Kajagugu Poker

Gold hits $1,100 - Holy Cow!

2009-11-09T15:41:00.004-05:00

As I was standing in the elevator this morning I was watching that little screen we have in there that gives me all the news I need for the day. Usually it's sport scores or other trivia like a funny word. But today I saw the gold prices have hit the $1,100 mark. That's pretty amazing.

I remember my days working in the pawn shops in LA where we would melt all the excess gold and take it downtown to sell it to one of the jewelery dealers for cash. I mean these were not gold bullion coins or anything fancy like that. We would take all the crap scraps - hoops earrings, cheap chains, bent rings. We would then get out the old welding torch and melt everything in a brick mold. Then we'd cool it off and voila, we had a gold brick to sell.

I remember they used to give us the exact carat and I doubt we ever made it past 12K. The high quality gold was always cleaned and shined and then placed in the display cases for people to buy. The 22K stuff was usually bought by the gypsies. And if that ring had an assortment of diamonds in it, those gypsies would buy them faster than we could put them out for sale.

So why am I talking about gold and gold coins today? You need to check out Goldsgain.com and take advantage of the gold market. They have a lot of free information about gold coins, gold bullion, investing in gold and more. Maybe you can get an idea about how to get some gold in your IRA account. Maybe you have some rare coins and you want to know how much they are worth.

Anyway, if you make any money from your golden ideas, be sure to send some my way. But for a parting gift, here's a great scene from "Golden Child":

FTC Crap Disclaimer: Review. Duh!

Try your hand at 888.com

2009-11-08T13:36:00.000-05:00

Practice your poker skills in our online casino poker rooms or play for big prizes in a regular poker tournament. Enter 888.com and get a step closer to winning the jackpot!

Moon River AKA Fuck You McKesson

2009-10-26T22:22:00.008-04:00

The tube of lubricant was right next to the exam table. I should have paid more notice to it instead of reading the big McKesson label on it. McKesson? I thought to myself, what do they make? That seems to be a brand name I should be able to associate with a product that's not in a doctor's office. Aren't they some big financial institute? Oh well, I guess I'll Google it later or something.

The doc came in and we had a little chat about family health history and recent ailments. Nothing special. I figured it's all part of the routine. He told me to strip down to my underwear and wait for him to come back, which I did. Then I noticed another McKesson product in the room. A box of latex gloves. Seriously, what the fuck does McKesson make? This is going to drive me nuts!

The doc came back in and started fashioning a small spear out of the other end of a long wooden Q-tip. We went through the whole soft-or-sharp exercise where he poked/stroked my whole body with his new toy and I passed with flying colors. Then he got out that funny hammer and checked all my reflexes. They were all fine.

What can I say, I'm in perfect health. Blood pressure was excellent. Nothing wrong with heart or lungs.

Then he said it's time to check the plumbing. Front first.

WTF??? Did I hear that right? Are you joking? I was not expecting that at all when I woke up this morning. And when did you have time to put on that latex glove anyway? Shifty bastard!

Cough this way, cough that way, turn around and bend over the exam table. Oh no!!!

(Click here if you're reading this in a reader)

And check out the Family Guy related video to see what I should have done:

Yeah! 39.5 years I've managed to make it in this life without some random dude shoving a finger in my ass. And what a shove it was, too. My head banged the wall behind the exam table. At one point I thought I might even pee from the pressure.

Then all of a sudden the pressure was gone. A box of tissues landed with a thud next to me on the exam table and the doctor snapped off the glove and said "clean yourself up, I'll be right back."

Holy Shit! Holey Shit, too!

I cleaned myself up and sat there for a few minutes trying to analyze what the hell just happened. Then I noticed the tube of lubricant again. The McKesson label seemed much smaller this time. The words "LUBRICANT GEL" seemed to be HUGE. Then I also saw the McKesson box of latex gloves. Once again, it didn't look the same this time around.

Then I saw a picture of the doctor's family on the table. His two young daughters had big smiles on their faces, as if to mock me. "We saw what daddy did to you, sucker," they seemed to say.

Well, fuck you McKesson!

Self-Defense is NOT a War Crime

2009-10-17T20:21:00.001-04:00

Watch this and pass along to anyone you know.

Here's the link to the complete text as well.

