<$BlogRSDUrl$>



Friday, August 12, 2005

Quick post here.

I went over to GMoney's place last evening and got silly drunk. But I decided to sit in a satellite to the WCOOP and entered the first one I found. Pot-Limit Hold Em. Lo and behold, we played some fine poker and ended up winning a $530 seat to event #7. I need to play more of these, obviously.

Two quick shout outs. First to Austin blogger, Scott, over at DeadMoneyInc. He tried his best to turn me into a TV star. Go read his background as a skiptracer/bounty hunter. Great stuff and I'm sure he has a million stories to tell. Go now.

Also, a faithful reader (thanks Keith) sent me this:

-------

Vegas Rock Star Poker is coming up in two weeks, and they're doing drawings from their website in a few days, so the opportunity to win is closing.

I went last year and had a blast, and it would be great if one of your readers (or yourself) was able to take part this year.

Basically, it's a 10K freeroll with a number of rock stars, and it's
run by Phil Gordon. Without going into too much detail, you can enter and
find out more about it at: www.vegasrockstarpoker.com

--------

So go sign up, damnit.




Thursday, August 11, 2005

From ClickZ.

Blog readers rock.

-----

www.clickz.com/stats/sectors/demographics/article.php/3526591

Blog Readers Spend More Time and Money Online
By Sean Michael Kerner
August 10, 2005

The blogosphere is big and its readers spend more time and money online than Web users who don't read them.

Fifty million Americans, or 30 percent of all American Internet users, visited a blog in the first quarter of 2005, according to a new report from Comscore, and sponsored in part by SixApart and Gawker Media. Traffic increased by 45 percent from the first quarter of 2004.

The average blog reader viewed 77 percent more pages than the average Internet user who doesn't read blogs (16,000 versus 9,000 for the quarter), the report found. Blog readers average 23 hours online per week, compared with the overall Web user's average of 13 hours.

Blog readers are 11 percent more likely than the average Internet user to have incomes of or greater than $75,000. Similarly, blog readers are 11 percent more likely to visit the Web over broadband either at home or the office.

Blog readers tend to make more online purchases. In the first quarter of 2005, less than 40 percent of the total Internet population made online purchases. By contrast, 51 percent of blog readers shopped online. Blog readers also spent six percent more than the average Internet user.

"Blog readers are an attractive audience to advertisers: they are more likely young, wealthy, on broadband, and spend significantly online," said Rick Bruner, co-author of the report. Bruner has since joined DoubleClick as research director.

Nearly 40 million blog readers visited blogs hosted by BlogSpot, LiveJournal, TypePad, Xanga, AOL Journals, Blogs.com and MSN Spaces. As blog readership has grown overall, so has the traffic on the hosted blogs. Six of the major host report growth of greater than 100 percent on a year-over-year basis. Blogs.com had the highest growth rate at 241 percent, followed closely by TypePad with 240 percent growth. Overall, BlogSpot holds the top spot in terms of the greatest number of unique visitors, at 19 million, up from 7.7 million a year ago.

Bruner told ClickZ Stats the scale of consumer-generated content was among the notable findings in the report. "Blog hosting site Blogspot, owned by Google and affiliated with Blogger.com, with more than one million blogs hosted, gets more traffic than NYTimes.com, USAToday.com or WashingtonPost.com," Bruner stated.

Among the 30 million users who also visited a non-hosted or stand-alone blog, news and political blogs held the largest audience share at 43 percent. A "Hipster" category was a distant second at 17 percent. Additional categories include tech (15 percent), women (8 percent), media (8 percent), personal (6 percent) and business (3 percent).


---

Jeff Jarvis adds (correctly):

We have greater value in our relationships and influence and we need to find ways to measure that. No, that is not a substitute for the basic audience metrics advertisers demand. But it will prove our higher value and we can then get paid for that higher value and that is a good thing.




I'm gonna announce a WPBT tourney here in a few. We're overdue for one, don't you think?

