Muttroxia

Firefox 3 came out today. It is allegedly already up to 6% of browser share, in less than 24 hours.

I have used it for five minutes and I am already in the bag for it. The location bar is literally called “The Awesome Bar”. It is.

Get it.

Tonight was big hands all the way. On the third hand, my nut flush lost to a full house on the river. We had a quad 8s, I got a quad 4s, there was another quad 8s. Every other hand was three of a kind or better.

Eh, the details are boring. I lost last week, won this week. Good to be the winner again.

Last week: -$20
Tonight: $60
Overall: $36 (on the plus side!)

* Some of my readers know I predicted a comfortable Celtics win. I wish I had documented it here in the blog. It might make up for some of my cursed political predictions.
* By comfortable, I meant 20 points or so. Not 39!
* Wow. I mean, wow.
* Rondo redeemed himself. I haven’t understood why announcers have been saying he was ineffective the last few games. He was playing just or good as bad as ever. Empirically, he didn’t seem any worse, so why was he being pulled out all the time? Last night was his style of playing. One suggestion: shoot with both hands. He shot six one-handed floaters, six missed. Most of those shots he had the time and space to use his other hand.
* Sam Cassell may not be The Mole, but I was glad he didn’t play.
* PJ Brown is one heck of dirty player. He has a full arsenal of sneaky tricks. He may be on our team, but I still don’t like him.
* Has Ray Allen ever looked deadlier? Was there ever a question that any of those three-pointers would miss?
* Garnett finally played the game we all wanted to see. Aggressive on both ends of the court. It’s about time they give him low post plays.
* Pierce may not have scored a lot, but his defense was impressive as always, plus 10 assists and a couple steals. I loved his halftime “interview” with Michelle Tofoya where he seemed completely confused by her question about effort. It’s the NBA, it’s the finals, this is how you play, duh! If there were any doubts they would take it, his comments about keeping the foot on the gas let you know that more was coming.
* Tofoya has a tough job. They should have let her sit down at the end of the game. Her interviewing Garnett was offensive, in that it ever happened. If I was Garnett I would have ignored her — pay a fine later. If I was ABC, I would have told Tofoya to leave him alone, the celebration was much better TV than the stupid quotes she would get. (Except maybe a celing-shattering howl of Anythings Possible!!)
* Gatorade on the coach? I don’t like it. Don’t like it in the NFL, even worse in the NBA. Gatorade got all over the floor, that should be a technical.
* I felt bad for the Lakers. That’s how I know we don’t have a real rivalry. Back in the day I would have loved nothing more than watching those lousy freakin’ Los Angeles losers get buried and heckled. It’s not the same.
* Phil Jackson got outcoached. There can be no doubt. In every way his team was not as prepared as the Celtics.
* Worst banner of the night: June 17 + Banner 17 = Pierce 34! Um yes… And guess what else? If you take Farmers age and subtract Luke Waltons number you get 17 also. Where is your god now Los Angeles!!!
* It’s really too bad the Patriots couldn’t win the Superbowl. That would have been so sweet. Maybe this was the beginning and Boston sports will run the table this year.
* Now that the finals are over, I can catch up on my sleep. And start taking care of my daughter. Speaking of kids, the Celtics have some real cute ones, eh? Kendrick Perkins and his little one year old were precious.

To paraphrase Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett: Hell yeeah! Aaarrgggooohhoooo!! Yeah!! Let me hear you!!! Gggrraaaggghhh!!!

Pikachu, I choose yo… oh GOD NO

Jon Arbuckle lays down the law with Garfield

Great motivational(?) posters

Iggy Pop’s concert rider. Hilarious.

Famous pictures done as Legos.
Tiananmen Square is my favorite.

Old people (ex-movie folks) review movies. This isn’t comedy, it’s just good reviews.
Update: They aren’t just any two geezers.

The best review of the worst book

A Fathers Day Prayer. Very funny.

A bit out of date, but a clever parody of Hillary think: Joe Dumars on the Celtics series.

How Traffic Laws make the roads less safe. I’ve been thinking this for a while, good to see it written up.

