That being said, I am now the owner of a pair of fishnet stockings and all I can say is, why do they have to make my legs look like pineapples when I take them off? T_T
Tuesday, 1 December 2009
Something Fishy
MrMan5.5 and I have discussed fishnet stockings a few times recently, and I believe they are for prostitutes (although I bet in saying this, one of my friends is going to pop out of the woodwork and tell me how they love to wear fishnet stockings because they're so airy or something). Not to mention the fact that if you want to rob a bank and hide your identify, they'll make you look like a dork if you wear them on your head. I have rarely seen anyone wear fishnet stockings in public, and the only person I know who has worn some had to wear them for a cabaret. So I guess maybe I should adjust my opinion. Fishnet stockings are for prostitutes and cabaret dancers. Or if you're Shikamaru and you wear it as a shirt.
Wednesday, 18 November 2009
I Wear T-Shirts
But she wears short skirts, I wear t-shirts
She's cheer captain and I'm on the bleachers
Dreaming bout the day when you'll wake up and find
That what you're lookin for has been here the whole time
-You Belong With Me, Taylor Swift
I bumped into a high school friend the other day, who reminded me that we're due for our 10 year reunion in 4 years (really scary, now that I think about it, considering I feel like I still haven't really done anything with my life). We started talking about the people we went to high school with, and I was reminded of my first high school crush.
I asked him out in year 11, and it was one of the hardest things for me to do. Though I was rejected, one thing I'll always remember about him was how I asked if he could tell me that he already had a girlfriend or he was gay to make me feel better, and he told me he was gay. To be honest, it didn't make me feel all that much better at the time, but right now I think it was really nice of him.
The reason why I liked him so much was because we had so much in common. Of all the people in high school, I'd say he and his best friend would have been the biggest geeks I had ever met at the time (then I decided to do Software Engineering at uni, and the people I've met since have completely blown them out of the water). Although I think he had a bit of a cruel streak, he was funny, nice and a geek, what more could you want from a guy? The crushing part was when I found out later in the year that he had datedsome bitch a slut Nicole Lemonhead (that wasn't her actual name, but that's what people called her. I didn't get it at the time, but in retrospect, I can see that she was so sour). I hated her, we were complete opposites and I can't remember what it was, but there was some class where she asked me for an answer to something, and I pretended I didn't know it, and from that point onwards, she called me dumb (although she changed schools in year 9, so it wasn't a long lasting thing) despite the fact that her clique would call my clique "squares" since we were the typical Asian students. I think if anything, they would have been the trailer trash, Britney-esque clique, which might seem cruel, but from what I've heard about how most of them ended up, not so far from the truth. =/ (*meow* claws come out? No, that's about as mean as I'm going to be, it has been almost 10 years since I've seen her. Besides, it's not nice to fight someone who isn't going to fight back.)
OK, blast from the past over, the bit I never understood was why he dated her and not me considering the fact that Nicole and I are so different, and if we're going to play the "Similiarities Game", I think I would have won by a landslide. Then of course, I heard the Taylor Swift song at work, and I thought to myself, "What guy wouldn't choose a short skirt-wearing, pom-pom-shaking, hot chick riding up and down on him over a T-shirt wearing, geeky girl who wants to co-ordinate a reaver drop with him?"
One big difference between being friends with someone and being in a relationship with them is the physical side of things. There are exceptions (ie. FWBs), but in most cases, there are things you just don't do with friends that you would only do with someone you're in a relationship. Personally, I think kissing someone you're just friends with is a bit weird, but that seems to be really common in Western cultures. (Although there was this one time I went out with some WoW people, and one of them offered me a beer. I drank it and was feeling weird, so I said I wanted to go and they said they were leaving, too so we all left and I ended up kissing one of them goodbye, but Charmleon dragged me away, so I'm glad I didn't do anything else! =/ So maybe it's something that's common in beer drinking cultures?) So if you really had to choose between the two, you could have the best of both worlds and date the hot one and be friends with the one who likes the same things you do.
Again, I'm going to bring up that thing Julian said to me ages ago, about friends being people that you have things in common with, and your partner being someone that complements you. So while I did have so much in common with that guy, I don't think that meant we would work well together in a relationship, just as friends (although I haven't talked to him since my 21st (my actual 21st, not my 22nd and 2/3), so I guess not) and maybe Nicole Lemonhead had somequality characteristic that made her better suited to him (probably the fact that she would fit a cheerleader outfit better than I can).
Still, I'm happy in the relationship I'm in now, and I think I have the best of both worlds, (someone I'm both physically and mentally attracted to, though I have yet to see MrMan5.5 in a cheerleader outfit) so it all worked out well in the end.
T-shirts for life!
She's cheer captain and I'm on the bleachers
Dreaming bout the day when you'll wake up and find
That what you're lookin for has been here the whole time
-You Belong With Me, Taylor Swift
I bumped into a high school friend the other day, who reminded me that we're due for our 10 year reunion in 4 years (really scary, now that I think about it, considering I feel like I still haven't really done anything with my life). We started talking about the people we went to high school with, and I was reminded of my first high school crush.
I asked him out in year 11, and it was one of the hardest things for me to do. Though I was rejected, one thing I'll always remember about him was how I asked if he could tell me that he already had a girlfriend or he was gay to make me feel better, and he told me he was gay. To be honest, it didn't make me feel all that much better at the time, but right now I think it was really nice of him.
The reason why I liked him so much was because we had so much in common. Of all the people in high school, I'd say he and his best friend would have been the biggest geeks I had ever met at the time (then I decided to do Software Engineering at uni, and the people I've met since have completely blown them out of the water). Although I think he had a bit of a cruel streak, he was funny, nice and a geek, what more could you want from a guy? The crushing part was when I found out later in the year that he had dated
OK, blast from the past over, the bit I never understood was why he dated her and not me considering the fact that Nicole and I are so different, and if we're going to play the "Similiarities Game", I think I would have won by a landslide. Then of course, I heard the Taylor Swift song at work, and I thought to myself, "What guy wouldn't choose a short skirt-wearing, pom-pom-shaking, hot chick riding up and down on him over a T-shirt wearing, geeky girl who wants to co-ordinate a reaver drop with him?"
One big difference between being friends with someone and being in a relationship with them is the physical side of things. There are exceptions (ie. FWBs), but in most cases, there are things you just don't do with friends that you would only do with someone you're in a relationship. Personally, I think kissing someone you're just friends with is a bit weird, but that seems to be really common in Western cultures. (Although there was this one time I went out with some WoW people, and one of them offered me a beer. I drank it and was feeling weird, so I said I wanted to go and they said they were leaving, too so we all left and I ended up kissing one of them goodbye, but Charmleon dragged me away, so I'm glad I didn't do anything else! =/ So maybe it's something that's common in beer drinking cultures?) So if you really had to choose between the two, you could have the best of both worlds and date the hot one and be friends with the one who likes the same things you do.
Again, I'm going to bring up that thing Julian said to me ages ago, about friends being people that you have things in common with, and your partner being someone that complements you. So while I did have so much in common with that guy, I don't think that meant we would work well together in a relationship, just as friends (although I haven't talked to him since my 21st (my actual 21st, not my 22nd and 2/3), so I guess not) and maybe Nicole Lemonhead had some
Still, I'm happy in the relationship I'm in now, and I think I have the best of both worlds, (someone I'm both physically and mentally attracted to, though I have yet to see MrMan5.5 in a cheerleader outfit) so it all worked out well in the end.
T-shirts for life!
Monday, 9 November 2009
If We Ever Get Married....
Short blog today, exam tomorrow. T_T I always wondered why it was a big deal to invite someone you're dating to a wedding. Apparently it's a stage you get to in a relationship, and inviting someone to a wedding has certain implications about the seriousness of the relationship. I guess if it's a family wedding, then there is the whole meeting the parents, siblings and entire extended family (which is never a good thing - hi cousins Andrew and Simon!), but what if it's one of your friends who is getting married? That shouldn't really matter, right, because you're just bringing along a date so that if you get stuck at the table with your friend's grandmother who doesn't speak English very well, you know you're not going to be sandwiched on the other side by your friend's aunt from Romania who thinks it's appropriate to yell at people and give them the evil eye. You're also gauranteed to have someone you find interesting to talk to.
That was what I thought until i went to Julian's wedding, which MrMan5.5 was also invited to. It was a good wedding (if you ignore the random Asian tourists that kinda crashed it T_T), and I'm glad MrMan5.5 was there, but it did change something in our relationship. After the wedding, we started joking and saying things like, "If we ever get married, we have to have ________ at our wedding." A few of the things are things we thought were awesome at Julian's wedding, but there are other things that have popped up that are just random things.
I don't think it's a bad thing, I actually like that we're comfortable enough with each other to be able to make jokes like that. We're not getting engaged or anything, but I can kinda see now how that could have a bad effect on a relationship if one person thinks the relationship is more serious than the other does.