Because it was so well-received last time, I'm posting another Gary Carson Day here at Guinness & Poker. Not as funny as the first one, so I'm compensating with assorted drivel beneath to destroy some workplace productivity.

Now go play some poker at Party Poker or Noble Poker, damnit.

Enjoy cranky Gary:

>HOW do I address a Chinese person!


"Ask them whether they're from South Vietnam or Northern Vietnam, that'll
really get 'em going."

>...cinch to pee between your hands. (Er, poker hands, that is.)


"Online all you need to do is keep some empty 2 liter soda bottles nearby."

"What if washing your hands makes you late and you miss the big blind? It
can happen, like they're out of paper towels or something."

"That losing feeling is your subconcoius telling you to cash in, get laid,
and get a good nights sleep."

"I though everybody knew that Daniel N was from Canada and only living in Amercia
until somebody asks him for his green card."

"Of course, Daniel can take a poll of his drinking buddies and probably get
an answer that agrees with the answer he wants."

"Yep. Maybe Phil could learn to add spitting in peoples face to his
trantrum act."

"Phil H. fought in two wars? Grandada and Somolia?"

"Most economics departments try to maintain some kind of intellectual
diversity by keeping a marxist economist on the faculty. We comprimised.
We had a token catholic."

"It's important to maintain backup communication lines with the mother
ship."

"What's really cool is when you can say, "Tend to open in middle position
with the top twenty-five hands except for hands 9, 12, 13, 17, and 24."
When you can say that then you know you've arrived as an expert."

"Binion's is the only one that gives the map to the buried silver in the
desert on your one year anniversary."

"One of the benefits of dating a school teacher is that whenever some drunk
sends me an email rant I can get her to check if for spelling errors."

"I learned how to spell in Canada."

"Although I did used to live in San Francisco, I've never really been
interested in that sort of thing."


>Should someone with a broken leg just walk on the other one until it's healed?


"Of course not. Walk on the broken one until it gets tough."

"And, Daniel is the poster boy for the assertion that you can be stupid and
still be a good poker player."

"The dog breeding industry will someday be squeaky clean."


>Ironic that he edits the curse words out but goes on to threaten violence.


"It's that methodist upbringing."

"El Paso is not in the same time zone as the rest of Texas."

"When I was in the 6th grade, my teacher, who drove a black 1957 Chevy convertible, sat on her desk and crossed her legs. It was a life changing event."

"Unless Paul Phillips can go back to the Horseshoe and get himself beat up, giving
them some usable film, it's doubful TV crews will be interested."

"A really powerful message would be to tell Becky, "I think you're taking
money that belongs to someone else and using it for your own benefit. But,
I don't care, I'm going to play in your poker games anyway."

"I'd give my wife a rose too if she bought me a house in Palo Alto. But, I'd
probably still be an asshole."

"You're right Razzo. Your heroes function much better in the dark"

"If I can't demonize people I don't like, then what's the point of not
likeing them?"

"I'm not cardplayer you know, I don't have a professional web development
team to crash my site regularly."


>I'm no PR expert


"Compared to Becky you are."

"What kind of irrational thinking lead you to the conclusion that existance
required good decision making? You've read to much Ayn Rand or something."

"Congrats to Travis for standing up for Becky's right to skim from dealer
tokes. It's a tribute to dealers everywhere."

"We finially got call forwarding here in Texas. Next week I hear we'll get
running water."

"Rather than cluttering this newsgroup with off-charter comments about what
you do with your killfile, why don't you just do whatever you're gong to do
and don't tell us?"

"Be careful Steve, he might challange you to a headsup chess match."

"Let's get Razzo to videotape it -- y'all put your dicks out on the table,
I'll drop the axe, whoever bleeds has the big dick and wins."


>Because of Mason's nuts? Gary, why I didn't think you were into those things.


