Scottish Advent Calendar

HFT...

Where can I buy one?

Save a Donk for Xmas

As a horse owner I try to support charities like these. A couple of quid goes along way for these organisations. It's just an idea - maybe you wouldn't mind sending a few quid in their direction. They are all fantastic and genuine charities that help equines in countries where vet care and animal welfare standards could be better. For a few bucks you can usually adopt a horse or donkey. A donation might make a nice alternative xmas gift. I've donked off much more lately so makes me feel better to donate some money to a good cause for a change:-

Please click on the links below if you want learn about what these charities do.

Safe Haven for Donkeys
Founded and run by an amazing and very brave English woman. Donkeys are treated like crap in the 'holy' land. £15 buys a donkey - so why bother treating it when it gets sick or injured? Why not set it on fire or tie it to a post to die of starvation.

I adopted Salaam - cause us donks need to stick together...



Race horse rescue
Next time you have punt, remember that the vast majority of race horses don't make it as winners and sometimes get shot after a few seasons because they can be a real handful and can be hard to retrain for recreational use. I have witnessed a race horse that was so crazy (presumably as a result of the unnatural lifestyle they lead) that he lifted (with his mouth...) the rubber matting from the floor of his stable and threw it over the stable door.

World Horse Welfare: the new name for the ILPH
Worldwide organisation that campaigns for better care of horses and also rescues them from maltreatment. They are running a campaign to end the live transportation of horses from Eastern Europe to Italy - where they enjoy horse flesh.

Brookes
Probably the best know and oldest horse charity

Chained to my desk

Have been fairly busy due to a demanding project I am managing. The project was on fire so needed a bit of intense activity. Now its just smoking a bit so that's an improvement. The client was going into blame mode and the words 'breach of contract' were mentioned. Was working at midnight last night preparing for today and then up at 6am to carry on the good fight. Couple of conference calls and directing the troops. Clients mood is better but still a lot to do. Got to keep the troops focused for the next few weeks. Positive progress reports from our developers will be verified with actual checking of the goods. Most developers are not to be trusted. When they say they are making progress or will meet the deadline - never believe them.

Due to all this work stuff poker has been temporarily relegated to low priority status. This week I even declined an offer of a sweat session so I could work instead... fekk - how sad.

Must say for the first time in ages my work has really challenged me. The old brain is starting to click again and I am taking control. It's sad but to get the best out of me I think you need to put several guns to my head.

Makes me think about my approach to poker. If achieving poker success was a life or death endeavour I'm sure many more of us average Joes would be more successful more quickly. We would put in the hours; we would be energised and much more focused. Look at Mr. Leatherass - broke and barely able to play the rent, in a relatively short space of time he grinded (word?) his way to success. But I guess there is probably more to his story that we don't know about.

On that note - I hereby commit to getting time at the tables this weekend.

Poker takes a back seat

Actually truth be told poker is taking more of a back seat than usual. This month I dropped a few BI in but made a definite improvement over Octobers results. Think I have started to turn things around by making a few little changes. The last week or so has been mega busy at work and I really haven't had much head space for poker. 12 hour days n that which I am not used to. Not much time for anything and when I do have free time I feel like having a few scoofs and just chillin as they say. By my old standards the volume and complexity is not that much really - just feels like it because I am as rusty as hell.

So Xmas is on its way and I have a couple of weeks off. Bizarrely I am going to use the time to try and get back into a good, healthy routine, BEFORE the New Year.

Frustrating session but a win anyway

Worked into the evening last night. When I finally got to play my PC was all over the place, Full Tilt was freezing and HEM didn't work. After a reboot things didn't improve much. So I played a measly 146 hands and won a 1/3d of a BI. Totally blind without my HUD and fighting time outs and all I ended up playing 12/9 lol. I knew I wasn't playing many hands but even for me 12/9 is wow. I only managed a win because I TABLE SELECTED and had position on a guy I knew was quite bad. Fortunately I flopped a set in the blinds and he came over the top of my check raise on a dry board with bottom pair. Perfect.

Anyway this morning I discovered that my graphics control centre software is a major resource hog so I stopped it from starting on boot up. Problem solved I hope. How exciting. If you want to see in more detail what is going on with your processes, download this free tool.

Process Explorer