Good trip to Vegas! Made some nice money in the 15/30 on Friday night, but then ran card dead all day Saturday and donated a bit back. The Friday game featured a guy with a bottomless wallet who lost his first $300 buy-in before he'd been seated for a full 12 minutes. He called EVERYTHING, and rarely had anything remotely resembling a hand. The Human ATM hung around and dropped no less than $3,000 on the table before leaving around 9:00. "Shit, now we don't have a game!" lol

We played on and I made a couple of scores to build up my stack slow and steady; just the way that I like it. I had locked in a winning session and was about to pack it in for the night, when the Human ATM sat back down in our game. "Damn, now I can't afford to leave..." That guy didn't care, and bless him for that. He dropped another $1000 before he left and I followed suit shortly thereafter. That's 8 racks of chip contempt $300 at a time, wrapped in a package and tied with a bow on top. I haven't seen a blatant display like that in a few months, but it is a sight to behold.

I finally sat in on The Pan Game on Saturday evening at the new Venetian Poker Room and met the crew. Viv, Marie, Chad and Murph showed. Great group of characters check out Linda's site for the game and room report. Murph was kind enough to let me crash in his spare bedroom; and he has a pretty massive poker chip collection. He also collects match books and other assorted casino items. I was sitting in the living room and struck a match to light a cigarette (ya, I'm bad sometimes). You should have seen Murph's face in horrors. "You didn't just light a match?", he gasped. "Ya, why?", I reply. He walks around and then sees that they're my matches from the Bellagio and of no immediate collectible value. He then pointed out the rare match books in a bowl but hidden under a magazine in the center of the table. Guess that sound of phosphorus striking will get your heart pumping when you're a collector. Thanks again for letting me crash at your pad, Murph.

I've been fiending pretty bad for the past couple of months to buy a new Tablet PC. I have it narrowed down to either the Fujitsu 1500D or the new Ultra Mobile PC (UMPC) which is the Samsung Q1. I'm really torn right now and have one hell of a decision to make, which has me agonizing. It's a really important decision for me since this baby will be a big part of my business life on the road. I'm thinking that I'll try the Fujitsu for a few days and just return it if I don't like it. The Samsung appears to be the real direction that I want to go, but it doesn't have a PC Card slot for the Verizon wireless card that I want for always-on Internet. I may be alright if I upgrade my phone, then it can connect via Bluetooth, but that's a pricey option as well since my Samsung i700 Pocket PC phone still goes for around $400 and I paid $750 for it new. We shall see, but I don't think that I can make it through another weekend without a new tech toy. Back to the grind.

Nicholas has left the 3s