Technology keeps letting me down! Tuesday was nightmarish. The first couple of issues were perhaps a foretaste of disasters to follow. First I had to change my mouse batteries whilst ten-tabling. I have a second USB mouse on standby for such situations, but the cable got snagged so the mouse wouldn’t reach my mouse mat – d’oh. (I think I need to print a pre-grind check-list and pin it up by my computer!)
Live Poker
Shortly later I made the mistake of trying to unplug the power brick for one of my USB hubs from the mains. The power supply pulled apart in my hand!! The thing was still plugged in, however half the casing had come off in my hand, exposing live wires and circuitry. Oh joy.
Why, oh why, did I decide to do this while playing poker? So I had to switch off my screens while I cut the power to that bank of plug sockets and disconnected the dismembered death-trap power brick.
Next, I lost my internet connection for 17 minutes at around 1am. Oh GREAT timing...
Why Now?
I had three speed games on the go on PartyPoker, including the $11 buy-in Speed Rebuy, in which I was the chip leader with a huge 23bb (over thirty times the starting stack; perhaps $150 worth of chips) with a quarter of the field remaining.
Also I was at the final table of the $33 Rebuy, seven-handed (top prize $3,473). Plus I was playing three or four other tourneys.
Bear in mind this was my first big final table for several days...
Tough table! The 33r FT before I lost my connection.Contingency Plan
No problem, my mobile broadband stick will save the day. Or will it?
For the second or third time when I’ve actually needed to use my T-Mobile dongle, I couldn’t get a f*$#ing connection. Thank you world!
No matter where I positioned it in the room, the dongle provided nothing more than light pollution, its blue flashing LED indicating ‘trying to connect’. Grrr. The damned thing has proved barely more useful than the proverbial chocolate teapot.
Blind Panic
Eventually my home broadband connection returned.
By the time I returned to the tables, I had bled away a third of my stack in the Speed Rebuy and of course the blinds had quadrupled, so I was down from 23bb to less than 4bb. I had virtually no chips in the other speed games.
In the $33 Rebuy, I had blinded away over a third of my stack and was down from 34bb to 13bb. It was a toughish table, with a higher proportion of strong players than usual in this tourney, and there had only been one elimination. Now short-stacked (with large antes in play) alas I would be next to perish. :(
My micro-stack earned me a min-cash in the Speed Rebuy. No such luck in the other speed games, where my piddling chip stacks promptly evaporated before the money.
Internet Schminternet
How hard can it be to obtain reliable internet access in the 21st century?
This has been the third or fourth non-trivial internet outage I’ve had in the last two years. I conservatively estimate that my 17 minute disconnection on Wednesday morning cost me in the order of $300—400 across all the tournaments I was playing. Just what I needed in the middle of a nasty downswing.
Unfortunately there is only one broadband provider where I live – it’s BT ADSL or nothing. You can’t get Virgin/cable in our area, and other ISPs are just reselling BT’s line, so I’m skeptical whether switching provider will have any bearing on the reliability of my connection.
King Dong(le)
So I need a back-up plan, but is mobile broadband the answer to my problems?
It may be that the T-Mobile 3G signal just isn’t strong enough to work reliably indoors here, so I’ve decided to try another network.
Three offer a dongle for £80, that comes loaded with 12 Gig of credit which can be used any time over 12 months. This is rather more expensive than the first pay-as-you-go dongle I purchased, but I’m desperate and have taken the plunge.
Frankly, because of the nature of my work, I would pay through the nose for a service that is truly reliable. £100 or £200 or whatever per year would be a pittance compared with what I could (and probably will) lose one day due to an ill-timed ’net outage.
Well, the new dongle arrived yesterday. Does it work? Does it bollocks!! I can’t connect to Three’s network, period. Not even ‘one bar’ of signal.
I’ve spoken to Three tech support and apparently they are performing maintenance work on our local phone mast. LOL. This is scheduled to end in a day or two. To be honest, I’m not holding my breath, but MAYBE the new dongle will magically start working at the weekend...
PC Problems
OMG OMG, and did I mention the problem I’m experiencing with my main PC? For several weeks now, I’ve suffered a nightly, albeit momentary, disconnection. I lose network/internet access entirely for two or three seconds, at a different time each night, but generally between midnight and 2am. This only happens on my main desktop PC, not my laptop, but I’ve no idea why. :(
I’m still in the process of diagnosing what’s going on. As a side note, it’s interesting to see how different poker clients respond to a couple of seconds of internet outage! PartyPoker usually copes alright, except that I get a gap in my hand history file, even if I’m only disconnected for a split second during a hand while nothing was happening. But as soon as my connection is back, I’m back in the game.
At the other end of the scale, iPoker seems go to belly-up. To say it is inelegant would be an understatement. Generally, all the game windows close and I have to log in again. Frequently it’s worse than that: I am unable to log back in without closing the application completely (which often takes multiple clicks of the close button) and in the past it’s taken anything up to a minute or more before I’ve found myself back in my games. All from two seconds of disconnection. Inexcusably lame!
God, komputaz suck.
Into The Blend
A piece of technology that has never let me down is my food processor. It may be cheap-and-cheerful, but I have to rate my blender as one of my favourite gadgets, up there with my laptop, my Virus synthesiser and my digital piano!
There’s been plenty of blending action the last couple of weeks:
Carrot and coriander soup. Wow, where have you been all my life? I can’t believe I never tried this before.
Homemade pesto. Do you buy the jarred stuff from the supermarket? DON’T! It’s miles better if you blend it yourself with fresh basil and garlic. Fun and easy to make.
CURRY! On Wednesday’s menu (and yesterday’s, and today’s – gotta love curry leftovers) was a sort of improvised chilli and coriander lamb curry. Yum. (You guessed it: I have a surplus of coriander I purchased on special offer!)
Speaking of which, it’s time I tucked into the very last of my batch-job of curry, before I return to the tables for more punishment. Happy days. :)
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