Stumble Upon

Stumble Upon has got to be the coolest web tool ever. Sign up, click the Stumble button and off you go on an adventure. I have never failed to find all kinds of interesting stuff when I Stumble.

Candy! Candy! Candy!

Yes. It's that time of year. Time for all good parents to buy kilotons of candy to hand out the neighborhood chillins. That is, after they hold back their person favorite candies in a secret place guarded by better security than Fort Knox. Nothing warms the heart like hearing kids whine about there being no Reese's cups in the cauldron of snacks I'm handing out!

I, like most people, buy those enormous bags of mixed chocolate candies at the local club warehouse. [insert Sam's Club joke here] All my friends know I have a special place in my heart for Sam's Club.

Unfortunately, those mixes always have one or two good things and the rest are marginal. The marginal stuff comes into play only when all the good stuff is gone. Suddenly marginal doesn't look so bad when the chocolate buzz starts to wear off and you are thinking about killing someone if you don't get another chocolate fix IMMEDIATELY!

Sometimes you feel like a nut.

Does anybody remember when 100 Grand bars where called 10,000 bars? or something like that anyway. I guess that's what they call candy inflation!

Two more personal favorite is Rolo and Riesen candies. But those are never in any mix.

No post about junk food would be complete without ... Fritos.

Fritos are the Devil.

That is all.

Men With Cramps

http://www.menwithcramps.com/

Plagiarized

gadzooks1995: hahahah this guy's accent is a scream
khanlady: ya i love it
gadzooks1995: hanyway
gadzooks1995: shit shit what the fuck is shooting us
gadzooks1995: lol
khanlady: hehehe
gadzooks1995: so the U.S. is like, fuck we're dumbassses
gadzooks1995: hahahahaha
gadzooks1995: WTF?
gadzooks1995: hahahah, OMG this is funny shit
khanlady: ya i love it when i found that
gadzooks1995: ok, I need the link to that
gadzooks1995: cause I'm so posting it on my blog
gadzooks1995: that's how funny I think it is
khanlady: hahahaha
khanlady: i was crackin up too, just watched it again actually
khanlady: and australia was still like WTF?
gadzooks1995: yeah
gadzooks1995: and some huge meteor is like FUCK THAT
gadzooks1995: lol
khanlady: hahahaha
gadzooks1995: HOMYGAWD get me that LINK damnit
gadzooks1995: BTW, I'm posting this chat with it lol
khanlady: lol

I watched this at least a half dozen times and it just gets funnier and funnier. So I will shamelessly steal from someone else's blog for my post today. Sue me.

Corruption

squibster: restaked :-(
squibster: and I blame the slut tour
gadzooks1995: that's not a bad thing
gadzooks1995: kewl
gadzooks1995: we corrupted you? woooot!
squibster: lol
squibster: yeah
squibster: corrupted

Taekwondo

The gym I belonged to in Indiana offered Taekwondo classes for kids. Thinking this would give my kids something to do while I worked out I signed them up. It was a very small class and they were the only kids. They got a lot of one on one instruction. It turned out that the owner was the grandmother of one of AJ's classmates.

After we moved to Illinois I didn't have much luck finding an acceptable (close to my house) place for them to do Taekwondo. During the t-ball season of '05 we met some of our new neighbors and while discussing different sports the kids participated in we found out about a TKD school nearby. The owners/instructors were a married couple that were former olympians! Well, this I had to look into.

The kids were hooked from the first class on. This was nothing like what they had done before. Very structured and organized. No small classes. But very well run! We loved it.

The boys were dying to go to a tournament. We signed them up for a tournament in Rochester, MN for the first week a April '06. We planned a great long weekend with a side trip to the Mall of America. The trip was a success when each won a medal and spent a day at the theme park in the Mall.

This season started in September. The school was kicked out of their former home but found another school to merge with at the local family Y. The school hosted a tournament today with several schools traveling to Peoria to participate. The turnout for this was significantly less than the last tournament but that only improved their chances of winning a medal.

It turned out that they were in a group of only 3 kids competing against each other. My boys ended up getting gold and silver for the form competition!

They got silver and bronze for breaking.

Sparring is probably the most exciting park of the competition. AJ loves it. Dillon would rather not do it.

AJ was pwned by his first opponent. Tears ensued.

Dillon was pwned as well.

AJ had to spar for 3rd place. He wasn't too thrilled about having to do it again after having his youknowwhat handed to him the first time, but he must have found something to get worked up about because he totally pwned this guy! Wooooooot! Another bronze medal.

My kids rock!