Roman the Rapist

2009-10-07T13:37:00.003-04:00

So here comes a massive rant. Ready?

Roman Polanski is a convicted rapist. He plead guilty to drugging, raping and sodomizing a 13 year-old girl. And while waiting for the hammer to drop on his stupid head he realized what he was going to get and fled the country to live in exile.

Wait, what? Exile? He moved back to live in France, where he lived before he came to the US to sodomize 13 year old girls. Where they would not extradite his ass because they're cool with what he did. Fuck the French!

So now, he gets some award in Switzerland and the FBI nabs him as soon as he steps off the plane. And this is the part that is the most troubling to me. It seems like everyone is on this pervert's side. Hollywood is crying out to "Save Polanski". Whoopi Goldberg even said on The View that this was not "rape-rape". Oh yeah Whoopi? What do you call giving quaaludes to a kid and the fucking her in the ass against her will? I guess it's not "rape-rape" because it's technically "ass-rape", right?

Well, fuck you Roman Polanski. And fuck all who support you. You know what? Even if he didn't drug the girl and even if he didn't stick it in her ass and even if she consented to everything - he still had sex with a 13 year old kid and that's AGAINST THE LAW!!!

I for one hope he gets what he deserves. A nice bunk-bed in a tiny cell where he gets "ass-raped" on a nightly basis.

And since nothing is worth posting without a good video, here's an awesome mash-up of Roman the Rapist on "To Catch a Predator":

Some Poker, Double or Nothing and a Great Video

2009-10-07T11:10:00.004-04:00

Played the neighborhood game last Friday and got my share of bad beats. "Any-Two" Snake hitting two pair on every flop makes it hard to play. Then he calls a gutshot on the flop and with me holding one of the outs and obviously rivers it.

Then BrainMc gets hit by the deck and I can't ever win a race so early end to my night. Stupid BrainMc chopped both games and made a pretty penny. So we invited him to a baseball game with a bunch of 4 year olds. Revenge!

On the bright side I won $4 from Chris playing Wii Guitar Hero. I played on Hard, he Medium and I still can't lose. I ROCK!

But here's a question for you about double or nothing. So we're playing heads-up Guitar Hero and he wants to bet $2 on the outcome, which in other words means he wants to give me $2. After he loses, I ask if he wants a re-match, which in other words means he wants to give me another $2. But then I ask if he wants to go double or nothing and he agrees.

To me a double or nothing means we double the bet to $4 per game, right? To everyone else it means we bet $2 again and I either get double (a total of $4) or nothing. I understand the logic, but what's the point of announcing it? Even if we play again for $2 without saying it's double or nothing, the result is the same. Right?

Whatever, here's a great video. It combines a semi-hot chick, British accents, fake football players and chocolate balls. I skipped the crap and went straight to the action. Enjoy:

The Poker Hos on The Amazing Race

2009-09-29T13:07:00.004-04:00

Oh snap! Did I just say that in the title? That was mean spirited and I am truly sorry. I mean, it's not like I said they were non-profit hos, right?

Kajawife and I love watching The Amazing Race and were very disappointed that the first episode of the season was not recorded because apparently a re-run of High Stakes Poker is more important for my Tivo to record. But last night I just hooked up my laptop to the TV and streamed the episode from the CBS site and all was well with the world. Or so I thought.

The Poker Hos ^TM (I really need to trademark that phrase) were absolutely annoying. Let me count the ways:

Who goes on The Amazing Race and brings a rolling carry-on piece of luggage? I mean seriously! Did you see Maria Ho try to roll that thing down the stairs in Tokyo? Good plan. I guess they are hybrids and can convert to backpacks but most of the town the were dragging them around which only gives them one free hand to use. I have a sneaking suspicion this is going to hurt them at some point.
The obviously idiotic "bluff" about working for the non-profit homeless something or other. I told Kajawife that someone will know who they were because they were on TV and the poker media, but she said that not everyone watches the WSOP or poker on TV. So I said that Tiffany Michelle needs to cool it with the poker shirts and trucker hats that says she "plays with the boys" or whatever it was. Two seconds later they get outed at the airport. Brazilliant move, hos.
One 14-hour flight into the show and Ho tells Michelle she doesn't want to talk to her anymore. Nuff said.
Hitting on gay guys. Classic.
Making fun of Zev. Classy.
Maria choking on a Wassabi Bomb. Twice. She should have let Tiffany tackle this challenge and imagine it was a PTB (for those who don't know what that is, here's an anagaram for you to solve: Babe Morph Into Tort).
The constant stupid poker lingo. We bluffed and then needed a one-outer because we like to play games and we are good at observing and reading people and blah and yadda and oh give us all a break.

