ever want to discover muscles you have that are used very little? try this: pickup a 32″ Sony Trinitron and carry it around a little. guaranteed to make parts of you hurt that haven’t been used since those wild parties in college.

my momseseses TV has been slowly dying. she called out a Sony repair guy who told her that the tube was on it’s last legs. since tubes are not really replaceable, the fix is a new TV. as a stop gap, he fiddled under the hood and turned the contrast and brightness way up. shitty picture, but picture nonetheless.

i tried for months to let her take my 27″ Trinitron that sits unused in the guest bedroom. i even offered my 32″ Mistu from my office. of course she would have none of it.

well, now home from the hosiptal and a little house bound during recovery, i convinced her to take one of mine. her plan was to buy a new flat panel, but since the new short-term goal is to sell her house and buy her a new house in our little suburban paradise, i suggested she wait so that we can tailor the screen size to her new living room.

so yesterday, prior to attending an Astros ass-kicking, i took her my Sony. 27″ old-skool tube TVs are heavy, but they are nothing close to the heavy of 32″ old-skool tube TVs. i think “TV Deadlift” could be an Olympic sport, if flat panels hadn’t eliminated the who genre of TVs.

in other news, my Klein Reve X has been here for about a week. i’ve got a Bontrager seat post in for it (in very odd 31.6 diameter…mountain bike size!) and my Bontrager stem, bars and tape should be showing up shortly. really all that is left is groupo and wheels. heh - yeah, that’s all.

i am in a double quandary with that decision: what group and where to buy it. my old LBS (which isn’t really “local” to me any more, but still worth the 30 minute drive) quoted me $1K for a new Shimano Ultegra group, sans hubs. of course, on teh internetz i can get it for $700. that $300 savings is basically the wheelset, or a significant portion of a wheelset if i go crazy and get something like Bontrager Race X Lite.

in addition to the LBS vs internet decision, do i want Shimano anyway? not Campagnolo? and now SRAM has supposedly got a pretty sweet group themselves. and of course, i could always mix and match with something like Bontrager Carbon cranks.

so all that said, i’ve done nothing. which means i still have no bike built. and i still really want a new Ibis Silk. West End has one on hand to show peeps and it is utterly amazing. the black clearcoat on the carbon fiber is jaw dropping. of course, why spend $1500 to complete the Klein when that is essentially half of the new Ibis?

i’ve got no answers, only questions!

btw - the Reve X is pretty damn stunning itself. the frame was in better condition than described in the auction; it looks almost new. the carbon stays and that crazy S.P.A. elastomer are driving me nuts. i so want to ride this bike!

i work in a small building - 6 floors high and we are on the 1st floor. due to the area of town we are in, what i will call a pseudo-business district, the shitters on the first floor require a key. so besides having to carry a cardkey for office access, you have to carry a physical key too. fun.

the bathroom is not very large: two standups, two sitdowns, two sinks. my office at home is larger and that ain’t bragging. i mention the size b/c it sets the scene for the atmosphere in our office away from the office.

with the diet i am on, i drink a lot of fluids (supposed to be water, but i have a severe Diet Coke problem, which is exacerbated by our office’s free soda machine). needless to say, i visit the head probably 4-6 times a day. i always feel a little self-conscious about it b/c i have to walk past another office each time, where there is a receptionist who faces the hall and can see our coming and goings (but thank god not our leavings.) i am sure she is tired of watching the parade.

i have always thought it a little weird, heading in to drop a load in very close proximity to another man doing the same. i mean, in spite of the smell and the sounds, it just seems too personal an act to share with friends and strangers. and what’s with the dividers that don’t go all the way to the ground? is Larry Craig in charge of restroom design permitting on a federal level? anyway, every time i am sitting in the can and someone comes in and sits in the next stall, disturbing the peace, i always think of the Romans.

that’s a Roman set of shitters. the Romans had plumbing, which put them an entire era ahead of their peers; unfortunately, the “let’s sit right next to another guy defecating” design appears timeless.

one thing that really weirds me out is the Indian guy who works in the other tech firm on the first floor. when i first started my job, i Googled this firm, b/c i am nosey and wanted to know what they did. plus they have a vast array of foreign workers, so i figured it was tech (guys from Indian, Pakistan, some former Soviet-bloc countries, etc.) anyway, this one guy is the head honcho. he’s got a Stanford degree and spends a large amount of time in the atrium of our building talking on his cellphone. that’s not the weird part; we all take our “private” calls in the atrium (thanks for the cubes, mother fsckers.) no, what’s weird is his pissing ritual.

look, i am not spying on the guy, so hear me out b/c you also would notice this. by shear volume of times i piss and the fact we share a two stand-up urinal bathroom, i run into the same people over and over and over again. it’s like Groundhog Day, but with more porcelain. the first time i pissed next to Mr. Stanford, i heard a paper ruffling sound coming from waist high. i figured maybe he had a paper towel in his hand, and while it would seem weird to handle your johnson in such close quarters with one of those pieces of tree bark they call paper towels, who am i to fault the man. he’s from India, what the fsck do i know?

