Down Undah Rueben Originally uploaded by ldavison.
Someone forgot to tell Rueben that FAO Schwartz is for kids!

While in Vegas, I decided that I've give my hand at some games I haven't played. First, I figured I would try Pai Gow Poker. This game has some differences from more traditional poker games, but it's easy to pick up. Basically, the goal is to make two hands from 7 cards (one 5 cards called high hand, the other 2 cards called low hand) that beat the banks hand. There are some more suttle differences though, such as on absolute ties the bank always wins. Also, the A, 2, 3, 4, 5 straight is the second best straight you can get. Other then that, all scoring is as traditional poker. The dealer will determine when players get to go, etc. This is based upon 3 dice that are rolled. There is more to it, but that's the jist of it.

Then of course, Baccarat. Justin and I played this game the last night we were in Vegas for the first time. It took some getting used to, but I quickly picked it up. It is kinda like Blackjack, but instead of trying to get to 21, your trying to get to 9 and hands don't bust. But, for instance if you have a 3 and a 10 that's 3, not 13. You always make it a single digit. Getting a 10, J, Q or K give you 0. An Ace will give you 1. The rest, 2-9 are counted at face value.

The game is started with the player betting on the player or the bank. If they bet on the bank, there is a %5 commision that the bank charges. The odds on the bank are better because of this, but only by 0.19%, so not very much. Next two hands are dealt. One for the player and one for the bank, the player goes first. If the first two players cards are 1-5 or 10, then the player draws a card. If it is a 6 or 7 the player stands. It is called a natural when the player has an 8 or 9, and the bank loses it's draw.

Then it's the bankers turn. If the banker's first two cards total 3 and the players third card was not 8 the banker draws. If the players third card was an 8, the banker stands. If the bankers first two cards total 4 and the players third card is 2-7 the banker draws. If the players third card is 1, 8, 9 or 10 (which really is 0) the dealer stands. If the bankers first two cards total 5 and the players third card is 4-7 the banker draws. If the players is 1-3 or 8-10 the banker stands. If the bankers first two cards total 6 and the players third card is 6 or 7 the banker draws. If the players third card is 1-5 or 8-10 the banker stands. If the bankers first two cards total 7, the banker stands. If the banker gets 8 or 9 total from the first two cards, it is a natural, the banker stands and the player cannot draw.

If the player has drawn no extra cards, the banker must draw on hands totalling 0-5 and stand on ones totalling 6-9. Again though, ones of 8 or 9 automatically win as they are naturals. There can of course be a tie and you can bet on the tie. You must bet on either the player or the bank though, and cannot just bet on a tie.

Good shit huh? I had fun playing Baccarat. I think I will stay away from Pai Gow though, I'm not a fan.

This past weekend, I drove to Vegas with some friends to party our asses off since my buddy Justin graduated! We had considered flying, but in the end driving was cheaper and we had plenty of people going so finding people to drive was not an issue. All I know is that I had a fucking blast, and I only ended up being $14.00 down by the end of the weekend! Lack of sleep was the key though... was out until after 2am Saturday night after sleeping 3 hours Friday night. Then driving home Monday after not sleeping at all the night before.

That last night was sure fun though. It was the first night since I had gotten there that booze had any effect on me. Gotta appreciate the elevation change... I know I love paying $5 for a beer and get nothing outa it. Oh well. Justin and I went out with a model friend of his that lives there. She met us with some of her friends at Margaritaville and partied it up until 2am. After that, we hit the tables until 6am, when we went and woke everyone else up so we could drive home.

Once I remove all of the incriminating images from my digi, I'll get some pics up. =)

This afternoon, I have been working to find out why in Internext Explorer (IE) I can't set the innerHTML value of a SPAN element without IE throwing a "Unknown Runtime Error". Of course, the SAME code works flawlessly in Mozilla/Firefox (Gecko really). First thing I did was consult the MSDN pages for innerHTML, and guess what it says? In a nutshell, it states it should work.

This made me think. Maybe I'm not passing the correct HTML or something stupid like that. So, I started removing elements until I had Testing. That worked. But, I am trying to use

and
• . What I found out through trial and error is that you can set SOME elements using innerHTML in IE, but not all of them. So far, the ones that fail are

  ,

  ,
  • , I haven't tested many others. I was able to use CSS and SPAN's to hack around this problem. Just extremely annoying that one has to do that in the first place.

     

    What I wanna know is when the fuck Microsoft will wake up and smell the fucking coffee? How about a browser that actually works fellas? - FUCK!

I was talking to one of my homie Jason last night about the Mac mini that just came out. Talk about cool as shit. For those that have no clue wtf I'm talking about, the Mac mini is a computer that is 2" heigh and 6.5" square. It comes in two flavors, a 1.2ghz and a 1.42 ghz. One of the things I like the most about it, is that Apple will support up to 1980x1080 for VGA and 1920x1200 for DVI. A major step up from the 1024x768 max I have now on my iBook G3.

I think this would be a great addition to my desk at work. Plus, it's very cost affordable as the 1.42ghz bases at $599. My biggest complain however is that there is only one DIMM slot, so you can have a max of 1gb, which is pricey since it has to be one DIMM. Other then that, it looks like an awesome deal, and I can't wait to get one!

Find out more at Apple - Mac mini