That was what I thought until i went to Julian's wedding, which MrMan5.5 was also invited to. It was a good wedding (if you ignore the random Asian tourists that kinda crashed it T_T), and I'm glad MrMan5.5 was there, but it did change something in our relationship. After the wedding, we started joking and saying things like, "If we ever get married, we have to have ________ at our wedding." A few of the things are things we thought were awesome at Julian's wedding, but there are other things that have popped up that are just random things.
I don't think it's a bad thing, I actually like that we're comfortable enough with each other to be able to make jokes like that. We're not getting engaged or anything, but I can kinda see now how that could have a bad effect on a relationship if one person thinks the relationship is more serious than the other does.
Saturday, 31 October 2009
Gaming Gender Wars, Revisited
Reading about the whole Junglist/Good Game/Hex controversy (cliff notes: Good Game is a gaming show on the ABC, which was hosted by Junglist and Bajo - 2 guys. Junglist was cut from the show, and he claims the reason was because they wanted a girl (Hex) on the show for "mass appeal", but ABC claims it's because Junglist wasn't performing well behind the scenes. Most fans think Junglist is the most credible presenter on the show, and are boycotting), and one of the comments on this article, was:
Some of the comments said that it shouldn't matter what gender the presenter is, it's their content that matters, but I don't realy think that's true. I think one of the weird inconsistencies in gaming stereotypes is that if you imagine a male gamer, you'll probably conjure up the image of a skinny pale guy, or a fat pimply guy, who probably speaks with sentences where the average syllable count per word is four or higher. So gamer guys are typically seen as nerds/geeks, with all the social inabilities that go with it. Why then, do we seem to have the female gamer stereotype being a hot, typically Asian, girl, who either spends all her time "playing" Imagine Catz, or follows her boyfriend around as a healbot in an MMO? Occasionally you'll get one that is a pro FPS gamer, but MMO and simulation games seem to be the female gamer's forte. I remember someone telling me about what happened to a girl from SEE at
a party. Some guy decided to go around guessing what games various
people played, and when he got to her he said, "The Sims!". Said girl does happen to be a gamer, though I haven't had the chance to play with her very often. One of my fondest memories of her was in a game of DotA where she had Furion. She sprouted her teammate QC (surrounded her with trees so she couldn't escape for a few seconds), and left her to get killed by us. It's a good strategy to avoid dying!
Anyway, that's why I think regardless of what people say, even if Hex managed to win the WCG title for every single game (I'm pretty sure there isn't an Imagine Catz/Dogz category), people would still believe in the back of their heads that Hex spends her nights hoping the epic healing trinket she has been trying to get for months will finally drop and if that pally tries to outbid her, she'll offer to send him pics of her boobs if he doesn't bid her up.
There doesn't seem to be as much of a stereotype for male gamer games. Well, except lack of pink. I think that if a guy admits to playing an overly pink game, there will be a few raised eyebrows (<3 Atticus). And ponies. Can't have ponies. Unless they're dwarven ponies. For dwarves. That you don't get to comb.
The thing is, they're stereotypes. Real people aren't necessarily like that. T_T
Then there are all the people going on about equality. They seem to think that the fact that Junglist got fired for a woman is acceptable, because that happens to women all the time in the workforce (being fired/looked over for promotion for men). Which is stupid, how is that equal at all? Though I'm getting off-topic, the comment that made me want to write out this blog post even though I need to be awake in 6 hours for work is this one:
[22:15] <+Fried_Tofu> monkeyfodder is a gender neutral nick, right?
[22:15] <%Rangers> yeah
[22:15] <+Fried_Tofu> hmmm
[22:17] <+Fried_Tofu> why do i get random people adding me on hon? T_T
[22:17] <%Rangers> they can sense ur a girl
[22:18] <+Fried_Tofu> -_-
[22:18] <%Rangers> its the internet
So the first thing I have to work on is using less emoticons. I remember a lot of people thinking Saiyumi was a girl because he used emoticons a lot in chat. It's just like an automatic reflex for me now though. T_T I think emoticons make it easier for the other person to know how to respond. For instance:
My grandmother died.
Could be good or bad unless you had prior knowledge of whether I liked my grandmother or not.
My grandmother died. :(
Indicates that this is a sad thing for me. My grandmother probably taught me how to make won tons, and stayed up late watching the Super Mario Bros. Super Show with me when I was sick. She would always tell me off for kicking the couch as it's disrespectful to our ancestors (I never found out if this is actually true or if it was something that she made up just to stop me from kicking the couch all the time), and let me play with the radio in her bedhead.
My grandmother died! :D
Indicates that I'm an ungrateful bitch who should be happy that my grandmother survived the war and immigration to another country so that she could meet my grandfather, and have my dad, who would then meet my mum and eventually have me. Or that I didn't like my grandmother. (Note: my grandmother was never in a war, as far as I know, but I really liked my grandmother.)
Anyway, ACTION ITEM 1: USE LESS EMOTICONS!
I think my next big problem is listening to people. Guys never do that, right? I was doing a daily group quest with this guy, and we started talking about stuff. He was telling me about his life (though I don't know how much to believe, I gave Julian a summary and he called bullshit), and somehow he ended up offering to give me gold and helping me run instances (he's stupidly geared compared to my normal TOC/quest blues crappy gearedness. We ran a heroic together, and it was one in which you get blocked out of the fight if you don't run in when the boss engages, which happened to me and I was the healer, yet they still managed to kill the boss. T_T) and generally making me feel like a WoW whore (although in my defense, I ended up selling him my titansteel CD, so it wasn't as though I was getting money for nothing. I don't even know why he was offering me money anyway, I have enough gold to buy all the stuff I need, and I don't even need anything right now except a gem and a few enchants! Though if MrMan5.5 doesn't want to borrow gold to buy his epic flying mount, maybe I'll save up for that 3-seater mammoth mount. Mammoth mounts make me look less small, which is always important! So my original point for this part is that guys don't listen to people talk about their lives, so if it happens again, I should swiftly change the topic to sport/cars/boobs, and I should be all good, right?
ACTION ITEM 2: STUDY UP ON SPORTS/CARS/BOOBS
I need to be more manly and aggressive. I prefer playing support heroes in HoN/DotA, and even when I random a carry hero/tank, I always prefer to play them in a supportive way. I think that is partly due to the influence of Mooicules when I first started playing DotA. Soulcry commented once that he seemed to always get Mekansm (Astrolabe in HoN), regardless of what hero he was. I guess I must have stored that little tip away somewhere, because I was a bit like that for a while. I thought it was essential to have a HP regen item at all times, and that seemed like a good one as it also gave you a slight stat boost and you could heal yourself if you needed to (although +250 HP really isn't much, now that I think about it). Played a few games of HoN with Redact, and watching him play Blood Seeker/Hunter, it was completely different to how I play him. I just don't have the confidence to go and hunt people. I prefer to gank in groups, which is a bit overkill when you can 2-shot someone.
ACTION ITEM 3: BE AGGRESSIVE. B. E. AGGRESSIVE
And there is my guide on being a girl who is not a gamer girl!
"BRING BACK Junglist! What¿s does Hex play? Probably hello kitty island adventure. Junglist you be l337 son!"Which I thought was funny as the most pro gamer I know (Atticus) was playing Hello Kitty Island Adventures a while ago. I think he also got SEE people into Hello Kitty Online where you get your own Hello Kitty email address and everything! I have to admit though, that I haven't watched the show, and so I can't really comment on whether Junglist was better than Hex. Could download a few eps now, but I should really sleep since I have work tonight. Anyway, reading the comments made me think about girls gaming. I know I've talked about this topic a lot, but since playing games takes up a large portion of my time (sleeping and watching Antique Bakery are close competition though), and I am female, I'm dragging out the horse (mule? I can't even get my proverbs straight. Dragging out thing to be flogged!) again.
Some of the comments said that it shouldn't matter what gender the presenter is, it's their content that matters, but I don't realy think that's true. I think one of the weird inconsistencies in gaming stereotypes is that if you imagine a male gamer, you'll probably conjure up the image of a skinny pale guy, or a fat pimply guy, who probably speaks with sentences where the average syllable count per word is four or higher. So gamer guys are typically seen as nerds/geeks, with all the social inabilities that go with it. Why then, do we seem to have the female gamer stereotype being a hot, typically Asian, girl, who either spends all her time "playing" Imagine Catz, or follows her boyfriend around as a healbot in an MMO? Occasionally you'll get one that is a pro FPS gamer, but MMO and simulation games seem to be the female gamer's forte. I remember someone telling me about what happened to a girl from SEE at
a party. Some guy decided to go around guessing what games various
people played, and when he got to her he said, "The Sims!". Said girl does happen to be a gamer, though I haven't had the chance to play with her very often. One of my fondest memories of her was in a game of DotA where she had Furion. She sprouted her teammate QC (surrounded her with trees so she couldn't escape for a few seconds), and left her to get killed by us. It's a good strategy to avoid dying!