I can't write about this anymore. They sucked. They should be ecstatic that they got a break with that non-elimination and that Maria's road bump was to give someone soup made of four ingredients.

WCP kind of likes them though. But they are SEO addicts. That must be the reason.

A blog post in which I win!

2009-09-05T02:03:00.003-04:00

Surprise! Surprise!

Hosted the monthly hood home game. Won the second game. Refused to chop and took it down after several bad beats and coolers where I doubled up my opponent heads-up. But I fought back and won it outright. And why did I refuse to chop? Cause I'm a winner, that's why.

And also because I had a prop bet from earlier in the afternoon with CE that I will win one of the games tonight without accepting a chop. And he busted from both games first.

And I won!

DirecTV Bonus FTW!

2009-08-31T13:00:00.006-04:00

When I moved to my current home I asked the sales center what TV service is available and they told me that we would get Charter. When I called Charter the had no idea which neighborhood I was talking about. That was after I had to deploy special secret service covert-ops dudes to even figure out what number to call.

So my only real viable option was Dish Network or DirecTV. I went back and forth and then decided to go with DirecTV for no other reason than I just felt that they were a better brand. The other thing that worried me at the time was that I wasn't sure if Direct TV in Georgia carried local channels, but when they assured me they did and I wouldn't need those 19th century rabbit ears, it pretty much sealed the deal.

To sweeten the deal they gave use free this and free that which included a DVD player (which has since totally crapped out but seriously those things cost about $25 these days). Then a few years in we added another TV and they threw in a free DVR.

Now i haven't switched to HD yet since all my Tivos and TVs are standard def, but I know the option is there when I want it. I am just not sure I want to fork over all that money to upgrade everything and then lose my Tivos to the much inferior HD-DVRs. but I think that when the main TV in the basement has seen its last day we will make the switch. Also, Comcast has come around and installed cable in our neighborhood so I will then need to make a decision about the triple-play or whatever it is they offer. There are other issues with that, like losing my land line that is required for my security system, but I might just switch to a wireless system anyway. The other problem is losing all my email accounts by switching to cable modem.

Anyway, this is not what the post is about. it's about the awesome THANK YOU I got from Direct TV for being a loyal customer for 5 years. Out of the blue they sent me a letter thanking me for my loyalty and enabled Showtime (and all related channels) for a whole year, free of charge. Now granted, Showtime sucks HBO's balls when it comes to content and I have yet to watch a single movie, but I thought that was a great customer retention and relationship building move on DirecTV's part.

So thank you Direct TV. You rock (unless the weather doesn't cooperate)!

Fall Style Guide

2009-08-31T12:45:00.002-04:00

Last day of summer? I guess so. it wasn't really summer this year anyway. I mean seriously, sub-80 degree weather in Atlanta in August? Global cooling...

Anyway, it's time to buy some clothes for fall/winter and so you should head over to ShopWiki and check out their Men's Fall Style Guide. Since my 4 year old daughter seems to only like boys and has proclaimed her love and plans for marriage I think i need to get a new Military Jacket to make sure these boys know I mean business.

One thing I don't need is a new Men's Suit. I got a bunch of those in the closet that I haven't worn in a long time. I hate wearing suits and I don't understand people who enjoy wearing them. The only suit I like to wear is my birthday suit, boo-ya!

I mean, even a shirt & tie can drive me nuts. The idea of that tie choking me all day long sends shivers up my spine. Is it up my spine or down my spine? Hmmm...

If you ask my neighbors, they will tell you that my standard wardrobe consists of shorts and a t-shirt. But I don't wear fancy shorts like some women do. I buy them in bulk at Costco. Only a woman can have the audacity to buy a pair of shorts that cost $505. Seriously, WTF?

