More Fun With Nigerians

I sent the following e-mail to the lawyer in London representing Mrs. Hariri and I am still waiting for his reply. When I get it I will add it below so be sure to check back here:

Mr. Johnson,
I am happy to hear the opportunity to assist Mrs. Hariri is still available and I can
assure you that my current legal issues will have no impact on our business at hand.
In regards to your request for information from me, I believe I may have
accidentally deleted your original e-mail while purging my system of unwanted spam.
What information do you need exactly for us to complete this transaction? I opened
a new account at my bank specifically to facilitate this transaction.
When I mentioned to the bank officer that I needed to open a new
account into which I could transfer $36 million,
he said " wow, you will certainly get free checking"!
I laughed at first, but then I realized that free checking is no laughing matter!

I must inform you at this time that telephone communication is going to be
difficult for us as my tongue was horribly mangled in a tragic cellphone
accident several years ago. In person, I can easily communicate with bits
of scrap paper and hand signs, but over the phone you would never be
able to comprehend my garbled attempts at speech. You will be happy to
know that while my handicap has been difficult to overcome, I have not
lost my sense of taste and still enjoy dining at gourmet restaurants
and sampling fine wines and cognacs.

Be that as it may, we will be confined to e-mail and/or fax messages for
the remainder of this transaction. I check my e-mail daily and will
promptly reply to any future correspondence.

I will be anxiously awaiting your further instructions.

Yours Truly,

Horace P. Manuer
Ceo/Media Wireless Group

Notice that I went back to the original spelling of my last name. Let's see if he picks up on it, too.

Lunch With a Playmate

I took a day off from playing poker and playing with Nigerian scam artists for a little B & B, which in my book means beer and bunnies! Yesterday I had the pleasure of meeting and hanging out with a former Playboy Playmate. Colleen Marie, Miss August 2003, was very cute and very nice. We had lunch together and talked a bit about her love of extreme sports and Las Vegas, where she has a home. After lunch, I watched her attempt to climb a temporary rock wall (successfully) and then had a picture taken with her. Not a bad way to spend a Thursday afternoon!

Chuck Drops a Bombshell

Chuck has dropped the equivalent of a 20 megaton explosive device on the blogger community today. I am still in shock and may be for some time. CNN and I are already trying to organize a "Hands Across Sligo" vigil where fans and mourners of the Carlos/Chuck blog can gather and drown their sorrows in a pint of Guiness and discuss the current and often inflammatory topics that Chuck dared to divulge on his digital diary. Maybe if he switched to a "subscription-based" blog it would give him something more tangible in return for his heartfelt prose. A simple link and Paypal account would easily cover the logistics of that scenario. We need to band together and let Chuck know that he can't just walk away from this "thing of ours" like that. Viva las misadventuras de Carlos!!!

Matisyahu at Electric Factory

Last night was the Matisyahu concert at Electric Factory in Philadelphia. I only recently discovered this artist and really enjoy his music.
The show was great, bordering on uplifting if only for the fact that you genuinely sense that he is for real and his beliefs boom through the mic. The former resident of West Chester born Matthew Miller, became Matisyahu in his late teens after meeting a rabbi in a park in New York and taking on the Lubavitch Hasidic lifestyle. I only have his "Live at Stubbs" CD, but his new studio album "Youth" was recently released and I plan on getting that, too.

Say No To Tilt

I've played a little poker recently with mixed results, but have been able to stay in the black for the year so far. I've only played in one big tourney which is less than I had planned, but I know that the best route for me now is to accumulate winnings in the beatable cash games and play the tournies when I am at the top of my game. This Sunday the Borgata is hosting an interesting tournament called "The Ultimate Satellite". The buy-in is $1000 and for every sixty players a winner will walk away with the ultimate grand prize package that consists of the following:

• $10,000 Buy-in to the Foxwoods Poker Classic April 6-9
• $25,500 Buy-in to the World Poker Tour Championship at Bellagio April 18-24
  
• $10,000 Buy-in to the Borgata Poker Open September 15-19
• $10,000 Buy-in to the 2006 World Series of Poker Main Event at the Rio July 28 to August 10
• $4500 in cash for travel expenses

Now that is a tempting proposition!!

