Walt at Random

Hold on. Before you light the torches or prepare your pithy comments, read on.

I mean it. Astrology is real. So is homeopathy–and by this I mean homeopathic remedies, not homeopathic practitioners (they’re also real, but it’s a different argument).

Real

What do I mean by real?

• The fields produce real income. Astrology columnists get paid, as do some folks who call themselves astrologers. People take homeopathic remedies and pay good money for them. Hell, there are even peer-reviewed journals, including one (Homeopathy) published by Elsevier, so it must be real. (The journal is only $277/year for institutional print access. Quite a bargain by Elsevier terms. I’d suggest offering your entire print budget at a homeopathic strengthening level, say 200C. Oh, look it up.)
• The fields have real effects on some people. People who believe in astrologers’ forecasts and astrology columns will have their lives affected by those forecasts. People who take homeopathic remedies that they believe work are likely to find that their symptoms improve in anywhere from 10% to 90% of cases.

How real can you get? The field makes money and changes people’s lives.

Scientifically meaningful

Oh, well, that’s an entirely different thing, in’it?

Do I believe astrology and homeopathy are scientifically meaningful? Not so much. (Not at all, if you must know.)

I think they fall into the same realm as Santa Claus and a fair number of other concepts: Useful under some circumstances…and only dangerous if you spend money on them that you can’t really afford or, much more commonly, if you substitute them for things like effort (for astrology) and medicine/sound health practices (for homeopathic remedies).

Incidentally, if you do believe (or know someone who believes) that a given homeopathic remedy (at 12C or higher) is working, in the absence of the homeopathic practitioner, I have a money-saving suggestion once you’ve gone through the initial bottle:

My local supermarket sells a superb general-purpose homeopathic remedy that should work exactly as well, once it’s poured into the same bottle with the same label and the same assumptions. Around here, you can get the general-purpose remedy for about thirty-five cents a gallon, if you bring your own containers, or maybe $1 a gallon if you need a container. You may find that your supermarket has big machines over in one corner that will fill your containers with this general-purpose remedy. (Do be cautious: Under the wrong conditions, this general-purpose remedy is one of the most universal solvents known, and many people have died through excessive and inappropriate consumption.)

Why do I separate homeopathic remedies, especially those you can buy over the counter such as one that’s apparently dynamite for flu and uses duck liver at 200C, from homeopathic practitioners? Because the practitioners are looking at the whole patient and almost certainly offering appropriate advice, and I have no reason to believe that the advice they offer isn’t in many cases effective. Whether the effectiveness of that advice has anything whatsoever to do with the liquids or pills they provide….ah, that’s another question.

Update: I forgot my other tip, one for believers in astrology. You can get an equally valid individualized forecast in almost any American city of any size–delivered in an edible wrapper after a good meal. Just go to most any Chinese restaurant (except maybe the fanciest ones). I can assure you that what the throw in free at the end of the meal is as good as anything in the astrology column.

I was wrong.

I’ve looked back at various responses to my foolish attempt to find out the truth about public library closings, those responses arguing that there is A Greater Problem, thus making the lesser issue irrelevant.

They’re right, of course.

Which means that I will now* focus all of Walt at Random, Cites & Insights and my other efforts on The Greater Problem–which is, of course, global climate change, the problem that overshadows all other problems.

After all, why waste time on anything smaller when there’s this greater problem to address?

I’m now working with corporate sponsors (who are not yet ready to be named) on a series of international conferences addressing The Greater Problem. Thousands of acknowledged experts, politicians and ordinary citizens will be flown (in 707s converted to fly 20 passengers each in first-class comfort) to a variety of significant destinations for each conference, with all expenses paid by the corporate sponsors. The actual conferences will be unconferences, of course. (Initial sites for conferences might include Kiribati, the Wake Islands, Miami Beach…)

*”Now” is defined as from the time this post appears until the end of the 91st day of 2012. After that, I’m back to those ignominious lesser problems and issues.

Second Footnote

Today marks the seventh anniversary of Walt at Random. The dashboard currently shows 1,522 posts and 3,920 approved comments; Spam Karma 2 has trapped 74,445 spams (it seems like a LOT more) and Bad Behavior has blocked 896 access attempts….in the past week.

