Rock

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F8kT8avF3Y

Turn it up. Listen.

Chili Peppers

Never really listened to all of the lyrics before...putting together a playlist for the plane ride to CA, with mostly Cali bands or songs about Cali. Dani California made the list, then this one played next.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DyziWtkfBw

Can't stop, addicted to the shin dig
Cop top, he says I'm gonna win big
Choose not a life of imitation
Distant cousin to the reservation
Defunkt, the pistol that you pay for
This punk, the feeling that you stay for
In time, I want to be your best friend
Eastside love is living on the West End
Knock out, but boy you better come to
Don't die, you know the truth is some do
Go write your message on the pavement
Burnin' so bright, I wonder what the wave meant
White heat is screaming in the jungle
Complete the motion if you stumble
Go ask the dust for any answers
Come back strong with 50 belly dancers

[Chorus:]
The world I love
The tears I drop
To be part of
The wave can't stop
Ever wonder if it's all for you
The world I love
The trains I hop
To be part of
The wave can't stop
Come and tell me when it's time to

Sweetheart is bleeding in the snowcone
So smart, she's leading me to ozone
Music, the great communicator
Use two sticks to make it in the nature
I'll get you into penetration
The gender of a generation
The birth of every other nation
Worth your weight the gold of meditation
This chapter's going to be a close one
Smoke rings, I know you're going to blow one
All on a spaceship persevering
Use my hands for everything but steering
Can't stop, the spirits when they need you
Mop tops are happy when they feed you
J. Butterfly is in the treetop
Birds that blow the meaning into bebop

[Chorus]

Wait a minute I'm passing out
Win or lose, just like you
Far more shocking
Than anything I ever knew
How 'bout you
10 more reasons
Why I need somebody new, just like you
Far more shocking
Than anything I ever knew
Right on cue

Can't stop, addicted to the shin dig
Cop top, he says I'm gonna win big
Choose not a life of imitation
Distant cousin to the reservation
Defunkt, the pistol that you pay for
This punk, the feeling that you stay for
In time, I want to be your best friend
Eastside love is living on the West End
Knock out, but boy you better come to
Don't die you know the truth is some do
Go write your message on the pavement
Burnin' so bright, I wonder what the wave meant

Kick start the golden generator
Sweet talk, but don't intimidate her
Can't stop the gods from engineering
Feel no need for any interfering
Your image in the dictionary
This life is more than ordinary
Can I get 2 maybe even 3 of these
Come from space
To teach you of the pleiades
Can't stop the spirits when they need you
This life is more than just a read-through

Playing around on Tumblr

Just exported this blog over there. Gonna see what all the hype is about. Not sure I'm a fan yet, so don't go away! I see a lot of my pics didn't come over. A lot of them were linked from external sites. It only allowed me to upload 250 posts, so I'll get the rest up tomorrow.

I have several other blogs here, so I'll likely stay.

Forgot...

Met and played with 2003 WSOP champion Chris Moneymaker at the C-Bus casino. Nice guy. NOT a professional poker player. I honestly think I'm a better player than he is. He did have a good tourney in 2003 though. If it weren't for him, I probably wouldn't be in the game. Good lord, I look awful in this pic, lol. I hadn't even ordered a drink yet! BTW, there was also a huge pool tourney going on at the casino, and they LOVED my Breaking Bad shirt. I hadn't realized the connection to pool...get it...Breaking Bad?

Book it!

Couple things... Tix to CA are purchased! Flying into LA, driving up the coast to SF and SAC, and flying out of SF. Gonna eat good; I'm already looking at recent James Beard Award nominees. I'm also already having stomach pains just thinking about the flight. Gonna hit up my doc for something to keep me from freaking out. What a ridiculous phobia.

Also booked...Black Sabbath in DET in August! Ozzy sounds like shit from what I can tell from the bad YouTube clips from Australia, but hopefully he'll get it together over the summer. My friend Sean Saley, who is the drummer for the band Pentagram, says they are being considered to open for Sabbath in PARIS! That would be amazing. I'm trying to get my old buddy Stout to be my date for this show.

Poker...sucks!

