Arriving in Vegas: Strange Timing, Daydreamin’ Exotics and Stupid High IRR investments

I flew in to LAS on the 6 am flight. I have often taken an early morning flight back from Vegas, but it was quite unusual to arrive first thing in the morning. Definite cognitive dissonance.

Ian Harding picked me up in the Ferrari. His new business, Day Dreamin’ Exotics, provides 6 amazing cars to drive in the hills around Las Vegas (30 minutes per car). They exceeded their revenue projections by 50% in the first month. We’re going to do some driving today or tomorrow. If you enjoy amazing cars and are in Vegas or travelling there, I suggest you try them out. If you might consider an investment, his offering was fully subscribed, but he has a little room to let one more investor in.

At the airport, while waiting for my bag (brought wine for dinner 2nite, so checked a bag for a change) I turned 25 cents in to $1.50 in the slots. That IRR is off the charts! There may be a little blackjack in the cards tonight, with my expected return being entertainment (and possibly some cash, too).

I’m now 15 and 1 as of Labor Day

On Tuesday, August 25th, I attended another Matt Cain superb pitching performance, giving up only 2 runs (but getting a No Decision due to lack of significant run support until the 8th inning). After a Travis Ishikawa 3-run home run in the 8th, giving the Giants a 5-2 lead, we made it exciting in the 9th, with Brian Wilson giving up 2 runs before being pulled (something you don’t see that often: your closer getting pulled) and Sergio Romo getting the final out and the save.

Today, Labor Day, September 7th, was another exciting Giant victory, but for different reasons. The Giants had just returned from a road trip the night before, losing an disheartening extra-inning (12 inning) game to the Brewers (this is the one with the Prince Fielder bowling ball celebration). But Brad Penny made his home debut in SF and pitched well, and the Giants were also swinging the bats well from the start, with Juan Uribe scoring the first run after a triple in the 2nd, and then in the 3rd, the Giants turned it in to a laugher with 5 more runs. Velez walked, Freddy Sanchez sacrificed him to 2nd, the Panda hit an RBI double, followed by Big Money’s RBI single and then an U-Ri-Be 2-run shot. Edgar Renteria made it back to back jacks for the 5th run of the inning – wow. The crowd was really in to this game.

Brad Penny was fairly emotional, perhaps what the team needs to get fired up for these last few weeks of the regular season.

I sat in front of a scout for the Texas Rangers, who I assumed was a Dodger scout (since he had the radar gun on Penny, but not the Padres pitchers, and since Penny faces the Dodgers twice over the next couple of weeks). Turns out the Rangers are scouting the Giants in case they face us in the World Series (which seems far-fetched – the Rangers are 5 games behind one of the best teams in baseball, the Angels), but also the scout told me that they routinely scout all the other teams in September to see the September call-ups for the first time. Very interesting2

I’m now 13 and 1 on the year

Paul Roesler was kind enough to take me in his most excellent AA seats to the game on Thursday July 9th, a night we were both bachelors.

The Giants were 9-3 victors in a game that was close and exciting for the first half of the game, when the Giants led by 2 runs for 4 innings, until the final innings when it turned in to a laugher. This was Tim Lincecum’s 10th victory.

Speaking of close and exciting, after the Allstar break and a Giants road trip I next attended the Tuesday, July 28th game against the Pirates, which the Giants won 3 to 2 behind Barry Zito. I still need to upload my pictures from that game, but it featured Eugenio Velez hitting his first home run of the year, and then hitting in the go-ahead run with an RBI double. He went on to carry the team for the next couple of weeks, a development very few would have guessed would occur.

The Giants are on the road again now as I write this while watching a thus-far-scoreless game against the Mets, but I will be seeing them on their first night back on Tuesday August 25th.

Michael O’Leary of Ryanair is classic

Reading the New York Times on the flight to Burbank this morning, noticed another article on Ryanair and its CEO Michael O’Leary, whom I am a big fan of.

Here are some of his (and the) classic quotes in the article:

“And, at a news conference to discuss the possibility of starting trans-Atlantic flights, he suggested — to the consternation of the young woman gamely translating his remarks into German — that business-class customers would receive oral sex“

“Will we give you a refund on a nonrefundable ticket because your granny died unexpectedly?” he asked. “No! Go away. We’re not interested in your sob stories!”

“MR. O’LEARY runs a tight ship in his office, too. Post-it notes and highlighters are banned. Executives bring in their own pens. To illustrate his commitment to that principle, Mr. O’Leary produced two pens from his pocket, both stolen from hotel rooms.”

Classic!

Pet Peeves

Pet Peeve #1: People who sign their emails “Regards,”.
Pet Peeve #2: Slightly worse: people whose signatures automagically sign their emails “Regards,”.

I’m now 11 and 1

OK, three more home games recently after a loss earlier in the season.