Hot & Cold Running Beer

This sounds like Chuck's greatest fantasy!! (Next to Inga vrom Sveeden)

OSLO (Reuters) - A woman thought she was in heaven when beer instead of water flowed from the taps in her apartment in west Norway."I turned on the tap to clean some knives and forks and beer came out," Haldis Gundersen told Reuters from her home in Kristiansund, west Norway. "We thought we were in heaven."Beer in Norway is among the most expensive in the world with a 0.4 liter (0.7 pint) costing about 50 crowns ($7.48) in a bar.Gundersen said she tried the beer but that it tasted a bit odd and was not fizzy.It turned out that a worker in a bar two floors below had mixed up the pipes on Saturday evening, wrongly connecting a new barrel to a water pipe leading to Gundersen's flat. The bar got water in its beer taps.

Riddle Me This

Here's an interesting riddle to ponder over the weekend:

You are in a room with three light switches. Way down the hall is a room with a light bulb that one of these switches controls. You can't see the other room or the light from the other room from the room you are in.

All three light switches are off and the light bulb is also off. Now, you can fiddle with the light switches any way you want. Then, you can go into the room down the hall where the light bulb is and come back to the original room where the switches are.

There is one specific way you'll know for certain which switch controls that light bulb.

This isn't a trick question at all, but you might have to think outside the box to get the right answer. I've never met anybody yet who got it.

Road Trip '06: Alcohol Was the Theme

Like any road trip embarked upon by 6 mature, tax-paying, upstanding members of society, alcohol consumption was the main goal and we excelled in meeting our objective! Here's the basic rundown: After the free beers at the brewery we moved on to Club 18, home of the 75 cent draft and the $5 pizza, a classic combo that really got us in the groove for the rest of the trip. The Drunken Monkey, while not quite as inexpensive as Club 18 with its pricey $1.25 drafts, had its positive attributes, as well, and gave us the final burst of momentum we'd need for the hour and a half drive to our ultimate destination. While the image is a little blurry, I have included below a photo of our next bar tab at Crazy Fingers where before we knew what hit us we had consumed a total of 4 beers and 17 margaritas in a little more than an hour. The final tab of $197 made us shudder to think what heights the bill could have reached if we had decided to stay there any longer!
Once at the cabin the real drinking began, and with an initial arsenal of 3 cases of beer, a half gallon of Captain Morgan, a fifth of Vodka and a bottle of Cabo Wabo Tequila, we felt pretty secure in the fact that we were well supplied, at least for the first evening. An intense session of the classic drinking game PIGS got us off to a great start which led to several heated rounds of PIT, eventually ending the evening with a halfhearted attempt at the classic dice game Mexican. While Fold the Laundry was mentioned it was never actually played to my limited recollection.
Day two began shortly after breakfast with a pitstop at Pat's Pub in Hawley (happened to be across the street from the Hawley Diner) where we enjoyed several rounds of Yuengling, some pool and some darts. This is the spot where we found our temporary replacement for Granger, who couldn't make the trip due to his prior committment to attend a fondue party in Media.
After the bar we decided to head back to the cabin and we made a quick stop at the local market to replenish our limited food supply and we pooled our money to purchase 43 tickets for the record-setting Powerball drawing to be held later that night (the fact that I'm even writing this entry should be proof enough of the outcome of that one). We decided we would only drink hard liquor from that point on as we only had 8 beers left and the group concensus was to put the money into lottery tickets instead of more beer. By Sunday morning we had depleted all forms of alcohol but a quarter of the Cabo Wabo and we left the cabin satisfied, if not hungover.
Here's some more miscelaneous pics including one of Paul and Ted checking the thickness of the ice on the lake:

Road Trip '06: The Brewery

We arrived at the Yuengling Brewery in Pottsville, PA at about noon on Friday, which meant we had an hour and a half to kill before the tour would start. We checked out the Yuengling Museum which housed quite an impressive collection of beer paraphenalia and beer art, as well as Yuengling family momentos. We were surprised at the level of access we were granted in the building and the lack of security on the premises. On several occasions we waltzed right past the "employees only' signage to investigate rooms and areas not included in the public tour, including the brewmaster's lab and the tap room where we helped ourselves to some free samples ( see photo below). The tour itself was interesting but the tour guide could stand to drop the decibel level of her presentation a few notches. A few interesting highlights were the underground caves which were used to keep the beer cold before refrigeration was invented, and the fact that during prohibition the company survived by making ice cream and their classic Porter, which was available by prescription for medicinal purposes only! Another interesting tidbit is the fact that it takes approximately 28 days to create a batch of beer from brewing to fermenting to canning to finished product, yet on the very day that Prohibition was renounced, the Yuengling's delivered a a truckload of beer to the White House to assist in the national celebration.
The tour ended with a visit to the tap room, which we had already discovered pre-tour. The good news was you could drink any of the 7 varieties of beer Yuengling currently makes, the bad news was you were limited ( by some vague PA law) to 2 beers per person. We are currently investigating loopholes for the next trip.
The brewery has been family owned since it was founded in 1829 and each generation has to buy the brewery from the previous which led us to an interesting conclusion. Since the current owner, Dick Yuengling, has four daughters the empire is ripe for a coup. We tried to fix Ted up with Wendy Yuengling, who works in the shipping department and is the most visually appealing of the four. Who knows, if he plays his cards right we could be enjoying frosty cold pints of O'Hara Lager at the Plumstead someday!

