Riddle Me This

Here's an interesting riddle to ponder over the weekend:

You are in a room with three light switches. Way down the hall is a room with a light bulb that one of these switches controls. You can't see the other room or the light from the other room from the room you are in.

All three light switches are off and the light bulb is also off. Now, you can fiddle with the light switches any way you want. Then, you can go into the room down the hall where the light bulb is and come back to the original room where the switches are.

There is one specific way you'll know for certain which switch controls that light bulb.

This isn't a trick question at all, but you might have to think outside the box to get the right answer. I've never met anybody yet who got it.

Road Trip '06: Alcohol Was the Theme

Like any road trip embarked upon by 6 mature, tax-paying, upstanding members of society, alcohol consumption was the main goal and we excelled in meeting our objective! Here's the basic rundown: After the free beers at the brewery we moved on to Club 18, home of the 75 cent draft and the $5 pizza, a classic combo that really got us in the groove for the rest of the trip. The Drunken Monkey, while not quite as inexpensive as Club 18 with its pricey $1.25 drafts, had its positive attributes, as well, and gave us the final burst of momentum we'd need for the hour and a half drive to our ultimate destination. While the image is a little blurry, I have included below a photo of our next bar tab at Crazy Fingers where before we knew what hit us we had consumed a total of 4 beers and 17 margaritas in a little more than an hour. The final tab of $197 made us shudder to think what heights the bill could have reached if we had decided to stay there any longer!
Once at the cabin the real drinking began, and with an initial arsenal of 3 cases of beer, a half gallon of Captain Morgan, a fifth of Vodka and a bottle of Cabo Wabo Tequila, we felt pretty secure in the fact that we were well supplied, at least for the first evening. An intense session of the classic drinking game PIGS got us off to a great start which led to several heated rounds of PIT, eventually ending the evening with a halfhearted attempt at the classic dice game Mexican. While Fold the Laundry was mentioned it was never actually played to my limited recollection.
Day two began shortly after breakfast with a pitstop at Pat's Pub in Hawley (happened to be across the street from the Hawley Diner) where we enjoyed several rounds of Yuengling, some pool and some darts. This is the spot where we found our temporary replacement for Granger, who couldn't make the trip due to his prior committment to attend a fondue party in Media.
After the bar we decided to head back to the cabin and we made a quick stop at the local market to replenish our limited food supply and we pooled our money to purchase 43 tickets for the record-setting Powerball drawing to be held later that night (the fact that I'm even writing this entry should be proof enough of the outcome of that one). We decided we would only drink hard liquor from that point on as we only had 8 beers left and the group concensus was to put the money into lottery tickets instead of more beer. By Sunday morning we had depleted all forms of alcohol but a quarter of the Cabo Wabo and we left the cabin satisfied, if not hungover.
Here's some more miscelaneous pics including one of Paul and Ted checking the thickness of the ice on the lake:

Road Trip '06: The Brewery

We arrived at the Yuengling Brewery in Pottsville, PA at about noon on Friday, which meant we had an hour and a half to kill before the tour would start. We checked out the Yuengling Museum which housed quite an impressive collection of beer paraphenalia and beer art, as well as Yuengling family momentos. We were surprised at the level of access we were granted in the building and the lack of security on the premises. On several occasions we waltzed right past the "employees only' signage to investigate rooms and areas not included in the public tour, including the brewmaster's lab and the tap room where we helped ourselves to some free samples ( see photo below). The tour itself was interesting but the tour guide could stand to drop the decibel level of her presentation a few notches. A few interesting highlights were the underground caves which were used to keep the beer cold before refrigeration was invented, and the fact that during prohibition the company survived by making ice cream and their classic Porter, which was available by prescription for medicinal purposes only! Another interesting tidbit is the fact that it takes approximately 28 days to create a batch of beer from brewing to fermenting to canning to finished product, yet on the very day that Prohibition was renounced, the Yuengling's delivered a a truckload of beer to the White House to assist in the national celebration.
The tour ended with a visit to the tap room, which we had already discovered pre-tour. The good news was you could drink any of the 7 varieties of beer Yuengling currently makes, the bad news was you were limited ( by some vague PA law) to 2 beers per person. We are currently investigating loopholes for the next trip.
The brewery has been family owned since it was founded in 1829 and each generation has to buy the brewery from the previous which led us to an interesting conclusion. Since the current owner, Dick Yuengling, has four daughters the empire is ripe for a coup. We tried to fix Ted up with Wendy Yuengling, who works in the shipping department and is the most visually appealing of the four. Who knows, if he plays his cards right we could be enjoying frosty cold pints of O'Hara Lager at the Plumstead someday!

Road Trip '06: The Drunken Monkey

While we were driving from Pottsville to Centralia, we ventured through the town of Ashland and noticed a sign for a small bar along the main strip called "the Drunken Monkey". A sign out front proclaimed it was the "home of the Monkey Wrap" which really intrigued us and we vowed to check it out on the way back from visiting the adjacent burning mine town. After Centralia we figured we were ready for anything so on the way back we pulled up to the bar and parked right out front. Inside we were greeted with a suspicious nod from the bartender and several locals enjoying a mid afternoon beer as we ordered Yuengling drafts and proceeded to investigate the premises. There was alot of monkey paraphenalia ranging from stuffed animals to posters, so I assume the owner has some sort of monkey fetish. They did have a Rolling Stones poster on the wall, too. Turns out the delicacy that they are so famously known for, The Monkey Wrap, is actually a deep fried burrito. Go figure. I guess inflation has caught up with this booming metropolis just outside of Pottsville as the price of draft beer had risen dramatically to $1.25. Oddly enough, they had the same selection of pickled eggs and hot pickled bologna that seems to be such a great seller in the local drinking haunts of this region. And what oenophile would not love a place that has ice cold bottles of Boone's Farm wine in their take-out fridge!