After:

* Saturday’s Tim Lincecum laugher to celebrate July 4th
* Monday’s Matt Cain pitching performance (July 6th) highlighted by a Kung Fu Panda Grand Slam (and a little more excitement than I was hoping for in the bottom of the 9th, courtesy of Brian Wilson)
* Tuesday’s Barry Zito gem – 8 and one third innings of 4-hit, shutout ball, accentuated by a Juan Uribe 2-run jack…

I am now 11 and 1 for the 12 Giants games I have attended this season.

Those numbers are All-star-worthy, even if I do say so myself.

Hopefully the Giants can continue to play well and make it to the playoffs.

With the pitching we have, led by Tim Lincecum and Matt Cain, I would not want to face the Giants in a short (best of 5 games) series.

My guess is that if we make the playoffs, we at least make it to the National League Championship Series – you heard (or read) it here first.

Michael Jackson’s death

Tonight we went to see Monty Python’s Spamalot after dinner at Amber India.

Similar performance to New York a few years ago, and even more similar to London on June 11th, 2008, with some changes we noticed.

During the Knights Who Say Kneeeeeeeeee scene, after King Arthur has presented the nights with the demanded shrubbery, the lead Knight, after explaining that they were no longer the Knights Who Say Kneeeeeeeeee, mentioned that Michael Jackson had touched many people.

After a pause, where some of the cast members looked at him like he had gone off-script, he then said “Allegedly” and brought down the house.

Swine Flu Screening

Speaking of the swine flu, after a 9 day period last week where I was in 6 countries, including 5 in Latin America, I found the different approaches to swine flu screening interesting.

Mexico doesn’t screen at all, much to my surprise.

Brazil had a form with 3 questions, and if you answered yes to any two of them, you were sent for screening (and possibly quarantined or turned away – not sure, since I was healthy).

Panama also had a form to fill out.

Ecuador had a form to fill out, distributed by mask-wearing doctor-types, plus thermal screening. Interestingly, when I told them I had come from Panama, they didn’t need me to fill out the form (due to the few cases of swine flu there, or perhaps it was just an oversight), but they still screened me (by checking my body temperature with a scanner). People who had high body temperatures were sent to a different line near customs, presumably for quarantining or rejection.

Coolest of all was Nicaragua. Besides the ubiqitous form asking about one’s health in English and Spanish, they had some sort of infrared thermal scanner which showed a full map of your body on the screen, with the temperatures of the different parts, and the average body temperature. Mine was 26.1 degrees celsius. Wish I would have gotten a picture of the image – it was very cool.

[June 25th update] On the way out of Mexico, I noticed that they have a sign stating that domestic and international travelers would be screened and/or have to fill out information on forms, but even more interestingly, it didn’t happen – just like on the way in!

Long live (A)H1N1!

We were planning to go to Greece in June for a holiday, but once the swine flu appeared, Mexico instituted a mandatory 5 day curfew, and the US and other countries issued travel advisories and restrictions about and for travel to Mexico, we knew we had to go to Mexico. After all, any contrarian investor should also be a contrarian vacationer.

Hotels in Mexico are (or at least were) up to 80% off, and flights were more than half off.

We checked in to the St. Regis in Punta Mita on Sunday the 14th of June, and in the first 3 days here, saw only 2 other couples (in a 120 room resort).

So, essentially, we’ve had the pool to ourselves, and a private beach, and a staff to guest ratio of something over 20 to 1.

When hell freezes over, pigs will fly (and now swine flu).

Near miss Fibonacci at the Rio airport

I’m a huge fan of the Fibonacci sequence, prime numbers, and other mathematical and numerological sequences and oddities.

Imagine my surprise in Rio de Janeiro a couple weeks ago at the SEA Lounge while waiting for my plane to Quito (via Panama City), when my wifi password was nearly the Fibonacci sequence:

I’m wondering after the perfect beginning of 1 1 2 3 5 8 13, why not 21? Why 47?

47 is, of course, the sum of two Fibonacci sequence numbers, 13 and 34, but to completely skip 21 and then jump to a sum of golden string sequence numbers defies all logic.

42 would of course, be the answer to the Life, the Universe, and Everything – not to mention an abundant number, the second sphenic number and also the second of the form { 2 · 3 · r }, and also the second sphenic number to be bracketed by twin primes – but 47?!

Some Brazilian IT guy or gal is probably just messing with me… If you’re out there, I hope you read this post!

[July 1st update: my buddy Marko tells me that 47 is a number that always appears in Star Trek. I did a little research, and found that in 1964, David Bentley, a Pomona college professor, proved that all numbers were equal to 47. Since then, a Pomona college alum became a writer on Star Trek, and that's why 47 appears so often in Star Trek. There are so many web links on 47 that I'll just let you Google for your own research]