My computer is now officially fucked.  It worked for a solid 5 days after I got rid of iTunes, but now it’s fucking up and it’s even worse than it was before.  I’m holding off on the inevitable, but I know I’m going to have to format the hard drive and start over.  It has only been 3 years since I got this computer, but I was really hoping I wouldn’t ever have to re-install the OS. Of course, I keep putting it off, so it’s going to be a while before I’m back to my semi-regular-every-few-weeks posting.

 And speaking of things that aren’t getting any better.  I ran for the first time in five months at physical therapy yesterday.  It fucking hurt.  A lot. Like, really a lot.  I’m not sure what I’m going to do.  I have an appointment with my doctor on Wednesday, but I’m really starting to think we’re going to need some more MRIs or scopes or fucking something because it really isn’t getting any better.  I did get to dribble a soccer ball though.  It was awesome; seriously awesome.  We’ll see what the doctor says on Wednesday.

Easter weekend was surprisingly light in AC. I guess there are more devout C&E Catholics here than I expected.

I headed out once again with the same couple I went with on Chinese New Year. At the last minute, they talked a friend into going and driving with us. Now I’m not one to envy cars, but when the car is  BMW M5, you can’t help but envy its awesomeness. That car is sick.  Pair it with a crazy driver (crazier than Chinese New Year) and I really thought I was going to die. But I couldn’t help but admire the handling of the car. Unbelievable.

I learned a few things on this trip:

1. 10/20 Limit is unbelievably soft.  Now I know why F-Train goes on about it all the time.  I had the best time I’ve had playing poker in over a year playing the 10/20 game.  I will hit it again soon.
2. I find myself playing higher limits in the table games just to get away from the douche-iness that always seems to find its way to me at craps and blackjack tables.
3. Deep tissue massage is where it’s at.  At the Borgata ask for Sue, she’s amazing.
4. If you stay in your hotel room past 4pm you will automatically be charged for a second day.  Luckily I talked them into comping the room for me so I didn’t have to pay the $300 for a night we didn’t even spend in the hotel room.

After talking so much shit about Quiznos and hailing Subway, I got food poisoning from the Subway on 60th and Lex last week; putting off my SXSW and AC (10/20 limit woo!) posts for yet another week. They’re seriously coming though.

Then my fucking computer started blue-screening because of some horrible combination of fucking iTunes and my fucking iPod. “Surprise device removal” apparently wasn’t as important in their regression testing as it was for us with that fucking USB-6008. Oh writing device drivers; those were the party days!

And my excuse for not posting this week?

Monotonix @ Union Hall 4-7-2008

Fuck yeah motherfucker.

This post brought to you by the big can of fuck you I have in my pocket.

Quiznos has always been trying to force me to stop eating there. As tasty as the food is, I had a hard time dealing with their commercials. But the turkey bacon guacamole sandwich always won. Today when I went to get the ol’ TBG I realized that Quiznos got rid of the “regular size” and now go with 6″ and 12″ for $6 and $10, respectively. 6″ isn’t enough food. $10 is waaaay the fuck too much to pay for a sandwich at Quiznos. Assclowns.

I walked out and went to Subway instead. Now Subway completely fucked me when they went from the top triangle cut to the traditional pacman cut, but half the morons at Subway were incapable of cutting the triangle properly anyway. They made up for it by adding the itailan herb and cheese bread and by offering to microwave any sandwich for you. And much to my surprise, Subway is running a $5 for a 12″ sub special (in Manhattan at least). That’s a 50% discount (take note, asshats at Quiznos).

So Quiznos, enjoy not having my business indefinitely (or at least until I get really fucking sick of not eating guacamole every day and come crawling back). Fuck you, we’re not friends.

Note: Posts like this are going to have to fill the time until I can get the novel I wrote on my phone out (email connectivity issues from my phone). Seriously I didn’t forget about SXSW, I wrote about a million top three lists for it so I hope I don’t lose this email.

sxsw2008: over the top, originally uploaded by jacklevy.

Random girl laughs while I explain to her that Brian is about to kick my ass at arm wrestling.

…but I am ready to switch web providers.  For the second time in the four years I’ve been hosted here, they’ve managed to lose two weeks of updates. Now, I don’t update all the time, so it’s not a horrible problem, but if they would at least fucking admit that they lost my data it would be a different story.  Instead I’ve been arguing with them for over a week and I’ve gotten nowhere.

Fuck.  Still.  Fuck.

Now that that’s out of my system, I’ll start thinking about re-posting my SXSW updates, SXSW trip reports, Jesus Day AC trip, and other miscellaneous information no one wants to read.

South by Southwest is a music festival that is explicitly designed for people like me. It’s a marathon. Four solid days of drinking and watching music, but not in a smelly outdoor camping kind of way, in small clubs that are within walking distance of each other starting from whenever you wake up and going until 2am bar close.

Last year we really took advantage of the free drinks. This year I don’t think I had more than 3 free drinks and I want to say they were all Dewar’s and ginger at Red Eye Fly. Generally speaking with the day shows, if you have good food/drinks/giveaways then the shows are going to be terrible. That way it’s a no-lose situation. Either you see good music like I did this year, or you eat and drink all day for free.

Once again this year we continued the now established tradition of hitting Mugshots during the siesta time between the day and night shows for some good cheap drinking. This year involved no shots though, which probably a good thing because it meant that I made it all the way through the weekend without throwing up.

Write ups when I get home.

First Lonestar tallboy at Emo’s

Biggest asshole move of the weekend? Jumping the line at Burbon Rocks to see the Helio Sequence. TOTALLY FUCKING WORTH IT. And to my credit, I had no intention of jumping the line, I was just drunk and asking where I was supposed to stand when she scanned us in.

Nerd out celebrity sighting:

Aziz Ansari of Human Giant.

ROCK.

Once upon a time I used to play poker constantly. Somehow while playing 5-6 games of soccer per week and holding down a full-time job I could still find the time to play 15-20 hours of poker per week. Moving to NY definitely changed how much I could play, but UIGEA is what really fucked it up for me. I pulled out almost every dollar I had in an online site, which was a good thing as I didn’t get my entire bankroll stuck in the Neteller mess.

A month ago, I decided to make an effort to start actively playing again. I randomly hit a limit blogger tournament and while I can’t dig up any hand histories, I do have this gem from the chat:

MiamiDon: thats limit with idiots
MiamiDon: most horrible play I’ve seen in weeks, KQ

I’m the idiot. If I remember correctly I spiked a jack to hit an inside straight and crack his aces. It actually got much uglier than that as I pulled a number of suckouts to stay alive for a while. Eventually I lost an all-in when I was ahead as the universe does have a sense of humor.

Today I decided to go back to the drawing board. Back to where I made money in poker to begin with. Limit poker. Low stakes. Today’s results were ridiculously good averaging somewhere around 20BB/hr. I don’t expect that to hold up, but it feels good to kinda get into the swing of things again. We’ll see where this goes.