Anyway, that's why I think regardless of what people say, even if Hex managed to win the WCG title for every single game (I'm pretty sure there isn't an Imagine Catz/Dogz category), people would still believe in the back of their heads that Hex spends her nights hoping the epic healing trinket she has been trying to get for months will finally drop and if that pally tries to outbid her, she'll offer to send him pics of her boobs if he doesn't bid her up.
There doesn't seem to be as much of a stereotype for male gamer games. Well, except lack of pink. I think that if a guy admits to playing an overly pink game, there will be a few raised eyebrows (<3 Atticus). And ponies. Can't have ponies. Unless they're dwarven ponies. For dwarves. That you don't get to comb.
The thing is, they're stereotypes. Real people aren't necessarily like that. T_T
Then there are all the people going on about equality. They seem to think that the fact that Junglist got fired for a woman is acceptable, because that happens to women all the time in the workforce (being fired/looked over for promotion for men). Which is stupid, how is that equal at all? Though I'm getting off-topic, the comment that made me want to write out this blog post even though I need to be awake in 6 hours for work is this one:
'Hey, "girl gamers" as you guys call yourself. Stop calling yourselves that. Like your sex makes you any different with regards to gaming. I really am sick of you people announcing yourselves as girl gamers. It's almost as pretentious as calling yourself a hardcore gamer.'I am guilty of that, and I feel bad about it. I think from now on, I'm going to try to be less "girly" in games (which is kinda funny, because of all that effort I put into trying to be more girly). I don't know if it's just me, but nobody else seemed to have mentioned it, but I get all these people I don't know adding me in HoN. I don't add them back, because for me, the point of a friends list is to make it easier for you to play games with your friends, and if I started adding randoms, then it's kinda like just playing pubs, so that defeats the purpose. Most of them are from games that I've played in, and at first I thought maybe it was because they thought I could host (which doesn't really apply in HoN, because games are hosted on their servers, so anyone can create games), but they have invited me to join games they have created, so they must know about that.
[22:15] <+Fried_Tofu> monkeyfodder is a gender neutral nick, right?
[22:15] <%Rangers> yeah
[22:15] <+Fried_Tofu> hmmm
[22:17] <+Fried_Tofu> why do i get random people adding me on hon? T_T
[22:17] <%Rangers> they can sense ur a girl
[22:18] <+Fried_Tofu> -_-
[22:18] <%Rangers> its the internet
So the first thing I have to work on is using less emoticons. I remember a lot of people thinking Saiyumi was a girl because he used emoticons a lot in chat. It's just like an automatic reflex for me now though. T_T I think emoticons make it easier for the other person to know how to respond. For instance:
My grandmother died.
Could be good or bad unless you had prior knowledge of whether I liked my grandmother or not.
My grandmother died. :(
Indicates that this is a sad thing for me. My grandmother probably taught me how to make won tons, and stayed up late watching the Super Mario Bros. Super Show with me when I was sick. She would always tell me off for kicking the couch as it's disrespectful to our ancestors (I never found out if this is actually true or if it was something that she made up just to stop me from kicking the couch all the time), and let me play with the radio in her bedhead.
My grandmother died! :D
Indicates that I'm an ungrateful bitch who should be happy that my grandmother survived the war and immigration to another country so that she could meet my grandfather, and have my dad, who would then meet my mum and eventually have me. Or that I didn't like my grandmother. (Note: my grandmother was never in a war, as far as I know, but I really liked my grandmother.)
Anyway, ACTION ITEM 1: USE LESS EMOTICONS!
I think my next big problem is listening to people. Guys never do that, right? I was doing a daily group quest with this guy, and we started talking about stuff. He was telling me about his life (though I don't know how much to believe, I gave Julian a summary and he called bullshit), and somehow he ended up offering to give me gold and helping me run instances (he's stupidly geared compared to my normal TOC/quest blues crappy gearedness. We ran a heroic together, and it was one in which you get blocked out of the fight if you don't run in when the boss engages, which happened to me and I was the healer, yet they still managed to kill the boss. T_T) and generally making me feel like a WoW whore (although in my defense, I ended up selling him my titansteel CD, so it wasn't as though I was getting money for nothing. I don't even know why he was offering me money anyway, I have enough gold to buy all the stuff I need, and I don't even need anything right now except a gem and a few enchants! Though if MrMan5.5 doesn't want to borrow gold to buy his epic flying mount, maybe I'll save up for that 3-seater mammoth mount. Mammoth mounts make me look less small, which is always important! So my original point for this part is that guys don't listen to people talk about their lives, so if it happens again, I should swiftly change the topic to sport/cars/boobs, and I should be all good, right?
ACTION ITEM 2: STUDY UP ON SPORTS/CARS/BOOBS
I need to be more manly and aggressive. I prefer playing support heroes in HoN/DotA, and even when I random a carry hero/tank, I always prefer to play them in a supportive way. I think that is partly due to the influence of Mooicules when I first started playing DotA. Soulcry commented once that he seemed to always get Mekansm (Astrolabe in HoN), regardless of what hero he was. I guess I must have stored that little tip away somewhere, because I was a bit like that for a while. I thought it was essential to have a HP regen item at all times, and that seemed like a good one as it also gave you a slight stat boost and you could heal yourself if you needed to (although +250 HP really isn't much, now that I think about it). Played a few games of HoN with Redact, and watching him play Blood Seeker/Hunter, it was completely different to how I play him. I just don't have the confidence to go and hunt people. I prefer to gank in groups, which is a bit overkill when you can 2-shot someone.
ACTION ITEM 3: BE AGGRESSIVE. B. E. AGGRESSIVE
And there is my guide on being a girl who is not a gamer girl!
Wednesday, 28 October 2009
20 bucks
Oh, wow. Not related to today's blog post at all, but I found out Lou Albano is dead. For those of you who are wondering why I'm interested in a wrestler, well, he actually played Mario in the Super Mario Bros. Super Show, and did the Mario. RIP. T_T
I should really be doing my assignment, but I thought I'd take a break (although I can't really call it a break, since all I've done so far is run a factor analysis, with a lot more to go). So I was reading World of Chickens by Nick Earls, and a particular part made me wonder about something.
When I was in grade 3, I had the best pasta I've ever had in my life. It was cooked by Caterina Zampogna, who taught 2/3 as well as Italian (which I wasn't allowed to learn, because my school offered Chinese and Italian, and because of my nationality, I was forced to learn Chinese). Being only 7 years old, I didn't think much of it at the time, and I knew I'd be able to have it again the next year at Italian Day. What I didn't know was that the school was going to close down, and I never saw her again. Even if I did manage to track her down, I don't know what I'd say. 'Hi, you taught me for grades 2 and 3, can I have your pasta recipe?' I don't even remember what type of sauce it was (although I do know it was tomato based). I just know that it was the best damn pasta I've had, and nothing I've had since compares.
That's the other problem though, since it was so long ago, the actual memory of the taste is fading away, and all I remember is that it was delicious, so over time, its reputation will grow, and I don't think it'd be possible to live up to expectations, even if I did manage to track her down.
OK, did more work, and have finished the first part, so break time again.
I think the same thing would happen to the Nev guy (though he never features in the book again, as far as I can recall), in that nobody will ever measure up to that one experience he had with the transsexual, and even though he doesn't want to go back, a part of him always will. I had dinner a few hours ago and now I'm hungry again. I wonder if there are any places that sell pasta at this hour.
At uni at the moment, and I have to say, going to the toilet is always an interesting experience. Someone had written on the door:
"I don't know where the penis goes."
To which someone else replied:
"Wrong toilet love, look for the <male toilet> sign."
I don't know why, but I was reminded of a conversation I had with a lesbian friend of mine. She said she thinks penises (penii?) are sad and wrinkly and she doesn't like them. I think given my history of older guys, I can say I've had wrinkly, but I think the whole point is to fix the sad part, right? If it's happy, then it's less wrinkly, although if it gets too happy, then it goes back to being wrinkly again. =( I wonder how wrinkly AG is now. Actually, I don't want to know. *shudder*I heard he's engaged now, or something. I wonder if she thinks about how wrinkly he is. I don't think I ever did, well, not at great length anyway. So I don't know why I can't get over it now. T_T
I feel a bit sad, because there was a lecture I was looking forward to, about serial killers but it turns out it was on yesterday instead of today, so I missed it since I was in class when it was on. =( I also frantically gave a shift away so that I could go, thinking it was today. T_T I've put some thought into maybe doing further study in criminal profiling, but I really don't want to write any more essays at the moment, and the more I think about it, the more I'm starting to convince myself it's a dangerous career pathway. I see enough angry people at work, and I know I'm protected by security, and with a press of a button, my table will be surrounded by security if something does go wrong.
