Ghosts of Christmas Past

I was confronted by my second year accounts lecturer today. As I was leaving my building he spotted me from across the street and shouted out a comment. The fact that he recognised me is quite telling, it's not because I was a good student.

I would tell you what it was he shouted out to me, but in the interests of not incriminating myself I plead DA FIFF!!!!

When of when will telkom connect my ADSL? Any bets people?

I'm going to buy some more memory for my PC today. Java Bean really is the cheapest place around. Here comes 512MB for my old dinosaur.

Saw this funny pictue on a poker blog today



I got an email from Lonely Finger here it is:

Dear Lonely person,

I tried to read the mail you sent me. But I don't have another finger friend to hold down the 'alt' key to open my mailbox.
I'll just stand here alone.
Waiting.

Sadly, finger.

I went back to the site to see if any new content was added. Nothing. I browsed the site a bit more and discovered some interesting looking links, this can't be what the whole thing is about can it? Really it can't?

Don't forget the Lonely Finger challenge, check the sidebar for more details. No one has said anything yet so if one person attempts they will automatically be the closest and the funniest.

cheers
schpat

Lonely Finger Challenge

Well trust mr. completely unreliable, that's you James, not to arrive for role-playing last night. But it was ok because mr. somewhat unreliable, that's me, left his character sheet at home. I tried to get a game of something going but alas it was to no avail. We had a good time anyway just talking shit, isn't it always the case. We watched The Most Amazing Show starring Corne and Twakkie last night. All I have to say is that a chakra is like a starburst of energy in your poophol! Who says SACB isn’t educational?

Another interesting thing we saw last night was an advert for a website. The ad was about a finger (complete with animated face drawn in ball point) who was so lonely he couldn’t get people to come to his party even when he offered free beer and strippers. I just had to check the website out today to see what it was all about, I left no more enlightened than when I got there. Go check out the site and if you can work out what it is let me know, otherwise post your speculations here as comments and I’ll give a prize for the person who is right, if no one is right I’ll give a prize to the most interesting idea. www.lonelyfinger.com

I can't say what it is about this week but it seems as if everybody is just going through the motions and waiting for it to end, that's what you get in four day weeks I suppose.

I'm still in the cooling off period before I go out and order ADSL but it's looking more and more attractive all the time. In case you're interested here's the financial breakdown:

ADSL 192 circuit line rental (god telscum sucks!) R270
ISP 3 Gig cap R100
Total R370

The next best connectivity option is callmore with a capped charge per call.

Callmore monthly R90
20 Dial-ups* R170
ISP R70
Total R320

That means it'll cost me only R50 extra to be permanently connected even in peak periods and never worry about internet call costs, that's R50 for piece of mind and convenience.

*I've used 20 dial-ups because on average I spend about 1.5 - 3 hrs online at a time and so 20 dial-ups is the break even point where the extra R90 for Callmore is paid off. I do realise that these figures are rough with many variables, but I think they are good enough for decision making.

Also today I realised that about 80% of my call charges are Elisabeth phoning me at work. If we can communicate via email it would save money. If we could manage only half of our communications this way it's going to save about R80, that means a saving of R30 per month, instant value!

Of course amortising the initial setup costs (R1500, ADSL wireless router with ethernet and wireless cards for my pc and Elisabeth's laptop) at R30 per month will take about four years. I could have gotten a modem for free and run cables, but ultimately R1500 is a small price to pay for not having the hassles of running wires in odd places or having them running across my lounge floor and being able to use the laptop anywhere in the flat.

Bottom line: I've been waiting and I'm still keen to do it. It's not a rash decision and I'm going to go for it.

After all that I'm going to leave you with a joke forwarded to me by the creator of Leisure Suit Larry, Al Lowe.

