Indy 2006 - Part 4

Ok I have procrastinated long enough. Time for the Saturday night of fun from Indy 2006. We started a new tradition last year I think by having a formal poker tournament on the Saturday night. This year we continued the tradition and I hope that it continues as it is truly enjoyable. I say "formal tournament" because we did play a fair amount of poker throughout the weekend... what can I say? We're obsessed. For those uninitiated in the world of poker we play arguably the most popular form of poker known to man, that form is known as Texas Hold 'Em.

We had a reasonable number of players, 9 in fact seated around a table and playing like their lives depended upon it...





... in a weird kind of way it did, their "night life" anyway. See the rules of this particluar tournament was that there were two 1125mL bottles of booze available to those still in the tournament...



... once you were eliminated that was it, no more free booze for you.

The winner of the tournament would win the remains which meant you had two things in the back of your mind when playing:

1) You wanted to ensure that there was something left at the end should you win

... but also at the same time...

2) You wanted to ensure you drank lots so that if you didn't win you got the most value out of the deal

This meant for lots of drinking but surprisingly some very good poker play... even though at the end of the tournament this was the remains indicating a fair amount of drinking was achieved in just a few short hours.



After the tournament some people headed off to bed as there was a big day of racing ahead of us including the sole Champ Car race of the weeked. Ben, Brad, Benny (visiting for the night), Rhonda, Dunc and myself toughed it out a while longer and continued to drink on thanks to the winner Ben graciously allowing us to continue to drink on, here is a shot of Ben with his prize taken later in the night after the "Shirtless Poker Tournament" began...



... and here is one taken even later still when a little bit more drinking had occured from his prize pool...



... but more of the early morning antics next time, when I promise to stop picking on Ben with the embarassing photos and pick on everyone else involved too.

Internet Outage Explained

So do we all remember the fun I had during my internet outage? If not take a refresher course here. Well it seems I might have finally found an answer to what caused it all. So what do you think? Modem fault? Or TPG fuck up?

Well in a weird kind of way it seems to have been a case of, a little from column A and a little from column B. After a weekend of some pretty heavy downloading I decided to check my account usage on the TPG website. I log in, access my usage information and see my plan listed as "ADSL2+/30GB Heavy". This is some surprise to me as I am only signed up to TPG with a 1.5Mb plan not ADSL2. Then I remember correcting the support guy when he muttered something about ADSL2 and telling him I'm not a ADSL2 customer.

Anyway so I am at this point starting to wonder about what is going on and start going through as much of my account email as possible on the website. I find a link to the "Post Office" which is presumably a way I can collect email from my TPG email addresses if I should want to. Sure enough, contained within, is a bunch of email dating back as far as the 21st of September telling me "We are pleased to inform you that your application to migrate to our new ADSL2+ plan has been confirmed." This is stranger still considering I never applied for anything of that nature. It seems it all got fully cutover the day I got my new modem and started playing which is probably why it was a bit flaky early on my new modem...

I rang TPG yesterday to be told I was labelled as an "add on customer" and it has something to do with the fact my contract was coming up for renewal or some such so they upgraded me for nothing. No contract change over fees, no restart of contracts just an upgrade. Which is all well and good but if I had actually known about it I would have known my old ADSL modem would not have worked once it was cut over and saved myself a lot of grief. What is also funny is that I told the support guy what kind of modem I had and he never once said anything about me using an ADSL modem on an ADSL2 line...

Anyway I've got ADSL2 without asking for it. It's $10 a month cheaper, I get 5 extra GB downloads a month and didn't pay any cutover fees. All in all I'm not too annoyed... I just wish a couple of email that got sent to me required some form of reply from me to say go ahead and they didn't just go do it anyway... but as I said I'm quite happy on ADSL2 now :)

Indy 2006 - Part 3

The Indy weekend, as I have previously stated, is always right up there for me in terms of "most fun time of the year". It's more than just the motorsport involved though. It's about getting away from home, even though it's only down the coast, for a few days with your mates and the shenanigans involved. This year was certainly no exception...

