I don’t know how you people do it. Many of the blogs I read have deeply personal stuff that I couldn’t imagine publishing. Mine is pretty much limited to poker, bowling, baseball, and a few other random things – though I’ve been lightly researching on how to publish a children’s book, potentially. Honestly, I very rarely feel the need to write something personal, but the few times I do, I don’t do it anyway. I have a post that I’ve written in my head now at least a dozen times, but every time I try to actually get it down on virtual paper, it just doesn’t happen. I sit there for a few minutes, and then give up and go do something else. Even if I could write it, I doubt I’d get myself to publish it. That I’m even writing about the fact that I can’t write the posts I want surprises me.

Instead of writing it the most recent time, I went and changed the sidebars on my blog to WordPress Widgets. It’s a pretty cool plugin, and makes changing the contents of the sidebars pretty simple. Unfortunately, my layout is different enough from standard ones that I still can’t just drop in new widgets and use them without a little hacking, but it’s pretty much the same changes I need to make to each one, and they’re pretty easy. While I was at it, I added the cool little +/- buttons on each widget so you can collapse and expand each one. The main reason for that was so I can default the poker blogs section to be minimized and actually use that sidebar for other useful things. The last thing I need to do before I’ll consider it done is make it use cookies to remember which boxes are expanded and collapsed on a computer so it’ll always look the same when you come back.

Wasn’t that last paragraph about cool new features on my blog more interesting than my personal issues that no one really cares about? I thought so.

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That is all.

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I have a lot of things I want to talk about, but I can’t seem to find the motivation to do it right now.

Instead, I’m wasting my time finding things like LiveJournal Crossposter, a WordPress plugin that lets me crosspost everything here and at my LiveJournal that I set up just so I could comment on other people’s. Not really sure why I bothered setting this up, but I think I’ll leave it.

Five year college reunion, poker, bowling, baseball… can’t find the energy to actually write anything right now. Hell, this post is really just to let you all know I’m still here.

That’s all for now.

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I promised a real post. This is it, I guess.

Damn you, Chris, for pointing me at this. Can’t get it out of my head.

Poker has been interesting lately. I haven’t been playing much, but enough to lose a bunch of money at Chumash last weekend. My losses basically came down to two hands: losing with QQ vs AK in preflop, and JJ vs 76s when I couldn’t lay it down. I have since made all that money back at 1/2 NL on FTP. I’ve only been playing the cash games there seriously again for two days now, but if it’s really as soft as it seems, I’m going to have to keep doing it. I’ve also played a few of their guarantee tournaments, but failed to cash. I busted 15 off the money in one getting in preflop with QQ vs 33. I will probably continue to play these tournaments, but at least for the moment, the $200 NL cash game looks like a better way to spend my time.

Reminder! Easycure‘s charity tournament for the American Cancer Society is this Sunday. This is a WPBT-POY event, and you can earn Player of the Year points in it.

What: Hammer Out Cancer – WPBT-POY Circuit Event (Tournament ID 3381723 under the Private section.)
When: April 16th – Sunday
Time: 9pm EST
Where: Full Tilt Poker
How Much: $10 + $16 ($15 goes to American Cancer Society so buy-in is 25+1)
Password: dahammer

The Mets are off to a great 7-1 start to the season. Of course, they’ve only played the Nationals and Marlins so far, so they should be beating those teams. Tonight they go up against Milwaukee, who have started the season 6-3. I can’t believe they’re for real, though, so the Mets should be able to beat them, too. I’m trying to figure out how long they’re going to string me along before falling apart and giving the division to the Braves again. I think this year it might be midway through September, sadly. At least I’ll be out of the country then. 🙂

A friend of mine at work sent me a link to a great blog: Plunk Biggio: Dedicated to Craig Biggio and his (probably unintentional) Quest to break the all time major league career record for getting hit by pitches. It’s got daily updates on his HBP numbers, as well as fun stats about teams and pitchers plunking him. He needs 14 more to break the record, and has one this year so far. He’s been plunked at least 15 times in each of the last 6 seasons, so there’s a good chance it’ll happen this year.

My fantasy team is off to a wonderful start, going 1-11 the first week. I had a pretty good offensive week, but my pitching sucked, and my opponent hit 13 homers with 44 RBIs to crush me. This week it looks like I might be able to salvage a split. Yesterday, I hit .430 with 6 homers (more than I had all last week). I’m short a closer because Gagne is hurt (again! what was I thinking?) and my other two have been crap. Izzy and Cordero both have losses for me this week. My starting pitching is a mess, too. I’m not giving up yet, though. It’s a long season. Last year I actually moved up into third place for a few weeks at the end of August and beginning of September before falling off and finishing second to last again. My terrible finish leading to picking first in the draft and getting Utley finally paid off with a 2-homer game from him yesterday. My homerun from Mora blew a Dan Miceli save for my opponent, too. I love this game, even if I suck at it.