Crazy Mexicans

2009-08-31T11:51:00.002-04:00

How many cases of swine flu will be reported after this massive gathering of almost 14K crazy Mexicans who decided to dance MJ's Thriller? Oh, wait, they're already dead dancing zombies:

Tainted Deck

2009-07-31T13:58:00.001-04:00

see more Fail Blog

Crushing SNGs

2009-07-28T14:50:00.005-04:00

I have slowly been getting my feet wet again with online poker. Once in a while I will fire up a $5 SNG and play with the donks who don't realize who they're up against. I started with 10 buy-ins and have more than doubled it so far. So now I'm thinking I should go to $10 SNGs. Here's a glimpse of what I have been up to:

Out of these 67 games I have been ITM 41.79% with 9 firsts, 12 seconds and 7 thirds. I think that's not too shabby. I will have some awesome hand histories to share in a later post. I know you all can't wait!

Top USA Online Casinos

2009-07-28T10:41:00.002-04:00

I saw 'The Hangover' a couple of weeks ago and thought it was awesome. Also, reminded me of my own bachelor party in Vegas however many years ago. Replace the tiger from the movie with a badger and you're starting to get close to how things went down. Oh, how I miss Vegas.

Anyway, it got me thinking about how the UIGEA is messing up our civil liberties and treating us like terarded kids who can't control themselves.

Well, here's a site that lists out us online casinos you can play at. It's a review site listing top USA player accepted casinos with links and bonuses. They also have US American accepted poker sites but only list Rushmore and Bodog. We all know Bodog is great.

The top rated casino is Golden Casino which I believe I still have some money on. There are several online casinos where you can set up auto-play on blackjack and tell the system what your rules are. I used to love those because they make it so easy to clear bonuses. You just take your free money when you sign up, head to the blackjack tables and set up your rules. Then you tell it to play however many hands you need and when you come back you have either cleared the bonus or gone broke. Usually they will let you clear the bonus easily so you can stick around and gambool it all away. Just find a good system and make some moola.

Play safe, kids!

Let me save you a couple of hours or Kaja's Matusow book review

2009-07-25T16:09:00.004-04:00

Yeah, you read that post title right suckahs, I can read! I know most of my readers think I am some sort of terard who can't form sentences let alone read them, but once again, you were wrong, and I was holding the nuts. Deez Nutz!

Anyway, you can see I am in a swell mood. Maybe because I don't get any sleep anymore. Whoever invented babies and baby sleep cycles can kiss my ass. So I decided to save everyone a couple of hours of their abysmal lives by reading the wonderful literary masterpiece about Mike "The Mouth/Meth/Ecstasy/Coke/Ritalin Addict/Bipolar/ADHD Sufferer/Donkey/Luckbox" Matusow. That pretty much sums up the book right there. I'm done.

Ok, here are some more details. You people are ruthless. And toothless (you know who you are, so stop smiling with just the left side of your mouth).

The book is a very quick read. I mean, I am a slow reader and I finished it in about two bathroom breaks. Well one break was kinda long because I ate too much sushi, but that's a story for another time. I swear, some of Hoy's posts are longer than this book. And I guess, you can tell a couple of bloggers wrote it, because it reads like a "bad-beat/luckboxing-your-way-to-a-huge-score" kind of post (I would link again to Hoy, but he only gets one link per post. Sorry, my pagerank is zero so don't be trying to get links people. Talk to Google first).

Basically, Mike was a Jewish nerd (I can relate), anti-social, trailer park livin', video poker quarter-feedin' weirdo who stumbled into the poker world and a backing deal about a decade ago. Then he parlayed that into backing Scotty Baby when he won the WSOP ME. Then he got really depressed and couldn't call a doctor to diagnose his Bipolar Disorder (all joking aside, this disease is hell and I encourage anyone who has no idea why they are suicidal one day and ecstatic the next to go see fuckin' doctor, moron!). So some of his "friends" told him to take some ecstasy, cause it will make him feel happier (no shit Sherlocks). And then some bitch told him to take some meth to get him to focus (great piece of advice there). So he fried his brain for 3 years on this crap and got ADHD. Nice move, friends!

