Airport Bombing

So does the TSA groping still make you feel safe? Ask the poor souls in this video.  There’s no reason it won’t happen in the US.  I hope this bomb maker blows his face off soon.

I’ve got a bit of ‘splanin to do

That’s because it’s been since October since I’ve done a real blog post.  It’s not that nothing blog worthy has happened. A lot has happened, actually.  It’s just that I haven’t felt like writing it up and since I don’t make any money or make any promises about posting, I just didn’t.  So let’s see what I remember.

My job kept me on the road after the October triathlon.  I’ve traveled to Germany, Vegas, St. Louis, Vegas (again), St. Louis (again), G-Vegas, DC, and Charleston, SC.  The Germany trip was to upgrade a customers database server.  It took a 24 hour work day (my first ever), but we hit the planned return to service time and the customer has invited me back.  I don’t have any problem with that. 

The first trip to Vegas was for the celebration of my 50th birthday.  I’m still not used to being that old, but so be it.  That trip was awesome.  Most of the folks that I really wanted there made it.  We had incredible dinner at the Hofbrauhaus on Thursday, followed by another incredible dinner Carnevino in the Palazzo, followed by the Cher show at Caesar's on Saturday.  There was some gambling in between with a good session of blackjack, a bad session of pai gow, and lot’s of poker.  Dr. K and I got in a couple of good workouts in the beatuiful fitness spa of the Venetian (where we stayed courtesy of Skoon and Brian the Red) and a visit with my younger brother and Dr. K’s aunt.  Though I ended up on the negative end for gambling, it was my best trip to Vegas ever.

The first trip to St. Louis was for work and nothing real special on that.  I did play some poker at Lumiere Place and River City, both times with poor outcomes, and stayed right downtown near the arch and Busch Stadium.  That was fun.

The second trip to Vegas was for the World Poker Blogger Tour (WPBT).  Seeing that bunch of degens just gets better and better the more times we get together.  The gambling hit a new low as I posted my biggest Vegas loss ever, but I’d do it again.  If I’ve got the resources, I will.

The second trip to St. Louis is probably best forgotten.  I was to present two days of training, but the customer’s folks only showed for 1 of the 4 sessions due to poor weather and general disinterest.  Too bad.  I had some good stuff planned.  I stayed and played at the Harrah’s Hotel and Casino.  My losses continued to mount this trip as well (are you seeing a trend here), so I’ll just move on.

G-Vegas brings us up to the new year and actually New Years Day and the BadBlood New Year’s Tourney.  You can hear all about it on the Gambling Tales Podcast, but the gory details are that I got my money in good and didn’t win any of the significant hands that I needed to post another big loss.  I’ve had good luck and bad luck in G-Vegas.  I’ll try again soon.

Finally, the trip to DC was interesting.  I think that will make for a good blog post of it’s own as that memory is fresh from last week.  I’ll break out this weekend’s trip to Charleston as well.

As for other highlights from the past quarter – Thanksgiving and Christmas were good with family and friends healthy and doing well.  Dr. K lost a bet with her nephew (a Clemson fan) and went over the top in paying off as the picture shows.

The two pictures in this post were taken with my new Windows Phone 7 which really kicksass.  I won’t say that it’s better than the other smart phones (iPhone, Driod), but it holds it’ own with a lot of potential yet to come.

That’s most of the highlights.  There are trips to Seattle, Colorado Springs and San Antonio in the near future.  I’ll try to do better at keeping up.

Hangin’ at the Hospital

Today didn’t go quite as expected.  It was a pretty normal day at work until just after lunch.  My phone rang with the caller ID telling me that it was my mom.  She rarely calls, but will usually call in the morning.  When I answered, it was not Mom, but a friend of hers.  This is not the kind of call where you want to mess around with.  It’s best to get straight to the point, to outrun my imagination.  Diane did just that and the news was not nearly as bad as it could have been.  Of course, it wasn’t great either.

Mom woke up feeling badly and called Diane for help getting to the emergency room.  That was a good call.  Mom ended up having a ruptured appendix.  I did okay with the news.  I called my wife, who is great in situations like this.  I wrote a quick email to my brothers as that was way quicker than calling each one and headed to the hospital.  Thankfully it was only a 5 minute drive.

As I write it is quarter past 11 and Mom has one less organ than she started the day with and is sleeping comfortably.  The staff here at Carolinas Medical Center – Pineville is doing a great job.  I’m confident that I could leave now and that everything would be okay, but I’ll feel better staying here.  Perhaps I could catch this blog up on all that’s been going on with the adventures of Special K.  I don’t have that much time but perhaps I’ll do an overview.  Stay tuned.

PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker! The WBCOOP is a free online Poker tournament open to all Bloggers, so register on WBCOOP to play.

Registration code: XXXXXX 602496

Gambling Tales Freeroll Tournament

If you've not noticed, the Gambling Tales Podcast (gtpodcast.com) is back "on the air" with new shows weekly.  We took a bit of a break over the last 6 months, reformatted the show to single topic weekly shows, and now we've added a weekly freeroll tournament on Full Tilt Poker.  I'm guessing that the tournament might be the most interesting part of the new GTP, so I'll concentrate the rest of this post on that part.

Full Tilt Poker has been kind enough to offer a freeroll tournament to the listeners of the podcast that includes a $50 prize pool.  The tournaments are on Thursday evenings at 9 pm eastern.  You only need a Full Tilt cash account and the tournament password to participate.  The password is generally given out sometime during the podcast which is released the Monday morning prior to the tourney.  Since you have been a friend to the podcast and since I'm getting ready to ask something of you, I'm going to give you this week's password.  It is "CollegePoker" (Tournament #208556681).  It fits into the subject of the podcast.  Shamus, of the Hard-boiled Poker Blog, is teaching a college course on Poker in American Film and Culture.  Interesting stuff.  I hope you will check it out.

Now my ask:  We need links to our web site.  If you like the podcast or the tournament, please write a brief blog post and include a link to http://gtpodcast.com in the post.  You could offer your readers the chance to enter the freeroll.  Encourage them to listen to the podcast, but give out the password if you like.  We would really appreciate it.  If you will reply to this email and let us know that you've created a post, I'll add you to the roll of "Friends of the Podcast" and send you next week's password.

Thanks again for your support and for listening.

May your dice fly high