a few days ago i had a back-and-forth via twitter with Felix Salmon (of the pseudo-deceased Conde Nast Portfolio, now with Reuters and Wired) in regards to Lynn Hirschberg’s Sunday NYT Magazine’s piece on MIA.

Salmon, a real fscking journalist IMO, thought it was a hit-piece (Hirschberg did a so-called hit-piece on Courtney Love oh-so-many-years ago.) I thought the french-fry setup was throw-away and MIA’s response on her website was trite and had the depth that is displayed by many twenty-somethings who can’t write a cogent paragraph and instead think that links alone will tell their story.

So if the NYT story was a “hit-piece” then i wonder what this tripe would be?

Part of my distaste for what the Houston Press has become are stories like these: National Inquiresque, tabloid journalism. sure, that description has the word ‘journalism’ in it, but is it really? and Lomax? He was born and bred at the Houston Press and is Houston’s new reigning king of this shit genre that passes for real media.

i am sure this douchestain from Blue October is playing up his affliction. heck, it might even be 100% fake; i could care fscking less about the band, the singer, his fans, or even his crusade to save the legion of gothed-out, emo masses who are lining up at Ace Hardwares across the U.S. for razor blades. But – my take is that Lomax smelled a great chance at getting a cheap cover story when he was granted an hour with Furstenfeld and being the Weekly World News journalist that Lomax is, well let’s just say he knows a bat child story when he sees one.

sad. and standard.

in my fortieth year on this planet i am supposed to be playing in the World Series of Poker 2010. alas, i have been unable to secure an affordable seat.

nonetheless, this year, as for the last seven years, i will be following the WSOP on the web. the good news is that every year the group of journalists providing the daily minutia from the WSOP gets bigger and better.

here’s a quick list of who i’ll be reading:

i don’t know who i found first, but i am pretty sure i found both from The Blogfather. Sir Al is now working for Full Tilt Poker and the Good Dr. Pauly has a book coming out soon. both are required reading for any WSOP year.

Al Can’t Hang: blog & twitter

Tao of Pauly: blog & twitter

another poker journo that i mysteriously found is Dan at Pokerati. i think i got there b/c Michelle Lewis‘ neighbor is my mom’s cardiologist and Michelle linked to Dan oh so many years ago when he was still in Dallas. i think.

Pokerati: blog & twitter

F-Train came from reading Dr. Pauly and Al Can’t Hang. he is another dengen convert, giving up i think a job in the world’s second oldest profession and traveling the world for poker.

F-Train: blog & twitter

Pot Committed is Dr. Pauly’s common-law better half. don’t let that fool you, she’s been covering poker for years and in the last year went global with her coverage of the Latin American Poker Tour.

Pot Committed: blog & twitter

so quit hanging around here and go catch-up on the action!

just a quick post to say thank you to Full Tilt Poker for the Battle of the Blogger Tournaments 5 – it was a great series that culminates tonight at 9PM CST with three (yes three!!) WSOP Main Event seats being awarded!

also a big thanks to Full Tilt Poker for hiring and keeping Sir Al Can’t Hang busy. i am sure they recognize that he is a unique and awesome spokesman for those of us who love the game of poker.

and my personal thanks to Al for another great series with another amazing round of prizes. it has to be tough to outdo each time, because you keep raising the bar!

so – how did i do? with a lot of luck and a little rustiness, i was able to place second twice. while that doesn’t get me a seat in the The Battle of the Blogger 5 Tournament of Champions, i am happy that i was finally able to show a little improvement. heck, over the course of all five BBTs, i might even be even now!

OK, i know, that’s bullshiet…but it sounds good!

good luck to all the bloggers in the ToC and good luck to the eventual winners who will be heading to Vegas to play in the WSOP. maybe this will be the year for a blogger at the final table and/or a blogger winner!

dream big!

i had to add a new 2 TB HDD for my iTunes library (yes, it is getting out of control) which meant some moving around and cleaning up.

i went through my back-up HDD and discovered an assload of old poker screen shots.

here’s a great one!

those were the days….

the astroturfed Tea Baggers turn on their own.

someone please create a cartoon of Frankenstein (labeled “Tea Party”) and show him running amok among the right wing (characters labeled “Romney” and “NRA”). Frankenstein should be screaming, “MORE CON-SERV-ATIVE!”

if you think this is all about Obama, then you must be a Republican.

November is going to look like The French Revolution…all incumbents blood running ankle deep in the streets.

but hey, John Cornyn says, “Just let them eat cake!” (Or would that be, “Just let them Drill baby, drill!”)

