GAMBLING: The Zen of Penny Slots

Thursday, May 27, 2010

The Zen of Penny Slots

① You can lose lots of “real money” at Penny Slots; the casinos have them for a reason. (Don’t fail to underestimate just how much you can lose “chasing rainbows”!)

② “Money management” is essential to winning. (Machine limits, session limits, day limits, trip limits) It’s not “winning” unless you take “their” money; that’s management!

③ Any currency that you put in a machine is at risk; includes green backs or the paper take out amounts. (If it’s in YOUR wallet, then it is NOT in the casino’s till!)

④ For your bankroll, think about how many plays you want; then decide how much to play. Decide what you will risk and lose it. When in a hole, STOP DIGGING!

⑤ Play the first half of your machine stake with as big a bet as you can stand. (That comes from the “jump in your grave” strategy.)

⑥ Play the second half of your machine stake with an eye to staying around for the big hit. (That comes from “you have to be in it to win it.”)

⑦ When you hit the “big jackpot” or have seen all the bonus games, leave with what you got. That machine session is over. (That comes from how rare the big payoffs are.)

⑧ Never, ever, put more currency into a machine. The big payoff is NOT just round the corner. “Just another twenty and it will hit” is a logical fallacy and a wallet buster!

⑨ Never, ever, drink when gambling. (There’s a reason that casinos give out free booze to players.) Don’t gamble when you are tired or upset either. It’s supposed to be fun; not therapy.

⑩ Remember your vocabulary. It’s gambling; not investing. It’s a random number generator. There are NO patterns. Despite what you brain, heart, or other body parts tell you. Don’t be stubborn. (A big win is great; a big loss ain’t! Better a small gain taken quickly, smartly, and spritely. Even a small loss can be the best you can accomplish.)

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INTERESTING: Wash your hands and forgive past mistakes?

Thursday, May 27, 2010

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100506141601.htm

Wash Away Your Doubts When You Wash Your Hands

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ScienceDaily (May 7, 2010) — Washing your hands “wipes the slate clean,” removing doubts about recent choices.

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“It’s not just that washing your hands contributes to moral cleanliness as well as physical cleanliness, as seen in earlier research” said Lee, a doctoral candidate in social psychology. “Our studies show that washing also reduces the influence of past behaviors and decisions that have no moral implications whatsoever.”

*** end quote ***

What interesting people the Creator made. How weird is our wiring? I’m not sure to make of this, but I’m going sure start washing my hands more often.

OCD?

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TECHNOLOGY: Diskless Booting; why not cdrom booting?

Monday, May 24, 2010

http://it.slashdot.org/story/10/05/08/0455244/Diskless-Booting-For-the-Modern-Age

Diskless Booting For the Modern Age on Saturday May 08, @05:08AM
Posted by timothy on Saturday May 08, @05:08AM
from the who-needs-moving-parts dept.

*** begin quote ***

An anonymous reader writes “Ever wonder what happened to PXE? Intel’s popular standard for diskless booting hasn’t been updated since 1999, and has missed out on such revolutions as wireless Ethernet, cloud computing, and iSCSI. An open source project called Etherboot has been trying to drag PXE into the 21st century. One of their programmers explains how to set up diskless booting for your cloud, using copy-on-write to save space.”

*** end quote ***

Having had to “clean” more than one machine — freinds, family, workmates, fellow alums, complete strangers (I love helping) — I have really never ever understood why we don’t boot from a CDROM.

Persistent virus infections, hiding in boot records, would be impossible.

Given that a reboot for desktops are relatively rare and for notebooks are infrequent, we could have true “change control”.

Never understood that?

Can you help me out and explain it?

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MONEY: Lessons from the Baby Boomer’s Blunders

Friday, May 21, 2010

http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2010/05/21/what-you-can-learn-from-baby-boomer-blunders/

What YOU Can Learn from Baby-Boomer Blunders   

Neal Frankle, a Certified Financial Planner, and the author of Wealth Pilgrim, a blog about his financial journey.

*** begin quote ***

# Don’t assume your home is going to fund your retirement.

# Try like hell to pay off your mortgage by the time you’re 55.

# Don’t send your kids to schools you can’t afford.

# Think about saving as any other expense.

*** end quote ***

I’d add some other “lessons”.

