Go Pack Go!

I'm not a Green Bay fan, but I was sure rooting for them to win last night. Brett Favre is a legend in the game, and everyone knows it. Anyone who denies that he is clearly has no idea what they're talking about.

Not only does he play the game great, but he plays with more passion, more emotion, and more love for the game than anyone in the league right now. He shows that he's happy when he's winning, and he shows that he's determined when the Pack are trailing.

Putting your heart, not just your body, into the game is something that should not go overlooked nowadays. The league is too full of crybabies and spotlighters. Receivers prance around like idiots in the endzone and linemen chop invisible trees when they do their job and make a tackle behind the line. Players complain about salaries, and when they can't do that they complain about their teammates.

Favre stays out of all that. When he throws for a touchdown the only celebration you'll see from him is his index fingers pointing in the air as he runs to his closest teammate to give them a hug, all the while shouting with happiness, proud that both he and his team can play the game. He's a true player, a true lover of football.

With all of that being said, #4 wasn't the reason I was happy to see the Packs win last night. Because they did take the W I score my weekend saving underdog parlay card, hitting for a +4312 to recover some loss on other games and come up with a decent profit. It's still small beans moneywise, but I'm workin my way up.

I would've hit for another smaller card if Tennessee would've covered the seven points, which was easily doable. The Raiders put up 14 penalties for 100 yards and had two turnovers. On top of that, they are just a horrid, horrid team, and I was shocked and pissed that the Titans couldn't capitalize on their opportunities in game.

I refused to bet the Philadelphia game this weekend, mainly because I've made a vow to not bet their games for the rest of the season. I'm tired of sitting at home watching my team and money get blown by boneheaded plays and faulty formations on field. I wasn't gonna do it again this weekend.

I headed over to my dad's house this weekend to enjoy the one thing that I can about the Philadelphia Eagles: they'll destroy the Minnesota Vikings every time they get on the same field.

After a horrible first half of the season, I've become quite the dejected Eagles fan. The defense is battered and the offense is not even mediocre. They had a rough start to the season and coming off of a bye week they crushed the Detroit Lions, putting up 56 points total with Kevin Curtis accounting for 221 yards in the receiving lane and Brian Westbrook running for 110 yards.

I was excited to see them win, and from the central NFL hub that is my father's house, I was able to keep track of all of my games and bets thanks to his NFL Gameday package. This weekend we have Paullywood Park coming up, and I'll probably stay at my dad's again on Sunday so that I can channel-change the day through while I either win or lose some more money.

All in all, it was a pretty good Sunday, with my weekend betting culminating in an overtime win by the green and yellow.

Until next time.

Damn You Philly...Damn You

Another weekend in the NFL has passed and like a broken spring in a set of gears, another Philadelphia fan has shot out of the They'll Be Okay clock and has landed in the bucket of Maybe Next Year among his fellow sprigs. Football. It's wonderful. It's painful.

This weekend's loss at home against the Bears hurt a little extra, because as much as I didn't want to bet on the Eagles, I had them holding up two of my remaining parlay cards well into Sunday afternoon. Everything looked good. Everything looked fine.

1:30 left in the fourth quarter, Philly up by 4. Chicago has no more timeouts. Deep in their own territory. Philly just don't let them in the endzone for a minute and a half. Simple stuff. Here we go!

1:00 left in the fourth quarter. Griese airs one out and completes to midfield. No problem. They have no timeouts and a field goal won't do. The Eagles know it, they know that all they have to do is for sixty seconds keep the Bears out of the endzone and they go 3-3 and have a small shot in the division.

0:09 left in the fourth quarter. I'm crying on the couch, cursing the Eagles through my tears for the amount of money I would have won on the two cards. Instead I'm left punching the couch cusions for two hours straight because I end up losing money in the end, thanks to Philly giving up a game-winning touchdown with :30 left.

I'm not the only Philadelphia Eagles fan ready to look ahead to next season. I'm sure there a few who started before I did. And I'm not the only one who lost money thanks to the Eagles this weekend, nor did I lose more than anyone. But the feeling of needing my team to win in order to have a shot of coming into playoff contention later this year coupled with the fact that they were all that stood between me and a healthy win pushed me over the mental sports fan cliff.