The Battle of the Blogger Tournaments 5 is kicking off today!

six weeks of poker fun brought to you by the fine folks at Full Tilt Poker and headed up by our own Sir Al Can’t Hang. looks like this year’s incarnation has a new Monday night tourney from Full Tilt’s Poker On The Rail. Wednesdays will feature the Buddy Dank version of The Mookie. Sundays will have an invitational format which is also a new wrinkle in the plan. and last but not least, a big ass freeroll on June 6th for all those who love Full Tilt.

hit up the Poker On The Rail post for all the details, grab a banner or badge for your blog and let’s have some fun!

cellphone companies are historically one of the great evils in corporate customer service. is there any other industry that values ’shiny, new penny’ customers more than the mobile phone industry?

when the NexusOne was released by Google, i was interested. i had a current T-Mobile account (2.5+ years) and a non-3G Blackberry Curve that was out of contract. seemed like i was all set for a new phone!

er, slow down.

first off, via Google’s sales page for the NexusOne, i was ineligible for any subsidy. after digging around the intertubes, i found out that because my wife and i were on a “family” plan, the NexusOne subsidized was not available to me. foolishly, i thought i would change that.

right around the time the NexusOne came out, T-Mobile revamped their service plans and released two new plans: “Even More” and “Even More Plus”. diametrically opposite from how new phones are offered, the new rate plans are available to all customers, new and old. switching plans would actually be financially beneficial to me: my wife and i paid roughly $220/month for our family plan, with the @Home service added and unlimited text/data on each phone. under the new plans, we would lose the @Home service (which T-Mobile was discontinuing anyway) and pay $140/month with unlimited text/data. $60 a month is decent savings and i would be able to get a subsidized NexusOne: win-win for me!

i knew there are risks associated with changing a rate plan. my departure from Sprint (my previous carrier) for the warm climes of T-Mobile was the result of getting screwed during a plan change; it was the usual scam: you switch plans, at which time your carrier signs you up for a new two year contract (unbeknownst to you) and by the time you figure it out…well good luck getting that fixed.

since the Sprint debacle is in my databank of corporate ass-fsckery, i knew i should get this question cleared up with T-Mobile. thus i made sure that the very first question i asked the T-Mobile customer rep when inquiring about a plan change was, “will i be required to have a new two year contract”? i was assured that i would not.

as you can guess, i was in fact signed up for a new two year contract on an almost three year old, non-3G Blackberry. T-Mobile would later say this was an “error.” really, you think?

fortunately, my wife caught this “new contract” issue the very same day that i changed the plan. it was actually pure luck: my wife went to a T-Mobile store to ask about the NexusOne; she had no idea it was a web-only sell, she only knew i had mentioned wanting one. the T-Mobile store rep informed my wife that i had just “signed up” for a new two year contract. fortunately, she was able to have that changed, because otherwise i would have been “Sprinted” by T-Mobile.

i gave the T-Mobile billing system a few days to sync-up and then i went back to Google to see if i could buy a NexusOne via a subsidy. lo and behold, it was now offered discounted, only for existing customers the NexusOne would be $279 and for new customers $179. both required the same two year contract and data plan.

so by changing out of my family plan, i saved $100. now all i had to do was recoup the ’shiny, new penny’ customer $100. no problemo!

properly armed with a new plan (and still being contract-free thanks to my wife) i called T-Mobile back and asked for the “loyalty” dept. if you don’t know, all cell companies have loyalty departments. the loyalty dept is to keep customers from jumping ship to other carriers. loyalty reps are armed with all sorts of deals, such as discount phones prices (even on new, subsidized phones), or rebates, or trimming your contract date to allow you do get a new phone/contract ahead of the industry-standard 22 months. so i figured i was good-to-go with getting the NexusOne for $179. long-term customer, user of data services, i even had shown a penchant to purchase extra wireless products, such as the @Home program. instead, i was told, “NO!”

so to recap: T-Mobile would rather lose at least one customer, possibly two, who have used their service and provided roughly $2400+/year in revenue…all to save $100 subsidy. wonder how long it would take T-Mobile to earn back that $100 in a two-year contract? i am guessing less than a year.

while dealing with the loyalty rep, i was nice, i was polite, i became the calm little center of the world. I was the Zen master. i told the loyalty rep i was going to find a new company and phone and i would be leaving. this is usually the kicker: you gotta be eligible to leave (read: outside of contract) to achieve any real help from the loyalty dept. the loyalty rep gave me her apologies, but said her hands were tied by Google. yeap, T-Mobile couldn’t offer the phone to me for the new customer subsidy price because Google had that specifically excluded in the contract! an image appeared in my mind at this time: it was one of Tom Hicks negotiating with Scott Boras to bring ARod to the Texas Rangers. the CEO of T-Mobile must be a Hicksian-level negotiator. it is more likely that T-Mobile adopted this stance because they could blame the inability to deal on Google. whatever.