Road Trip '06: The Drunken Monkey

While we were driving from Pottsville to Centralia, we ventured through the town of Ashland and noticed a sign for a small bar along the main strip called "the Drunken Monkey". A sign out front proclaimed it was the "home of the Monkey Wrap" which really intrigued us and we vowed to check it out on the way back from visiting the adjacent burning mine town. After Centralia we figured we were ready for anything so on the way back we pulled up to the bar and parked right out front. Inside we were greeted with a suspicious nod from the bartender and several locals enjoying a mid afternoon beer as we ordered Yuengling drafts and proceeded to investigate the premises. There was alot of monkey paraphenalia ranging from stuffed animals to posters, so I assume the owner has some sort of monkey fetish. They did have a Rolling Stones poster on the wall, too. Turns out the delicacy that they are so famously known for, The Monkey Wrap, is actually a deep fried burrito. Go figure. I guess inflation has caught up with this booming metropolis just outside of Pottsville as the price of draft beer had risen dramatically to $1.25. Oddly enough, they had the same selection of pickled eggs and hot pickled bologna that seems to be such a great seller in the local drinking haunts of this region. And what oenophile would not love a place that has ice cold bottles of Boone's Farm wine in their take-out fridge!

Road Trip '06

Well, this road trip certainly had it all! It will take several posts to report all the drunken debauchery of the weekend, but I will begin with our stop at Centralia, PA. The warning sign posted at the entrance to the town says it all. If it weren't so damn cold we may have spent a little more time exploring the little hamlet, but with the wind chill factor already in the negative digits and the sun about to set, we decided to keep this leg of the trip to a brief minimum. We were somewhat disappointed in the fact that there really wasn't any exposed flame, just a lot of steam rising from holes in the ground. Parts of the ground were warm to the touch, and you could see where the ground was starting to collapse in areas. Ted found a nice chunk of coal which we later used to heat the cabin when we got to the the lake. All in all it was kind of eerie, like visiting the set of a creepy horror movie. While I half expected to see some banjo-strumming, mouth-harp playing townsfolk rocking on their porches, we did not see any residents while we were there. This was the shortest leg of our journey, and we were quickly back on the road headed toward our final destination at Lake Wallenpaupack.

Weekend Road Trip

I found out over the weekend that on Friday, February 17, 2006 I will be embarking on a fantastic road trip through central Pennsylvania and up to Lake Wallenpaupack. We leave Friday morning and will be making stops at Centralia, the coal mining town whose only claim to fame is that it has been on fire since 1961! After that, we will be heading to Pottsville for the Yuengling Brewery tour, which, rumor has it, includes two free beers at the conclusion. Then, I believe Tedman wants to stop at Cabela's 250,000 square foot outdoorsman store in Hamburg and then finally, it's up Rt. 81 to the Pocono's. With the group that's scheduled to go, it should make for some mighty fine blogging come next Monday.

Missing Money: Part Deux

OK, I see you seem to have an interest in this topic so I will divulge the links to the websites and I truly hope you all find something.

www.missingmoney.com
www.peoplefinders.com
www.unclaimed.org
www.patreasury.org


I got my claim paperwork from the PA Treasury over the weekend, which really surprised me for the response time from a government agency.
Good luck and happy searching!

Missing Money

I read an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer the other day about a lady that searches public databases for missing money and unclaimed property for charities and schools. She had just found $35,000 for the School District of Philadelphia that was being held by the State of Texas. The article listed the sites she uses and I went on today to check it out for myself. On the first site I tried, I ran a search for my name and found two items. One is an uncashed dividend check from a Dean Witter account I had in the early nineties (about $110) and the other is an 8000 share stock certificate from a Morgan Stanley account I had back in 1992! I called the 800 number and spoke to a woman at the PA Treasury Dept. and she told me what the items were and took down my info to mail me the claim forms. I am to fill them out, get them notarized and mail them back, then they send me my stuff! I thought that was pretty cool and now I am going to run a few more searches and see what else I can find!