"Some girl on the street outside the bar just asked me if I was saved yet."
"Yeah? What did you say?"
"I told her 'I saved at the checkpoint a couple of minutes back and I can reload from there if I die.' She looked confused."

lol, geek anti evangelism humour, gotta love it!

schpat

Schpat Poker Invitational

I'd like to thank everyone who came to the Schpat Poker Invitation, I had a lot of fun and it wouldn't have been possible without you. For those of you who couldn't make it here's how it went down.

Fourteen people started at about 17:00, I say fourteen, but only thirteen were actually there. Due to an unfortunate scheduling issue Garrick couldn't join us until later. Everyone put R25 into the pot and was given 1500 chips. The people who played were
Chelle, Alex, Garrick, Roo, Mike, Beth, Al, Paul, Nick, Hila, Dave, Waynne, Graham and me. Roo took a big early lead with his patented ultra aggressive style and by the time we got to the final table he needed one of the chip cases to transport his stack.

The final table was Mike, Graham, Chelle, Waynne and Roo with a rather impressive chip stack. Chelle and Graham didn't last very long after joining the final table rather short stacked. Mike went out next but managed to hold in there to witnessed Roo losing his chip lead to Waynne and Dave, he walked away with R50. The aggressive play that brought Roo to the final table with an enormous lead just couldn't carry him any further and he was taken out by Waynne and Dave, waking away with R75. Waynne and Dave played heads up for awhile trading small pots until Dave went all in on an A4o and won. Waynne earned himself R100 and Dave R125 for the evening. The tournament finished at about 01:00

After than Al, Garrick, Roo and I decided to play a little five card Draw for a R10 stake. That game went on until 07:30 the next morning going through various silly stages where I did things like playing indian poker, playing blind and playing with my draw open for everyone else to see. During these silly phases I made most of my gains. By the end of the evening the cards were so manky that they wouldn't fit back into their boxes. Thanks to these late partiers for taking the night to a whole other level and a really big thanks to them for helping me clean up.

Well I'm still tired, but looking forward to the next time we do it.

Less Stress

The days are significantly more relaxed now that there is very little that can be done before Christmas. People are calmer and the roads are quieter, but thank god I'm not in the shops. I may be speaking too soon though, I've still got to pick up Elisabeth's main gift. I'm getting her a mini Hi-Fi that plays MP3 from CD and also memory cards and flash drives, from Hi-Fi Corp. While the products offered by Hi-Fi Corp are decent the quality control of their manufacturers is rather suspect and with their seven day return policy there was no way I was picking the unit up with out leaving plenty of time for a return. So yesterday I took a little trip out to the Rondebosch branch and guess what, out of stock! They have no stock of the unit anywhere in the western cape. They took my number and promised to call me back if stock came in, but they couldn't promise it would be before Christmas. So a bit of a pickle.

Elisabeth and I have been eating a lot of wraps and salad because they are quick to make and require almost no clean up. Last night I was bored of eating the same "easy" suppers over and over, so I decided to be a little creative. I've got a bunch of salmon in my freezer and I decided to do a stir fry. I picked up a Woolies ready cut stir fry pack and I was ready to go. I fried the salmon first adding a generous measure of teriyaki for flavour. Then did the stir fry in two batches because my pan is small, I really need a wok. The ginger in the veg mix really brought out the flavour of the fish and teriyaki, it was da bazomb!

After supper we watched a little TV and then I headed downstairs to clean up the kitchen and play a little Texas Hold 'em. I played two 18 p NLHE $1.50 + $0.25 Sit and Go tournaments and finished 1st and 2nd respectively. The first tournament was all about playing aggressively and winning big hands, it was what worked. It was a whole bunch of fun twice during that game I went from big stack to incredibly small stack (at one point $800 with $600 blinds) as other players got luckier than I was. Careful playing and some amazing semi bluffs saw me steeling a few pots and building my stack up again. I also had my share of luck drawing three straights on the river, all with 9. This included my last hand where I won with a straight to K against two pair KQ. Man winning was great, the $10.80 wasn't bad either.