but a few weeks later, it happened again. he’s pissing next to me and i hear the sound of scrunching paper and this time i notice he’s doing the old hippy-hippy-shake. again, seems odd, but hey, i still figure it’s nothing.

last week same deal. except this time i am almost certain: Captain Google-School is wiping his pecker when he finishes pissing! now i haven’t seen anything, but i can’t help but think this is what is happening. at first, i am really weirded out by this. who wipes their dick? well, besides the Rolling Stones, years 1970 to 1998. but the more i thought about it i wondered: should i be wiping my dick? is this some ritual that i missed out on b/c my mom raised me by her lonesome when i was ages 6 to 11?

when i saw that he turns on the faucets with a paper towel and opens the door with a paper towel, i did relax a little. is Monk Indian?

my momseseses has been in the hospital for the last week; she had an angiogram and two new stents put in. her recovery was hampered a little by the healing of the site where they thread the angiogram tube in (largest vein in the body, for the win!) but overall her health is good and she is bored shitless waiting to get out - we are hoping today is that day.

so i have been hustling to and fro between work, hospital, home all week…thus no updates and missed fun times like Dr. Pauly’s 5th Anniversary tourney extravaganza. sucks to be me. also, this is the month we are sending our latest project at work to QA with an attempt to go live with all Chase partners near the middle of August. suffice to say, i was at work till 9PM last night and i am dreading a certain call today. oh well, it is nice to receive a paycheck!

anyway, still waiting for the frame to show up; i would expect today. i am hoping for a spare sec to make it by West End so i can query about what parts to build it up with. since it originally was a mix of Ultegra and Bontrager, i am thinking of using those. plus some high end training wheelset. heh. more on that front at it happens.

off like a dirty shirt….

it’s a tropical storm! run for the hills!

i love when they run the local pledges out into the storm, to get the ‘local flavor’; here is a schmoe who is out at a gas station to report that gas prices are down ahead of the storm. good news for those of us who plan to fill up our Excursion and head to Austin to out run the massive storm surge.

and nothing makes me happier than watching the lowly wannabes stand out in the rain, b/c we all know that we wouldn’t believe/understand rain, unless they actually show us it is happening. right? i mean, is rain even wet? Marissa Reyes knows!

stay tuned folks - maybe i’ll live blog all the destruction that is surely imminent.

that Robert Burns, he was a helluva guy.  i remember this quote about once a month, never repeating it with the ending “oft go awry” but always as it was written (quoted in the title), mostly b/c my AP English teacher in high school was badass.

so why am i quoting some 18th century poem for ya?  b/c my plans after work were to hit the local grocery for supplies for both home and the shop.  today happened to coincide with Hurricane Panic 2008, Edouard Edition!

wtf?  seriously, the grocery store was a mad house.  i went down the soda aisle, which also happens to be the water aisle - it looked like the hurricane had already hit.  i expected to see physical violence with Sexy Susie Suburbs clawing Cougar Cathy Careermom’s eyes out over the last bottle of Fiji water.  it was out of control.

so i got that going for me, which was the opposite of nice.  as in shitty.

anyway, i lived, but my planning is not the best.  i guess watching the weather during the weekend might have clued me in.  although, seriously (again), it’s a fscking tropical storm.  we live on the Gulf Coast.  haven’t you mother scratchers seen these before?  i don’t think this qualifies as “hell or high water” territory.  do we really need to be hording water and batteries for something lower than a Cat 3?  jebus.

in better news, check it:

that, my friends, is a 2006 Klein Reve X.  i bought it on eBay today.  we’ll see when it gets here if this is going to qualify for the road bike i want, or if i end up building it up with average parts and keeping it b/c i have a soft spot for Kleins.  i am seriously wowed by the Specialized Tarmac and the Trek Mardone, as well as the Ibis Silk…but i couldn’t pass up this Klein frame, especially with the kooky rear elastomer!

so stay tuned to see if this frame gets a sweet setup of maybe Dura-Ace or Record; if i let it replace getting a whole new bike, then it is going to get the trick shit build.

ttfn!

today i feel like Houston became a real city…or i became a real citizen of the fourth largest city in the nation; behold, the strike rat!

i guess strike rats have been popping up all over the nation. since Houston doesn’t really have a unionized labor force, no wonder it has taken so long for me to see one. these guys are protesting our building management over labor, unions, and the janitorial staff. appears that Strike Rat might have some legal issues, too!

wonder how much a strike rat would cost? maybe we get an eight foot dog for outside our shop?

i’m not dead yet…i think i’ll go for a walk!

