Last night, I logged into World of Warcraft for the first time in about a month, sold or gave away all my belongings, then donated my gold to newbie characters until I was broke and naked in Stormwind. I said farewell to my guildmates in Windmasters and then logged off, for the very last time. Then I cancelled my subscription to the game. I'm done with WoW. One less time-consuming monkey on my back.

I've had graduate students call me "Hero" or "Superman" when I recover the data they just accidentally deleted that their doctoral theses rely upon, but I'm not really. The real heroes are those who put themselves in harm's way: firemen, policemen, EMTs, soldiers, and others, and those who's calling is to help others in need. One of the poker bloggers I read just linked this article and this article by Ambulance Driver in his blog.
For those of who you read this and ride an ambulance, police car, or firetruck: thank you.
For those who read this and are enlisted in the military: thank you.

Bill O'Reilly tells his producers to cut off Col. Wright's microphone after she starts questioning his credentials. The cutoff happens during the last minute of the interview.

No not that roll! My bankroll on PokerStars.
Allergies are kicking my butt this spring and I think I've got a sinus infection so I stayed home today to avoid coughing and sneezing green snot on everything at work. On a whim, I signed up for the 12:40PM 10 FPP Turbo No Limit Holdem (Frequest Player Point) Freeroll tournament with a $250.00 addon prize pool. I've played about half a dozen of these so far and usually bust out early. The blind structure is insane, going up every 5 minutes so you have to keep gathering chips or you get hammered as the blinds catch up to you.
Long story short:

( Final Results )

I finished in 5th place out of 3,321 entrants and won $$7.76 so now I have a few bucks to play with online again.

I played in the 2007 Holdem For Hunger charity poker tournament yesterday at UNC and placed 34th out of 450+ players! We started with 5,000 chips, 100/200 blinds and 25 minute blind levels. The blind structure was brutal, though. It doubled every level, so just a few levels into the game you were either chipping up or going home fast. People dropped like flies and I'm not too proud to admit that I sucked out on a couple people to stay in the game and chip up. Registration started at 1PM and the first hands were dealt around 2:20 or so. We got a break at 3:30 for BBQ and fixin's, then another break at 6:30 or so for subs. AFter the 2nd break, we were down to just 38 players left, with the top 40 players earning prizes. Unfortunately, I had only 12,500 in chips having gotten short-stacked after chasing an open-ended straight draw that didn't come. It was all-good though, since if I had made the straight I would have pushed all-in and the other guy would have taken all my chips with his full house. He also had a humongous stack at that point. Some where around 120,00 in chips and was sitting immediately on my right. His stack put a serious cramp in my game because I didn't feel like I could play a hand unless I was willing to go all-in with it. Otherwise he'd just push me off the put with his monster chip stack.
After the break, the blinds were at 4,000/8,000 and me with only 12,500 in chips! Ouch. We consolidated to just 4 tables of 9 or 10 players and selected a dealer by drawing high card. The dealer ended up being 3 to my right, putting me as first to act on the first hand and set to get the big blind on the very NEXT hand. :-( Ouch ouch ouch. I thew away A4 offsuit on the first hand, then posted my big blind. Someone in early position doubled the big blind to 16,000 in chips, the dealer called him, and I looked down to see K5 suited. I thought about it a bit and then pushed the remaining 4,500 in chips in. We split the pot into a main and side pot, leaving me a hefty 41,500 chip pot to win with a small side pot for the other two players. The flop came out, missing me completely, and the 1st guy checked. Dealer went all in and 1st guy called his bet. They flipped over and they ran out the rest of the board. The river was a 5 but that wasn't good enough to win me anything and I went home in 34th position.
I won coupons for two entrees w/ sodas at California Pizza Kitchen for my 7 hours of play, though, so I'm not too disappointed I didn't win the 42" plasma screen TV. :-)
This morning, I woke up and realized that I could have improved my final position by several slots if I'd played differently. With my chip stack, I could have folded both the big blind (8,000) and small blind (4,000) leaving me with a single green 500 chip and the deal. I could have then waited another 8 to 10 hands before having to put that chip in all the next time the big blind came around. That would have put me out finishing some where around 30th or better, and if I'd gotten to 30th, I would have gotten a Tier 2 prize instead of Tier 3 prize. Oh well. Hindsight is 20/20 and all that rot. Next year I'll pay more attention.

I am *such* a geek. I was just reading Wil Wheaton's blog in Google Reader and followed a link to his actual blog site over on typepad.com. Lo and behold, Wil had redone the look of his blog and chose the exact same layout/theme that I was been using up until a few days ago. :-) It tickled me for no good reason other than I'm a geek fanboy of his.

How true it is. How true it is.

So, I had a pretty good run in the first game at the Tavern tonite. Within the first 40 minutes I got four big pocket pairs: AA, QQ, JJ, and AA. I had to show down all 4 hands and won each time, taking me from the starting stack of 5,000 chips to about 15,000. A bit later, I got pocket 5s with 6 people at the table and first to act. Blinds were 200/400 and I raised to 1,200. A short stack behind me went all-in, and another almost as short stack raised all-in after him. I called for about another 700 chips and turned over my card. The first all-in had pocket 9s, and the other one had Ax. The 2nd card in the flop was a 5, and the river was a 5, giving me QUAD 5s!!!! Our table broke up after that and I had to get a chip rack to carry my stack to the other table.
I went card dead at the other table. :-( The one time I got a decent hand I raised it and no one called me. I tried to steal the pot in another hand after checking the big blind, got called and then folded when the caller bet into me on the turn.
I went out after I got pocket 5s *again*, raised the 1,000/2,000 blinds to 8,000, and got a caller. The flopp came 7-8-10 with two clubs. I checked it and the caller checked it. The turn was another 10 and I instantly went all-in figuring to scare her off the pot. She thought about it and then called me. I turned up my 55 and she turned over 66. :-( I didn't catch a 5 on the river and went out.
It was a good run, though.

