July 2007

Former St. Louis Cardinal Mike Coolbaugh was struck in the head by a line drive and died less than an hour later yesterday evening. Mike spent his 17 years playing baseball mostly in the minor leagues but also appeared in 39 games with the Milwaukee Brewers and five games with the St Louis Cardinals. Since then he has been coaching in the minors

Technorati : Mike Coolbaugh, St. Louis Cardinals

You know you work in hell when after asking an employee to clean the filter on the ice machine he starts his sentence with “when I was in prison…” and then goes on to tell you all about breathing freon and how it makes you go “waaa waaa” and makes your legs weak.

I think perhaps investing in a lock for the cover of my ice machine is on the agenda for this next week.

I enjoy playing a nice game of poker. I think I’ve mentioned that my former neighbor built his own table (it was VERY nice) and would host games in his basement. Due to work hours and such I never got the chance to participate in one of his games, which I regret particularly since they moved out of state, but my son did play with them several times.

Although it has been awhile, I never did like playing with inexperienced players. It’s only partly about the money. I actually enjoy the sport of the game and it is much better with folks that also have a good level of expertise and enjoy playing the game as well. I have recently been invited to play with one of my managers and a couple of guys that he plays with but so far I have refrained. I wonder at how good of a player he is as he is always broke and has no money.

PokerOnAMac.Com has a new section on strategy that is a pretty good read, particularly if you want to learn more about the game and the psychology behind it. There are several different sections that deal with different aspects of poker strategies including Poker cash games, Poker tournament strategy, Online poker strategy, Poker theory, Poker math (a must read), and poker tactics.

My favorite is the Poker Cash Games section as it deals with what I like to play, long steady earning games that you won’t bust out of too quickly or easily unless you just don’t bring enough stake. Nowadays it seems that everyone is into tournament style games, but I learned to play at cash game tables and penny games. It has always been the type of game that I enjoy the most.

Probably my particular favorite which they deal with is Hi-lo or more specifically Seven Card Stud Hi-Lo. It’s a nice long game and if you are patient and methodical you can win fairly often at the game. I especially like that they deal with how to play strong, even when you aren’t, such as in the example that is shown with the A-2 showing and pretty much nothing in the blinds.

Anyway, it’s just one more site to suck on my limited time now as there are plenty of tips to read as well as blog updates. One of the things I haven’t had the chance to do much with is online poker, but I have started reading their strategies on that in an attempt to familiarize myself with it.

Technorati : Gambling, Poker

Since today is my Friday it might as well be ‘thank god it’s Sunday’. I’m off for the next couple of days, which is nice. I want to sleep in for a change tomorrow and then I have a ton of stuff to do. We have to go get school clothes for the girls and unfortunately I have to go to the Social Security office. I never received RePete’s Social Security card, although she was assigned a number, either that or I have just lost it.

Either way I have to get a replacement card so that she can start school this year. I hate going to government offices. Might as well pack a lunch and plan on staying for awhile. It’s going to take forever.

Today will most likely be a nice long day. Sunday is normally a long day for me anyway, and I am in my nasty shop as well. If I make it home before tonight I will have to consider myself lucky.

masterseek is a global search engine that gives access to different corporation’s profiles, company contact information as well as descriptions of the services and products that they offer from more than 45 million companies in 75 countries. It’s a pretty good way to get new sales opportunities and make new contacts among different industries as well as find new customers.

For some reason this entire week has been very rough. I think it’s mainly a result of staying out too late the other evening. I have felt like I was behind the eight ball all week long. It was still worth it though.

I just got home from overseeing shift change at my busiest store. I had a bunch of paperwork to do that I haven’t had the chance to finish the last couple of days, and I don’t leave my managers without finishing the stuff since I expect them to have it complete before they leave.

Unfortunately I am at my store with the weakest manager tomorrow. He is off this weekend, which means two fourteen+ hour days just cleaning up the fucking mess that he has made over the last six days. I stopped in earlier today and the entire weeks paperwork was strewn all over the office (which is a tiny 4’x4′ room) including the floor. If that shit is still like that tomorrow I am just going to throw it all in a bag and go about my merry way running cash shortages on his ass. He can figure out what paperwork he hasn’t done when he comes back. I am pretty much over having to spend four hours after the end of my first shift there just putting together paperwork that he hasn’t had the chance to complete.

He has serious time management issues. Actually he just has lazy running of the fucking mouth issues. I have spent the last 11 weeks trying to get him motivated and change some of his bad habits and no matter what I tell him to do he gives me the lip service and just does whatever the hell he wants. The only reason I haven’t made a huge issue out of it yet is that the trainee that is next in line for a store is worse. He never shuts up and won’t stop and sit down long enough to listen or learn anything. Once he gets a store somewhere else then I will turn up the heat until old dude either starts doing his job or quits. He goes on vacation next week so that will be the opportunity for me to make some changes in his store. There are a couple of female trainees that have recently started that seem pretty sharp and on the ball, and I want one of them in my store.

Enough ranting about work for tonight, I think I will go find some mindless bullshit and read about it, maybe even post it.