Matt Holthe's Fleeting Thoughts

It has been a very eventful last few weeks. On November 17, a tornado ripped through my home town of Washington, IL. My niece and her mom (my brother's ex-wife) had their house completely destroyed. My childhood home was damaged, but is still standing (the house next door is only partially standing). My dad's house had a decent amount of damage (windows blown out, hole in the roof, fence ripped apart, some other things). My brother's house had some minor damage. I was able to make it in that afternoon and board up my dad's windows with the help of some family members. My dad wasn't actually in the house when the tornado hit because he was in the hospital. He had a minor heart attack and spent several days in the hospital. When he was released, he couldn't go back to his house for two reasons: (a) the house wasn't livable because of the tornado damage and (b) he wasn't strong enough to take care of himself. My dad has progressed some with his health, ...

I am now back from my Spain trip. The trip ended up putting me over the AA status for miles (I'm still one segment short, but since I got there on miles, it doesn't matter) and I have my status on Hilton for next year. Next year might be a down year for travel. I have been assigned to a couple accounts to do stuff remotely. So it might be the last year that I maintain the high level of status for both flights and hotels. That's fine with me - I could use a break from travel. Spain was beautiful. My work was in the northern part of Spain, and that was green and had mountains and the food was amazing. Then I spent a couple days in Madrid, which was very different. The architecture was amazing and there is a lot of history there. I was also able to spend a few hours in London during an overnight layover. I really want to go back there and spend more time - that city is amazing. (But it's really expensive). A three hour cab tour through the city just didn't do it ...

Looks like I'll be set for status for 2014 on both American and Hilton. With Hilton, I either have my status already or I'm 1 stay short (the web site says I'm 1 stay short, but I think my stay last week is still pending). Either way, I have a Hilton stay on the books for a couple weeks from now, so that will put me over the top if I need it. With American, I'm 6 segments short. And I have 6 segments scheduled for an international trip. Hopefully all those come through - since it's an international flight, at the very least it will take a while to post. But even though they are code share flights, they should correctly post to my American account and it will get me there. Even if a couple of them don't post, as long as the flights over the ocean post, I'll get there based on miles. And there should be a couple more trips before the end of the year, so I'll have some cushion. I think 2014 will see a slow down in trips, and I might not make status ...

I was recently thinking about what it would take to make sports betting your job. First off, you would have to be really good at picking games against the spread (ATS). Let's just assume for now that you can predict the winner ATS right in football and/or basketball (NCAA or Professional) correctly 65% of the time. To keep the math a bit simpler, let's say you bet the same amount (call it "x") on every game. Realistically, I think a professional sports better is going to be "more sure" about some games and bet more heavily on those games, but we would have to make more assumptions (how often that happens, how much bigger those bets are, and so on). So let's stick with the same bet on every game. When you lose the game (35% of the time), you lose "x". When you win the game (65% of the time), you win an amount that is slightly less than the original bet. For most casinos, if you make a $110 bet, you win $100, which is 90.90909% of the origina...

It looks like I'm going to have a trip to Spain coming up for work. Trying to figure out if my wife can come along. We have to figure out if someone can watch our daughter for the better part of a week, which is not a minor obstacle. The next hurdle is using miles for my wife's flight. The first option I looked at had a flight to Chicago, then to Dusseldorf, Germany, then to Spain (but not the final destination). 4 flights - ugh. There were options with 5 flights, even. The return had the same route, but the Dusseldorf layover was an overnight layover (like 10 PM to 10 AM the next day). Sleep in the airport? Go through customs in Germany for a 7 hour sleep in a hotel bed? Ugh. If I change things up a bit by going to another destination in Spain, then the options are much better. There's still an overnight stay on the way home, but it's in London, and the flight to London arrives a little after noon. So we could go through customs in London (where we at least speak the...

As an update to my previous post about Disneyland timing, the Fantasmic show is now listed for a couple of days of our visit, along with Fireworks at night. So we switched around our planning a bit and should be able to make both shows on one visit. We have to figure out the best way to see both on the same night (Fantasmic starts at 9:00 PM, lasts 20-25 minutes, and then the fireworks start at 9:30).

I'm beginning to think we picked the worst possible week to visit Disneyland. We booked this trip a long time ago for the first week of September. Our thought - we get the extra day (Labor Day) without having to use that day as vacation. Disneyland posts the park hours schedule about 45 days in advance. (Which is quite a bit different from Disney World, where things are around 180 days in advance). Two weeks before our visit, Disneyland is open 8:00 AM - 11:00 PM and has the Fantasmic show and Fireworks show at night. Sunday, August 25 is the last listed day for Fantasmic. Starting Monday, August 26, the park hours are 9:00 AM - 10:00 PM. Although Fantasmic is gone, the Fireworks are still there. Starting Tuesday, September 3, park hours are 10:00 AM - 7:00 PM, and they don't list either Fantasmic or Fireworks.

