Blogger Championship 2

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I give up...

I don't believe in love anymore. I just don't. There is no reason to. I feel cold, and hurt, and am just tired. I give up. I don't want love anymore.

Fuck love.

Great...Writer's Cramp

It has seriously been forever since my wrist hurt this bad. Get those thoughts out of your heads. You know who you are.

Yesterday, I had a bright idea of writing a new poker article. I hadn't written once since around July. And I figured it's about time I start sharing some stuff I know with my fellow players.

I decided to do an in-and-out examination of Razz strategy. Ideas quickly began flowing through my head, and I decided it was time to put those thoughts down.

I stopped on my way to work at Target, and bought a 100-page composition notebook and two pens. I did this because I didn't have anything to write with on me. I began writing, thinking I would be done shortly.

Tonight, at midnight, I finally finished, and wound up using almost 1/5 of the notebook.

My hand hurts so bad, it's hard to type. But I wound up analyzing proper strategy from 3rd street straight down to showdown, and tried to encompass almost every possible situation one could face.

Now, just because I finished writing the article, doesn't mean I am finished with it. I still need to reread everything. If there are more situations to write about, I need to write about them. Then, of course, comes typing this sucker out. And then submitting it for publication on AJPoker.com.

Hopefully, this will get published. They have no idea how hard I worked on this, and how much writing this made my brain hurt.

But yeah, I think I just wrote a pretty definitive article here. And I seriously hope it goes over well.

A shred of light in a dark place can make all the difference...

I woke up resenting my job. Simply put, I hated it. This job has made me retched. Simply put, when you put yourself in a position where your patience is tested every 10 minutes, you start to realize what kind of person you really are deep down inside.

And I was horrible. I've spent so much time muting customers, call them douchebags and every other name in the book, and punching my cubicle and monitor, and giving my monitor the finger, that you would think that I had Tourette's.

I wanted to quit, but know I can't. I can't afford not to have this job right now. So I stay, and be the retched person I am.

Or maybe not?

Today, I come in, expecting another day of the normal idiots and me complaining behind their backs. What I got instead was not expected.

And it started with the worst call I have ever got.

Verizon has just adopted a new policy where e-mail address passwords cannot be abc123 or 123abc. Otherwise, the customer's e-mail is shut down. This is to protect them from spammers using their e-mail to send out spam and viruses. Some guy didn't see it this way, as I got a call from him saying he received an e-mail about e-mail abuse.

I kindly ask him to change his password from abc123 because it was a security risk. He, in turn tells me, "It's is own d*** security risk, so why the f*** should we care?"

I finally convinced him to at least create a sub-account with a new password, and he obliges me. Once we get that set up, and he starts using that e-mail address, he then starts prodding about why the original account was a security risk. I explain the whole security alert, and he then becomes irate that he would be accused of spamming because spammers could easily hack his account and send e-mail address, just because his name was on the account. And then he starts yelling over it again, and telling me how he thinks it should be, and blaming me over this.

Whatever. Finally get him off the call, and I take a break for a breather. I was trembling on this one, because I don't like being yelled at, and quite frankly, my natural reaction is reciprocate what I am experiencing.

And all through my breather, I debated about quitting. I just couldn't figure out how much my nerves would take, and how much longer I could stand it before destroying property, yelling at a customer, or killing someone.

My next 2 calls after my breather were simple transfers. My next call was a bad cell phone connection where the customer decided to call back later.

Then came my next call. A lady just giving it a go trying to set up her DSL by herself when her friend couldn't get it working.

When trying to find out what version of Windows she had, she had to move her plants off the desk to get her keyboard there, so she could type what I needed her to. She then started talking to her cat. Then she starts talking to me about her cat. A Tortoise-shell.

You have my attention. That's the exact breed of my two cats, which mean a lot to me. So we started talking about our cats, and going back and forth while she does this.

And the talk kept going with this lady over the course of the call.

Turns out, she was online, for some reason, it wasn't working earlier, but now, all she had to do was activate her account. Very straightforward, and I was about to cut the call off for the sake of my call time. She felt uncomfortable with the process at this time, and asked me to stay on the line. At that time I justified that by remembering that we almost never get the ActiveX controls on this page to install right, so we might have to do a manual setup.

I'm glad now that I didn't get her off the line.

As we went through the setup, she figures that is was just God's time to set up this DSL. Sounds crazy, but I think she was right. And yeah, I know that goes beyond any technical understanding or reasoning that I could apply to this. But I suddenly believe that.

As we got past the ActiveX controls, which amazingly installed correctly, she got to the point where she was able to set up her username and password. She was comfortable with that. I just gave her one fair warning: that the password must contain a number. Her response: "That's fine. My usual password's a bible verse."

I just felt myself calming down over this.

So I just let her know that I'd let her go, and thanked her for calling Verizon. And she told me, "Thanks for being so personable and patient. And God bless."

I couldn't get her off the call fast enough, as I was just breaking up.

I had to take another break to collect myself and get myself together. But this call was meant for me. Truly. I needed that one.

Every call that's made me bang my head against the wall, made me scream, and made me want to quit just seem meaningless now. Just because someone actually made me feel better while I was working. I had never felt that well after a call. She truly broke open a sense of peace at this job that I really needed. And I'm going to cherish that from here on in.

Maybe now I can start acting more Godly at work. Maybe now I won't feel miserable now.

I can't divulge names of my customers, due to our security policy. But I'll always remember her name. And if she ever reads this (I'm sure she won't, but if she does, she'll know who she is): Thanks. And God bless you.

another bonk

After watching variance rip me a new hole on Full Contact, I've decided to a game I could once play decently: Razz. Thus, it's about time for a deposit to Full Tilt.

It had been a minute or two (more like since November) since I played Razz. And lo, FTP has started running Razz Freerolls nightly. I am so there.

Simply put, the level of play there is simply donkalicious. I watched players at 400/800 fold to a 28 All-In bet in a 3000 pot. RIDICULOUS!

But anyway, 589 entered, 18 cashed. In normal circumstances (like a buy-in event), the payout would've been around 50 cashed. I played pretty solid, and made some great moves.

Unfortunately, the time caught up with me, as I grew more tired and careless, and I finished 54th.

I made the top 10% again. Which is not a bad place to be. It also reminded me that I can play Razz still. It took a level or two to get my feet back under me. It had been forever since I played a Stud-based game period.

But once I got going, I was counting the cards again, and running smart plays on my opponents, and saving myself bets in tricky situations. I only had one incredibly bad beat the entire tournament put on me, which would've been probably avoided had I have bet 5th street like I considered. Unfortunately, 6th street gave my opp. a draw, which she made on 7th to out draw me. I had her the entire way up until 7th.

That was one huge mistake that I'd like to have back, but it wasn't a costly one.

But all-in-all, I feel my comeback to Razz is going to be a lot of fun this time around.