Happy Halloween

Sundays, but not today.  Go give yourself a sugar coma sneaking candy from your kids’ treat bags.  That is, after all, what Halloween is all about.

Windy

Just a little windy out here today.

Just a little.

PokerSlut Tour PLO DS

Not only will I be hungover from my Home Game, I will be trashed from attending the Central Illinois Youth Symphony’s Wine Tasting and Silent Auction fundraiser. 

So, come take my chips.

Home Game

I’m hosting a home game tonight.  After the boys spend the whole afternoon at a swim meet I should be primed to drink and play poker. 

Maybenotsomuch but I will do it anyway.

Poker is starting to wear thin with me. 

The PokerSlut Tour has been running for what feels like an eon.  It has been a struggle to get the numbers back up after taking the summer off.  I suspect it may run through this season and maybe one more but unless the poker landscape improves in that time frame I see the end of the PokerSlut Tour on the horizon.

I lost my ass at the SlyPalooza in Michigan only to come home and lose even more at my local boat.  I have been trying to play more online but I have been so busy with “real life” that I haven’t had much time for it.  I was doing well until the other night when I lost four buyins playing 6M 25nl. 

Yeah, poker is wearing on me. 

Maybe I’ll just plan on drinking and donking out early tonight.  Yeah, that sounds like a plan.

T-1

If only….

I would kill for a T-1 connection.  I live out in BFE.  I doubt we ever get fiber optic service out here. 

PokerSlut Tour XIX Limit Holdem

Yes, it is time for that slow painful death known as Limit Poker. 

Hot Date!

Tonight is drunken euchre.

TOH is out of town at his Alma Mater’s homecoming.

I have a date.  Wooohoooooo  ooooo.

I offered to drive since he doesn’t know where we are going so there won’t be any drinking for me.  My neighbor might want me to bring her husband home alive after agreeing to loan him to me for the night.  If not for her I’d be stuck at home with the kids tonight. 

Gay Marriage

My BFF T sent me this.  Awesome!

If you mind the f*cking language, well, then don’t hit play.

Falling for Fall

In the last few days the Ash tree in my front yard has gone from luscious green to burnt yellow and is now spewing leaves all over my yard.  I guess that’s what happens after a few frosty nights followed by several 80° days.  My poor tree.

I guess Fall has finally made it here.  I find it hard to believe since I’m sweltering in my office even as the air conditioner is running. 

I can’t wait for Halloween - by then the weather is down right chilly at night.  I usually sit on the front porch and hand out candy to the kids.  I had to stop wearing my witch’s cape and making up my face after I scared the begeesus out of the little kids in the neighborhood a few years ago.  Maybe after they have grown up some they will be ready for my witchiness; by then it won’t require any makeup .

PokerSlut Tour XIX Stud

Bring on your studliness!

Multi-tasking

I always knew I was an excellent multi-tasker…

P.S.  Windows Live Writer automagically resized this comic to fit my blog’s width setting.  Just sayin.

Windows Live Writer

I listen to several tech podcasts: CNet’s Buzz Out Loud (the boys and I think Molly Wood is a scream!), This Week in Tech, This Week in Google and Windows Weekly among others.

The Windows Weekly has been very helpful; based on Paul Thurrrott’s unabashed love of his Windows Home Server I ended up buying one and fell in love with it myself.  For less than $300 I picked up a refurbed (roxors!) HP MediaSmart Home Server with a 750gb hard drive.  Now that we have five computers in the house the home server has been the a life saver for backing up all the machines.  I don’t really use it much for media sharing but I have set it up to collect music and pictures from all the machines.

Recently Leo Laporte and Paul Thurrott discussed the newly released Microsoft Essentials.  With the exception of the Windows Movie Maker I have no use for the programs bundled in the Essentials package.  Paul waxed poetic about Windows Live Writer;  he uses it to write his many blog posts. 

Let’s admit it: Blogger sucks as far as it’s interface for composing posts.  A long time ago I started using the ScribeFire add-on to Firefox.  One of the reasons I gave up on Chrome was how horrible ScribeFire was in Chrome – well, that among other reasons.  Recent updates to ScribeFire have left me less than dazzled by the program but it was significantly better than Blogger. 

I was more than ready to give Live Writer a try.  After setting it up I spewed out a post.  I was more than delighted to see that it pulled in my Style Sheet in perfect detail.  Everything about my post was exactly as it would appear once posted unlike any other posting program I have tried.  It offers all the expected options: links, photos, videos, and the usual formatting stuff.  Spell checking and word count are also very handy. 