  • Don’t assume that you’ll be working after fifty. Or, don’t assume, unless your work for the Gooferment, that your pay will keep going up. One thing I have learned form my turkeys is that (a) there is a good possibility of a year out of work, living off your savings, dipping into your retirement money, and settling for a lot less.
  • Don’t assume that your “blue chip company” will even exist in the next year. Look at Lehman Brothers for a quick demise. Look at GM for a slow death. You are the master of your own fate. If the Titanic is going down, even if you’re not one it, it can take you with it. Look at the city of Detroit. Look at all the suppliers and correspondents of Lehman Brothers. Heck, my CPA took a batch with Lehman Brother’s bonds; a supposedly safe investment.
  • Don’t assume that your “gold watch” company will take care of you. Your “benefits” are very expensive. I’d suggest that, if possible, you have your own health insurance. Again, from my turkeys, loss of the benefits are a financial disaster. It can break a marriage. It can break your spirits.

You have to have a strategy, with the tactics to match.

I alwasy fall back to what I think is the “success” meme in today’s climate:

Success for your generation is: (1) ruthless financial discipline — no bad debt; (2) a life long interest in learning — education — a degree — they can’t take it away from you; (3) a NON-OFFSHORABLE white collar job in order to save big bux; (4) a blue collar skill for hard times — never saw a poor plumber; (5) one or more internet based businesses — your store is always open; (6) a free time hobby that generates income; and (7) a large will-maintained network of people who can “help” you.

FWIW

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INTERESTING: Where is the edge of the flat earth?

Sunday, May 16, 2010

http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-1005.html

Crypto-Gram Newsletter
May 15, 2010
by Bruce Schneier
Chief Security Technology Officer, BT

*** begin quote ***

Worst-Case Thinking

*** and ***

Remember Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s quote? “Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don’t know we don’t know.” And this: “the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” Ignorance isn’t a cause for doubt; when you can fill that ignorance with imagination, it can be a call to action.

*** end quote ***

“We don’t know what we don’t know”

In the dikw (i.e., data, information, knowledge, wisdom) meme the elements explode into: Data is the elemental atom of the paradigm. Information is data in context. Knowledge is actionable information. Wisdom is knowing the implications of knowledge.

Wisdom is that “don’t know what don’t know” area.

Where is the edge of the flat earth?

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TECHNOLOGY: Taming the email monster

Saturday, May 15, 2010

http://www.happiness-project.com/happiness_project/2010/05/five-realistic-tips-for-using-email-more-efficiently.html

MY COMMENT:

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May I suggest that more email accounts, with a proper strategy, mail actually be more “efficient”?

All too often, I see folks with a single email account with everything jumbled together. No ability to segregate personal from business, financial from non, family from weirdo, (Oh wait some of my family are pretty weird!), … any way, you get the idea.

I personally use lots of different accounts for different purposes. Reading down my inboxes in my mail client: Urgent Matters, Brokerage Account, Bank Account, Paytrust, Family, Friends, Work, Job Search Networking, College Alumni, My High School Class Specifically, High School Alumni, Networking, Technology Playing, Catch All, and Routine Subscriptions. And, few other oddballs ones.

May sound like a mess, but:

(1) Email time is IMMEDIATELY presented in priority order. (Most people just reply to email, so they get to know me by the address. I have my own domain so I am in complete control of the names, the archiving interval, and automatic handling.)

(2) Messages purporting to be from my bank sent by a spammer stand out like a sore thumb when they come it on the “wrong” email account.

(3) Message originating from me are distinctive in the account name so the recipient can quickly place my association with them. (e.g., HighSchoolNickname @ mydomainname dot com) Saves angst on all ends.

(4) “Lost messages”, remembered or needed later, can be found by looking in the “dedicated email” box which is just a fraction of the overall mail volume.

So in this case, more is actually less. More mailboxes; less wasted time.

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INTERESTING: Verify and validate “change”

Thursday, May 6, 2010

http://www.careerhubblog.com/main/2010/04/17-tips-for-dealing-with-volcanos-change-and-uncertainty.html

17 Tips For Dealing With Volcanos, Change and Uncertainty

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Ever-changing technology, globalisation and hyper-competition have conspired to make most of our professional lives an ever-changing landscape. Add to that a changeable economic climate, political uncertainty and a sprinkling of volcanic ash and voila – you have the makings of constant change and unpredictability.

While your ability to create and execute detailed plans may have served you well in the past, in today’s economy and work place, it’s your ability to operate in a much more fluid environment that determines your progress.

Regardless of whether you’re currently trying to lead a team through change or attempting to navigate your own career through a turbulence, here are 17 tips which may help.

1. Focus on clear outcomes instead of detailed plans

*** end quote ***

(0) Check your paradigms and memes. Change is a delta based on a previous perception. What if that perception is wrong? Our memes shape our perceptions and vice versa. Sunset is the other side of sunrise. Both are unique changes but they are inexorably linked. Are they one? Similarly, we have so many blind spots about some many things (i.e., time; culture; distance; interpretation). Those paradigms and memes might be wrong. Worse yet they can be silently invalidated by changes over time without us perceiving that change. So, very carefully, examine and reexamine your paradigms and memes. Challenge what you think is true. Test it. Don’t depend upon it without reexamination. It can bite you in the a double q.