Road Trip '06

Well, this road trip certainly had it all! It will take several posts to report all the drunken debauchery of the weekend, but I will begin with our stop at Centralia, PA. The warning sign posted at the entrance to the town says it all. If it weren't so damn cold we may have spent a little more time exploring the little hamlet, but with the wind chill factor already in the negative digits and the sun about to set, we decided to keep this leg of the trip to a brief minimum. We were somewhat disappointed in the fact that there really wasn't any exposed flame, just a lot of steam rising from holes in the ground. Parts of the ground were warm to the touch, and you could see where the ground was starting to collapse in areas. Ted found a nice chunk of coal which we later used to heat the cabin when we got to the the lake. All in all it was kind of eerie, like visiting the set of a creepy horror movie. While I half expected to see some banjo-strumming, mouth-harp playing townsfolk rocking on their porches, we did not see any residents while we were there. This was the shortest leg of our journey, and we were quickly back on the road headed toward our final destination at Lake Wallenpaupack.

Weekend Road Trip

I found out over the weekend that on Friday, February 17, 2006 I will be embarking on a fantastic road trip through central Pennsylvania and up to Lake Wallenpaupack. We leave Friday morning and will be making stops at Centralia, the coal mining town whose only claim to fame is that it has been on fire since 1961! After that, we will be heading to Pottsville for the Yuengling Brewery tour, which, rumor has it, includes two free beers at the conclusion. Then, I believe Tedman wants to stop at Cabela's 250,000 square foot outdoorsman store in Hamburg and then finally, it's up Rt. 81 to the Pocono's. With the group that's scheduled to go, it should make for some mighty fine blogging come next Monday.

Missing Money: Part Deux

OK, I see you seem to have an interest in this topic so I will divulge the links to the websites and I truly hope you all find something.

www.missingmoney.com
www.peoplefinders.com
www.unclaimed.org
www.patreasury.org


I got my claim paperwork from the PA Treasury over the weekend, which really surprised me for the response time from a government agency.
Good luck and happy searching!

Missing Money

I read an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer the other day about a lady that searches public databases for missing money and unclaimed property for charities and schools. She had just found $35,000 for the School District of Philadelphia that was being held by the State of Texas. The article listed the sites she uses and I went on today to check it out for myself. On the first site I tried, I ran a search for my name and found two items. One is an uncashed dividend check from a Dean Witter account I had in the early nineties (about $110) and the other is an 8000 share stock certificate from a Morgan Stanley account I had back in 1992! I called the 800 number and spoke to a woman at the PA Treasury Dept. and she told me what the items were and took down my info to mail me the claim forms. I am to fill them out, get them notarized and mail them back, then they send me my stuff! I thought that was pretty cool and now I am going to run a few more searches and see what else I can find!

Thinking Back

I've been feeling a little down lately as I reflect on the past year and come to grips with the reality that it is over and I didn't come close to accomplishing anything I had set out to do. This year is going to be different and I have been thinking back to the first tournaments I ever played back in 2003, trying to rekindle the spark that ignited my passion for poker. I still remember my first tourney vividly. I had been playing online alot that summer and starting going down to the Borgata to play in cash games. ESPN was airing the 2003 World Series of Poker over and over and that was getting me into it, too. The Borgata started having nightly live tournaments with small buy-ins and I finally entered my first one on a Thursday night in November. It was a $40 buy-in with unlimited rebuys for the first hour. There were over 100 players and I ended up making the final table and finished in 7th place for a win of about $500. I was so excited and that was really the event that got me started. A few days later I noticed that the Sands was hosting a televised poker tournament with a guaranteed $1 million first prize, the biggest payout in Atlantic City history! I decided I was going to play in that event, which would be televised on Thanksgiving Day on Fox Sports Net. I only had to overcome one obstacle; the $10,200 buy-in.
The Sands was holding satellite tournaments where you could buy in for $225 and try to win a seat in the main event. Hot off my final table finish at the Boragata I figured I'd give it a shot. The big tournament would start the following Saturday so I only had a week to do this, but the first chance I got to go down and play was Thursday, two days before the big one. I drove down to Atlantic City for the 4 pm start and put down my $225 entry. I didn't realize how many professional players enter these satellites for a discount to the bigger events, so I was shocked and very nervous when I sat down with 5 major TV pros at my table. After watching so much of the World Series of Poker and the World Poker Tour it was strange to see these faces scattered throughout the room. I'll give the details in another post, but I ended up knocking out the 2001 World Champion and winning the $10,200 entry after about 5 hours of play.
As I think back to those first days of play I get goosebumps and get excited all over again at the prospects for this year. I know I have it in me, I just need to commit to the schedule and show up with my "A" game.