Obviously this isn't going to keep me from betting the games again this weekend. I need redemption! This past weekend I would've won despite the Eagles draining loss if I had listened to my guts instead of the numbers and the "experts". But, like I'll be tempted to do, I listened to the voices outside of my head and it cost me. I have a new strategy coming this weekend, and hopefully I'll be able to pick up a little bit of cash.

In other gambling related news, I'm currently planning my birthday trip to Vegas. There should be a decent group of us getting a few suites at the Venetian and doing the Vegas thing the weekend before Christmas.

What does that mean? Everyone will have just finished up Christmas shopping and will be awesomely out of cash, so it looks like the small weekends in Vegas will continue for a little while longer.

I've started to enjoy small weekends in Vegas, as the last trip with my dad turned out to be another unforgettable experience in Sin City. The stories I hear on a regular basis about his past times in Las Vegas make me love it even more. This trip was a little more personally enjoyable, as it was not only another vacation, but it was a fun time spent with my father, which is something I haven't had in a long, long time.

I'm going to write that trip report soon, and will probably be putting up a Vegas section to this blog. I'm also thinking of starting a new, possibly joint, blog about my Vegas trips instead. I'm also currently trying to redo Sitting The Apple's layout, which is part of the reason why there's been a huge lack of updates.

In the end, I'll tell you I'll keep trying to update. But I'll slack, you'll get mad at me, call me names, and then come crawling back once again to this wonderful outlet of my mind and useless ramblings. At least I update more than Darsky... and I work so at least I have an excuse you long-haired freeman!

Until next time.

Pendulur Sickness

For the past while now I've been in and out of small bouts with sickness. It's been nothing close to extremely sick until today, but up until today it's been more of a constant state of soreness and misery than actual illness. Of course it all started with a phone call into work to play hooky. And wouldn't you know it by the end of my day at home I actually was feeling sick. It's just the perfect kind of irony that keeps me straight.

My crappy chair at work, where I spend all of my pointless hours during the day (which is all of my hours during the day), has been causing me a lot of soreness to my neck and back. The life of a paid internet browser is tough, there's no doubt about it.

I haven't really felt like blogging for a while, mainly because of my personal mental state. I've fallen back into the whole "I shouldn't be working" mentality, but with every thought of quitting comes a contrary thought and reason why I should stay.

I just took another small getaway to Vegas though, so I'll be writing that up soon and will hopefully have something for you all to read. I'm not sure how many readers I still have after leaving this thing dry over and over again, but as soon as I get out of this mental slump I plan on getting all those lost readers back.

Until next time.

This is the Game I Am Currently Sucking At

With my makeshift year 2000 sound setup. New one coming soon.

Living in High Def

Whether it be poker or technology, I try to pretend like I know what I’m doing. I know very little in some areas of both, but in whole I really have no idea what I’m talking about. Although from time to time I may sound like I fit in with the niche that has been created around either field, it’s only because I get caught in the right conversations with the right people who just happen to ask such the right questions that I can squeeze out answers with what limited knowledge I do have.

I have a fancy phone with cool gadgets, a decent laptop with fancy gadgets, and a massive amount of poker related things, mostly books and an insane amount of assorted poker chip sets according to any sane person. But in reality, I let the hype of these things take place of the actual understanding of putting any of it to use. Don’t let this deter you from thinking I’m a hard and true badass, cuz I definitely am, but I know nearly nothing compared to the world of knowledge that surrounds both poker and electronics.

In any case, I’ve gotten a decent taste of everything over the past couple of weeks. Two weeks ago on the Friday night before our Saturday night game at Paullywood Park, Darsky and I headed down to Hollywood Park for a little poker action. I was planning on a night of drinking with Joe and a couple friends in Santa Clarita, but when I was presented an opportunity to play on Darsky’s dime, I couldn’t pass up the offer.

I have another trip report written up for that weekend which I’ll post soon, but it’s gonna have to go on hold until I write about my faux technology addiction. I’ve been meaning to get an awesome new TV for a while now, but thanks to my misunderstanding of the game of poker over the past two years I’ve been unable to comfortably afford one.

I’ve been wired into the tables of casinos across the nation for a long time now, and I’ve been completely unplugged from the technological world around me. I use it, I want to get to know it, but I haven’t been able to own it or love it as my own. While I’ve spent countless hours dumping my earned money at poker tables and blackjack tables at Chumash, Vegas, and Turning Stone (the won money was put back into the game around a year and a half ago), my friends have been out spending their money on tangible objects that shine, shout, and display glorious visions of the future around their houses.

