Degenerate hoser convention, part 1.

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The following is a long-delayed entry from my experiences at this year’s World Series of Poker.

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Kyle had been telling me for the past year that the live players at the WSOP tended towards a very low average skill level. For example, I played(and hosed) the $1500 no-limit holdem event today. I had initially expected the skill level to be somewhere around the level of online $530s. Or at least, $215s.

Today was about the level of online $55s or $33s.

To say the least, I was not impressed with the general level of play. Sure, I could identify a fair number of good players at each table, but rather than having 1 or 2 donks at each table on average, there had to be more like 4-5 donks a table. At least, I was seeing some plays which were completely beyond my comprehension, implying that they were either strokes of genius or complete idiocy. My money’s on the latter.

Multiple people were getting on me for shaking, thinking that it was a tell. However, as former roommates can attest, my leg tends to twitch/shake constantly anyways, so this probably doesn’t indicate anything aside from me being the spastic type.
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Information Management in Firefox: Stumbleupon, Delicious, Read it Later, and Zotero

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 Those are the four most important information management addons I use in Firefox.

Stumbleupon is for channel surfing and finding cool new stuff. It’s also great for sending links and comments around to a group of friends. Unless they don’t ever click stumble: “The person you are sending a page to has too many sites waiting in their stumble queue. ” 

Delicious is for bookmarking, social or otherwise.

Read it Later is for storing one time sites (i.e. ones you might not want to necessarily bookmark) for later consumption.

and Zotero is the ultimate reference management tool and webpage snapshot addon.


Sin City, part 2.

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At the end of the March trip, the entire team had dinner at the Wynn Buffet. The Wynn Buffet is one of the best buffets in Vegas- personally, my favorite part was that they used a bandsaw to pre-open the snow crab legs for easier dining. Kyle’s favorite part was their thermonuclear candied apples, which had some excessively hard and brittle candy coating. In fact, it was hard enough that dropping it onto the table from a height of about a foot didn’t even chip the coating.

While there, we talked about various promotions and comps that casinos had. One comp involved going to a shooting range, where a store had many comparatively exotic firearms for rent such as M249s and Barrett .50 cal sniper rifles. A few minutes ago, we had been talking about pets and animal shelters, so I suggested a new comp thing where people could use their comps to go to the shooting range and donate to animal shelters. In exchange, when shelters needed to euthanize animals, they would instead be turned out onto a shooting range where people would take aim with the Barrett .50 cals. Considering that a bullet that size would blow a 200-lb mule deer into pieces, it’d red mist a typical housecat or pet dog.

At this point, everybody was staring at me, and one of the other degenerate gamblers in the group asked me what the hell was wrong with me.

Hey, it seems like a much kinder, quicker death than the asphyxiation methods that some places use. If I had to pick, getting my head blown off by a bullet the size of a paperweight seems a lot faster than being strangled.

Why is the equation editor grayed out in Microsoft Word 2007?

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Probably because you are editing a Word 2003 document and in Compatibility Mode. The 2007 equation editor is grayed out when in compatibility mode.

Solution: You either need to convert a 2003 equation (i.e. from Equation Editor 3.0)

or, open a new 2007 document and make the equation in that.

or, save your 2003 document in 2007 mode and lose some measure of compatibility

Sin City, part 1.

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(In case you missed it, Wretched Hives of Scum and Villainy starts here and describes (mis)adventures in Reno, the Biggest Shitty Little City in the World.)

Last month, I joined Kyle and a bunch of other degenerates in Vegas as part of a team organized by a guy nicknamed Fixer. There was a casino- a decent sized one, in the Strip area- which was having a double payouts promotion for jackpots from midnight to 11:59:59 pm for one day. This was big. Depending on what game was available, it could turn something which is ordinarily a 95% game- that is, returning 95 cents for every dollar wagered- into a 130% game. We were looking at being able to pull a profit of about $1500 per hour per person.

Unfortunately, when we got there, it turns out they had Nerfed the two best plays. Sadly, this dropped things to around a 107% game- still good, still running around $300/hr per person, but not quite what we were hoping for given that most of the team had flew in for this. But hey, it could still turn out to be a solid profit if we could get in a half dozen hours of play before they pulled the promo. If we could get in a marathon session, so much the better. We’d work in pairs and sit spread across the gaming floor, hoping to avoid identification as a team.
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Ubuntu 7.10 vs. Windows XP on a Dell Inspiron 6000

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I did a clean install of Windows XP onto an Inspiron 6000 and then put Ubuntu 7.10 on it as well for a dual boot machine.

It’s kinda sad when the Windows install doesn’t even have a freaking driver for the Ethernet card (not to even mention the wireless card),  and the Ubuntu install has drivers for both and WPA support to boot. I guess the selective pressures in the Windows ecosystem just aren’t there. But they’re getting there.

Ashley Youmans, Ashley DiPietro, Ashley Alexandra Dupré, or Nina Vanetta?

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Ashley DiPietro goes by many names, Ashley Alexandra Dupré and Nina Venetta

Take a look at her myspace pics and tell me that it doesn’t look like two different girls?

And are these two Nina Venetta songs, which links back to her myspace page, by the same person?

Why would see give so much info to the New York Times for free? Could she have tricked the Old Grey Lady? Could this be a case of mistaken identity or a hoax or some sort?

No, I think this may be a brilliant marketing ploy by a very media savvy woman. Taking maximum advantage of a spotlight situation.

If so, kudos Ashley, big ups to yourself!

P.S. This comment on her blog post cracked me up:

I bet 9 dropped a 2 when the feds called. In his pants.

Posted by Nick on Wednesday, March 12, 2008 at 11:02 PM

UPDATE 3-13-2008 1AM: soon after posting this blog entry her Amie Street profile added another downloadable song.

UPDATE #2 2:30 AM: I now think Ashley and Nina are the same person given this interesting snippet:
Let’s ride. cAshley Youmans, 1985- (a.k.a. Ashley Nina Veneta) c2007
Which can be found on the following site: http://bulk.resource.org/copyright/hids/hid_10/hid_10854100-10854399.txt

Makes sense that Bottega Veneta (Venetian Boutique in Italiano) would lend it’s name to her pseudonym, which then later added a “t.”