Off Grid

I went briefly off grid this morning. Perhaps not as "off grid" as some but it was far enough for me. Around 8:30am a substance let's call it "water" came in contact with a component, let's call it a "power supply" which provides a device, let's call it my "computer" with electricity to do stuff, which I loosely refer to as "work!" So, I went low tech for a while, and actually found a great many things to occupy the time. There were particularly two big IT issues to be dealt with, but my involvement was to disseminate information to the affected parties and make a number of calls and brief the management chain. In the absence of massive computing prowess ... argh argh... I had only wit and wisdom to call upon. In short, since I couldn't dazzle with brilliance; I was forced to baffle with bullshit. Finally, as a number of pseudo crises had run their course and fizzled out, my buddy and desktop support guru, Mike W arrived and got me back in business again. Of course now, no one needs a damn thing.

Hope all is well with each of you. I've got baseball practice for my 9 and 10 year olds tonight. Later of course is Eagles drawing night, and a well deserved libation or so! Tomorrow night, again at the Eagles there will be a Texas Hold'em tournament for a max of 50 people... but yours truly will be unable to attend. Instead, taking the high minded approach and familial responsibility seriously... and living up to the "dad" part of cheer_dad... I'm staying at home with my son and being a good guy. In my absence you may feel free to lose your money to the ever lovely and talented Big Red. Beware her crazy mad skills in the cash game afterward. And she Oma-ha-ha's your suggestions of playing Omaha, and will take your hard earned cash in an equally demoralizing display. Don't say I didn't warn you all!

Regards,

cheer_dad

Things that caught my attention today

A wasted work day winds itself down, once again. I spend most of the day dealing with a virus alert on my laptop. After a few scans, reboots, research, and sacrifice of a virgin (the most difficult) and hours of effort; it was determined that my "virus" was in fact a false positive. Corrupted scanning engine and/or pattern file continued to identify a Trojan although no file(s) were identified, just an entry in the Risk History. In short Symantec had it out for me. On the plus side, during the course of the effort my PC Support buddy Mike was here to figure out what was going on. So while we watched scans crank and little else, we talked poker. He's a long-time member of the ole NDPT. We talked about Tri-State and various home tourneys, and the ever popular Shuman Cash Game. It was also good to hear some additional perspectives on how the WSOP Final Table looks. So, despite the downtime in the computing world, a good poker discussion filled the void! Thanks Mike!

I came across the following post by AlCantHang http://www.fulltiltpoker.com/poker-from-the-rail/bloggers-on-the-rail/railing-big-cash-game (which cited a write up over at PokerNews.com.) It covered a high dollar game on Full Tilt, in which I'll never find myself, but put into perspective some of the "bad beat" tales I have told and retold here on my blog. In short I think I should fess up and admit that "things ain't so bad for me." Talk about ouch!!! Go read it for yourself. And thanks to Al for posting it.

And while I was out there reading his blog, he reminded me of something else that I read yesterday but got sidetracked. My sincerest of apologies go out to MY GIRLFRIEND!!! Clonie Gowen won the 2008 World Poker Open Championship in Tunica, MS!!! The event had only 107 players (at $5,000 each) and was held at the Gold Strike Casino. Clonie, took it down for $183,224, further winning my admiration. : ) According to the post this win inches her closer to the magic number of $1 Million in career tourney winnings. Congratulations Clonie! (pssst, call me!)

Tonight is Eagles Night. We go up every week for the winner take all drawing, along with the whole gang. Yes, Robert... this is what "degenerate gambler feels like." Hope to see you all there. Tomorrow night is a South home football game, so Whitney cheers, and we'll cheer her/them from the stands. Hopefully things'll warm up a bit. I know how cold it was on Monday for the JV game. I lost feeling in the toes there for a while. Saturday night some of you fellow degenerates will converge with me on the Yanok's Tournament. There's always a good time to be had at this game, and this one is uber important as "both" games of the night will be qualifiers for the year-end game. I REALLY need to put one in the WIN column to beef up my meager chip stack for the final game. Can I get a little luv!

The online grind has returned to what passes for normal. I've been showing a profit for the last several hundred hands on Bodog, I'm happy to report. Meager sums here people, don't plan on rolling me in the parking lot for some extra scratch!

Hope all is well with each of you... and happy bankroll building.

Regards,

cheer_dad

What a frustrating day...again!

It's been one of those days, one of those weeks. Just more steps back than forward it seems. I spent a lot of time this week troubleshooting the problems of others as well as my own. Both, were equally frustrating and pointless. I'd like to elaborate more on the problems of others, but I'm sure some trade secret or other would be broken as a result, so let's just suffice it say that a programmer's website just isn't performing as he'd like it to. While I can't fully account for why, I can't fully discount to anybody's satisfaction that it is not the fault of the infrastructure. Here's a clue for all you quick thinkers... our group takes care of the infrastructure. It may very well just be some data transfer issues, but I can't prove it since that's not my area of access or influence. Still I've got to act as the intermediary. Yeah, the picture sums up how I feel about it all.

Anyway... aside from the problems of others, I've been dealing with some computer problems of my own too. Of course my troubleshooting efforts brought me some problems of my own. While tweaking and re-tweaking... some of the settings caused me a few problems. Unfortunately, they appeared much larger than they really were. There was information that I didn't have though. A number of the websites that I routinely access I just couldn't get to anymore. Wacky error messages, timeouts, etc... So, I delve back in to the whole mess to undo what I thought I'd done. I learn much later that, network issues were to blame, and so I was barking up the wrong tree. I couldn't fix it...but didn't know it and ended up making an even bigger mess of things. Several hours later, cups of coffee, and a migraine I end up having to undo all of my fixing. Anyway, it's over now well at least I hope so.

Sorry that was all purposely vague wasn't it.

One ray of brightness, I ended up making back some of the bankroll last night online, over at PokerRewards. Enough so I can say I'm back to square one anyway. Now just turn the corner and turn the profits out and it'll be all downhill from there. Yeah right who am I kidding. Just keep on keepin' on. Play your best, study, learn, play some more, and don't let it get in your head, and the rest will take care of itself.

Cole's got a baseball game tonight, and I'm sure there's homework to contend with before we leave. I just want him to have a good time tonight. I don't want to be hounding him about what to do and how to do it. Tonight I just want him to play the game. Treat it like a game and have no greater expectation than that. I want for him, for something to just go right that he can smile about and be proud. And I want to see the expression of joy on his face as a result. We could all use a little more joy in our lives, and I guess I don't do everything that I can to help him live that way. I'm a little slow on that... and sometimes I'm hard on him, and Whitney for that matter. I'm going to try and remedy it on both counts.

Regards,

cheer_dad