Got back from Mohegan Sun last night fairly late. It was freakin big. Apparently it is the second largest in the US. (next to foxwoods, which is just down the road and my next stop) I have to say I did pretty well. I was practicing Baccarat for the past 2 weeks, and have the whole idea about betting. I like Baccarat because you don’t have to think. Unlike Blackjack, where, if you play “perfect” Basic Strategy, your chances are just a hair better than Baccarat’s no thinking. So Baccarat is all about money management and betting systems.
The events of last night…
- Gary (coworker) and I show up in the casino at about 6pm.
- Walk around the gigantic complex and see where all the tables are.
- We see a Race book, and check that out (Gary is in to race books) Sit there and watch the horse races for an hour or so. Gary makes himself look busy, reading the papers and all, and the waitress comes around and gives us free srinks. The race book is a great place to hangout. Comfortable chairs, big screen projectors all over the place, smoke friendly, etc.
- After betting on a few lame horses, We wander around again. I hit the ATM for 400 bucks. My plan is to only play with 300, but I want to be able to cash out something! I’ve never seen an ATM that gave out hundreds. I don’t know if I like that…
- Find a $10 Blackjack table, and Gary sits down. I tired of standing, so I sit down and play a few hands… Mistake number 1. My lazyness cost me $100 in 15 minutes. Freakin dealer was pullin Face cards all over the place. We got up and walked away.
- Ate a steak at “Michael Jordan’s Steakhouse”, which was pretty good. Beautiful asian waitress. (Side commentary: I like asian women, but for some reason I find them too hard to read. Like this one could either be thinking. “Get away from me you disgusting freako!”, or “Hey hey, what’s up honey, ask me out and I’m all yours! But I can’t tell the difference!)
Steaks were pretty good but freakin expensive. I guess that’s what you get eating steaks in a Casino and in New England. As we were walking out, Gary was telling me the Waitress was checkin me out and giving me “the look” The walkway angles around so I can see her through the glass. I figure I’ll do 2 “glance arounds” and see if she’s lookin. Both times, seconds a part, she was lookin with a slight smile. <-Insert excuses here-> Excuse #1-So I don’t like to approach women in their workplace. It seems to me they are pretty vulnerable because they *have* to be there and probably get hit on all the time by drunk gamblers. Excuse #2-She was standing with a little group of her coworkers, and I find that tough to approach. Excuse #3-I’m a big wuss But I was feeling pretty good right about then, and maybe it will carry over to the gambling.
- Went to the Baccarat tables and stood and watched for a while. They were doing some weird stuff where the players were handling the cards and weird betting rounds. Looked a little intimidating. Luckily we saw some “Mini-bac” tables with lower limits near the race book, so we headed over there. Mini-bac is apparently closer to the online versions of Baccarat that I’ve seen. The table is the same size as blackjack, and the dealer handles all the cards. You just have to lay bets and manage your chips. At this point I am still $100 down from the Blackjack tables. I change $200 for chips and start my little betting schemes. I lose track of my totals, and just keep with the scheme. Next thing I know it I’m 300 up at this table without paying attention (200 net). So I tell myself, if I’m ever only 200 up (100 net), I walk. after a few hands, this happens, and I walk. I guess I don’t have the gambling addiction gene or whatever.
- So I end the evening $100 bucks richer. After thinking about it… the cost of Dinner, gas, tips, $5 chip souvenir, I’m right about even. I feel like Jerry in that “Even Steven” episode.
Anyway, I had a good time. Want to hit Foxwoods next. Gonna study Texas Hold-em also. I found some good books. They guide you to find the right table’s with easy money on them. Since the house doesn’t play in those games, the odds are way better.

I added the permissions to let anyone comment. So just click on “Comments” below this entry then “Port Comment”

I changed the webcam on the left with a little jacascript that updates the image ever 2 minutes without reloading the whole page. I hate javascript, but unfortunately, that’s the only scripting language (I know of) that the browser processes, as opposed to the webserver. I also had it set up, so that if you clicked on the picture a pop-up window would come up, with its own self-updating pic. For one thing , I despise pop-ups!, but I thought it was ok, because it would be voluntary. But secondly, the javascript I stole to do the job cause some javascript errors in IE. Works fine in Mozilla though. Freakin IE. Anyway, I just got rid of the pop-up code, and am leaving it as just a self updating picture in the corner.
Big week coming up.
- Planning on going to Mohegan Sun and/or Foxwoods. I’ve never been to a casino before, and I want to try out my money management stuff on the Baccarat tables over there. We’ll see how I do.
- Wednesday, gonna go to the orthodontist. This is big. I’ve been putting this off 13-14 years, and I have to admit, it will be a challenge for the poor dentist. I’m probably going to need some heavy duty machinery/16th century torture devices. This will just be a consultation, so I won’t have any work done just yet.
- Wednesday evening, or Thursday morning, Jeremy (coworker) and I are headed to Montreal. I’ve been meaning on making a trip somewhere lately, and they say Montreal is fun. Taking friday off, so we’ll spend 2 days over there. Hopefully I’ll be able to spend my winnings from earlier in the week, and this won’t cost anything.

