Last.fm goes corporate

Last.fm has been bought by CBS. For those of you that haven't tried it, it is a great way of finding new music. It will look at what you listen to, and play you similar music, or, you can search for music similar to specific artists. Given recent massive increases in charges by record companies in America, it will be interesting to see if they continue to allow Americans to access it now they are part of big business.

Dale who?

It's that time again. Another Britbloggerment over, another bad day for me; but a much improved result for BurnleyMik, as he not only made the final table, he made the money. A solid third place for BM. Unfortunately for him, he came up against a first timer in the Bloggerment, but a rather experienced player, the mighty Daleroxxu, winner of the 2006 Pokerstars World Blogger championship (by the way, what happened to the 2007 tournament, it was supposed to be an annual event?), who crushed all before him. Second was Weegem, giving us a Scottish 1-2.

Early on in the game Rosie and Katitude were running hot and playing good aggressive poker, and bullets were flying. 4 players went out in the first 11 minutes. Doing the walk of shame was ResdentEvil, going out in the same hand as xldane. Next a big shock as reigning champion TanOrpheus busted out in 15th place, followed by another player who has been flying high recently, Zagga. I followed shortly afterwards.

Having been leaking chips, I made a donkey-like push with AT sooooted, and was hit by Quixote8s bullets. Spid, Surflexus and Cloud followed me to the rail, and we moved onto the final table in record time.

Moving swiftly on, mainly because I missed what happened next, simonjjj was tonight's bubble boy, and BurnleyMik makes the money. He was to go no further however, as his great run was crushed by daleroxxu. Weegem took a fine second place, after hanging for quite a while with the short stack.

Heres the full result, and updated league table.

17 players
Total Prize Pool: $85.00
Tournament started - 2007/05/27 - 16:00:00 (ET)
Tournament finished - 2007/05/27 - 17:51:50 (ET)
1: Daleroxxu (Dalkeith), $42.50 (50%)
2: weegem (Falkirk), $25.50 (30%)
3: BurnleyMik (Burnley), $17.00 (20%)
4: simonjjj (watford),
5: Rosie_m_t (Bristol),
6: Katitude (Toronto),
7: PokerMunk3y (Bradford),
8: Quixote8 (London),
9: Al Eleven (Miami),
10: the_cloud71 (Hertfordshire),
11: surflexus (Kennesaw),
12: Spid (Timperley),
13: stephenrhall (Blackburn),
14: zagga (East Kilbride),
15: TanOrpheus (Jersey),
16: xldane (Aalborg),
17: ResdentEvil (glasgow)

the_cloud71	34
ResdentEvil	31
Zagga	29
PokerMunk3y	27
TanOrpheus	27
Simonjj	25
Al Eleven	22
stephenrhall	21
Quixote8	20
Rosie_m_t	18
cadmunkey	17
weegem	17
BurnleyMik	14
Katitude	14
Pokerdwarf	14
Spid	14
lightning36	11
Daleroxxu	9
lzfsb3	9
mauzj	9
Sir Fortune	9
Kennl	8
sookraboaby	8
LepRecon777	7
SuffolkPunch	7
lousaban	6
S.t.b	6
countryk	5
a104l9	4
AlCantHang	2
mikesaban	2
4everleeds	0
mookie99	0
Neil Ross	0
wadhead	0

Now the work really starts

My wife is out of hospital.

Hurray! I hear you all shout.

Unfortunately she discharged herself.

After nearly 5 weeks in hospital, dealing with a complete lack of information before her operation, and dealing with an attitude amongst the nursing staff after her operation that she should be better by now despite still being in a great deal of pain, she reached the end of her tether (did you understand that sentence? Reading it back I'm not sure I do, but tough).

The operation was successful in that it has halted the progression of her condition, the end result of which could have been paralysis. So thats good. The secondary aim was to remove the pain. That part has only been partially successful. Coupled with the inevitable muscle wastage of 5 weeks in bed, her mobility is severely restricted. But we can work round that. We may be restricted in the assistance we get from the State, as they don't approve of people discharging themselves. If she had waited, we might have got referrals to the appropriate agencies, but now we are working it out for ourselves.

We've applied for a disabled parking permit. That will go a long way towards making life easier - if you can park outside where you need to be then life is a lot less restricted. Anyone know how long these things take to come through? At the moment she can't walk any distance without discomfort, and that's with the aid of crutches. We don't know if there is going to be much improvement in this area.

