Hella Hold'em

Hello, again, my pretties!

I'm here waiting for a 90-player SnG to fill up, and in the meantime (and beyond), I will hang out and ramble with you all.

It's likely the 2nd to last beautiful day of 2008 in Chicagoland. Tomorrow will be nice, and after that, we drop into the 60's and below, probably for the rest of the year. We've had 2 of the most gorgeous weeks of weather I've ever experienced - so you'll all have to remind me of this when I'm bitching in a couple months that Chicago weather sucks, and that we never get any moderate temperatures - just freezing cold into boiling hot, skipping over anything resembling spring or fall.

Ahh, we're full. Let the games begin!

I've been catching up on the WSOP on the TiVo. There was a segment where Ray Romano was saying that it's nice to have something that makes your heart pump. I still get that feeling when playing poker. I just don't have as much time to play as I used to. However, I'm glad it still makes my heart pump, so to speak.

I love Ray Romano. I never watched "Everybody Loves Raymond" when it was on, I think because it was on in first-runs before I had a TiVo (and thus, pretty much before I watched TV on a regular basis). Now, I watch it whenever I catch it, and every episode cracks me up. He looks good with a little gray :)

Ouch, set over set, FTP classic - good thing it wasn't me.

Joy, I've got the every-hand-min-raiser at my table.

I had my first hummingbird ever come to my back yard bird feeders yesterday. Totally stoked. Yeah, I like birds. What of it?

I don't necessarily like 3-9 suited.

I do like the smell of exhaust from a dryer drying clean laundry.

I've been back in Ultima Online again. It'll be 11 years this November that I've been playing that game... effectively, a third of my life. Crazy. There's a new expansion coming out in 2009 that I'm totally looking forward to. They really have a brilliant business model. There's no end-game, so it's a subscription based cash cow, for all intents and purposes. Many players have multiple accounts (including myself). And so it goes, cha-ching, month after month. Compared to the big guys like World of Warcraft, the subscription base of UO is minuscule, around 100,000 subscribers - but I've never found a MMORPG that is anywhere near as flexible in terms of making it whatever you want it to be. WOW is built on the "kill stuff" premise. You can kill stuff in UO, but you can also build a life for yourself crafting or gardening or working as a merchant. There's a vibrant PvP community, a respected roleplay community, and just a great variety of things to do. As long as UO exists, I will play it.

Hovering right around average in chips...

I bought Parallels, the virtual machine software, so that I could run Windows within OS X on my Mac. I had hoped to be able to play UO on it, but it's just not quite fast enough in video rendering (even though it says it can play games - UO isn't one of the listed "official" games that it supports. I thought it might work anyway, as UO's video demands are much lower than some of the games on the list). I've heard that VMWare Fusion works better, and I probably should have tried them both out before I spent $50 on Parallels. I will get use out of Parallels anyway, as it makes it much easier for me to test web sites in IE (barf-a-roni), and it gives me easier access to MS Office (they use it at work, so sometimes I must play nice and be compatible). I had been running Vista with Bootcamp on my Mac, but it's a bit of a pain to have to reboot and boot into Windows for the few things I use it for, because then I don't have my web bookmarks, or access to my documents or my iTunes or anything that lives on the Mac side. I may try VMWare Fusion. We'll see.

I'm getting tired of folding decent hands to raises, but I'm out of position and too likely dominated. Still, it's annoying.

Wow - I'm watching a video tour of VMWare Fusion, and already I see a feature that makes me want it: it can run my existing Bootcamp installation right within OS X! I won't have to reinstall Windows! (again!!) They've got an academic discount, $39.99. TYVM, career! Hmmm this is intriguing. Still, I will download the free trial and test it before buying - but this looks quite promising. Kudos to VMWare's download site too - I'm pulling over 1,000 KB/sec down. Nice.

Card dead...

Might as well install VMWare while I fold... Down to 11xBB... Gotta move soon...

So, Dave Matthews had joined Twitter.com, and holy cow does he post some funny stuff! He's @DaveJMatthews - lots of funny pictures, and nuggets of wisdom like only Dave can do... lovin it.

My hair is getting long. Not long, relative to people with long hair, but long relative to the length I've had it for like the last 8 years. It's longer than it's been in a long time. I wish it would grow faster!! I need a dye job, too. Oy.

Big time push of fold mode. Nothing to push with. Oooh, A3s. Here we go. Damn it, 2 people all in in front of me. FOLD.

Owie antes hurt!!

So I finally got sick of the spicy Italian sandwich at Subway. Trouble is, nothing else is really calling my name there. i've given the chicken bacon ranch sandwich a few days in court, and it hasn't really sold me. I feel lost without a signature sandwich. *sniffle*

AQo, I'm pushing regardless...

2 callers. Nada on the flop. And... I'm out, in 34th place.

Time to go play with VMWare!