Long story short (it might be easier and faster to just read the book at this point, but you made it this far), he got tricked by some narc, got to spend some quality time in jail and kicked his street-drug habit by replacing it with prescription meds that make him happy and focused. Hurray for modern medicine and for Mikey. He also won a bunch of money along the way by playing the worst hand at the wrong time and sucking out. That's poker, right?

I do like Mike. A lot. I think he is a genuine character and would not hurt a fly. Well, he might hurt Mr. Peanut, but then again, who wouldn't? At least Mike is not masquerading around as some giant douche like Phil Hellmuth and is not trying to make everyone love him by being Mr. "Nice Guy" Negreanu.

And Amy and Tim who wrote the book are really great writers. So all that being said, go spend your hard earned $25 and buy Mike Matusow: Check-Raising the Devilto support these folks. It's $1 less than another stupid $26 tournament on FTP, so you're a winner already! I am so excited for you, I don't know what to say! If you liked my review, just send me that $1 as an FTP transfer to Kajagugu. Who knows, I might be able to retire after this post.

Airports Suck!

2009-07-21T20:36:00.004-04:00

Yeah, you know it. Anyone who has ever taken an operations management class, will tell you that the worst run places on the planet are airports. Just absolutely horrendous.

I dropped my parents of for an AirTran flight on Saturday. Thinking it's the weekend and they have e-tickets, I figured it should take no time at all to get them to security. But I forgot that people are idiots. Sorry.

It took about 2 minutes to check in at the kiosk (and pay $15 for a checked bag - what a racket that is) and then about 45 minutes to wait to drop off said checked bag. And why is that? Because of the humans. The humans at the drop off counter who, for some unknown reason, take for fucking ever to print out a sticker and put it on the bag. And the humans in line who are dropping off the bags.

Let's start with the idiots dropping off their bags. You're standing in the kiosk/internet bag line, right dip-shit? Then you should have checked in at the kiosk or the on the internet! Why does every single person who walks off to drop his bag have an issue? Hey AirTran, maybe you should designate half your counter space for "I have Issues" sort of passengers?

These fucking idiots are clueless! This guy has not ticket. That girl packed 120 pounds worth of mascara and eye-liner in her bright pink suitcase and is refusing to pay the overweight charge (which would apply to her ass as well). Some dude showed up with a piece of luggage so big they had to find a measuring tape to see if it would even fit on the plane. And so on and so on...

The folks at the counter should have one job and one job only. Step one, check that ID matches printed boarding pass. If it doesn't or there's no boarding pass, they should just punch the passenger in the neck and send him away. Step two, print the bag tag and stick it on. Done! Seriously, a fucking robot should be able to do this job. But of course, robots are not at the right level of face recognition. But they sure could taze the fuckers who have issues. That would be awesome!

So yeah, we waited 45 minutes and then it took us 1 more minute to send off the bag. Then it was the stupid line at security... But that's another story, because those people have made a science out of messing up anything resembling queue management. Stand in one long line, then a person tells you which other line to go to, then go back into a single only to be split up into separate lines by another person. Wow, that's so bad...

Kaja's advice - never pack more than a carry-on. If you need anything else, just buy it at your destination. I have a friend who used to fly with nothing. He would then buy everything he needed to wear and return it to the store for a refund at the end of his visit. Brilliant!

Was Michael Jackson really that great?

2009-06-26T09:33:00.003-04:00

I want to start out by saying that I feel sorrow and sadness for Michael's friends and family and especially his three children who will now grow up with only a faint memory of their father.

That being said, I am kind of stunned at the outpouring of emotion over MJ's death. I would understand it if it all happened 25 years ago, 2 years after Thriller came out. That would have been a great loss. Back then. In 1984. Because Michael Jackson was a genius and an innovator. 25 years ago.

But since then, it's been pretty much one long episode of "True Hollywood Story". Countless plastic surgeries, several child molestation lawsuits (always settled out of court - I wonder why), baby-dangling over balconies, some hate lyric scandals here and there, Saudi prince bailouts, Neverland foreclosures, planned and cancelled mega-tours and drama, drama, drama. Lots of drama.

Genius usually comes hand in hand with insanity and boy did this kid have it bad. Whacko Jacko started out young in an insane family and lots of talent. Talent became super-stardom which was way too hard to handle alone and the whole thing collapsed. And such a shame too, because some of his songs, dance moves and beats are incredible and will live on for eternity.

