Mattazuma's Revenge

A little 6-Max success

I am a tight poker player.  This is not a great thing when you are playing 6-Max NLHE.  You need to be playing 20%+ of your hands and I average around 12-15%.  I have been playing in the Math on and off since it went strictly 6-max a few months ago.  I finally broke through with a cash on Monday.

I got pretty good cards and won all of my toss-ups until the end.  I doubled up three times with 1010 in the second & third hours.  I entered the final table with 30k chips and then went completely card dead for 20 minutes.  I bled down to 12k and then lost a coin flip to corron10 when up my A7 couldn't beat his J10.

I know I need to play more hands in 6-Max, but I'm not 100% sure what hands to add to my normal starting hands.

Oh well, off to play in the Mookie.

Sneaky Apple....

Somehow the Apple Update software got installed on my PC.  I probably had a moment of weakness during an iTunes update, but whatever.

Yesterday the update program popped up and had an update for me.

Was it a new version of iTunes?  Nope, Apple wanted to install Safari on my PC.  Using their update program to sneak the install is very wrong.  I'm sure they'll get a few million installs from unsuspecting people.  I bet once it installs it auto runs & tries to become the default browser too.

From everything I've read, the PC version of Safari is buggy and is slower than Firefox.  There is no way I want another browser, Firefox is all I need.

Somebody please tell Apple to stop pulling crap like this.

Fun with new 55-250 IS Canon lens

I just bought a new lens for my Canon EOS 20D.  Canon just came out with a 55-250mm EF-S lens with image stabilization.  I was looking for a lens to go with the 50mm F1.4 lens I bought previously and this one was perfect.

I can now take some reasonably good daylight action pictures at baseball games & stuff.  It's not an L series lens by any means but I think it will be perfect for what I need.

Here are some pictures of it in action:

At 55mm.

Somewhere in the middle.

At 250mm.

This is what the lens won't do real well, indoor shot without a lot of lighting.  This was taken at 250mm and was a 1/15 second exposure.  Uncropped, this picture looks fine, but close up you can see the sharpness issues.  The image stabilization is good but it can't fix this.

Can't wait to use this lens when we go to L.A. in April & check out an Angel game.

Wonder what lens #3 is going to be....

Keep your broken Dell HD - $20

I was spec'ing out a few Dell PCs today for work and saw a strange new option on their site:

Keep Your Hard Drive - $20

Yes, Dell has put a price on the security of the data on your broken hard drive.  For $20 Dell will let you keep your hard drive if it fails while under warranty.  Otherwise, you have to send you drive & data back to Dell so they can refurbish & resell it.  Who knows how good a job Dell's refurbishment vendor will do erasing your data.

I guess this is slightly better than Apple's policy of taking your broken drive no matter what.

Making you buy this up front is pretty bogus as well, I understand how insurance works and all but Dell can't be making more than $20 on reselling the refurbished drives.  Let me choose what to do when I call them with the broken drive.  Either send in the drive and get a new one or give them $20 to keep the broken one.

The Best Day of the Year

The Cubs tickets showed up today!!!

This is a great time in the baseball season.  Most teams are optimistic on how the year is going to go, we get to see which kids get hot and stick with the big league team.  Hopefully next year I can go to Arizona and check out some Cactus League games.  I went to a few spring training games in Florida back in the early '90s but haven't been since.

The Cubs have a great shot in the weak NL Central.  The only other team that can win the division is the Brewers and they have more question marks than the Cubs.

Coke's Got a Brand New Cap

I drink way too much Diet Coke.  I noticed the other day that they have introduced a new cap on the 20oz bottles.

The new cap is around 2/3 the height of the old cap.  The new cap is noticeably harder than the old cap.

On this picture you can see the larger ribs of the sides of the cap.

One minor detail that only fans of My Coke Rewards will notice is the code on the new caps have two lines of six characters while the old caps had three lines of four characters.

Best Burger in Chicago

Kuma's Corner

Burgers + Beer + Metal

It is really a perfect combination.  I've been there three times now, and it keeps getting better.  Tonight I had the Kuma Burger, which is 10oz of fresh beef with bacon, cheddar & a over easy fried egg on a pretzel roll.

The pretzel roll really makes the burger.  Everything else is very good but the pretzel roll is what makes it the best burger in Chicago.

They only have good beer.  No Bud.  No Miller Lite.  Only microbrews (domestic & imported) and PBR.  Tonight I had a few Lagunitas Lumpy Gravy's which were excellent.  No, I have no idea where the name came from.

You owe it to yourself to go to 2900 W. Belmont in Chicago and experience Kuma's. 

Be prepared to wait an hour for a table, don't worry it's worth it.