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Real post coming soon, I promise. For now, what I spent my time on after bowling (horribly) tonight:

Link to wall storage at Skymall.
Note: WPG2 is cool.

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Evan, opening day.

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The Mets won their first game of the season today. Hopefully, it’s an indication of how the rest of the season will go. Glavine with six solid innings, Wright with a homerun, outfield assists from Floyd and Beltran, and Wagner with a save. Xavier Nady also went 4-4 with two doubles, and Lo Duca got the Mets’ first RBI of the season.

Now, if only my fantasy team was doing as well. My two pitchers today got shelled, and I had two homeruns sitting on my bench. And today’s games aren’t even finished yet.

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First things first: Joaquin posted about this in my comments, and I realized I haven’t mentioned it yet. Iggy has set up another WPBT WSOP satellite, this time at PokerStars. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to make it, as I’ll be at the bowling alley. Monday night? WTF. Thanks, anyway. 🙂

What: Blogger WSOP Satellite Tourney
Where: PokerStars – Private Tab
When: April 3rd – MONDAY
Time: 9PM EST
Buyin: $30 +3
Password: socoshot

Second, Easycure is raising money for the American Cancer Society. You can just give cash here, or play in a charity poker tournament he’s set up on April 16th. I don’t know if I’ll be able to make it to the tournament, but I’ll be donating at least the $15 if I can’t.

What: Hammer Out Cancer – WPBT-POY Circuit Event (Tournament ID 3381723 under the Private section.)
When: April 16th – Sunday
Time: 9pm EST
Where: Full Tilt Poker
How Much: $10 + $16 ($15 goes to American Cancer Society so buy-in is 25+1)
Password: dahammer

I haven’t been playing much poker lately, and haven’t won when I have played, so nothing really to report on that.

Last weekend, I went back to the east coast for Evan‘s bris. The ceremony was nice, and it was good to get back home for a couple of days. I have a picture of him in my photoblog, and there’s one in the gallery. While I was there, I also got to see Brad and Staci’s new house, and it is beautiful.

Yesterday, I finally got a replacement receiver back from Denon after they finally decided waiting three months for a part was absurd and sent me a whole new box. While I’m not at all happy with their service, I do love the receiver. I set it up again last night, and got my Harmony 880 remote working with it. That was a bit of a pain, actually, but once it was programmed everything is working perfectly. It’s so nice to be able to switch from my Xbox to my Cox DVR without having to go behind them and move wires around. I also got the Xbox DVD kit yesterday, so I can use my Harmony remote to control XBMC now. I’m very happy with the whole setup now.

One last thing: Opening day, this Sunday.

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I’m so behind in posting, and have so much to say. Where to begin?

Last Friday, I became an uncle! My brother‘s wife gave birth to a healthy 8lbs, 10oz baby boy. Say hello to Evan Scott Penner. I’m heading to the east coast this weekend to meet my new nephew. I’m now officially “crazy uncle Alan from California.”

Saturday, I went down to LA with some friends to see V for Vendetta. I enjoyed the movie a lot. I liked the political message, and while it really seems like an obvious attack on the Bush administration, it’s worth remembering that the original comic was written between 1982-1985. From what I understand, the movie is pretty faithful to the comic. The explosions (though few) were good, too. The 1812 Overture is great music to blow shit up by (as opposed to Music to Look at Boxes By). I bought the graphic novel as reading material for the plane ride this weekend.

Sunday, I played some board games. First, Paranoia Manadatory Card Game, which was a lot of fun. Also, I won. I don’t think it played out quite like the game normally would, as people didn’t seem to draw the right cards for some of the missions, but it’s a good game. After that, I played a few games of Lost Cities before heading home.

I went home to play in the WPBT WSOP Satellite. Many thanks for Iggy for setting it up. I didn’t play particularly well, and eventually busted when I pushed (with an m of 2) from the cutoff with K5 and ran into Gnome‘s AK. He would go on to take second. Congratulations to Gracie for winning!

Last night, I played in the $17k guarantee at FTP. I was doing just fine until my KK in the small blind ran into AA in the big blind. It actually folded to me, and I just completed. The big blind raised, and I pushed. He said “you better not suck out,” and then called. He flopped quads. I rivered a king. I had him slightly covered, and so I still had some chips. Built them up a little bit, and then my 55 lost to A4s who made runner runner flush. And then the next hand my JJ lost to 33 (all in preflop) and I was out. Damn poker. I guess I was due for a bad run of cards at some point.

Update: I almost forgot… okay, I did forget, and I’m fixing that now: April has posted information on getting room reseverations for the WPBT™ Summer Classic. Go check out the news here.

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