It started early with lots of chaos and confusion during the transport organisational process. This could be attributed to many different people and reasons and no fault could be placed in one particular location. After all that Bee & I ended up travelling down in the car dubbed the "Party Mobile" with Blore (Brad & Lore). The trip down consisted of me sledging Brad's driving at every opportunity slipping in terms such as "grandpa" and "boring" as much as possible. He showed me up though on the way to, and from, Rhondas Dads place with some very fun chicane driving. As stated at the time my favourite part was the arrogance involved... one hand only on the steering wheel!! Despite this side adventure we made it safely to the unit.

Friday morning began with some laughs at Duncs expense. He had been running around with a shirt on all morning oblivious to the fact it had a peg attached to it...



... turns out it had been mischeviously placed there by Jen, a member of the Alex posse. What she began we continued throughout the rest of this morning, including a fun walk to Surfers with plenty of "peganoia", and through the entire weekend. It became an art form to sneakily attach a peg to someone when they were not looking and you felt like a dill if you suddenly found yourself pegged. It became so popular members of the group began using it as a fashion statement like me here during the Saturday night poker tournament (more on this in Indy 2006 - Part 4). I wore this for most of Saturday afternoon, and yes I did venture out of the unit and into the general populace with this attached to my hat... I even forgot it was there!!



All in all there were loads of shenanigans throughout the weekend. Some of these resolved around ppl refusing to pose for photos in a sensible manner, a couple of examples were:

Lore pretending to be some kind of futuristic cyclops in one of the grand stands on Friday arvo...



... and Rhonda doing god knows what on the walk back to the unit from the track on Saturday arvo.



Perhaps the biggest night of shenanigans was Saturday night which involved much drinking and very little sleep for some... stay tuned for more on these activities next time on Mick's World! As a teaser here is a shot of Ben showing me Blue Steel early Sunday morning when things were at their height of silliness.

*sigh*

So I thought my week was over... how wrong was I? Ever since 19:30 I've been working on an issue with one of our servers at work, ahhh the wonders of being on call. I've been on the phone to Sun Support for a while and mainly waiting on them to figure things out.

Doing work over dial in and calling Sun, on a mobile in a house with poor reception, without actually be at work and on the network is a major pain in the rectum!! Anyway turns out I need to do some hardware replacement as some memory modules have passed on to the great big cyberspace in the sky causing my server to crash and reboot a few times.

So soon my phone will be ringing from the Sun engineer, finally an Aussie to talk to!!, as he leaves the airport after picking up my parts to meet me at my work building. Happy, happy, joy, joy!!!

The only thing that keeps me sane at the moment is trying to figure out what to spend my overtime money on. Any suggestions? :)

Indy 2006 - Part 2

So after having a hectic week with running ppl everywhere around Brisbane, doing overtime due to being on call and all the while trying to go to work everyday I am finally ready to continue with the Indy 2006 stories.

We've covered off where we stayed so I thought the next logical step would be to cover off who was with us this year. So without further ado here are, what I am going to call, the 2006 Indy Bogans (more on the use of "Bogan" in later Indy 2006 updates).

Of course Bee & I were there...


... Ben was there too (I don't have a "normal" pic of Ben from this year so I dug into last year's Indy photos for this one)...


... along with Dunc & Rhonda...


... and last, but not least, Brad & Lore.



Of course there were others staying in the unit as Feona (Dunc's Mum who owns the unit) and Alex (Dunc's brother) invited their own posses also. All 7 of the 2006 Indy Bogans were sharing a single room, which was an interesting experience. There were two single beds, a single mattress and some blankets on the floor for sleeping purposes. After spending the first night on the floor, where Bee had to leave for the couch to get sleep and I had the worst night of sleep of my life, Bee & I ended up on the single mattress. To show how cramped it was here is a shot of Bee trying to get an afternoon nap on the mattress. We both had to sleep on this remember!