In the past year, there have been 470,974 sessions and 2,146,946 pageviews–and I believe as many as 2% of those have been people rather than spambots.

The most-viewed actual post, with just under 11,000 views during that year, is “The Cover Story Part 1.” Sure it is. Apparently a wide variety of spambots access this blog, as I see 55,743 IP addresses in 113 “countries” over the past year. (I use scare quotes around “countries” since that’s really top-level domains; the most common country is .com, for example.)

There’s an odd ongoing story across the Bay–a newly-elected Sheriff (in a county that’s also a city, thus has a police chief and sheriff with precisely identical service area) who’s been brought up on domestic violence charges and ended up pleading guilty to one of them.

And who’s now been suspended by the newly-elected Mayor (and replaced by an interim Sheriff who’s a woman, the first time this Sheriff’s Office has been headed by a woman), without pay, while it’s determined whether the conduct makes the Sheriff unfit for office.

Key to the eventual guilty plea: A neighbor’s video showing the wife’s bruised arm where the Sheriff grabbed her during some sort of argument/discussion.

Which got me to thinking: Under what circumstances would I be justified in grabbing my wife’s arm, especially hard enough to cause a bruise?

• An argument? Nope. Period. Not gonna happen. (Not that we don’t ever argue, but an argument is never justification for physical violence–especially, as in this case, where the man is considerably larger and more powerful than the woman. I’m actually shorter than my wife, but outweigh her by quite a bit. In any case, we’ve only been married 34 years, but never argued at a pitch that resulted in physical assault on either side. I hope we never will.)
• Asserting your superior rights over the woman–that she’s your property to do with as you please? Right…if my wife ever for an instant believed that I thought anything of the sort, I would no longer be married. Or deserve to be part of a civilized nation. (I won’t get into whether some states in the U.S. can be considered parts of a civilized nation; let’s just assume they have barbarians as state legislators and let it go at that. I do know where my tourist dollars won’t be going any time soon, which is unfortunate, because I like Key West and San Antonio.)
• Which leaves what?

I finally came up with a situation in which case I’d feel justified in grabbing my wife’s arm. If we were in an exposed situation where she was about to fall off a cliff or off a ship or otherwise about to be in serious physical danger, and the only way I could save her from that danger was by grabbing her arm.

Otherwise? Damned if I can see any justification, ever, for a man to grab his wife’s (or girlfriend’s, or date’s, or boyfriend’s, or husband’s) arm hard enough to leave a bruise.

That’s a misleading title, but I couldn’t think of a better one for this very silly post that is of no consequence whatsoever.

As I’ve noted before, I relax with video slot poker to take breaks between writing, editing, research chores, or whatever. Most of that, these days, is in five to eight rounds of contests at the video poker site (free, no actual gambling), playing whatever the contest of the day is. A round is 100 plays–and a play is usually anywhere from three to one hundred hands (since most of the games are either triple play variations or, sometimes, 25-play, 50-play or 100-play, or “spin fever,” in all of which you’re dealt one hand, you choose which cards to keep, and those cards are replicated in as many hands as there are–or, with spin fever, a reel-type variation I still haven’t entirely figured out). You’re automatically betting the maximum each time, and your credits (wins) total at the bottom and are used to score the game. So far, so good: I track the games and play “against the nut”–that is, trying for a final total that’s more than the total bet. (If it’s pure triple-play, that’s 15 credits per play–three hands at five credits each–or 1,500 for a round.) Oh, I won’t turn down a high score of the day: that’s happened to me once, and it’s good for $50. But I’m playing for fun. (As noted earlier, all this has had the odd effect of reducing urges to go to actual casinos, as this is smoke-free and convenient, and in the long run even cheaper than casino gambling, since at most it costs me $25/year to avoid ads–if I don’t just play the downloaded version, which inherently has no ads.)

A new feature

A couple of days ago, a new feature appeared on the contest screen that shows up when you complete a round. If you’ve beaten the nut, there’s a “Congratulations!” and it tells you how much you would have won–in dollars and cents–if you’d been playing the game at a quarter ($0.25) machine.

