Hot and New. Have you ever wanted to impress your girl?

Greetings Increase your volume in just days Worried it won't work? But without any results… Show your girl a huge explosion as I used to do You crave to shoot like a film star… All you need is here: *{link}*

Someone goes to all the trouble to send out a million emails, sneak them past a few spam filters, and this was the best they could come up with. PATHETIC!!! Here's my 30 second attempt at an improvement:

Greetings! In just days you will be mocking reservoir tips. After years of research, top scientists have finally perfected this wonder pill. Worried that it won't work? The only thing you should be worried about is severe dehydration and a shortage of clean towels. Your dirty girl needs a shower. Are you man enough to give it to her?

All you need is here: *{link}*

Super-cum pills would be flying off the shelves if I was a spam-artist.

The original text left me with sooo many questions. "But without any results..."? Huh? and notice the past tense on "as I used to do"... What happened? Are the pills dangerous? Did the immense pressure rupture something? Maybe it was the girl that got hurt? Or, did she just become desensitized to it (the huge explosions), like with violence in the media? Or maybe... Maybe they just grew apart...

Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of withering, of tarnishing.
~ Anais Nin

new Internet Explorer 7

on a lighter note, i just installed the new Internet Explorer 7 today. i really like it--- it's such a huge improvement over the old one.

The best things that I've discovered in only 15 minutes of playing with it are:

Tabbed Browsing-- it makes it much easier to manage multiple browser windows.. this is important for me since at the end of the day i usually have at least 8 or 9 IE windows open

More Screen Real Estate-- the layout is much better. the design of the browser allows for the toolbars to take up less room, yet offer more functions

Search Bar-- I use the Google Toolbar, because I'm happy with it and like a lot of the functions (especially a handy English-Spanish translation thing that automatically translates anything that my mouse is pointing on into Spanish), so I thought that having ANOTHER search box would be overkill. But it isn't. You can easily search from multiple search engines, and add your own. For example, I just added a IMDb search engine to the list, and it was remarkably simple to do.

i'll be saving time like crazy now.

dark days

today i woke up with a wine hangover, turned on the TV, and caught the last half of Saving Private Ryan... and by the end, i was crying like usual... no... not quite like usual--- today i cried harder and for many more reasons.

yesterday, president bush signed the Military Commissions Act. it redefines OUR habeus corpus rights.

of course, most people aren't worried because they would guess habeus corpus has something to do with dead bodies.

it really does matter though. it's fundamental. as americans, we don't think that we can be hauled off into the night, questioned, tortured, and held without a trial for years and years before being convicted without ever seeing the evidence against us.

it is possible now. it is LEGAL now.

With the distance of history, the questions will be narrowed and few. Did this generation of Americans take the threat seriously? And did we do what it takes to defeat that threat?

these are the ironic words that president bush spoke as he signed the bill into law.

this law isn't the fault of bush and the republicans and the democrats. it's our fault. we have allowed what our country stands for, what our ancestors fought and died for, to become perverted under the guise of protecting freedom and liberty and our way of life.

i'm completely ashamed.

Bush is afraid of 14-year old girls

Yes he is. Apparently, Secret Service agents found it necessary to interrogate a 14-year old girl for posting a picture of President Bush with a knife stuck in his hand and the words "Kill Bush" on her MySpace page.

I mean, COME ON!! The knife was sticking in his hand, not his eye or something.

I understand that threatening the President is against the law. Is just saying, "Kill Bush" against the law? Is that a threat? I really don't understand.

So-- here is the LAW-- 18 USC Sec. 871

"...Whoever knowingly and willfully deposits for conveyance in the mail or for a delivery from any post office or by any letter carrier any letter, paper, writing, print, missive, or document containing any threat to take the life of, to kidnap, or to inflict bodily harm upon the President of the United States, the President-elect, the Vice President or other officer next in the order of succession to the office of President of the United States, or the Vice President-elect, or knowingly and willfully otherwise makes any such threat against the President, President-elect, Vice President or other officer next in the order of succession to the office of President, or Vice President-elect, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both."

I still don't understand what the definition of a threat is. Doesn't there have to be intentionality in a threat? If you say the words "I am going to kill President Bush", can you know if it's a threat without a context for the statement?

If I say that I hope that somebody drowns Bush in a bathtub full of bullshit, and that I would open a bottle of wine and light a Cuban cigar upon hearing the news, it's still not a threat. It's just a beautiful beautiful fantasy.

So-- upon seeing a picture of a stabbed-handed Bush, the Secret Service decided that rather than try to understand the context of the statement, they would harass the little girl at her middle school.

Once again, thank you Big Brother.

