Matt Holthe's Fleeting Thoughts

I was looking at my TripIt stats today. Since I started using it (January 2008), I have traveled 250,884 miles. That covers 130 trips. The average distance of my trips have been going down since moving back to Illinois. I have more trips to the east coast than the west coast, and now that I'm in Illinois instead of Colorado, I'm obviously closer to the east coast.

As I sit here in the O'Hare Admirals Club on my way back from Washington DC, I decided to see if I was still on pace for my 2013 status on American and Hilton. The end of August will be around 67% of the way through the year (8 out of 12 months, don't know the actual day number). This final flight today will get me to 41 segments (out of 60 needed), which is 68% of the way toward next year's status. And the hotel stay I just completed will make 18 stays and 41 nights. I need 28 stays, so I'm 64% of the way there, or 60 nights, which is 68% of the way there. Last year at this time I was behind schedule but ended up making it with a lot of creative scheduling of flights and hotels over the last three months of the year.

Over the last couple of days, fields for some of the early season college basketball tournaments have been announced. Illinois is going to be playing in the Maui Invitational this year. One of these years it would be cool to go to a tournament over the Thanksgiving week to watch some games and have a vacation.

Back in 2009 I posted a summary of trips during March Madness going back to 2001 (the first March after moving to Colorado). Late in 2009, I moved back to Illinois. In 2010 , I made it to Las Vegas for the second weekend of the tournament. It was a lot more low-key -- the casinos weren't as crowded (although it was still tough to get a seat during the games) and we were able to gamble during the day and watch games at night, so it wasn't so tiring. In 2011, I watched the games in Illinois with friends. In 2012, I watched the first and second round games in Illinois, but then went down to St Louis to watch the regional semifinals and finals in person. That was pretty cool. Next year there are regional games in Indianapolis, so I might do that same thing again next year. Although I'd love to make it to Vegas again....

It's nice to get back to Denver occasionally. And I'll be doing so in early August. Hopefully I'll be able to see a lot of my friends while I'm there.

I'm at the halfway point of 2012. Am I half way to renewing my Hilton Diamond and/or American Platinum status for 2013? For Hilton Diamond, either 28 stays or 60 nights is needed. I normally get there based on the number of stays instead of the number of nights. This year is no different. I'm exactly half way there with 14 stays, but not quite half way there with 26 nights. For American Platinum, either 60 segments or 50,000 miles are needed. Without having overseas flights, I generally get there on segments. This year I'm at 28 segments, so a little short of the half-way point. And I'm st 21,488 miles. That means I'll need to get there on segments again. A trip to Chicago (train - no segments), a one-way drive to Cincinnati (I flew back), and a trip to Indianapolis (drive both ways) have affected by airline segments so far this year.

I haven't posted in a while, but that doesn't mean I haven't been busy. I had a golf trip to Riverside, IA for a couple days. Then we had a garage sale to get rid of a lot of stuff (not as much as we wanted, but some stuff). Then I had a business trip to New York. Then we went down to the in-laws for the weekend to celebrate father's day, my daughter's birthday, and my monther-in-law's birthday. Then was my daughter's birthday. Finally, last weekend we had a party at the zoo for my daughter's birthday. It's been a completely busy month.

I was just looking at my TripIt statistics. I started using TripIt in January 2008 to track my travel. According to my account, I've been on the road 506 days. 2008 was a leap year, and 2009, 2010, and 2011 were "regular" years. May 25, 2012, is day 146 this year. That's 1607 days total. 506 out of 1607 is 31.5% on the road, which counts weekends (but also counts my vacations). That's a lot of travel.

This Sunday, May 27, 2012, is when Frontier Airlines starts flying into the Bloomington, IL airport. They are flying to/from Denver three times a week and to/from Orlando twice a week - at least that's what I think is happening based on looking at the web site. My family and I have already booked our flights to Orlando for later this year. It is nice to fly directly to Orlando MCO when going to Disney. Allegiant Airlines is already in Bloomington and fly to Orlando, but they fly to the "other" airport (Orlando Sanford) and Disney transportation doesn't pick up at that airport. So we bought tickets for an airline before it started flying into the airport we will be using. On a related note, AirTran will be stopping its service from Bloomington to Atlanta on Saturday, June 2. So there's a week when both airlines will be here, but I'm guessing that ground crews working for AirTran will be switching companies.

I just read an article from Vegas Magazine called The 10 Best Burgers in Las Vegas . I thought I'd post the list here. BLT Burger (The Mirage Hotel & Casino) Bottles & Burgers (Tivoli Village) Burger Bar (The Shoppes at Mandalay Place) Five Guys (3 locations) Holsteins Shakes and Buns (The Cosmopolitan) I Love Burgers (The Shoppes at The Palazzo) In-N-Out Burger (10 locations) KGB: Kerry’s Gourmet Burgers (Harrah’s Las Vegas) LBS (Red Rock Casino) Le Burger Brasserie (Paris Las Vegas)

My family scheduled a trip to Chicago for a little mini-vacation coming up. We're going to take our daughter to Navy Pier, the Shedd Aquarium, and some other museums. Turns out that a company in Chicago wants me to come up a few days before that vacation. So I'll be going to Chicago, coming back home, then going to Chicago a day or two later. At least I live only a couple hour drive from Chicago, so two trips up there in a week isn't a big deal.