Of course, it only gives you winning amounts. There’s no “Too bad!” message with the amount you would have lost during a round. That’s reasonable.

But, Duuuude…

Yes, I know, I’m at least 40 years too old to be using that phrase, but that’s what came to mind when I was playing 100-play poker, yesterday’s contest, and had a really good round: 59,910. The screen came up with “Congratulations! You would have won $2,477.50 if you’d been playing on a quarter machine.” (That may not be the precise wording, but you get the gist.)

But, Duuuude…..

If there are quarter 100-hand machines, and if I was playing maximum coins, I would have been risking…

wait for it…

$125 dollars per play. That’s one hundred and twentyfive dollars. That’s, let’s see, 15 lunches at my favorite local Chinese restaurant (including tax and tip). Or 15 to 20 bottles of most of the Chardonnays I buy. Or a nice dinner out with our best friend in Livermore…including wine, tax and tip. Or 15 weeks of the daily paper. Or two years of the cell phone service we use. Or one good pair of Rockport shoes. Or 125 pounds of organic navel oranges from our favorite semi-local grower. Or…well, you get the drift.

Per play.

That is so not going to happen. Realistically, I’d probably never even play the plausible version of a hundred-hand machine, at one cent per bet, since even that is $5 per play, and I’m not that wealthy. (I know there are hundred-hand machines; I saw some at Harrah’s New Orleans. I think those were penny machines, although of course they only handle folding money and the ubiquitous tickets.)

Even if I won Super Lotto, I wouldn’t wager $125 per play on a slot machine (or any other form of gambling.)

Even if someone sent me that Powerball ticket that’s worth $200 million as a lump sum, I wouldn’t wager $125 per play on a slot machine (unless, of course, such wagering–up to, say, 100 playsmaximum–was a condition of being handed the $200 million ticket).

I enjoy gaming, especially poker with its small amount of skill. Once in a while–much less so these days–I even enjoy doing it in a casino. But never for more than $50/day. Which may indeed mean wagering several thousand dollars over the course of a day or two, but not at $125 a shot!

Oh, and here’s the message I might have gotten two rounds earlier on the same day. “Sorry! You would be down $2,657.50 if you were playing on a quarter machine.” I can pretty much guarantee that no gaming site is ever going to show me that message.

[Overall? Overall, I've gotten good enough at holding that I'm running within a plausible range, which I define as anywhere from 93% to 103% over the long run, more typically 95% to 98% playing max coins--which, for me, would mean 93% to 96% in a casino, since I'm too cheap to play max coins. In hundred-hands contest play itself, I'm still up, because that one dealt royal flush, which turns into 100 royal flushes, takes a long time to play down to average. Thus, on the double-bonus version, where I got the dealt royal flush, I'm at 119.46% over 350,000 actual hands; on the deuces-wild version, with no such absurd luck, I'm at 95.06% over 300,000 actual hands. Of the variations that show up in contests, I've concluded that Double Super Times is my worst variation--I'm consistently under 90% for that. But when there's no actual money involved...]

This one’s so good I just have to quote it in full:

Write more, thats all I have to say. Literally, it seems as though you relied on the video to make your point. You clearly know what youre talking about, why throw away your intelligence on just posting videos to your weblog when you could be giving us something informative to read?

In response to that suggestion, I’m going to quadruple the rate at which I post videos to this blog. That will move it up from zero videos per year to, well, zero videos per year.

I’m not a big DIYer or really handy around the house, but there are some things I buy at home improvement stores.

From where we live, it’s almost exactly the same driving time to a Home Depot and a Lowe’s.

The Lowe’s seems a little newer and a little more upscale. For most things we’d buy, either one would do (except for CFLs, where Home Depot’s house brand is simply superior).

But now it’s easier

Lowe’s apparently caved to a one-person “Family” organization–with these organizations, “Family” almost always belongs in scare quotes–that seems to regard American Muslims as probable terrorists.

Huh.

Home Depot still advertises on the same show that Lowe’s dropped.

Makes it easy for me to go to Home Depot.

Not a great title for this musing, but I’m not feeling creative enough for a better one.