A lot of Las Vegas hotels (most, in fact) are now charging resort fees. This is an extra charge per night for stuff that used to be free - like newspapers, internet access, and so on. It basically makes the hotel nightly rates look better because those don't include the fees. Thanks to the Las Vegas Advisor web site, there's a list of current fees. The link is: Hotel Resort Fees . Some of the items that I might actually use included in these fees are boarding pass printing, bottles of water, and internet access. I'm never going to use the phone calls, fax service, or shoe shine service. The fitness center is doubtful, but might be used. Same with parking - I might rent a car once, but it's doubtful. The newspaper would probably be read, but isn't a necessity. Here's all the hotels that I might possibly stay at (basically, eliminating the ones in Henderson) and their resort fees and what you get as of July 17, 2013: Aria - $25.00 - In-Room Internet acces...

I was watching part of an NBA Summer League game tonight at dinner (it was on one of the bank of TV's - it's not like I was actively watching). It got me thinking... what about a Las Vegas trip next year during the NBA Summer League and watching a game? In 2013, the NBA Summer League in Las Vegas runs from July 12-22. There are 4 games (every 2 hours starting at 1:00 PM) Friday July 12 through Tuesday July 16 at COX Pavilion and 3 games (every 2 hours starting at 3:30 PM) Saturday July 13 through Tuesday July 16 at the Thomas & Mack center (a couple days have 4 games starting at 1:30 PM). Wednesday July 17 starts the tournament at both locations following a similar schedule to the round robin (3 or 4 games at each location). Saturday July 20 starts the final 8 teams at the Thomas & Mack center (4 games starting at 1:00 PM). Sunday the 21st is the final 4 (2 games starting at 3:00 PM), and Monday the 22nd is the final at 6:00 PM at the Thomas & Mack center. Ticke...

I haven't been to Las Vegas in a while, and there's many new things that I'd like to see and do on my next trip there. Secret Pizza restaurant at the Cosmopolitan. The last time I was in Vegas, the City Center was still under development. So, really, seeing the City Center is on my list. Mr. Lucky's 24/7 restaurant at the Hard Rock for the $7.77 unadvertised steak special. THE Steakhouse in Circus Circus. There's a food theme here, isn't there? High Roller Wheel at the Linq (still under development - scheduled to open in December). I want to see what happened to O'Sheas. more information Of course, there are the standby items that I'd like to revisit: Mirage Volcano Sirens of TI Fremont Street Experience Fountains of Bellagio Fall of Atlantis at Caesars Forum Shops

The first half of 2013 was a good pace for my Hilton and American status retention. I'm 70% of the way there with Hilton stays (21 out of 30) and I'm 68% of the way there on American segments (41 out of 60). But, as of right now, I have absolutely nothing on the schedule. Naturally, that won't hold out the rest of the year, but there's almost always something in the works - something out on the horizon. Hopefully business picks up a bit - I don't like scrambling at the end of the year to keep my status.

As an update to this post I'm now the Foursquare mayor for 12 places. I lost Denny's Diner, so now it's exclusively Bloomington, IL places. I also lost Schooner's pub. But I added three new ones: McDonald's (there's a bunch in town - the one closest to my house where I go for breakfast a few times a week) Jimmy John's (don't know how I got this one - we go there for lunch about twice a month) Suburban East Park (daughter's T-Ball practice is here. After that's over, someone else should be able to steal this one pretty quickly) It seems like Foursquare activity is starting to wane, however. Maybe the fad is over nationwide.

For those of you that don't know, foursquare is a "check-in" web site where you check-in to different locations as you go there. If you check in the most at a certain location, you become the "mayor" of that location. Currently, I'm the mayor of 11 locations on foursquare. I think that's the most I have owned at any time. One of the most unusual ones was one I got last week at Denny's Diner in Wisconsin Dells. We went there twice for breakfast and I became the mayor. Here's a current list of all the locations where I am mayor: Holthe Household (Bloomington, IL) Rob Knight's Swim America (Bloomington, IL) Schooners (Bloomington, IL) El Toro (Bloomington, IL) Eastland Mall Play Area (Bloomington, IL) Chesterbrook Academy (Bloomington, IL) IBM Bloomington (Bloomington, IL) Super Gyros Blm (Bloomington, IL) Kulb Chalian Leak Urologists (Bloomington, IL) Denny's Diner (Lake Delton, WI) Supreme Buffett (Bloomington, IL)