Thinking Back

I've been feeling a little down lately as I reflect on the past year and come to grips with the reality that it is over and I didn't come close to accomplishing anything I had set out to do. This year is going to be different and I have been thinking back to the first tournaments I ever played back in 2003, trying to rekindle the spark that ignited my passion for poker. I still remember my first tourney vividly. I had been playing online alot that summer and starting going down to the Borgata to play in cash games. ESPN was airing the 2003 World Series of Poker over and over and that was getting me into it, too. The Borgata started having nightly live tournaments with small buy-ins and I finally entered my first one on a Thursday night in November. It was a $40 buy-in with unlimited rebuys for the first hour. There were over 100 players and I ended up making the final table and finished in 7th place for a win of about $500. I was so excited and that was really the event that got me started. A few days later I noticed that the Sands was hosting a televised poker tournament with a guaranteed $1 million first prize, the biggest payout in Atlantic City history! I decided I was going to play in that event, which would be televised on Thanksgiving Day on Fox Sports Net. I only had to overcome one obstacle; the $10,200 buy-in.
The Sands was holding satellite tournaments where you could buy in for $225 and try to win a seat in the main event. Hot off my final table finish at the Boragata I figured I'd give it a shot. The big tournament would start the following Saturday so I only had a week to do this, but the first chance I got to go down and play was Thursday, two days before the big one. I drove down to Atlantic City for the 4 pm start and put down my $225 entry. I didn't realize how many professional players enter these satellites for a discount to the bigger events, so I was shocked and very nervous when I sat down with 5 major TV pros at my table. After watching so much of the World Series of Poker and the World Poker Tour it was strange to see these faces scattered throughout the room. I'll give the details in another post, but I ended up knocking out the 2001 World Champion and winning the $10,200 entry after about 5 hours of play.
As I think back to those first days of play I get goosebumps and get excited all over again at the prospects for this year. I know I have it in me, I just need to commit to the schedule and show up with my "A" game.

Media Represents at Borgata Winter Classic

The turnout for the Borgata Winter Classic was impressive and the poker craze is far from "jumping the shark". The first event last Friday had 1323 entries for a prize pool of over $660k. The second event, on Saturday, had 864 players for a prize pool of over $640k, and the official headline reads "30-something Media Man Wins $176k at Borgata!". Unfortunately, the man was 32 year old Mike Hickman, not yours truly. Who knew Media was such a hotbed of poker? I don't know Mike personally, but he is a friend of a friend. It was a nice score for him and I know I will be in that position this year, too. The $10,000 buy-in Main Event will start on Sunday and will be televised for the World Poker Tour on the Travel Channel. As bad as I wanted to play, when the cards were dealt I just wasn't as focused as I needed to be. That's poker. Next month is the World Series of Poker Circuit event at Harrah's in Atlantic City and hopefully I can rise to the occasion there. I did win a little in the cash games if that is any consolation.

Time for Some Serious Poker

The 2006 tournament circuit kicks off for me this coming week with the start of the Borgata Winter Classic on Friday, January 20. There are several events leading up to the final event, a $10,000 buy-in tournament to be televised by the World Poker Tour. Friday is a two day No-Limit event and Monday is a two day Limit event. Nothing gets my juices flowing like a little high limit hold em at the Borgata (well, not exactly nothing else, just one of my favorite things). I thought about easing into the year with a little $10/$20 but opted for the higher stakes of the $40/$80 table, known as the "Blue Chip Game". It is held in the high limit room at the Borgata, usually at table 1 in the near corner and it is called the Blue Chip Game because it is the only game where you can use the blue $10 chips that the Borgata introduced last summer. This game has a few regulars and a rotating lineup of new fish and some sharks. Now you don't want to sit at this game with less than $2000 in chips to start and $3000 or more is a better way to go. This is generally the highest limit stakes I will normally play and can be a very tough game to beat. I was doing better than 1 big bet per hour ( the grinder's goal if you want to try to make a living at this) after four hours of playing and took a dinner break. When I came back the game was breaking and I decided to call it quits for the day and head home. The new tower for the Borgata is coming along and I can't wait for the new poker room to open. The current room has 35 tables, but the new room will have 85, even more than the Taj! Plus, Bobby Flay is opening a Mesa Grill in the new section which is another bonus. I feel my mindset is right and my game is sharp so I am hoping to get off to a good start with the upcoming tourney. I'll keep you posted.