Today was my last day of classes, and if all goes well, it'll be my last day of undergraduate classes!
I should really be doing my assignment, but I thought I'd take a break (although I can't really call it a break, since all I've done so far is run a factor analysis, with a lot more to go). So I was reading World of Chickens by Nick Earls, and a particular part made me wonder about something.
'Nev's older than Dad and ... he's famous for one thing, and it's not tree lopping... There was this big philosophical bind he got into. There was this one time when he paid twenty bucks for a blowie on Brunswick Street and then he found out he'd got it from a trannie.' He stops, raises his eyebrows in a how-about-that kind of way.As I've mentioned before, it seems like the majority of guys wouldn't go there, knowing it was another guy on the other side. What I was thinking though, was now every other time, you'll be thinking about how good it was.
'I don't see the philosophical bind yet.'
'It was a blow job the like of which he'd never had befoer, the eye-roller to end all eye-rollers. So what's a man to do the next time he's got a lazy twenty in his back pocket? ...and the story gets worse, too.... the trannie had lost his front teeth going over his handlebars when he was a kid, and for an extra five bucks, he'd take his plate out.'
When I was in grade 3, I had the best pasta I've ever had in my life. It was cooked by Caterina Zampogna, who taught 2/3 as well as Italian (which I wasn't allowed to learn, because my school offered Chinese and Italian, and because of my nationality, I was forced to learn Chinese). Being only 7 years old, I didn't think much of it at the time, and I knew I'd be able to have it again the next year at Italian Day. What I didn't know was that the school was going to close down, and I never saw her again. Even if I did manage to track her down, I don't know what I'd say. 'Hi, you taught me for grades 2 and 3, can I have your pasta recipe?' I don't even remember what type of sauce it was (although I do know it was tomato based). I just know that it was the best damn pasta I've had, and nothing I've had since compares.
That's the other problem though, since it was so long ago, the actual memory of the taste is fading away, and all I remember is that it was delicious, so over time, its reputation will grow, and I don't think it'd be possible to live up to expectations, even if I did manage to track her down.
OK, did more work, and have finished the first part, so break time again.
I think the same thing would happen to the Nev guy (though he never features in the book again, as far as I can recall), in that nobody will ever measure up to that one experience he had with the transsexual, and even though he doesn't want to go back, a part of him always will. I had dinner a few hours ago and now I'm hungry again. I wonder if there are any places that sell pasta at this hour.
At uni at the moment, and I have to say, going to the toilet is always an interesting experience. Someone had written on the door:
"I don't know where the penis goes."
To which someone else replied:
"Wrong toilet love, look for the <male toilet> sign."
I don't know why, but I was reminded of a conversation I had with a lesbian friend of mine. She said she thinks penises (penii?) are sad and wrinkly and she doesn't like them. I think given my history of older guys, I can say I've had wrinkly, but I think the whole point is to fix the sad part, right? If it's happy, then it's less wrinkly, although if it gets too happy, then it goes back to being wrinkly again. =( I wonder how wrinkly AG is now. Actually, I don't want to know. *shudder*I heard he's engaged now, or something. I wonder if she thinks about how wrinkly he is. I don't think I ever did, well, not at great length anyway. So I don't know why I can't get over it now. T_T
I feel a bit sad, because there was a lecture I was looking forward to, about serial killers but it turns out it was on yesterday instead of today, so I missed it since I was in class when it was on. =( I also frantically gave a shift away so that I could go, thinking it was today. T_T I've put some thought into maybe doing further study in criminal profiling, but I really don't want to write any more essays at the moment, and the more I think about it, the more I'm starting to convince myself it's a dangerous career pathway. I see enough angry people at work, and I know I'm protected by security, and with a press of a button, my table will be surrounded by security if something does go wrong.
Today was my last day of classes, and if all goes well, it'll be my last day of undergraduate classes!
Wednesday, 7 October 2009
Time For Something New
It seems that more and more people are starting to recognise me at work (players, not staff) and I'm starting to get scared that some day I'll be walking around and some person who I took $10k off will recognise me and want to beat me up. While I did go to that one krav maga class with GP, I really don't think that's my preferred course of action, as I don't like to get beat up, and I have very little confidence in my ability to win. T_T So I've decided to take up running, because I'm good at running away. Well, that's not true, which is why I've taken up running, but I'm good at being a coward. I went for my first run with Graham on Tuesday, and ended up with the flu on Wednesday, so maybe it's my body telling me that exercise is bad and that I should stop doing it, but I think getting bashed up is worse.
I have nothing to do during my breaks at work, so I've picked up lots of books to read, but unfortunately, my favourite authors can't write fast enough so I've run out of their books. T_T I started reading some other books from the genres I like, but most of the books I've tried so far have been pretty poor. :( Olek and Goaty have mentioned the Ender saga, so I'm going to try and find those books, but last time I was at the library, I could only find the 4th book in the series. I've started reading another Orson Scott Card book though, and I'm liking it. For some reason, the name sounds really familiar, but looking through his listed works on Wikipedia, I don't recall having read any of his other books, so maybe he's just one of those famous authors that you know you should read at some point, but never get around to.
Mum wanted me to buy an apartment, as it'd be something I could rent out later in life, and I could also live there in the meantime, as rather than paying rent, I can slowly pay off the apartment. We got into an argument because I wanted to use my savings to go to Italy and she wanted me to buy a property. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), even with my savings and help from mum, the bank won't lend me enough money to buy one, which my mum got really upset at me for. The woman at the bank was really nice though, and she suggested I put my money in a term deposit rather than just let it sit in a bank account, and I thought it'd be a compromise for mum, even though it makes me a sad panda now that I won't be able to go to Italy until at least after April.
Which also means I've lost all motivation to go to work, but seeing as it's my only source of income, and my midnight pizza cravings will never go away, have to keep taking money from old ladies. I guess I could just keep saving and saving until the term deposit matures and go on some mega trip, but I can't do that! So I started thinking about what it is I really like, and to be honest, the obvious things like games, programming and pizza passed me by, and the thing that I ended up with was movies. I love movies, and TV shows, too (although there are many, many, many movies and TV shows that should never have seen the light of day). Sure, I could go on a spending spree and end up with a massive DVD collection, but then mum would yell at me some more (I wanted to get dad a DVD for Christmas, but she got angry at me because she didn't want a DVD, which somehow means he doesn't want one...? I don't understand mum-logic). Anyway, and this is probably influenced by Graham and Dante getting me to watch The Guild, I've been putting some thought into making some sort of online series, or maybe a movie.
I have to admit though, I have no concept, no experience, no actors and well, the list goes on. Still, I think it'd be a fun new project, and it'd be something to do over the Summer holidays at least. I really need to get out of the house more, and while the job hunt still continues, I don't want to spend all of my time playing WoW/HoN, going to work and sleeping. I need a hobby, something that I can put a lot of effort into and get a feeling of satisfaction at having accomplished something. I was wondering if anyone else was interested in joining me. Would be nice if you knew something about production, but it's probably something that we'll pick up as we go! Or any ideas/feedback would be helpful. How hard do you think this will be? :S
I have nothing to do during my breaks at work, so I've picked up lots of books to read, but unfortunately, my favourite authors can't write fast enough so I've run out of their books. T_T I started reading some other books from the genres I like, but most of the books I've tried so far have been pretty poor. :( Olek and Goaty have mentioned the Ender saga, so I'm going to try and find those books, but last time I was at the library, I could only find the 4th book in the series. I've started reading another Orson Scott Card book though, and I'm liking it. For some reason, the name sounds really familiar, but looking through his listed works on Wikipedia, I don't recall having read any of his other books, so maybe he's just one of those famous authors that you know you should read at some point, but never get around to.
Mum wanted me to buy an apartment, as it'd be something I could rent out later in life, and I could also live there in the meantime, as rather than paying rent, I can slowly pay off the apartment. We got into an argument because I wanted to use my savings to go to Italy and she wanted me to buy a property. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), even with my savings and help from mum, the bank won't lend me enough money to buy one, which my mum got really upset at me for. The woman at the bank was really nice though, and she suggested I put my money in a term deposit rather than just let it sit in a bank account, and I thought it'd be a compromise for mum, even though it makes me a sad panda now that I won't be able to go to Italy until at least after April.
Which also means I've lost all motivation to go to work, but seeing as it's my only source of income, and my midnight pizza cravings will never go away, have to keep taking money from old ladies. I guess I could just keep saving and saving until the term deposit matures and go on some mega trip, but I can't do that! So I started thinking about what it is I really like, and to be honest, the obvious things like games, programming and pizza passed me by, and the thing that I ended up with was movies. I love movies, and TV shows, too (although there are many, many, many movies and TV shows that should never have seen the light of day). Sure, I could go on a spending spree and end up with a massive DVD collection, but then mum would yell at me some more (I wanted to get dad a DVD for Christmas, but she got angry at me because she didn't want a DVD, which somehow means he doesn't want one...? I don't understand mum-logic). Anyway, and this is probably influenced by Graham and Dante getting me to watch The Guild, I've been putting some thought into making some sort of online series, or maybe a movie.