Running bad. Playing bad. Started off the year way up, now I am back to even. None of my hands are holding up, very few draws are hitting, and I'm making bad decisions. It's to the point where I have zero desire to even play.

The good news...it's 77 degrees outside! Got out on the bike a couple times in the past week. Need the exercise!

Map of yesterday's ride

Tool

Never seen these guys live...would be an amazing show

New laptops/tablets, TV shows, movies, and other media

Agh...sick AGAIN much of last week! Not as bad as the supercold I had a few weeks before, but had the sore throat/sinus/cough thing going on. I've never been sick back to back like that before. WTF!!! The weather has finally taken a turn for the better. I am really dying to get out on the bike.

Anyway,I forgot to mention the Craigslist find from a couple weeks ago. Got a Samsung model 300v5a-a05us laptop with Core i7 CPU and 8GB RAM for $300. Gonna sell my Toshiba ultrabook to cover the cost. Will likely even make a few $$ on the deal. I purchased a 120GB SSD drive off eBay and tossed it in. I got some benchmark software and it screams. Only thing is, it's creaky/noisy and I think I still like my Asus better even though it's an i5 CPU, it still seems just as fast. It's also totally solid as far as its construction. I still wish either had a backlit keyboard.

So, being on a perpetual electronics upgrade kick, I offered a kid (like 16-18) $150 for the Google Nexus 7 he was selling on CL, and he accepted. Nice little tablet! I've been playing around with it for a couple weeks now too. Sold the Kindle Fire for $100 on eBay. Not quite a free upgrade, but worth the few extra $$.

As for phones, I am cool with my S3, but the new HTC One looks sweet. My mom wants a new phone pretty bad so I am recommending this or the iPhone, although the bigger screen really wins out, especially for older folks. Did I mention my mom has lost a bunch of weight? She's been dieting and actually even exercising. Good for her.

I recently joined Amazon Prime which seems pretty cool so far, but I am still unable to watch some of my favorite cable shows without paying. I like Walking Dead, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Louis CK, Californication, Homeland, Bates Motel, Workaholics, and Sunny in Philly. Walking Dead season just ended and Mad Men started last night. I was just saying how I never used to watch so much TV. Well, if the weather was better...One cool thing with AP is that you get free 2-day shipping on everything, which will pay for itself even before Christmas with all the business I do there. I rarely even buy electronics from Tigerdirect any more.

One item I'll be buying from Amazon will be the new Black Sabbath release coming out in June called 13. I've heard a couple snippets and it sounds good so far. First Sabbath release in 35 years with Ozzy. Looking forward to a tour! Sample here

Books! can't forget to mention the new book I'm reading. Recommended by TK and a few podcasters I listen to (Mysterious Universe, Paranormal Podcast). It's called John Dies At The End, and so far it's freaking fun. Movie is in my Netflix queue. There's a sequel that I'll pick up immediately after this one.

Speaking of podcasts, Bill Burr's Monday Morning Podcast is quickly becoming a favorite. It's just him ranting into a recorder, but his comedy is pure brilliance. Check it out!

Work is going great. Got a lab together a couple weeks ago, and got a ton done over spring break. I hope summer goes as smoothly. 

Sorry, no poker lately. Probably gonna hit the Shoe soon. Team tourney this coming weekend.

Weather

First week of April and it's been below freezing overnight since who knows when. No end in sight. We may hit 50 degrees this weekend. Meanwhile, every FB friend of mine seems to be vacationing in FL, posting pics by the pool, riding bikes, fishing, etc. I would love to be able to get outside year-round.

My friend Sean was in from DC last weekend. He was moving his mom back to town and crashed at my place Sat night. We just sat around talking all night and flipping channels on the tv. He had to head back to DC the next morning. He'll be back here on Friday with 1 band he's in, and back to Europe in a few weeks touring with Pentagram. Here he is from last year's tour. Rock and roll.

Finally feeling better

I'd been sick for over a week. Serious chest cold or bronchitis or TB or something. Really took the wind out of my sails. Meanwhile, it's still freaking snowing outside. We had 1 60-degree day. Did manage to get the dogs out for a walk, they loved it. Didn't stay out too long, I was still feeling awful.