"Sometimes a guy just gets lonely Vince"

"Okay. I'll go post something right now. If it doesn't show up on your
server right away then it's because Mason deleted it."


> ....disingenuous....


"I know I can't spell that word. I wanted to use it. But, not badly enough
to look it up or open another window so I can use a spell-checker. So, I
didn't use that word.

Barbara used that word. She spells better than I do, she does combinotorial
math better than I do, and her legs are almost as sexy as mine."

"It's Maverick, Razzo. He's been married and working the last couple of
years and been out of the loop. Now that his marriage has fallen apart and
he's lost his job he's back to hanging out in cardrooms"

"That's why I'm a champion. I always play hands that will flop a full
house."

"Well, since you said it twice then I guess you must be right."

"...since I take as many cheap shots at Malmuth as my busy schedule allows."


>I'm just glad to see David Sklansky has a sense of humor!


"His jokes are ghost written by Malmuth."


>have had the same calculus teacher at Teaneck H.S., who said there's a fine line between genius and insanity.


"And, of course high school calculus tearchers are often experts in psychiatry."

"He denies the false accusations? Does he deny the other accusations also?"

"There really isn't all that much information content in the second hand
facts that Nolan provided us. He did use a lot of words though."


>Gary, gca should consult with you on your next book. They are the real experts


"It's a book on how to teach grammer to little boys whose daddys didn't send
them to school."

"I don't think Occam intended the razor to have application in paranoid
delusions."

"I'm gonna tell you an amazing story. I was born in Austin, and there are
people here who were actually in the hospital the day I was born and they
still live in Austin and they don't know me."


>I wouldn't waste his time, I'm also as boring as a potato.


"But more like a couple of those little red boiling potatoes than those big
baking ones, right?"

"I didn't start looking for alternative sites until I realized Planet was
investing in celibrity endorsements rather than software maintanence."

"Good luck Todd. Maybe soon you'll be first at something."

"That would be good. I'll be the obtuse idiot and you can be the acute
idiot."

"I thought only little girls puncuated with multiple exclamation marks? Does
the Brunson boy have a little sister who makes his usenet posts for him?"

"Bullshit. I do dumber things than that at least 5 times a day."

"So, if you just came over to the US to work on the railroad, and intended
to return to China after the work was finished, would Chinaman be
appropriate? I mean, Chinese-American doesn't seem right if you're only
here to build the railroads."

"You can play the role of Jimmy's hooker."

"I've found it to be a lot of fun to refer to Koreans as Chinaman. It
really puts them on tilt."


>Then you can decide what to call the Irish?


"The irish is easy. It's "Would you like a doughnut, officer?""

"Well, Doyle might be a unique individual. But, that's kinda not a unique
characteristic. It's a characteristic shared by most people. Makes him kind
of ordinary, doesn't it?"


>Can someone please explain the meaning of "R00ler"?


"Ruler. top dog, the best as in, Todd Brunson is the R00ler of the trailer park."


>I generally use the term "Asian" today out of respect for the preferences of certain people. It just puzzles me a bit why this term would be chosen


"It's because it' so convenient. With that one word we can denigrate 2/3rds
of the worlds population -- phillipinos, pakistanis, japanese, koreans,
thais, english expatriats in HK, Indians, we can insult them all with just
one word."

"I liked the search for case law on geocities. Great site for legal
research."

"Hell, until they learned to read well enough to pass a civil service exam,
Irishman was a racial slur."

"The only war that any french have won in the last couple of hundred years
are the canadian culture wars. Because of that, we give english speaking
canadians a pass on all grammar war skirmishes. It's just not fair to
expect anything from a bunch of canadians who can't even tell a small group
of unemployed frenchmen to shut up."

"But, even so, we still consider Johnny Chan a Texan. Maybe Doyle doesn't,
but the rest of us do."


>Those folks are called "employed".


"Look, buddy. This is a poker newsgroup. Some ethnic slurs just don't
belong here."

