Sounds good Markus, but I kinda liked the bookshelves in the background. It felt more cozy/homey. :)

I have an HP dv5. So kinda like yours but a few years older.

I only have 10 pairs of shoe I wear regularly, but the retail replacement cost is around $5k

10 ? What are you a fashionista!

I got 3 pair
My pair of 15 year old dress shoes
my sneakers
my worn sneakers

Ya.... I have a shoe thing as well... Not high dollar shoes, but still a wide variety....

My most expensive pair is my Scarpa hiking boots at ~$260...


And don't get me started on HP laptops.... My last choice of windoze boxes....

I'm with D on the gambling. I will play a friendly low stakes game of poker, but no lottery or casinos....

Got letter from the court, the DA gave negative advice to declare my dad missing.

Pretty confused as to his argumetns :

First he quotes the law
Not seen at his home adress for at least for 3 months , no adress, no news or known whereabouts , this results in uncertainty as to him being alive or dead

DA says , i don't think these parameters have been met because he left the hosue, with ID card, with money, told a mate he would be in Spain for short while.
And he was spotted in Shiphol trying to board a plane for Nairobi.

Eeh?

3 months
vs
"he left more then a year ago saying he went to Spain for a short while, tried to go to Nairobi"


To me it sounds like the DA is conflicting his own advice.

But, no sweat, i get to go to court. I find that mighty interesting, ain't got nothing to loose really. If i get a no, i saved myself 450 bucks by not letting a lawyer write the letter. And i definitely don't want to pay a lawyer to go argue it in court, that will cost me even more, with the risk of getting a no anyway, or even if i get a yes i still gotta pay it out of pocket an not get any thing back for it(all i ask is that the court put somebody in charge of his business while he is mia).


I find the DA confusing, because he quotes something that happend 1 year ago, as counter for the uncertainty when the law in fact states a 3 months period.
For me, to say we are not uncertain about his life or death, i would think one would have to sort of prove he is in fact alive?
How can you argue against uncertainty without showing proof of life or death?

interesting stuff, stijn. it might be fun to have a sit-down with your father (assuming he is alive), just to hear him tell his story. nairobi?!

Im gonna go ahead and duck fir admitting this, but I've got a pair of testoni black labels....the box shows msrp of 1498....I didn't pay msrp, but I still paid more than I care to admit.

If i wanna hear lies that is..

I don't think MSRP on all my shoes would hit that... And I rarely pay msrp....

And thats with the aforementioned scarpas, some $200 montrails, and $150 Justins...

damn! the most i've ever payed for footwear was ~$450 for my snowboarding boots: there aren't many choices for hard-boots.

that can be interesting, too. your father sounds like a character. perhaps, no offense, not a good one.

none taken, he's not my real dad, i was brought up thinking he was..but when they divorced he pulled plenty of tricks on me...
he kinda manipulated me to revolt against my mum, i basically fought to move in with him, he probably never thought she would give in
In one of those fights, mum broke the news "he's not your real dad anyway"

That's one way to screw up a thirteen year old.

anyway, i kept fighting to go live with him, because i had more of bond with him than with my mum (cold hearted witch)
After some time she caved, told me i could move in with him... At which point he said, oh, i got no time for you, i'll put you in bording school

That's another way to screw up a thirteen year old

He used to drive rallies (pretty good at it) fast cars, horses , hunt, shoot, fly planes.. so from a young boy's perspective, he was a fun dad..
Except when it turned out he payed for all of it with loans he forged in my mothers name.

in his younger days, he once missed a turn with his Alfa on sunday morning.
The church was in the outside of the turn, he stopped at the altar
Plenty of stories to go around

wow!!!!

When I hear stories like that I realize how lucky I was to grow up in the normanl happy family.

Gambling...
I play poker, Texas Hold'em once a month. This month the game is at my house. $10 to play, if you are below your 1000 chip buy in before the 30th hand you can get another 1000 chips for another $10. Wining pot is typically from $70 to $100. After the big money game we usually play a $5 game with 500 chips and no re-buys. It's all good friendly fun.

Back in the day I was really interested in Chaos mathematics. Set down and did some Chaos based statistics on Black Jack. I built up a table basing whether the NEXT hand would win or lose based on my current face up and hole card and the dealers face up card. I thought it fit Chaos math because it didn't have to predict the actual cards, but just the trend of the next hand so you knew whether to bet high or low. It put the odds at 60% in my favor. Never played it at a Casino though.

I also did the same thing trending lottery numbers using Chaos theory. I could trend each ball within ±3 numbers or 7. The problem is to guarantee a 5 ball win, $200,000 you would have to buy tickets for every permutation of the 7 numbers for each of the 5 balls. That's 7 to the 5th power or 78,125 tickets. Checked that it worked by checking against the past winning numbers, but I haven't got $78,125 AND to be able to by 78,125 tickets in 4, 10 hour days I would have to buy a ticket every 2 seconds. And recently the price of the tickets went up as did the prize money.

Rich folks gamble and loose way more in Vegas then the 200 grand you mentioned..
If math could work for a lottery, for a well funded player, somebody would have found the funds and done it by now.. Just to gamble and see if it works.

Checking online and it looks like I can pick up 6 hours online while I am doing my internship... Really needed 9 to make everything work and just have one semester left.... Hmmm...

Going to see my adviser in an hour....

There was a LARGE group that did the en mass ticket purchase thing, and won splitting the winnings. Each person in the group bought a very large number of specific numbers at a different locations.

There have also been at least 6 winners that claim they picked their numbers using math.

Besides you don't have to actually purchase tickets to see if picking certain numbers win. Just keep track and check after the results are out. I'm sure that's what the large group did before getting investors and sending out ticket buyers.

The problem with the en mass ticket purchase thing is that 1 in 10 times Chaos jumps to another strange attractor. That means there is a 1 in 10 chance that the numbers would jump and miss the 78,125 combinations.

Typically someone with $78125 available is not going to bet the lottery with it. AND AGAIN, you would have to be able to PURCHASE A TICKET EVERY 2 SECONDS FOR 4 DAYS! ANd you are not going for the BIG grand prize because the power ball does not fall within the 1 in 7. You would only win the prize for 5 balls and no power ball. To get the grand prize you would have to buy 60 more tickets for each of the 78000 tickets or 4,687,500 tickets, 2000 TICKETS A MINUTE FOR 4 DAYS!

I still maintain, that a 9/10 chance is pretty good odds for a gambler and the technicalities of the ticket purchase can be arranged with a team of people..

If it was that easy, then somebody could and would do it.
Really big players loose 78 grand in one hand, and then double up to loose that hand as well.

I really think that with all the lottteries and all the crooks if there was a way to cheat the odds it would be happening. If the lottery folks saw a big jump in winners they would figure out a way to stop it.

it's simple, add more balls