Technical Difficulties Make Me Nuts

There's a great scene in the movie Office Space where one of the main characters (Who's name is Michael Bolton - no relation to the singer) is trying to print something and the printer jams. You just see him standing at the printer and he says "P.C. load letter? What the fuck is that supposed to mean?" Then as he struggles with the paper stuck in the machine he says "This is just what I need right now. Come on you little bitch let's go!" Eventually one of his co-workers pulls him away. Later in the movie, Michael and his buddies exact their revenge on the printer (which they all hate so, so much) with a baseball bat, a few drop kicks, and even their bare fists. After they get their fill of pounding on it they leave it broken into a thousand (by my count) pieces in a deserted field. This is often what I feel like doing to my technology when it doesn't work the way it's supposed to.

I had a little scare when my Internet cut out today in the middle of a significant hand. The hand in question took place in a $3/$6 blinds NL cash game where I had about $175 in front of me. I open raised to $18 with KK and got called by both of the blinds. The flop came down with three unconnected cards below 9. Both of my opponents checked, I bet $36 and the player in the small blind moved all in. I clicked on call and...nothing happened. ACK! My Internet connection failed and I wasn't sure if the software had registered the call. If it didn't, my hand would be folded if I wasn't able to log back on in time. After about 10 seconds of staring blankly at my blinking but inactive screen I ran down stairs to jump on one of the laptops.

Jen's laptop was on, but closed. When I opened it up the area that reports the status of the wireless connection said "limited or no connectivity." My first thought was "This is just what I need right now. Come on you little bitch let's go!" Luckily, when I ran back upstairs my computer had reconnected and I'd won the hand. But it wasn't exactly the fun positive experience that I normally get from doubling up.

At that point I spent about an hour screwing with a myriad of things trying to make my connection more reliable. I thought my best bet was switching out my wireless USB network adapter with another one we had lying around that looks like a satellite dish compared to the stupid little stick I've been using. But, of course after 30 minutes of restarting, configuring, swearing and sweating, I couldn't get that piece of shit to work the way it's supposed to.

I think the main source of my connectivity problems was that our wireless router had been moved over the weekend and was in a spot that blocked some not insignificant portion of the signal. I think I have the problem solved, but tomorrow I'm investing in some new equipment to receive the signal on this end just to be sure.

Happily, despite the various malfunctions I had another nice winning day. With a late start and all the time I spent messing with stuff today, I only managed 2,000 hands (I've reduced my goal for the month from 60,000 hands to a more realistic 50,000 which is still a lot given the 8 vacation days I've taken so far this month), but I did win a little over seven hundred. That makes 9 winning days in a row. I'll try to make it 10 tomorrow.