Ok so now we've got where we stayed and who we were with out of the way. This means in the next updates we can focus on the fun stuff! I feel any good story requires a bit of background is all... and now you have it! :)

Back to reality with a bang.

Doesn't take long for you to snap back into reality after a holiday, no matter how small, does it? Today was my first day back at work since last Thursday and I came down from holiday mode pretty damn fast.

Not long after sitting down at my desk I had a couple of ppl immediately onto me demanding stuff as if I had never left! It was a reasonably hectic day with a lot of running around tying up a few loose ends.

I had to pick up Bee's grandparents from the airport this arvo so I drove to work and Bee met me at work so we could head out to the airport. The flight was supposed to be in at 17:45, and expecting traffic we left just before five... we didn't mean to leave quite that early but Bee was there so I up and left.

Turns out the flight was delayed and got in at about 18:40, with them not clearing customs etc until well after that. We didn't get home until about 20:30 and had a late dinner. I'm knackered, I still haven't caught up on enough sleep and all day I had a splitting headache due to tiredness.

At least while we were killing time at the airport Bee had a chance to pick up some new sunglasses...



... *wolf whistle* Hot look babe!

Not too sure about Bee's pop though...



Anyway no time for Indy stories tonight... hopefully tomorrow.

Indy 2006 - Part 1

So I'm back from the Coast and the 2006 Lexmark Indy 300. As usual it was a truly enjoyable weekend and one of the highlights of my year so far. Also as usual I am already thinking about next year and how much fun it is going to be. That, to me, is the truest indication of how much I enjoy attending Indy.

Over the next couple of days I'll post pics and stories from Indy. I am, as yet, unsure how I am going to format these blog entries. For now though I'll start at what seems like a good enough beginning as any... where we stayed.

I've doctored this track map from the Indy website to give an idea of where the building was in relation to the track. See the arrow pointing to the dot...



A shot of the twin buildings that make up the complex from inside the track. I was crossing a suspension bridge at the time, which was fun in itself with all the swaying!! We stayed in the building on the left on the 29th floor about 5 or 6 from the very top.



A view from the small side balcony of the first chicane and the beginning of the second...



A view from the large front balcony looking at the main straight...



That'll do for now, I'm tired... it's been a very long, tiring weekend and I have to go to work in the morning.

Indy here I come!!!

A short blog entry now to say farewell. I'm off to Indy tonight to live it up in the party town that is Surfers Paradise at this time every year. Unfortunately unlike Cam I'm not always blogable (read: able to blog) due to a lack of techo wizardry... this will mean no blogging until I return... no doubt full of stories and pics and vids! Have an awesome weekend all.

Pedantic Mick Strikes Again!!

For those of you who know me I am a pedantic bastard at the best of times. Had a classic pedantic moment on the train ride to work today. For those unaware the Riverside Expressway into the Brisbane CBD, the major thoroughfare from South on the M1 and inbound from the west has been closed. The latest Courier Mail story is here if you'd like more info.

Anyway this has had some effect on the public transport system as people make alternative plans to get to, and from, work in the CBD. Queensland Rail had an announcement over the PA system at various train stations, I heard it at Central & Roma St, this morning that went like:

Due to the closure of the Riverside Expressway, Queensland Rail apologise for any inconvenience caused by circumstances out of our control. We thank our passengers for their patience and understanding at this time.

Now Pendantic Mick, one of my favourite alternative identities, hears this and thinks... they're only apologising for circumstances out of their control, so things like trains breaking down due to incorrect servicing or drivers not showing up for work aren't being apologised for. And not only that it's only because the Riverside Expressway is closed that they are apologising at all!!

Yes, yes that's very pedantic... but as a professional organisation at least try and be professional when wording public announcements.