Michael Lewis on Vasectomies

Birthrates and war

The worlds biggest drawing (more detail here)

Ten great Flash animations

Paul Graham on cities. As a big Cambridge fan, I really enjoyed this. I knew there was a reason I liked to go to Harvard Square and just hang out.

What a game! I mean — wow, that was just amazing! No coherent thoughts right now!

I gave up on updates. Why? Because ever since I started blogging I’ve lost horribly. Last summer, I won more games than I can count. My Wednesday game is still scared out of their wits of me. In my first seven outings I won something like 5 games, 2nd place once, and once out of the money. As soon as I show up, they joke the game is over and get mad when I sit to their left. You, my dear readers, know that I haven’t done anything to be proud of in months and months. It’s been humiliating to get into a big losing streak just I start blogging the details of it. I just couldn’t sit down at the keyboard on another late Wednesday night to write about how I screwed up or got screwed yet again.

Two weeks ago was the kicker. In the second hand of the night, I had K-J suited. I raise, I have one taker. The guy who called me is terrible. He never bluffs, and rarely raises. He doesn’t even try to hide his expression while he looks at his cards. I couldn’t ask for a better opponent. The flop is J-10-9. I raise again. He thinks about it and grudgingly calls. I can’t even write the rest of the hand. It has never been so obvious to me that I had the best hand. I had the aggression, I had the cards, I had the read. Long story short, I bet almost everything. I had read him perfectly, and he caught another 10 on the river, giving him trips and leaving me short stacked. I was first out. The next week was no bad beats, just no cards and nothing happening, another early exit.

Tonight looked like more of the same. In the first hour, I got Q-Q (no one called my raise), K-K (had to fold when an Ace came up, was the right play), 6-6 (got the 3rd six, but no one called me), A-J, A-Q, K-10… just ridiculously good cards. I wasn’t raising much, but it didn’t matter. No one else ever had cards good enough to play.

I got A-A. I was small blind, bet 300 (3x big blind). Big blind grudgingly calls. Flop is 6-8-10. Given how it’s gone so far, I slowplay check. She puts in 100, I call. The turn is 6. Time to muscle, I put in 500. After a lot of thought she calls. The river is nothing special. I bet 500. She calls. She caught her flush on the river. She says she would never played the hand out except she thought I was bluffing. This is depsite the fact I’ve shown all these amazing cards I’ve gotten (to build my rep) and she knows I rarely bluff against her. Argh. I wasn’t too mad at the situation. It was a terrible beat, but it was at least partially because of how I played it, and hey – that’s poker.

There I was short-stacked. Then my luck turned. Yes, I played fairly well tonight, but it was mostly luck. I went all in with A-10. He had A-J, I got my 10. It was a good sign.

Blinds have just gone to 250-500. I have a pair of 10s. I bet 1500, 3 callers. Flop is 3-5-7. Everyone checks. I want to force everyone off my pot! I put in 1500. Two of them stay with me, one of them is all in. I think the one who went all in has me beat. I figure the other one to have overcards. Turn is another 3. I put the other guy all-in. I don’t want to give his overcards a chance to pair up. But he doesn’t have much less, he’s forced to call. I figure I’m going to lose the big pot, and hopefully make a little something back on the small one. We flip up our cards. Yep, the overcards are A-K. The other guy has 7-7, giving him trips. In the middle of his war whoop the river gives me a third 10 for the win. Heh heh!

I go all in with K-J, she had A-J. I got my K. When we got to heads up, I went all in 2-2. She paired an overcard on the turn, I got a third 2 on the river. All in all I think I was on the lucky end of five or six bad beats.

The final hand I had 3-3. She called my all-in with big slick (A-K). She got three more aces on the board, now that is winning with style!

Man, I write a lot when it’s about good beats!

Tonight: $50
Overall: -$4

They are my new favorite band. I watched them on Saturday Night Live. After their first song I said, “I liked every note of that. These guys are good.” I felt the same way after their second song.

Here’s the one that sold me.

Illustrated guide to the police for children (read the text)

Every Simpsons Couch gag, in one continuous video

Childtrader.com: A brilliant parody site. Yes, it’s a parody.

Fetish chart. Something is more than a little wrong with the mind that made this.

On the Implausibility of the Death Star’s Trash Compactor.

