adam @ 404

This story comes from the hospital next door to my apartment. It’s the leading trauma and knife wound center in the Northwest. Lucky me.

I missed the Menomena show at UW that I bought tickets for. Completely forgot. Work is officially ruining my life.

One of my New Year’s resolutions is to learn a card game well. Yesterday, I went down to the Central Library to find some books to read on card games. Looking through the Games section I found a book, “Slot Machine Strategy: Winning Methods for Hitting the Jackpot.” My first response was to laugh; I had to read this book.

It’s a quick read, written in an, at times, war story-like style by a “slot veteran.” Even after reading it, the skeptic in me thinks some casino owner union paid the author with the golden pseudonym, Macintyre Symms, to write a book to give people enthusiastic hope that there is actually a winning strategy to a game that is probabilistically stacked against them. The other part of me thinks that somewhere past the cheerleading (”be proud of slots”), annoying over-reliance on anecdotal evidence (especially in the case study section where someone is quoted as saying “slot machines are a lot like the stock market”), and seriously obvious common sense (e.g. don’t gamble on illegal machines or do illegal stuff) , there are some pretty keen tips and observations about the business of slot machines that build a general strategy of slot machines.

The number one reason I think the book is leading people astray is that it doesn’t reinforce the idea that in fact the odds are always against you when playing the slots. It’s truly a gamble and chances are you’re going to lose. If you want a better bet on earning money, go invest in bonds or mutual funds or better yet, work instead of going to the casino. It is mentioned in the book that casinos wouldn’t have slot machines if their aggregate returns didn’t turn a profit on total plays, but it isn’t stressed that every single machine (unit of gambling/dealer) on the floor is going to return a profit over time (even factoring in fixed-costs like the building and machine itself). No matter what machine you play, the odds are against you. Chances are going to be better on certain table games, and in some cases, they can actually be in your favor. But in those cases, the casino can rely on free alcohol, variable pacing, quick talking dealers, wait staff and other elements to serve as distractions to confuse and throw-off gamblers of these thinking games. There are relatively few of the same effective distractions in the “mindless” world of the slots.
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Europe, here I come. Last night I decided that I’d procrastinated too long, over-analyzed too long, waxed ponderously far too long… so I booked the flight. Happily, my 100k frequent-flyer miles actually paid off. I’ll be spending two and half weeks in turkey with a three day stopover in Amsterdam, starting in late May. I’m flying into Istanbul, which is technically on the European continent, so to answer your question, “Yes, I will be in Europe.” Time to learn some Turkish.

Posting this from Midway in Chicago. My flight on United was cancelled yesterday, so I booked another flight on Southwest for early this morning. If you’re planning on going through Chicago I wouldn’t recommend booking on US Airways as they use United as their operating carrier. United is having plenty of its own problems with staffing levels, and the problem gets compounded when trying to rebook a cancelled flight through a carrier that your reservation was not booked. Anyway, I would not get to Seattle until 12 midnight today if I didn’t book a flight through Southwest. It’s starting to look like an expensive christmas between flights, parking and cabs.

Otherwise, the Christmas holiday was great visiting the family and seeing friends. The quote of the trip is Grandma P telling me “Awesome, Bro!” When she said it, I thought, “awesome…. bro,” as in awesome, grandma. Wish me luck getting back to Seattle. out.

I’ve picked up the hiking bug in the past few weeks. I’m now part of the coveted Dawn Patrol, check out some of the photos from Alpine Lakes and Mason Lake.

As of October 10th 2007, all of my college loans are paid off in-full. Maybe I should go back to school now? Nawwww.

Some photos from the camping trip out to Olympic National Park earlier this past week.

I’ve been playing the part of tour guide and expert good times for the past couple weeks with plenty of family visitors. So if I’ve been absent from weekly events such as soccer or not around on the weekend, do not fret, as I will be reinstated this Thursday.

I just read about the vote in Senate not winning to remove troops from Iraq in 120 days and the only thing I could think of was one really bad hangover. Not just a hangover, but the day after being really drunk and remembering the completely embarassing raging drunk things you did the night before, like invading another nation’s country in the name of Freedom and fucking it to all hell up and basically causing a near civil war.

I would hope the only reason someone voted against not removing troops would be that they have this same sense of embarrasment. The one in which you say “Oh shit, we can’t get out yet, I still have to apologize to all the people I puked on last night and try to make things right, offer to clean their carpet and clean up my mess.” Because its not about freedom anymore, it’s about trying to clean up and hoping that things don’t get ten times worse. I feel shitty about the whole thing, and I’m a perfect example of a complacent American who should feel shitty about the whole thing.