adam @ 404

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.
Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Have you seen my new Amazon Kindle? It’s ridiculous!

I’d like to read the entire study by Jianguo Liu which asserts that rising divorce rates are bad for the environment when it comes out. My interest is peaked because there is likely going to be a whole slew of “averages” that will weave a story about the lives and patterns of divorced households and more generally people living alone. Ultimately, these stories are going to be used by someone to make moral and ethical prescriptions that really have no concern for the goal of environmental sustainability but only serve their agenda.

My major concern here is that by simply analyzing the resource consumption levels of single-person households (divorced, single) vs multi-person (married) households, the study serves to distract attention away from the day-to-day consumption patterns of both groups that ultimately consume much more resources than “eco-friendly” patterns. “I live in a McMansion and drive 3 hummers, have a couple cottages, but hey, I’m married.” You know what I’m getting at here.

Basically, this study will say “sharing resources is good.” I hope that is truly the moral of the story, not just, stay married or get married and have a few kids. Sharing is great but when those resources are consumed at ever-increasing rates across the board, and in unsustainable manners, it doesn’t matter how many households can share them because ultimately our consumption is going to outpace natural supply and environmental resilience. It will be nice if the study points out that sharing of resources doesn’t just happen on a familial level but at a community, city and regional levels (public transportation being a great example if it is heavily used in comparison to individual modes).

I’d like to hold off judgement on this study but it really sounds like a sleight of hand, or rather a one-dimensional analysis that argues a single life-decision is worse than another for the Environnment, and solely responsible for ones environment impact. Maybe I’ll put together a study about how much ‘greener’ it is on average and in-total to live in a city versus the suburbs by analyzing the top 50 most populace metropolitan areas in the US. Whadya think? Hopefully Liu’s study will also analyze resource consumption along other dimensions.

Update: I just realized another great analysis would be how income wealth affects efficiencies of resource consumption. I bet if we analyzed those numbers it would turn out that it’s totally kick ass for the environment to be poor! So think about it, that is being poor.

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.

My first reaction to the NYTimes article talking about MySpace joining Google-led OpenSocial alliance is, “You sneaky [explicitive].” Facebook has been pioneering the social network platform, and good ‘ole “open” Google comes around with their developer know-how weight and establishes an “alliance” to make things “open.”

Googles move is simply about establishing uniformity, controlling or “leading” the direction of the interfaces and ultimately spending vastly less money getting a foothold (and easing the pain) into every social network, and, once again, getting more user impressions and advertising dollars. Google’s social network site, Orkut, is at the margins of popularity, so what better way to get into the biz than lead an alliance of heavy hitters against the potential threat of Facebook in the impressions business? Not only does it help get a foothold into other sites but it could release a tidal wave of information that Google can sick an army of developers to wrangle into a competing site.

Since other social networking sites aren’t up to the game of establishing their own social platform for developers like Facebook is, of course they’re going to line up behind Google and say, “Yeah buddy, over here, this is what we should all do.” When Facebook first opened up their APIs, my prediction was that MySpace was slowly going to lose numbers (or gain them more slowly) and ultimately be a number 2 or 3 player . After all the hype, they obviously sense that this may be the case and are now technologically struggling to keep up. Google smells the blood and is throwing them a lifeline. If you’ve ever seen a MySpace page you know something is seriously wrong with that company’s tech culture. The entire dynamic of a non-social networking company that is based on monetizing user clicks and impressions, leading an alliance to establish a standard for social networking platforms smells extremely fishy.

p.s. I’m waiting for the social networking backlash where people reach a saturation point and won’t accept anything but face-to-face conversation. Time to think about moving to the mountains again.

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

Michigan is in the news. UAW and GM come to terms on a contract, state government avoids shutdown by increasing taxes in a struggling economy to balance the budget. Times are tough. Reading through the comments section of a criticism of the recent UAW-GM contract, it struck me that I’ve never really read or heard any constructive debate about how to pragmatically solve the problems of these old industrial giants in day-to-day life. There’s a history of conflict and heck, I should say it, macho posturing between those who support corporate executives vs. those who support the union (and their leaders). It’s a godamn pity you would bicker all the way down on a sinking ship.

It’s one big 100 year hangover, and Michigan, please hear me. Simply working the same old factory line is not helping, urban decay chic bohemianism is not helping, leaving the state for a good job is not helping (*huhem*), insisting that your 20th century industrial executive strategy will come back into fad is not helping, and continually bickering about what should have gone right is not helping. The state really needs idea people, creativity, innovation and/or a diversification of industry, not necessarily interdependent on each other. At the base of all these is a willingness to walk off the cliff, and take risks in the face of entrenchment, oblivion, ignorance and outright discouragement. It’s not a focus on any bottom line, its a focus on one’s passion which usually yields far greater profits in one’s life and others.

My romantic motivational speech time is over. Here are some projects backed by Michigan friends that have the right passion, innovation and creativity: Envoi, Tyvek, and Zattoo.