I have to admit though, I have no concept, no experience, no actors and well, the list goes on. Still, I think it'd be a fun new project, and it'd be something to do over the Summer holidays at least. I really need to get out of the house more, and while the job hunt still continues, I don't want to spend all of my time playing WoW/HoN, going to work and sleeping. I need a hobby, something that I can put a lot of effort into and get a feeling of satisfaction at having accomplished something. I was wondering if anyone else was interested in joining me. Would be nice if you knew something about production, but it's probably something that we'll pick up as we go! Or any ideas/feedback would be helpful. How hard do you think this will be? :S
Sunday, 16 August 2009
What's In It For Me?
I had a discussion with Gary Paul about altruism, and whether it truly exists. Mostly it was something I had blogged about before, but to save you (and me) the trouble of going back to find it, he mentioned how people who do "good deeds" may do them for the good feeling that comes from doing something nice, and not ask for anything in return, but if you think about it, that in itself is a reward for the deed, so in a sense, it's like they are getting something, so it's not entirely altruistic. Also, they may be doing the deed to help out a friend, in which case, their reward would be perhaps a future favour from the friend, or an increased standing in that friend's opinion.
I am one of those stupidly optimistic people in the sense that I believe people can be genuinely altruistic. Sure, a good deed may come with some sort of reward, but if you think about it, that reward may not nearly make up for the cost of doing the deed in the first place. If that is the case, then the altruistic person would be incurring a cost for doing the deed, and the overall gain for that person would be a loss, even if they managed to get some reward. When I had more time to bake things, I would sometimes drive out to people and give them whatever it was I baked. Most of the people I went to visit were at least 20-30 minutes away from me. Who is to say that the feeling I got from bringing someone something that might potentially poison a friend (I'm so evil) outweighed the time I lost during the delivery process, or the cost of the ingredients of said baked item? (Although, for the record, I haven't felt like it wasn't worth it for me in the past, so even though I don't see it as an altruistic act, I still hold the belief that one exists.) In this case, I'm working with a modified version of the word altruism in which the act is one in which a person does something that results in a net loss (or at least no net gain) for them.
I was reading a book about game theory, and in the book, the authors discussed a game called the Ultimatum Game. In the game, there are two players, A and B. They are to split some money between them, let's say $10. A can choose the amount that each person will receive (say $6:$4), and B will choose whether to accept or reject. If B accepts, then both players will receive the amount stipulated by A, but if B rejects, then both players receive nothing. If you look at both of the expected payoffs, you would think that B should accept whatever A suggests (except in the case of $10:$0, in which case it doesn't really matter to B whether they accept or reject because they'll get $0 either way, but they might reject just to "punish" A for being so selfish) as B is better off with whatever value A decides to give than with nothing at all. You would think then that it is in A's best interests to offer something like $9.90:10c to B, because A knows that B gets a better payoff from accepting that offer than rejecting it. However, the authors of the book, and other studies have found that A players tend to offer 50:50 values, and have attributed this to people's sense of "fairness".
There are obviously other things that can be attributed to A's seemingly generous offer, such as A's belief that B will reject anything that seems unfair to B, even if it means they both end up with nothing, as A believes B would rather end up with nothing than end up in a situation where A gets more than he should. There were more studies done with a variation of this game called the Dictator Game, in which A's role is the same, but B's role is simply to accept whatever A offers, so A is the "dictator" and decides who receives what. They found that A players still tended to offer 50:50 deals, even though there is no chance that B could reject it at all. I think this shows that people are willing to do what they think is "right" even if it results in no gain for them, and they even end up with a loss.
On a side note, they did some studies looking at how cultural backgrounds changed people's responses in the dictator game (this is all second-hand from the book, it was a reserve book from the library, so I had to return it, and really can't be bothered looking up the references now). They had women of Western backgrounds play with men from countries where women were believed to be inferior, and even though the women were offering 50:50 offers ,the men tended to offer 80:20 offers, believing that women do not deserve more than 4 times what a man receives.
I'm trying to think of a "truly" altruistic act, and just from the things that Gary Paul stated that make most seemingly altruistic acts not altruistic, it's hard. In order to negate the positive feeling that comes from doing something for someone, you'd have to either be the kind of person who doesn't get a kick from that kind of thing (in which case it would be not altruistic due to a personality difference rather than "truly" altruistic), or you would have to not know about it - or at least the good that came from the act. Then to negate the change of opinion in the good deed's recipient, or any other witnesses that happen to be there and who also think that it was a good deed, you'd have to make sure nobody else knows about it, including the beneficiary. My first thought was for you to set up a trust fund in which money was given to someone chosen by a third party, of whom you are unaware of, so you don't get to see the result of your action, but then you would have the good feeling of having set that trust up in the first place. So you would need to have the money there, and someone able to access it, but without your consent, or knowledge. Then a recipient has to receive your money (and be in need of it, since giving money to someone who is already filthy rich isn't really a good deed???) without knowledge that it's from you. Though if you use the second suggestion, then are you really doing a good deed, since this requires no action on your part (other than perhaps acquiring the money)? Maybe the good deed comes from your not complaining that some of your money has gone missing, but it seems strange that a good deed would result of inaction rather than some sort of action. If a large chunk of my money suddenly disappeared, I'd like to know what happened to it, so if it happened to me, I'd probably launch an investigation and end up finding out who the recipient of my money is and potentially be able to see the change in their quality of life since receiving the money and consequently gain a good feeling from it.
If you look at it from another point of view, is the good deed being done by the third party? They are acting as kind of a Robin Hood, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, and even though they're doing something bad to the first person you might think that the negative feeling that came from the loss of money for the rich guy would be less than the positive feeling that came from the gain of money for the poor guy (although I've never been rich, and I really don't know what it's like to lose a lot of money, I just know that losing $100 is a lot to me, but seems to be nothing to Julian - although that might just be due to his increased threshold of pain (to losing money). Not that I'm saying Julian is rich, I'm just trying to illustrate that losing various amounts of money has differing effects on people).
I am one of those stupidly optimistic people in the sense that I believe people can be genuinely altruistic. Sure, a good deed may come with some sort of reward, but if you think about it, that reward may not nearly make up for the cost of doing the deed in the first place. If that is the case, then the altruistic person would be incurring a cost for doing the deed, and the overall gain for that person would be a loss, even if they managed to get some reward. When I had more time to bake things, I would sometimes drive out to people and give them whatever it was I baked. Most of the people I went to visit were at least 20-30 minutes away from me. Who is to say that the feeling I got from bringing someone something that might potentially poison a friend (I'm so evil) outweighed the time I lost during the delivery process, or the cost of the ingredients of said baked item? (Although, for the record, I haven't felt like it wasn't worth it for me in the past, so even though I don't see it as an altruistic act, I still hold the belief that one exists.) In this case, I'm working with a modified version of the word altruism in which the act is one in which a person does something that results in a net loss (or at least no net gain) for them.
I was reading a book about game theory, and in the book, the authors discussed a game called the Ultimatum Game. In the game, there are two players, A and B. They are to split some money between them, let's say $10. A can choose the amount that each person will receive (say $6:$4), and B will choose whether to accept or reject. If B accepts, then both players will receive the amount stipulated by A, but if B rejects, then both players receive nothing. If you look at both of the expected payoffs, you would think that B should accept whatever A suggests (except in the case of $10:$0, in which case it doesn't really matter to B whether they accept or reject because they'll get $0 either way, but they might reject just to "punish" A for being so selfish) as B is better off with whatever value A decides to give than with nothing at all. You would think then that it is in A's best interests to offer something like $9.90:10c to B, because A knows that B gets a better payoff from accepting that offer than rejecting it. However, the authors of the book, and other studies have found that A players tend to offer 50:50 values, and have attributed this to people's sense of "fairness".
There are obviously other things that can be attributed to A's seemingly generous offer, such as A's belief that B will reject anything that seems unfair to B, even if it means they both end up with nothing, as A believes B would rather end up with nothing than end up in a situation where A gets more than he should. There were more studies done with a variation of this game called the Dictator Game, in which A's role is the same, but B's role is simply to accept whatever A offers, so A is the "dictator" and decides who receives what. They found that A players still tended to offer 50:50 deals, even though there is no chance that B could reject it at all. I think this shows that people are willing to do what they think is "right" even if it results in no gain for them, and they even end up with a loss.
On a side note, they did some studies looking at how cultural backgrounds changed people's responses in the dictator game (this is all second-hand from the book, it was a reserve book from the library, so I had to return it, and really can't be bothered looking up the references now). They had women of Western backgrounds play with men from countries where women were believed to be inferior, and even though the women were offering 50:50 offers ,the men tended to offer 80:20 offers, believing that women do not deserve more than 4 times what a man receives.