Most of my 20-21 year old friends are broke anyways, so I don’t feel so bad that I am for the most part as well. However, they always manage ways to fund their addictions to hottest new toys on the market, much in the way that I always manage to scrape up just enough money to help the casino fund their comp for one of their highroller’s $300 steaks; the difference is my friends get to use theirs every day instead for a weekend like me.

The thing I've noticed about myself, though, is that I'm so frugal when it comes to spending money on things (with the exception of dinners), but I feel no restraint when it comes to betting $300 on a single hand of blackjack. I've seen that because I actually refuse to spend money on things that I want on an every-day basis, I've had money in the past to throw away to my reckless fearlessness inside of a casino.

Because I realized all of this stuff, I decided to cool it on the serious gambling for a bit and concentrate on building up a reputable collection of my own technology and house adornments. I started with a laptop, a digital camera, and Motorola Q before I decided to leap into a new TV and an XBOX 360. I was planning on waiting until December to make the plunge, and I had been putting in a bit of time looking at and talking about LCDs and DLPs with friends of mine who are more savvy in the matter.

I also couldn’t decide if I wanted to get a TV for my bedroom or for the living room, which I share with two roommates on a daily basis, one of whom is known for being messy beyond a higher being’s ability to stop it. After a bit of thinking, I had firmly decided that come the last month of the year, I was going to buy myself a birthday present of a 42” LCD and 360 which would be safely located within the boundaries of my bedroom. That was until I found a deal I couldn’t pass up.

Two Fridays ago I was browsing a couple forums when I came across a deal that Best Buy was having. In order to liquidate their DLPs for the new year’s models, as well as to advertise and boost the hype for the upcoming release of the newest addition to the hugely praised Halo series, a huge online sale was being hosted. If a person were to buy a Samsung DLP 50”+, an XBOX 360, and pre-ordered Halo 3 through Best Buy, they were giving $410 off of the TV and free delivery. At first I was skeptical of the deal, but as more and more people chimed in on the legitimacy of both the deal and the products, I had to find something for myself!

Still recovering from financial hell and being on a low budget, I needed something that I could afford yet still feel good about buying. There were a few selections of TV to choose from, yet I decided to go with a price saver that’s around middle of the field for TV’s nowadays. I purchased the Samsung 50" 720p DLP HDTV HLT5075S. After reading the great reviews it got, I felt that it would be an adequate purchase to feed my desire to be seen as a tech guru while staying within an affordable price range.

I know that it isn't the greatest TV out there, and it's not even close. However, HD TV channels only broadcast in 720p, and since the majority of it's usage will go towards TV it's not bad at all. I wouldn't want to cramp my room with a 50" DLP (13" deep), but it fits perfectly in the living room, actually takes up less space than our previous 36" CRT, and with this cheap of a price I won't be too upset if the thing gets crapped out due to roommate conditions. The downside is that without 1080p we can't watch HDDVD's to their utmost capabilities, nor will video games output their max potential. With that being said, the games that I've played so far look insane, and like stated the HDTV channels come in crystal clear.

I decided to go with the XBOX 360 with the knowledge that I'll be getting a far superior TV sometime in the future that will be able to handle anything thrown at it, and even in this new setup the 360 displays awesomely on our TV.

In total, I was able to grab the TV, the 360 Elite, and Halo 3 for less than $1,300. It's hooked up, our HDDVR cable box is hooked up, and just in time for Sunday football (even though the Eagles need to go back to the offseason already so they can learn how to play the game again). We are all now enjoying our weekly shows and weeknight Halo 3 online anger-fests in high def and I couldn't be more content.

I can't decide whether surround sound is next or if I'm going to further fuel my TV want with a top of the line LCD for my bedroom. Of course, knowing me, I'll end up spending zero dollars on either one and I'll be writing another blog entry from my Vegas hotel room a couple months from now, complaining that I should've just bought another damn TV and had something to show for the $2,000 I just dropped only to stare at a grimacing dealer's face and retire to a night long view at the Strip from 30 stories up.

Only time will tell where my money will end up in December, but for right now it's back to the tech forums to see if I can't actually learn something about all the new stuff I'll want to end up buying.

Also, I fixed the internet at our apartment and I have a bunch of stories to tell, so hopefully....just maybe....just....just by a random hopeless chance, I may start updating regularly again.

Until next time.