I’m sitting in DFW airport, waiting for my flight to Atlantic City for another WSOPC. The plan is to play in up to three $500 buy-in smaller events, and if I cash in any of those, stay longer to play in the $5000 main event. First place for the small events is cash [edit: and a ring]; First place for the main event is cash, a championship ring, and a seat at the Tournament of Champions at next year’s WSOP.
The usual gang can’t make this trip, but I’m not going alone. At the last WSOP in July, I played in a couple of the Orleans Open events. At those events, I met a woman from Kansas City named Robyn, who might just like poker more than I do. Since July, we’ve exchanged a few emails about our poker successes (and failures, of course), and her husband was gracious enough to let her attend this tourney with me so I don’t have to spend 4 days in a casino alone. (Not sure the bankroll can sustain 4 days at the Craps table!)
So… more news as it happens…
WSOPC
Thirty points!
As of tonight, I have all the high-scoring scrabble letters covered. For the last 5 years, I have been driving a Nissan Xterra, which I refer to as “The X”. Recently, I got the new Motorola Q cell phone. And, today, I picked up my new Nissan 350Z convertible (“the Z”). Since I’m keeping the X for times when it’s not good to drive the Z, I’m keeping all 30 scrabble points covered.
Jay Dugan would be so proud
The lesson learned tonight is I’ll probably do anything for women. See, I have this standing rule: I don’t do shots. Ever. Tonight, I broke it. Read on.
WSOP
I don’t want to talk about it. Ok, I’ll talk a little about it. A big group of us went to Vegas to play in the WSOP $1000 buy-in NL Hold’em event, and stayed for 4 days. I busted out just before the first break. Ugh. But, I did fairly well (cashed a small amount) in a smaller buy-in tournament at the Orleans. Aside from that, we had a great time gambling, drinking, and playing poker, and I met some new friends. So, overall it was a good trip. Ask me about Vegas, but don’t ask me about the WSOP, because I don’t want to talk about it! 
Cingular’s EDGE Restriction
A couple weeks ago, I picked up a teeny-tiny Sony Vaio TX750P for the times when I’m on the road, but don’t need a development-quality machine with me. If all I’m using it for is watching DVDs and playing poker in the hotel room, I don’t need my doubles-as-a-boat-anchor Dell XPS notebook with me.
Built into the Vaio is a WWAN card, which is essentially a cell phone that connects to Cingular’s EDGE network, to give me data anywhere I go (where Cingular has a network, anyway.) The idea is I don’t need to rely on local hotspots, when Cingular already has a lot of coverage. Sounds good to me. So, today, I finally got around to activating my free 30 day trial.
The Google
Google really is the coolest company on the planet. Every week, it seems, I start using a new offering from them, or I start using a previous offering more deeply.
I’m convinced that Google and the tools/services they provide are becoming so integral in people’s lives that soon we won’t remember what life was like without them. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say some time in the not-too-distant future, the terms “the internet” and “the web” will be deprecated in favor of “The Google”. “The Google” will be the generic term for the storage medium, the data stored there, the method of retrieval, and the interconnections. Google won’t own the data, but people will be clamoring to get their data (and their own storage medium) plugged in to The Google. They pretty much already are.
Hello Moto
The new Motorola Q phone is out, and damn it looks sweet. It’s only available through Verizon. I’m a Cingular customer with 9 months still left on my contract, but I’m willing to switch and pay the termination fee just for this friggin’ phone. I hope to pick one up tomorrow when I get back to Dallas.
Beta, beta, beta
Microsoft has released a lot of beta software into the wild lately, and ever the glutton for punishment, I have downloaded most of it. The stuff I use on a regular basis (Office, Media Player, Internet Explorer) mostly confuses me. From these three pieces of software — arguably the three most used pieces of software, short of the OS itself — I get no clear picture of what future applications will look like.
I Didn’t Die…
… but it was close. It was the first illness where I actually considered calling 911. But, I made it through.
Work is still busy. I’m in OKC two weeks out of every three. This project should go through August, or maybe longer.
I’ve got two big poker tournaments coming up … a WSOPC circuit event in New Orleans on 5/19, and a WSOP event in Vegas on July 10th. I have no real expectation of winning or even finishing in the money, but I’ll post my experience here, of course.
Stuck in a Hotel with Malaria
Ok, so it probably isn’t malaria, since I’m not in a tropical hotel. But, it certainly does suck to be in an OKC hotel feeling like crap. Alternating chills and sweats are not how I planned to spend my time here. And to think it was only about 3 weeks ago that I got over the Plague, where I coughed up alarming amounts of brown and green shit. ‘Tis the season, I guess.