Last week my family and I took a trip to Wisconsin Dells, WI. It's the water park capital of the world - there are tons of them. We stayed at a resort hotel that includes water parks. There are 4 indoor and 4 outdoor water parks exclusively for people staying at the resort. On the one hand, that's good - the number of people in the water park is limited, you can walk or take a shuttle to the water parks if you want, and it's easy to get back to your room if needed. On the other hand, you're paying for water parks as part of your hotel stay. If you don't make use of the water parks, you're losing money. Luckily, we were at a water park every day of our stay, if only for an hour or two each day. It was a great vacation and I'm sure we'll be back there in a couple years as the little one gets older and braver (she didn't go down any of the tall water slides, and very few of the shorter slides).

I've been keeping track of how many states and how many airports I've visited since starting my current job several years ago. My definition of "visiting a state" is two-fold. There are states where I've stepped foot in (being at the airport is good enough) and states where I've spent the night in. This week, I added the Seattle Airport (SEA) for my first official time setting foot in the state of Washington. And I'll be spending the night here before flying home tomorrow. So I've now been to 43 out of 50 states. I'm missing Alaska (pretty typical), New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine (I could get all of those in 1 trip), North Dakota, Oregon, and (believe it or not) South Carolina. I could imagine getting a trip to Oregon at some point in the future of this job. The other states, it's most likely going to take a side trip or concerted effort to get there.

Oh, my... this was a horrible travel week. I was scheduled to fly Bloomington (BMI) to Chicago (ORD) to Pittsburgh (PIT) to Tuesday, then PIT to ORD on Wednesday and ORD to BMI on Thursday morning. (I couldn't get all the way back to BMI Wednesday because of flight timings). Tuesday morning I get an automated call that my 10AM BMI-ORD flight was canceled (which means I would miss my ORD-PIT flight). I was rescheduled on the 5PM BMI-ORD flight and 9:30PM ORD-PIT flight. So that's 1 cancel and 1 missed flight. Around noon, I got another call that my 5PM BMI-ORD flight was canceled. Since it was noon, I decided just to rent a one-way car and drive up to Chicago (about 3 hours) to catch my ORD-PIT flight. Turns out the ORD-PIT flight was delayed for various reasons for 2 1/2 hours. We took off at midnight. I finally got to the hotel and my head hit the pillow at 3:45 AM local time. 2 cancels and 1 missed flight and 1 delayed flight isn't horrible, but that was only the ou...

Again this year I picked the line and total on every NCAA tournament game. Tonight's the championship game, so there's been 132 picks (66 lines and 66 totals) so far. U-G-L-Y is the only word for it. I went 29-37 on the lines (43.9%) and the exact same on the totals. For the line bets, I seemed to do a little bit better picking the underdog (16-17) compared to picking the favorite (13-20).

The end results for the single pick every day weren't pretty. I fell off the cliff a little bit toward the end of the season. There were 2 days during the big conference tournaments were 2 picks were made in a day (I won 1 and lost 1 of the "2nd picks"). Overall, I won 63, lost 64, and pushed 2. A 49.6% winning percentage. On the other hand, I picked a whole bunch of games Saturday (the day before selection Sunday). I picked both the line and the total in 13 different games (26 total bets). I also did a 3 team parlay bet. For the straight bets, I went 17-9 (that's really good). And I won the parlay bet. If I was in Vegas betting real money (which there's no way I would have made that many bets for real, but still) I would have had a 33.7% ROI for the day.

I've been spending the past day (and will be spending several more) trying to get my work computer back up and running. The Windows 7 boot file became corrupt. There's very little hope of recovering from that when the hard drive is encrypted like mine is. So I had to wipe it out and start over. I had a backup (but from late November) of my data. So it's a matter now of reinstalling all my programs and getting everything back up and running. Ugh.

I've been picking college basketball games for the whole season. There's several different methods for my predictions. The first is my "1 pick every day" method. With this, I choose exactly 1 game every day to predict. So far this year I'm 30-22-2 (57.4%). Another method is picking games when I "feel good" about them. With this method I'm 55-43 (56.1%). The final method is using computers to pick the games. These started a week or so ago - I wait until around the turn of the calendar before I start ranking teams. There's a few different ways I make these predictions. One picks quite a few games each day and is 23-15-1 (60.3%). Another picks only games which the computer thinks the line is "way off". This computer program is only 6-5-1 (54.2%). Finally, I have one program that only picks totals. This one is doing very well this year at 13-5 (72.2%).