Dear 19 year old neighbor kid whom I’m paying eight bucks an hour to dig trenches:

Mr. Right is here ladies!

A inside account of the rules of baseball fighting

Blind obedience

Time to rethink the company logo

A compilation of Reagan’s wit. Give him his due, that’s a funny guy.

Chris Matthews destroys, just destroys, a right-wing gasbag.

How did Obama get all the money? This article examines this under-reported aspect of his success.

I can’t believe I actually called this one right!

Boy, we look like a completely different team when Allen is hitting his shots. Rondo and Garnett and Perkins call all be mediocre and it doesn’t matter. That’s the nice thing about having the big three. They don’t all have to be on every night. Any two will do. For the most part, my analysis last week still holds, so I won’t add much.

I’m glad we’re playing Los Angeles. Not because of the historical Lakers-Celtics stuff, though that is a bonus. I think we have a better chance against them than we do against San Antonio. Fundamentally, the Lakers are a one player team, similar to Cleveland. Sure Pau Gasol is a great player. But if you can shut down Kobe, you shut down the Lakers. There are no other huge weapons to speak of. The Spurs have two or three big players depending how you count. You can triple team Duncan, but someone else will show up and kill you. Who’s going to do it on the Lakers?

Against Cleveland, you shut down LeBron you shut down the team. Sure Ilgauskis might hurt you, Wallace might hurt you, but you’ll take your chances with them. Similarly, I’ll take my chances with Odom, Walton, and Derek Fisher. (And remember that LA won game 4 under shaky circumstances. I think they still would have won, but it was not truly a 4-1 victory, it probably would have been a 4-2 victory like ours.)

Of course, this all assumes that we can shut Kobe down. Even the best defensive team of the decade is going to have a big challenge with that. Holy cow that guy is amazing.

While in recovery, a photography firm that works with the hospital tried to sell us their services. They were working with the hospital, they were allowed personal and direct access to the room and patients. It’s must be a good business. Those announcement cards cost money. And especially with a first child, you naturally want to treasure every moment.

For some reason we were given a form. The form must be filled out, with the appropriate section completed to accept or refuse the photography. Yes, we had to fill out paperwork to refuse an upsell. We even had to have a witness! We didn’t need a witness to cover what happened if the epidural paralyzed Mrs. Muttrox for life, but we did for this. I wonder what would have happened if we hadn’t signed anything. Would we have been stuck at the hospital, never to leave the grounds, a new century’s Charlie on the MTA? Would photographers have snuck up on us in the hall, sneaking shots like papparazzi and then charging us $200 for them?

They took our answer of no graciously, and left two copies of the form. Why do I need copies of this form? I will file it under “D”. For donut.

In unrelated nuttiness, one of the nurses was named Joyce DeWitt. No relation I assume.

You may have seen some coverage of Clinton’s enormous “gaffe” regarding Bobby Kennedy. Oh, it was so outrageous. Oh, it was so tasteless. Oh, it just shows what an uncaring manipulative crone she is!

Watch the actual video.

So, what exactly is the problem? She is clearly referring to the fact that Kennedy was still campaigning in June. There is no judgment made about the assasination, just stating the facts.

It doesn’t matter anymore, she’s done and done, but it is yet one more example of the bull she has had to put up with the whole campaign. McCain can say that he directed Oceans 11 and no one will blink an eye. If Hilary mentions that she likes cereal for breakfast, the media will find a reason to rake her over the coals for it.

Update: Just found this – Krugman nailing it as usual, Andrew Sullivan having a psychopathic hissy fit as usual.

Elise was born very very early Sunday morning, May 25th. She’s 7 lbs, 19 inches, and a whole lot of beautiful. She was a few days early, which took us by surprise. For instance, Daddy had been planning to study up on the labor phases on Sunday, which seemed like plenty of time for a planned Wednesday birth. Instead, we were in the hospital late on Saturday night. I remembered there was something about breathing and visualization and stuff, that was it. Fortunately, Mrs. Muttrox is an old pro at this and it didn’t matter. The delivery was quick and easy. At least from where I was sitting. She didn’t even mind that I watched the Celtics game between contractions.

Seriously, Mom is in fine shape, resting easy. We are doing great and are delighted with our new addition.