Social Services should be coming to visit us at some point, but because of the self-discharge, they aren't rushing. We need things like ramps in the doorways (we've been given one of those little electric scooters that are so dangerous in the hands of the untrained!), and perhaps extra hand rails on the stairs, though climbing stairs is far in the future at the moment. We've also been given one of those snazzy electric beds that help you sit up, so that is in the lounge at the moment.

What her being home does mean is that the kids will be able to come home. I haven't seen them in over a week and it's far too quiet without them. They are staying with their grandparents until next Tuesday evening. I'm on holiday from Wednesday so I can spend the rest of the week doing nice things with them. The park, the bikes and the bird sanctuary beckon. It will probably rain.

Today in my car

I am listening to "Ta Dah!" by Scissor Sisters.

Short and to the point

Dudley's got a blog.

Orpheus out of the Underworld

Updated Bloggerment league table - my slide continues, and TanOrpheus continues to storm upwards, as he beats newcomer kennl. Cloud picks up some points to keep his place at the top.

BurnleyMik made it to the final table thanks to me generously busting out in 10th place, and BMs inability to fold AK. He says it was an accident. A king on the turn and he takes the hand. I'm down to 185. I did make a bit of a comeback, thanks to LepRecon777 generously doubling me up twice. The first time I went all-in with AJo. Lep called with 8 5d. No improvement for either of us and I take the pot. A few hands later and I'm just ahead of Lep in chips. He goes all-in preflop and I call with AQo. He flips over A9o. A queen on the flop and I double up again. I double again courtesy of BM with a full house, but my comeback hits a brick wall as, drunk on my success, I run pocket sixes into kennl's KJ on a flop of JJT. Out in 10th again, and no final table again. BurnleyMik obviously couldn't take the rarified atmosphere of the final table, and soon followed me out in 9th place.

I actually got called a maniac this week. What's wrong with all-in with A4 anyway? I split the pot, so no harm done ;-)

	the_cloud71		34
	ResdentEvil		31
	Zagga		29
	PokerMunk3y		25
	TanOrpheus		27
	stephenrhall		21
	Al Eleven		21
	Simonjj		19
	cadmunkey		17
	Pokerdwarf		14
	Spid		14
	Rosie_m_t		13
	lightning36		11
	Quixote8		18
	Katitude		10
	lzfsb3		9
	Sir Fortune		9
	weegem		9
	mauzj		9
	sookraboaby		8
	Kennl		8
	LepRecon777		7
	SuffolkPunch		7
	BurnleyMik		7
	S.t.b		6
	lousaban		6
	countryk		5
	a104l9		4
	mikesaban		2
	AlCantHang		2
	wadhead		0
	Neil Ross		0
	mookie99		0
	4everleeds		0

For your delight and delectation...

here's a new blog for you to read. It's The Bigger Deal, written by a number of people, including Lee Jones, former poker room manager at Pokerstars, and writer of "Winning at Low Limit Hold'em". Thanks to Otis for pointing this out.

Interesting to see the blogs they link to - just two of them. Guiness and Poker, and the Tao of Poker.

Update

After three hours of surgeons poking around in her back, and a disc that refused to cooperate with said surgeons, my wife has returned to the ward after a discectomy. Apparently the operation was difficult but successful. I believe that successful means, in this case, that she still has use of her legs. Whether or not there has been an improvement in her condition we won't know until tommorrow. At 10pm this evening she said she didn't feel any better, but, after a general anaesthetic and a thorough mauling from the surgeons, I don't think I'd feel too clever either.

Action!

My wife goes under the knife this afternoon. She is having a discectomy, which basically means they are cutting away part of one of the discs in her spine to relieve pressure on her spinal cord. Apparently she'll be about 3mm shorter after the operation.

The Royal Preston Hospital isn't the most attractive of places. The ward is on the lower ground floor right at the back of the hospital. One of the first things I saw was an ant crawling across the bed, and you can barely see out of the windows they are so dirty. And it's another mixed ward.

On the plus side, the nurses are lovely and the doctors communicative. We have had the procedure explained in full, along with what the expected benefits will be, and the possible complications. In summary, the risk of doing nothing far outweighs the risk of operating. If all goes well, tomorrow, for the first time in nearly 4 weeks, she should be walking about.

