Elect Me Vice President in Charge of Volcanoes

I just finished reading Cat's Cradle, the first Vonnegut book I've ever read, and loved the cynical quasi-sci-fi feel, and will be on the lookout for more at the used bookstores as soon as I finish reading the rest of the stack of books I've accumulated. Today's post title is brought to you by chapter 9.

I've been playing a lot of online poker lately, finally giving in to the temptation to play for real money (and so to play 'real' poker). It lacks the interaction of sitting around with buddies to play a game, but then it makes you care less about the money you're taking in if you win, after all the ideal buddy game sees everyone at even money in the long run anyways. By that definition though, even the poker I've played with friends haven't really been 'buddy games'. What I mean though is that there isn't the same ability to read people, or feign strength or weakness. And trash talk in a chat window inevitably comes off as some blend of obvious, lame or immature. Again, I suppose to so much different from home games, just with less feeling.

Anyways, after having any and all plans for my weekend dissolve, I spent most of the day yesterday playing poker while Carolyn worked and actually made money in the more traditional sense. When you play electronically, you end up getting a sense of unjustness in the way the cards are dealt cause there's no physical deck there to reinforce the real logic. But yesterday was a day where I felt I was getting the short end of the deck. Despite playing for real money, I'm still playing in the lowest stakes games on the site, and getting realistic play is still a bit of a challenge. Suffice it to say, its very hard to 'bluff' people out when you don't have cards (as was most often the case) and when you do have the best cards, its almost inevitable that they will be in with a crap hand that ends up getting the cards they need to make theirs better.

All that said, I am at a pace now of winning just enough to keep playing a few games at a time, kind of like winning a free ticket in the lottery. Its annoying, and I think its time to move to slightly higher stakes so at least I make better players beat me for my money, rather than beat me with luck.

/end poker

I've also been looking at a site tracking some local blogs, which I have from time to time looked for over the years. Infact, I've thought for a while of maybe trying to create something along the 'ist' line of local blogs for the Waterloo area (see Gothamist,LAist, or Torontoist). But between living in the shadow of London and Toronto which actually have venues capable of/willing to host decent music acts and the like, its been more of a whim than anything. However, seeing some of the quality of blogging out there (clearly far superior than anything you'll find here), if someone could get them all on board, there could be the makings for a decent collective blog. Anyways, probably another whimsical idea (my homebrew is going down rather smoothly at the moment), but look for some updated links to some local bloggers in the near future.

Drought Over

After not winning a night of poker since around the christmas season, I finally managed to make it out of heads up and not get burned by some ridiculous card on the river, thus making myself a hard earned $6 richer. Of course poker makes me thirsty, and I drank more like $15 worth of beer in playing, but that, and the lingering headache this morning were a small price to pay for the glory.

On top of that, I may have some work lined up for later in the summer, pending a meeting with the department's resident paleoclimate professor. Today would have been my convocation, had I had the interest in attending, or had I yet completed my still outstanding thesis. Instead I'm looking just far enough past all that to get some money in my pocket, and dwell on what exactly it is I want to do for at least the next 2 years.

While sitting around not writing more important, but less entertaining things, I ended up stumbling across a do-it-yourself improvement for wireless routers that might as well have come straight from the 3 'Lone Gunmen' nerds from the X-Files. I have yet to test it myself, although a buddy of mine has already tried a similar approach, and found a dramatic increase to the strength of his wireless signal. It costs about a half hour of time, a few pieces of cardboard, and some tinfoil, so for any of you out there with issues with getting a good signal to your laptop wireless card, or to a remote PC, I'd give it a try before dropping money on antennas and other crap they'll try to push on you at Future Shop or Best Buy. Its not a technological marvel on par with say a 'gay bomb', but its something.

I'll post the successfulness of my attempts later, but now its time to grill some meat while continuing my march towards skin cancer.