Dear Reader,

Yes. As you can tell I have returned from the exciting city of London, and what a pleasant trip it was. And upon my return, I have been diligently pounding away at my in-box and updating Casinomeister. A new section that should be posted in the next several days covering online casino licensing and the significance of what each jurisdiction means. This should prove useful for many of you.

And it's finally snowing again.

Aesthetically yours,

Bryan

Three men were standing in line to get into heaven one day. Apparently it had been a pretty busy day, though, so Peter had to tell the first one, "Heaven's getting pretty close to full today, and I've been asked to admit only people who have had particularly horrible deaths.So what's your story?"

So the first man replies: "Well, for a while I've suspected my wife has been cheating on me, so today I came home early to try to catch her red-handed. As I came into my 25th floor apartment, I could tell something was wrong, but all my searching around didn't reveal where this other guy could have been hiding. Finally, I went out to the balcony, and sure enough, there was this man hanging off the railing, 25 floors above ground!By now I was really mad, so I started beating on him and kicking him, but wouldn't you know it, he wouldn't fall off. So finally I went back into my apartment and got a hammer and starting hammering on his fingers.Of course, he couldn't stand that for long, so he let go and fell -- but even after 25 stories, he fell into the bushes, stunned but okay.I couldn't stand it anymore, so I ran into the kitchen, grabbed the fridge and threw it over the edge where it landed on him, killing him instantly.But all the stress and anger got to me, and I had a heart attack and died there on the balcony."

"That sounds like a pretty bad day to me," said Peter, and let the man in.

The second man comes up and Peter explains to him about heaven being full, and again asks for his story.

"It's been a very strange day.You see, I live on the 26th floor of my apartment building, and every morning I do my exercises out on my balcony.Well, this morning I must have slipped or something, because I fell over the edge.But I got lucky, and caught the railing of the balcony on the floor below me.I knew I couldn't hang on for very long, when suddenly this man burst out onto the balcony.I thought for sure I was saved, when he started beating on me and kicking me.I held on the best I could until he ran into the apartment and grabbed a hammer and started pounding on my hands.Finally I just let go, but again I got lucky and fell into the bushes below, stunned but all right.Just when I was thinking I was going to be okay, this refrigerator comes falling out of the sky and crushes me instantly, and now I'm here."

Once again, Peter had to concede that that sounded like a pretty horrible death.

The third man came to the front of the line, and again the whole process was repeated.Peter explained that heaven was full and asked for his story.

"Picture this," says the third man, "I'm hiding naked inside a refrigerator..."

Ha ha ha ha

MY THOUGHTS ON LONDON
A Brief Overview

I arrived via a four hour train ride, a three hour wait at the airport, and a one-hour-and-fifteen flight. And it was great to get there in one piece, I always freak a little knowing that I'm traveling in some little metal tube miles above the ocean, barely noticeable to any living thing that's floating in the water down below. And there are no parachutes--an irrational fear of an ex-US Army paratrooper. But they didn't lose my one bag - and I made it to the subway (another tube) within 45 minutes of landing.

The first thing I noticed on "the tube" were Casino-on-net banner ads. If they can't get you in cyberspace, they will get you in normal space. In fact, they were all over the place - some were bigger than life, sprawling five meters high three meters wide and spread on the wall opposite from where you stand waiting for the subway train. Interestingly enough - they didn't promise big winnings or bonuses like their cyber counter parts, but just a statement to join their 4 million members in the poker room for example. And where was the competition? I'm sure some of the big British land based casinos have the funds to launch a counter ad campaign, but there were none in sight. Very strange--I find this puzzling.

Well, within 30 seconds of arriving in my hotel room. The phone rings and it's Kevin from Reviewed Casinos wondering why I'm not drinking beer downstairs in the bar. Well, I gave myself ten minutes to unpack, and I made it down there and there was a whole zoo of people that I knew. Ted Loh, Craig Miller, the guys from Reviewed Casinos, Spiral Solutions and Greedy Girl form GoneGambling. Oh what fun we had blabbing away, figuring out what we were going to eat while we drank beer. Sushi it was and we wandered down to a very cool sushi restaurant.

