Great story Tony. "... But you should call the number."... hilarity. I'm glad you stuck with it and didn't just agree to call back later. I hate that garbage.

I believe Andy got a better digital cable price when he was gonna leave. Apparently we should periodically try to quit all these memberships to get the good prices.

Brendan... I didn't make any benches for the church. Okay technically I helped, but that was your buddy Scott's project. My benches were for a community center near my house, where as far as I know there were no lame guys waiting for girls to ask THEM to dance. Also as far as I know, they WERE horribly defaced by skateboarders and vandalism.

Sweet painting though.

jhiro.net may indeed rise again, but I've got a different name in mind. And no real design concepts yet. Maybe I should just modify the old one. Or go back to my Street Fighter character select screen idea... To be continued once I get my computer running again.

Steve, sorry you lost your online poker money. You'd probably have done well if you had the guts to play $3-$6. Heh just kidding, that's horrible advice and goes against what I told you earlier. You just have to keep studying and learn through experience. When you're ready (read: WHEN YOU HAVE A JOB), we can talk Party Poker/Empire Poker bonuses. That way you have some cushion to fall back on if the cards screw you over.

I agree with most of Brendan's comments. However, I don't mind seeing friends lose money if it's not that much and it's because they ignored my advice. Because that's just stupid. And "closest" friends... nope, don't think I've ever had one of those.

There is just one aspect I want to address. You obviously want a table full of weak callers who play too many hands too far for too much sucker money. However, I would guess that at those really low stakes players who learned from TV shows (or not at all) are playing a lot of hands, and aggressively. This may be the key to someone like us having trouble. When Brendan and I were starting out at PokerRoom, a good $1-$2 table had 60% seeing the flop and $20 average pots (oh, those days were SWEET). If the $.50-$1 pots are really getting that big, then there's gotta be some raising going on. Give me a table with no preflop raises and I'll gladly sit there all day. But I hate it when any other player raises preflop. That's because it's now costing me more to play a hand I'll probably have to fold when the flop misses me. So remember table selection is an important aspect of winning strategy. If you can find a table with a lot of players coming in for one bet, that's where you wanna be. If they're capping it every round, either find another table or take up religion. The choice is yours, but I think you know which one I'd go with.