I'm trying to think of a "truly" altruistic act, and just from the things that Gary Paul stated that make most seemingly altruistic acts not altruistic, it's hard. In order to negate the positive feeling that comes from doing something for someone, you'd have to either be the kind of person who doesn't get a kick from that kind of thing (in which case it would be not altruistic due to a personality difference rather than "truly" altruistic), or you would have to not know about it - or at least the good that came from the act. Then to negate the change of opinion in the good deed's recipient, or any other witnesses that happen to be there and who also think that it was a good deed, you'd have to make sure nobody else knows about it, including the beneficiary. My first thought was for you to set up a trust fund in which money was given to someone chosen by a third party, of whom you are unaware of, so you don't get to see the result of your action, but then you would have the good feeling of having set that trust up in the first place. So you would need to have the money there, and someone able to access it, but without your consent, or knowledge. Then a recipient has to receive your money (and be in need of it, since giving money to someone who is already filthy rich isn't really a good deed???) without knowledge that it's from you. Though if you use the second suggestion, then are you really doing a good deed, since this requires no action on your part (other than perhaps acquiring the money)? Maybe the good deed comes from your not complaining that some of your money has gone missing, but it seems strange that a good deed would result of inaction rather than some sort of action. If a large chunk of my money suddenly disappeared, I'd like to know what happened to it, so if it happened to me, I'd probably launch an investigation and end up finding out who the recipient of my money is and potentially be able to see the change in their quality of life since receiving the money and consequently gain a good feeling from it.
If you look at it from another point of view, is the good deed being done by the third party? They are acting as kind of a Robin Hood, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, and even though they're doing something bad to the first person you might think that the negative feeling that came from the loss of money for the rich guy would be less than the positive feeling that came from the gain of money for the poor guy (although I've never been rich, and I really don't know what it's like to lose a lot of money, I just know that losing $100 is a lot to me, but seems to be nothing to Julian - although that might just be due to his increased threshold of pain (to losing money). Not that I'm saying Julian is rich, I'm just trying to illustrate that losing various amounts of money has differing effects on people).
Monday, 10 August 2009
Leaving the Nest
In July last year, MrMan5.5 put a dead spider on my sister as a joke, and she completely freaked out and got really angry at him. Not long afterwards, she stopped talking to me. For some unknown reason, she started talking to me again a few months later, and everything was back to normal, she seemed to have forgiven MrMan5.5, and all was good. Then at the start of this year, I was leaving to go to MrMan5.5's beach house with Sharon and Graham and while I was in the shower, I heard Anjelica asking my mum why MrMan5.5 was here so often. Mum replied that it was because he was my boyfriend, so it was understandable that we'd want to spend a lot of time together. After I got out, I confronted Anjelica and asked her why she didn't want him here, and she said that she was still angry about the whole spider thing. It had been over 6 months since the spider thing happened, and I thought that was a stupidly long time to hold a grudge, so I raged at her and then left with MrMan5.5. We stopped talking again. A couple of months ago, mum told me that the fact that Anjelica and I weren't talking to each other was causing her a lot of stress, partly because Anjelica was having trouble with her schoolwork, and mum had planned for me to help her with Year 12, so I went to Anjelica and tried to work things out with her, but she didn't want to. We're still not talking.
Not long ago, she started complaining about MrMan5.5 being over and the fact that we make too much noise and she has trouble sleeping at night, so I asked him to stop coming over. Last night, we went to see a movie, and as it finished so late I suggested he stay at my house so that he wouldn't have to wake up as early to go to work the next day. We didn't make any noise, and went to bed as soon as we got home, yet, she still woke up and started yelling and screaming that she couldn't live like this anymore, and ran off. Dad went to get her, but I decided that it would probably be better if I didn't live with my family anymore, so now I'm temporarily staying with MrMan5.5's family until I find somewhere else, I guess. I told mum that I would go home and try to talk things over, but considering the hours that I work, it's impossible for me not to come home late, and seeing as she is in her final year of high school and trying to get into uni, it's unfair to her if I make so much noise coming home at 4AM.
To be honest, I was mostly in a shock last night after I left my house. I was reminded of those team-building exercises they make you do where they have a list of items, and they put you in a situation like there's a bush fire approaching your house and you have to leave, what would you take with you? I know it's not the same, as it's not like I won't be able to go home, but it also kinda felt like I had to pack the rest of my life into two bags, and I thought I would be more sentimental, but I didn't take any photo albums or the box of every Christmas card, birthday card and personal letter I've ever received. All I took were clothes, chargers for my phone and PSP, DVDs, toiletries and uni stuff. I think part of me is still hoping that after all of this blows over, I can just go back home and everything will be back to normal, but the rational part of me is scared that now that I've done this, I'll never be welcome in my home again. I'm really relieved that MrMan5.5's parents are OK with me staying at their house though.
A few months ago, I told my mum that the only graduate position I applied for was in Canberra. She got really upset saying that I was leaving my family behind and that I didn't care about them, and started yelling at me. I didn't have the heart to tell her that the only reason
that was the only job I applied for was because I had been too slack and that the other deadlines for applications for jobs I was interested in or qualified for had passed and this was the only job left. =/ She would probably just have yelled at me more anyway. But that was when I started thinking about moving out, and how I would go about it. I imagined spending months trying to find the right place to live, going to inspections and fighting with other potential renters. Going out and looking at furniture and buying all the crap that you take for granted as being in your house like a fridge, washing machine and dryer. Having a housewarming where your friends get to Christen your new house with vomit all over the carpet.
I guess I understand how Korsair feels now. I thought about moving out with him the first time he told me he had been kicked out, but it wouldn't work, seeing as he needs to live away from the city, and I need to live close to it, for work and uni. I mentioned in the past that Graham has wanted me to move out with him, but he has moved in with friends recently, so that wouldn't work. I could live alone, but I don't really think I could afford it, and even shifts at work have started becoming mainly just weekend shifts, with people fighting over any spare shifts on other days.
Speaking of work, seeing as my incredible graduate applications (that really shouldn't be plural, but it makes me feel better) have turned up nothing, and my career as a student is coming to an end at the end of this semester, I've been thinking about whether I want to keep working as a dealer. I know for sure now that given the choice, I'm definitely going to pick poker over baccarat even if it means players will pee on me, because I can wash pee off, but the guilt of taking enough money to buy myself a new house in one hand is something I don't think I can get over so easily. I told Matty my reasoning and he said that if I had such a guilty conscience, then I'm working in the wrong place.
It's kinda strange that when I first started, I hated it when people won a lot of money at my table, it meant so much more work for me. I knew 1, 2, 3 x 17 and 35 off the top of my head, but anything higher than that required mental dexterity that I hadn't yet achieved, and so it was a strain. I was also more of a section spinner and didn't know how to get out of the zero-section, so "Zero Gamers" would flock to my table and crowd around like crazy. Now I can usually work out most payouts in a second, and the huge towering stack of chips isn't daunting anymore, but I can't seem to section spin anymore, and so the ball goes all over the place, making my newfound mathematical abilities kinda useless. Contrary to their beliefs, I want them to win, and it's really hard seeing people who look like my grandma losing a pile of chips just because my ball went haywire.
I miss my computer, I really want to play WoW, TF2 and HoN, but I had to leave my computer at home because I share it with Amanda and dad, and it wouldn't be fair to Alex to take it with me. Speaking of Alex, I bought him a G15 keyboard for his 21st, but so far, the only thing he has used it for is a table for resting things on (it's still in its box). Maybe I am really out of touch with my family and moving out is a good thing.
Long post means only one thing - I have something due tomorrow and I don't want to start it. Can't escape it though. =(
Not long ago, she started complaining about MrMan5.5 being over and the fact that we make too much noise and she has trouble sleeping at night, so I asked him to stop coming over. Last night, we went to see a movie, and as it finished so late I suggested he stay at my house so that he wouldn't have to wake up as early to go to work the next day. We didn't make any noise, and went to bed as soon as we got home, yet, she still woke up and started yelling and screaming that she couldn't live like this anymore, and ran off. Dad went to get her, but I decided that it would probably be better if I didn't live with my family anymore, so now I'm temporarily staying with MrMan5.5's family until I find somewhere else, I guess. I told mum that I would go home and try to talk things over, but considering the hours that I work, it's impossible for me not to come home late, and seeing as she is in her final year of high school and trying to get into uni, it's unfair to her if I make so much noise coming home at 4AM.
To be honest, I was mostly in a shock last night after I left my house. I was reminded of those team-building exercises they make you do where they have a list of items, and they put you in a situation like there's a bush fire approaching your house and you have to leave, what would you take with you? I know it's not the same, as it's not like I won't be able to go home, but it also kinda felt like I had to pack the rest of my life into two bags, and I thought I would be more sentimental, but I didn't take any photo albums or the box of every Christmas card, birthday card and personal letter I've ever received. All I took were clothes, chargers for my phone and PSP, DVDs, toiletries and uni stuff. I think part of me is still hoping that after all of this blows over, I can just go back home and everything will be back to normal, but the rational part of me is scared that now that I've done this, I'll never be welcome in my home again. I'm really relieved that MrMan5.5's parents are OK with me staying at their house though.
