Open your mind and your orbits.

I have a folder in my RSS aggregator that I call "Newbies". If I find a blog I think I might like to subscribe to, I add it to the Newbies folder. If I find I like their posts, I'll promote them to the "bloggers" folder. One of the blogs I found through my referrer logs and added to the newbies folder was Bill Rini - a poker player from LA.

I thought that it might be nice to open your mind to the fact that other peoples lives and interests are entirely different from your own. But, little did I know, exactly how true this was. The latest post arrived this morning, and out of ALL the sentences, I understand approximately ZERO of them. Observe:

"I got aces cracked twice in two orbits. Both times I picked them up in the blinds and had 7 or 8 callers before it got to me. The first guy to crack me was this older Asian dude who called two cold with pocket threes and hit his set on the flop. After my aces got cracked the second time I turned to the dealer and pleaded that she not deal me any more aces. I had lost half a rack in two orbits because of those damn cards."

Oh... Yeah? Well, ....er... Man, um.. That's really cool. You know, I cracked my ace on the toilet wall. Lucky the blinds were shut. Huh? Those old Asian dudes - man, you gotta look out for them. I caught a cold once from a guy who had a nice rack, but a was a bit of a flop with the crack, if you know what I mean....

The world is an amazingly diverse place. Blog-land, doubly so...

Comments

Easter at Blackhead

Camping out on the headland, miles from anywhere. Big swell, off-shore winds, clear crisp nights and smoke from the wood fire. Sometimes it's so rewarding to get out from under the pressure of your life and just be a family of humans.

How to rename an XML Node in C#

This was driving me crazy - here's an easy cut and paste solution to not being able to use the DOM to rename a node for lazy developers like me: public static XmlNode RenameNode (XmlNode node, string namespaceURI,string qualifiedName) { if (node.NodeType == XmlNodeType.Element) { XmlElement oldElement = (XmlElement) node; XmlElement newElement = node.OwnerDocument.CreateElement(qualifiedName, namespaceURI); while (oldElement.HasAttributes) { newElement.SetAttributeNode(oldElement.RemoveAttributeNode(oldElement.Attributes[0])); } while (oldElement.HasChildNodes) { newElement.AppendChild(oldElement.FirstChild); } if (oldElement.ParentNode != null) { oldElement.ParentNode.ReplaceChild(newElement, oldElement); } return newElement; } else { return null; } ...

Democracy in Action...

I have to vote in the US Senate Election Tomorrow. Okay, I don't have to vote, but being an Australian American, voting is something we do. Australia has compulsory voting, which I am overwhelmingly supportive of. People often assume that the point of compulsory voting is to somehow educate people about politics - to force them to have an opinion. The reality has nothing to do with voters, and everything to do with ensuring good governance - By forcing politicians to care about every voter, rather than just the ones who can be bothered to go down to the poll both and vote, it means that politicians are consequently forced to address the needs of all the citizens in the country. Under a non compulsory voting system, it's mainly the wealthy and educated who vote. I was a little shocked to find out that part of the aim of the campaign advertisements that have been confusing me for the last month on TV is not to encourage voters to vote for one candidate or another, but to discou...

Over the falls

Search This Blog