Poker Perambulation

When I thought about quiting the blog, the main reason was I thought I’d run out of interesting topics and was about to turn the room into Newt Minnow’s ‘Vast Wasteland’ of content. Right now I have more topic I want to cover than I have time for. You, fortunately, get only a synopsis of what could have been individual blogs.

1.

Bill Rini of billrini.com found an interesting blog with an interesting idea. We should boycott our online poker rooms. The idea, strangely, is making some sense. The blogger in question, Full Shill, states it very well so let me direct you there. You’ll note I didn’t truly link to BILL RINI. This is an experiment. BILL RINI finds every link to his site – often within minutes it would seem. Poor BILL RINI is moving digs so this many not work and I won’t see a Gibraltar flag show up under my demographics for a while. Did you find me BILL RINI without the actual link used to your site?

2.

Otis has blogging conversion pain. My heart goes out to him and I know Linda also feels his pain. At least he has control of the situation. He’s converted but now his whole blogging career seems to all have happened on his own little Groundhog Day. Much of his past transpired on Jan 24,07. Seems he voted and even celebrated a couple of holidays on 1/24 or thereabout. It made for an interesting revisit though and remind me of some of his old topics. Otis may live too close to salt water for his own good as a true middle American. The TV ad jingle should really go: Baseball, Hot Dogs, Apple Pie and Otis. You should read him as much for his savvy about about politics and the media as his other life in poker. Politics is an always timely and gritty subject and he understands it and explains it well. And that brings me to the next arena.

3.

I moved a brokerage account. I normally get my account statement via electronic postings. That isn’t set up for the new account. No trades this month and it is still 6 pages. The last 2 pages are about ‘money laundering’ which is a hot poker room topic. (There are blog here that have address the Fed’s witch hunt in Merry Old England and rather than point to the very good blog here I’ll refer you here because it a good week and you should read the others…if you haven’t already.) To give you the executive summary of those two pages or at least a bit of the interesting part, it says that your financial institution must look harder for money laundering. They must create a person responsible for enforcing the institutions compliance to Federal statutes. And they must search their records and do audits to look for potential situations. If all this has to happen, it is the best way. Your bank or broker has fiduciary responsibility and ethical constraints that won’t overly expose our little peccadilloes. Some will be mis-tagged and be inconvenienced but will also be able to seek redress at tort – that will keep the institutions on the conservative side. It beats the hell out of a Nixon Enemies List or J. Edgar Hoover’s blackmail or Dubya’s shotgun approach.

4.

Felicia and Glenn are back from their cruise. Poor Glen says that he mailed the check but they returned to a waterless home. Seems the check didn’t make it to the local water company. It is the weekend and the water company is probably closed. They only have a limited supply of old-people putter-pants – the one’s with the elastic waists – and after the cruise I am sure that’s all they can get into. They probably need to wash them. Especially Glenn who’s a known messy eater.

I actually commiserate here. I forgot one of those payments a number of years ago and found out the local water company – fortunately bought out in that respect — turns your water off after only 10 days. So I ended up going to downtown Gary to get it turned back on before the tenant got off work. Seems the water companies across the nation are sticklers for payment.

I also had a more recent utility nightmare. NIPSCO is my electric company. Every month the bill arrives and I pay it. A tenant transferred the wrong unit to their account and got my bill when they moved in. They got that corrected and in the process the utility – using their infinite wisdom – sent the bill to an old address and haven’t been around in a number of years. When the bill didn’t come, I failed to notice. On a roasting hot summer day, with air conditioner running, the air conditioner stopped – my electric had been turned off. NIPSCO consolidate their offices and the only one available was back to old downtown Gary. I managed to park close to the building but still ran a gauntlet of loiters who did want to carry on a conversation with me going and coming. And the all black staff there had a ball with whitey – think officious utility cum license bureau wonk squared. It was a horrid and scary time — the inside had two, armed security guards — and I had to post 3 months of bill to get it turned back on and that took the day and somewhat fibbing about health issues without the AC. And it took multiple phone calls to get them to admit they shared the problem and get a refund of the rather substantial amount I’d been forced to post.

To try to link all this to a poker blog, think UIGEA requirements coupled to those nice folks at the bank which periodically screw up your life to keep things interesting. Or the support guy at the poker room whose answer to your problem is ‘Clear your cache’ or some outlandish response that in no way addresses the issue you’ve raised.

ADDENDUM:

I promise the next two posts – already in the can – will discuss poker. I have been playing a huge amount online of late. Results continue to be fairly decent and I’m not suffering my boredom tilt nearly as often. Those necessitate a visit to the $5 tables to play donkey poker and look like a total idiot – really great fun and get me out of my funk.

The next one talks about tournaments at a specific site – not TonyG for a change though I’m still enjoying the very profitable play there – that CC inspired to no small degree and returns to one of my first articles here – pre-blog. The following one is related but about playing HORSE with free money…ummm…free money.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 27th, 2007 at 7:29 am and is filed under Journal, Misc., Off Topic, poker legislation. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.