Ex Sex

I remember the day when you broke up with someone and pretty much never saw them again. None of this calling, texting, AIMing, booty calling, etc., after it was all over with. You just moved on to the next loser, er, person.

Is this a new thing? Post break up sex? Why would you want to go there? I just don't get it.

I know two people that basically asked my permission (yeah, I don't get that either) to have sex with their exes. I strongly discouraged it. But apparentlly I was wrong about that, because at least one of them did it anyway. I have to give him credit for fessing up to it, much later of course.

Horny soul number two is trying to talk himself out of it but I'm sure he'll cave, too, and I'll end up listening to the first 8 stanzas of "I can't believe I did that" over and over again.

Welcome to the new millenium.

Pokerpalooza!

OMGWTF?!?!?!? I'm too old for this.

As many of you already know I went to Pokerpalooza - Indy this past weekend.

Pokerpalooza was a gathering of the FullTiltForum members that could make it to Indy for some friendly poker playing and general debauchery.

We arrived around 4:00ish. While the other half unloaded the van I contacted the two forum members that had already arrived. We hung out in the "suite" part of my room for a while then headed off to dinner.

Amish, Zooks (me) and Lynx

As soon as we got back from dinner we took over the "breakfast" area of the hotel lobby. The table was felted, adult beverages poured, and the cards and chips were soon flying.

Sly shows off his powerhouse hand - CBL!

Zooks, REVina, amish, and Lynx

Lynx checks out his hole cards

DTM - is he cute or what? He's available!

Asian! What's with the hat?

We don't know it yet but Mrs. Sly was going to kick our butts this weekend.

We played two full table sngs. DTM and Mrs. Sly decided to chop the first one. Zooks and DTM played the second one out since DTM had a huge chip lead he wasn't too interested in offering me a chop. I hope to get it all in with two live cards but I was DENIED!

K5>>>75, Pinche Rio
(board reads right to left in this case)

Those wild and crazy young people played a short handed sng after the oldtimers (me included) went to bed.

The next day found us all dragging a little bit. We managed to scare up a game after lunch.

Pretty soon it was time to start setting up the conference room for the main event - a $20 deep stack tourney. REV and IlliniFan did a great job getting all the stuff set up. Tables were felted and away we go. REV had invited a bunch of his local degenerate friends to play with us. We ended up with 27 players.

It wasn't too long before we had an all in!

Predator was playing fast and furious!

Predator's table lost the first 4 people if I remember correctly. He did manage to hit Quad As to double up but he was still pretty short stacked and ended up going out pretty early.

Squib and Lynx hanging to make the final table.

Sly shows off his stack.

Say it with me, Eddaaaay!

T bought me this shirt when she was in Vegas to play the WSOP ME.
She loves me!

Teresa (Pwner of Yoll) and Predator.

Carraaaay (soon to be a poker playa) and Eddaaaaaay!

Couldn't leave REV outta the pictures!

The Effers did make a nice showing for themselves. I think 7/10 final table players were from the forum. I'm pretty sure all the cashers were FTFers! Wooooot! Asian ended up bubble boy but a deal had been made while he was still a pretty large stack to pay the bubble bitch his buyin back. So after all that play he ended up even for the night. Amish ended up coming from behind and winning after a HU battle with Mrs. Sly! To be fair, it must be said that Mrs. Sly was slightly "handicapped" by that point in the evening.

As people busted out a loser's lounge sng was started. Since I didn't bust out soon enough to play it I have no idea who won it but there was a lot of exciting hands being played based on all the whooping and hollering coming from that direction.

A ring game was set up with the next 5 or so players to bust and it was filled up rather quickly. I played in that a while but I was pretty much card dead all weekend. I played one hand where I chased a flush only to end up doubling up Lynx with his set of 2s. I guess I was just in the mood to gambol!

By far and away the best part of the weekend was getting to spend face time with all the people that I "talk" to online. Although I had physically met most of the people before it was amazing - even the first time we met - how comfortable it was; not at all like meeting strangers for the first time, definitely like meeting long lost friends.

We're already working on a plan to have a Pokerpalooza - Vegas, Baby! We're shooting for May but maybe July would be better so we could catch some WSOP action at the same time. So if you are in Vegas and see a diverse crowd of people acting wild and crazy and thoroughly enjoying themselves screaming things like, "You have CBL don't you!", "Damn you and your Panger!", "OMGWTF, I've been dimmified!", "Man I wish DTM and Asian were here!" and "Man, we've gotta post that on the forum." then you know you IT'S THOSE DAMN FTFERS!