I actually cooked some fish today. Never done it before, and I feel so grown up now. I made that Dijon Salmon I mentioned in an earlier entry. It was OK, but nothing to write home about. Fish just doesn’t “do” it for me. I don’t disklike it or anything, but its just there. I just have to try some other methods or preparation I guess.
I also wen’t to the furniture store to buy a dinette. I finally found one with comfortable chairs. Should be here on thursday, at which point I will be stylin! Then I guess I’ll need to get placemats and crap like that.

I just woke up, and had a cool dream. I wanted to write it down before I forgot it. I’m laying there half asleep. And somewhere in the dream archiving world, I’m figuring out how it works. Apparently every night when you sleep, and your dreams kick in, 2 pillars get created. And you have a little “dream proxy” (proxy is the first work that came to mind, but it’s really more of a painter type dude) who paints each pillar with the contents of your dreams (2 pillars, one for each eye) So I’m laying there half-asleep, and because I’m half-asleep the painter is working in slow motion. Painbrush in either hand, one on each dream pillar. I get the feeling he’s is trying to hide the fact that I’m waking up, and he’s drawing awtumn leaves and other colorfull things like that. As I start to wake up more and more, this guy is trying harder and harder, until I wake up, and run over here and put this all in. Weird, huh!?

I just had my groceries delivered by Peapod. I feel so guilty. I have a tendency to repeat myself, and I think I already discussed this, but what the hell. Typically when I go to the store, I get enough stuff to last me for a whole month. So, I have to get things that can be frozen or stored in the pantry. Nothing fresh. But with Peapod, the only thing holding me back from getting stuff is if i have cash for a tip in my wallet. Which isn’t an issue, because I pass an ATM on the way to work every weekend. So now that the fresh food arena is in play, I pulled out my “healthy” cook book that my sister gave me, and I peruse Allrecipes.com for recipes I want to try, and I just go and click next to all the ingredients at Peapod. For example, this week, I’m going to make some Baked Dijon Salmon. I would have never bought fish at the grocery stores before! Peapod also saves the lists, so if I find I like a dish, just reclick the ingredients from an old list. Those are good reasons, right ?

I found this cool webcam software. It’s MS Windows based to run on my work laptop, but its still GNU’d. You don’t know how hard it is to find free software that deals with webcams. Dorgem was really a diamond in the rough. All the “freeware” had ads in there or couldn’t do this or that without buying the “pro” version. That is another big reason to avoid Windows. So this takes pictures and can upload it through ftp (or sftp with the external command line function) Captions are fully customizable and everything. Can’t say enough about it. So, that’s enough..

The shawndo.com migration finished. I got new backups so I’m happy. Everything seems to be working right so far.

This morning at about 4AM I went to help a buddy out with his new network setup, and driving home, I found an all-night self-service car wash drive through. I go through there, and little did I know, it was friggin -10 degrees F (wind chill). The damn soap froze to my far before the water came around to wash it off!!! So now my car looks like it just went through a snow storm. Friggin New England.

I was kickin myself for an hour and a half. I was ssh’d into shawndo.com uploaded some stuff, but it would just plain NOT come out on the webpage. I changed the .htaccess file, and web server ignored it!. So after about an huor and a half, I realized they are donig this migration. My hosting company is moving me to a different server. So, it looks like shawndo.com and mail.shawndo.com already moved, but www.shawndo.com didn’t propogate yet. (If you notice weird errors when you go to shawndo.com instead of www.shawndo.com, that’s why. Good thing, because I was missing some email also, but when I connected to the old site, I found it all. Doing another backup, just to be extra sure. Wanted to put this entry in there becfore the backup. The plan is to add a webcam block to the front page. I know that is soo mid 90’s, but I never got into that stuff. See ya post migration!

So Daniel from Austin came up and visited his family in NH for the Christmas holidays. I hung out with him on the 1st. Called Jeremy from work to show us around NH. We had a good time, can’t say that I ever really go out at all, so it was cool. We almost went to Montreal the next day, but some weather hit, and that delayed our plans. Plus, maybe I wasn’t completely of sound mind when I was lobbying for the trip I have to admit, I think I am a bit of a wuss when it comes to beer. I only drank like 3 or 4 beers, and I started to get heartburn and nausea and all that stuff. I didn’t throw up, so after a bit of sleep, I’m all ok. As far as 2002 went, I think I drank a total of maybe 7 or 8 beers over the course of maybe 3 outings. Not a party guy I guess.

In retrospect, it’s probably a really good thing we didn’t go. I screwed up my budget by 50 bucks this time, and I was really close to bouncing my rent check. Well, as far as I know I may have bounced it already. Hopefully they didn’t try to clear the check today before my sis transferred some cash to my account. Oh well, we’ll find out next week.