brandonberndt.com

This is Joe.

Joe is one of my best friends, was one of my best men at my wedding, and one of the funniest guys I know. Joe is also a gambler, a big gambler some would say. I would be one of those that say said statement.

This is Joes poker story, and its a funny one.

Joe and myself made a trip to Lake Tahoe earlier this year. We do this frequently as its only an hour and half away from where Joe lives and Harrahs has given Joe and I a lot of free rooms (F*&# You Let it Ride). One evening after infinite vodka red bulls, I am down infinite and head to bed. Joe continues to play 3/6 limit holdem to pass the time and enjoy free drinks. Its our great get drunk quick with minimal lose strategy.

While playing holdem at Harrahs Lake Tahoe (actually the poker room is in Harveys which is across the street, go figure), Joe is at the table with an older Chinese fellow. Out of the three hours Joe is at the table with said player, he notices two things.

1. He has not said a word of English the entire time.

2. Every time this guy wins a pot, he points and laughs at the person that loses the pot.

Everyone at the table is getting upset about #2 since it is very rude, to the point of bringing it up to Joe saying things like “how rude” and “what an asshole”.

Joe then decides to turn the table; every time the guy loses a pot or Joe wins one, Joe points and laughs at the guy in the exact same way this guy was doing to others. Joe does this for over an hour. While doing this, the Chinese guy laughingly does it back to Joe thinking Joes gesture is friendly. The table understands Joe is mocking him, and laughs at it.

At around 4:30am, Joe decides to call it a night/morning and cashes out. At the poker room in Harvey’s, the poker room manager is also the cashier. So while the guy is counting Joes chips, Joe asks “does that Chinese guy play here often? I played with him for like 3 hours and all that asshole did was point and laugh at people he beat. Does he even speak english?”

The poker room manager responds to Joe with…

“No, he’s deaf”

I figured I would do a quick post for all readers with Wordpress blogs. These are the wordpress plugins I use which I think are really cool/helpful. Google the names as is to find the downloads as must of them have been altered.

Best Wordpress Plugins:

Advanced TinyMCE Editor - This plugin gives you a rich text editor when writing your posts. It allows you to use a great WYSIWYG editor which makes posting much easier.

All in One SEO Pack - Best SEO wordpress plugin out there. Makes it easy to optimize your site and increase traffic.

Breadcrumb Navigation XT - Adds a breadcrumb navigation for your visitors to follow the path to their current page. Also helps a lot with SEO.

Easy Tube - Just a quick way to post youtube videos

Google XML Sitemaps - Creates a quick and efficient sitemap of your site.

Kimili Flash Embed - Easy way to imbed flash into your posts.

MyDashboard - Alters your dashboard to be much more user friendly and faster to use.

Secure and Accessible PHP Contact Form - Great contact form to reduce spam.

ShareThis - Make it easier for readers to share your posts on social networking sites

Ultimate Google Analytics - Easy way to add google analytics to your site.

Wordpress Automatic Upgrade - Fast and safe way to automatically update wordpress when an update is available

WordPress Database Backup - Not sure if I need this anymore as I am pretty sure the auto upgrade works perfectly. But I leave it up just in case.

WP lightbox JS - Cool way to add the image light box. Below is an example. *Click on the image*

Wow, this was truly an incredible movie. If you have not had a chance to go see The Dark Knight I would suggest you run to the theaters now and see it. Heath Ledger was truly incredible and deserves as many awards he can win for this role.

I will not give any spoilers away, but The Dark Knight is by far the best comic book movie of all time. I would also say it is the best movie of 2008.

Heath Ledger’s performance of The Joker was unbelievable. Its very unfortunate that Heath Ledger past away after the completion of this movie as there would have for sure been a call for a Joker based movie. He portrayed a psychopath to a tee, and gave the Joker a feel the even Nicholson couldn’t reach.

All in all, The Dark Knight was a 10/10 and great on all levels. Christian Bale was just as good as he was in Batman Begins, and Aaron Eckhart did a phenomenal job playing Harvey Dent (who becomes two face).

