even want to talk about it. I've hunkered down and have been working on plugging the few habitual leaks I've sprung, but the last couple days have just been bad luck. Today, it hasn't even been monster hands killing me. It has been the blinds!! I mean, the cards in the hands of the players in the blinds. The board has been matching up with the goofy ass blind hands left and right on me today. Totally squashing me. I fear I will not even clear all of my bonus before I lose all of my money. Sigh.

A side note - an observation really. I sat down at 1/2 limit for a while today. I quickly discovered, somewhat to my surprise, that the play sucks just as bad as at .50/1.00. Equally horrific starting hand selection skills, equally fishy calling station tendencies... you know the deal. I couldn't help but think, how high do I have to go to find at least a few decent players in the game - enough that the percentage of fish per table won't turn the game into a complete crapshoot? I watched a couple 3/6 tables. Play there was night and day compared to 1/2, though I only watched for an hour or so. Most hands didn't make it to showdown, and the tables were more aggressive. Starting hands that made it to showdown were typically legitimate.

I'm been wondering if maybe I should limit my play to SnG's only until I can afford to sit down at 3/6 limit online. My primary cash funnel (as in, down the toilet) has been ring games lately. I've had more success than not at SnG's. Maybe that's what I need to do. I don't know. Does that sound crazy?

On the bright side, Randy and I have the most kick ass plans for next weekend. Is anybody going to see Dave Matthews Band up at Alpine Valley the weekend of July 23rd? We're heading up there for the weekend and staying near the Milwaukee airport, just a few miles from the Potawatomi Casino. We got a sweet suite (hehehe) with a hot tub, and with a tiny bit of luck will have fantastic seats to the 2nd show with VIP passes. I got tix to the first show via the Warehouse fan club, but being pretty new to the club (3rd year) I got trumped by those with higher seniority and didn't get tickets to the second show. eBay to the rescue! So, the plan is to head up to Wisconsin next Saturday, see a couple DMB shows, and hopefully play poker at the casino at least one of the days we're up there. We have all of Sunday during the day to kill, and all of Monday before we head home, and maybe even some time on Saturday, if we leave Chicago early enough. Play poker, sit in a hot tub, AND see Dave. That's a mighty fine weekend in my book.

Alrighty, that's enough for me for one day. Off to bed. 'Nite all!