The second game was much more reserved, it was all about winning the small pots and outlasting the other players. Early on in the game, like third hand, I raise to 500 (with a stack on 1480 on AA one other player called, that's cool it increased the pot. We were both sitting with our entire stack already in play so the hand played out: 6d Td Ac, I'd hit my flop and went all in with the rest of my stack, the other player called and because all our money was already in the pot his cards were revealed, 9Th. I still can't quite believe he went all in on a pair of T. The turn came 8s and the river Ah, Four Aces, Ka Ching! That hand set me up as chip leader for most of the tournament and let me dominate a lot of hands. But by the time it came down to the last hand I was short stacked $6k to $21k and the blinds were $2k. I was dealt Qd 6s in the hole and as BB I checked. The flop Came 3d Ac Ad and my opponent checked, that meant he didn't have an A and was probably betting on a Pair no bigger than JJ, I went all in with a bluff trying to convince him I had an A. He called, damn. The turn came 2d giving me 9 outs for the flush, the river came 9d and I thought I had it. But the villain showed Kd 2c and stole the flush with the only card that could have beaten me. I can in second and won $8.10 bringing my winnings for the evening to $18.90, sweet!

I don't think I'm going to be playing tonight, I'm on a high from winning so much that I may get careless and lose, plus I need the rest. I just got a call from Hi-Fi Corp that the unit has been delivered so I'll probably go pick that up after lunch. The project team is going to Yum for lunch, it's a bit pricy, but the menu does look great, I'll let you know.

schpat

alt.me.die.die.die

I'm sorry for the really long absence here, and for disappointing all the people who read my blog often. On the up side all the hard work seemed to have paid off because I got to see a whole bunch of people over the weekend that I haven’t seen since August and that I wouldn't have seen had it not been for SchpatCON.

SCHPATCON REPORT BACK

All in all a resounding success. Many very late nights went into the con this year, but that's probably because I was so slack getting the whole affair off the ground. Friday night started with Munchkin, my brother cam through and managed to come second, Garrick won the event and prizes should be on the way. After Munchkin an impromptu game of Texas Hold 'Em sprang up. I managed to last almost the whole thing on my initial buy in, I didn't have a winning hand dealt to me the whole night, not one! Because of that the game was quite boring for me I didn't get to the showdown more than three times the entire evening. Dieter did the worst with three buy-ins and still not walking away with a cent and Roo did best winning a total of almost R100. A special mention has to go to Graham Polter (I hope that's right, it's been a bad weekend for names) who came to the table with "can you please remind me how this game works" and "I can't really shuffle, could someone do it for me" and then proceeded to sit on Big Stack for most of the night, he was the only other person to come away with anything.

Saturday morning saw me completing my module and picking up our fine sponsor Adeeb from Outer Limits. Alex was working so we had to run the Deadlands module first. It was a great running, with three tables participating. The first session ran horribly over time with one GM taking 2 hours longer than any of the others, but people were kept quiet by the readily available PS2 and the fact that they hadn't paid a cent.

The afternoon module was played by only two tables because of the late starting time, but was still enjoyed by all. Adam came round and we "jammed" a bit on our harmonicas, I'm gonna get myself a cool one sometime, mine sounds way too tinny. The game finished at about 8pm and I gave Adeeb a lift to town and then home before getting to the One Ring for the after party at about 10pm.

Because the Steve Jackson games prizes had not arrived yet the Outer Limits spon was all we had to dish out, thanks Adeeb and Grant. Best player prize went to Robyn Saul for an amazing Calamity Jane, one of the best performances I've ever seen. Mike Dewar and Brendan Quinlevin (his ears are not bleedink) came in very close joint second place, Brendan for Doc Holiday and Mike for a piratey type. The GM prize went to Garrick for his performance in "Pieces of Hate", a one point difference. He also scored best in "Hexes Wild", altogether a deserving winner.