You can publish to multiple blogs and numerous blogging protocols are supported.  I’m not usually a Windows fangirl but this little freebee has really impressed me.  If you have a blog, particularly a Blogger blog, you should give it a try.

Wake Up!

My youngest is sleep challenged.  Or rather, wake challenged.  Talk about grumpy and impossible to wake up. 

I thought it would improve now that he can actually sleep in later in the morning but, alas, this isn’t the case.

Mind you, this boy is only 11 years old!   Oh the hell I will go through when he actually hits those teen years.

I can’t tell you how many times I have felt like doing this:

I’m sure I have a stray water bottle running around here somewhere…

HP Fail

My FIL (father-in-law) has been having problems with an HP laptop that he bought about 3 years ago.  He uses it only for travel.  Every Sunday he fires it up, checks for Windows updates and runs a virus scan. 

Not too long ago his screen started giving him fits.  We thought it was probably dead and found a nice little ASUS to replace it but first he took it to the computer shop.  I warned him that he shouldn’t invest a lot of money into fixing it as it wasn’t worth it.  He ended up getting it repaired against my advice.  He even said he was excited to buy the new machine but instead opted to get the old one fixed.

A few weeks later he told me that it wouldn’t start up.  After a lengthy conversation I determined that there were probably some updates that hadn’t completed installing and that he should fire it up again and give it some time to finish doing its thing.  Sure enough the laptop made it back into the world of the living…. until…. 

Until he called me again saying his machine was acting squirrelly.  He wasn’t wrong.  There was definitely something wrong with it.  When Windows 7 came out I bought him a copy to upgrade the laptop.  He opted for an in place upgrade instead of a completely fresh install (my preferred option).  Somehow something managed to get totally messed up. 

I suggested that we do a completely new install of the OS and hope that fixes his problems.  I picked the machine up from him and spent a few hours getting the new installation up and running.  Everything was working fine until I got a frantic call from him yesterday saying it wasn’t booting up. 

He was finally resigned to replacing it since he was going out of town in a week and really wanted a laptop to take with him.  Luckily there was a nice deal on a 14” Toshiba at Amazon.  I ordered it with my Amazon Prime account with free 2-day shipping.  You know what I’ll be doing come Tuesday afternoon.

I really enjoy shopping for computers.  But you knew that already, didn’t you????

A neighbor told me she was in the market for a netbook so I recommended a Toshiba T215d that I had been eyeballing for myself.  After I trashed my netbook’s LCD I seriously considered buying one the Toshibas to replace it.  There was even a killer deal running on the red one.  I got to play with hers for a bit and I was impressed.  Toshiba has one of the best reliability records for laptop computers as opposed to HP who has one of the worst reliability records for laptops (1 in 4 machines is expected to fail within the first 3 years). 

I have owned several HPs and have been disappointed in all of them. My Toshiba has been an excellent machine and I wouldn’t hesitate to buy another one (we have two now) and recommend them to my friends.  My experience with HP has not been good and I have had several friends that have had machines fail as well. 

I can’t wait to get my hands on my FIL’s new Toshiba.  I’m sure he will be delighted with it and I expect it to give him many years of trouble free service.  I’m still lusting after that Toshiba netbook.  Who knows, maybe I’ll find a killer deal that I can’t pass up.  Or I’ll get a real job and be able to afford new toys.  Nah, that’ll never happen.

PokerSlut Tour XIX Razz

It's time to Razzle Dazzle!

Blind Type

When I first saw this a while back I was thrilled!  I really wanted to try it but it hadn't been released. 

I just read this on AndroidGuys:

Ever wonder what happened to the company BlindType? You know, the one's that have the bad ass predictive keyboard (to see a demo click here). Well Droid-Life is reporting that the company announced today that they have been acquired by the Big G, Google. This is great news! See the official statement below!

We are excited to announce that BlindType has been acquired by Google!

We want to thank everyone for their overwhelming support and positive feedback.
We know that typing on your mobile device can be a frustrating experience, which is why
we’ve worked hard to make touch typing easier and faster than ever – the way it should be.

We’re excited to join Google, and look forward to the great opportunities for mobile innovation that lie ahead.

The BlindType team

Does this mean BlindType is going be built into the Android stock keyboard? Let's hope so! That is one great keyboard!