Time it nearly is, yes...

Cheesy pic aside, our heads-up poker tourney is tomorrow night. Report will follow. Interesting night shall be had.

Video Games are still not bad, people!

I posted a response to the "video games are bad for kids" debate a while back.

Rory Blyth has a tremendous post about this issue here. It's in his typical cynical style and is well worth the read. Rory has really been on a roll lately. Check it out.

Stuff and Stuff

Back to the grind after a four-day weekend! I hope everyone had an excellent Thanksgiving weekend.

Gretchen and I returned from our Alabama Thanksgiving trip yesterday without event. It was good to see my family and hang out for a couple of days. It was also good to "unplug" from the internets for a few days, as nary a computer was to be found in our weekend excursion.

Thanksgiving dinner was amazing. My dad made his typically excellent ham, my stepsister (probably last time I call her that - sister from here on out) Tamara made a delicious turkey (smoked and non-smoked, yum!), and my mom made all the other sides (I think, I'm sure Mom will correct me should I be incorrect), including homemade dumplings (from an old family recipe), stuffing, and three casseroles - broccoli, squash, and sweet potato. Damn fine eating.

Dessert was quite good as well, with pecan, chocolate pecan, Cool Whip, and pumpkin pies and a coconut cake. I opted for the cake and Gretchen went for the pumpkin pie.

After dinner and cleanup, we went into some family chatter, card playing, and football watching (my Falcons won, w00t!). All in all an excellent day. It's always good to go back home for the holidays.

In other news, we have a heads-up poker tournament this week instead of our regular Poker Night. It should be an interesting change of pace. I'm loading up PokerStars for some heads-up Sit N Go action to prepare. I'd advise Josh and Justin to do the same thing, but that wouldn't be good for me, now would it? I'm sure one of us (or all three, maybe) will have a report up this weekend.

Well, I'm out...time to go heads-up with a random person on PokerStars...

Another reason I love .Net

Greg always has some neat little tidbits on his blog. Today I notice this one which would have been SO FRIGGING USEFUL IN my last project ;) Oh well. So why did I name this post about loving .Net? Because. Greg writes in VB. I'm not a VB'er myself, but 95% of anything he talks about will be relevant to me because the language in .Net is just another choice you can make.
Now, there are, in my opinion, technical reasons to justify a specific language from time to time. I prefer C#, but if I had to do any Office automation work, you bet your pasty posterior I'd do it in VB.
Nuff said.

Good, Bad, and Tomorrow

Good:

I finished 2nd in a Sit N Go on PokerStars tonight. Took in $36 for my efforts. Yay me!

Bad:

Alabama got beaten up today by Auburn 28-18. That is all I intend to say about that...

Tomorrow:

Justin, Josh and I are going to a poker tournament in Dayton. Josh posted more info on BlackroseWorld. Top prize is $10,000 or a WSOP trip and main event buy-in. Luck to Team RandomHumans.com!

I'm off to get some rest. Today was a weird emotional ride, and tomorrow will be mentally exhausting.

Edit: Mistyped the score of the Alabama game last night. You'd think I didn't watch as opposed to what I did do...view the game in utter disgust...Thanks to my mom for pointing this out.

Comments

Comments are down. I think it's a problem on Haloscan's end. Once I'm sure that they are operational (their site is down, so my hands are kind of tied), Justin or I will square it away.

By the way, how about that video? I never realized I had that much Wookiee in me. (Of course, I'm not the only one that had a bad showing at States, but we won't talk about that...) The puppy is White Shoes. Isn't she cute?

Josh does good work. Don't forget to check out BlackroseWorld.

If you have any ideas about comments, email me. Otherwise, wait patiently to express your opinions. We'll fix it soon (in some way, shape, or form).

Update - Late as hell: Everything's back up. It's like everything hiccupped at once. We now resume our regularly scheduled entropy already in progress...

This may be a little late...

Well it has been awhile since we went to the Ohio State Championship. Though I do have rare footage to share of our dear friend Random Sam and his reactions to his horrible showing. Click here. Enjoy!

What are the odds?

What are the odds?
Originally uploaded by | HD |.

