first blood

my first poker tournament took place at harrah's rincon casino this past thursday night - it cost $20 to enter, $5 for the house extra and had a $10 rebuy in (one time only - an extra 1500 in chips which you could only do before the third blind raise).

was a show of nerds and fat guys like myself

there were either 4 or 5 tables of players (9 per table) and I lasted and placed at 7th place (not bad for my first game?)

sucky things that happened:

my drink cost $5.50 (wtf? thought it was a casino)

i put in too many blinds at first because i was scared

i was late from the 10 min break and lost some chips because i was in the small blind

some dude next to me kept holding my arm when i was folding before my turn, scolding me

worst: some dude raised to 1600 (on a 500 blind) and i didn't hear him and just checked (put in 500) then they made me put in the other 1000, he reraised and i folded

good stuff:

called a dude who went all in with k-8, i had 9-9 and won

won another all in hand (for me, the other guy had a big chip stack) with 5-5 vs. king/ace, jacks were on the board and the river was a 5

knocked out the arm-holding dude

made it to the final table and beat out a bunch of other losers

bush welcomed in iraq

Video of a man throwing his shoes at Bush. From the smile on Bush's face it seems that this has happened before?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/7782774.stm

anonymous

From Anonymous (the anti-scientologist group), why they are against scientology:

"hundreds of illegal actions, fraudulent activities, and human rights violations"

I think these guys should focus on bigger criminals than a bunch of sci-fi capitalist culties, like governments and arms suppliers to start with. Who cares about scientologists? It's like a fake thing to protest. Shouldn't you protest the mass murder of 100's of thousands of people instead? Or is it just easier to go after some obviously deranged religion? Seems like a scam. Like anonymous is scientology.

Who cares if Tom Cruise is gay or an idiot?

what about shakers

i love the job prospects in humanities

"We seek teachers sympathetic to social justice, simplicity and consensus-seeking. Earlham eagerly solicits applications from African Americans and other ethnic minorities, women and Quakers."