PokerSlut Tour XVIII Razz

Incredible!

This is my next phone.  I just haven't decided whether I want to pre-order online or go to the store the day it comes out.

Decisions, decisions...

Poker Slut Tour XVIII 7 Game Mix

Tonight's Game: 7 Game Mix

BBT5

The Battle of the Blogger 5 Tournament of Champions: May 27

The BBT5 will last six weeks, culminating in a Tournaments of Champions scheduled for Thursday, May 27th. The prizepool for the ToC is impressive: 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place finishers will each receive a $10,000 entry into the 2010 World Series of Poker Main Event as well as room accommodations at the Rio All-Suites Hotel and Casino. 4th and 5th place finishers will receive a $2,000 Bracelet Race package good for many of the preliminary 2010 WSOP events.

To qualify for the Battle of the Blogger 5 Tournament of Champions, you need to be a top player in one of the following tournaments:

Poker from the Rail Series: Mondays at 22:00ET

On April 19th we are introducing our new Poker From the Rail tournament series and everyone is welcome to join us for this deepstack NLHE event with a buyin of $24+2 (or token) starting at 22:00ET. In addition to first place money from the prizepool, the winner will earn an entry into the BBT Tournament of Champions.  The Poker From the Rail tournament will run each Monday from April 19th through May 24th.

The Mookie: Wednesdays at 22:00ET

The Mookie tournament is one of the longest running blogger-hosted events on Full Tilt.  It’s been running so long, in fact, that the original blogger-host has retired and the tournament is now being hosted by the folks at Buddy Dank Radio who have been running a fine game. This tournament, also a deepstack NLHE format, runs each Wednesday at 22:00ET with a $10+1 buyin. Every Mookie winner between April 21st and May 26th will also earn an entry into the BBT Tournament of Champions.

The Invitational: Sundays at 19:00ET

The last ToC qualifying event is the Sunday evening Invitational, 6 events fielded by many of your favorite poker bloggers, players, and media personalities. Full Tilt has invited a lot of old school poker bloggers to battle the younger generation, the mainstream media, and a few surprise celebrities.  It’s a great chance to rail the writers you’ve been reading for years while they play for one of the two ToC entries up for grabs in each tournament.

Blogger Battle Royale: Sunday June 6th

After the ToC is one final event: the Blogger Battle Royale, a freeroll thank you to all the participating bloggers.  The stakes:  a $2,000 WSOP Bracelet Race package and another $2,000 in cash.  The Battle Royale is open to any blogger who actively participates in the BBT.  Qualifying is simple: put the BBT badge (available at the soon to be created BBT webpage) on your blog and play in a Mookie or Poker from the Rail tournament and you’re in.  (Please note: your blog must have been created prior to April 15 to be eligible.)

In order to fulfill the egalitarian promise of the Battle Royale, we’ll also accept good-faith gestures from bloggers who would like to play in the Battle Royale but cannot, for whatever reason, meet the above qualifications.  Email my colleague Dave McCarthy at DaveFromTheRail@gmail.com and he’ll take care of your Battle Royale entry in exchange for a little assistance promoting your fellow bloggers.

Tournament: Poker From the Rail
When: Monday, April 19th through May 24th starting at 22:00ET
Game: Deepstack NLHE
Buyin: $24+2 (or token)*
Password: 2010WSOP

Tournament: The Mookie
When: Wednesday, April 21st through May 26th starting at 22:00ET
Game: Deepstack NLHE
Buyin: $10+1*
Password: vegas1

*Winner also receives ToC entry

Tournament: Battle of the Blogger Tournaments Invitational
When: Sunday, April 18th through May 23rd starting at 19:00ET
Game: Deepstack NLHE
Buyin: Restricted freeroll**

**$2,000 Prizepool + 1st and 2nd place receive ToC entry

Tournament: Blogger Battle Royale
When: Sunday, June 6th starting at 14:00ET
Game: Deepstack NLHE
Buyin: Freeroll for BBT participating bloggers

Tact

Tact - not one of my strengths.  Sarcasm, on the other hand...

Next Laptop

Your Man

Hahahahhaah!

I do love that commercial...

PokerSlut Tour XVIII PLO8 DS

Barter

In exchange for some laptop maintenance my neighbor installed Zooks99's Xmas present: a tetherball pole.  It took him less than 2 hours to install the pole and the boy is giddy with anticipation - the cap will be delivered soon and the concrete will be set in a few days.

Yes, we are now THAT family. 

I started working on the two laptops they brought over.  One needed to have the OS upgraded from Vista to Windows 7 and the other just needed to be cleaned up - they suspected they had picked up some bad things.

They were right.

HO MY GAWD.  I ran Glary Utilities first.  I found all kinds of stuff including 24 spyware infections.  Then I fired up Malware Bytes.  Over 200 infections.  After rebooting and running it again even more popped up.  Malware Bytes is an excellent AND FREE program that I had installed on this laptop about a year or so ago.  I'm pretty sure it had not been run since.

While Malware Bytes is a great program there are some insidious little creatures that even it can't deal with.

The first thing I noticed when I fired up these machines was some crazy program asking me if I wanted to connect to a broadband network.  This family had DSL and their own router so I was pretty sure they weren't using this thing so I just closed it.  Besides, I was doing this work at my house and would be connecting to my router to access the internet.  Eventually I figured out they weren't even using this and deleted this network connection in their Networking Center. 

Another thing I noticed when I was doing a Google search for Malware Bytes was that the default search engine was something called Fast Browser Search.  What really bothered me was that the results I got for my Malware Bytes search didn't point me to Malware Bytes but to a bunch of other products I had never heard of, BUT, specifically, to one product I had just removed from another friend's machine: XP Security 2010.  XP Security 2010 was a disgustingly annoying, fake malware product.  It wasn't terribly hard to remove it but man oh man I wouldn't want my friends to accidentally install that thinking it would cure their problems.

After a little research it looked like I would be having to manually delete a ton of registry entries in addition to removing the programs and tool bars that Fast Browser Search had installed.  I was amused by the popup I got when I uninstalled the software: it asked me if I also wanted to remove some other product THAT WASN'T INSTALLED ON THE MACHINE.  Never mind that the uninstall program didn't actually uninstall anything.  The next time I fired up Firefox and IE the browser default was still Fast Browser Search.  I did manage to remove all the registry entries for that program, delete the program files, and change the about:config in Firefox to finally get rid of it.  A few things I read about it said that people picked it up from a FACEBOOK TATOO APPLICATION!  Now I know why I don't play any of those Facebook games or install any of their add-ons.

It took me over 5 hours to clean up both of these machines including over 20 Windows updates - even SP2 had not been installed.

Once again I showed them the Glary Utilities and Malware Bytes programs and suggested that they run these once a week.  I even told them about installing the Windows updates as soon as they appear.  The wife mentioned to me that she gave up using that machine because it wasn't running right and now she has a netbook that she uses while she lets the boys use the laptop.   I'm pretty sure this machine will be infected again in no time at all.

Killer Rabbit Rebuy

Sigh. 

Another one of Kat's Rebuys that I can't play.  I know you have no excuse so get registered already!