I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker!
This Online Poker Tournament is a No Limit Texas Holdem event exclusive to Bloggers.
Registration code: 9905494
To me the thing about the internet that makes it wonderful and special is that it is democratic in the truest sense of the word. I can create a website, add some content and put it out there for the world to see. If the world likes it, they come to my website, if not, they don’t. My website can be accessed with the same ease and by the same number of people as the websites of Nike, Ford, Walmart, and other major corporations.
I could go on ad-neauseum about the wonders of the internet, but I would probably bore you to the point that you abandon my blog for something cool. In the interests of actually making the point I intended to make when I started this post, let me just say that we can no longer take for granted the above mentioned aspects of the internet.
The concept of "Network Neautrality" is hugely important to the functioning of the internet and it is under attack. There is an article by Adam Green at the Huffington Post that does a better job expaining the issue and why it is important than I ever could (thanks to Wil Wheaton for pointing it out to me and his other readers).
Read the article. Visit the link. Tell everyone.
So, I’ve got a job. Actually I have had it for a little while now but so far I haven’t found time to make an announcement.
The job is as cabin crew with a low cost, European airline called easyJet. So far the company seems great to work for and they are the market leader in the European low cost sector. They are adding over a hundred of new staff and a new aircraft every month and they keep adding new bases and routes. The newest routes (starting this summer) are London-Marrakech and London-Istanbul.
It all happened rather fast. I completed an application on the 12th of last month and got a call the next day offering me an interview the following Satuday. Two days later I was offered the job with and I started training on the 29th. I finish my training on friday and in theory I’ll be flying by next monday. I say in theory because not all of my background checks are complete and I can’t fly until they are.
So, there you have it. Now I am sure you are all curious, so I have put together an premproty FAQ.
Q. Cabin Crew? Is that like a flight attendand?
A. Yes, Exactly. That is just what they (we) are being called now.
Q. Wow, I never though of you as cabin crew.
A. That’s a statement.
Q. Fine. What made you want to become cabin crew?
A. I don’t know. I actually applied on a whim. I had never really thought about it before but it sounded like fun and I rather enjoy flying.
Q. Don’t cabin crew end up spending lots of time away from home?
A. It depends. If you are on long haul routes (trans-atlantic for example), yes, you often do. But easyJet operates only short haul flights and as a result, night stops (spending a night away from your base) are extreamly rare.
Q. Do you get any cool perks?
A. Yes, I get (really) cheap flights anywhere easyJet flies, as often as I can stand. I also get other travel realated perks like cheap hotels and stuff.
Q. Doesn’t easyJet have hideous orange uniforms?
A. Hey! I am going to be wearing that uniform!
Q. Excuse me. Doesn’t easJet have erm…BRIGHT orange uniforms?
A. Yeah. What of it?
Q. Aren’t you worried it will make you ass look fat?
A. It would take more than an orange uniform to make my ass look fat. Like pillows stuffed in my pants. No, I’m more concerned that it will clash with the color of my eyes.
Q. Really?
A. No.
Q. Can we see the uniform?
A. Yes, I’ll try to post some picture soon.
Q. Anything else you want to share?
A. I’m not a stewardess!
Last weekend I had an an interesting experience in a poker tournament at the local casino. Now, there are a few things I should say before I begin. The first is that the casino does not employ dealers for the poker tournaments. This may be standard here in the UK, it might even be a legal necessity, I don’t know. Anyway, the other thing is a detail for non-poker players. In poker, when you fold your cards the are placed in a pile of folded cards called the muck. If any cards touch the muck, they are considered folded, whether the player intended to fold them or not. I’ll try to include enough detail for the poker players out there without overwhelming the non-players.
We pick up the action about an hour into the tournament. I am the big blind and I am dealt the King and Queen of Diamonds. A number of people call and it reaches me without being raised, so I raise it to twice the blind, just enough to build the pot a little. The flop comes out Ace, Jack, Ten, 2 clubs, one heart (I do not remember which was which) giving me the nut straight. At this point I have about $1600 in tournament chips and the average is about $2500. I haven’t been in many hands and need to win something, preferably something big.
Knowing I have the best hand on the table at that point, but realizing someone with 2 clubs could catch one on the turn or the river to beat me, I push all my chip towards the pot and declare myself all in. The player to my left has been having a run of bad luck and folds. The woman to his right calls, but I’m not shocked as she has been calling a lot. An older, experienced player I later learn is a professional player folds, as does the woman next to him. A good natured man calls me as well, leaving the dealer and the small blind still to decide. At this point the pro player starts to clean up the table, gathering the folded cards into the much pile. The dealer, a young university student playing in his first live tournament calls me as well, but the small blind folds. The pro player has gathered up all the folded cards, and then, reaches across the table and grabs my cards as well.