Btw just realised this will be the first non baby blue based blog entry for me... this is being posted from my work laptop as I sit at my desk. Have a good Thursday, or whatever day it is wherever you are, everyone!

Hi everybody!!

Got an email from my mate Brett the other day where he asked me a question about Eldest, which I must admit surprised me because I'd never spoken to him in person about it. This led me to believe he had read my blog entry here and when asked he admitted he was a regular reader of this here blog.

This got me thinking about the fact that I have no idea who is out there reading this. Don't get me wrong I know of a handful of people who tune but Brett wouldn't have been on that list if you had asked me a few days ago. This isn't because I didn't think he would care or was a "bad friend" (inside joke) it's just... well... because I didn't think he would I guess.

Now to me it doesn't particularly matter if there are hundreds of people out there reading because I'm not in this for the hit count, I'm in it for the self expression, but it is nice to know there are some people out there reading. So if you're out there and reading this I'd be interested to know. My blog allows anonymous comments so you don't need a blogger or google account to let me know you're out there so go ahead, post a comment and say hi. If you're the shy lurker type then that's fine too. Regardless thanks for reading and catch you later!

Back on the air!!

My absence of blog entries was not an indication that Ben was correct when he commented on my first blog entry. In fact he is far from being right, as usual I might add. I am very keen on blogging now since baby blue arrived. I am still turning him on and thinking "Ooooooh shiny!!" and getting all excited. On top of the l33t factor of blogging while watching TV I have genuinely rediscovered my love of blogging.

No indeed my lack of blogging was attributed to a lack of internet service. It seemed my trusty Netgear DG824M had lost the ability to communicate with TPG. Now it seemed to me that I was faced with either a modem or a connectivity issue. My DG824M was telling me that it was connected via the built-in modem but that it was unable to establish a connection and was dutifully "Waiting for data...". It could sense the link speed and all that jazz ok but never received an IP address and never fully established the ADSL connection.

So I up and rang TPG Support on Sunday after having a very busy Friday & Saturday. After hanging on hold for almost 20 minutes I was finally hooked up with a "technician". After simply describing my problem "My modem link light is on, it is telling me it is connected but not getting an IP address" I was then advised that I could only get limited support for my modem type, which I didn't want support for anyway, and then was walked down that commonly used aisle known as "Fool the customer with complicated seeming standard response".

This involved me going through all my settings to confirm they were correct and restarting my router numerous times. In between appeasing him by doing what he wanted I was asking questions like "so you can see that I am connected?" and "so there should be no issues on my line?" to which I was given all reassuring answers. This saga finished with me being asked to contact Netgear support and discuss with them how to change my modulation settings to what he wanted... I let it go at that and figured I had gotten as much use out of him as I was going to.

I was then left with a dilemna, assume the dude was right and that there should be no problems on my line to TPG, meaning it was a modem problem or tear my hair out in frustration and jump in front of a car. I decided, for the sake of Bee & baby blue getting lonely, on trying a new modem. I wanted to upgrade to a newer router anyway with 802.11g support, better wireless security and ADSL2 support so even if it proved to be an unnecessary purchase I would still end up with a shiny new toy. After doing some research and getting unsolicited advice from Cam when he was over on Saturday arvo (Ed: I have just noticed I don't have a link to Cams blog in my blog list to the right... this has been fixed) I finally settled on the DLink DSL-G804V.

This afternoon I picked him up, came straight home and began to play. Within about 2 minutes he was configured and ready to go... yet still couldn't connect. I muttered some expletives in TPGs direction and did more fiddling. I swapped phone cables, reconfigured the ADSL settings, tried different ADSL settings... nothing. I finally tried to call TPG only to be told that "Due to an influx of calls we are unable to take your call at this time. Please try to contact us again later"... which I wasn't impressed with. So in the meantime I relocated baby blue and my new toy to the lounge room to try the phone connection up there... same deal. More expletives followed but not long after bringing him back down to his rightful home down on the bench near the kitchen, lo and behold, it started working!! Don't ask me what happened, at the moment I don't care. I'm back on the air baby!!