What I’m getting at is this:

One downside of increased transparency of many people’s lives, especially noteworthy people, is that it’s harder to divorce the person from their creations.

For example?

I read many of Robert Heinlein’s books when I was much younger (maybe even young). I enjoyed most of them, not as great literary works but as enjoyable science fiction.

At the time, I knew nothing about Heinlein’s own worldview beyond what was in the books, and that wasn’t always obviously Heinlein speaking. (It’s definitely not the case that everything said by Isaac Asimov’s characters represented Asimov’s own thinking; why should it be true for Heinlein?)

Later, as I learned more about Heinlein, the man, it was too late for it to affect my enjoyment of his books–I’d already read them.

But I didn’t read Orson Scott Card when I was younger, and still haven’t. And, frankly, I suspect I never will, given what I know of Card’s activism and, um, sentiments, and given that I’m never possibly going to read all the books that are out there that I might enjoy. I figure I read about 12 science fiction books and another 26 booklength-equivalents (in science fiction magazines) a year, and that includes fantasy as well; there’s no conceivable way that I begin to run out of reading.

A tougher case…

There’s a country singer I’ve enjoyed quite a bit over the years. The name’s not important. His songs aren’t stridently political, and while he certainly indulges in gospel and religion sometimes, well, he’s a country artist. (Heck, I was an absolute J.S. Bach devotee when I was young, and Bach didn’t exactly ignore religion…)

Lately, though, I’ve heard that this person is becoming a known and significant contributor to a brand of politics that really doesn’t do much for me.

Does that make his music less appealing? Maybe, a little bit, yes.

The difference between this person and Card are, apart from pure intensity, this person doesn’t inject his politics into his songs to the extent that Card apparently (apparently–I haven’t read him, remember) injects his worldviews into his fiction.

And in general…

Once you’ve heard and confirmed someone’s stances and the vigor with which they pursue those stances, you can’t unhear them–and I don’t see how that can fail to affect how you read their writing, view their art, listen to their songs, watch their plays.

[Just as a socially onservative religious person who wants to know more about the St. Andrew's Cross and doesn't have filtering turned on will probably never fully unsee the results...]

That’s life. It’s always been true to some extent. I think it’s more true these days, and it’s harder to ignore the person behind the writing, the music, the art.

And sometimes, that feels a little unfortunate.

Not unfortunate enough to send me to the “Card” section of my library’s SF/F shelves, to be sure…

A two-part post of no enormous import…

Texas

Just finished checking Zelienople Public Library, the alphabetically last library in Pennsylvania, for presence on Facebook and Twitter. That process began with A Hufnagel Glen Rock Library on November 17. Given the bad cold I’m finally getting over and other stuff like turning around the micropublishing book and helping (a little) get ready for Thanksgiving, I guess I shouldn’t be too unhappy with that progress. That’s 453 libraries in roughly four weekdays and one weekend; a little below my 100-per-weekday, 100 over the weekend goal, but not badly so.

Now on to Texas’ 561 [565: Seeing that the table I had was only showing city names, I found another table, showing 565 main libraries with population figures, and it has full library names] libraries, aiming for 50-75 today, the rest starting Friday. (For those who follow my activities closely, if there are any of them, the reason I’m posting this on a Wednesday morning instead of being out hiking is because I *am* about 95% over the cold and decided to take it easy–and because it’s threatening rain out there any minute.) I might miss the aim: As always, I’ll help with anything Thanksgiving-related my wife asks me to do, but I’ve found in past years that I’m usually most helpful by staying out of the way.

The Texas process will be a lot slower because November 25 is also precisely four months past the point at which I began the original 25-state/2406-library scan, and thus marks the start of the four-month rescan. So I’ll be happy with 25 or more new (Texas) libraries per day…

And somewhere in there I may put out a truncated little C&I issue…

Thanksgiving

I won’t scan any libraries tomorrow. We’ll be hosting a small dinner (brother & sister-in-law, sister & brother-in-law; none of the nieces and nephew and grand-nieces are here this year), with my wife doing, oh, 95% of the work. That may be a conservative estimate. It’s her choice, although it’s my immediate family. I doubt that I’ll even be on the computer tomorrow–and if I am, it won’t be until late afternoon at the earliest.