so i have been a little remiss in my posting frequency. yeah yeah, i did spend a good amount of time in all of June following the WSOP. but we’re now into August and i don’t have an excuse. but enough about what i haven’t done, what about what i am doing!

so i have been kicking around buying a new bike. yeah, i know i have over $3K worth of Ibis hanging in my garage, but that is a mountain bike; the closest trails are pretty much Memorial Park and i just don’t get excited about riding there anymore. btw - the way i describe mountain bike is the way i explain to my wife that i am going to need a new $3K+ bicycle. since her last bike was a beach cruiser bought for about $150, she is a little confused on why i need a new bike. at least i have my history of being a bike messenger and aspiring racer to fall back on.

anyway, about a year ago i fell in love with the Specialized Langster, specifically the Chicago Gangster version. i tried to order one in 2007, but they had already run through their supply for the year. i spent the next 12 months or so scouring eBay for one to no avail. not like it mattered - in truth a Langster would really only be a toy that i would probably end up not riding much. it’s not like we jaunt around the neighborhood on short trips…there are no bars and we don’t really hit the water park or country club much.

so maybe two weeks ago i decided that what i need is a new road bike. since we are on the edge of Houston, there are lots of rides where you can just head out and go. shit, i rode my Ibis with slicks to Rosharon a while back. so, a road bike would not only be fun, but would get me out and about and help with my weight loss.

speaking of weight loss: roughly two months ago i went on a weight loss/diet/life change. well, really longer. in January i quit drinking pretty much. i also stopped taking Effexor, which i was blaming for slowing down my metabolism. well, although the Effexor might have been doing that and the empty calories of alcohol weren’t helping, it was probably my daily intake of breakfast tacos, chik-fil-a and fries that were hurting more. so like i said, two months ago i went to see Dar’s nutritionist/diet doctor. initial weigh-in was a life record for me: 237lbs. jesus christ! this doctor has all the newfangled medical gear, so they measured my body fat percentage, simulated my metabolic rate and put me on a 1800 calorie/day diet with specific categories to maximize protein intake and minimize sugar. i even use a website to track my daily intake and exercise. so here i sit: 217lbs. better, but still pretty fscking fat!

ok, so the bike is gonna help with all that. plus, i am so sick of the elliptical trainer. so i am thinking i am going to trying riding for fun and exercise. i need it!

so i have been scouring the web to pull info on bikes; a lot has changed since i raced in 1992-1997. it seems the new hot thing is composite frames. sure, composites have been around for years (i remember drooling over Kestrels and the like) but the big manufacturers (and some small) have pretty much made the push into making carbon fiber the frame material for the masses.

i’ve spent a lot of time reading about the Specialized Tarmac and Roubaix and contrasting and comparing with the Trek Madone. Ibis is again up and running with Scot Nicol at the helm and he is only producing carbon fiber bikes; that should tell you the trend in frame making if Scot has forsaken his beautiful steel and titanium history. i also have peeked at the offerings from Colnago and Eddy Merckx. sadly, this is pretty much all just web shopping; i have yet to hit any stores other than my local Specialized Concept Store (yes, West End, i am coming to see you!)

while trudging the web, i stumbled across my first expensive bike love, Klein. Klein, kinda like Ibis, has gone the way of the dodo…well almost. Klein was bought from Gary Klein in 1995 by Trek. the rumor at the time was that Trek wanted Klein’s expertise with aluminum, plus Klein had a special tubeset that only was made for them. as happens a lot, Trek started mass producing Kleins and pretty much ended up running the company into the ground. the last U.S. production year was 2007 and no one is talking on whether or not they are coming back in 2009. but, Klein is selling like hotcakes in Japan. who would have thunk?

anyway, i pretty much scan eBay every day, just to see if an old Klein pops up. i doubt i am going to buy one, but i enjoy the walk down memory lane. which brings me to this realization: people are pretty fscking terrible at listing stuff on eBay.

i consider myself an eBay early adopter. i joined in Sept. of 1999 and have amassed 182 positive ratings in the last 9 years. no negatives! i both buy and sell on eBay and pretty much have learned some tricks of the trade for selling and for finding good deals - usually b/c some moron doesn’t understand the way eBay works.

here’s an example: Kline Road Bike. at least this genius was able to get it listed in the right category: road bikes. but you’ll notice a few things, just in the title: first, uh, misspelled the manufacturer. that is going to kill the auctions action b/c most people search via keyword, not via category. second, lack of info. what model is it? what size? what year? you would hope that since this is missing in the title, at least it will appear in the listing’s description.

you’d be wrong. no model, no year, no size.

i realize that finding the year and size might take some work, but model? it’s on the fscking top tube!

so how hard is it to find some info on this bike if you are the seller? remember, this is info that will help bring in bidders, which drives up price, meaning you MAKE MORE MONEY! plus, how many emails do you want to get with questions such as, “uh, dude, what size is the frame?”

