Don't f**k with the octopus

This video is worth installing Realplayer (or at least Real Alternative) for.

What are we going to do tonight Brain?

Jennifer Government: NationStates looks like an interesting game that I may just try to get into. It reminds me a little bit of Ender's Game, and the Locke/Demosthenes development with his siblings.

I think my boyfriend must be in on the conspiracy against my chocolate-fast. After a week out of town he arrives bearing gifts (which well he should), however the gifts consists of multiple specimens of two of my favorite chocolate bars which are hard to find in the US (sigh). At least they give me something more to look forward too this week.

Oh yeah - the featured ingredient in the Cook's Illustrated that was waiting for me in my mailbox? You guess it, baking chocolate...

I haven't really had a chance to do much research poker wise yet this week. I'm hoping to get some time to check out PokerStars (and decide what I want to do with my Empire account given the Party issues) sometime this week.

A week without chocolate: Second full day

Well, today actually went pretty well as far as choco-avoidance goes. My only temptation was the cookies during lunch: chocolate chip, double chocolate-macadamia, and (thankfully) oatmeal raisin. So, my cookie-lust was filled, though I really could have gone for one of those double chocolate deals. Nuts are good for me right?

Someone at work must read this blog (which, based on my tracksy stats, is really not very likely) because I got an invitation to this in my inbox today. It seems that my work is partially sponsoring this because haven't you heard, chocolate is good for you now. I'm totally going.

Today I tried out this anti-procrastination method. It seemed to work pretty well except for a couple of gotchas: 1.) It doesn't work well when I get interrupted (which seems to be about 10 timses a day, minimum) 2.) The tool I choose to do the timing isn't quite ideal. Workrave is a neat product for enforcing breaks for people fighting repetitive strain injuries, but it is a little draconian since its definition of "break" means get up and leave the machine (it actually locks your computer when you are supposed to be resting. In the 10+2 plan, I would have liked to spend my 2 minutes surfing....

I also learned a little more about the whole PartyPoker/Skins split which I am now going to start blaming for my lack of being on a winning streak at Empire. I'll try to delve a little deeper and post more tomorrow.

A week without chocolate...

In an attempt to prove to myself that I am stronger than my addictions, I've decided to go for a week without eating (or drinking!) any chocolate. I started yesterday at 8pm, and on this coming Sunday (10/23/2005) at 8pm, I'm going to commence making the chocolate lava thingies featured in this episode of Good Eats.

So far, I think I'm doing ok. The hardest part was that almost immediately after making the pledge yesterday evening, I ended up watching the above linked chocolate themed Good Eats episode - I honestly didn't know what it was about, the title was "Art of Darkness" which seems innocent enough (actually, it does seem a little sinister, but still!). I notice now that there are actually 3 different Art of Darkness episodes - hopefully I don't run into the other two this week...

In the interest of full disclosure, I must admit that I did make a small slip today. One of my co-workers is attempting to divulge himself of his Girl Scout Cookie hoard and walked into my cube and promptly proceeded to push a box of these into my face. I only took one, and then ate it before I remembered my goal (sigh). I don't even LIKE Tagalongs...bah! Obviously, I'm going to need to be more diligent so that slips like that don't happen again.

007

is not blond!

Someway, some how, the Administration must be responsible for this.

As an aside, poker wise I seem to be flattish so far, but making money trivial amounts of money through rakeback and bonuses...not quite the pro-circuit yet, but give me time.

This weekend's project will be to install Poker Tracker and play around with it a little - I'll keep you posted.

Signs of the Impending Apocalypse: Volume 1

Welcome to SOTIA, my periodic foray into the reasons why I'm sure that the end times must be nigh upon us.

Today's entry: You thought that squirrels on crack were just a product of teenagers on crack?

Think again!

Actually, I'm pretty impress with the boys over at threebrain.com, last time I checked them out, all they had was Weeeeee! and Hypothermia, but it seems that they have expanded their repetoire (not that I'm brave enough to watch anything else on there). Hypothermia seems to have been remixed too - why? Because the end of the world is coming....of course!

That's all for tonight - being sick sucks. I wish they sold Neo Citran in this foresaken country...

Interesting site

Here's a Newbie Guide to Online Poker that some guy on 2+2 has created, from what I've read it looks pretty interesting, thought that you might feel the same.

As an aside - why are men so frustrating...sigh.

Getting started in Internet Poker

So, my live game is "ok", and getting better now that I'm trying to apply some of the concepts in Small Stakes Hold'em, but I've been feeling that to really improve, I need to get more practice and take more notes.

Taking notes (or consulting reference material) during a live game is, in my opinion, less that practical, so into the scary world of internet poker goeth e-o. Thankfully, I've got a pal who knows a lot about this sort of thing so here's the steps that he's laid out for me to get started. I'm posting them here for two reasons: first, they might be of interest to one of you, and second, having them written down will help me to remember.

Step One: Open up a Neteller account
Neteller seems to be the PayPal of the internet gambling world. There are other money transfer sites that are accepted online, but Neteller seems pretty universal, and for me it came with references (which is important if I'm going to be depositing money with gambling sites).
You'll need to do this at least a week before when you want to start playing unless you want to pay between 3.9% and 8.9% in transaction fees. My experience with them was pretty painless, though they do have a slightly confusing account verification process that involves phone calls and mystery deposits to your checking account (but, they did pay me $0.14 for my trouble...)

