Happy Birthday to Me

It's my birthday, and here I am stuck at work. Yay!

So I've decided the first day of my 26th year on this planet is as good a day as any to start with this whole "blogging" thing. Actually, I've blogged before, way back in the days before the Internet was the fad it is today... I guess sans Web, it would just be called "logging"... and yes, I was inspired by Doogie Howser, M.D's end-of-show routine, condensing that episode's moral dilemmas into a few paragraphs so that future teenage doctors could learn their lessons from his teachings. I wanted to be cool like Doogie and type my thoughts out on a computer rather than write them down with pen and paper in a girly-type diary. :)

Ahhh... those were the days... being the tender age of 15, seeing my hormone-driven feelings emerge in type in glorious monochrome, knowing the angst of my soul was being transcribed electronically by my 66 mHz pre-Pentium CPU (which was on Turbo, mind you), and saving it all onto a series of 5 1/2" floppy disks. I've got those disks somewhere, and if I ever do find them, I wonder if I'd be able to even find a 5 1/2" drive to be able to read my teenage memoirs.

Well, now I'm in the prime of my life and I figure, what the hey, let's start keeping track of things and go ahead and put it out into Cyberspace. This whole Internet fad is only going to last a few more years, right? Might as well ride it hard while I can.

For now, I'm gonna categorize these writings into the gambling/poker subset of blogs. Why? Mainly 'cause gambling (specifically, Craps and Poker) is my current obsession. That, and the only blogs I've been interested reading are the Poker blogs. And with the popularity of TV poker, I wanted to jump on the bandwagon and be one of the cool kids. ;)

Seriously though, in reading the Poker adventures of others, it seems very cathartic to share those bad beat stories. And I obviously want to better my game, but I realized I tend to focus on the negatives - "Why the hell did I call that? Why the hell didn't I re-raise him back on the flop? Why the hell am I playing this stupid game?!?!" - etc. etc., and I hardly remember any of my good plays. So I hope writing it all down, good and bad, will help me learn from my mistakes, give me some positive re-inforcement, and allow me to progress in my skills.

I'm sure I have a lot more to say right now, but I'll hold off and dole it out bit by bit. I might even be able to make this blog relevant for at least a week! For now, it's back to work, and then head home to the wife and kids and see what birthday surprise they have in store for me. And if I don't get too drunk, maybe head off to the casino and see if the cards will be nice to me on this very special day. :)