Of course Mum & Dad were coming over to dinner tonight so this entry was started, paused and now finally finished. In that period it has once again stopped working and then started working again. Since it has been working again it hasn't stopped so I'm crossing everything I have, which believe me is easier said than done in some body part cases!!, in an attempt to ensure it keeps working... wish me luck!!

Certainly was an experience!!

I had the day off work today to go with Dad while he enjoyed his birthday present from us kids. Yes, for all those that know my family, Dad's birthday was well over a month ago now but this present required him to make an appointment, and they are apparently very busy (you'll soon see why)!!

You see we decided we were sick of the boring presents we always get him so we thought we'd get him something fun. So we bought him a drive in a V8 powered race car thanks to the people at V8 Race Experience.

Basically the concept is you turn up, get some briefing and driver training, get suited up and go for a drive around Queensland Raceway. For those familiar with Qld Raceway the track used was the "Clubmans Circuit" which is not quite the full track driven by the drivers in the V8 Supercar Championship.

Unfortunately I was too busy being in charge of the video camera to take many good photos but here are a sample of those I did take. Once I get access to the video camera again I might youtube a couple of movies and I'll even see if I can grab some shots from Kates camera as she was taking heaps while I was busy with the video side of things.

Dad had an absolute ball and wished it went for longer... which goes to show we did well with the gift!

Dad suiting up before his big drive.

Dad squinting into the sun once fully suited up (minus the hairnet and helmet of course).

Charlie came to watch his Pa drive...

... and ended up getting behind the wheel himself!!

Bahahahahaha!!!

Ford Australia have gotten into the act after Sunday's Bathurst victory. Corporate sledging gone too far or just hilariously funny? I'm going with hilariously funny...

What am I talking about? To find out click here... make sure you've got sound turned on!!

Bahahahahahaha!!

The drought has broken!!

The pictures above say it all...

... after 8 years of agony and despair the soul searching can finally end. Ford has won Bathurst for the first time since 1998! Craig Lowndes, his co-driver Jamie Whincup and the Triple Eight Race Engineering team are the toast of Ford fans across Australia, and around the world, and are ironically the first to put their names on the Peter Brock Trophy.

After a day of drama and action it seems fitting that Lowndesy, for a long time Brocky's protege, got to lift the trophy and celebrate Brocky's life in style. Lowndesy was earlier involved in a moving tribute to Brocky whereby he drove one of Brocky's old victorious Torana's around Mount Panorama. It was obviously an emotional time for him as at one point the camera panned on to him standing beside the car and he was openly crying. He was crying during his victory speech on the podium too and it obviously meant a lot to him. Well done Craig!

Unfortunately the joy and elation of yesterdays Ford win was tempered heavily by the news that Mark Porter, one of the two drivers involved in Thursday's big crash, passed away yesterday afternoon. It seems that my gut feeling at the time, when I blogged that I had fears for their lives was unfortunately well founded. I stand by the anger in my post directed towards Channel Ten but in no way did I mean to imply any anger or disrespect to the drivers involved in the incident, and in no way was I blaming them for the coverage dramas. My heart goes out to Mark Porter's family and friends at this time as I am sure does the hearts of motorsport fans the world over.

I guess it just rams home the point that motorsport is a dangerous business and that despite the fact our heroes make it look easy there is always an element of risk and the smallest of elements can make a race go tragically wrong.

Yesterday was such a joyous day yet such a sad day at the same time...

Woah!!

Skaifey, pole sitter and by far the scariest Holden out there for the weekend out of the race before he even got to the top of the mountain on the first lap!! Unbelievable start, suffered from a slipping clutch and was limping along off the racing line when he got poleaxed from behind and turned into the wall by another Holden!!

Such a shame!! :P

GO THE FORDS!!!

Can you feel it???

