Tony Guitar: that’s Bb.
Mike D: Ahh, right right. that’s what I meant. I’m stupid.
Tony Guitar: You’re not stupid Mike. You’re very stupid.

Ha! Well played Tony. Well played.

Sander’s Australia trip is winding down, he has made it to Sydney and will be back in the states soon enough. We’re all wondering if he’s going to show up to work on Tuesday with an Australian drawl.

Those are the odds of winning the mega lottery jackpot tonight. The jackpot is roughly $376,900,000 right now*. I wanted to know how many games of roulette you’d have to win before you’d have the same odds as winning the lottery. My next obvious question: if you won every time would you have more or less money than if you’d won the lottery?
*$376M is the cash return. The payment over time is the more popularly advertised value of $600M

A few assumptions:
1. This is a no limit roulette table
2. You bet all your winnings on the next winning color every time (no green!)
3. Luck is very much your lady tonight

Playing either red or black on a roulette wheel will return a 48.6% win rate.

So 0.486^x = 1/135,145,920 should tell us how many spins!

what’s the result? twenty six spins!
Actually not exactly twenty six spins, that’d be amazingly coincidental.
26 spins is 1/140,429,063
Close enough for MikeDiDonato.com!

Let’s see which option has a better return on investment:

A lottery ticket costs $2.00.
Each roulette win gives you 2:1 odds.

26 wins in a row would return $67,108,864
Sounds like you should head to the convenience store instead of the casino tonight.

But then again… how many more spins would surpass the $376M?
Twenty nine spins (total $536,870,912)- although one more correct call would put you over a billion… it is worth it? Just one more spin? What do ya say?

He sent back his first picture to me: His majestic steed.

Result: Complete failure. I did everything wrong.

And thus I begin my training. Since I floundered with the Turkey, I needed to start small. I picked up a chicken last weekend and got to work.

http://video.pbs.org/video/1333042208/

Watch the first 2m30s of that video to be wowed by Jacque Pepin. He debones a Chicken in about 40 seconds. For those of you who are interested, watch the rest – they do a turkey as well as all sorts of other impressive dishes.

What Jacque did in 40 seconds, easily took me 30 minutes. It was slow and painstaking. I had a hard time finding the joints and Jacque moves soooo quickly that I found myself rewinding again and again and again. I could blame my less than sharp knives, but I’m fairly certain it would have taken me just as long with a lightsaber.

Eventually: success

Once deboned, I spread out the meat into a mostly uniform layer

Jen and I then added a pad of sausage stuffing (onions, sausage, pork, bread crumbs, egg, and seasonings)

I then rolled it up, and tied it up with twine. I was a little worried because mine didn’t look as snazzy as Jacque’s. It turns out climbing knots do not help for roasting.

Despite my weak-sauce rope-work, the chicken came out great!

With the stuffing:

Overall this was an extremely rewarding experience. I’m going to try doing one chicken every two weeks like this until I can complete the deboning in less than a minute. Then I’ll upgrade to a turkey and ultimately try it with my sword for a new kung fu party trick.

Huzzah!

The Art Museum was awesome. Renovations were just recently completed, and as a free art museum this one might be the best I’ve visited. In an hour we couldn’t walk through the museum in its entirety. In addition to having a noteworthy collection of compositions from art masters, the museum impressed me in the breadth of its exhibits: Sculptures, Ritualistic art, and even Coins.

But it was the unexpected Beinecke Library that impressed me most. We stopped by mostly on a whim. The library houses rare books and manuscripts, but since the books are rare – you can’t stroll through the book shelves – instead there are a few key pieces in protective cases placed around the center of the excitement: the vault of books.

Five stories high and encased in glass, the vault is awesome to behold. Making the experience all the more eerie, the walls are plates of marble. The plates are so thin that light from outside shines through them. Unfortunately for us, it was cloudy. Still an impressive sight.

If you have some time in the New Haven area, I strongly recommend visiting these two Yale locales.

One thing Jen and I enjoyed about all the houses were their kitchens. The breakers was designed to be fire proof since the first version of the home burned down. The kitchen is testimony to that with its cooktop that has no exposed fire. The parties were so huge at these places that the broth pots couldn’t be moved once they were filled – they were far too heavy. So instead they had spigots on the bottom of the pot. Awesome!

It helped that all the pots and pans were beautiful copper. Although I’d hate to have to be the staff person to have to polish those up every night.

Overall, I strongly recommend you go check out the mansions of Newport. Of those that we saw, the only one I think I’d pass on next time around was the Chateau sur Meh. The other four are must-sees.

Also, all this talk of mansions has me thinking of new house names. I know that my final house shall be called “The Keep”. But if I end up owning an intermediate home – it’ll need a name. Any recommendations?

The Elms also had a drawing room. And I learned that the name Drawing room actually comes from the word ‘Withdrawing’ – like relaxing. Stupid me always thought that people liked making sketches in drawing rooms.

The more you know!

I think as a general rule the more you learn about the challenge that’s facing you and the more frequently you push the envelope, the easier it is to blaze new personal trails.

Perhaps what I respect most about Sander is his evolved comfort zone. He’s okay with giving things a go while the rest of us might feel more comfortable taking a back seat to the action. His reward is a life filled with the unexpected.

And thusly I announce Sander’s amazing Australia adventure.

Sander took a month off from work (May 1-27), flew down to Australia, and has been making a solo motorcylce trip across the country from Perth to Sydney. A 2700 mile journey – much of it through Australian back country.

Sander’s been sending me frequent updates of his adventure. I’ll post the especially noteworthy ones here.

So far, he’s reached Ceduna. 8 days in and he is far ahead of schedule. Apparently he’s giving himself some wiggle room just in case it starts to rain. I asked him how he has avoided Australia’s surplus of dangerous everything. So far, no snakes.

Here is Sander’s list:

Snakes: nothing yet, but I remain suspicious.
Camels: After dark they sleepwalk, kinda, and are bad news.
Eagles: They feast on the dead kangaroos on the side of the road. Then when I come along, they take off…slowly…sometimes in my direction. They are gorgeous, but HUGE. Imagine getting hit by a 45lb dodgeball at 70mph.
Kangaroos: Out West the gray roos roamed. Up to 100kg-ish. Out here? Red roos, which get up to 10 foot tall. Spotted a mob yesterday near the road, my heart just recently started beating normally again.

Epic.
Fun fact: Acceptable collective nouns for kangaroos include: Mob, Herd, and Troop

A random spot of Sander’s trip via Google Streetview

Sander, I am exceedingly jealous of your trip. Good luck out there.