This presidential election marked the first time I tried Intrade, a widely-used prediction market where you can put your money where your mouth is ... on just about anything.

In the 2004 election, I heard about Intrade, and watched in amazement as Kerry took a complete nosedive on election day, as the results came in. The real-time nature of the market was amazing, I knew I had to give it a go the next time around.

It works like this: You can buy a contract at a certain price. Say it was mid-September, Obama contracts were around $5. On election day, it is either going to be worth $10 or $0. As the events unfolded and we moved closer to election day, the Obama contract incrementally went up to $6, $7, $8 and finally $9. At any of these times, you could sell and make a profit. But of course if you ride it out till election day, you go the distance and make your full amount.

So what did I put my money on?

- Obama, LONG

- McCain, SHORT (I know, that's basically Obama long, but just wanted to see how it all worked

- Palin kicked off the Republican ticket, SHORT (didn't think there was any way that could happen. It was a $0.40 contract, so by going short, you needed to pony up $9.60.

All in all, I netted myself $336. Woohoo :P While the stock market is in the dumps, I think prediction markets are my next addiction and I may have better luck, actually. Any advice on what to bet on next? I wanna take the winnings and double it :)

http://www.intrade.com

(this is almost, but not quite up to the level of stupidity of Kev's blog :)

This last trip to Hong Kong couldn't have been better-timed, Olympics-wise.  We landed on Aug 8th, and pretty much as soon as we set our stuff down, bam, opening ceremonies were on the screen.  Throughout the next 2 weeks, we enjoyed all sorts of awesome coverage, especially of stuff that wasn't broadcast in the U.S.  And we left the day after closing ceremonies, so we didn't even miss that.

Coming back from Hong Kong was a pretty brutal 13.5 hour flight to LA, before coming back to Seattle.  Coming from foreign soil and landing in the U.S. means going through U.S. Customs, fun fun fun, if you know how that goes.  Fill out the card, declare the value of all your Avian-flu-infested chickens, kilos of opium, that kind of thing.  And the funnest part: lining up.  Oh yeah.

So I finally get to the front of the line, there are about 10 customs stations, double-stacked, so it's kinda tricky to figure out who's going to serve you, you hafta constantly pan and scan until you see someone raise their hand... and you hafta acknowledge them and act FAST or they get annoyed (and people in line do, too).

Great, a lady raises her and and I walk over to her. 

"Hey, how's it going?" I say, shifting into smalltalk and trying to be friendly. 

"Good, how was your flight?" 

"Good, good, LONG" I say.

She swipes my passport, pulls up my record, does her thing.  I'm just kind of spacing out.

"Did you go to the Olympics?" she asks.

Now at this moment, for some reason (maybe cuz she's looking at my file) I'm thinking, Olympic mountains?  What?  How does she know I'm from the Pacific Northwest?  Oh yeah, she has all my information up on the screen.  But why?  Is she a nature lover?  It's been a long time since I've been to the Olympic National Forest, so hmm, how should I answer this...

"The O-LYM-PICS???" she asks once again, obviously frustrated with my confused look.

"OHHHHHH! OHHHHH!"   Darrrrrr.....

:|  Gawd I felt stupid.  At that point I felt like I deserved to be taken away and put in the customs interrogation room or whatever, my behavior must've definitely looked suspicious, as in, "I'm not listening to what you're saying, I'm too busy focusing on this ceramic bomb I smuggled in my backpack..."

We'll see how Amez and her crew compare to this when they do her bachelorette party later this month.

Summary of Nate & Ray's double-bachelor weekend:

• Number of guys who went: 10
• Number of guys who came back safely: 10
• Number of celebrities encountered: 2  (Chris "Jesus" Ferguson, Mike Tyson)
• Number of poker celebrities conversed with:  1  (Kev)
• Number of guys ordering fish at a steakhouse:  1  (Kev)
• Largest win off one hand at a table game: $2000   (Andy, Mississippi Stud)
• Best placing in the 50-person poker tourney:  3rd, $375  (TJ the Poker Champion) .. honorable mention goes to Dan, placing 10th only cuz the guy sucked out to beat my QQ... no bitterness here though
• Number of sweet Chinese ladies sitting next to me at the poker table who looked like my mom:  1
• Number of times I felt horrible for bluffing out a sweet Chinese lady:  2
• Number of guys abducted by a drive-by bachelorette party: 1  (Josiah)
• Greatest number of email addresses collected belonging to middle-aged women:  3  (Dan, apparantly, as I'm rifling through my scraps of paper here)
• Greatest number of beerpong games won: 5  (Josiah & TJ)
• Greatest number of single cups hit in Baghdad:  1 (Nate)
• Greatest number of times the dealer turns less than 5 on a double down: 20+ (Jeff, almost unbelievable, but Dan witnessed it) 
  
• Greatest number of long island ice teas consumed in an evening: 7  (Dan, approximately)
• Number of public garbage cans puked-in, following an ill-advised all-you-can-eat brunch:  1  (yeah take a wild guess)
• Highest percentage odds of retaining initial bankrool based on gambling strategy:  100% (Erik, did not gamble :)
• Largest win at Casino War, the "Thinker's Game": $50 (Kev)

... and that's just from my perspective... you know what they say about the rest!  -ShennyD

Got a message on my answering machine from Eugene ... no, not the Eugene I've known since 5th grade, apparantly this is Eugene who lives across the street from me.  FedEx delivered him a package that should've been mine. 

Cool, I call him up, and meet him out on the street.

I walk out onto the street, and this Chinese-looking guy in t-shirt and shorts approaches me.  Shake hands, start chatting ... turns out he's lived in the neighborhood for almost 10 years!  DOHP, made me feel horrible about not knowing my neighbors.... gahhh I'm awful.  Turns out that his last name is Shen, too!  That's how the mixup happened, likely.  Anyhow, he's a 42-yr-old  social worker, works in the Burien school district, wife and 4-yr-old kid, nice guy.  He's definitely down for some poker action, as well as having beers within stumbling distance of home :)

Thanks for the mix-up, FedEx!

Guy comes to the door this morning to pick up a modem I'm selling on Craigslist.  It's one of the older modems, a Cisco 678, but it's way more reliable than many of the crappy Actiontec modems of late.

Only caveat of this modem is that it's so old (circa 1999) that it doesn't have a web interface.  You hafta use a serial cable (remember those?), find a computer with a serial port, and use Hyperterminal to issue cryptic commands to configure it.  If you know what you're doing, it's not too bad, but for the average joe, it could be intimidating.

I've actually sold a couple of these and had to take them back because people didn't know what they were getting themselves into.  It's a pain, and waste of my time and their time.

So today I remember to be proactive.

Me:  "Just FYI, you know about what it takes to configure this modem, with the serial cable and all, right?"

Buyer:  "Uh, I'm a Cisco engineer, but do give me the details..."

Me: DOHP!

I just laughed, felt a little stupid, but it turned out he was humble enough to STILL want the quick setup guide that I wrote, which tells me he's probably a really good engineer...