Pretty Darned Good

1284 players started the Weekly Championship Tournament. After playing for a little over two hours, I went bankrupt. It was a do or die bet on my part and I lost. Close but no cigar LOL
At the end of my run, I finished very respectfully, in 69th place. Only 68 places away from the $750 first place prize. I don't feel the least bit unhappy as I played, I think, very well. I folded when I should have folded and called the big bets when I thought I could win. Just what any poker player would do.
There is always next time :)

Another week bites the dust

Another week has come and gone. Time flies! It's been an interesting week though.
I went down to the bowling alley on Thursday to see if I could sub in the School Employees league. I haven't bowled since May when the Sagebrush Men's league ended. But, I didn't bowl. There was a spot open and I thought they would ask me to sub but they didn't. This made me slightly depressed since it was beginning to look like nobody wants me! I know I am not the best bowler around but I can't possibly be that bad at a 161 average, can I? My self esteem really took a hit there.
I noticed that one of the teams that had been full last week had a vacancy so I asked what happened to their third bowler. They said she had hurt herself in some way and had to quit because she couldn't bowl. So, I asked if they'd like me on their team and, after talking it over, decided I would be welcome. This made me feel much better. Both of them are low average bowlers, in the 120's on a good day, so hopefully I can help them win some games :)
In the poker area things are improving. I find myself more patient when it counts, not chasing after straights or flushes that aren't coming. More inclined to match someone going all in when I have a high hand. I always hate folding an Ace and something else just because I am being overly cautious. I especially hate folding that Ace when I see that the person that went all in has two low cards like a 5 and a 7. So, I have really been thinking hard before I fold on an all in bid and it has worked out okay. yes, I lost some pots and ran out of chips but I also have won some very large pots being a more aggressive player.
I finished the week with a little over 35000 points, pretty good. I checked my ranking on the site and find that, for last week, I was ranked 612 out of 2000. Not bad, not bad. Thus far I've played 558 tournaments. I've won 145 of them, was in the top 10% 154 times, the top 30% 281 times and in the top 50% 392 times. Pretty darned good for someone that isn't an expert poker player :)
I got another invitation to the Weekly Championship Tournament which starts in about three hours from now. Last week there were 1201 players in that tournament. Wonder how many this week and how long I can survive LOL
Hope all of you had a good week and will have a great week coming up :)

Power

Sitting here fooling around when all of a sudden, blackness on my computer screen! In the corner of my eye I see someone outside and I dash out there to see the SCE man turning things off. What the heck?
I tell him I've had the power on since January. He tells me they have no record of power service ever having been established. Finally he gives me a card and tells me I need to call a number. I tell him I cannot do that because he's turned the power off and my phone needs electricity to work as it is a cordless phone. He gives me one hour to do what I need to do.
So, I called Edison and get the service turned on. Again. LOL Hopefully, when the man comes back he will have gotten the order and will leave things on and go on his merry way. If not, I will be without power and will be grumpy without my computer I'm sure.
I did also get the man at SCE to say he would send me an application for their CARE program, offering low income households a discount of 20%. I'm sure I qualify for that, my income sucks.
As for you all, have a great weekend. Have some fun :)

Flaunt Yourself

Well, not yourself personally. there are strict laws against too much self flaunting. But, you can flaunt your website or blog. And, the best part is that you can do it for free.
How often during the course of a day do you go to Google or Yahoo or Bing and search for information? If you're like most folks, quite a few times during the day. That's where directory submission comes into play. If you're searching, just imagine how many others are searching too. And, in order for your site or blog to be found easily it needs to be up at the top of the search lists.
With a free directory submission, you will be one step closer to generating a massive flow of traffic to your site! FreeDirectorySubmission.org understands that it can be difficult to generate the traffic you want and need. This is why they provide you with this very simple tool for free!
There are many ways to get site to your traffic, often times these methods can be time consuming and/or expensive. Submitting your website to a directory is a very simple way to get your site noticed by major search engines. Please use their free easy-to-use SEO tool to submit your site to many free web directories. The Internet is a large place, with millions of web pages.
So, what are you sitting there waiting for? Click on the link above and flaunt yourself! More traffic means more readers, maybe even a lot more money (if you have something to sell). And, more traffic makes you more enticing to advertisers so you can make money.

