I have been playing Texas Holdem for almost two years now. I much prefer playing on the computer instead of in real life. Real life poker is just too slow. I don’t have the patience to sit through to the end, if I make it that far.

Pokerstars is the only website that I have played poker on the Internet. Back in late 2004, I started out with play money, then months later added some actual real money to gamble on. All throughout, it has been up and down. I keep track of my games and tournaments through an Excel spreadsheet that I made for myself on the computer. That has been a project in itself. In the file, I note money won and lost, position, overall gains, etc. It is a fantastic way to measure my progress.

I certainly have not earned any money by playing this. If anything, I have lost money. But it comes and goes so slowly, I hardly notice. That said, I do enjoy playing on Pokerstars. I have to give it marks for being a lot of fun, their adding of new features, and their customer service.

My only problem is that I feel that there is at least a 50/50 chance that the whole game is rigged. This is primarily true for the regular tables, and less so for the tournaments. Simply too many hands have straights, flushes, and sometimes four-of-a-kind. These big hands happen one after the other, on some nights. How often does this happen is real life, I wonder? Sure, you can say that the computer can deal out five times as many hands per hour as a real life game, but that doesn’t explain why deal after deal is an amazing hand. See, the better everyone hand is, the more money the Pokerstars business gets from the “rake” of the winnings. They have an interest in hurrying the game up, or encouraging people to bet more. I can’t swear to any conspiracy, but if you like poker, check out Pokerstars.com. Below, you’ll see my player icon:

The Carolina Hurricanes won the Stanley cup, beating Edmonton in a 3-to-1 victory at the RBC Center in Raleigh! I watched on TV and the game was awesome.

For my birthday, Laura bought me an iPod Shuffle! I absolutely love it. I used to own a small Phillips mp3 player that I’d bought years ago. That player only had 128 mb of storage and the controls were clunky. The one AAA battery didn’t last as long as I hoped, either.

But since using my new 512 mb iPod, I can see why it is above and beyond its rivals. Sure, the Shuffle doesn’t have a screen, but its simplistic abilities and size were my primary reasons for wanting this particular model. The player just plain works, and works well. Managing my music library and playlists is so brain-dead easy with iTunes that I can’t imagine going back to using any other software. It is so smooth and slick, it makes others in its class seem clunky and complicated.

The iPod has a few noteworthy cool things that I doubt you’d find in other players. For instance, if you are playing music and your headphone cord is pulled out, it automatically pauses the music for you. The built-in rechargeable battery never needs to be swapped out; only charged with a powered USB port. The device also doubles as a portable storage drive for any kind of data, not just music files. The onboard USB plug gives you freedom from having to search for the right cable to connect the iPod to the computer all the time.

Overall, I am very satisfied with it. Now that I am a proud iPod owner, I have moved up to the ranks of the elite class of music lovers. I can wear my white earbuds with pride.

I have had the Playstation 2 game GoldenEye for some time now. I think it was released at the end of 2004. I just looked up something about it online, and was surprised that a lot of game reviewers gave it “passable ratings”. In fact, ign.com rated it 6.5 out of 10. Personally, I’d give it more credit.

Here’s why. I love first-person shooters, mainly. And I really enjoyed the old GoldenEye game that was made for the Nintendo 64, long ago. So I had high hopes for how fun this would be. This game for the PS2 is online, which is the main reason that I bought it. My only complaint in this area is that trying to wade through the options of hosting your own game are too complicated and choosing and managing the map rotation is not implemented in an easy way.

Other than some technical things like the above, the game is a lot of fun to play. It is very addictive. The things that happen while everybody is gunning each other down is often hilarious. Some of the weapons will make your enemy fly through the air when they get hit, which makes me laugh every time. It has a great set of weapons and objects to collect in the arenas. In fact, a great thing about the game is that you can use the arenas themselves to kill other players, though traps and stuff. That is something I have grown to love that I haven’t seen anywhere else.

I have played this game a lot since I got it, which was probably a year ago. I don’t get tired of it. I am not sure why some other people disagree. Actually, I play this game more than any other of mine at the moment. My review here is primarily based on how much I play the online mode. I have not played the single player walkthrough mode nearly as much. I reached a certain point, and the game got repetitive and impossible.

I wish more people would be online to play with. I think the reason that finding a host is spotty is due to the silly, complicated way they made it work for someone trying to create a host. Some of the default settings, like ending the match after only 10 kills, are stupid. And it defaults to using the same map over and over. I think this is why there isn’t a good deal of choice when searching for a game to join.

In the end, if you like this kind of game, I’d recommend playing it. I dare say that I like playing it more than Medal of Honor when it comes to comparing just the online modes. And that is saying a lot.

I have finally decided on a theme to use for my site. I like the clean look of it. I’m going to try to keep it this way and not change it often, if I can help it.

Welcome to my new site. I am going to use the WordPress blogging software to manage my entire site as a whole now. Blitzcraig.net will be my new domain name. The best of my regular website and my blog are now one and at a single domain. With this software, I can change my sites theme and appearance very easily. At some point in the future, I’ll decide on a theme instead of using the default. I’ll leave it as is until I get my feet wet. My old domain will remain online and active. Pages requested there will redirect here. My email address will stay the same and will not be changing.