Eddie Guerrero

Originally posted 12/13 at 12:26 PM. I found the photo courtesy of user "jakeinvan" on Flickr and added that today. Tonight on WWE Raw there will be a tribute show for Eddie. There's another on Friday Night Smackdown, which is the show on which Eddie Guerrero performed.

Eddie Guerrero, a WWE wrestler and former World Champion, passed away this morning. WWE.com has the story (at least what little is known so far) here.

Eddie was one of my personal favorites. I've been watching him since he came to WCW in 1994 and was ecstatic when he finally won a world title last year. He will be missed by all who appreciate the good things (few as they may be) about professional wrestling.

Eddie Guerrero was 38.

LSU 16, Alabama 13

LSU ended Alabama's undefeated season on Saturday, defeating the Tide 16-13 in overtime. It was a tale of two halves, with Alabama dominating the first half and LSU taking the second. The Alabama offensive line has got to get better fast, as Auburn is next week.

Alabama needs to beat Auburn.

That's all there is to it.

The Hand Pocket Aces Never Beats

*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $38.40 | Rake $1.85
Board [2c 7s 3d 2s Jd]
Seat 1: Sandyhaven (big blind) folded before Flop
Seat 2: blinknfire folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 3: Peach City showed [Ah As] and won ($18.25) with two pair, Aces and Deuces
Seat 4: BoatonRiver folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 5: Doubble "J" (button) folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 6: RandomSam (small blind) showed [Ad Ac] and won ($18.30) with two pair, Aces and Deuces

Gotta love pocket Aces…especially when the other guy has them too.  At least I didn’t lose to the HAMMER.

So, wanna play poker tonight?

You do? Really? Cool. Play here.

What: WWdN: Toby039 Invitational
Where: PokerStars
When: Friday, November 11th. 7:00 PM EST
Password: monkey
Tournament number: 14856143
Buy-in: $10+1

Wil's tournaments are wonderfully fun, and there's a great chance you'll get to play with various and sundry poker bloggers as well as Mr. Wheaton himself. As for me, I play as RandomSam. If you actually go to the tournament because of my recommendation, bother me and say "Hi." Otherwise, bother Wil, Joanne, Daddy, Iggy, GRob, or anyone else - because they're better than me.

If you're playing tonight, good luck! If you're not...why wouldn't you play? It's good for the soul and stuff...really!!!

Update 8:30 Went out in 46th. Lost with AJ vs AQ when money went in with 55A on flop. Oh, well. Good times.

Well...at least it's not Great Stuff...

Safesex
Originally uploaded by ja_sen.

Oh, really?

My blog is worth $1,129.08.
How much is your blog worth?

Thanks to PokerGeek.

Alabama 17, Mississippi State 0

Alabama remained undefeated Saturday, but it wasn't pretty.

Of course, that's the m.o. of the Crimson Tide post-Florida. Post-Tyrone Prothro.

Reminds me of a certain National Championship team in 1992. That Tide team didn't win pretty either. They just won.

It's now or never for this year's Alabama squad. LSU and Auburn await. Win those, and then the SEC Championship Game. The reward? Facing either Georgia or Florida. A tall order, to be sure.

But if they keep winning, however they do it, they will deserve to be considered one of the top teams in college football.

If they keep winning, and another falters (read as either USC or Texas), then maybe, just maybe the Rose Bowl can remember its history.

True Tide fans do. Alabama owns a 9-1-1 all-time record in the Rose Bowl, a game they haven't visited since 1946.

That's the dream. Three more wins and one little loss by #1 USC or #2 Texas, and it becomes a reality.

Maybe I'm just cynical...(RANT)

This is a rant. You've been warned twice now, so don't claim surprise.

The views expressed are my own, no one else's, so don't go writing angry emails to Sam or Blogger or anyone else. Not even me, because you're not going to change the way I feel, so it would be a waste of time. In other words, if you're mad about things I've typed here, then you really need to not let little things get to you so much, and maybe stay away from the internet, or at least forums and blogs. Go outside and take a walk.

If you're a republican, save your righteous anger for something useful, and just don't read this.

You've been warned a lot. Don't say you weren't.

