Category: Consumption

My Vegas Angle

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I’ve been to Vegas once or twice. It’s fun to play, but I would never bet more than I expected to lose. You can see how people get addicted to it though – it’s easy to start fantasizing and lose track of reality. Case in point…

I thought I had perfected my gambling angle to the point where it couldn’t fail. The idea is to shift the long odds to shorter by decreasing the payout. Here’s the details, it’s pretty simple.

First, some basic Roulette. You can play red (or black) with a 2:1 payout. What this means is that if you bet $1 on red, and the little ball lands on a red number, you win $1. If it lands on black, you lose. All the numbers are either red or black, so it’s pretty good odds – the only down side is the 00 number – if that comes up, EVERYONE loses. OK, now for the angle.

If you lose, double your bet and play again. Keep doing this until you win. Once you win, if you do the math, you will see that you have won $1 since beginning the round of betting. You ALWAYS WIN $1!

OK, one bad assumption has ruined many a scheme, and the same is true here: you can’t double your bet indefinitely. Therefore, it’s just a matter of time until you lose several times in a row, doubling your bet each time, until you hit the betting limit and you’ve lost your shirt. Losing your shirt is typically seen as a BAD gambling strategy.

It’s still not too bad though, if you look at the numbers… UPDATE: yes it is… move on, nothing to see here…

8.5 Carcasonne

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I got Carcasonne for Andrea for Christmas based on three factors: it was one of the “classics” that has several expansion packs available; everyone at Games Galore recommended it; and it claimed to be a ‘great game for two players’. It was a steal, too, even with the Castles and Inns expansion pack.

It’s been a lot of fun. It’s not too complicated, but there are lots of choices as you build out a map of interconnected cities, roads, and farms.

I’m going to score our games as I rate them on several categories, higher always being better:

Pure strategy (no luck involved): 7
Player paths intertwined: 10
Multiple strategies available: 9
Complexity: 7



HTHAM: The Grapes of Frath

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The neighborhood got together for a “How To Host A Murder” party on New Year’s Eve, aka Larry’s birthday. It was a hit! Larry stormed around as the captain, yelling “don’t call it a boat, it’s not a boat, it’s a ship!” and “I don’t remember what I was doing, I was drunk at the time…”. Scott was decked out in a racing jacket and gloves, and Greg played out the accusatory investment banker perfectly. All the ladies were “dressed to kill”, which played out perfectly, as they all ended up running brothels or being romantically linked to the deceased.

To cap it all off, the role of the murdered host was played by none other than… Michael Jackson. Perfect casting!

Everybody had a blast, and we hope to do it again some time soon.


Heroes Incorporated

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Sammy, a good friend of mine from way, way, way back in the salad days of high school, made his fortune, and nearly lost his sanity, producing The Two Towers video game for Electronic Arts (yes, “that” TTT). Hurling himself from the jaws of the corporate grind, he “quit the biz” and decided to pursue a true passion of his, creating his own board game. He’s been working hard on it for a while, and it’s looking great.

He chatted me up the other day to bounce around some ideas for a tagline for the game, which has a theme of superheroes fighting crime whilst simultaneously soliciting the funds needed to keep at it as a full time profession. I immediately thought “let’s extend ‘crime doesn’t pay’ in some way”, but we just couldn’t shorten it up enough.

Sam: Like, “crime doesn’t pay, but Heroes Incorporated does!”, only, not stupid…

Then he hit the nail on the head… check out the Quest Machine website for the answer to the perfect tagline!

9.5 Pulse

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I just realized, several toe-tapping hours after the end of this movie-trip-around-the-world, that there wasn’t a single spoken word of English in it! It was that good that I didn’t even notice. I want to see this one a hundred times more!

Fortunately, I found the web site for the movie and LOTS of the rhythms and images are captured there, to jog my memory and keep me humming tapping and drumming on my potbelly for a long time to come… JAMMIN’!

Leo Kottke in the house

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We all took naps around 3 o’clock on Saturday while one of the kids from the neighborhood cut my lawn. (thanks Kelly!)

Then we got up around 5 and gathered up the troops. We took a blanket and a picnic dinner to the NC Art Museum’s amphitheater to hear the best guitar player on the planet lay down a wall of sound for two solid hours.

He was everything I hoped and expected, starting off with jazzy sounds, mixing in 15-year-old classics from my first exposures, rocking 12-string slides, and a beautiful darker tune in some minor key called “Industrial Park” (but he said the name in German hehe). All mixed with his droll disjointed ramblings that kept a permanent smile tatooed on everyone’s face – whenever we weren’t laughing out loud. We heard about everything from reincarnation to watermelon liberation to martian hibernation – something about a guy named Frizz Fuller and his crazy lyrics… “Martians at the window… And you in my arms… take down your antennae, don’t broadcast your charms…” And the whole time he’s just dinkin’ away on the guitar…

We brought the binoculars, and for the second half we were just a few dozen feet from him. I zoomed in on his hands and tried to figure out his playing technique. I couldn’t see a pick or a slide, but his dual melody-rhythms and walls of full twelve-string chords kept flowing out like he was using four guitars. So I guess his hands are just melded with his guitar, as I always expected.

Dang, that was fun!

Lan Partython

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Thanks again to Jason for hosting anotha LAN, all day long this time. Counterstrike and Diablo ][ devoured the day before we knew what hit us. Chau, Stephen and Brenda, Zac, Jason and Julie, myself and 4 or 5 friends of Chau were in attendance…