various and sundry

Text based games are cool. I grew up on the old infocom text adventures on my Apple II, Zork etc. I found a neat remake of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy at http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/hitchhikers/game_andrew.shtml.

I also found out that I'm leaving about a grand a month on the poker table by not using rakeback affiliates. They basically make a deal with big online poker sites to get them more players, the poker sites offering them a small percentage of the new players rake. The affiliate then offers the player most of that rake back. So without any playing, they get 5-10% of the rake from their players, who get 20-30% of their own rake back. Since I generally pay about $3500 in rake a month playing low-limit, that turns out to be about $900. This is freaking sweet. If you can make 1.5BB/100 at 5/10 6max, and get in 30k hands a month, that's almost 2 grand a month in rakeback, and $4500 in winnings. That's over 6 grand a month playing low limit poker, or about 70 grand a year. Hot damn.

My cell phone charger should be getting in tomorrow from boxwave.com, so I can finally check my messages and see what I've been missing in the last few weeks. It's been nice being completely cut off, but I'm getting bored. I can't wait to get back to SoCal. Especially after watching the Iron Chef last night, in which Japan's leading sushi chef battled Iron Chef Sakai. I miss my sushi :(

Also, with regards to my heart thingy, I had an echo-cardiogram taken on Monday. I get the results tomorrow, but my doctor is telling me that he thinks I won't be able to drink alchohol or smoke ever again, as well as no red meats. Please let this be lies...