This past weekend, we went on a little AC trip with a few friends. Although we were supposed to have an 8-person group, we never quite met up with the other half of our troupe and we spent the day as a 4-person cell, gambling, dining, and shopping.

Lisa really enjoys playing roulette, which has superseded her previous addiction, Sic Bo. They are similar games of chance that involve betting on outcomes of an external device.

We had the typical Halloween for our family, we didn’t dress up, didn’t go trick or treating, and didn’t pass out candy. The only Halloweeny kind of thing I did was pumpking carving. I carved two pumpkins this year, one personal pumpkin and one with the team at work. I carved a Naruto-like face for the first pumpkin (it was my first ever) and our CEO’s face for the second pumpkin.

For the first pumpkin, the Naruto image, I used a spoon and dremel. I drew a quick outline using a Sharpie on the pumpkin and did the rest by eye. I found the toughest part to be the fact that my pumpkin was still wet, having been hollowed-out only a few hours before.

The second pumpkin I worked on along with my team at work. We entered a pumpkin-carving competition at work. Our strategy was brown-nosing, so we carved the faces of our CEO and CIO.

For this carving, I used Gimp to posterize a picture. Then I taped it to the pumpkin and scored key sections. Next, I removed the pattern, and carved the rest by eye, using the scores as a guide.