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Mon.Jun.26.2006

2:46 am EDT        66°F (19°C) in Baldwinsville, NY

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Again, it seems like life just gets in the way of updating this thing as often as I would like. This is only my seventh update in the month of June, meaning I’m not exactly having a stellar month. Then again, I suppose this is better than what happened between November 2001 and February 2004, when I went 26½ months without an update largely because the site was not online for much of that period.

Yes, I have only come about 700 miles (around 1,100 km) in four days. When my little plot to take this load, which originated in Romeoville, IL, to the company’s Columbus, OH terminal fell through, I was pretty well stuck with it. At least it happened to be routed within 40 miles (65 km) of the Interstate 94 corridor, so by adding some extra out-of-route miles to the trip, I was able to shut down in the I-94 corridor city of Ann Arbor for two days. I arrived Thursday evening, at which point my friend Marc picked me up and took me to his apartment; he would return me to the truck Saturday evening.

The highlight of the unplanned stop in Ann Arbor was Friday’s “poker night” at the apartment of one of Marc’s friends. As I mentioned a week ago, I have really been interested in Texas Hold’em lately, and this gathering presented me with my first real opportunity to play in a large tournament setting. Everything was kind of disorganized at the outset, because nobody had taken the time beforehand to formulate a set of house rules and we had to haggle over those for a while, but once all the details were worked out and play began, it went well. I ended up finishing fifth out of the 12 players there, missing out on the $10 pay-out for third place by two spots; Marc was the big $30 winner for the night. I think I learned two things: (1) somebody needs to write up a set of house rules, including chip values, starting chip counts, and blind structures, long before anybody shows up to a poker tournament, and (2) king-7 off-suit is not an “all-in” hand, not even after flopping another king.

I have actually been inspired enough to write up my own set of house rules for Texas Hold’em, and I think I may go ahead and sink $100 into a 1,000-piece chip set on my next home time. With the chip colors and denominations I settled on last night, 800 chips would support a 12-player tournament with some spares left over in a couple colors, and since nobody seems to sell 800-piece chip sets, I might as well add 200 white chips (white is the generally accepted color for 1-unit chips) to fill out the set of 1,000 chips. Maybe one of these days, I’ll host a tournament.

I saw something last night that really demonstrates the executive branch’s contempt for the rule of law in King Chimpy’s 43rd Reich. I was exiting eastbound Interstate 90 at State Route 45 in Austinburg, OH, to park at the Flying J and call it a night; complying with the law, I stopped at the red light at the end of that off-ramp. The light turned green, and I began to move forward; I had probably pulled at least 20 feet (6 m) into SR 45 when I suddenly saw flashing red-and-blue lights and heard a siren to my right. An Ohio State Highway Patrol trooper was coming north on SR 45, and apparently decided he didn’t have to wait for his light to go back to green; he simply turned on his lights and siren to force me to stop in mid-intersection! If I had known what he was doing there (unfortunately, it wasn’t until another 20 seconds had passed that I could figure it out), I swear to God I would have kept moving and let his fascist ass hit me.

It was pretty easy to figure out what he did when, a mere 20 seconds later, I saw this trooper continue north on SR 45 and cut his police lights off. That stupid fucking asshole was too goddamned important to wait for the light to turn green, and it didn’t matter that he had to stop a moving 70,000-lb. (31,751 kg) truck to do it. It’s really amazing that the very people charged with enforcing the law can so brazenly demonstrate their contempt for it, but I suppose that this is not at all surprising in King Chimpy’s 43rd Reich and especially in Ohio, the worst Rethuglican cesspool in the nation. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Osama would deserve amnesty for 9/11 if he takes out Columbus with his next attack.

You know, I was noticing something about a week ago: I haven’t yet made an update in 2006 from that fascist state down south. It’s going to stay that way for at least the next few days, as I’m headed to the Carolinas with my next load.