A few months ago, I told my mum that the only graduate position I applied for was in Canberra. She got really upset saying that I was leaving my family behind and that I didn't care about them, and started yelling at me. I didn't have the heart to tell her that the only reason
that was the only job I applied for was because I had been too slack and that the other deadlines for applications for jobs I was interested in or qualified for had passed and this was the only job left. =/ She would probably just have yelled at me more anyway. But that was when I started thinking about moving out, and how I would go about it. I imagined spending months trying to find the right place to live, going to inspections and fighting with other potential renters. Going out and looking at furniture and buying all the crap that you take for granted as being in your house like a fridge, washing machine and dryer. Having a housewarming where your friends get to Christen your new house with vomit all over the carpet.
I guess I understand how Korsair feels now. I thought about moving out with him the first time he told me he had been kicked out, but it wouldn't work, seeing as he needs to live away from the city, and I need to live close to it, for work and uni. I mentioned in the past that Graham has wanted me to move out with him, but he has moved in with friends recently, so that wouldn't work. I could live alone, but I don't really think I could afford it, and even shifts at work have started becoming mainly just weekend shifts, with people fighting over any spare shifts on other days.
Speaking of work, seeing as my incredible graduate applications (that really shouldn't be plural, but it makes me feel better) have turned up nothing, and my career as a student is coming to an end at the end of this semester, I've been thinking about whether I want to keep working as a dealer. I know for sure now that given the choice, I'm definitely going to pick poker over baccarat even if it means players will pee on me, because I can wash pee off, but the guilt of taking enough money to buy myself a new house in one hand is something I don't think I can get over so easily. I told Matty my reasoning and he said that if I had such a guilty conscience, then I'm working in the wrong place.
It's kinda strange that when I first started, I hated it when people won a lot of money at my table, it meant so much more work for me. I knew 1, 2, 3 x 17 and 35 off the top of my head, but anything higher than that required mental dexterity that I hadn't yet achieved, and so it was a strain. I was also more of a section spinner and didn't know how to get out of the zero-section, so "Zero Gamers" would flock to my table and crowd around like crazy. Now I can usually work out most payouts in a second, and the huge towering stack of chips isn't daunting anymore, but I can't seem to section spin anymore, and so the ball goes all over the place, making my newfound mathematical abilities kinda useless. Contrary to their beliefs, I want them to win, and it's really hard seeing people who look like my grandma losing a pile of chips just because my ball went haywire.
I miss my computer, I really want to play WoW, TF2 and HoN, but I had to leave my computer at home because I share it with Amanda and dad, and it wouldn't be fair to Alex to take it with me. Speaking of Alex, I bought him a G15 keyboard for his 21st, but so far, the only thing he has used it for is a table for resting things on (it's still in its box). Maybe I am really out of touch with my family and moving out is a good thing.
Long post means only one thing - I have something due tomorrow and I don't want to start it. Can't escape it though. =(
Wednesday, 22 July 2009
Laying It Down
I was reading about Tigule's (Jeffery Kaplan) discussion about some of the problems with WoW's quests, and started reading the comments. One comment that caught my attention was this, by WildDanimal,
Secondly, and this is probably because I'm female, but personally, I don't think it's something worth bragging about, and to be perfectly honest, a guy like that is a real turn-off. If you think it's something worth bragging about, then chances are, you're not getting it very regularly, or you're an ass, which probably explains why you're not getting it very regularly.
I was reminded about another tidbit of conversation from Barrens chat, where a guy said that he told his roommate that he was tired and going to bed because he wanted to play WoW instead of going out to a pub. A few people laughed at that, which was to be expected, but then a few more people chimed in saying that going out and getting drunk was overrated.
I think it's awesome, that WoW geeks can admit to being geeks, rather than feeling like dorks for not having a social life - or at least the social life that go-out-and-get-drunk people consider a social life. Before MrMan5.5, I thought maybe I could meet someone at a bar, but I was so uncomfortable there, that the possiblity of being with someone who considered that their primary form of entertainment, and still enjoying my time with them seemed pretty improbable.
On a completely unrelated to guys, but related to MMOs note, I've been trying to think about what makes a good MMO. I guess this is the topic of discussion for a lot of people, considering the new MMOs that are in production at the moment, and it seems WoW gets a lot of crap from players of other MMOs, but you can't argue with the fact that it does have a very high subscriber base. Whether or not some of those subscribers are just people wanting to play both factions on a PvP server is irrelevant, it's the fact that people are still coming back for more.
One thing I always thought contributed to it, was the way which it allows people to come together, and interact in an environment without it being too overcomplicated. In my opinion, the best MMO would be one in which the players are allowed to play the part of anything, and there would be no NPCs, kinda like the way EVE is run, but you get the problem in that nobody wants to play the boring characters, just like how if you really had the choice, would you prefer to be doing the job you're doing, or be out there in some other glamourous job? There was a slashdot post about how one of the players in EVE was entrusted with an EVE bank, and he was actually stealing money from the in-game bank (money that belonged to other players), and was selling it to players in exchange for real money. I'm a crafter at heart, and so I'd like to be able to sit in a city and craft to my heart's content (Charles keep yelling at my for fishing instead of levelling my priest, but then he heard that there's a water mount that you can only get by fishing - so there!), but I'm terrible with selling my stuff, so I don't think it's something that's sustainable without having to go out and farm materials.
I imagine an MMO without the level grind would be awesome, except for the fact that the level grind teaches you how to play your character. Tsuruya was complaining about how most people don't even bother to level in instances anymore, so when they group together with others for end-game content, they're usually noobs who have no clue what's going on. Unfortunately, I hate the level grind, and I'm so terrible at it. I level so slowly, it took me ages to get my shaman to 60, and even now that I've started playing on Barthilas again, I still can't seem to be able to get my shaman to 70, even though I know where all the quests are and stuff like that. In Guild Wars, there's an option to create a level 20 (the level cap) character as a PvP-only character, which I think is cool, except you can't get all the spells possible, because some spells are only attainable through PvE experiences, and you only start out with a small number of spells, and the only way to unlock more is to have another character unlock them through PvE. I guess one of the benefits to this, is that you can try before you commit hours of your life levelling the character up. Also, I've mentioned this before but GW needs to have jumping. T_T
Player interaction is important, and I know I haven't levelled a PvE character to 20 in GW yet, but one of the things I noticed was how hard it was to find the other people in your party. When they're outside your minimap, your UI doesn't display their location at all, and it requires some combination of either of you pinging and drawing lines all over the minimap, or a poor attempt at describing your location, in order for you two to find each other. Not to mention the fact that you never bump into people outside of cities (both a good and bad thing). I can't even begin to recall the number of times I've been saved by a wandering healer in WoW who decided to chuck a heal just as I was about to die from having pulled too many mobs, but there's no chance of that in GW - which I guess means you should be more careful, but I like the idea of saving someone (maybe that's why I prefer to play healer classes, so I can be the hero! >_>)
Anyway, I think I've given my blog fingers a bit of a stretch, so I'm going to continue this later, if I'm not lazy!
"This is the main reason why I don't play WoW any more. It gets to be a pain in the ass and sucks way too much time for not enough actual enjoyment. Even I don't have time for that, just because I have classes to go to, and I can actually get laid sometimes."Something I've noticed that seems to occur in most WoW discussions - including the Chuck Norris-ridden ones in Barrens chat, is that someone inevitably ends up gloating about the fact that they can get laid, and always that term, gee, be more creative, at least! First of all, this is World of Warcraft we're talking about, if you're going to brag about anything, brag about some new purple you just got, because otherwise, most people aren't going to care - and even if you were to brag about that, I'm pretty sure most people wouldn't care anyway, unless you were the first one on the server to get it, etc.
Secondly, and this is probably because I'm female, but personally, I don't think it's something worth bragging about, and to be perfectly honest, a guy like that is a real turn-off. If you think it's something worth bragging about, then chances are, you're not getting it very regularly, or you're an ass, which probably explains why you're not getting it very regularly.
I was reminded about another tidbit of conversation from Barrens chat, where a guy said that he told his roommate that he was tired and going to bed because he wanted to play WoW instead of going out to a pub. A few people laughed at that, which was to be expected, but then a few more people chimed in saying that going out and getting drunk was overrated.
I think it's awesome, that WoW geeks can admit to being geeks, rather than feeling like dorks for not having a social life - or at least the social life that go-out-and-get-drunk people consider a social life. Before MrMan5.5, I thought maybe I could meet someone at a bar, but I was so uncomfortable there, that the possiblity of being with someone who considered that their primary form of entertainment, and still enjoying my time with them seemed pretty improbable.