I could provide a gratetude (Jon Carroll’s marvelous term) of things I’m thankful for (John Scalzi’s been doing a wonderful “Thanksgiving Advent Calendar” series of daily gratetudes at his Whatever blog), but I’m not much of one for lists. At a start, there’s my wonderful wife (we met not much more than 34 years ago, and we’ll celebrate our 34th anniversary on New Year’s Day). Then, there’s good health (this cold being a rare exception–I’m 66 years old, not taking any prescription medicines and not having any real complaints, so I’m extremely thankful to my father and other ancestors for great genes!). And, to be sure, being in a country, state, and community that I love, despite all their failings; having not only a roof over my head but the nicest house we’ve ever owned; good food (much of it local, most of the produce from farmers’ markets) and having not gained the habit of eating too much of it; good wine (some of it very local, nearly all of it from within 200 miles); good music; good friends locally and the many good virtual friends of LSW (and others); good books and a great local public library to borrow them from…

And more, but I think that’s enough. On to Abernathy, Abilene, Alamo…

Alexandria Library has both a Facebook page and a Twitter account–although the Twitter account doesn’t show up on the library’s homepage and seems somewhat neglected. York County Public Library appears to have neither (although, as with so many others, there’s a Facebook page that the library probably had nothing to do with).

And that’s Virginia from start to finish, with lots of interesting stuff in between.

Now, on to Vermont. Meanwhile…

Too Many Words on a Favored Break Pastime

When I’m in the middle of writing a chapter, I alternate between working on the chapter and checking groups of libraries/visiting FriendFeed and gmail, usually aiming for 25 libraries at a time. (I’m current at 1,975, planning to get to at least 2,050 by the end of the day. Technically, of course, all those counts are one too high, since there’s a label row.)

But when I’m not writing a chapter–either because I’ve done enough for the day or because I’m done with this week’s installment–I do something else for a break. (Not the long breaks, where taking walks and reading are involved, but the short breaks sitting at the computer.) For quite a while, that break was frequently an ongoing game of five-card draw video poker, jacks or better, using a years-old Masque program that could be set to suggest which cards I should hold (and has a printable table of the too-many combinations to think about). I still have the program, but am unlikely to use it much in the future. For that, you can thank New Orleans and a website I discovered after ALA Annual.

New Orleans?

Yep. I think I mentioned in another post that, along with going to various programs and spending a lot of time in the exhibits, I spent a few hours at Harrah’s in New Orleans, always playing video poker (the only slot machines that involve some degree of thinking and skill). Planned to spend $50 to $70 max. Ended up walking out with $250 of the casino’s money. And found that I was almost always playing either three-hand poker or some subset of a ten-hand game, and that I enjoyed that a lot more than single-hand poker.

For those who’ve never encountered it, multihand poker (it can be anywhere from three to 100 hands, usually either three, five, ten or 100–and with three, five or ten, you can usually choose how many hands you want to play) works like this:

• You place your bet–with coins (or, rather, numbers based on the bills or slip you deposited) going to each successive hand first, then adding to them. If you want to get the best payback, you bet five coins for each hand (massively increasing royal flush payoff–this is true for virtually all video poker, and makes up about 1.5% of the extremely high payback of such machines); I almost never do that.
• When you click on Deal, the bottom hand is dealt.
• When you hold cards in that hand, they pop up on all of the hands you’ve bet on.
• When you click on Draw, the non-held cards are replaced in each hand–but each hand is a separate deal. Thus, if you’re playing five hands, you see five different results of drawing from the same held cards. You win on each hand if it’s a winning combo.

The virtues: More action and it’s interesting to see how things can play out. The vice: More action–if you’re playing a quarter five-hand machine and want that big royal-flush payout, you’re wagering $6.25 on each deal. That’s way too rich for my blood. I was typically starting with $0.50 (one each on two hands) and increasing hands & bets as I was winning–or, playing a dime machine, starting with $0.30 (one each on three hands) and doing the same. I’m guessing 100-hand games are typically penny games, but that still means you’re wagering $5 each time (5 coins each on 100 hands).