I didn't see the "King of Pop" die yesterday. I saw a reclusive pedophile freak die and get a lot of media coverage. Because that's what we consume as shallow human beings. Shame on us!

The "King of Pop" died a long long time ago.

RIP Michael. I hope the demons will finally leave you alone.

Iran (or: Seriously what were they thinking?)

2009-06-19T10:23:00.005-04:00

So this blog has become an op-ed by Kajagugu lately since I don't play much poker but still have opinions. And the latest topic is... Iran. So here goes.

I am shocked that people are surprised the elections were rigged. But the only way these things resolve themselves is through civil unrest and a powerful revolt by the population. Not by blog comments and changing your twitter logo to green. Come on.

How did this regime come into power? Revolution against the corrupt Shah in whatever year it was. You can't topple a dictatorship through elections. Has history taught you nothing? Instead of wasting your campaign money, you should go hire some ex-CIA, ex-Mossad, ex-MI6 folks and bring them in to help you organize a revolt. Get some "hashasheens" to take out the top political figures. Disrupt secret military installations. Create chaos. And only then take to the streets. Maybe that will work.

Did anyone think that Khameini would preach democracy this morning during his speech? Did anyone think Ahmadinejad (is he related to Ali Nejad BTW? Burn!) would just gracefully step down or even perform a recount? Why would anyone even take the time to go vote in that country? If I lived there and had an hour to spare I would start running for the hills as fast as I could.

So here are a couple of stories about Iran/Iraq for you. We had two kids in my class in high-school who were from the region. Mehran from Tehran and Mehrdad from Baghdad. I am not kidding, those were their real names. I'm not sure how Mehran got out but I assume it was during the time the Shah's regime was overthrown. But Mehrdad was a different story. He walked by himself from Baghdad over the mountains to Turkey and eventually made his way to the coast. He was probably 13 years old. And he did it alone. Can you imagine?

Here, let me draw a map for you:

Second story. Half a life ago I used to work in a pawn shop in LA. I might have mentioned it before. The real money in a pawn shop is obviously generated from interest and fees, but some people never show up to pick up their shit so then the store can sell it. And since the loan is for about 10% of the street value of the item you can then sell it for 50% and make a 400% profit. Easy math.

Most people bring jewelery, but others bring anything they can get their hands on. From big screen TVs to cars to boats to guns to tools to musical instruments (including some pretty priceless Stradivarius violins) to art work (including an original Chagall) to well, pretty much anything that can be resold. We took almost anything. Our mantra was, if one idiot paid money for it, there's going to be another idiot who will pay money for it again.

We had a lot of electronics. And this old Iranian dude would show up every few weeks and ask to buy all the stuff that looked brand new in a box. And he would haggle me to tears in the worst English with the worst Iranian accent ever. He basically tried to get everything for free. That was his negotiation starting point. So I would start at full retail price with markup. And we would go at it for a couple of hours until he either left in a huff or he would break down and buy something.

Then one day I figured it out. He owned an electronics store and was selling my items to his client as new for full retail. What a scumbag. At least anyone buying from me knew it was not new, even if it was in a sealed original box.

Now any time I hear Ahmadinejad speaking his nasal Iranian I immediately flash back to that old dude who gave me such a hard time. God, I hated that fucker!

Go Iran!

Bruno

2009-06-19T10:20:00.003-04:00

How awesome is this guy? I don't think I would have the balls to pull of this git'up (pun obviously intended):

This movie will be great!

I made it on the Daily Show

2009-05-26T21:52:00.001-04:00

I kid you not. Check it out below. About 40 seconds in:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

M - Th 11p / 10c

Auto-Neurotic Gas Fixation

thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Economic Crisis

Political Humor

Hiking & Camping

2009-05-11T15:44:00.004-04:00

So the weather is finally starting to get better and I even took Kajakid to the pool this weekend. Next on the adventurous agenda is camping. While I did my fair share of hiking and camping in the army, I think my daughter is going to love it. And since her best friend's dad suggested it, I figure we might give it a go.

I think baby steps are the way to tackle this monster. We'll probably put up a tent in the backyard just to see how the kids handle sleeping outside before we get a meltdown in the middle of the night somewhere far away from home. I can't just imagine it's 11pm and we have two crying kids wanting to go home, which is a 2 hour drive away or something.