Got to the Shoe over the weekend for a while, and it was almost a carbon copy of my last session, although my cards were worse.

I am soooo ready for a bike ride and nice weather! 

Winter sucks

I'm blaming my lack of posts lately on winter. It sucks. I'm really hoping for early spring. I've done almost zero exercise-wise since probably November. I'm ready to jump on the bike and pedal like crazy. Gotta love cabin fever.

Poker...lost 2 buy-ins at $1-2 last week at the Shoe. Played good for the most part, then got a couple hands cracked, and loosened up way too much later on.

Saw the movie Dark Skies...meh. Watched a strange one on IFC the other night... Valhalla Rising.

Hello Russians! They are my 2nd largest audience next to the US. Hmmmm.

OMG is this funny

Someone bought the website of Guy Fieri after his domain expired, and this is what he replaced the original website with. Hilarious. If you can't read it, this is the site http://guysamericankitchenandbar.com/

Road trip!

Took a bus trip to Presque Isle on Saturday. Played 3 hrs of poker, up $305, and about an hour of blackjack, up $90. Running good. :) Actually had a $5 BJ table running.

Small casino, 9-table poker room, food sucked, yada yada yada. Had fun either way.

Hollywood Casino in Columbus

Columbus Casino poker room report below, pasted from CPMG board. Was down there for the annual eTech Conference. Low attendance this year, but the sessions I attended were pretty good. Brought back some decent work ideas. Gonna work on some electronic tests for the computer teacher with Google forms,

I was also there on Sunday, being in town for work. Only waited about 30 min for a seat despite the wait list being 30 deep.

I concur with everything Data says here, but my table was not quite as soft. It was also a new table but the stacks got deep pretty fast. Several newcomers sat down and bought in for the biggest stack. There was some decent play at my table. Larry Fish hit one of the $100 random draws. Last one of the evening. I then took it from him when I turned a boat against his flopped nut flush.

I thought the dealers were decent, with the exception of 1 or 2 that sucked.

Fish and I split an $11 large pizza from OH!, one of the restaurants, and it was excellent. Priced well also. Their burger looked good, and word at the table said the club sandwich was the best. They have a fountain drink station just outside the poker room as well, if you get tired of waiting for the cocktail waitresses. They seemed a tad understaffed on Sunday.

Went back on late Monday afternoon, and the place was DEAD. Surprising since the place is so new. They had half the poker room draped off, as they were doing something with the lights and/or security cams, and the construction noise was really distracting.

No cage in the poker room was a negative, and there were long waits for chip runners to return if you had to re-buy.

Results:
Sunday
30 min of $15 blackjack:  +$80
6.5 hrs of 1-2NL:  +$13 ($480 deep, was up about $100, then down around $350)

Monday
2 hrs of 1-2NL:  +$231 on a single $200 buy-in. Was up $340-ish at one point, but wanted to wait until rush hour traffic cleared. Bad decision.

Saw quite a few familiar faces besides Data and Fish. Andrew (NJA) and James (from the Shoe) were there, along with several Show/Nautica guys that I recognized but don't know well.

This is definitely the best poker room in OH.

Car problems...just in time to eat up my tax return

Got my tax returns deposited yesterday. Went to get a $20 oil change at Conrad's during my lunch break, as well as get a slow leak repaired (nail). They gave it their basic inspection, and although most of the stuff isn't critical, the Jeep does need some work. Most of it is suspension-related, but it also needs new plugs, differential service, etc. The big one is the steering stabilizer, which causes the wheel to shimmy like crazy after hitting a bump.

Estimate is coming in around $1100, but I am guessing I can get everything done for $750-800 from White's Automotive in Elyria. They did good honest work for me a few months ago when I thought it needed a clutch.

I think I'll get the suspension stuff done first and the rest in a month or 2.

I am almost at my resolution goal  for putting money in the bank for the year, thanks to a nice run in poker and a little from my tax return.

I am gonna be checking out the C-bus casino this Sunday. I'll be in town for work, and me and Fish want to hit it up. I might even play a $5-10 limit game if they have a table going. We'll see.