Do you Yahoo?

Do you Yahoo!? I do. Or I did.

My morning routing includes firing up the laptop and checking out the entertainment news on my.yahoo.com.

But this morning... no my.yahoo.com.

No yahoo.com.

Hmmmm.

Everything else seems to be working.

Hmmmm.

gadzooks64: is yahoo working for you?
khanlady: let me check
gadzooks64: k
khanlady: yep
gadzooks64: crap

After having tried it periodically throughout the day I finally decided to call my favorite person at Mediacom: Mr. Tech Support. Yeah, I'm sure he was just as thrilled to be talking to me as I am to him. We have had a long tempestuous relationship - mostly hate/tolerate with the occassional grateful/indifferent.

My first clue that there was a problem was the 20 mins I spent goofing off while listening to the speakphone relay the recorded "your call is important to us" diatribe.

Mr. Tech Support confirmed that the residential customers were not able to Yahoo! today. He assured me that "they" are working on resolving this issue and commiserated with me because he, too, uses Yahoo as his homepage.

"They" better get my Yahoo! going again... and soon. I neeeeeeeed my horrorscope! How am I supposed to know if today is a good day without it?

Cold Deck

Poker has been really frustrating for me lately.

I've have been getting no playable hands. Or, if I pick up a reasonably playable hand somebody else picks up a monster.

I know we've all been through it. It sucks. You just have to wait it out. Sigh.

Here is the complete hand history for my latest sng.

Dealt to gadzooks64 [7h Qh]
Dealt to gadzooks64 [7h Tc]
Dealt to gadzooks64 [Qh 3s]
Dealt to gadzooks64 [6d 2h]
Dealt to gadzooks64 [5h 2c]
Dealt to gadzooks64 [8c Tc]
Dealt to gadzooks64 [6d 4c]
Dealt to gadzooks64 [7h 9c]
Dealt to gadzooks64 [Ah Js]
ppath calls 50
FishfullThinkin calls 50
598chevy folds
nicknack15 calls 50
Queenie38 calls 50
BILL ZAAT raises to 375
gadzooks64 folds

Dealt to gadzooks64 [9c As]
Dealt to gadzooks64 [9d 3s]
Dealt to gadzooks64 [7s 5s]
Dealt to gadzooks64 [5s Tc]
Dealt to gadzooks64 [5s 2h]
Dealt to gadzooks64 [9c 8h]
Dealt to gadzooks64 [2d 3d]
Dealt to gadzooks64 [Th 4h]
Dealt to gadzooks64 [Qs 4c]
Dealt to gadzooks64 [3h 5s]
Dealt to gadzooks64 [Qh 7h]
Dealt to gadzooks64 [3d 4h]
Dealt to gadzooks64 [Jc 2s]
Dealt to gadzooks64 [Kc 2h]
Dealt to gadzooks64 [7c Qs]
Dealt to gadzooks64 [6c Kc]
Dealt to gadzooks64 [Ts 9d]
Dealt to gadzooks64 [Ac 2d]
Dealt to gadzooks64 [8s Kc]
Dealt to gadzooks64 [8c Th]
Dealt to gadzooks64 [Jh 8c]
Dealt to gadzooks64 [3c Qc]
Dealt to gadzooks64 [8h 2s]
Dealt to gadzooks64 [6d Kd]
Dealt to gadzooks64 [Kh 8d]

Dealt to gadzooks64 [Qd Ac]
gadzooks64 raises to 820, and is all in
JZ4230 raises to 3,781, and is all in
masATC folds
FishfullThinkin folds
firesteve folds
harden1391 calls 1,120, and is all in
mcdaddy23 folds
MojoKansasn folds
JZ4230 shows [4h As]
harden1391 shows [Kc Ah]
gadzooks64 shows [Qd Ac]
Uncalled bet of 2,661 returned to JZ4230
*** FLOP *** [9c 3d 5c]
*** TURN *** [9c 3d 5c] [6h]
*** RIVER *** [9c 3d 5c 6h] [Kh]
JZ4230 shows Ace King high
harden1391 shows a pair of Kings
harden1391 wins the side pot (600) with a pair of Kings
gadzooks64 shows Ace King high
harden1391 wins the main pot (2,760) with a pair of Kings
gadzooks64 stands up

Internet Phone Service

I guess I should start this off with: we live in the boonies. If you live in the boonies [anywhere outside of "town"] you accept the fact that some things just cost more in the boonies. Phone service is one of those things.

We were paying [including all taxes, surcharges, and miscellaneous graft] about $65/mth just to have a land line to our house. That included NO long distance.

