The champagne flowed free and confetti littered the air Saturday night after Maemo community member Lardman cleaned out a Vegas casino.

"Every one-armed bandit was my buddy," he said with a still-surprised look on his face. "Every roulette wheel was my wheel of fortune."

Although his take of 21 million USD was large enough to force the casino to temporarily suspend operations, it wasn't the biggest haul for the lucky Linux fan. A few days earlier he had struck even bigger gold.

"Yeah, I don't normally buy lottery tickets," the congenial Lardman chuckled, "but after noticing something unusual, I felt compelled to test it."

That 'something unusual' was the frequent appearance of his avatar in the "random community members" collection. A cursory statistical analysis proved that he was coming up in a frequency that significantly defied the norm, leading Lardman to suspect that Fate was leaning his way.

A fit, handsome man who is anything but lardish, the respected community member decided to test this suspicion. He purchased a single lottery ticket and used a random number generator to fill in the blanks. "Randomness seemed to be on my side. Why fight it?"

After winning the 55 million USD lottery, Lardman immediately booked a flight to Las Vegas, Nevada, and prepared to confirm his theory.

"I'm not a gambler by nature," he confessed. "I know nothing about cards. So I decided to keep rolling with the randomness, and leave skill out of it entirely." He laughed again. "Not that I had a true choice."

The windfalls have yet to really sink in for this man, who has pledged to setup a foundation for orphaned Linux coders. "This was utterly unexpected, unplanned-for. And I feel obligated to do what I can to keep these feral programmers off the street. It's not their fault they've been abandoned, and I feel that 'there but for the grace of amazing luck go I'."

When asked about his next plans, Lardman smiled broadly. "That avatar keeps popping up, so I think the roll continues. I'm off to Monaco next, and after that, who knows?" He paused in deep reflection, then offered, "Really, where can this possibly lead? I may have the power soon to completely upheave the status quo of computing. Look out, Bill Gates!"

I hope everyone realizes I'm just teasing lardman.

But I get the feeling Onion-style satire doesn't work well here... : /

I thought it was pretty funny -- I even laughed. But, I didn't have an equally witty response, so I just didn't post.

Tim

I am finding that very difficult to believe Tim.










I mean-- you laughed???

Very well written! But it was too gentle to be Onion-style satire.

You're right about the not-so-random "random community members"... I hope they fix that.

Truth be told, I didn't really get the Onion satire there - hey last I read the Onion I thought they sold to some Chinese company (Onion satire again maybe but I believed them).

But your last comment to Tim did make me laugh ...

looks like lardman got the luck virus.

Quick, somebody get him an omap3 dsp STAT!

(red dwarf : quarantine 2:40 onwards)

ROFL @ lcuk and snicker @ qole.

I think lardman is just stuck in the corner.

(to the tune of Losing My Religion)

That's me in the corner,
That's me in the spotlight, I'm
Always on the front page.
Trying to keep looking random,
But I don't know if I can do it,
Oh no, I'm sure stuck here,
I haven't moved at all.
(I thought that I heard Tim laughing,
I thought that I heard Tim sing,)
I think I thought I filed a bug...

I had noticed this too. But... I bought a lottery ticket at the weekend and only won £200,000, so obviously not all that lucky.


Yeah, in my dreams, matched 1 number as ever and am now £1 poorer


Perhaps it's just karma? My missing discussion karma has boosted my avatar so that it always appears on the front page...?