After which I checked out the movies. Besides meeting people, movies are my main concern. I don't get them in English at home, everything is dubbed, and this to me is horrible. I can't stand getting perfect voices that are clearly from someone reading the script and overdubbing the actor's. What a shame the Germans are so used to this; they don't really care and think this is normal.

Anyway, I saw "The Gangs of New York" the first night. Man, what a violent film!! If you like meat cleaver and butcher knife fights, this one is for you!! It was about two and a half hours of people beating the crap out of each other. I thought the costuming was rather good, but one review I read compared the costumes to 70's porn meets Willie Wonka. I thought that was pretty funny.

The ICE began the next day, and it was to last until Thursday. ICE stands for International Casino Exhibition and this is the place you need to be in order to meet the most influential people in this industry. I'm not going to go name dropping, but most of the major software providers have their people here, either in booths or wandering around, and many of the main casino operators are here as well. This is the reason I go. I need to have a face to face contact with most anyone I deal with plain and simple. And I'm sure they want a face to face meeting with me.

And of course, with this many people around, rumors are started or extinguished, or passed around like a cheap bottle of Boone's Farm. One rumor that I found interesting was that Golden Palace is moving to Playtech. Hmmm? And like who cares anyway? But maybe Playtech should care since Golden Palace has an infamous history of ripping off a bunch of players some time ago. You'll also find that most portals that have any scruples will NOT advertise for these folks. But I'm not going to get into this.

But what I will get into is the fantastic Fire and Ice party that was sponsored by Online Casino News. This party is held every year during the ICE and it has a counterpart at nearly every convention I attend. I didn't get there until around 11 pm since I was having a wonderful diner with some of the folks from Microgaming, Spiral Solutions, Ted Loh, and Mikki from Trident Entertainment Group. Wonderful gossip at that dinner party I'd say! But not to be published here! Oh, I digress.

The party was held at the Fire House, a relatively old building which I guessed used to be an old Fire House, but it's now a two-story bar. Unfortunately, by the time I arrived everything was blurry except I do remember talking to quite a number of people, and I actually met a few persons who are fans of Kilgore Trout, the character I borrowed from K. Vonnegut Jr. to trick that Nigerian con artist last summer. Oh, what fun.

I arrived back at the Hotel at around three a.m., woke up to some moron calling me on the phone at 7:20 (I didn't bother to pick it up, and the person didn't leave a message either). But then I did drag myself out of bed, and after a couple of cups of java, I hit Virgin records (which was nearly across the street). I spent most of the morning grabbing a number of CDs I just can't seem to find in Germany.

London has a lot of magic for me; mainly from it's history and it's writers. Dickens was always one of my favorites, and what a delight it was to have a magnificent lunch with PartnerLogic just around the corner from one of Dickens' homes. It was here that he wrote "A Christmas Carol", the story of Eberneezer Scrooge's Christmas ghosts. There is a graveyard across from the restaurant with headstones dating to the 18th century. Dickens probably saw these on his daily walks, and these stones perhaps found themselves intertwined in his stories. The restaurant was on Old Marleybone Road; Scrooge's partner was Marley. Cool stuff. And I digress once more.

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Before leaving London, I had the chance to see two more films which were absolutely incredible. The new "Harry Potter" film was great and I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that Jason Issacs was cast to play the villain. If you have seen the "Patriot" with Mel Gibson, you would have recognized Jason Issacs who played the British cavalry officer who was very evil indeed. Great show! Forty-five minutes after this show ended, I caught the "Lord of the Rings - The Two Towers". This was the grand finale of my London trip. It was beyond awesome. I thought the first film couldn't be beat, but this one kicked butt. Three hours of nonstop intrigue and action. Wow, what a trip.

And then my trip was over. But it's good to be home; back home in Germany. My family, my kids, my wife, my pillow. But I'm already looking forward to next year's ICE. Hopefully it'll give me a chance to catch the next "Harry Potter" film and the third installment of the "Lord of the Rings".

A few photos here.