TeeBee's Blog

Poker Night

I'm part of a group of guys that play poker once a month (or so). $5 to buy chips, nickel/dime/quarter stuff, $.50 limit on raises, so not big-stakes by any stretch. I'm slowly learning that the fun is playing the game, and any winnings/losses are secondary enjoyment. Here's a quick summary of last night's game:

- Location: James' new porch. Big, high ceilings, all screens. A very cool night; felt like July in Maine.
- 6 guys: Me, James, Jonathan (aka Johnny S.O.), Jim, Dave, Norm
- Best Hand: Jim gets his first Royal Flush au natural - no wildcards. Then he gets a natural full house the next hand (I think;or something else very good) playing 5-card draw, jacks-or-better. Accusations of a stacked deck start flying around.
- My notable hands: I get 4 natural jacks (plus 2 threes!) playing Baseball. Hey, does 6 of a kind count? Plus I get the ace and deuce of spades when playing 2 out of 3. Hmm - think I'll raise a bit...
- Big winner: can't remember.
- Me: broke even
- Beers: Bass, Harpoon IPA, Ipswitch Nut Brown (which I avoided; I stick to ales and IPAs when playing poker)
- Snacks: Doritos, pretzal sticks, some variety of chips which were mostly gone when I showed up

We all pause to look at Mars in the driveway afterwards. Bright, almost a disk to the naked eye, reddish if you tell yourself it is.

Fun.

teebee

A particularly beautiful morning

I got up this morning an hour earlier than usual, and was on the road to work just as the sun was coming up. As you've seen here, I have a very bucolic (and short) commute to work. However, the variety of vistas that are presented to me over this route is amazing.

Take this morning, for example. Pulling out of our driveway, the morning looked to be shaping up as nice but uneventful - sun shining, not many clouds, etc. However, as soon as the road left the woods and entered the open fields, things changed. This amazingly dense, low-hanging fog bank was creeping out from the cornfields over the road. This is one of those fogs that you feel you can reach up and touch - it wasn't more than 10 feet over the road and had sharply-defined boundries. I could look behind me where the early sun was still shining brightly, but all around me was this grey ceiling. I watched a bird fly off the ground and into it, then he'd re-appear further down, like some sort of reverse cormorant in the sky. There were openings in the fog where I could see houses bathed in the early-morning light, looking like someone had colorized just that part of a black and white picture. All of it very beautiful, and a great way to start the day. I had my digital camera with me, but I've learned that vistas like this just do not translate well into 640x480, so you'll have to fall back on your trusty imagination (and my crappy prose) on this one.

teebee

Addition Update

The whole house is now re-roofed, and it looks good. Windows were installed yesterday. They're starting on the siding. I had to move most of my workshop into the new basement so they can start on the plumbing for the basement bathroom.

Pics here. Remember - you have to sign into Yahoo, and be a member of my group, before you can see pics.

teebee

New Yahoo policies are now in effect

Remember when I announced some changes to Yahoo groups (go here if you forgot)? Well, they finally got around to implementing them. If you're having trouble with getting to files in my groups, please email me.

teebee

Smokers as pathological litter-bugs?

<rant>

While I do not approve of smoking, I generally take a laissez-faire attitude toward those that do. You want to light up? Sure, fine, whatevuh, live it up.

However, the whole culture of littering that goes along with it really, really bugs me.

It seems (to this casual observer) that the worst offenders are smokers in cars. We were driving to my parents house last week on the Mass Turnpike. Car in front of me - first out comes the still-smoking butt, then the empty box. 5 minutes later comes the wrapper from the new box. Then another still-smoking butt. Hell, why not just hang yer ass our the window and take a {scatological noun used as verb} on me, buddy!

Its not like cars don't come with ashtrays anymore. That one hanger-on to the whole smoking-is-OK culture of the 50s and 60s is still going strong. Maybe smokers don't like the smell and mess associated with dirty ashtrays. So they throw their trash out the window. That's like a double-standard on top of a double-standard. So is that a quadruple-standard?

The other place this occurs with regularity is at the entrances to businesses. The smoker pauses at the door, takes one last drag, drops the butt, (sometimes) grinds it out with their foot, and proceeds inside. Sometimes these doorways look like a herd of incontinent filter-tipped-excreting seagulls just passed overhead. I don't pause at the door of Target and divest my pockets of gum wrappers, lint and ATM receipts. What is it that makes smokers think that there is an exception to the "Don't Litter" rule?

Maybe the act of smoking these days has become such an "outlaw" activity that those doing it think "Hey, I've already stepped outside the bounds of society-approved behavior. A little littering on top of that won't hurt much". This is a slippery slope, my friends. What's next - "Well, I just sparked up, so what the hell - let's tip over all the San-O-Lets in the rest area. Then we'll pass in the double-yellow zone. It doesn't matter 'cuz I'm a SMOKER, dammit!"

</rant>

teebee

Blogs go mainstream!

Or at least, they get a writeup in the op/ed section of the local paper - the Hampshire Gazette. Looks like the virus Henry planted is starting to spread. Maybe it is mosquito-born...

Read it here.

teebee

Addition Update

Man, they're flying now! The roof is taking shape, here.

teebee

A fond childhood memory, skewered

Here's an incredibly accurate and well-written analysis of that old ABC Saturday morning cartoon staple, The Superfriends. Fun-ny!

You turn your back for 4 days and...

We went on vacation last week (subject of a future post), and when we got back, our addition had gained significantly in the z-axis dimension (i.e., the walls went up). Cool, cool, cool - we can walk out the slider and into the addition, and things are exactly as we had envisioned it. Except for the rain which was running straight down the walls and pooling in my shop. Oh well - turn on some fans and the dehumidifier and close the door.