Never Again!

Last night I played two pokers tournaments at the same time. I will never do that again! The window of the game pops up whenever it is your turn. There were a few times when it was my turn at both tables. I almost bet most of my points on a hand that I wanted to fold. OOPS!
I shall try to stick to one game at a time, just for my own safety there. The funny thing was that in the money qualifier I finished 15th out of 70. So, it wasn't all bad.
The way the windows pop up though was making me dizzy. Hard to pay attention to these things. *sigh* I think I may be too old for two poker games at the same time LOL

Back It Up

If you work in a big company then you probably already know that their information and data get stored, or backed up, daily if not more frequently. But, what about your computer at home? Isn't your data worth backing up?
Did you know that an estimated 1-in-10 computer hard drives fail each year resulting in the loss of important files such as financial documents, emails, digital photos and music? Even more people, nearly 43% of all computer users, will lose some of their important files because of other computer or hardware problems. Luckily, this is totally preventable with the use of an online backup service. These services will run automated or manual backups of your computer's hard drive so that if for any reason your files are corrupted or lost they can be recovered as good as new. These services are easy to use, totally secure and will prevent losses in time and money in the event of some sort of file loss.
Having been the unlucky one to lose a few hard drives along my way I can tell you that it is incredibly frustrating to realize that all your personal stuff is gone. While I do not have any businesslike information and I can always go get music and videos back I always have some pictures on my computer that I cannot get back, either pictures of my kids or my grandkids. Using an online backup solves that problem.
Click on the link I just posted above and it will take you to a wonderful site where they have reviewed a number of online services that you can use to back up your important data. Stop for just a moment and think. What would you do if you turned on your computer tomorrow and nothing happened because the hard drive crashed? Isn't a backing up service truly worth looking into? There is a reason why businesses back up their information and there is good reason for the rest of us to do so also.
Click on the link above, find the service that is best for you and get yourself some computer peace of mind.

For Better or Worse

Finished another week strongly, ending up with roughly 35000 points and another invitation to the Weekly Championship game where the winner wins $750. Too good to pass up. Unfortunately there were way too many people that thought the same thing, LOL In fact we started the tournament with 1201 players! I beat out around 540 of them but then ran out of cash and was wiped out of the tourney. No cash :(

The worst hand of the week? I had a full house, Queens and 2's. I went all in and was shocked when someone actually called my bet. Their hand showed they had three 2's, so I can understand why they thought they could win. But, I was feeling pretty darned good until the river (last card) came up a 2! I got wiped out by four of a kind?! Darned river!

No matter what the poker experts say, the game of poker still comes down to one thing...luck LOL

Pure and Simple

I can remember, when I was a kid, a lot of people were making a big fuss because the government wanted to put fluoride in the water. Seems like they thought we needed that fluoride to help our teeth, but people were worried about what else the government might want to put in the water. Guess they were afraid the government was planning on turning everyone into zombies or something. But, their fears were for nothing. Fluoride is in the water and nothing bad has happened since they did it.
Now days, people are still concerned about the safety of their water and they drink their water either bottled or filtered. I'm not sure if they just don't still trust the government or they just have not liked the taste of their own water. Either way, they go to great lengths to make sure their water is pure and simple. Just water.
If you are one of the many that drinks water this way, then you should really go and check out this website and see all the wonderful water filters they have. They have brands from Amana to Whirlpool and much more. Heck, they even have a water testing kit so you can see how good your water truly is. Also, be sure to read the very informative Blowing the Lid off Bottled Water.
You don't have to drink bottled water and pay a high price (and these days, saving every penny helps). You can purify your own water and save money. So, check out the website. Click the link above and keep your water pure and simple.