The part I am not that worried about is the actual hiking. Yesterday these two ran circles around the living room furniture for a good 4 hours, so if anything, the problem might be my terrific physical state. One thing I know about myself (although a lot of time has passed) is that I can walk pretty much forever. And you can put a lot of weight on me too and it won't bother me. As long as there is no running involved.

So we're going to need to get the kids some hiking boots. I will probably need some things comfortable too. Although, I don't think the hiking part is going to be the main attraction. I think the smores will be. Kids love smores. Not sure what it is, but they love 'em.

Anyway, for all your travel and outdoor fun shopping try out shopwiki. Looks like they have everything you may need.

Beware of bears!

Car thoughts by Kajagugu

2009-05-11T10:18:00.006-04:00

I love cars and I love to drive. The longer the drive the better, I say. And I was just thinking the other day about my current car situation. Functional, but no fun. We have a Yukon and an MDX and it's mostly for safety and size.

Our last fun car was a BMW. My wife actually bought it for herself when her Ford Explorer lease was up, but then I ended up driving it because the MDX was easier for her to get a baby seat in and out of. That beemer was awesome with all the sports package upgrades and a stick shift. It was a sad day when we turned it in at the end of it's lease.

I've never really owned any fancy cars. My first car was my grandfather's Suzuki Swift, which is probably similar to a Geo or Kia(read: crap). It was great to get around in and had amazing gas mileage, but it was nothing to write home about.

What I did write home about were all the awesome cars I drove while working at a pawn shop in LA. We had an auto pawn license and people would just leave their cars for cash. Then it was my job to take these cars to our massive parking lot in the valley. So here's a list of my top 3 favorites:

1. '55 T-Bird: This thing was beautiful. It was brought to the store by some lady who took it from her husband in a bitter divorce settlement. She didn't care about it at all and pawned it right away, not ever intending to pick it back up. So after a few months it became store property and I got to drive it around on weekends. Cherry red, convertible, two-seater - what else could you want when you're broke and 23 years old in LA?

2. Porsche Carrera S4: Some Russian thug brought it in because the dealer delivered it in the wrong color. So he pawned it with about 25 miles on the odometer for about $50K. I actually had to go to the bank in a "nice" part of town to get the cash. With two big Rottweilers by my side. We drove it slow on the freeway and parked it indoors, then covered it with a silk parachute so that nothing bad happens to it. Was still a great experience.

3. Big-ass Monster Truck: Some redneck showed up with this beast and told me that the gas guage was broken, "so just fill it up everytime before you drive it." I drove that thing up the 405 in traffic and had everyone get the hell out of my way.

So now I'm driving my good 'ole MDX and thinking about what my next car will be. I'm in no rush. In the meantime I will leave you with a an old favorite. Take it away, Gary:

So this is a poker blog, right?

2009-05-04T13:08:00.004-04:00

I guess some poker content is due. I actually played a tiny bit online the other day. It all started when I won a little challenge by @Andy_Bloch on Twitter. Some fundage was sent to my FTP account so I needed to finally install the poker client to see how much money was in the account. On the way I also installed PokerStars, where I actually have some money left and PokerTracker3, which is all paid for.

I wasn't going to play seriously and saw that the quadruple shootout satellite to the WSOP ME was about to start. I jumped in knowning full well there is no way I can sit there for 6 hours and go through 10K player to take one of 10 spots. But it always feels good to get this when you're not even trying:

And the other guy shoved into me on the river. Nice.

Oh yeah, I won that table and waited forever for the others to finish. Then within two minutes of starting the second table we had a break. I was done and just shoved blind until I was out.

But that gave me a little confidence boost. I have no idea when I will be able to play again with a new baby and a ton of work. But it sure was fun.

Kaja Recommends: Timex

2009-04-02T13:46:00.004-04:00

Welcome ladies and germs. It's been a while since I've reviewed anything here in this forsaken corner of the poker blogosphere. So I wanted to pimp the latest from Timex. You know Timex, right? They've been around since forever. And they make awesome timepieces. You know how I know? Because I used to own one for the longest time. Let me share.

