eviljim.com: the mac days

So this weekend a few of us went down to the local Indian tribal casino to play some games of chance.

When we arrived, Blake was already playing Craps, and he said the table was doing quite well. So, after watching for a couple minutes, I decided to jump in.

The table was doing quite well. There were about 10 people playing and everyone seemed to be growing their chip stack quite quickly. I was doing well for myself too, though still playing conservatively despite the insane run. I was at one far end of the table and across from me was a girl shooting; I think she rolled the dice roughly for half an hour before she finally crapped out. The dice came around, Blake rolled a few good rolls, he craps out and the dice come to me.

Anyone who has ever rolled dice in craps knows the first roll ends up being somewhat imperfect. There’s this calibration, especially being at the far end of the table. You need to throw hard to hit the other back end of the table, or the roll doesn’t count and everyone gets mad. Also in the back of my mind I’m remembering some “dice rules” – keep them over the table, never touch them with more than one hand, etc. So, all this floating around in my mind, I wind up and toss the dice.

The dice hit the girl opposite of me directly in the face.

“Bad bounce,” you might think – maybe they hit the table kind of hard and jumped out and plunked her. It’s not common for the first roll to kind of bounce out, but also not terribly uncommon.

But oh no, I can’t say that’s what happened. The dice didn’t even touch the table – I looked like a raving lunatic that just threw the dice hard at someone’s face. Because that is exactly what I did, you see.

Anyway, my first real roll I hit a 7, then I roll a 4 and hit the point a few rolls later. At this point I think everyone, girl included, has forgiven me. Unfortunately I crap out on the next roll, but still more or less everyone’s made a bit of money off my rolls.

Shortly after this I go over to the blackjack table and do quite well the first shoe. I tried doing a A/5 count and played relatively close to the strategy and did pretty well. The shoe was overwhelmingly positive the entire time. The next shoe was pretty negative (-3 or more) almost the entire time though, and then I lost track on the third and successive shoes so I ended up losing a bit of cash. By the end of the day, I ended up more or less even (earning $4.50, and a $20 comp).

Anytime you can play craps for about an hour or two and not lose a ton of money is always a win though – lots of fun, but way too easy to lose a lot of money quickly (though just as easy to earn some decent bank, ask Blake).

I have a confession.

For the past two months, I’ve had the same 3 netflixes at home. So, basically, I’ve been paying $18 a month to have clutter by my DVD player.

Recently I’ve taken steps to correct this, specifically by watching the DVDs I had rented. I returned a couple yesterday and received an email today from netflix, telling me what movie to expect Friday.

I forgot how exciting that was! It’s like buying DVDs (which I am not allowed to do, currently) but not as expensive.

Plus I can finally see the end of “A Scanner Darkly” — I watched the first hour on a plane entertainment system, and ran out of time before finishing it.

So, back in Illinois, you have a woman who speaks to angels going nuts over city-wide WiFi in Naperville.

She is apparently afraid of all forms of electromagnetic radiation. Or maybe even any radiation, as she says “Any device which emits radiation is hazardous to your health.” Apparently, despite her vast knowledge of this technology, she doesn’t realize that this includes, well, visible light.

Or maybe she does.

She’s a vampire!

I was eating a “pluot” and decided I’d gone long enough in my life without knowing. I must know what a “pluot” is.

Yep. It’s a plum mixed with an apricot.

This doesn’t bother me. What bothers me is it was invented in the late 20th century. Why am I beta testing this fruit? Doesn’t it take longer than that to be proven, uhm, food? I think it should.

Besides. Why are people inventing fruit? I thought fruit gets discovered, not invented. I don’t know.

I also found out that “Grapples” (Grape-Apples) are not a hybrid of any kind. They dip apples in artificial grape flavoring! That’s just sad. And somewhat stupid.

I also realized that just a sentence can make me crack up. Case in point is today’s Achewood. I don’t know why, but the 2nd frame is just hilarious.

Well, I’m off to have my own victory with computers.

Apparently MP3 Tunes, which I long ago posted about and subscribed to, is now free with unlimited storage. It basically allows you to upload your entire mp3 collection to their servers, giving you the following advantages:

- You can sync it back down (so it’s basically a backup service)
- You can sync it back down to other PCs (so you can keep multiple PCs up to date with your music library)
- You can listen to it online (very cool, almost itunes-esque interface)

Pretty good. Pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty good.

So I was reading the Pennies Arcade and they mentioned a site which makes previewing and finding Xbox Live content (downloadables and such) easy, here.

I realize now I’ve been disappointed by pretty much anything Microsoft has attempted to do so I shouldn’t be surprised that this does too.

Does it make it easier to find content? No.
Does it make it easier to find new content? No.
Does it make it have an RSS feed of any kind? No.
Does Microsoft understand the Internet? No.

Ugh. How annoying. Especially as something like that would easily draw sales by highlighting stuff people might be interested.

I’ve jokingly said things are painful to watch before, but this… this actually was. I had to keep pausing it and do other things just so I wouldn’t die.

Interestingly near the end she comes out of the office and gets applauded. I think the second Harry Potter movie paid homage to this scene at the end, when the school inexplicably applauds Hagrid for being released from prison.

Two other points:

1) Apparently Windows, when printing, would YELL “PRINTING!” at you in an ever increasing font while it printed. Microsoft Product Mangers were apparently as bad as they are now back then, as I met a few that would think this quite the revolutionary idea. Perhaps in Office Accounting 2008.

2) Also apparently, Microsoft Word (or whatever it was called then) has not changed what charts look like in, well, however long ago this movie was made. They look exactly the same! And to be honest it looked like the insane woman in this video had an easier time of making charts than I ever do.

For almost a decade, people have wondered how to vastly increase their consumption of porn. Mark Cuban has found the way.

And it is no less than brilliant.

Unfortunately, there are a few steps missing in the equation — I am not quite the seer that this fellow is — but it goes something, like-a-this:

1. Sell your company to yahoo for 5 billion dollars in stock
2. Start a blog to share random but always uninformed opinions
2. ???
3. Post on your blog asking people to send you porn

I think step 3 might be “go bat-shit insane” but I can’t prove that. I am not operating at the porn level of Mark Cuban. I might suggest that none of us are.

Honestly, can we say for sure that the whole business deal — founding and selling broadcast.com — was not working up to this point? Just to gander enough glory to have people email you porn. It’s not unlikely.

Now that’s good advertising.