Another Great Week

Although the week looked like it was going to be the pits, having lost almost all of my points on Sunday, it rebounded quite nicely.
I finished the week with slightly more than 25 thousand points. Although I didn't win any bigger tournaments, especially the qualifiers for the money on Mondays, I did finish well in a mega points tournament. Out of roughly 80 starters I finished fourth!
This morning I awoke to find this email waiting for me:
Dear Bonebag,

You won an invitation to play in the "Nlop Weekly Champ Sept 13th 2009 at 7:30" tournament which is scheduled to start 09/13/2009 07:30:00 PM. If you have not already done so, you must register for this tournament to play in it. To register for this or any other tournament, log on and click the Tournaments tab. All tournaments and their details, including dates and start times, can be found there.

Sincerely,
NLOP Customer Service


Guess I am doing alright at the tables. I still need to practice patience. I just can't believe how long some players can stare at two cards and not know whether they want to call or fold. LOL

A Record Broken, Sadly

Records are made to be broken, they always have been. I was happy when Babe Ruth's home run record was broken because I admired Hank Aaron. I was somewhat happy when Lou Gehrig's record was broken because I admired Cal Ripken Jr. But, the record I shall report about today does not make me happy. It makes me sad, very, very sad.


By Jenifer Langosch / MLB.com
PITTSBURGH -- On pure observation, the Pirates' 4-2 loss to the Cubs at PNC Park on Monday ended like any other. The team filed out of the dugout and into a quiet clubhouse. No music blared inside.

Sure, the sting from not being able to sustain any momentum from a thrilling walk-off win on Sunday was there. And certainly the mounting frustration of having lost 10 of the last 11 games didn't help the mood. But on the surface, it was essentially just another loss.

From a historical sense, however, this one was vastly different.

Perhaps fitting that it would come on an overcast day and under an ominous sky, Monday's Labor Day defeat sealed another losing season in Pittsburgh. And this one, the franchise's 17th in a row, permanently stamped the Pirates as the only North American professional sports franchise to ever endure that many consecutive losing years.

"None of the guys on this team were here for any of the majority of that. It's just the label we've been given," third baseman Andy LaRoche said. "But it's up to us to apologize to the fans because we're the team that actually broke the record."

LaRoche said that it wasn't until Sunday he realized that the club sat one loss away from such a distinction. That absence of awareness seemed to be the norm. Yes, most players knew that such a streak existed, but it had been anything but a common subject in the clubhouse.
"It's frustrating," said Brandon Moss. "But how many of these players have been here more than three years? We don't think about it."

To answer Moss' question, the answer is four. Only Paul Maholm, Zach Duke, Ryan Doumit and Matt Capps started the 2007 season with the Pirates.

"We in the front office own the 17-year losing streak. We are a part of it," general manager Neal Huntington said. "These players, their job is to get better on a nightly basis and to consistently win games. Their job isn't to worry about how we've lost for so many years."

The 16-year losing streak the Pirates had entered the 2009 season with matched that of the 1933-48 Phillies.

"Our great fans deserve to be able to passionately support a winner again," said Pirates president Frank Coonelly. "The fact that they have supported us so well through these last 17 years intensifies our commitment to provide them with that opportunity and to do so as quickly as possible."

It will be Pirates starter Daniel McCutchen who finds his name attached to this historic loss, despite the fact that McCutchen has thrown just 205 pitches in his brief one-week Pirates career. He picked up the loss on Monday in what was his first professional decision.

He admitted afterward that he didn't know this potentially historic day actually fell on Monday until just before he took the mound. And if only it hadn't been for Chicago's Derrek Lee.

The Cubs first baseman saw two pitches from the rookie September callup and sent both over the wall. The first, a fastball, was crushed into the shrubbery out in center for a solo shot. The second, a changeup, was lined just to the inside of the left-field foul pole and into the first row for a two-run blast. The combination of homers gave the Cubs the early 3-0 lead.

"Both of them weren't located where I wanted to pitch them," McCutchen said. "A guy like that, he's the don't-let-him-beat-me guy in the lineup."

To his credit, McCutchen battled and kept Chicago from widening its lead any further. Making his first start at PNC Park, he followed up his six-inning debut with a seven-inning effort against the Cubs. He was charged with four runs on nine hits, but also struck out five.

The only problem was that an offense so enthused one day earlier had little answer against Cubs starter Ted Lilly. Moss' one-out double in the fifth pulled the Pirates to within two of Chicago's lead. LaRoche had taken Lilly deep with his own first-pitch homer back in the third.

