It is the idiot control for my video card which is sort of high end or was when I got the machine a couple of months ago. I don't really need it but when it goes south it takes Windows Explorer with it. And, things get sluggish. But, it is a Dell and has online support.

I do the jump through hoops bit and end up “talking” to a guy in India. He works for a couple of hours on it by taking over my machine using remote control software. Decides the video card is failing and schedules a replacement. There will be a guy out to replace it. They even overnight it and I get a call the next day that he'll be there between 11 and 2. He was even early.

That was the good news. He shows up with not only the video card but a new hard disk. I've been installing and messing with a lot of stuff recently getting ready to add another little computer to the mix. But, wait, they are understanding. All I have to do is return the old HD in a few days. So, I put it in an external enclosure and there it is – available on my system to copy from.

I copy a bunch of stuff and life is looking better. Then I start thinking. Yeah, I know; don't say it. I could put it on another partition if I could clone it I'd have my old stuff back and accessible. I find a freeware program that will do it. I'm a bit dubious that the firewire connection is up to the task but delete all the stuff I'd copied so I'd have space. Long story short. Managed to fry the data.

I've recovered a bit of this and a bit of that. I've downloaded similar. Email is iffy but doable. I can post to the blog. I at the point of walking but not chewing gum.

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I remember saying that as a child. Stories were always fun. My Nana was great at ones about the olden days. Here’s my high tech, cliff notes version.

Windows is unavoidable for most. It wasn’t always that way. OS/2 was a superior Operating System but owned by IBM who couldn’t merchandise free money.

Windows came into existence with under powered computers the norm. To make it work they did kludges. Kludges are something all programmers are familiar with. They are little tricks that let you accomplish a task that otherwise might be impossible. The other side of their reputation is they are snakes in the grass waiting to nail you if you looked away for a second.

The kludges first implemented under Windows are nailing/poisoning us to this day. The worst idea was what was called co-operative multitasking. The processors of the day had interrupts available. Interrupts can do what they say. But, they weren’t necessary in the old single threaded applications. When multitasking came along, the idea was programmers were gentlemen and would release their task in a courteous fashion to other applications. I am/was a programmer. Nuff sed!

People obviously wanted their program to look best/speedy and courtesy was lacking. As hardware grew to the state of today, the problems from the early kludges remains. I have a system with 8 processors. Each is more powerful than anything even imagined when Windows hit. There is no excuse for processes hanging or computer looking sluggish. Guess what?

I’m using Windows 7 64-bit – MS’ latest and greatest. My computer is very close to state of the art with enough memory to avoid paging. I just allowed a poor application (Poker Track Stud) to compact its database. It completly took over the computer. Other times I’ll be doing seemingly insignificant task and the computer hangs with applications graying out from not getting access to the processor.

Windows has improved over the years but a chart of that success would parallel graphing a hyper active player who overplays every hand. It is the old two step forward and one or more back.

Windows provides us indirectly with some great applications. That is really its only claim to fame. Understand that this will at times frustrate you. It isn’t your fault. It is the perfect storm of application and operating system conspiring to bring what should be easily doable to its knees.

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Against my better judgment, I played the Bammer. It had been a while since I’d played over on FT. It is one of those 8 P. M. blogger thingies that I try to avoid. The only one I play in often is Linda’s little HORSE one and I am truly beholding to that lovely lady.  She plays online poker

I played well and held the early chip lead for a fair poke. Later, Bammer (I think) said something about my game and someone responded that I always had a hand. That indicated I was playing pretty well and without regards for truth, justice and the American way. I might have had slightly better cards at times but it wasn’t the slam dunk being indicated. Felt pretty good about the remark.  If he'd thrown in bastard, it would have been perfect.

It didn’t take me long to remember that donkdom gets mandated much earlier on FT. They have 10 minute blinds. UB has 12. Doesn’t sound like a lot but it can be and is.

Later, I proceeded to play poorly. I played one hand with a read but needed more than that. Finally got busted by Doc. Of course he should have never called my all in … blah, blah, blah … questionable play … blah, etc. … A3 Suited??? Certainly ok raising but not calling. (yeah, I had KT and was short stacked. Howdja know?)

I did accomplish my goals:

• Gigglied Poker Grump with the play of a lifetime.  My 99 made a boat against his rivered CRUB FLUSH with him using crappy low cards close to 42. I'd raised from UTG with them and he chose to do the implied odds thing from the BB. Can I hear an amen? 

• Got Doc to be foolishly all in earlier when his QQ got sucked into my all-in genius of the hammer. He failed to understand my bragging when a duece came on the flop. Another player though was properly respectful of such power.

