RAMPAGE

Some weekends just aren't so good. Last weekend, for instance. It wasn't just the shits for poker, it was the shits for everything.

I'd left off from my tales of playing in four different WCOOP events, wherein I'd cashed in two and tilted out short of the money in the third where I should have been in the money. I still might post the hand that set me off, but then again, maybe not. When the pros at the table are typing "OMG" at the other player's actions you can bet it wasn't pretty.

But with the affordable WCOOP events out of the way, my short-lived fling with some of the better players around was done, and I returned to donking it up in multiple SNGs and small MTTs. Lose, lose, lose, and lose some more. It was just one of those streaks, and when the cards are running bad of late, they're running real bad.

My problem was that the "running bad" went way beyond the poker. It was, as the fates would have it, a weekend from hell. A tough couple of days of work were the starting point, but hey, that's the nature of work. Even in good jobs -- and I like mine -- it can't be peaches and cream every day.

But work became a whole lot more difficult Saturday when I walked over to my work laptop and everything was... frozen. No mouse motion on the screen, and when I rebooted it, nothing but a black screen and a BIOS message for an unreadable drive.

Oh, boy.

Yep, you guessed it: total hard-drive failure. That machine is now in a shop awaiting a new hard drive, a new operating system, and eventually, some new software. But I def lost some crap.

I got through my work for the day using my other two computers, and decided I'd sneak into the $215 HORSE event at the WCOOP. It was, originally, the one I'd really wanted to play in above all others, and even though I was tilted from my exit three days earlier and had had nothing but bad luck since, I figured I was over the tilt.

I was indeed over the tilt, but in a HORSE event you have to at least catch a few cards. I saw nothing, just like Sergeant Schultz. I'd say there's one tournament in 50 where you see cards so good that you can't help but cash, and one tournament in 50 where your cards are so bad that there's simply nothing you can do but accept your demise. This was that one.

But at least I had background noises to keep me company. I live in a three-story apartment building, and just outside the door, the smoke alarm above the stairs was going off in spurts all day long. I think someone upstairs was cookin' or 'smokin, and I'm not talkin' tobacco. The alarm, though, was going off with great frequency as it became evening, and I finally started calling the complex's emergency maintenance number to get them to check it out.

That took three calls and a couple of hours, by which time I was ready to take a golf club to the thing. But finally a maintenance guy showed up and solved the problem, whatever it was.

In the meantime, I'd spent a good chunk of the rest of the day bringing my older computers up to speed, including the old Emachines desktop upon which this post is currently being typed. Both this and my broken-backed but still functional older laptop originally had Norton, but my current Comcast high-speed service comes with complimentary McAfee, and the Norton had expired since the last time I'd used the machine.

The laptop installation went okay, but on the old desktop, it was a war between McAfee and a persistent trojan planted on the machine by 888 (aka Casino-On-Net) that lasted for several hours. Since I hadn't turned it on in a long time, I hadn't picked up that there was a latent virus. Excising it proved to be quite the chore, and I finally had to block the system process that creates periodic restore points to get rid of the thing.

Think 888'll pay for me my wasted time if I send them a bill?

Yeah, when hell freezes over, I know.

But, let's just say that I was plenty steamed by the cumulative life beatdown. I tried a couple of more SNGs, took some ridiculous beats, then thought hard about breaking something. REALLY wanted to take a walk, but in the midst of all this crap, I could not -- we were in the middle of cold-front-meets-Ike-remnants and were a day into three days and eight inches of rain. So I sat and stewed. And stewed some more.

Sunday wasn't any better. I like to watch the Packers when I can but living in the Chicago 'burbs, this was one of those weekends where I was stuck watching Chicago and handful of other games. At least the Packers played Detroit.

Monday, blessedly, it stopped raining. I snuck out to play nine holes on Tuesday with the new clubs, though the course across the way was one of the few places even open, and that was walking-only with a couple of the holes still underwater. Some of the runoff channels through the grass had been stripped bare by the rain. But it was still outside, know what I mean?

Life goes on, pokerwise. I suffered a couple more down days, then out of the blue took down a $10 HORSE tourney on Stars to win back everything that had gone down the tubes in the downswing. The moral?

Sometimes you have to fight like hell, just to stay even.