Step Two: Are you a Bonus or a Rakeback Whore?
A bonus is a fixed amount of money that the site that you sign up with will pay you for making your first deposit. It's usually something like 20% with some sort of cap, and you only get the money when your MGR goes above a certain point. Bonuswhores has lots of info on how to maximize your bonuses, and turn a $500 payroll into potentially much more (unless your play totally sucks).

A rakeback is a percentage of your MGR that is paid back to you on an ongoing basis. The way this works is that each of the poker sites have a number of "affiliates". They offer each of their affliates a certain percentage of the rake that they earn from players who the affliates refered to them. In turn, the affiliate pays you a portion of the rackback that they got from the site that you actually played on. Confused yet?

Basically, you sign up for the site you are interested in via one of their affiliates, the affliate gets say 40% of the rake that you pay on every hand, the affliate keeps 15% for themselves, and gives you 25%. Some players with really high MGR apparently get offered rakebacks personally by sites hoping to swipe customers from competitors. I'm not one of those players, and if you're reading this - neither are you. For more information on rackbacks, try RakeBackReview.

I was talked into going in the direction of maximizing my rakeback. The reason is that basically a bonus is a one-time deal for every site, and it's only really lucrative if you open up an account with a lot of money. I'm planning on starting small, so the $20 that I get back on a $100 depost isn't really all that exciting. Rakeback on the other hand is for life (from what I understand it), and the more you play, the more you get.

Step 3: Sign up
I'm signing up for EmpirePoker through RakeTracker (non-referral link), because I was referred to both by friends. The RakeTracker signup was pretty straight forward, and their site seems nicely laid out.

My next step is to actually sign up to Empire Poker given the referrer link that was emailed to me by RakeTracker. The reason I haven't done this yet is that since I previously installed Party Poker (to play around), and EP is a "skin" of PP, EP apparently won't let me create a new account, so I need to find a "clean" machine (which will be the desktop box that's currently in pieces on the floor of my study).

That's all for now, when I have some time I'll track down some links to poker glossaries for definitions of things like MGR and skins, but for now, if you're feelling totally confused, try the Beginner forums at 2+2.

It's all in the flour...

The foccacia? Not so good, very "crummy"? crumb, not an amazing rise. It basically reminded me of mediocre pizza dough.

I'm hoping that the problem was just that I used all-purpose flour instead of bread - I'll give the recipe one more chance.

Your silly link of the day is brought to you by Metafilter.

Toodles!

arrgh!

obviously, someone didn't like my Harriet Miers conspiracy theory, and blogger's "scheduled downtime" (my ass) ate my post.

fuckers.

It was a good post too (I know you knew that I was going to say that).

And they tease me with the "Recover Post" link, but it does nothing.

I won't try to recreate it, but here is a digest
This evening, I attempted to make focaccia from The Yellow Book (which I should write an entry about some day) . It is cooling now (it was rising when I attempted to post before)

I think that the"grassroots" anti-Harriet buzz has been planted by the Administration to lull the liberals into complanceny (I mean, anything that pisses these guys off has to be good -- right?)

MarketPlace Takeout

Just heard on tonight's Marketplace that they finally have a Podcast!

Now, if only they would do the same for the Splendid Table - my public radio listening will acheive a state of zen^H^H^H nirva^H^H^H^H^H something really good....

A hacker without a handle

Poor Joey, lately I've come to understand what he was going through. For about a decade, I had a handle I loved (came up with it in Latin class, no less). but it seems that over the past couple of years I've basically outgrown it. It's a little sad actually, as I've lost touch with my old persona, I've also lost touch with the people who know me by it - it's like a little piece of my life has been bundled off and put into permanent storage. I wish I had more pictures....

So, now I'm back as Eclectic Ocelot (I haven't decided whether or not to add a "the" at the front yet). Why this? Well, I just discovered ocelots not to long ago, and I think that they are pretty fricking cool - in fact, I think that my cats probably dream about being ocelots at night (hopefully this will be the last time I mention my cats here - don't think the world needs another crazy cat lady blog.

The "eclectic" is for a couple of reasons: first it makes the name really fun to say, second (and most importantly) I'm really starting this blog because I've wanted for a while to find a blog that discussed things that were fun for me. Sure, there's Metafilter, Gizmodo, CardSquad, and other sites that tickle a few of my interests every now and then, but nothing that really covers it all. Maybe there are people out there whose interests are just like mine, and if so, this blog is for them. Maybe you're one of those people? Maybe you should stick around, read a few of my posts, drop me a comment and let me know you're out there. And if what I have to offer doesn't interest you Maybe it just wasn't meant to be...

So, this is me Eclectic Ocelot... The? Eclectic Ocelot... EcOc... eo... whatever. I can't really say what this blog will be about but hopefully I'll enjoy figuring it out...

First Post!

Seriously, I've been meaning to (and avoiding) doing this for quite a while. We'll see how long I keep it up for.

I think the secret will be pacing - one (and only one) entry a day. If I have more ideas of what to say, I can queue them up, but no reason to be busting out with a world of new content right away.

Today's mundane discovery: beet greens taste pretty good (better than beets at least). I'd honestly eat more greens if they weren't such a bitch to prep - what am I, in the military or something?

Tomorrow - who am I?