"WAIT!" I say, but it is too late. My cards land in the muck.
After much deliberation and consultation with the casino staff it is decided that my cards are in fact folded. After the turn and river come out it is clear that my hand would have stood up to win.
It wasn’t until later, after learning that this guy is a pro and well known jerk that it occurred to me that it might have been intentional.
Oh well…I learned a lesson I don’t think I’ll forget: Always protect your hand.
After some early morning showers the winds managed to banish the clouds long enough for us to remember how bright the sun is. And let me tell you, it is bright. I took the opportunity to get outside and go for a walk. I finally remember to bring my camera with me and take the pictures that people have been bugging me to take. Of course I neglected to check the battery before I left and, of course, it was low. So, of course, it died on me.
To see the pictures go to:
http://photos.eccentric.org/v/ben/
Over a three day period around the 28th of December we got a little snow each day. All together it may have as much as 3 inches. Eventually we got a warm rain and all the snow melted. I was able to catch a few pictures of it. Take a look.
The first two pictures are looking out our front door at our neighbor’s cars, the next two are our back yard (or garden as they say here), one out the kitchen sliding glass door and one from the upstairs window
and the last one is of our new sofa. The one we got at the auction. 
Sunday morning there was a big explosion in Hemel Hempstead, which is about 15 miles south of us. Neither Gina or I blew up. In fact, nobody was killed and only 40 injured and just two seriously. That’s pretty incredible since they are calling it the ‘largest peacetime explosion in Europe.’
We were asleep at the time, but the noise actually woke us up, which should give you an idea how big it was. Fifteen miles away and it still woke us up. After looking out the windows for a while we went back to sleep. It actually wasn’t until yesterday afternoon when my dad called that we realized what it was.
The pictures are quite impressive, but they say that the cloud is almost entirely soot and not particularly dangerous. I’m not sure how much stock to put in thatbut the winds have been blowing the smoke south, so I think we’re pretty safe. We have plans to head into London on Thursday, but the fire should be out soon.
Thanks to everyone that called and emailed to make sure we are all right.
I’m about to upgrade our computer to OSX 10.4 (Tiger). If you dont hear from me for a few days…something went wrong.
Wish me luck.
UPDATE
ROWR! Or whatever noise Tigers make. After overcoming odd technical
difficulties I have successfully upgraded to OSX 10.4 aka Tiger.
[Begin geek speak now or <geekspeak>] I can now set up WPA-PSK, which was not
supported in 10.2.8, which is what I was running before. This should offer an upgrade over WEP. It probably would be easier just to to prevend the SSID from being broadcast and set up MAC filtering, but the D-Link DSL-604T doesn’t have an option to stop broadcasing the SSID and it has an odd little bug in its web interface. I can’t click the button to add MAC addresses. Having done some web searching it turns out that I am not the only person to have this problem. Apparently the button only works in IE running in a Windows environment and not MAC OS browsers. So WPA it is.
Overall Tiger seems to run a little slower than 10.2.8, but both are much faster since I added 512mb of RAM for a total of 640mb.[end geek speak now or </geekspeak>]
In having some problems getting the upgrade working I logged in using MAC OS 9. What crap. I remember now why I disliked macs for so long. The MAC OS before OS X were so clunky! It made me really appreaciate OS X.
Tiger has some cool features, like being able to switch from one user to another without logging out. And now I can install Skype and Acquisition. Woot Woot!
…because she likes it. *Thank you, Thank you. I’ll be here all week*
I like to think of myself as something of a Renessance Man. I can do a pretty decent number of things tolerably well. Most of these things I do because I enjoy them, and that is enough.
I play poker because I enjoy it, but like everyone else male, and between 18 and 29, I can’t help thinking…"Maybe I could get really good at this." I can’t help aspiring to something great. If I just had a bankroll and some time. If only I could learn not to make stupid calls. If only I could remember the percentages on 8Q off-suit with 3 plays in the game. Or, as Neil Stephenson puts it in Snow Crash….
"Until a man is twenty-five he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastry in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Columbian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad."
If I just dropped out and devoted my life to poker.
I received an interesting email today. It was from a young woman (at least I assume she was young…ok, I assume it was a woman too, but I don’t know of any men named Kelcei) inquiring as to whether I was the Ben Feldman from The Perfect Man. I am pretty sure that I am not. Although, not being sure what (or who) The Perfect Man is, I couldn’t be certain.
As I suspected, The Perfect Man is a movie. And there is, indeed an actor named Ben Feldman, who plays one of the main characters. I’ve known about this guy for a while now, ever since he started popping up on search results, but it seems like he is getting a lot more attention now.
It might be time to start going by one of my other names…