• Got to make fun of Waffles avatar/expression. He laughed. Always nice to run into one guy who arrives at a table with his sense of humor intact. Such an easy going fellow!

• Got to make serious/questionable fun of Josie without her knowing who it was. That made it deserving of a priceless commercial. (R J Squirrel 40 evidently wasn’t associated with such a powerhouse player)

• Got to pick on Amir even with him on my immediate left a good part of the time. We both started together and made the same table switch. Pretty sure I post-oaked him more than all the rest.

In the chat I told Bam-Bam that I didn’t play these things as they were past my bed time. That is sort of true as I later experienced. When I did hit the remote’s off button about a half-hour into Letterman, I couldn’t fall asleep. It isn’t necessarily past my bedtime when my stupid gene kicks in at a table; it is the after period when my brain keeps going and I can’t drop off to sleep. An hour and a half into trying, I finally pulled it off. Trying to count Bammer’s number of parents was as ineffective as sheep.

I will apologize for leaving within a second or so of busting out. I should have said my good byes and accepted being played the numbers. It was a knee jerk thing in that it is what I always do in less friendly tournaments and it happened before I could stop it – Click – Gone.  Now, ring a bell and I'll drool.

ADDENDUM:

888 has online poker site.

They also have a section on poker strategy.

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I recognize that every morning when I shave. That fortunately has little affect on my readers or table mates. Politicians have the same kinds of problems. Harry Reed seems to have resolved one of his. Evidently his butt was getting uncomfortable sitting on the fence over the poker legislation.

Harry is off the fence and on “our side” of the issue. As a result, he’s lost some of his constituents. I suspect that his financial disclosure will show he garnered more casino money friends than he lost.

This is one of his critics:

“It (online poker) is just the tip of the iceberg and could open up this state to more online gaming,” said Bill Hughes, the Marketing Director of Peppermill, to the Reno Gazette-Journal. “It will only draw more money out of this state, from our poker rooms and eventually other facilities.”

Now Nevada is a hard place to pull off reality checks. But even Mr. Peppermill can’t be that dumb. Poker rooms in casinos have had their ups and downs. Pre-Moneymaker few rooms even had poker available. Online poker made poker again a viable option for casinos. It will never generate the $/sq. ft. that other profit centers produce but it does get more players through the front door.

Mr. Peppermill seems to think that the state outlawing online gaming has stopped it in its tracks.  My state also makes what I'm doing illegal.  Mr. Peppermill, all the folks that want to play poker online in your state are already playing online poker in your state.  Bad laws get ignored.

Online site have demonstrated they are happy to partner with the bricks and mortar side to bring lots of players to various tournaments. A fact that has bypassed the Nevada Gaming Commission during a major economic downturn for the area.

Reality doesn’t come to the top when discussing a marketing director. But, Mr. Peppermill has carried it beyond believability along with his California cohorts in their opposition to reality.

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She said it better…dammit

I know you are curious.  So, click already!

This won't get me a drink but maybe an ice cube.

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That was coined by Newton Minow about television in a 1961 speech. Others come close in describing the standard on the Internet. I think they read my blog.

But there is an interesting counterpoint to our rants and misreads in poker blogdom. It is a site called Khan Academy and has free tutorials on a host of subjects. All of this eclectic mix of science and knowledge is the product of a single person – Sal Kahn.

The gentlemen has pretty sturdy academic credentials:

Khan was long an academic star. With his MBA from Harvard, he has three degrees from MIT: a BS in math and a BS and a master's in electrical engineering and computer science. He also was the president of his MIT class and did volunteer teaching in nearby Brookline for talented children,

This was from an article about him in Fortune.

He seems a pretty bright guy. OK, he hasn’t written a poker book. But, neither has he evidently bought one.

If you’ve got kids, you might follow fearless leaders example and spend some quality time with your kids perusing the site.

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When you put “I’m from the government.” ahead of that things can get surreal. Now throw in departmental regulation and it gets terrifying.

"We're experts in air traffic management and control for airplanes," said Hubbard, who is working on the FAA project with Stanford aeronautics and astronautics colleague Associate Professor Juan Alonso. "We plan to apply this expertise to the whole question of space traffic control. We need to figure out what kinds of systems will be necessary to tell flight controllers how to keep the space rockets out of the way of the flight from San Francisco to Washington."

Along with the aerospace experts who will develop policies for space launches, traffic management and human space flight, Stanford researchers at the Graduate School of Business will have a hand in examining and forecasting what business opportunities exist in space travel and exploration. Which evidently those business aren't smart enough to figure out on their own like business has since it was the barter system, I'll add.