I've switched things up on my lj. Come by and take a look.

This is grrliz Casino Royale template for the Bloggish S2 layout. I found it in her template community, thefulcrum.

I love how the colors in the template coordinate with my default user icon!

This is kinda weird and neat at the same time.

Sunday, BoingBoing had this article about an Ebay auction for a can of Hobo Soup. I saw a reference to Ortonville, MN, in the article and started in surprise. My dad grew up in Ortonville, so suddenly I was linked to an article on BoingBoing.

Following the links, I learned that Hobo Soup was the brainchild of Lem Kaercher, the publisher of the Ortonville Independent newspaper. He had been a hobo as a young man and in 1953 went into the "Jungles" of Ortonville in search of a feature story on Mr. Hobo. At the conclusion of his visit, Lem was treated to some old-fashioned original Hobo Soup. Lem felt the world should share in this fine cousine and went in search of a canner to produce it for him. In 1960, Lem and his son Jim finally saw the dream come true: Hobo Soup on the grocer's shelf.

I emailed my parents about it and got the following back:

Yea, dad remembers the HoboSoup. It was the works of Lem Karcher who owned the paper in Ortonville, and he talked of visiting with the hobos who came to town, dad isn 't so sure that he didn't even travel on the railroad with them from time to time for the fun of it - anyway they canned the soup there in Ortonville and dad isn 't sure if Leona didn't work on the quality control part of it at the canning factory. Apparently Lem got the recipe from the hobos or made it up from what he was told they used in it.

Leona was my dad's mother so there is an even stronger link to this weird product!

Best of all! Hobo Soup is alive and well and still available for sale!

Damn... Damn damn damn damn damn...
( BSG Spoiler Alert )
BSG is the finest show on TV in years and the only one where I've really cared about the characters since Babylon 5.

Damnit. We need a Crazy Fire in Durham or Chapel Hill. I don't want to have to drive to Cary or Burlington to get me a bowl o' goodness.

In reference to bleakdesolation's post about Feminism, and my comment about sitcoms featuring "smart" women and "dumb" men, can you image the uproar if a National Organization for Men spun up and started advocating against sexist attitudes towards men. The firestorm would be amazing.

Ganked this one from obie.

Go to YouTube. Type in the year you were born, and post the video find in your own journal.

1966
The Mamas And The Papas-California Dreamin' (1966)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p73rOqGyFcU

Bonus Round

Type in your full birthday and post the video that comes up closest to your date:

October 3, 1966
Simon and Garfunkel- "Homeward Bound"
http://youtube.com/watch?v=ixH54kRJM9Y

Just ran across this clip on youtube and had to share it.

( Cut for youtube embed )

I loves me some Opus!!! What a fine commentary.

Just what, exactly, is Web 2.0?

Here is one very good answer to that question.

BestBuy is now on my permanent no-buy-zone list.

Best Buy Confirms It Has Secret Website

How many of y'all are LibraryThing users? I know at least a couple of you are, or use similar sites.

I'm thinking about cataloging my books. I've tried in the past but nothing I've used worked well enough for me to keep it up. Can you get your data back out of LibraryThing as an export file of some sort? I'd hate to get it all in there and then loose it if they go belly up.

I am the proud owner of a car loan for a 1999 Honda Accord EX-V6 Sedan. :-)

The "dream car" I settled on after researching everything was a 1998-2000 Honda Accord EX Sedan with manual transmission, leather interior, and not white exterior. Turns out this really was a dream. :-( Manual transmission in Accords are rare as snowballs in July. The only Accord I could find within reasonable distance with a manual in it had a tick in the engine that kept me from making an offer on it. Driving it was fantastic, but no go.

So, I eventually gave up on getting the manual transmission and started searching for what I wanted with an automatic, a MUCH easier task. My very first search turned up a dark green, '99 Honda Accord EX at Morgan Dodge Jeep in Durham. I called them to get their hours and make sure it hadn't been sold already, then got a ride and headed over to test drive it. I fit in it well, it had everything I wanted (except the manual tranny), a price within my range, and I had prior experience buying from Morgan. I bought a Dodge Grand Caravan from them back in '97 or so. Dickering went reasonable well, except it turned out I could not use the in-dealership financing available for my credit union so I wasn't able to close the deal yesterday.

This morning, I went to my credit union and hit a setback. The last time I purchased a vehicle, CFCU was willing tto finance up to 125% of the value of the vehicle. This time, they would only finance 90%, leaving me with a mandatory down payment, which I didn't have as my savings acount is very very skinny. So, it was off to work for me.

I called my parents, who flew home from FL to MN today for my grandmother's funeral later this week, discussed the situation and they graciously agreed to lend me the money I needed for the down payment. I headed back to the bank, did all the paperwork, got the loan check and drew a cashier's check off my checking account for my downpayment, and then was off to the dealer.

At the dealer, I waited a lot. Tihs is the part of buying a car from a dealer I really hate. It seems to take forever for every little step to get completed. I filled out papers with the salesman, then waited for the business person to get free, did the actual purchase with him, than waited and waited and waited for them to finish cleaning the car and getting it out front for me to pick up. The entire process at the dealer took at least 3 1/2 hours. Oy. Finally, they brought the car out, took my picture with it, and I was done.

It's good to have a car again and be independent. I want to send a special thank you out to everyone who helped me get around these past few weeks. I appreciate all the help y'all have given me.

EDIT: My car is actually an EX-V6, meaning it has a 3.0 litre V6 engine, not a wimpy V4.