The last R50 gift voucher was the prize for the Drunken Foosball Tournament. Now there'd been a lot of trash talking on my part but I wasn't all that confident, there were some pretty tough teams in contention. There was a round of Round Robin where Lucas and I were undefeated, at the end it was Jason & Sean vs Mike & BETH for third and fourth, and Dave & Virolin vs Lukas & me in the final. Both finals were to be monster 20 ball games, and both went into extra time. In the end I think Mike and BETH came third in a very close and exciting runners up match, and Lucas & I cleaned the board with Dave & Virolin in extra time. Go us. The tournament took about an hour to play and the guys that were at the table before us were rather gracious in letting us hog the table after I explained what it was for. They wanted to compete, but I explained that it was kinda a private thing and they totally understood. Sniggering they introduced themselves as "Japan" and "Taste" ("Taste of Japan", geddit?) they did challenge Lucas & I though, and cleaned the floor, walls and ceiling with us. I congratulated them and informed them that they had obviously had a misspent youth, I don't think they got it. Those jock types! I gave the prize to Lucas because I was just lucky, he was the real skill behind our team.

I like to take this opportunity to really thank everybody who came, and especially those who contributed. I just organise this thing for everybody to come along and have a great time, I just couldn’t have made it happen without you.

Thanks

Wow that was long!

POKERSTARS.COM

Last night I graduated myself from play money to real money. I deposited a few dollars and entered a No limit Hold 'em tournament for $1 + $0.20. That's a $1 stake and $0.20 fee to the house, then they give you $1500 in chips and you play till the last man standing, there are 45 players on 5 tables and the top seven places are paid out. I played in that for a while and eventually finished in 29th position. Then I played a 18 player 2 table $1.50 + $0.25 Turbo (15 seconds instead of 30 to make decisions) No limit Hold 'em, in that game I made it through to the final table and finished 7th. With 18 players only the top 4 are paid. I decided to go for one more game before going to bed, another 18p 2t %1.50 + $0.25 Turbo No limit Hold 'em game. I did much better this time, having sussed out a couple of the finer points of a game with severely increasing blinds. I made it through to the final table and I wasn't even the shortest stack when I got there. By the time it had gotten down to seven players I'd made a pretty severe mistake and only had about $500 in my stack (blinds were $300 at this point). Got dealt a decent pair (QQ) and played all in, people folded an I stole the blinds bringing me up to about $1.5k again. In the very next hand I was dealt AKs (the "s" means suited, "o" would be off-suit) and after the other three shortish stacks had gone all in I decided to follow, the two (substantially) larger stacks folded out. With all four players "all in" there is no more betting and no opportunity to fold, so everybody's hole cards are revealed. I was up against AQo, AJo, ATs and I had AKs . Then came the flop Q J 8, mortified I hopped for the K to come at either the Turn or the River, there was about a 12% chance of that happening, other wise was screwed. The Turn 3, shit! From all over the world (one guy in Essex, one Guy in Terahn, one guy in Erie and me in CT) we held our breath for the River: T! Everybody had hit their under-card except for me, but I still won with the straight to A. That is one hand I'm going to remember for a long time. Now I was in the top three, but I was short stack on about $6k with the other $21k split pretty evenly between the two big stacks. Blinds went to $600, then to $1.2k and soon I had been bled out of the game, but it was great. I won $5.40, yay me!

PERSONALITY-LESS ZONE

Well Moonie, I did that personality test you've been bugging me to do and, if the blog title didn't give it away, I'm Wesley Crusher. That's actually pretty cool, I've always liked Wesley. When I was watching the series I was only a few years younger than the character and I always identified with him, he might not have been the coolest character, but he was dependable and got to live on a starship! Kinda like me, except for the starship part. Plus Wil Weaton is a geek god!

SIGN OUT

I've still got some shopping to do, hopefully at lunch time. I'll try to post more regularly, thus ensuring shorter posts.

Until later

Cheers