(None of these are threats YET either: Anti-Bush Gear )

Online gambling terrorists are infiltrating our nation's vital ports!

Fortunately, Bush signed a bullshit Safe Ports Bill that, thanks to his weasel friend Bill Frist, had an Unlawful Internet Gambling bill slipped into it.

We can all sleep better at night now. Thank you Big Brother.

So what does this mean for me as a professional internet gambler? I'm still not sure. The bill makes it more difficult for American players to get money into offshore internet gambling sites. American players account for about 80% of the online poker players, and quite possibly a larger percentage of the "more-money-than-brains" online poker players.

PartyPoker, the biggest online poker site, has closed its doors to American players. The site is like a ghost town now. Many other sites have followed suit. There are a few sites, Poker Stars and Full Tilt and Ultimate Bet, that have decided that the law doesn't pertain to online poker, and they are continuing to do business with Americans. So, that's where I'm playing now. I CAN play on Party and every other site, it's just that there is no money in it.

What really pisses me off is that I pay taxes on my income, and the US is doing its best to take that income away.

I really don't know what online poker will be like a year from now. This might be the beginning of the end. If you think that the government listens to you, you can send a quick email through the Poker Players Alliance.

Also, join the Libertarian Party.

Aruba

Aruba was nice, and I felt lucky to have been there with my mother and sister and niece. Unfortunately, my luck didn't extend to the tournament, which was heartbreaking.

There are times when I play poker and I know that I'm not playing well. I make stupid mistakes. With poker though, sometimes it doesn't matter how you play. I can play bad, make more than my fair share of mistakes, and still win. I can play perfect, and lose.

In this tournament I played perfect. We started with 10K in chips, and 3 or 4 hours after starting, I still had around 10K. I hadn't had much to play. I stole a couple hands, and I made a few really good folds that would have cost me a lot of chips. After 4 hours of play, I would have expected myself to have at least 12K or 13K in chips, but I was very happy with still being at my starting point, when I got this hand:

I was dealt 33 in the big blind. Blinds were 150/300, and the player to my left raised to 1000. He had about 12K in chips, and was, in my opinion, a very bad player. The type of player that would go way too far with an overpair or even top pair weak kicker. The only reason why he was still around was because of a few lucky breaks.

I called the 700 more, hoping to catch a 3 on the flop and hurt him if he had a good hand too. The flop came 5 3 2 with 2 clubs. I bet 1500 chips. Some people like to check and let the raiser bet so that they can trap with three-of-a-kind. I do this sometimes-- but I was really hoping that he had something good, and that he would see my bet as a kind of "feeler" bet, and then reraise me.

He reraised to 3500. I did a little acting. A short count of my chips. Looked at him a little, and then I reraised all-in. I wanted a call, but would have been happy with a fold.

For a thinking player, there were three possibilities of what I had: a flush draw with overcards, a set (which is what I had), or an overpair. If he had AK or AQ of clubs, or AA through TT or so, I was hoping that he would discount the possibility of my set and call. I really didn't want him to have an Ace-high flush draw though.

He called and turned over 66. I couldn't believe it. I would have never played my hand that way if I thought he was so weak, but he called anyway! By calling with 66, he had to believe that I didn't have a set or an overpair (because an overpair would be higher than his 66). Also-- even if I just had a flush draw, we would have been about 50:50 to win the hand. It was really a mind-boggling call, but I was happy that he made it... that is, until that 4 came on the river and gave him a 2-to-6 straight. UGG!

So that was it. The end of the tournament for me. I was pretty disappointed, and walked up and down the beach for a couple hours to clear my head (that, plus a few tasty frozen drinks at a bar).

Anyway--- that's all boring poker stuff for people who don't live poker. The important thing is that, although the competition was better than average, I didn't feel out of my league. I can compete with those people, I just need a little better luck next time.

Another cool thing in Aruba was a butterfly farm that was just a mile or so down the beach from the hotel. They don't really "farm" butterflies, or harness them for some sort of manual labor, but it's a big netted garden with tons of plants and fountains and butterflys. I liked it. I want to have my own butterfly farm someday.

Aruba was the nicest island in the Caribbean that I've been too. It's definitely a place where I would return (especially if it was a free trip).

Crazy lazy

Sometimes you get so far behind in something that it's easier to just keep on falling behind than to try to catch up, even if falling more behind bears a psychic cost. I'm sure that there is a properly-named disorder for people who habitually do this to themselves, but I just call it crazy lazy.

I've been crazy lazy lately. There have been a lot of things that I want to type in here--- little news tidbits, stupid things that I wish I had never eaten, strange growths, and other life-changing MONUMENTAL stuff--- but I just haven't. I've become crazy lazy.

So I'm going to try to catch up a little.