About half my life ago I was young and fit. I served in the armed forces of the only democracy in the middle east. I moved around a bunch and managed to set foot on all four corners of my country (and sometimes just a bit outside of it). There was a lot of grease involved and a lot of dirt. And through it all, my trusty Timex was there to tell me how long I had until that hell was over. I used it in a variety of ways:

Alarm - good feature, but unnecessary because someone would always wake you up before you thought.
Time telling - that is something extremely important, but yet again, someone was always there to tell you how much time you had left and move it!
Date - now here is one that was crucial. Without it you were pretty much guaranteed to have no idea when you started on this journey.
Coffee maker - yeah right.

Now seriously, all kidding aside, I relied on my watch a lot. Whether it was coordinating a silent attack where we had to sync watches or counting the seconds it took for an artillery shell to land so you could time your infantry attack just right.

Anyway, my point was - go get a Timex. And also, dig their new logo:

Twitter & Interweb Cycles & Human Nature

2009-03-20T09:57:00.007-04:00

Since I don't play much poker these days and have been busy with all sorts of other things (life, work, getting ready for KajaKid #2, etc.) I figured this would be the best place for me to write down some of my thoughts. If you don't like it then move along. But if you do stay and let me know what you think.

So one of the things that I have been thinking about recently is the cyclical nature of the interwebs in general and Twitter specifically. I've had a few twitter accounts for some time now and originally the @Kajagugu account was so annoying that I pretty much ditched it. I turned off notifications and stopped updating. I've recently started playing around with Twitter again under my other accounts (business and personal).

So why do I say Twitter is cyclical? Because in my opinion it is based on the same concepts of one of the first technologies to appear on the internet called IRC. For those who don't know what IRC was - it was the first version of real time online chat rooms. You chose a nickname and channel and you would chat with the people on that channel. There were topics about pretty much everything, you could send direct messages or reply to everyone. You could ignore people who annoy you.

Twitter is a single channel chat room. You can add topics by using #hashtags and everyone can see your responses unless you send a direct message. You can also block other users if you want. It's very similar to IRC and might even be a simplified version of it.

Obviously since all the tweets are stored on the Twitter servers there is some additional functionality, like search, but really there is nothing special about it. The genius behind it is that it play on peoples natural emotional needs:

Recognition: This whole business of 'followers' and 'following' allows people to feel important. "Wow, look who's following me" they might say to themselves. "Look how many people are interested in my boring little life." If you think about it a second you will realize how preposterous it is. Half of your followers are dormant accounts or some sort of spam at this point. Which brings us to the next point:

Popularity: Twitter is a place for the "cool kids" to compare how many followers they have. And the more you have the more perceived influence you have. It's especially hilarious when you follow the people who created this site. They spend less than 5% of their time interacting with their followers and would rather micro-blog their wonderful lives for all to see. And then there are the "social media experts" too. Oh, they know everything. Just ask them.

Addiction: There's no arguing that Twitter is extremely addictive. I've fallen into this pattern too and my initial thought was that I don't want to miss anything the people I am following say. But really, who cares? How is this any different than Digg or StumbleUpon which are just ways for people to share other website? Hey look, Guy Kawasaki linked to another demo of how to use Alltop! I must retweet that so that everyone who follows me will know how smart I am!

Let's face the facts. Twitter is a fad that has managed to raise $55M so far with no real way of making money. There's been talk of monetizing it somehow for targeted marketing, but that's just a derivitive of permission-based spam. There's been talk about what a powerful real-time search engine it is, but with a greasemonkey script in FireFox I can run a single search and get the last 5 Twitter search results as well. So what's the big deal?

The big deal is that our attention span as human is getting shorter every day. We don't want to read complete articles, we want excerpts. We don't want excerpts, we want 140 character-max messages. We don't want everyone's messages, so let's just use tweetDeck and filter out the noise. How many of you made it this far in the post? Probably less than half of those who started at the top.

If you want to follow some interesting people, I give you two who are a must: @cwalken (last tweet: She said I should talk more about my cat; that people like that sort of thing here. I didn't know I still had a cat. Explains a few things.) and @BobbyBracelet (last tweet: "If my head was made of veal, how much would it be worth?" is possibly the most random quote to pop into my head in quite some time.)

That is all.