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JOBSEARCH: Myths are killers in job search

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

http://www.pickthebrain.com/blog/6-myths-that-stand-in-your-way/

6 Myths That Stand In Your Way
April 18th, 2010 by Mark Harrison

*** begin quote ***

1. Myth: There is time

2. Myth: You can rely on other people

3. Myth: You are important

4. Myth: You should put others before yourself

5. Myth: Conflict should be avoided

6. Myth: The difference between success and failure is LUCK.

*** end quote ***

Ahhh, myths, I can relate to this one. I was so … … stupid, lazy, dumb,

Shoulda, coulda, and woulda!

Paradigms are the way we perceive the world (i.e., the JoHari window). Memes, like genes for ideas, are the units of thoughts that transfer and modify behavior.

Myths are a erroneous paradigms and memes.

So is the problem, the difference, that we now perceive them as “wrong”. By what standard?

So we have paradigms and memes that, being wrong, interfere with a successful life and a successful jobsearch.

Some of them that have particularly screwed me up.

1. I believed people. They lied. I acted on those beliefs. And, I did damage that I can’t even know or assess.

2. I “coasted” when it would have been trivial to do the work. Again, another hit that can’t be assessed.

3. I read a mensa piece (i.e., human being owner’s manual) many many moons ago. I thought it was a joke. Little did I know how true it was.

4. I have heard many of the self-help gurus and read many of the self-help texts. Read, but didn’t grok. Preused but didn’t action.

5. I didn’t play the “political game” at my various stops along my career path. Who knows what could have been?

6. I urged people to forgive themselves. I have to do the same. The “more than a year” amnesty. All sins forgiven; not forgotten.

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INTERESTING: I have some anecdotal evidence that I never understood

Thursday, April 22, 2010

http://www.sciencedaily.com/videos/2007/1201-glasses_help_parkinsons_patients.htm

Science Video
Glasses Help Parkinson’s Patients
Podiatrist Invents Device To Make Walking Easier For Parkinson’s Sufferers
December 1, 2007

*** begin quote ***

The augmented reality glasses simulate an effect called kinesia paradoxa: the triggering of normal walking behavior in akinetic Parkinson’s patients by the placement of physical obstacles at their feet. Sometimes such cues exist naturally, such as black and white tiles placed evenly on a floor. The black tiles appear as objects to avoid, or as guides, and trigger a reflex of landing the feet between the black spaces. Walking up regularly spaced objects like stairs triggers the same effect, and can “un-freeze” a person who otherwise has problems walking with a normal gait. Presenting virtual objects and abstract visual cues moving through the patientýs visual field at speeds that emulate normal walking can also achieve this effect.

*** end quote ***

When I read this i had a “Great Brother Jasper’s Ghost!!!” moment.

My Mom has just past. As she aged, she suffered terribly with Parkinson’s.

Growing up, she had spent a lot of money on black and white tiles through out the apartment. Maybe it was her way, even without knowing it, that she was compensating.

Wish I could tell the author. It might help him to another breakthrough.

I find this an interesting explanation.

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INTERESTING: Corporations shift their IT costs

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

http://www.forbes.com/2010/04/20/smartphone-mobile-iphone-technology-cio-network-blackberry.html

JargonSpy
The End Of The BlackBerry Elite
Dan Woods, 04.20.10, 06:00 PM EDT
Companies are increasingly allowing workers to use their personal smartphones for work.

*** begin quote ***

And now that smartphones are relatively inexpensive and many workers own one, companies are encouraging employees to use their personal phones for work. One retail executive told me that most of his employees were eager to use their personal phones to stay in touch with work e-mail, and some workers could be reimbursed for their phone and texting charges.

Increasingly, companies are attempting to bring personally owned smartphones into the fold of corporate IT, which in practice usually means providing access to MS Exchange or Lotus Notes. This fits into the vision of Organic IT in which corporate IT is delivered through personal technology.

*** end quote ***

This brings up some interesting questions like ownership, liability, wage ‘n’ hour, and exhaustion. All questions that the CxOs really don’t want to recognize.

When corporate data leaks onto an employee device with the corporations blessing, who owns it? Customer lists take to a competitor by a job changing employee leaps to mind.

What are the liability issues with agreeing to this? An employees answers a email while driving and crashes defends with “the boss made me do it”.

If an employee has to support “off-hours”, what’s the wage ‘n’ hour implications?

If an employee is exhausted and burnt out, what is the costs of the mistakes and replacing them?

And I’m not even a lawyer; just a fat old white guy injineer who has had to “do” it.

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