Done and Done

I feel mighty productive. That’s been rare for me over the last, oh, two years or so because I have become very lazy. But I have actually taken care of some things in the last few days that just needed to be done. I could have put them off as I so often do. But I didn’t and I’m feeling good now.

(1) Got the Firebird off the street and into a repair shop. (2) Gave Kid Crash my buy-in for the Chumash tourney so he could put me in this week (He did that and mentioned it in his blog…thanks, Dude!) (3) Bought a really nice floral arrangement for my mom from 1800flowers dot com. I bought them in time so they will arrive on her birthday, today. (4) Reserved my room at Chumash for the weekend of the big tournament.

I’m really looking for to the Chumash tourney. Its not big as far as the buy-in. I’ve played in bigger tournaments. That’s for sure. But it is a big thing at that casino, only happening 3 times a year. It’s a $200 + 20 buy-in limited to 700 seats with 100 alternates. First place pays $50,000 and they pay out 100 spots. Instead of listing the entire payout structure, I’ll do the math and just tell you they seed the tournament with $10,000. And with a cap of 800 players, its not like your normal guaranteed prize fund. They have no chance of having the gap covered by extra buy-ins. I think that is pretty nice. You know what kind of field you will be up against going into it. No chance of having to best a field of 1499. No sir. There will be, at most, 799 slappy bastards in my way.

And the structure of the tournament is really good for a one day event. It starts at 9am and ends around midnight. The first level is 60 minutes and 30 minutes for each thereafter. I’ve been very patient in the early levels of this tourney in the past. But I have found after the first 4 hours of play, you need at least 4 times the starting amount (T5000) to really play right. I’ve done well in the early going of the first two of these events that I have played, accumulating around 15k in chips early on. But I was basically playing tight. And I continued to play pretty tight after building a stack. This time, I’ll be looking to play loose and really find some spots to take control. I feel really good about my game and my chances. Wish me “good poker.”

Back to my recent diligence: (5) Attacked my PC to figure out why the Ethernet card is no longer functioning. My sister recently used a crossover cable to copy all of my music to her laptop. Since then, no network connection. A quick inspection revealed the Ethernet card was not functioning properly and, in fact, was not recognized. I made several attempts to reinstall the driver to no resolve. I finally took apart the pc to reseat the card…last ditch effort. That didn’t help either. So my sister is going to pick up a new network card. It did happen on her watch, after all. I’m going to finish that up tonight. (In case you are wondering, I have been using my laptop for two weeks while the pc has been out of commission. It was easy to ignore the problem thanks to my trusty lappy.)

(6) I mounted my sister’s new TV on her bedroom wall. She got a Polaroid 32” LCD HDTV. Its one of the lower end brands in the television market but it provides a beautiful high def picture. Even non-HD channels look good. Anyway, she wanted it mounted on her wall and that kind of task usually falls squarely on my shoulders without discussion. Fortunately, she was out of town for a couple days so she could not get in the way. I had a bitch of a time trying to install the mounting bracket. I’ll spare you the gory details (I’m kinda tired of telling the story) except to tell you that I kept at it and got the job done. I finished it off when my sister came back by mounting her speakers along side the TV. Ace (my sister) is very happy with it.

I think that covers what I was able to accomplish recently. I have a few things ahead of me, too, such as re-tipping my pool cues, practicing pool, writing about pool, and hanging my bike in the garage. Sounds exciting, don’t it?

SEEYa