Coming home

We used to go to Reno two to four times a year, mostly visiting surrounding attractions in the mornings and playing slot poker in the afternoons. We don’t do that any more because the second-hand smoke is too much for my wife’s asthma and also irritating for me. There’s an Indian casino about two hours from us that had a substantial true nonsmoking room, but it also has lousy odds and the town doesn’t have a good hotel (the casino’s building one now). We went there a few times (my wife’s sister lives in town, and her niece is a financial person at the casino), but not recently…

I was missing casinos–not to gamble, which would imply the possibility of winning, but to game as cheap entertainment. And I realized that the Masque video poker wasn’t doing it: I wanted multihand, and it wasn’t enough like the real thing. (I was also finding double-bonus poker, where you trade less of a payoff for two pairs for more payoff for many other hands, including *much* more payoff for some 4 of a kind hands, to my liking, and the advice on holding is necessarily different for that version.)

A little investigation…

I wasn’t about to sign up for an offshore gambling website, any more than I’m ever likely to visit either of Livermore’s two “casinos” (that is, poker parlors–legal in many California cities since poker is a game of skill): Too rich for my blood, and I’d be a terrible live-poker player.

But then I found a website that’s explicitly not a gambling site (there’s no cash wagering of any sort) and offered video poker looking and sounding almost exactly like the real thing: Videopoker.com. There’s a reason the poker games look and sound realistic: Videopoker.com is operated by Action Gaming, a division of IGT–and Action Gaming makes those multihand video poker slot machines.

The win-win situation…

You can play video poker, in an absurdly large number of variations, absolutely for free–if you don’t mind flashing and changing ads around the edges of the virtual machine. After a while, I found that annoying enough to sign up for the “silver” level: $25 a year, and the third-party ads go away. (There are still a few videopoker.com ads, but they’re static and out of the way.) There’s a much more expensive level, something like $8/month, that allows you to chat with other players and keep track of your scores, but I’m not interested in that.

There’s also something else. On each of the first 20 days of each month, there’s a daily contest, using some “machine” from the large collection. (A machine might be Game King or Three-Hand Poker or Hundred-Hand or one of the many extra-action variations; within a machine, there are still quite a few choices–e.g., jacks or better, double bonus, deuces wild, and anywhere from three to a dozen others.) Unlike the regular games, where you start with 10,000 credits, bet what you want (all of it non-$) and go up or down until you stop playing, these ones are fixed: You always bet the max, you start with 0 credits, and that number goes up as you win. You play 100 deals (which may be anywhere from 100 to 10,000 actual hands), at which point your score is recorded. You can play up to five rounds per day–or, if you played five the previous day, up to eight.

And the high score for the day gets a $50 Visa gift card, plus a month of free Gold membership.

(The last third of each month is a single contest for the whole period, with a few prizes running to a little more money, and as many entries as you like.)

I started doing this, keeping track of how I was winning or losing on various game variations. Seeing that the leaders for each day were almost always dealt at least one royal flush, I figured I’d never win, but that was OK: It wasn’t costing me anything.

Until, somewhat less than a month ago, playing hundred-hand and actually winning (that is, I was well on my way to having more than 50,000 credits after 100 hundred-hand deals), I was…dealt a royal flush. Which, of course, you hold all of (actually, that’s the single hand that you don’t get choices on), turning it into 100 royal flushes.

Yes, they do send you the $50 Visa card. I know it was somewhat less than a month ago because my player status hasn’t yet reverted to silver. It will soon.

I see this site as a win-win-win situation. Players win because they can play for free and maybe learn to be better players. (There’s now a $20 software option, which plays full-screen and offline, and it *does* offer the option of advising on what’s best to hold.) Action Gaming wins because players are far more likely to seek out Action Gaming machines when they do go to casinos.

Casinos win because multihand poker, especially with some of the options, gets past the problem casinos might have with full-odds video poker: The payback is *so* high–around 99% for jacks or better, actually slightly over 100% for deuces wild and some other options *if* you always hold correctly–that players really don’t burn through very much money. But if you’re always playing maximum coins and you’re playing three or five or ten hands at a time, you’ll be spending a little more. (If you’re an addict, you’re probably not playing $0.10/$0.25 video poker anyway–you’re probably playing something that doesn’t require thinking and offers more bells and whistles.)