We're supposed to be going on holiday at the end of June - we've rented a holiday cottage in South Wales, near Fishguard. The doctor wouldn't commit himself on the likelihood of us being able to go. My in-laws have kindly volunteered to go instead if she''s not fit!

Change of Scenery

After 1 day short of 4 weeks, it looks like my wife will be moving out of Blackburn Hospital, and into Preston Hospital. She is scheduled for surgery tomorrow, but no one has told her what the operation is. They have transferred someone out of Preston to Blackburn to make room for her, but the paramedics that brought the patient from Preston are too busy to take my wife back!

On the day that the results of a survey on patient satisfaction was published, indicating that 90% are happy with their stay in hospital, we find ourselves definitely in the 10%. I don't know about you, but in an area as critical as this, 90% satisfaction doesn't seem to great. Also as part of the survey, 22% said patients were not treated with dignity and respect. Once again we are in that negative group. One of the worst aspects of her stay in hospital has been the lack of staff talking directly to her about what is going on, when they did bother to talk to her they often talked down to her, and there was very little thought given to her dignity or the dignity of other patients on the ward.

Last night, a 98 year old lady had to wait over half an hour for a nurse to respond to her buzzer, wanting to be taken to the toilet, despite being regularly in the same room doing non-urgent tasks, and despite my wife pointing out that the old lady was buzzing. My wife has sometimes had to wait two hours in severe pain, for the nurses to bring her prescribed morphine. Some of this is down to the ward being understaffed, but some of it is just down to the attititudes of some of the staff.

I must point out that some of the nursing staff have been fabulous, and have done everything possible to make my wife's extended stay as comfortable as possible, but this has been far from universal.

Another NHS topic in the news recently is mixed wards. My wife is on a mixed ward. In a brand new hospital you wouldn't think this would be the case.

Oh well, nearly visiting time. Better check which hospital I'm visiting before I set off!

Somebody will be very pissed off.....

Here's the last hand of a SNG I just played, after duelling heads up for the last 20 minutes:

Seat 5: SGTMOTO (6055 in chips)
Seat 8: stephenrhall (7445 in chips)
SGTMOTO: posts the ante 50
stephenrhall: posts the ante 50
stephenrhall: posts small blind 300
SGTMOTO: posts big blind 600
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to stephenrhall [7d 2c]
stephenrhall: raises 6795 to 7395 and is all-in
SGTMOTO: calls 5405 and is all-in
*** FLOP *** [9h Ks 5h]
*** TURN *** [9h Ks 5h] [7c]
*** RIVER *** [9h Ks 5h 7c] [4s]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
SGTMOTO: shows [6s 6h] (a pair of Sixes)
stephenrhall: shows [7d 2c] (a pair of Sevens)
stephenrhall collected 12110 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 12110 | Rake 0
Board [9h Ks 5h 7c 4s]
Seat 5: SGTMOTO (big blind) showed [6s 6h] and lost with a pair of Sixes
Seat 8: stephenrhall (button) (small blind) showed [7d 2c] and won (12110) with a pair of Sevens

Britbloggerment 8 - Storm clouds gathering

Congratulations to ResdentEvil, who defeated Cloud heads up. Once again Cloud has come so close, and fallen at the last fence. PokerMunk3y took the last cash place, with pokerdwarf this weeks bubble boy. Doing the walk of shame was Quixote8. Going down in a blaze of glory just after that was BurnleyMik, whose hammer failed to break Tan's queens.

The league table now looks like this:

	the_cloud71		31
	ResdentEvil		31
	PokerMunk3y		25
	Zagga		25
	stephenrhall		21
	Al Eleven		21
	Simonjj		19
	TanOrpheus		18
	Pokerdwarf		14
	Spid		14
	Rosie_m_t		13
	cadmunkey		11
	lightning36		11
	Quixote8		11
	lzfsb3		9
	Sir Fortune		9
	weegem		9
	mauzj		9
	sookraboaby		8
	Katitude		8
	LepRecon777		7
	SuffolkPunch		7
	BurnleyMik		6
	S.t.b		6
	lousaban		6
	a104l9		4
	mikesaban		2
	AlCantHang		2
	wadhead		0
	Neil Ross		0
	countryk		0
	mookie99		0
	4everleeds		0

MTT Cash

Today I made it through a field of 9539 players to make it into the money.