Saturday night the fire alarm in our house went off around 3:15 in the morning. Turns out it was the carbon monoxide detector. And it turns out it was a faulty detector. The fire department came out and checked everything out and our CO levels were just fine. They disconnected the faulty detector and we ordered some new ones. Apparently, the new hard-wired CO detectors are "cumulative". Meaning, over time the sensors become more sensitive. The firemen said that the hard-wired detectors have a maximum life of 7 years, but they are seeing 4-5 years often times. It could have malfunctioned at 3 in the afternoon instead of 3 in the morning, though.... After buying the new ones, I put a reminder into my Google calendar to have it repeat every year for 6 years. That way, around 5 years from now we can start thinking of buying a replacement. We also bought a stand-alone CO detector. If the hard-wired ones are going off and the stand-alone isn't, then maybe it's a faulty d...

Courtesy of Casino Player magazine, some special deals on food in Las Vegas: South Point Hotel specials from midnight to 6 AM (like biscuits & gravy for $1.95) Similar specials midnight to 6 AM at the Orleans American Burger Works at Excalibur - serves french fries with option of 15 dipping sauces Anthony's Gourmet Burgers and Brew at M Resort - pairs burgers with special craft beers Mr Lucky's at Hard Rock Hotel - $7.77 (unpublished - you have to ask for it) meal with steak, three huge grilled shrimp, potato, and salad Station Casinos are the best buffet deals in town (have to be a players card member) - $4.99 for breakfast, $6.99 for lunch, and $9.99 for dinner.

Some excerpts from an article about the NCAA Tournament handle in Las Vegas this year... ( original article ) “This year the opening weekend of the NCAA tournament for us dwarfed the Super Bowl in terms of our network handle,” said Todd Fuhrman, senior sportsbook analyst for Caesars. The sportsbook at the MGM Mirage reported a 40 percent increase in bets on the opening Thursday of the tournament compared to last season. The Nevada Gaming Control doesn’t track betting numbers on the NCAA tournament alone. It lumps the NBA in with college basketball on its monthly revenue reports. But industry officials estimate the NCAA tournament accounts for 70 percent of all basketball wagers in March. Last March, Nevada sportsbooks took $137.5 million in basketball wagers. Nevada sportsbooks took $93.8 million in Super Bowl bets this year. Fuhrman said there’s a good chance his book will have taken more bets on Colorado State-Murray State—the first game to tip on the opening Thursday—than...

This year my friend Tim and I are picking the lines, totals, and money lines for every NCAA tournament game. Picking the money line is basically picking the winner of every game. But it's not quite that simple. You are involving money with the pick. For example, in the Cincinnati/Ohio St game in the sweet 16, if you picked Ohio St to win, that was -375. Cincinnati to win was +310. For a $30 bet on Ohio St, if Ohio St wins, you win $8. For a $30 bet on Cincinnati, if they win, you win $93. That's a big difference. If you think that Cincinnati has more than a 25% chance of winning, then the bet on Cincinnati is the better choice, even if you think Ohio St has a 70% chance of winning. On my Money Line picks, when I pick the favorite, I'm 31-14 (69%). When I pick the underdog, I'm 7-12 (37%). Line bet and total (over/under) bets are more traditional. In line bets, I'm 34-28-2 (55%) - enough to make money in the long run. For totals, I'm 33-31 (52%) - losing mo...

As a follow-up to this post , I have finished picking 1 game every day during the regular season and conference tournaments. That was a total of 122 games in 122 days. I really stumbled to the finish. I went 2-1 in my last 3, but right before that I was on an 12 game losing streak. So I was 62-43-2 at one point (58.9%) but ended up 64-56-2 (53.3%) - barely enough to make money for the season. Of course, if I was doing this for a living, I wouldn't bet exactly one game per day. Some days would be more, some days none at all. When picking the favorites, I was 24-24-2. When picking the underdogs, I was 40-32. Over those last 15 days, I picked 8 favorites (1-7) and 7 underdogs (1-6). So, before my collapse, I was 23-17-2 (57.1%) picking the favorites and 39-26 (60%) when picking the underdogs.

As a followup to yesterday's post about picking all the games, I basically had a "meh" day. I went 42-46 overall. There were 48 total games - 2 of them didn't have any odds posted, 6 of them had totals (over/under) only, and 41 had both lines and totals. Of the 41 games where there was both a line and a total, 7 times I won both, 9 times I lost both, and an astonishing 25 times I won one and lost the other.

Today is the first day of the Big Ten, SEC, ACC, Mountain West, and some other "big conference" tournaments. Conferences like the Big 12, Big East, and Pac-12 have already started. But that means there are a lot of games to pick. For grins, I picked every game that had a line and/or a total today. That's 88 bets spread out over 47 games. Since a lot of these picks are wild guesses, it will be interesting to see how I do overall.

For the 15th time in the last 16 years, the Vegas sports books posted a profit on the Super Bowl. Compared to last year's modest $724,000 profit, this year's profit was $5,064,470 - very nice. Here is an article from the The Vancouver Sun, via Reuters : The value of bets placed in Nevada’s 184 sports books was $93.9 million US, up 7.3 per cent from the $87.5 million wagered on last year’s Super Bowl between Green Bay Packers and Pittsburgh Steelers, according to the Nevada Gaming Control Board. Sports books in Nevada kept a combined $5 million from Super Bowl bets, or 5.4 per cent of the total wagers placed, unaudited figures showed. That was up significantly from the $724,176 they pocketed last year when the Packers beat the Steelers. Casinos in Las Vegas were initially hoping for a Patriots win in Sunday’s championship game but a slew of late bets for New England over the weekend altered their allegiances. I got the actual number from this web site which lists the actu...

My wife, daughter, and I were all in Houston, TX, for the last few days. We went to the Children's museum twice, the zoo, a bouncy-house place called Pump It Up, and did lots of other fun stuff. After we returned home, we built our daughter's new bed and headboard. After doing all that, I can honestly say that I don't remember when I was this sore last. All this playing and running around and crawling and everything was rough on my body. But my daughter had a blast on vacation and absolutely loves her new bed.