Where the Battle of Algiers rages on ...Rick's Cafe Americain

My first post was on Blogspot, on Wednesday, October 29, 2003.

The first time I called Karol (then “Kashei") a racist was on November 3, 2003. (I don’t know what happened to Karol’s site).

Sam and Ugarte Joined the Staff on November 21, 2003.

Karol began her name-calling in earnest on December 2, 2003.

We officially moved to our present location at http://www.rickblaine.com on December 7, 2003.

Signor Ferrari left the Blue Parrot for Rick’s on December 11, 2003, and then left to pursue his tireless crusade on behalf of baby seals on April 5, 2004.  He still stops by every once in a while with a treatise, though.

Sam crawled under the floorboards sometime after February 9, 2004.

Ugarte’s addendum

If you are interested in other liveblogging of the debates, check out On The Third Hand, which has a list of livebloggers including our friend and nemesis Karol.

I added Karol’s site, Alarming News, to the Usual Suspects blogroll.  She will be placed in her proper alphabetic place in the blogroll on November 3, when she can do no more harm.

Or when she gives Rick’s double links because of our bi-coastal nature.   I apologize for the emoticon.

Thanks in large part to the cached files available on Google and Yahoo searches, We are back up, with only minor damage. 

To wit: Anything posted yesterday is gone, and I had to reconstruct the comments using a proprietary method called Comment Fairy(TM), so although the content remains unchanged, I was unable to attribute all the comments where the commenter did not provide an e-mail addresses or some other way of identifying themselves.

Also, some pre-existing links to reconstructed posts may be broken.

The blogroll and Charles’ gig list should be operational shortly.

Sorry.

As you were.

Here are some new features:

1) Smileys! 

2) If you came for poker, and don’t want to be distracted by this other namby-pamby shit, you can now click on the link at the top of the page that takes you directly to Ugarte’s Grovel.

3) Similarly, Ugarte’s Grovel (i.e., RCA’s poker content) can now be separately syndicated.  Go to The Grovel and use the links on the left sidebar to do so.

4) Many of the glitches being experienced by users of various browsers should have been fixed.

5) I like numbered lists.

Seriously, I’ve been in the Bay Area for a week, interviewing for a new job and looking for a new home.

Ilse and I had success on the home front (pun intended), and I think the interviews went well.  I have my favorites, and if I get offers from both of them, it will be a tough choice.

In other news, I caught a bit of John Kerry‘s appearance on Meet the Press this weekend.  Although I thought he was too quick to back away from taking strong positions (a common fault among Democratic candidates, who tend to have this odd notion that part of leading a democracy is building consensus and that part of representing a superpower is diplomacy), l liked what he had to say.  Although I am (of course) an ABB guy, I think I may be becoming pro-Kerry.

Also, I read a front page artlicle in the Wall Street Journal (unfortunately I am not a subscriber and could not find it elsewhere online) a couple of days ago that pretty accurately described how the Bushies’ lack of planning and failure to act intelligently in the first days/months of the invasion of Iraq led to the setbacks (it is virtually impossible to find images of the burned bodies on the internet—why?) our troops are now facing.

This just made me angry (TAKE SOME FUCKING RESPONSIBILITY, YOU SMUG LITTLE FUCKER!), but this cheered me up.  Something happened with the hand histories I tried to download, so I can’t offer a detailed write-up, but I will say I got a few strings of really good cards, and that made all the difference.

Anyway, back to the real world.

First, please welcome the “Staff Picks” feature on the left hand side of the Cafe, where your gracious hosts will point you directly to their best work (or, if they are feeling particularly selfless, someone else’s).

Second, please wecome two new poker blogs to the Gambling Room.  The Fat Guy is actually long overdue.  Ugarte asked me to put him up about a month ago, but I forgot.  So, apologies and welcome.  Also new to the Gambling Room is Riding the F-Train, a new blogger who plays a little game nobody really likes to call “the Cadillac of poker”.

Finally, if anyone knows how to generate an RSS feed (preferably using pMachine RSS factory) from less than all the posts (i.e., only posts of a certain category), please e-mail me (use the E-MAIL link on the left there).