The start to the 2006 SuperCheap Auto Bathurst 1000 is mere minutes away!! Oooooooooohhhhh yeahhhhh!!!

GO THE FORDS!!!

Not Happy Jan!!

So, as previously posted, I had the day off to watch Qualifying in this years "Great Race", otherwise known as the Super Cheap Bathurst 1000. While watching the telecast the Development Series first race of the weekend was on. In an incident packed race there was an absolutely massive accident that had me, for a long time, fearing for the drivers lives. This, as could be expected, heavily delayed the start of official Qualifying. When it did start it was well behind schedule.

For those unaware of the Qualifying system in V8 Supercars the field is split into two halves based upon their performances in the Practice sessions to that point in the weekend. While watching the bottom 50% go through their 45 minute Qualifying session it was obvious that the telecasts scheduled finish time of 16:00 was going to arrive prior to the end of Qualifying. Foolishly I simply assumed that the telecast would continue until Qualifying was over. WRONG!! Apparently according to "broadcast legislation" Channel Ten are legally required to continue with their childrens TV programming at 16:00.

So what does this mean? It means I took an entire day off work, sat inside all day resulting in a headache in order to watch Qualifying and hopefully watch Rusty make the top 10 for the Shootout tomorrow only to have the top 50%, of which Rusty was a member, hit the track with about 5 minutes to go in the telecast. I saw them perform a warm up lap and then the telecast ended!! ARRRGGGHHH!! Fuck you Channel Ten, thanks for nothing!!

To help me get through this traumatic time I went for some retail therapy when picking up Bee from Garden City. I bought a Logitech Cordless Mini mouse for Baby Blue. I am now blogging and surfing in much more comfort without having to use the TouchPad. Which is some comfort and relaxing for a very unhappy and angry Mick. Grrr!!!

Proud Uncle

As I have the day off to watch Friday's telecast of Bathurst this afternoon, which will include the Qualifying session and some practice, I am currently sitting on my couch after having a bit of a sleep in. It has been a busy couple of days. Wednesday night I visited Mum & Dad for dinner as per our weekly dinner schedule. With Kate (my sister) being sick, she & my adorable nephew Charlie were at Mum & Dads place, which was a surprise as they were supposed to be not coming this week.

It was after seeing Charlie that I was reminded of dinner with Mum & Dad last week and something that transpired. I was chatting to Scott via Google chat (although I don't have the client yet I just chat in Gmail) when Mum & Dad arrived. I let Mum & Dad have a chat to him as I don't think they have had much of a chance to talk to him since he left for Germany. Mum, as should have been expected since we all do it, began talking about Charlie. It was then that it happened... I was accused of not posting photos for others to see! *gasp*

It is obvious that I have been failing my duties as a proud uncle and so this post sets out to rectify that. Below you will find a small sample of the millions of photos of Charlie that my family, and often complete strangers :p, have taken of this gorgeous little man.

You have nothing to complain about now Scotty :)



He is learning so much he even thinks hard while sleeping!!




My favourite photo of the little munchkin! I wonder who owns that hat...



... obviously someone with a much bigger body than Charlie, it's almost half the size of him!



He may only be almost 5 months old, but he has heaps of friends that call him all the time!



Sometimes I think he might be the next Jim Carrey with the funny facial expressions he pulls.

Last night Eldest...

... tonight Freecell. Yes I was stuck at work again. This time I knew in advance, thanks to the meeting yesterday, so I came prepared. Baby Blue made the journey to work with me today and as I was waiting on servers to finish up I played some Freecell. Not a game that I've ever really played for any great length nor am I particularly good at, but I did ok tonight, take a look!!



Got onto a bit of a streak, 7 in a row!! I think that'd be a Mick record! So foolishly, given I have no idea how good all of you out there are, I am throwing down the challenge. Anyone out there willing to attempt to topple my mark go ahead and try. I'll require screenshot proof of your score and if you want to cheat and doctor up an image go ahead but you know what they say... you'll only be cheating yourself!!