so for all of Feb i searched for a new carrier/phone. midway through the month my wife informed me that she can’t get to Facebook on her phone. i ask when it started and she says roughly the beginning of the month. i do a little troubleshooting and it appears she is getting no data access at all. voice works, texts work, but no data. i login to the T-Mobile site and our account looks fine. she is signed up for the new plan, unlimited texts, and the unlimited G1 data plan. so i am forced to make the dreaded call to support. after about 90 minutes of script reading and trying all the things i had already done, the second-tier support rep says he’ll have to enter a ticket for the “network engineers”. i get a trouble ticket assigned and the second-tier support rep says he will call us in two days to see if has been fixed and then he will follow-up about pro-rating the monthly bill, since she’s been without data for two weeks. i was semi-impressed with at least his commitment to see the trouble ticket through.

silly me! despite giving the guy our business phone number as a contact number (and i think they have a few mobile numbers for us already), no one ever called. no one. not support, not billing, nothing. oh, her phone magically started serving up web pages, but no one followed up. standard.

then the Feb bill arrives from T-Mobile. it had the expected $135.95 for “Monthly recurring chgs” plus an unexpected $155.80 for “Usage charges”. i instantly knew the problem, which was confirmed by the bill. it showed that all $155.80 was on my wife’s phone for “MESSAGING CHARGES.” the bill also listed her phone as having “Text Messages – Unlimited”. oxymoron.

sure ’nuff, i decided to ruin my morning by having to deal with T-Mobile yet again (i am up to 5+ hours of call time in dealing with these issues), the problem is as-expected: they fixed her account’s technical setup for data access, but had not properly setup the billing. duh – no shit.

at the end of this call, the billing rep said she wanted me to talk to a “loyalty” rep. even though i know it will make no difference in my decision to leave T-Mobile, i agree. maybe this corporate giant might one day figure out why they suck.

that loyalty rep? she offers me $100 instant rebate on the NexusOne. yeah, the same $100 that i asked for almost two months earlier. i politely thank her and tell her no. sometimes, you gotta have principles.

so, why did all this happen? it could be one of a few scenarios:
1) the rep who initially was helping me change plans? maybe she was a malicious bitch, who felt that if she made my plan change the worst experience ever, i wouldn’t change plans ever again!
2) that same rep could have been new, or under-trained, or poorly trained.
3) that same rep could just be a fscking retard.
4) maybe there are various departments in T-Mobile with misaligned goals and metrics.
5) maybe T-Mobile, who start their calls with, “this call could be monitored or recorded for quality assurance,” actually suck as QA.
6) it could be that their internal systems are so complicated that Harvard grads with MBAs from MIT couldn’t do the daily work.

while it would be fun to think it was #1 or #3, i doubt it.

it is more likely that the employees work with a system that is very complex and they are poorly/under-trained. it is also more likely that T-Mobile’s quality assurance work is well below par. and i would not be surprised to find out that call quotas and goals to close tickets lead managers/departments to make decisions that ruin long-term business relationships.

so what did that $100 cost you, T-Mobile?

Best Ressurection:

Alice In Chains – Black Gives Way To Blue
I knew Layne Staley died in 2002 and yet as i listened to “Black Gives Way To Blue” it was like he never left. It might sound trite that a band with a new singer sounds just like their old shiet, but in the case of Alice In Chains, this is a pure compliment. Alice In Chains ruled the 90s, and like Nirvana, burned out with their loss. Give credit to Jerry Cantrell’s writing and musicianship because their 2009 comeback is as good as anything in their catalog.

Best ‘Snatching the pebble from the hand’:

Phoenix – Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
Master Kan: Quickly as you can, snatch the pebble from my hand.
[Young Caine tries to do so and fails]
Master Kan: When you can take the pebble from my hand, it will be time for you to leave.
For years Phoenix played second fiddle to Air’s lead as French synch kings. 2009’s “Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix” changes all that. Air’s 2009 release “Love 2″ was oblique at best; Phoenix one-upped their 2004 “Alphabetical”, which i loved, charting all the way to 37 on Billboard.

Best New B.R.M.C./The Raveonettes Album:

The Big Pink – A Brief History Of Love
RIYL; What more can i say?