so how hard is it? my first Google for “klein quantum size year” pulls in some helpful info. the fourth listing takes me to a blog from a Klein fanatic! scanning this wealth of Klein info, midway down the page, he has a compiled spreadsheet that lists model, year, and frame color! you’ll notice what i would call a ‘maroon’ Klein is probably a 2002 Plum Klein Quantum 105SC.

armed with the year, the next Google search brings up a rocket all the way to #1, listing a link to a pdf on the Japanese site with frame geometry (our info is on page 43-44). a simple measure of the top tube will give us frame size for our listing!

total time to do this: about 5 minutes. god only knows how much this info would improve the listings chances.

so that was fun. heh. i still don’t have a bike, but i am working on it!

ok, so mission accomplished: i managed to get a post out. i didn’t cover much, but just like exercise, you gotta start small and move up. stay tuned, maybe i’ll post on my recent -$500 drunken $1/$2 Full Tilt play, recent books that i crushed and enjoyed, or even more on my mythical man-month bike search!

ttfn!

the six week Batan march of death has started and Las Vegas is crawling with card players all lusting for money and jewelery.  as i keep grinding the Poker Stars Steps in search of a seat, here are the sites i am checking that help me keep abreast of what is happening:

• Poker News: up-to-the-minute happening from the tourneys.  some great staff additions this year!
• Tao of Poker: Pauly is doing it old school this year.  best beat writer in the biz!
• Full Tilt Poker Blog: Michael Craig, in search of that big score.
• You Can’t Miss What You Can’t Measure: poker pro Shane Schleger’s blog; hoping he updates it a lot!
• Poker from the Rail - Bond18: one of the wittiest/funniest new writers to hit the scene.  hoping he scores big!
• Two Plus Two forums: as always, full of rumor, innuendo, and actual happenstance.  slog away!

that’s what keeps me busy…back to the grind.

well, i couldn’t even handle my own self-imposed exile from poker.  sure i made it through Friday night, but i got up this AM and decided to start my Steps again.  after getting shot back down to Step 2 i would have to wade my way through.

to get to five handed, i got it AIPF with sevens vs tens.  allah smiled and i flopped a set.

to get to four handed, i snapped off aces with JKs, turning trips.

to get to three handed, i snapped off aces with QTo, making a straight.  this was blind v blind and AIPF.

i then held on to win my Step 3 ticket when Q8o finally took out the blinded down A5o.

so, i played pretty poor.  got really, really lucky.  won my ticket.

next!

last night i finished [u]Every Hand Revealed[/u] and [u]Hats & Eyeglasses[/u].  i was impressed with Hats & Eyeglasses, a memior of a Hollywood fluff writer who grew up in New York.  some great poker stories in here and her description of getting hooked on Paradise Poker is pretty funny; at least she was able to beat the sickness!

Hansen’s book was O.K.  you really have to parse all the hands to get to the meat, which are some gems of how Gus thinks and his method to dissecting hands.  one thing for sure, Gus ran over his tables; no one put up a fight and he stole his way down to the final three.  Jimmy Fricke tried to answer some questions about the hands on 2+2 before some tard ran him off.  but Jimmy’s contention that all Gus looks at is pot odds is kinda true.  but then again, why would Gus look at anything else when no one was standing up to him?  Jimmy made some big pot errors to Gus, but when you look at the hands that Jimmy had to lay down to Gus’ aggression, i would assume he was pretty frustrated.  either way, it is a cheap book and worth some time.  someone on 2+2 suggested it should have been packed with the video of the tournament, which would have been cool.  you can go to PokerTube and watch a lot of it.

ttfn!

Houston is handing out self-congratulatory blowjobs this morning after Kiplinger.com reported it the No. 1 city in the nation for, “beat-the-heat tunnels and loop-the-loop highways, world-class museums and wiry cowboys, humidity that demands an ice-cold martini and the biggest damn liquor store on the planet.”  whooopie!

look, i love my city, i do.  i have no intention of ever moving, which is why i want all you assholes to stay where you are.  i don’t want any CA douche nozzles showing up and ruining the fun.  all you out of work auto plant rednecks head somewhere else; we have enough rednecks as it is, even if you would just be pseudo-rednecks.

what makes me “meh” this story is that this is no different than in the 70s.  the last time we had an energy crisis and gas/oil prices soared, Houston was also top of the pops.  i remember going to school and everyday some new kid from PA or OH showed up, their parents moving b/c Houston had tons of jobs…all due to the energy crunch.  i also remember the 80s, when oil got cheap, tax revenue fell and no one wanted to live here.  suburban sprawl took over, white flight, and a crime way engulfed the city.  businesses moved/consolidated and middle management got laid off by the thousands.

this is all just a cycle kids.  get used to it!