Matt Holthe's Fleeting Thoughts

No fault of my own - just no requests have come in for the last month, and next month is going to be dry again as well. I am going to be working remotely on a Redbook Wiki, which means I won't travel unless an emergency comes up. I still need 22 segments on American for my Platinum status in 2012. Luckily, I get 4 segments every trip I take (I have to connect through Dallas or Chicago every time). So that means I need 6 trips over the last 4 months of the year - that should be possible. Hilton will take some trick-er-ation on my part. I need 12 stays. If I'm doing 6 trips, I can switch hotels on every trip (for example, stay in Chicago overnight on the way home). I basically will need to stay at 2 different Hilton hotels on each trip. I highly doubt I would have 12 different trips over the last 4 months of the year to just stay at 1 hotel per trip.

This game opened up in March of this year, but I hadn't heard about it until now. It's called 3 dice football and only available at O'Shea's: http://lasvegasblog.harrahs.com/gaming/3-dice-football-debuts-at-osheas-las-vegas/ The full details of the game are available here: http://www.tcsjohnhuxley.com/de/live-gaming/table-games-worldwide-games/3-dice-football.html It looks like the "Touchdown" bet has a house advantage of 3.6%. And there's a couple prop bets that aren't too bad - the "no gain" bet on a single play has an advantage of 2.8% and the "cover 3" on a single play has an advantage of 3.7%. And the "under 4 yards" is 2.8% with "over 4 yards" at 4.6%. That is assuming that the creator of the game did the math right (I would assume he did) The mathematical analysis is found here: http://www.tcsjohnhuxley.com/images/stories/PDF/3_dice_football_cis_05.11_v4.1_144dpi.pdf If I ever make another trip to Vegas, I...

I just got accepted to work on a Redbook Wiki: Domino Development Best Practices, LO-1W03-R01 Here's the abstract: This new Lotus wiki deliverable will create a Lotus wiki about Domino Development Best Practices. This wiki will cover everything needed to build application, regardless of client, and general practices to make development easier, less buggy, and easy to support changes. The best practices will not be version-specific, lending itself well to a longer "shelf life" for this deliverable. It's projected to be 20 hours per week for 5 weeks, starting 2 weeks from Monday (August 8). I'm very excited about the opportunity. I've been published in trade magazines before, but not for a while now (for at least a few years) and I've been itching to get back into the "professional writing" game.

Colin Cowherd on ESPN radio was ripping into Rory McIlroy after the British Open, saying "was Tiger doing such and such?". Well, he's comparing Rory at 22 to Tiger at 25 or 26. So I decided to do an apples to apples comparison. Rory was born May 4, 1989. That means that as of this past weekend's British Open he has played 2 majors after turning 22 years old. Tiger was born December 30, 1975. So he turned 22 on 12/30/97. That makes the 1998 US Open Tiger's 2nd major after turning 22 years old. Tiger played in 6 majors as an amateur: 1995 Masters - T41 1995 US Open - withdrew 1995 British Open - T68 1996 Masters - missed cut 1996 US Open - T82 1996 British Open - T22 Tiger's professional results up to and including the 1998 US Open: 1997 Masters - win 1997 US Open - T19 1997 British Open - T24 1997 PGA Championship - T29 1998 Masters - T8 1998 US Open - T18 That's 1 win, 2 top 10's, and 4 top 20's. Rory has also played in 12 majors, but only 1 as an ...

It's been a long last couple of weeks. The week of July 4th my wife, daughter, and I went on vacation to Wisconsin Dells. That was a pretty good choice for someone who just turned 2 - the water parks up there were a good choice. Then my Mom passed away on July 7. The funeral was Monday the 11th and I took the day off on the 12th. I was back at work Wednesday through Friday last week, but honestly wasn't all that productive. I'm finally getting back into the swing of things today and hopefully can get some development work done and some prep work for taking a certification exam.