It was a Pokerstars $1000 added freeroll. Here is the congratulations email:

PokerStars Tournament #50093293, No Limit Hold'em
Freeroll
9539 players
$1000.00 added to the prize pool by PokerStars.com
Total Prize Pool: $1000.00
Tournament started - 2007/05/13 - 09:10:00 (ET)

Dear stephenrhall,

You finished the tournament in 983rd place.
A $0.20 award has been credited to your Real Money account.

You earned 12.40 tournament leader points in this tournament.
For information about our tournament leader board, see our web site at
http://www.pokerstars.com/tlb_tournament_rankings.html


Congratulations!
Thank you for participating.

Yes, thats right - I won 20 cents. I've decided not to withdraw these winnings, but to use them to contribute towards building my bankroll.

Tagged

I've been tagged by Rosie, so here are 7 things you didn't know about me :

1. I have a really "interesting" reaction to Pennicillin - starting from the groin and radiating outwards, , my skin turns red and peels off, itching horrendously, like the worst sunburn you can imagine.

2. I am the father of twins, a boy and a girl aged 8.

3. From the age of 5 to 18, I lived on the edge of the English Lake District, and never appreciated how lucky I was until I moved away.

4. Our family pet is a French Lop rabbit, who is house trained, has the free run of the garden, and terrorizes any cat foolish enough to come into his garden.

5. The first album I ever spent my own money on was "Kings of The Wild Frontier" by Adam and the Ants.

6. I won darts competion at my college at Durham University for the right to play Eric Bristow. I didn't get a throw at a double, but I would have beaten him if he'd missed his finish,honest!

7. I have worked for the same employer since I left university 16 years ago. In fact, I worked for them for 5 years before I left university, working there during school and university holidays paid for all my pints of Theakstons!


So who can I tag? This is a bit like pyramid selling - those who get in at the start have it easy. Oh well, lets see if these people are reading this:

I tag

Neil the Geekster
Amatay
Mike Saban

Three weeks and counting

As of yesterday, my wife has been in hospital for 3 weeks. As of today, it is 2 weeks that she has been waiting for a transfer to Preston. Yesterday was the first time she has seen a consultant since the day she was admitted. He apparently spent most of the time berating the nursing staff for the way they were doing things. If he had been round more often he would have been able to give them proper instructions earlier!

The Patientline system, as well as being a complete rip-off, has proved to be extremely unreliable, with the units crashing regularly. They run an embedded version of Windows XP (say no more!). Also, the network regularly goes down for hours or even an entire weekend, preventing internet access. We have got around the problem of the outrageously priced priced phone calls, as the nurses are allowing patients to use mobile phones. I don't think this is official policy, but given recent revelations that phones don't actually interfere with equipment, and the very bad publicity Patientline has had (including contract clauses stating that hospitals must ban mobile phones), the nurses are applying a common sense, compassionate approach.

My daughter has been of school all week. The doctor says she has a virus, but also says the stress of her mother being in hospital could also be an issue. The children are spending the weekends with me, but go to their grandparents during the week, so they can do the school run with minimum inconvenience to them. I'm looking forward to getting them back home tonight; I spend week nights rattling around the house on my own, eating junk food. I've also got friends coming to stay, with their two younger children. We went to university together, and have known each other for 19 years. With a bit of luck I can give the kids a fun weekend, taking their minds off their mother being in hospital, and they can chill out a bit. Visitors are also an excuse to open a bottle of wine or three.

Might be around tonight to play in the 9 o'clock MTT on Pokerstars. Depends how much tidying up I need to do after I get the kids to bed. Got to make the house reasonably safe for a 3 year old and a crawling baby!

Blog Roll

I've just got round to updating my blog roll. It gets out of date because, with Google Reader, I just click on Subcribe to add a blog to my regular reading list, but I haven't found a way to display the list of subscribed blogs on my blog. I realised it was out of date when I was looking back for a post I'd read recently, and the post wasn't on any of the blogs on my roll!

They're not all poker blogs - of the non-poker blogs I've added today, gamers amongst you may enjoy Penny Arcade, and there's some great non-poker related writing from Otis, of Pokerstars blog fame.

The post I was looking for was a from a poker blog, it was this one. It talks about reversing the conventional wisdom of playing extra tight in the big MTTs, instead looking to make gains early, and makes the valid point that its better to bust out early than on the bubble, as you have wasted less time!

BritBloggerment 7 - The Results

And the winner is -


ME!