One day in January a nice lady came around passing out photocopied flyers about new phone service from the cable company. We already have digital cable and internet service from them and they now are offering phone service for $30/mth with unlimited long distance to anywhere in US and Canada for free. SIGN ME UP!

I call her back and tell her that we definitely want this service and to sign us up. A week later I get a return call saying she had taken care of it and our installation date was 2 months out! WTF?!?!?!? 2 months? You must be kidding me. Sigh. Ok, I wait.

Well about 2 weeks before my scheduled install date I get a call saying that we never confirmed our desire to switch carriers - you know that phone call where they tape everything and you have to say YES I want to change about a brazillian times - and we must do that before they can come out to change over the service. Fine. Call me and I will do that. Yes, ma'am we can do that but we will have to reschedule your installation date as well. WTF?!?!?!??! You must be kidding me. So my install date gets moved back another 3 weeks. I guess I should be glad it wasn't 2 months.

The nice cable guy shows up with my handy dandy phone modem and we do the whole install thing. We had to split the line at the phone jack to handle the modem and the fax/printer/scanner/copier machine. Well the minute we hooked up the fax things we crazy. For whatever reason they did not like one another. We goofed around with it a little and came to the conclusion that it was the cable. Installed another cable and they seemed to get along just fine.

Flash forward 6 months. My mother is visiting and needs to fax a document. I happily slap said document into the fax/printer/scanner/copier machine and away we DON'T GO. Come on I thought we had this all figured out a long time ago. Sigh. Looks like the modem and fax machines [or the splitter between the two] are incompatible. Truly, a small price to pay for cheap phone service but sometimes I wish technology wasn't so incompatible with my lifestyle.

I'm going to try buying a new splitter and see if that doesn't improve the situation. Until then, it's plan B: off to use the inlaw's fax/printer/scanner/copier machine. Here's hoping I don't break their machine.

Edit: It appears the problem with in the power cord to the printer. This printer would consisitantly freak out whenever the power went out. I ended up disconnecting the power cord from the printer and reconnecting it [advice from the online support at HP, HP ROCKS!] and suddenly the damn thing works fine. Go figure.

I love my mother.

I love my mother. But....

Because my mother would have had to wait at the airport for over 2 hours to catch the shuttle to my house I agreed to drive the 2:45ish minutes to O'hare to pick her up for her month long visit with us.

Her flight originated in Frankfurt, Germany. She had a layover in Detriot before catching her last leg to Chicago. Unfortunately, I had to leave my house before her flight from Detroit left for Chicago. Even on the best of days there's a better than 50/50 chance that her flight could be or would be delayed for some reason.

Armed with my handy dandy cell phone I called the airline to get a flight status and sure enough there was a 30 minute delay. Greaaaaaaaat. So much for my planned drive-by pick. Now I'm pretty much committed to parking and collecting her at baggage claim. So I set the cruise control for 65 instead of the usual 78 and took my time hoping to save some unneccessary ass time at the airport.

Just a few minutes after getting the flight status my handy dandy cell phone rings with a number that I don't recognize at all but I answer it anyway. It's my mother sounding strangly "cheerful" informing me that her flight was delayed and that a nice woman at the bar was letting my mother use her cell phone to call me. Greaaaaaaaaat. I tell her I already knew her flight was delayed and that I would park and collect her at baggage claim.

After we hung up I noticed that her flight ought to be boarding soon and I hoped she was getting her butt outta that bar soon.

I arrive just in time to see all the Detroit passengers claiming their bags. I look around intently but don't see my mother. Figuring her for a nicotine fit I went outside to look. Hmmm, no mother. After doing this circuit twice, maybe three times, I break down and go to ticket counter to have her paged.

The lovely counter agent informs me that my mother did not make her scheduled flight but would be arriving on the NEXT FLIGHT landing in and HOUR! Greaaaaaat.

I trot my ass back to the car to retrieve my latest J.A. Jance novel. On the way back I attempt to locate one of the ubiquitous Starbucks that seems to multiply at aiports. But, no o o o o oo, they are all ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SECURITY CHECKPOINT. And, one must possess a boarding pass to go through said checkpoint.

I stroll around and determine there is exactly NOTHING to eat or drink in the baggage claim area of Terminal 2 at O'Hare airport. Greaaaaaaat.

Finally 6:00 approaches. I park myself near the escalator dispatching newly arrived passengers. Oddly, no passengers seem interested in the NW carousel. About 6:15 I finally approach the lost/missing luggage counter and ask when the next Detriot flight will be arriving. Oh, that flight was delayed until 6:30. Greaaaaaat.