"I was born a poor black boy, and had rythm then. But, I grew up and
became a white man, and lost all my rythm. Of course, in the west Texas
Methodist world of Doyle's youth, rythm was the work of the devil. That
and gambliing."

"it's not enough to have a girlfriend with a job and a credit card, I need
to dump her and find one with a job, credit card, and pentium IV."

"Yes, Mike, Mark should do that. And, he should issue a public statement
about his financial relationship with Firestone also. And, what did he have
to do with Three Mile Island? And, why was he in Dallas that day?"

-----


Jessica Alba pic for BG and crew.



Here's some strange links for ya'll.

Stoned journalist

The Sports Guy's mailbag, talking about poker.
By Bill Simmons

Daddy over at Snailtrax requested a curbjob video. This is pretty brutal - you've been warned.

Brittany Spears. Pregnant in a bikini. Nuff said.

From the Nature channel. Octopus versus Shark.

Tiger vs. Crocodile here. Who you got?

My old boss, of all people, sent me this picture.



Transcript of Peter Gammons' Hall of Fame induction speech... if you missed it this weekend, it's absolutely required reading for anyone that calls him/herself a baseball fan.

And finally, the best mugshot ever.

Link of the Day
Doyle's Date with Darwin
Dear Crane Accidents Forum: I never thought it would happen to me. I had about 35 years of operating experience. I just got too confident.




Monday, August 08, 2005

"I have nothing to say of my working life, only that a tie is a noose, and inverted though it is, it will hang a man nonetheless if he’s not careful."
Life of Pi

I'm back.

Truth is always stranger than fiction, ain't it?

Good God, here's a quick tale.
As if I didn't have enough of facing Mortality these days, I get this experience...

A little backstory.

My Grandfather was 17 years old in 1927, the year he began flying airplanes. This was some serious cutting edge shit. Hell, the Wright brothers made their first successful flight in 1903. How on earth did he start flying that early in aviation history? Probably due to the fact that Charles Lindbergh was reared in the same area as my grandfather, Little Falls, Minnesota, in the Iron Range.

The roaring Twenties.
Romanticism and devil-may-care-attitudes abounded.

Stranger still, in this age of open air cockpits, while he was barnstorming, he met the only licensed female pilot in Northern Minnesota at the time. So he married her.

The two made quite a pair.
You betcha.

But that's another story entirely.

During World War 2, he flew in the South Pacific, returned and did what many war-weary veterans did. Bought lakefront land up in the North Woods and built a log cabin.

Years ago, you would see this on television: A boat in the distance patrols the shore. A plug arches toward the camera. A voice: "Crow Wing, Minnesota, means big northern pike." Jaws and teeth flash, and soon a large fish is hauled aboard. Next scene: fillets, lemons, Old Milwaukee beer, and anglers rubbing their bloated guts as they sprawl on the deck of a lakeside lodge. "You know," says one, "it just doesn't get any better than this."

And it's the damn truth. I've been going to our pastoral property for years now and this past visit was no different. With this one exception.

I spent the first four days just hanging out with my parents. That meant I had the bunkhouse all to myself. I fished my ass off and read lots of books.

But my sister, physician husband and three young children joined us on Friday. And that's where my story finally kicks in.

Because of the invasion, my dad set up an old tent down the hill from the cabin, by the shoreline. I've slept there several times, enjoying the loons calling across the lake and the water gently lapping against the shore.

Idyllic.

Until now.
It was perhaps 1.30 AM when I finally closed my book and settled in.

And then I heard it.

Something crashing through the brush, heading downhill. Towards me.

Now understand, there's tons of critters & bigass bugs in these wild woods. You're always hearing things, no biggie.

But this wasn't a critter. This was something Big.

I immediately thought it was a deer or even a moose - hell, the cabin is located on Moose Point - it stands to reason, right? But deer are typically pretty quiet when walking through the forest, but still, I didn't think anything of it, especially when the noise stopped after ten seconds.