I haven’t been into the Batman movies since I was a kid, and this movie was still great. Normally I won’t post about movies, but I think this movie deserved a short Dark Knight review.

POSSIBLE FIX BELOW

So I woke up early today like it was freaking christmas and I was 8 years old to update my iPhone to software 2.0 everything was about to be completed then BAM. Shit.

I am getting a couple of different errors, one is:

We could not complete your iTunes Store request. A secure network connection could not be established. Make sure SSL 3.0 or TLS 1.0 is enabled in the Internet Options control panel, then try again

now its:

We could not complete your iTunes Store request. The network connection timed out.
Make sure your network settings are correct and your network connection is active, then try again.

The phone is stuck in emergency mode, and is asking me to plug it into iTunes, which it already is.

This is so shitty, its like opening up the big present xmas morning to find a ugly sweater.

If you have an answer, I will ship you a $25 iTunes gift card, and my admiration. I want results, not telling me what the problem is btw

POSSIBLE FIX -
Apparent’y the issues today is due to server load. The way to get around this is one of two options:
1. Click on iPhone via itunes, if you get the error again, click on the iTunes button, and then click back on iPhone. If you do this 5-20 times, apparently it will work one of those times.
2. Keep docking and undocking your iPhone until it finally connects.

I am leaving to go out of town this weekend in about an hour, I am going to be really upset if I can’t use my iPhone this weekend due to these issues (won’t have internet connection)

If anyone has any success, please leave a comment with how you did it.

This weekend I packed up the car and took my wife and my bulldog Dozer and drove the 1.5 hour drive to Elk Grove, CA where our families are located. We are staying at my mom’s house in Wilton which is a puppy paradise. 3.5 acres, a pond, pool, and all the grass he can eat.

Today we are going to hangout by the pool and spend some time with my nephews. Kris and I are taking all of them to a Sacramento River Cats game to help raise funds for the Susan G Komen foundation. I always love going to the River Cats games (Oakland A’s AAA team) because its a great park and a fun time to have with your family. Kris and I also have a friend that pitches for the River Cats so hopefully he throws tonight. Ill see if I can get some pictures up later.

Just a heads up, I will be joining the PAP Radio show on Tuesday for the first couple hours. It should be a lot of fun and I am looking forward to it. Make sure you listen to it every week.

For now, here is a couple images I thought you might like.

When trying to purchase the new Panic at the Disco album on iTunes, I was given this error. I am a Panic fan, but that seems a bit long to wait.

Todays headlines at ESPN.com. I knew they were quick, but I didn’t know they were this fast.

Last but not least, the most disturbing image on the internet.

His poor, poor wife.

Alright so its almost been a year since I set out to have this blog created. Its time to get it going. As many of you know, my name is Brandon Berndt and I am the Poker Room Manager and Affiliate Program Director for ChanPoker.com. I love playing poker, and have a bit of a gambling problem.

Speaking of gambling, I often deposit $100 on Bodog just to kill some time at my game of choice Let it Ride. I do this as many times a week as I can before the wife catches on. Well lately I have killed their casino. Here are some screenshots.

For the first one, I only had $35 left so I was betting $5 (like I said its to kill time). Next hand I bet $10 and hit a flush, it was a good start. I ended up taking it to Blackjack and won another $200 beating $15-$75 a hand.

The second four of a kind was something special. I was down to my last $45 and was slightly tilted after losing 15 consecutive hands. Playing my self proclaimed can’t lose Berndt LIR strategy, I knew the odds were on my side for a winning hand. So I bet $15 and was dealt 2 2 2. Jackpot.

I ended up taking the $2400 to blackjack, roulette, a bit of poker, and some $5 slots. I promptly cashed out $4900.

Now yes I have a couple stories like this, but most of them go; deposit $100, hit big hand, lose $1000 betting $100 a hand while on tilt. I am sure I will share these with you soon.

Anyways, hope you enjoy the upcoming blog. Sorry Bodog.

This is my first blog, and am really looking forward to it. So stay tuned for some good fun!