Best Flashback:

Jane’s Addiction – A Cabinet Of Curiosities [Disc 3]
The whole box set is fantastic, but this particular disc takes me back to Lollapalooza 1991 in Dallas. Disc 3 is Live at the Palladium 12/19/90 and it might have been Jane’s at their pinnacle.

Best Welcome Back:

Jason Lytle – Yours Truly, The Commuter
“last thing i heard i was left for dead / i could give two shits about what they said / i maybe limpin’ / but i’m coming home”
Watch Jason Lytle at SXSW in 2009

Best New Artist:

Kid Cudi – Man On The Moon: The End Of Day
Part hip-hop, part new wave, 100% amazing. Not even Hova could touch this album, so instead he just featured Cudi on “The Blueprint 3″. One generation begets the next.

Best Concept Album:

Mastodon – Crack the Skye
What’s a concept album? Read it here. Track #4 is almost eleven minutes of awesome.

Best Cover Album:

Rosanne Cash – The List
NPR did an interview with Rosanne Cash, where she explains “The List” and its origin; don’t argue with The Man In Black.

Best Super Group:

Them Crooked Vultures – [self-titled]
Led Zepplin? check.
Nirvana / Foo Fighters? check.
Kyuss / Queens of the Stone Age? check.
All systems go!

Best Band of the Decade:

Wilco – Wilco [the album]
Here’s Wilco’s offerings for the first decade of the 21st century:
*Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2002)
*A Ghost Is Born (2004)
*Kicking Television: Live in Chicago (2005)
*Sky Blue Sky (2007)
*Wilco (The Album) (2009)
Any questions as to why i called them “Band of the Decade”? No group produced as many great albums during this decade; they capped it off with “Wilco The Album” which i enjoyed all Summer, then the Fall, and here we are in December and i am still playing it. Do yourself a favor – if you don’t have all of these albums (including the live “Kicking Television”) use some of your Xmas money and get them now.

very sad day today – my buddy for 16+ years passed away in my arms earlier this afternoon.

he was an amazing cat: he loved attention as much as any dog i have owned and he fetched just like a dog too! i’ve never seen a cat with such a great disposition.

Barnaby was with me when i graduated college, started my career and got married. when my wife’s dog came into my life, Barnaby adopted Xuxa like they were kin.

Barnaby went from Houston, to Waco, to Houston, to Missouri City. he lived with me in shithole apartments and in our very first house.

in 2006 when we evacuated Houston for Hurricane Rita, Barnaby made the 12 hour car ride.

he adapted to every change in our lives and never complained.

we’re going to miss him greatly.

hand #38 of tournament:

Full Tilt Poker Game #12952534346: 150 Seat Main Event Guarantee (83239154), Table 155 – 20/40 – No Limit Hold’em – 18:30:35 ET – 2009/06/21
Seat 1: Run Luke Run (2,660)
Seat 2: icecreamboy (2,590)
Seat 3: sellthekids (3,515)
Seat 4: ALuckMuppet (2,578)
Seat 5: Jimmy Diamond (3,404)
Seat 6: khartattack (2,550)
Seat 7: Dougger316 (4,373)
Seat 8: ZEPA (2,330)
khartattack posts the small blind of 20
Dougger316 posts the big blind of 40
The button is in seat #5
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to sellthekids [Qd Qs]
ZEPA folds
Run Luke Run folds
icecreamboy folds
sellthekids raises to 140
ALuckMuppet folds
Jimmy Diamond folds
khartattack raises to 460
Dougger316 folds
sellthekids calls 320
*** FLOP *** [8d 9c 2c]
khartattack bets 960
sellthekids raises to 3,055, and is all in
khartattack calls 1,130, and is all in
sellthekids shows [Qd Qs]
khartattack shows [Kc As]
Uncalled bet of 965 returned to sellthekids
*** TURN *** [8d 9c 2c] [2d]
*** RIVER *** [8d 9c 2c 2d] [Ks]
sellthekids shows two pair, Queens and Twos
khartattack shows two pair, Kings and Twos
khartattack wins the pot (5,140) with two pair, Kings and Twos
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 5,140 | Rake 0
Board: [8d 9c 2c 2d Ks]
Seat 1: Run Luke Run didn’t bet (folded)
Seat 2: icecreamboy didn’t bet (folded)
Seat 3: sellthekids showed [Qd Qs] and lost with two pair, Queens and Twos
Seat 4: ALuckMuppet didn’t bet (folded)
Seat 5: Jimmy Diamond (button) didn’t bet (folded)
Seat 6: khartattack (small blind) showed [Kc As] and won (5,140) with two pair, Kings and Twos
Seat 7: Dougger316 (big blind) folded before the Flop
Seat 8: ZEPA didn’t bet (folded)