Pics here.

teebee

Memories of...

Connetquot Drive:

(for those of you not in my immediate or extended family, Connetquot Drive was the street my grandparents lived on, on the banks of the Connetquot River in Oakdale, Long Island, NY)

Really, really old and rusty tricycles. How we avoided tetanus, I'll never know.

Boating in that old, leaky rowboat. We would just take off for hours, with the only parental restriction being that we bring a life jacket. Would that I could bring myself to grant my kids the same freedom.

Feeding the ducks.

"Fishing" off the dock.

Throwing rocks into the water.

Jellyfish.

Having to choose between wearing a t-shirt while riding the styrofoam surfboards, or not and chafing the hell out of your stomach.

Spyrograph, Lincoln Logs, Tinkertoys, wood blocks.

Putting up/taking down the flag with Grandad.

Those 3 plates on the wall across from the dining table, with captions in French - one of which I finally translated into "Its not the hat that is too big - its the head that is too small".

The light-up switch for the kitchen light.

Sleeping on the 2 big red cushions from the chair. Itchy, and they always crept apart during the night so you ended up with your ass on the floor.

The smell you got when you walked out the kitchen door into the cool garage on a hot day.

Nana's response to every question - "Well?". I finally realized that was shorthand for "Well - what is it now?"

The clock, the painting and the sword.

Watching "Wonderama" in the morning, while Mom and Dad slept in.

Having tea and Ring Dings for breakfast.

That endless walk to the 7-11 to get Slush Puppies and comic books.

Sneaking around the Dowling College campus, and getting chewed out by some crabby old fart.

Billy Stock, the Beales and (can't remember the name of the kid across the street who came to visit us in Rockport).

The boat Grandad had for years which just sat there.

Binoculars.

The library, with its mix of inaccessable titles, but with other things thrown in like "God is For Real, Man" and "Happiness is a Dry Martini".

Cousins, and how our interractions both changed and stayed the same, as we got older.

The ice cream truck - what a concept!

Yelling at the cool, fast boats to "Open 'r up!" They never did - wimps.

Getting really, really good at rowing.

Dropping an oarlock over the side.

Showing up at 11:30 pm on a Friday night, and being greeted so warmly by Nana at the door.

The smell of the river, when you were standing on the "beach".

The sound of the rain when you were on the porch.

Eating with the other kids on the porch, while the grownups sat at the big table inside.

Grandad asleep in his chair.

Using the magnifying glass to project upside-down images of the light on the wall.

The bakelite pulls that you used to open and close the big curtains.

The rare thrill of using the door between the big windows.

Falling between the popup bed and the regular bed, 'cuz the popup bed rolled.

An intangible sense of peace and quiet, mixed with a little boredom.

teebee

You do have to sign in to Yahoo before you can see stuff

I just tried to view my group w/o signing in, and wasn't able to see any files. I then signed in, and was able to see stuff.

So remember, boys and girls - sign in first, then view files. OK? OK!

teebee

By the way, I do not get up at 3:30 AM to post these. Apparently, Blogger's computers run on West Coast time. Add 3 to get true post times.

teebee

Yahoo is changing how groups work

I just got this email from Yahoo:

>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Dear Yahoo! Groups Moderator,

IMPORTANT NOTICE:
You are receiving this notice because you are a moderator of one or
more groups. As part of our efforts to ensure that all Yahoo! Groups
users enjoy the same high-quality service, we will implement the
following service changes on Aug. 7, 2003:

(snip)

- Files and Photos: Groups web membership will be required to access a
group's Files and Photos areas.

(snip)

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

I think this means you *will* have to be a member of any group in order to see that group's files and photos. Not a big deal (it is free), but it is a change. I'll keep y'all posted

teebee

My Yahoo Group is offline again

Apparently, I am soooo popular that I've exceeded the download limit for my public group. If you get that message, try this afternoon or maybe tomorrow. I will probably set up a second public group, and alternate their use, to avoid this in the future.

teebee

A Walk in the Woods

In which the Golden Ghost, the Black Phantom and I escort you on a scenic tour of the Hampshire Woods. Find it here.

teebee

You can't teach what you don't know

I was never very good at chess growing up. Sure, I mastered the basics of the game, but concepts like "control the middle", "end game", "fork, pin, skewer" - no clue.

Now here I am trying to teach my kids how to play, and I'm at somewhat of a loss. I picked up a Chess Basics book and am reading through that, but I need to really get things down to a much simpler level. I need to make it understandable, interesting, and fun.

So I've thought up a strategy that should work, as a place to start - once a game gets going, I'll do my best to make sure at least 1 of my pieces is in peril. Then, I'll tell my "opponent" that (a) they can capture one of my pieces but (b) I'm not gonna tell them which one. They will have to look around to figure out which of my pieces they can capture. My hope is that they'll have much fun taking all my pieces, but will also learn how to look around and begin to master the movement strategies of the various pieces.

teebee

Addition Update

No update - raining hard, so any thoughts of our guy showing up were dashed. Patience, patience...

Yahoo Groups tip

If you try and view one of the files in my group, you might get this message:

Document Unavailable

The document you requested is temporarily unavailable because this group has exceeded its download limit. Please try again later.

If you do, try again in about an hour. Apparently Yahoo sites have bandwidth throttles in place, but they reset each hour. Hey, its free, so ya gotta expect some limits.

*sigh*

Its the price you have to pay for being popular.

teebee