Saturday 15 November 2014

rural

welcome back

Pretty sure I've banged on about the cons of rural life before but I just thought I 'd mention it again in passing, cough cough.
Just finished my first week at another new job. The second job in as many months, lol.Neither job is pretty and neither job prettily paid, sigh. I know, it's my location.
There is not much call for academia round these here parts.
Cleaner, driver, factory, farmhand are all in demand .... especially if English is NOT your first language. You are of course paid and treated accordingly, sigh.
The fact that the second largest county in Englandshire does NOT have a motorway passing through it speaks volumes about what the rest of the country thinks of the place !
So I've made myself a promise. If, whilst playing poker, I can match the wishy washy wages I currently earn in the real world, then I'm going to leave my latest job and go and stack the shelves at the local co-op and make up the difference at the virtual felt !!
Trust me, it's not as far fetched as it might seem at first glance. I actually have a shot at this as I am currently on backshift, at least until the end of the year. Assumption: I last in this job until the end of the year. I know me and that is a huge fucking assumption, sigh. This gives me 5 mornings a week when I'm all on my own at home.
The catch ? Getting to bed at a decent hour so that I get up early enough to put in some decent volume at the felt. I know me and that is a huge fucking catch, sigh.
No doubt I'll be back in a week, or a month, or four, to tell you how many jobs I've gone through in the preceding months !!

pleasant dreams

Tuesday 12 August 2014

Jet

welcome back

My poker "weekend" approaches but things have changed and I'm not quite so enthusiastic about it. Oh the family are still going on their long weekend break and I'm still staying home moggy sitting.

Jet and Jemma
The situation has changed somewhat.

As you know, one moggy, Jet, was under the weather. I got Jet and Jemma in 1999 and they were probably two years old. So they are in the region of 17 years old. Not bad at all for domestic cats.

On Saturday morning and throughout the rest of the day, her condition deteriorated. She pretty much stopped eating and drinking and would only wander a couple of yards from her bed to sit in the middle of the kitchen floor. This was one of her favorite spots, right in the center of all. When she was fully fit, we used to shoo her out the door so that no-one trod on her whilst cooking the dinner or whatever other activity was taking place. It made me smile that we all, even the kids, stepped over her or round her and let her sit there, seemingly quite content.

When someone passed her, they stopped and stroked her. She did respond to this in her usual way, by purring.
She was like that. A super affectionate cat. A cat who purred like mad when she got attention.

Whenever I went into the garden and sat on the bench, Jet was right behind me and would sit beside me or in my lap, purring.

Jet sleeping cats lie.

Sunday morning she was the same. Mrs Evil phoned the vet and as luck would have it, there were two of them already at the surgery. After a lengthy conversation, the vet agreed to see us as she didn't want to wait until Monday.

I knew in my heart of hearts this would be my last road trip with my beautiful cat, Jet.

After a thorough examination, the vet confirmed what I already knew. Still a shock though. I knew this was Jet's best option and sadly agreed. I was asked to sign something but tbh, I don't really know what it was. I never expected to be quite so cut up about losing her but there you go.
It was a two stage procedure. First the vet gave Jet an anesthetic to knock her out and I cradled Jet in my arms as she went to sleep one last time.

After an all too brief period, the vet got me to lay Jet on the examination table, she checked Jet was out cold and then administered the final injection. I stroked Jet one last time and then she was gone.

I was going to have Jet cremated but Mrs Evil was adamant that I bring her home and bury her in the back garden. I'm glad my Mrs was so insistent on this.

Late Sunday afternoon I dug out Jets' final resting place.

My two youngest bade her a tearful goodbye and as I lifted the spade to start filling her grave, my eldest surprised me and insisted that he do it. I let him fill it in as much as he wanted and eventually he passed the spade back to me to do the final honor.






You know what ? I miss that cat so damn much.








pleasant dreams

(Jets final breath was at 13.45 Sun 10th August 2014.)

Tuesday 5 August 2014

More

welcome back

Poker volume still rubbish. What a surprise, lol.

I'd really like to change that this coming weekend. Honest.

EDIT .... it's not this weekend, it's next weekend, bugger :( .... END EDIT

I was supposed to be going on a long weekend break with the family this weekend. Then one of my elderly cats decided she wasn't feeling particularly well. After a $$ painful trip to the vets, it became quite clear that going to the cattery was not going to be an option for my poor wee moggy. guess whose name came oot the hat to be a moggy nurse for the weekend ? Cancelling the holiday would have been financial madness, not to mention having to keep super grumpy kids here as well :(

So, just me and my two old moggy's at home this weekend. What's a man to do ....

This made me smirk .... played two hypers, got nowhere. Third one I finished 12th. Think I'll quit these as I am now two buy-ins up !!

pleasant dreams

Saturday 12 July 2014

Little Things

welcome back

I have this strange urge. I want to play. I want to blog. Obviously helps if I actually have something to blog about, lol. If my playing urge comes to fruition, I'll drop some notes on here. Tonight's a bust. There is some stupid wee footie game on. Tomorrow is the same. Another pointless game :)

If I do run over you at the tables, you can blame Juffin Halli

pleasant dreams 

Wednesday 9 July 2014

Comfort Zone

welcome back

Poker - lucky if I've played 1k hands in the past 3 months. Seems like working for the man for three decades was not the only thing I was burnt out on.