Not Much to Say

I am sorry to say that I just haven't had anything to really write about recently. I hadn't even played any poker yet this year until Wednesday nite. I ended up loser for the night after playing my final hand where I raised the blinds $10 before the flop and was accidentally re-reraised by a player who wasn't paying attention. You see, verbal bets are binding in legitimate poker games and when he announced raise without knowing I had already raised he was committed to raise at least the minimum bet. Since I had made it $12 he had to make at least $22 ($10 was the minimum amount he could raise). He made it $24 anyway, which is what I had been hoping for in the first place so I could come over the top and move all in with my pocket kings. Another player who had called my original bet dropped out after I moved all-in, but the other player actually called my all-in bet (he was on his 7th rebuy of the evening, stuck over $420, by the way) and turned over a pathetic Ace-Five offsuit. I sort of knew he was going to suck out on me as the poker gods had not been kind all night. Of course he caught an ace on the river to win the pot and I stood up, grabbed my coat and left. I had had enough of seeing the best hand lose on the river and just decided to call it a night.
I have some tourneys coming up soon, including the Winter Classic at Borgata ( a World Poker Tour event) that starts next Friday (1/20) and there is a World Series of Poker Circuit event at Harrah's in February, too. I have big plans for 2006 and need to get back into a regular schedule of playing in Atlantic City again. I was happy to discover that I am now officially a part of the Cardplayer Magazine database of players with an official Player of the Year point ranking and everything. I didn't do diddly in '05, but had two cashes in rated events from '04 that still qualify me for the list. I plan to improve that ranking this year!
Other than that, not much to report yet. I did finally read the DaVinci Code and I am now reading "See no Evil" the book that inspired the movie Syriana.
I am off to Kildare's for happy hour tonight to meet some old friends from high school so that should be interesting.

Run in With a City Cop

I went into Philly the other day to do some shopping and get a cheesesteak. I came out of a store onto the street and there was a city cop standing there writing out a parking ticket. I walked over to him and said "come on buddy, can't you give a guy a break?". He ignored me and continued writing the ticket. So I called him a jerk. He glared at me and started to write another ticket for having worn tires.
I called him an asshole. He finished writing the second ticket and put it on the windshield with the first, then he started to write yet another ticket! The more I verbally abused him the more violations he came up with and the more tickets he started to write. This went on for almost 20 minutes!
Finally, I just gave up and walked away. I didn't really care anyway, my car was safely parked around the corner in a garage, and this car had a "Hillary in 2008" bumper sticker on it!

Male & Female ATM Procedures

After months of research, male and female drive-thru ATM procedures have been developed. Please follow the appropriate steps for your gender:

MALE PROCEDURE

1. Drive up to the cash machine.

2. Put down your car window.

3. Insert ATM card into slot and enter PIN.

4. Enter amount of cash desired and withdraw.

5. Retrieve card, cash and receipt.

6. Put window up.

7. Drive off.

FEMALE PROCEDURES

1. Drive up to cash machine.

2. Reverse and back up the required distance to align car window with the machine.

3. Set parking brake, put the window down.

4. Find handbag, remove all contents on to the passenger seat to locate ATM card.

5. Tell person on cell phone you will call them back and hang up.

6. Attempt to insert card into machine.

7. Open car door to allow easier access to machine due to its excessive distance from the car.

8. Insert card.

9. Re-insert card the right way.

10. Dig through handbag to find diary with your PIN written on the inside of the back page.

11. Enter PIN.

12. Press cancel and re-enter correct PIN.

13. Enter amount of cash desired.

14. Check makeup in rearview mirror.

15. Retrieve cash and receipt.

16. Empty handbag again to locate wallet and place cash inside.

17. Write debit amount in check register and place receipt in back of checkbook.

18. Re-check makeup.

19. Drive forward 2 feet.

20. Reverse back to cash machine.

21. Retrieve card from machine.

22. Re-empty handbag, locate card holder and place card into slot provided.

23. Give dirty look to irate male driver waiting behind you.

24. Restart stalled engine and pull away.

25. Redial person on cell phone.

26. Drive for 2 to 3 miles.

27. Release parking brake.