Nov 01
Had a great weekend, starting a little early on Thursday with dinner with Sammy at the Raleigh Times. A great veggie burger with great toppings (avacado, grilled mushrooms and onions, lettuce, tomato, ketchup and mustard, mmm), and the beer list is to die for. I had a Belgian triple – three times the hops and barley of a normal brew. It was delicious and effective, one beer was plenty. Then we went to Escazu, the chocolatier I’ve been obsessing over for a year or more. They have the best bars at Whole Foods (out of 200 or so, it seems), and the actual shop, on Glenwood Avenue, is adorable – a converted house with a display case full of painstakingly handcrafted chocolate delights. Then it was time for Halloween, and we partied like twentysomethings. You’ll have to hook up on Facebook to see all the good semi-clean fun we had. :> Except for this one blurry picture I found on my iPhone…
Sep 09
This past weekend soccer was rained out by a tropical storm, so we switched to blueberry pancakes and board games. After a game of Carcasonne (with Andrea as the sneaky victor), the weather cleared up. The girls took me to the stable and I got a turn on Sundance, bareback! Takes a lot of balance! I stuck to trotting. Maybe next time I’ll put a little more speed on. :>
Aug 04
A couple recent Popular Mechanics articles on my two favorite alternative energy subjects:
Nov 29
I cleaned up the header of the blog a little, stuffed a little thumbnail of a random bit of artwork from the girls in the upper left corner. The art’s really old and there’s only a few to start. I will add more over time…
Aug 19
meloncully writes “YO unc, here are my euro trip pictures for andrea 
and whoever else would like to see em. only about 30 of them , i didnt have enough space to put up all 100.
so here ya go
http://homepage.mac.com/meloncully/PhotoAlbum2.html“
Feb 09
Ken posted to my site! Ken, that means you can do no wrong! Get posting to your OWN site, you madman!!! :> Gimme a buzz if you need help…
Ken Etterman writes “Mike, nice job keeping up you blog, I notice you’ve been very regular (with the blog I mean). I would like to jump start mine again, you as always motivate me in that direction. Hope you guys are well – lets get connected soon.”
Feb 01
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…
Jan 16
OK, I’ll make this short and sweet… the big V was straightforward, I was told the anaesthesia needle would be “something I would remember”, but it was painless – the only lingering memory I have is of the noxious smell of my cauterized vas…
BYE BYE MY LOVELY SPERM! You served me well. Now don’t anyone ever accuse me of holding back on the details of my personal life. 
Dec 14
Ken wants to set up a blog, I thought maybe I could run it for him. Look at the potential!!
etterman writes “Saddam was captured on December 13 by US Special Forces. The US Intelligence intercepted a cell phone call to the Tikrit Dominos on Tigris Blvd. Saddam ordered a plain chesse pizza (large) under his own name. U.S. forces converged on the crawl space in which Saddam was hiding, reportedly Saddam opended the door in response to a U.S. Military personnel yelling “Dominos”.”
Sep 12
Tried to use one of those fancypants Windows DVD players but it turns out I can’t play a freakin’ DVD if I haven’t happened to have manually disabled my video-out on my video card. How sad is that! DVD *PLAYERS* have to go to great lengths to make sure you aren’t doing something as simple and fundamental as sending a video stream to an output jack. That’s like your car having an automatic refrigerator scanner in it to make sure there isn’t beer in your fridge before you go off driving somewhere. It’s so sad that it’s come this far…
I didn’t even think the video in/out was working on my Gainward video card. Hooked up my video camera to my tv-in jack and got this. At least I had a little fun in the end…