Rather than go back to work for the man, I'm currently investigating the self-employed market. Scary shit when you've been PAYE all your life. Well and truly out my zone. The more I trawl the net and sign up for job sites, the more recruiters who phone me, promise the earth but nothing materialises, the more I edit my CV, the more comfortable I'm beginning to feel.

Moving up a buy-in ? Learning a new variation, anyone ?

The poker parallels are quite surprising. On any given job site, knowing when to fold (not apply) or raise (apply), is probably the same as sitting at the virtual felt. That's a ton of patience and whole lot of folding.

Once something, virtual or real world, turns up, I'll be back, probably.

pleasant dreams

Monday 24 February 2014

Haunted by the designated driver

welcome back

First, real life, then to the virtual felt.

One of the outlaws cousins has taken not well and been shipped off to hospital. He has had heart problems for a while (apparently) and was told to retire. Did he ? Did he fuck ! Now he is paying the price. To remedy his latest problem he needs work done on one of his heart valves. This operation will be carried out at a large hospital in the neighbouring county of Nottinghamshire. He is due to transfer there tomorrow. His wife will face a 2 hour each way drive to visit him.

So where does yours truly fit into this equation ?

Well thanks to my generosity and kindness I offered my services as the designated driver :) (ie the mrs and mother-in-law "volunteered" my services without asking me)(I may work flexi-time, but fuck me, I'm going to be down a shit ton of hours by the time this is all done and dusted. Thanks darling) .... I briefly thought of telling her where to get off, then I thought, what if it was me ? I'd sure as hell want to see some friendly faces every day so I very quickly changed tack and told them "sure, no problem".
So starting, probably, tomorrow, I'll be doing a lot of driving. It's not a particularly long drive, mileage wise, but it's all "A" roads, not a dual carriageway or motorway in sight, hence it's 2 hours each way. Lets hope the scenery is good, lol.
Due to the nature of the poor blokes problem, his wife is obviously very worried and I expect she'll want to visit every day for the next week or two. I guess this will obv depend on the blokes rate of recovery.
Anyway, I hope the op goes to plan and I wish Mr A a speedy recovery.

and back on the virtual felt ....

Not good. My 8-game experiment came crashing down about my ears across several multi-table sessions. Pissed me off no end. No one to blame but me, I'm afraid.
Time to put Plan B into operation.
No beer on a Saturday afternoon so I put in a short, timed session. The most obvious thing to me, was to cut back on the number of 8-game tables. Less is more :) so one table of 8-game and four to five pl08b tables. I felt it went quite well and after loading all the HH's into my dB's this feeling was borne out by the results. Here they are -




pleasant dreams

Sunday 16 February 2014

A haunting week

welcome back

managed to fit in a couple of sessions. Nothing of note to report, so just a quick update of my 8-game progress. After dropping back to zero profit (about the 2k hands played) I've stayed away from the bigger table and stuck to 20c/40c. Correct decision for the time being, imho. :)

pleasant dreams

Sunday 9 February 2014

Returning to old haunts

welcome back

I've been expanding my pokerr horizons and dabbling with that there 8-game. I put in a bit of practise at the fun tables :) And if ever the saying "no fold button, huh ?" were true, it's never truer than at the fun tables, lol.
Being the nit I am though, I try to play as if the fun money mattered. I'm pretty much the only player who can fold pre-flop at these tables. Smashed it for a while, then got bad beat the fuck out the door and gave it all back, obv. It is fun though.
Then I gave it a go at the cash tables. I think I'll do just fine but I do need to learn to walk before trying to run. That just equates to sticking to 20c/40c while I build up a decent sample size whilst staying the fuck away from 50c/$1 tables. (I was up a buy-in and a half at $1 table, got cocky, gave it all back, oops).
At the moment I only have a nano sized sample to go with the nano stakes buy-in.

pleasant dreams

Wednesday 15 January 2014

He might be mad but I'm certifiable.

welcome back

and the hot news from the Res camp is ....




Correct. Absolutely sweet F A.

I continue to dribble chips away at the nano stakes, spending more money on booze and cigs than I ever have on poker. Time to clean my act up. Don't worry, I'm way more sceptical than you on that one but you never know :)

The only news I have is the fact that TN1 no longer works at all. I might be a small money fish but I do like to multitable. Need to look into some alternatives, sigh. Sure 'stars has auto hot keys but they do not recognize input from an xbox controller. TN1 did and so does TN2. Just started the 60 day free trial and who knows, I might just have to bite the bullet and pay the bastards their yearly subscription. Unless of course the old registry edit ruse works with TN2 ....

I'll be back "soon" with an update and of course, more "hot news".

pleasant dreams