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A Blogger Technicality, Starcraft 2, More Brett Favre?, MORE Roger Clemens???

No thanks to my two-year-old nephew, everyone in this house is horribly sick, including myself. I’ve slept all day–tons of medication will do that to you–and I just woke up a few minutes ago.

I shall be making this post while munching on my dinner of Ritz crackers, slices of American cheese, and sliced turkey breast.

- So apparently Blogger timestamps each new entry based on the time the entry was drafted, not the time the entry was actually published. Case in point: the blog entry that I created on Thursday, which did not go live until Friday (because of the review of The Office) was initially timestamped Thursday ~8PM. Had I not woken up a few minutes ago to check my blog, I would never have noticed it, and would have been eliminated from the IMBC.

To remedy this, I changed the timestamp on the blog entry in question to Friday. You can check the RSS feed to verify that the entry for Friday was indeed posted AFTER the entry about The Office.

Nevertheless, Hank, if you’re reading this, I’d like you to administer a ruling on whether or not what I did was kosher. If it’s not, then I guess my run in the IMBC is over at 57 blog entries (and, personally, that would be 30 entries or so more than I would have anticipated).

- In the worst kept secret of the week, Blizzard has announced production of Starcraft 2: The Fight for More Money.

(Tangent: Yeah, I watched Spaceballs a few days ago, for the 25,000th time.)

In other news, nerds everywhere are already lining up in front of EBGames, Gamestop, etc., waiting for the release of the game. I’m surprised these stores aren’t already taking preorders.

One interesting passage from the article above: “As for initial StarCraft 2 impressions - the game looked very similar to SC1 - nearly identical user interface - graphic styles and unit proportions nearly the same - more flashy lighting effects but it seems like Blizzard didn’t want to mess with SC’s underlying formula very much.” On the one hand, why change what worked for one of the biggest and best RTS (Real Time Strategy) games of all time? On the other hand, StarCraft was released in 1997; I would have expected some sort of major graphical changes between the original and the sequel (kinda like the difference between Warcraft 2 and Warcraft 3).

I just hope Starcraft 2 turns out a heck of a lot better than Command and Conquer 3. C&C3 was pretty abysmal, IMO; I just recently played the original C&C, and thought the storyline AND gameplay in the original were a heck of a lot better than C&C3. I only played the GDI campaign in C&C3, and have no real motivation to play the NOD campaign. C&C3 was better than the second iteration of the series, though, but that’s because Tiberian Sun was complete and utter crap.

- Yeah, Brett Favre is yapping again. And yeah, Roger Clemens is getting way too much media attention. Rather than talk about either of these attention whores, I’ll leave you with this article, and remind sports fans around the country that, as bad as your team may be, your team isn’t the Royals (ripped from Bill Simmons’ blog).

Until next time!

Hold’em Fun, Screwed Are The Suns, More Time Warner Fun, and Wrongfully Accused

Here is what should have been blog entry #100; it was pushed back only after I watched the season finale of The Office.

- The term “bad beat” is a poker term referring to a hand won by a player despite a holding a terrible hand, and then making the best hand by the turn or the river. There are bad beats, and then there some absolutely sickening bad beats (which I shall, from now on, refer to as “donkey sh!t”).

Case in point, from a hand I saw a couple days ago (I am player Quintaces):

Hand #1135011766000819: Munich 11766
Seat 2: MCRAIGA (6.25 in chips)
Seat 3: Vatson (25.15 in chips)
Seat 4: Quintaces (8.40 in chips)
Seat 5: GivMeDaMoney (25.52 in chips)
Seat 6: slick sammy (46.55 in chips)
Seat 7: SkunkEBuds (7.40 in chips)
Seat 9: TL1127 (21.49 in chips)
Vatson: posts small blind $0.10
Quintaces: posts big blind $0.20
Dealt to Quintaces [ Kh Ks ]
GivMeDaMoney: raises to $0.40
slick sammy: calls
SkunkEBuds: folds
TL1127: folds
MCRAIGA: calls
Vatson: folds
Quintaces: raises to $1.50
GivMeDaMoney: calls
slick sammy: calls
MCRAIGA: calls
*** FLOP *** [ 9s Qc As ]
Quintaces: checks
GivMeDaMoney: bets $5.80
slick sammy: calls
MCRAIGA: is all in
Quintaces: folds
*** TURN *** [ Qd ]
GivMeDaMoney: is all in
slick sammy: folds
GivMeDaMoney: returns uncalled bet $18.22
*** RIVER *** [ Tc ]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
GivMeDaMoney wins $2 with Two Pairs, Aces and Queens
*** SHOW DOWN ***
MCRAIGA wins $19.35 with Straight, Queen high

MCRAIGA held a jack and an eight. Calling before the flop was a horrible play enough, but then he called an all-in bet with just an inside straight draw (needing a ten to make his straight)!

There were a couple other horrendously bad beats, like the guy who flopped three queens and lost to four deuces on the river, or the guy who went all-in with absolute crap and got help on the turn and river to make a flush.

Online poker, it’s FAN-tastic!

- The Suns ran out of gas last on Wednesday, and lost to the Spurs to go down 3-2 in the best of seven series. As if that wasn’t bad enough, noted dirty player Bruce Bowen hit the game winning shot: a 3-pointer from the corner. Think the Suns could have used Amare Stoudemire and Boris Diaw yesterday? If the Spurs go on to win the NBA Championship, some votes have to go to Robert Horry, right? The Suns were totally gassed at the end of Game 5, and they had only a single off-day to recover for Game 6, AND they have to win tonight or go home (and it’s not looking good)!

I am praying for this series to go to a Game 7, for the following reasons:

  1. I can’t rule out the possibility of a Suns’ retaliatory cheap shot, this time on the Suns’ home floor (I kid :P).
  2. I want to see how the Suns’ fans treat Robert Horry. Maybe a fan will throw a towel at him.
  3. Most importantly, this is the most compelling NBA Playoffs series to come around in years. I’d like it to go the distance.

- (from Consumerist) I should really stop complaining about how much Time Warner sucks. I don’t have it nearly as bad as these guys do. My favorite story is this one; ghetto-rigged “repairs” are nice if you’re doing it for yourself or for a friend, but not when you’re a technician for a major cable company!

(Tangent: I love the pictures that Consumerist uses in their articles, like the guy smoking crack in the first article linked above.)

- Finally, a Harford, CT, man will be paid $5 million nearly a year after he was released from prison, when DNA evidence proved he did not commit a rape he was convicted of in 1988:

Tillman, who was 26 when he was arrested, was sentenced to 45 years in prison after being convicted of raping and beating a woman in Hartford in 1988. The victim identified him, but Tillman was exonerated last summer after DNA tests showed he could not have been the attacker.

Tillman’s lawyer, Gerard A. Smyth, said his client believes the $5 million is fair compensation.

I hope I don’t hear that this guy has agreed to a book/TV movie deal in the next couple of weeks. In all seriousness, I hope the guy is able to life a normal life after being (wrongfully) imprisoned for so many years. Sure, $5 million would probably be enough for the guy to retire on, but is any amount of money enough to pay the guy back for losing eighteen years of his life?

Kudos to the guy for being so humble, and kudos to the CT legislature for their decision as well as their subsequent standing ovation to the guy.