"I noticed he was just trying to get me with fastballs to get ahead," said LaRoche, who now has eight homers this year. "I was sitting on something middle in and happened to get it. It felt good to square something up."

Those two hits would be it for Pittsburgh, as three Cubs relievers, including former Pirates pitcher John Grabow, followed Lilly's six-inning start with a perfect inning each. Grabow, along with lefty Tom Gorzelanny and third baseman Aramis Ramirez, had an unusual vantage point for Monday's record-setting defeat as all took paths through Pittsburgh before joining the Cubs.

"If you play for them, you feel sorry for them," said Ramirez, who played in Pittsburgh from 1998 until 2003, when a Trade Deadline deal sent him away. "Since I've been here [with the Cubs], we've been in the playoffs three times, and that's fun. They make you play for something. When you're never in the race -- you're going to have years when you're going to struggle, everybody goes through that -- but 17 years in a row is a long time."

Considering the Cubs hold arguably baseball's most recognized run of futility with a 100-year World Series drought, perhaps there's some irony that the Pirates hit loss No. 82 against the Cubs.

"Teams try, nobody wants to lose," Cubs manager Lou Piniella said. "I'm sure [the Pirates] in the near future will start winning with more regularity. It'd be great for the National League and it'd be great for the fans here. They have a lot of history here and they've had success in the past to draw on."

That was precisely manager John Russell's message afterward.
"We can't erase it," Russell said of the streak. "We can't say it didn't happen. It did. But our job is to continue to play baseball and to continue to grow for the future."

It was a very good week

The week is over at NLOP and it was a very good week for me. I ended the week with a whopping 22435 points. This means that I won (or at least cashed) more tournaments and sit and gos than I lost. I guess it really means I am getting better at playing poker as well as knowing when I can bet and when I should just give up the hand and save my points. Patience is not my strong point LOL
I'm also getting better at spotting the donkeys and the outright big bluffer players, which is an important step in my progress. A lot of the players there are beginning to realize that I do not bluff, or at least I hardly ever do. This helps me a lot for when I am bluffing. If my bet is larger than normal for the time most of those that have played against me will fold, knowing that I have a darned good hand and there's no sense losing their points.
Am I ready to lay my own money on a table somewhere? Nope. But, I may at some point in the future. I don't have a lot of money to waste on gambling.

MANKATO, Minn. (AP) - It didn't take much work for two county sheriff's deputies in Minnesota to track down four burglary suspects.

In fact, the suspects pulled right into the Happy Chef restaurant where the Blue Earth County deputies were on a coffee break
Wednesday night.

The deputies had been investigating three residential burglaries that seemed to be related. When they were on their break at Happy Chef, a report of another burglary came in from another county, along with a description of the suspects' pickup truck.

A truck matching that description pulled right into the parking lot. The stolen goods, including laptop computers, other electronics and jewelry, were in the back.

Captain Rich Murry says it shows even a coffee break can be productive.

---

Information from: The Free Press, http://www.mankatofreepress.com

Home Buying Time

Post deleted by request :)

Thoughts

Poker players go from one extreme to the other. Some think too much, some just don't seem to think at all.
Here is the thinker: they've been dealt two cards. They take forever trying to decide if these two cards are worth betting on or not. What i8s there to dwell on? Either they are good cards or maybe they go together, like a 3 and a four or they are the same suit, or they just aren't worth your money. Don't make everyone else suffer just because you are confused. Fold and get it over with already!
The non-thinker: Has a five of clubs and a nine of hearts. No fives or nines in the flop. They bet all of their chips, sometimes thousands of dollars worth. There is no way in Hell I'd go all in with garbage like that. These folks do it and then are shocked when they lose LOL
My better half says I have a problem. If she goes out for a walk she comes home to find me playing poker. If she goes out shopping or somewhere and she calls me, she finds me playing poker. When I am home alone, I play poker. I don't see the problem. It's hard to concentrate on things with people around, especially when I need to listen to them and respond so that they know I am listening LOL
I wonder if I will have a problem when I finally win a cash tournament? LOL