Finally, at 6:45 my mother strolls down the escalator and claims her luggage which had managed to wait for her to arrive WITHOUT festering resentment, unlike me.

Needless to say it was one very quiet ride home. Mostly because she SLEPT most of the way. Good thing she's staying for 4 weeks. There's some hope I may have forgiven her for this before she leaves.

How I became a degenerate

We all have our own unique story. It usually begins with, "I was soooo o oo o o oo bad..."

Like most of us I loved to watch poker on TV. They make it look so simple. So easy. So exciting.

I'm a reasonably intelligent person.

I love games.

I have a very competitive nature.

I should pwn poker.

Hahahahahahhahahahah!

For me it started with a trip to Las Vegas for my brother's wedding a year ago February. Aside from seeing the Penn & Teller show, playing poker was numero uno on my list of things to do while there.

I finally got to play some 3/6 limit holdem. I WAS SOOO O O O OO O BAD! LOL! No really. I got to play twice and lost a total of $100 or so. But I was hooked.

As soon as I got home I was online downloading poker software and signing up for an account on Full Tilt Poker. I started playing playchip. I WAS SOOO O O O OO O BAD! LOL! No really. But it didn't seem to matter because they were all SOOO O O O OO O BAD! LOL! No really.

Like any highly motivated and competitive person I decided to do some research. I bought and read several books on poker. Then I found some poker forums and blogs. I learned so much from all of these places.

I was itching to play real money poker but the other half said not NO but HELL NO! Being the resourceful (read sneaky) person that I am, I checked out these links I had seen posted in many places about InstantBankroll.com. Turns out these people were giving away FREE MONEY to play online poker. It was just the deal I needed. Sign me up. Ship me the money!

The only drawback to this was that I had to play at Party Poker. Not a site I care for very much but I figured I could clear the money and take it and any profits I made over to Full Tilt.

After I started playing at Full Tilt I found a table with an unusual name: fulltiltforum.com. Now that's a funny name for a table. After seeing it and playing there a few times I checked out the forum only to find a group of intelligent and very funny people who loved to play poker.

The forum was just starting their Tunry II season. The draft was coming up and desperately wanted to play in it. After playing the forum table and some careful needling I was chosen for a team.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

I've been reasonably successful playing poker. Given the legislation that Bush is about to sign, I'm not sure what the future of online poker in the U.S. will be, but I intend to play it as long as I can.

At least I can say I am no longer SOOO O O O OO O BAD!

Pokerslut Tour Event #2 Limit Omaha Hi/Lo

Looks like we're back to poker again.

My friend, Teresa, and I decided to start a new FullTiltForum.com private tournament event. We like to refer to ourselves as pokersluts so that's the name we chose for our tour.

We never intended it to be a female focused event. You can be male and still be a pokerslut; it's an entirely non-gender thing.

The first event was the ever popular No Limit Holdem. We had quite a decent turnout with several new players showing up to play. We had a great time and surprisingly enough a woman, DranDead, from the forum won it!

Turns out the 1st, 4th, 5th, 7th and 8th place finishers were all women! I'm gadzooks64 on this site so that's me in 5th place! Not a bad finish but out of the money unfortunately.

Event #2, Limit Omaha Hi/Lo - not one of my favorite games - was last night. Again we have a great turnout. Several forum members stalked the named pros on Full Tilt Poker and hounded them until one agreed to play our tournament!!!!

Richard Brodie, known online as Quiet Lion, is a professional poker player. He was actually playing cash game O8 when he agreed to register for our tournament. At least one other high stakes cash game player also joined us! We told him next week's game is Razz, another game he's quite good at. So who knows, we may be able to talk him into playing that one, too!

The play at the final table was incredibly tight. Those players with Poker Tracker commented on the stats for the table and how tight the play was. [Tight in this case means conservative.]

Quiet Lion mananged to hang in there long enough to be the bubble player - the last player out that doesn't win money - or as we affectionately say, "Bubble Bitch". The coolest part was that the three players left WERE ALL FORUM WOMEN!

Way to pwn ladies!!!

Next week's event is Razz. I can't wait to see who wins!

Caution

Caution: Gratuitous posting ahead... don't say I didn't warn you.

"Mommy, google is great for EVERYTHING!", D.

This comment came after his dad showed him how to google pictures of butterflies for a school project.

Sadly, I had no google when I was 7.

Caution: Gratuitous cute child [D] video ahead.

Caution: More gratuitous cute child [A] video ahead.