Unfortunately for my streak I had to leave work in the middle on what might have been the 8th in a row. Not wanting to take Baby Blue home in his bag while running the entire time I had to quit out. So I guess I'll just have to start again!!

Escape.

So after rocking up to work in my usual Monday morning daze, I ate some breakfast, downed a 600ml Coke (the nectar of the gods) and started to feel slightly more alive. Then it happened... the weekly team meeting. *sigh* No matter what Monday it is you can guarantee, without fail, that I will forget about the meeting until someone says something about it. Maybe it's my subconcious way of blotting it from my memory or something.

Anyway I thought I had escaped the meeting pretty much unscathed until someone said something about some scheduled work we had all, collectively, blotted from our memories... see it isn't just me!!... and it turns out that work scheduled for tonight was scheduled for, yup you guessed it, yours truly. So tonight saw me working back late, mainly spending most of my time on waiting on the servers I was working on to finish their work so I could continue with mine.

All I can say is thank goodness for the escape provided by reading. Reading Eldest has been great, and I am getting very deeply involved in it. I love reading a book and being able to completely escape from the reality around you. Whether that be on a crowded morning train to work, a lonely quiet office after everyone has gone home or reading in bed before sleep. That ability to immerse yourself so deeply in a book that you forget everything else is so refreshing and so pleasurable. It's like waking from a dream when you put the book down and more often than not you discover that time has flown by. That's what happened tonight, thankfully, I delved into the world of Alagaesia and the fact that I left at 20:20 instead of 17:00 didn't seem to bother me that much... until I got home and realised just how tired I was!!

I guess you never know if something you experience is the same for everyone but for all those that don't read or believe that reading is a worthwhile activity (and yes I realise the irony of voicing this in a forum where reading is the receiving mechanism) if you can really get into a good book it is one of life's simple pleasures.

Mneh

With Bee at work from 06:30 this morning on her usual Sunday morning open I was left to my own devices. On a day with little motivation this resulted in a day with not enough activity and way too much radiation, read: TV & Laptop. In between there was plenty of reading and snacking.

The end result? Most of the afternoon and tonight I have felt like utter crap. Bored to tears, tired, not able to concentrate properly with a weird "been inside all day headache" and to top it all of when flicking to the NRL Grand Final every now and then (there was no way I could bring myself to actually watch it properly) I got to see the Boncos win.

The title of this post says it all... mneh.

Luck...

... is truly a fickle, fickle mistress. Yesterday was one of the weirdest luck days I've had in a while. I tempted her before the AFL Grand Final when asked if I wanted to bet on Sydney winning. I stated that I believed the Weagles would win by about 20 points so betting on them would be silly. However while my head was telling me that the Weagles would win there was no way in hell my heart wanted that to happen. I hate the Weagles... so what did I do? Yup I foolishly threw a 10'er on the team I thought would lose. Lady luck didn't let me get away with that although it was an absolute thriller!!

Then later when Benny, Brad, Dunc & I returned to my place to play some poker I saw some of the worst luck I have ever seen. On a consistent, and repeated basis too. I was in two big hands that first weakened me, and then knocked me out. In both hands when the big bets went in, both times my opposition went "all in" on me, my hand was dominating theirs... both times I lost, once on the river, once on the turn. Brad also got knocked out, I believe on the river, after dominating the hand when betting had stopped, i.e. he had gone "all in". Dunc & Benny then proceeded to play heads up poker for about 45 minutes where the lead kept changing hands and on at least 4 ocassions someone went "all in" when being dominated and got away with it. It was about 00:30 when the table was finally over after seeing me declare, the hand before, that "if that (a dominated hand winning saving someone from defeat) happens again you are all getting ejected from the Mick Casino". Thankfully Lady Luck was as tired as we all were and granted Benny victory.

As I said at the start, luck is a fickle thing.