Twenty seconds later, after I dug back into my sleeping bag, it began again, getting closer, but this time with a large branch cracking in half, causing me to immediately sit up on my cot and listen carefully.

The loud thrashing of underbrush continued towards me. What the fuck? My first thought was to see if I had my camera with me, to hopefully catch a nighttime shot of whatever the hell this was.

But when I quietly got up, crept to the side tent window and saw a fucking medium-sized black bear sitting in our wild raspberry patch, perhaps 20 yards away, I immediately starting thinking about weapons instead.

And I had zip. Nadda. The only thing I came up with was my faithful ballpoint pens.

It truly was a fight or flee situation. Despite it being a typically nippy Minnesota evening, after about five minutes of watching the beast, I realized I literally had rivers of sweat pouring down my body.

I didn't know what the hell to do. So I just stood there, sweating and watching in aphasiac terror. The damn bear was in the path of both the cabin and bunkhouse. And despite putting on my shoes, I knew you weren't supposed to run from black bears as it triggers an urge for them to chase and drag you down.

Now SNEAKING away was a possiblity. The door of the tent was facing away from the bear but I wasn't sure if I wanted to gamble yet. There were two zippers to unzip and also the possibility of stepping on a branch once outside, sidling away. I even considered running down to the lake. Not to swim, mind you. Black bears can swim (and climb), after all, but I wondered if I might jump in a boat. Damnit, I realized - both are up on lifts so I'm screwed there as well.

At this point, I was seriously wishing I had my dogs with me.

I decided to ride it out. What choice did I have? And to make a short point, I wasn't and am not scared of dying but I DO have a pet peeve about being eaten to death. I'll take a heart attack or car wreck or lightning strike over being chewed on for supper.

I sat down on my cot, ballpoint pen in each hand and waited.
My wife finds this mental picture very funny.

After what seemed like hours, even though it was perhaps 15 minutes, I heard the bear moving again. This time away from me, uphill towards the cabin.

I saw, and then heard, him scramble into the woods and head up and over the hill. I wasn't sure what the hell to do next. I imagine most folks would have ran for the safety of a cabin, or even a car, but I didn't. I felt the danger was past and waking up everyone would be a tremendous waste of time and sleep. Hell, my folks are old, after all.

So I grabbed my flashlight, laid back down and picked up Harrington On Hold Em Volume Two and was asleep within an hour.

Thanks Dan!!

But I didn't sleep very well (imagine that) and when my folks awoke I quickly went up to tell them the story. Dad called someone from the Dept. of Natural Resources and got transferred and ultimately they sent someone out. They found tracks and droppings and told us there was nothing to fear, it was just a hungry lil bear, but to call this cell # if it returned.

My dad was non-plussed, too, as this was only his second bear sighting in the 50+ years he had been coming up North.

I took more proactive measures and immediately drove into town and bought some freaking mace. I slept like a baby every night thereafter.

And so that's my lame little tale. Beats a fishing story, don't it? And this one is true, unlike the latters tendencies.

Whew, it's amazing what a week of no internet, no TV and no phone will do for you. I'm full of ideas. But for now I've got to buckle down and catch up on email and reading.

If anyone wants some fine summer book reading, I'm going to recommend the following three bestsellers. The first two are fiction (and I'm loathe to recommend fiction) and the third, as someone said; 'transcends categorization as memoir, literary criticism or social history, though it is superb as all three.' I'm gonna link these to Amazon but be careful of spoilers in the reviews.

Life of Pi
Kite Runner
Reading Lolita in Tehran

Let's finish up with a funny link of the day, and what else, bear photos......

Link of the Day:
"The ride home from the bachelor party." This reaction kills me.
One last Prank















All Content Copyright Iggy 2003-2007
Information on this site is intended for news and entertainment purposes only.


100% Signup Bonus at PokerStars.com up to $50

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?