As a few of you guys know, Em and I just took our first sans-computer vacation in a long time.  Over her spring break, we spent four days in Rome and four in Florence.  Hopefully unrelated to our electronic deprivation, I had an awful time sleeping and couldn't sleep more than 4-5 hours a night.  The second morning in Rome I woke up around 4:30, read Angels and Demons for a while (it seemed setting-appropriate) and in a shocking turn of events, I snuck out of the room to go for a run while Emily was still asleep.  Though fairly short, it was an awesome run.  The sun was rising and streets only starting to bustle.  I looped from our hotel to the ruins of ancient Rome, around the Forum and then around the Coliseum before returning.  Connecting with that sort of history--the Coliseum especially--while huffing and puffing at first light with nobody else in sight is a pretty *wow* experience, one of those moments that helps you view your own place and time in a slightly less self-centric context.

But no matter . . .  When I returned to the room, Em was still asleep.  The room was pitch black and I didn't want to wake her by turning on the light but since i was pretty thirsty, I figured I'd grab a water from our backpack and bring it into the bathroom.  The propblem, however, was that in the backpack there were 5 sparkling waters, belonging to Em and 2 still waters, which were mine.  As a math-based player, I was already working on the solution.  I thought back to an eerily similar interview question involving black and white socks in a dark bedroom that I had with Susquehanna five years earlier and I tried to determine how many bottles I'd have to grab to have an acceptably low risk of ending up with all sparkling water.  At this point, I deduced the best way to proceed was:  

P (at least 1 still water) = 1 - P (all sparkling)

As I pulled the waters one-by-one, I was tempted to stop at 3, which would have yielded ~30% chance of all sparkling, but decided to be extra sure and go for 4, which yielded <15% chance of all sparkling (yes, I really sat sweating, in the dark, on the floor next to the backpack, thirstily doing this math in my head).

I took the chosen bottles to the walk-in closet where I'd been reading, closed the doors and turned on the light.  For added suspense, like a stud player squeezing out a river card, I slow-revealed the waters to myself . . . .  All . . . f&%*ing . . . sparkling.  I muttered to myself, "Ack!  Bad beat!"  As I tiptoed to into the bedroom to grab two more waters, I grimaced as I realized that a read-based player would have just brought the whole backpack with him in the first place.  Score one for the bad guys.