On the other hand…

The effect on me is a little different. The play is realistic enough that I have very little interest in going back to casinos. Oh, if we went to Vegas to see the architecture, I’d play; if Reno ever gets rid of smoking in casinos, we like the town enough that I’d play some–but otherwise, well, there’s absolutely no second-hand smoke at home, there’s no loud music, there are no drunks or over-perfumed women sitting down next to me, and if I really want a glass of wine, it will be a whole bunch better than what I’d get at most casinos.

And, to be sure, I can play for 15 minutes when I choose to.

Well, there’s one other negative: I’ve played enough of the extra-action games (which require more than five coins per hand to offer a number of higher payouts, usually involving more luck and less skill) to know that I would probably never play them if and when we do go back to casinos (or I play aboard ship on a cruise).

Anyway, that’s my story. Oh: While hundred-hand poker is just too rich for real-world playing, it’s a great way to check what makes sense to hold and draw, as you’re seeing 100 sets of results for each attempt. I’ve been refining my own playing based on hundred-hand results. When I do eventually show up at real machines, I’ll be a better player…although, y’know, I’m probably enjoying it more at home. Even if that 453,000 point total wasn’t worth the $4,530 it would have been on a penny machine. My regrets for that not being real money are nonexistent: I simply would not play at $5/hand, even if we won the lottery. Not before I saw it was possible to win so much; not after.

Comment situation

I’m not allowing comments on this post for two reasons:

1. I neither need nor want lectures on The Evils of Gambling (even when no money is involved.)

2. I know Spam Karma well enough to know that your chances of having any comment accepted that includes words like poker or gambling are nearly zero. That’s even true for my own comments.

Here’s a first-world “problem” for you.

On Sunday, our bidirectional PG&E electricity meter read 2 (preceded by a bunch of zeros).

But that was before doing a bunch of laundry and cooking.

Today, it turned dreary (not “bad” weather by any means, just dreary): Overcast and rainy. Which means very little generation from our photovoltaic system (5.42 kWh, which is better than I expected but one-third of a really good day)–and also using a little more power for lights. Right now, the PG&E meter is at 16.

Trivial numbers, but a target

My wife really wants to hit zero–to see the PG&E reading be all zeros. That would mean we’d essentially used the grid as a giant battery all year–sending surplus electricity out on sunny days, getting it back on overcast days and at night.

Technically, zero wouldn’t do it: We were at -22 at last year’s “truing up,” the annual point at which PG&E will actually charge us for the electricity we’ve used, if any. (Or, starting this year, theoretically pay us a little if we’re net negative.)

If we’d forgone baking & laundry on Sunday, we would have been there–but that’s silly.

Not done yet

The truing-up reading will be taken somewhere between October 15 and October 18. Right now, the ten-day forecast (ha!) says rain today through Wednesday, but clear from then through October 11. (The three-day forecast is probably right. The seven -day Weather Underground forecast is plausible. AccuWeather’s 10-day forecast? Really? 10 days ahead in the weather biz is a very long time.)

Chances are, if it’s clear almost every day from Thursday through October 15, we’ll wind up at zero at some point. Maybe.

Silly in a way

This has very little to do with money–after all, we’ll wind up paying for, say, 10 to 50 kWh for the year, at the lowest rate, which means a bill of around $5 (for 50 kWh). For the year. (Well, plus the $4.50/month metering/grid connection charge we’ve been paying along with our gas bills.)

It’s just a number, but it’s an interesting one.

I should note that our next-door neighbor is having a photovoltaic system installed. Little by little, these rooftop installations do make a difference.

That’s an odd topic: Turns out UC Berkeley is working with SolarCity, our vendor, on a study of the actual impact of household solar on electricity loads–which involves changing the frequency with which our system’s output is reported to SolarCity via wifi from once every 15 minutes to once every minute. The study’s just getting going…it will be interesting to find out the results.