"This emerging new commercial space area could be a business of many billions of dollars a year," Hubbard said. And we want our cut, I'll add.

Seems sort of reasonable. We don’t want those darn space ship crashing into our Vegas flight. But, think about it. Your one of those X-contest guys sending up your space ship. Are you also so dumb that you’ll send it out into space without looking in hindsight at the route and saying, “Oops, flight 107 got in the way. My bad.”?

Is the FAA the choice to handle this upgrade or is it more an opportunity to expand the department and ask for added funding? After all we have the other fairly costly entity called NASA and they been throwing things into space without knocking 747s out of the sky for quite a few years. It would seem there is a fairly responsible mechanism in place that has already resolved the issue.

ADDENDUM:

Part of this was inspired by my watching CSPAN. It was a speaker talking about crippling the new Health Care Legislation. One of the things is there won’t be a way to override a veto with the votes available. So, part of his solution was to cripple funding. And the example was not funding the 16,000 additional IRS agents that are needed to implement the mandatory penalties associated with not participating. But, then the White House, will likely call it job creation and use “stimulus” funds.

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In the first six month in office, George Bush was the boogyman responsible for all ills.  That morphed into those evils folks on the hill that fought the reasonable progress proposed.  They'd always blame the war for our deficits.  

When they start talking tril and bil around us, our eyes glaze over.  That isn't something that we use when balancing our check book.  So, all too often, we take what's represented by our leaders as the straight skinny.  Are we right in doing so?

Seems noticeable when we got the change in "leadership" and learned about "stimulus".

.

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It seems that everybody's favorite Democratic Senator, Harry Reed, is almost ready to support online poker.  Well, almost and sorta kinda.  It seems that his congressional cohorts have been working on him to support Frank's legislation.  But, small, Nevada casinos are still worried that it will negatively impact their revenue.  Being a dedicated politician he wishes to leave no special interest rock unturned getting gelt for his war chest.

It is a horrid quandary facing fearless leader.  So his support is sorta — kinda –  wink, wink, nudge, nudge, say no more.  Now that is leadership.  It has to give a warm glow to every inconvenienced poker player in the free world. Such clarity. Such purpose. Certainly deserving a statue in the rotunda. 

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You gotta love the guy. But, then there is that old one about “If you represent yourself, you have a fool for a client.” but sometimes it is a reasonable risk. I’ve done it twice in traffic court and am batting 500. Kickin the LasVegasCabbie’s backside. The last angry man is oh for two.

I’m not sure who’s blog to attribute getting to his site. My abject apology. There are a couple of stories on his site about run-ins with local law enforcement. You can get the legal info from his site. It is about stopping to pick up fares. It seems that is a no-no in LV.

Las Vegas caters to the tourist. From the limo line at the airport to the diamond club noshing, the business show they are happy to drop to their knees and at least appear to be willing to perform outrageous services that impact their bottom line. For those who aren’t high rollers with a stretch at their call there are jitneys and free bus rides to get folks to their casino area.

But what if you don’t want to sweat your way a number of blocks or maybe visit the neon graveyard or another spot devoid of slots? The likely vehicle will be a cab. And, LV in its wisdom greed used the law to stack the deck on something as basic as hailing a cab. If you want a cab, you must enter a property which has a chance to pull you in or at least sucker you out of a buck or two for their doormen letting you climb into a cab. New York City is more congested than even the strip. Yet, cabs are hailed everywhere and anywhere. But then, they don’t have slots or table games.

We’ve seen the UIGEA take away what we thought was our right. LV takes it even further. Not only do the local cops meet quota writing cabbies ticket for picking up fares but there is an administrative arm of the taxi commission doing it too. I call that a perversion of everything we call liberty.

As poker players, we’re disadvantage in all but a home game by the rake. But, in return, we get some perceived benefits. But, when you see how they go beyond to pervert local regulations to screw us even further, well, I call that angle shooting and it gives me another reason to go to the boats instead of hopping on a plane.

ADDENDUM:

I fought a ticket locally. Ended up there one evening and the judge (actually a local attorney down on his luck with some clout) found me not guilty which totally honked the cop who had to come in on his off time and lost the ticket.

The other was in Iowa. It was on the road to Cedar Rapids and there wasn’t another car in sight. The trooper had his out of the way spot and my almost 10 over cruise control that usually gets you a pass got me stopped. I hit the library and looked up the radar defense and went to court. Funny! I sat there the only idiot contesting a ticket that day. I was in business attire and had a legal pad with notes. I heard a couple of office folks commenting that I must be some attorney hired to get some rich guy off. I lost the case but the judge offered to sponsor me to his law school. But, I wasn’t that despirate.

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