Actually that isn't strictly true. I won the second chance tournament. And as only 4 of us entered, that isn't the great achievement it might sound. Though I did finish ahead of some mighty players - Cloud, ResdentEvil. Oh, and BurnleyMik played too ;) Whilst I wouldn't want to make a habit of playing HORSE (I really suck at Omaha!) this was great fun - thanks for playing guys.

In the main event, results took a rather different turn, previous high flyers Spid, ResdentEvil, and Al Eleven leaving the game early. BurnleyMik and I both failed to make the final table. We had a new player this week - mauzj, AKA The Edge, who NEVER SHUTS UP! he makes BurnleyMik look shy and retiring. Our resident celebrity SuffolkPunch also joined us. He's trying to steal the Hairy Gymnast crown, but Cloud still reigns supreme!

The eventual winner was TanOrpheus, who was heads up against Zagga. Third was Simonjjj, and this weeks unfortunate bubble girl, after a great comeback,was Rosie. Doing the walk of shame was Bullmeister, who hasn't got a blog, so can't post the monkey!

As far as it went for me, well, the dealer obviously had it in for me, and I had very few cards worth playing. This was made worse by having a very agressive TanOrpheus on my right, who was making a lot of preflop raises, so any marginal cards I received were priced out of the game, and opportunities for stealing were virtually nil. I'm sure that mauzj will be able to tell us all exactly how many times Tan raised preflop - what was the name of that software again? It wasn't mentioned much so I can't quite remember. My personal statistics - played 133 hands, saw 11 flops (8% - a little too tight methinks), won 2 out of 5 at showdown (ouch) and won 12 without showdown. I probably should have called more of Tan's raises - my passivity putting me in a position where I had to push.

I eventually went out in tenth place; with my stack dwindling away, I pushed with JJ. Mauzj called with AK0, and the Ace on the river sent me home.

Updated league table below - no change at the top, with Cloud, me, ResdentEvil and Al Eleven all finishing outside the points, but a big move up the table from Zagga, who is really running well at the moment.

	the_cloud71		23
	stephenrhall		22
	ResdentEvil		22
	Zagga		22
	Al Eleven		21
	Simonjj		19
	PokerMunk3y		18
	TanOrpheus		18
	Spid		14
	Rosie_m_t		13
	cadmunkey		11
	lightning36		11
	Quixote8		11
	lzfsb3		9
	Sir Fortune		9
	Pokerdwarf		8
	sookraboaby		8
	Katitude		7
	LepRecon777		7
	BurnleyMik		6
	S.t.b		6
	SuffolkPunch		7
	weegem		5
	lousaban		4
	a104l9		4
	mauzj		4
	mikesaban		2
	AlCantHang		2
	wadhead		0
	Neil Ross		0
	countryk		0
	mookie99		0
	4everleeds		0

Cash Crash

Played the cash tables last night, and after doubling my money early on, things went horribly wrong as three times I was dealt AA, and three times failed to win, beaten once by JJ, once folded to a big raise on a scary flop of QQJ, and worst of all, lost to 83 off suit. He called my preflop raise with 83o! He was then on a straight draw after the flop, and called my raise once more. He rivered the straight and I take a big hit.

Dell to Install Ubuntu

The BBC is reporting that Dell will be selling computers with Ubuntu Linux. This is great news, and should hopefully encourage hardware manufacturers to provide drivers for Linux. I use Ubuntu myself at home, and it does everything I want it to do, with greater speed and reliability than Windows. I wonder what Microsoft will make of this? or SCO?

Full Bloggerment League Table - By popular request

the_cloud71	23
stephenrhall	22
ResdentEvil	22
Al Eleven	21
PokerMunk3y	16
Spid	14
Zagga	14
cadmunkey	12
Simonjj	12
lightning36	11
Quixote8	11
lzfsb3	9
Sir Fortune	9
TanOrpheus	9
Pokerdwarf	8
sookraboaby	8
Katitude	7
LepRecon777	7
Rosie_m_t	7
BurnleyMik	6
S.t.b	6
SuffolkPunch	4
lousaban	4
a104l9	4
mikesaban	2
AlCantHang	2
wadhead	0
Neil Ross	0
countryk	0
mookie99	0
4everleeds	0
weegem	0

Way to go MPAA

The MPAA has issued a takedown notice to several sites hosting the encryption key to HD-DVD disks. Unfortunately for them, the idiots have published the key themselves as part of a URL in the letter. Take a look at the second link.