It’s no longer topical, but when has that ever stopped me before? Ame likes to play the “no purchase necessary” McDonald’s Monopoly sweepstakes when it comes around, and this last season was no exception. We have McDonald’s a couple times a week as it is, so this game is really just an opportunity to collect little colored Atlantic City properties and hope for a match or instant win.

The odds of winning any prize is about 1 in 3 or 4, but “any prize” really sucks like a small frosty with purchase of a large drink. Right on. The big money is in the property matches, and, just like Monopoly, the shitty properties are the shitty prizes, but matching Boardwalk and Park Place is where the real action is. Don’t get me wrong, matching even the dark purples, Baltic and Mediterranean (yes, I’ve practically memorized the game board of Monopoly), the lowest property in the game, would still be awesome because winning is awesome.

If I recall correctly, the odds of winning the Texas State Lottery is something like 1 in 65,000,000. At those levels, it really is no real appreciable difference mathematically in buying a ticket or not. Not quite a less-than-zero percent chance, but why bother? It reminds me of a goofy and kind of insightful comment I saw at Slashdot. 

“…you can have a negative percent chance of succeeding in a task. For example, if you have a -5% chance of succeeding, not only will you fail every time you make an attempt, you will also fail 1 in 20 times that you don’t even try.”

So whenever the McOpoly game comes around again, I just roll my eyes and hand all my miniature Monopoly properties over to Ame whereupon she hoards them with glee like some sort of paper-token miser.

Goddammit! Park Place again!?
- Ame

I, uh… kinda exploded for awhile. I think I’ve duct taped all the pieces together. Regular weekday updates forthcoming.

No, Mom. I didn’t really explode.

I’d never eaten at a Grandy’s before until Monday morning. I had dropped Ame off at work and taken the car to the shop for an oil change. I know how to do it myself, but it can be messy and the price is right to have someone else do it for me while I stay at home watching TV or playing video games… which is what I did, ha!

Anyway, before the short quarter-mile walk home, I stepped into the Grandy’s right there. I had always seen their advertising marquee with different specials for lunch and breakfast, so I figured I’d check it out.  Honestly, I was expecting more of a sit-down setting than what I was presented with. The front area was a lot like McDonald’s and a bit to the side was the breakfast buffet. I stood in line for 15 minutes and ordered that up with an orange juice.

The bacon was good, the sausage patty was okay I guess. I don’t think that’s a fault of Grandy’s though. I’ve never really, really enjoyed sausage patties ever. It must be just me, so I won’t fault them there. The scrambled eggs were runny though. Gross. And the orange juice was awful. I had mistakenly ordered a large. I mean, orange juice is not hard, and I really like orange juice!

I won’t be going back for breakfast stuffs, but I did notice they have a chicken fried steak meal platter, which, if you don’t know me, I love chicken fried steak. I’m sure you Texans know exactly what I’m talking about, and it’s really weird when you think about what makes a chicken fried steak good. Basically, you take a pressed steak of questionable quality, and then deep fry it like you would a piece of chicken from KFC. Make sure you deep fry it fairly poorly, but you still want the batter to stick to the meat. Serve with mashed potatoes and white gravy. Bonus points for Texas Toast (hobo garlic bread) and corn on the cob.

mmmm…

Go vote, you irradiated mole rat!

And this isn’t a bad thing, no, really! As you know, I work Friday through Monday, but the office is suffering some emergency maintenance issues. The space is flooded and inoperable, so no one can really do anything until the mess is cleaned up. The best part is I’m getting paid for the time.

Of course, there’s always bad news, and it’s really my own fault. I’ve been playing Mother 3 during my downtime at work; it really helps kill the time, and it’s a great game to boot. Every night before I left  work for home, I’d make a backup of my EEPROM (save-game file) just so I could have the option of continuing the game at home. This past Friday came and went, I worked, I played Mother 3, but it was the only night that I didn’t make a backup. I was at the final final final boss of the game when I it was time  to leave, and guess what I didn’t do? That’s right. No backup of the save-game.

Now I’m all freaking out (not really, it’s just a game) that my progress since my last backup (a significant amount!) could be lost. What if the hard drive on my desktop computer at work was affected? There are any number of scenarios that could warrant either a hard drive replacement or wiping it out and restoring it fresh! I’m sure I’m just being paranoid, and the file is fine, but the chance is there.

So, take the good with the bad though. Ame and I have really enjoyed these days off.