(RANT ON)

Maybe I'm just cynical about things.
Seriously...
I'm not sure.
Somehow, it seems wrong to me, but maybe it's just me...
Anyway, I should probably explain.
For the last several days, I've been seeing more and more about the president's plan to combat the possible "superflu." Is it just me, or is this coming at a time when we've just about stopped being so goddamn afraid of everything? It's been a good bit of time since the London bombing, it's been a while since we've even heard about anything going down in Palestine/Israel, and the only new news from Iraq is that we're still losing people over there, and while that is certainly saddening and does make me angry, it's hard to be afraid. It seems that the rest of the US, while they may not (and probably don't) agree with anything else I say or feel, have the same lessening of fear. We don't seem to believe anymore that the big bad terrorist is going to release vapors containing anthrax in a transit system, we are no longer afraid that they're going to carry backpack nukes from a near-unguarded strip of coastline to blow up New York, we're not even afraid that they're going to come to our fair cities and spit on the fucking sidewalks. We're not really all that afraid of terrorists anymore. So...
Now there's the big scary "superflu" to replace the big scary terrorist. Before the terrorist it was the commie. Before the commie was the anarchist. Before that, it was usually the last ethnic group to immigrate (or gain freedom, and that's all I'm gonna say about that.) Sure, these were transparent attempts at power-grabbing by one group or another, but we're looking at these things in hindsight. Do you think that most people in the 1950s saw the commie-fear for what it was? I doubt it. I don't even think that most people saw it in the 1980s. Most people just went along with what they were told. "What, Commies are evil, and not even fully human, and eat the flesh of unbaptised babies for lunch 3 days a week? Okay, I'll hate and fear them, too, just like everyone else on my block." It's so easy to motivate through hatred and fear. You can take a large group of people, a nation even, and make them believe whatever you want them to believe. You can make them happily go to die in a hopeless conflict, you can make them lynch their neighbors, you can even make them re-elect an incompetent (and dangerous) leader. The only trick to it is this: You have to shift the fear to something new every once in a while. The people will only fear the same thing for a relatively short amount of time if nothing happens. Then you have to shift the focus of the fear to something new, or else they lose interest, and the level of fear goes down, and they start to notice the things you don't want them to notice. Nevermind that we didn't really do much in Afghanistan except blow up some villages and a few caves, and we never did really find Osama, we're gonna go do some "regime change" in Iraq now. Nevermind that Halliburton got almost all the oil contracts, we captured Saddam. Nevermind that we're still encountering guerrilla-style resistance, and that the US Army doesn't deal with a "war of attrition" well, we got that democratic constitution in place. Nevermind that we've been fighting the "war on terror" for the last 4 years to no real effect, there may or may not be a "superflu" pandemic sometime in our lifetimes, and roughly 1 in 150 Americans could die from it. Are we running out of things to fear? What's next, alien invasion? Angry mobs of cows? Ooo, I know, how about the dangers of dog shit? It's in every park in the country!
In all seriousness, a new mutation of the influenza virus may or may not happen at any time. There are plenty of virii that are in the same boat, but, if just the right new mutation happened, more than just the very young, the very old, and people with weakened immune systems would fall victim (roughly the same ones that are at risk from the ordinary, not-so-super flu.) I suppose my rant is about that, too. I don't like the way politicians in general try to whip the masses into a frenzy with fear, but, at a deeper level, I think they could do a lot better than "superflu."
Dubya, if you want to scare me, you better bring Ebola to the table. Otherwise, just STFU.

(RANT OVER)

You were warned. If you actually read it all, and you're still pissed, GOOD! Do something worthwhile with your anger. Channel it into something constructive. Emails are NOT. In fact, they'd be trashed without reading, so don't waste your time. Unless you want to do something symbolizing the true ephemeral nature of this life, like a Tibetan Buddhist monk who spends days working on an elaborate mandala, made of colored sand spread on the floor, and then opens the doors to let the wind blow it all away. Of course, if you want to write an angry email to me, that's probably not your thing, so aren't you glad I told you? Now go do something constructive with your righteous anger, like cleaning up some dogshit from the local park. It might attract aliens.