On a completely unrelated to guys, but related to MMOs note, I've been trying to think about what makes a good MMO. I guess this is the topic of discussion for a lot of people, considering the new MMOs that are in production at the moment, and it seems WoW gets a lot of crap from players of other MMOs, but you can't argue with the fact that it does have a very high subscriber base. Whether or not some of those subscribers are just people wanting to play both factions on a PvP server is irrelevant, it's the fact that people are still coming back for more.
One thing I always thought contributed to it, was the way which it allows people to come together, and interact in an environment without it being too overcomplicated. In my opinion, the best MMO would be one in which the players are allowed to play the part of anything, and there would be no NPCs, kinda like the way EVE is run, but you get the problem in that nobody wants to play the boring characters, just like how if you really had the choice, would you prefer to be doing the job you're doing, or be out there in some other glamourous job? There was a slashdot post about how one of the players in EVE was entrusted with an EVE bank, and he was actually stealing money from the in-game bank (money that belonged to other players), and was selling it to players in exchange for real money. I'm a crafter at heart, and so I'd like to be able to sit in a city and craft to my heart's content (Charles keep yelling at my for fishing instead of levelling my priest, but then he heard that there's a water mount that you can only get by fishing - so there!), but I'm terrible with selling my stuff, so I don't think it's something that's sustainable without having to go out and farm materials.
I imagine an MMO without the level grind would be awesome, except for the fact that the level grind teaches you how to play your character. Tsuruya was complaining about how most people don't even bother to level in instances anymore, so when they group together with others for end-game content, they're usually noobs who have no clue what's going on. Unfortunately, I hate the level grind, and I'm so terrible at it. I level so slowly, it took me ages to get my shaman to 60, and even now that I've started playing on Barthilas again, I still can't seem to be able to get my shaman to 70, even though I know where all the quests are and stuff like that. In Guild Wars, there's an option to create a level 20 (the level cap) character as a PvP-only character, which I think is cool, except you can't get all the spells possible, because some spells are only attainable through PvE experiences, and you only start out with a small number of spells, and the only way to unlock more is to have another character unlock them through PvE. I guess one of the benefits to this, is that you can try before you commit hours of your life levelling the character up. Also, I've mentioned this before but GW needs to have jumping. T_T
Player interaction is important, and I know I haven't levelled a PvE character to 20 in GW yet, but one of the things I noticed was how hard it was to find the other people in your party. When they're outside your minimap, your UI doesn't display their location at all, and it requires some combination of either of you pinging and drawing lines all over the minimap, or a poor attempt at describing your location, in order for you two to find each other. Not to mention the fact that you never bump into people outside of cities (both a good and bad thing). I can't even begin to recall the number of times I've been saved by a wandering healer in WoW who decided to chuck a heal just as I was about to die from having pulled too many mobs, but there's no chance of that in GW - which I guess means you should be more careful, but I like the idea of saving someone (maybe that's why I prefer to play healer classes, so I can be the hero! >_>)
Anyway, I think I've given my blog fingers a bit of a stretch, so I'm going to continue this later, if I'm not lazy!
Friday, 3 July 2009
Oh Noes, Died. Who Will Carry On?
Agents Simon has gotten me hooked on boingboing, and I came across this article about how to ensure someone will be able to access your encrypted data once you've died (there's a link to the actual article in the Guardian there). This has occured to be in the past, and it probably occurs to anyone who had a password for anything sensitive. What will happen to it if you suddenly died before being able to tell anyone the password? Even though I don't really have anything important that I need to store, I think I do have a safeguard, that I won't mention here, because the security of that safeguard will be compromised if I do mention it, but it really makes you think about how hard it is to do something like this. The author's initial solution was quite convoluted, and really, it came down to how much you trust your significant other.
Whenever I think about how much I could trust someone I'm married to, I think about Mr and Mrs Bristow from the TV show Alias, in that they were both secret agents, but during their marriage, he was unaware that she was sent to seduce him in order to find out his secrets. In later episodes, they are forced to work together, but there is always this underlying sense of whether they can trust each other - as they must in order to complete the mission, but the one who betrays the other is more likely to come out alive than the one who gets betrayed.
On the other hand, if you can't trust someone you consider your significant other, then who can you trust? The first solution that occured to me was to give it to someone who wouldn't know what it was, and so wouldn't be able to use it against you. But then you come against the problem that if they don't know what it is, then how will they know to use it if you die? Not just that, but if they don't know how important it is, what is to stop them for throwing it away/forgetting it/telling other people? Not to mention the problem of updating, in the event that you change your password. "Hey, remember that word I told you last month? Well, I just thought of a better word: s923id0!jd}#5da1+5jsxpf5." Yep, smooth. If you change your password regularly, then updating it with your keeper would become an increasing security hazard, as something like that would appear suspicious. Especially considering that picking someone close to you would be bad, as they would be the natural target of someone looking to break your code, but if you suddenly started regularly visiting your cousin twice-removed that nobody really likes, but gets invited 'round for Christmas every few years, someone's going to wonder what's up.
Also, relationships tend to phase in and out for me. The people that I couldn't be separated from in primary school I never see now (although I still talk to one on occasion). The friends I grew up with in high school aren't nearly as close as they were at the time. My friendships at uni seem to grow and fade as their lives move to intersect with mine on occasion, or pull away, as our interests and hobbies change. Other than family, I don't really know anyone that I've kept in constant contact with in my life. Family is difficult. I can't be sure that my parents will outlive me, and even though I know I'd do anything for my siblings, lately I really can't tell if the feeling is mutual.
I do know of one solution that does work, but isn't very practical: have nothing worth hiding, which is how I'm operating now. And in case I do drop dead tomorrow, this blog will be in the hands of Dante, although since he doesn't want to post any more, I guess it'll have to suffer the same fate I did - which I don't think is that bad, as the blog was meant to be a way for me to get my thoughts down, and if I'm dead, well, presumably I'm not having any new thoughts.
(And that was meant to be the end of the post, but as a slight aside, I was reading about how blogs actually make money, and obviously, there are billions of blogs that fade into the ether never to read any kind of level of prominence, but apparently the biggest moneymaker for blogs (other than getting a book/TV deal/other misc. job out of it) is to sell stuff through them. There's the whole issue of blogger's integrity, but if you think about it, a few cents for the however many minutes of entertainment you manage to get out of a blog post is a good price - and it's not even out of your pocket. That being said, if I were to start selling stuff on my blog, well, I wouldn't even know what kind of stuff I'd sell, and I don't even have the audience for it anyway, but maybe I'd sell Heinz Big Red Tomato Chips! Though I don't want money in exchange for people clicking links, I just want more chips!)
Whenever I think about how much I could trust someone I'm married to, I think about Mr and Mrs Bristow from the TV show Alias, in that they were both secret agents, but during their marriage, he was unaware that she was sent to seduce him in order to find out his secrets. In later episodes, they are forced to work together, but there is always this underlying sense of whether they can trust each other - as they must in order to complete the mission, but the one who betrays the other is more likely to come out alive than the one who gets betrayed.
On the other hand, if you can't trust someone you consider your significant other, then who can you trust? The first solution that occured to me was to give it to someone who wouldn't know what it was, and so wouldn't be able to use it against you. But then you come against the problem that if they don't know what it is, then how will they know to use it if you die? Not just that, but if they don't know how important it is, what is to stop them for throwing it away/forgetting it/telling other people? Not to mention the problem of updating, in the event that you change your password. "Hey, remember that word I told you last month? Well, I just thought of a better word: s923id0!jd}#5da1+5jsxpf5." Yep, smooth. If you change your password regularly, then updating it with your keeper would become an increasing security hazard, as something like that would appear suspicious. Especially considering that picking someone close to you would be bad, as they would be the natural target of someone looking to break your code, but if you suddenly started regularly visiting your cousin twice-removed that nobody really likes, but gets invited 'round for Christmas every few years, someone's going to wonder what's up.
Also, relationships tend to phase in and out for me. The people that I couldn't be separated from in primary school I never see now (although I still talk to one on occasion). The friends I grew up with in high school aren't nearly as close as they were at the time. My friendships at uni seem to grow and fade as their lives move to intersect with mine on occasion, or pull away, as our interests and hobbies change. Other than family, I don't really know anyone that I've kept in constant contact with in my life. Family is difficult. I can't be sure that my parents will outlive me, and even though I know I'd do anything for my siblings, lately I really can't tell if the feeling is mutual.
I do know of one solution that does work, but isn't very practical: have nothing worth hiding, which is how I'm operating now. And in case I do drop dead tomorrow, this blog will be in the hands of Dante, although since he doesn't want to post any more, I guess it'll have to suffer the same fate I did - which I don't think is that bad, as the blog was meant to be a way for me to get my thoughts down, and if I'm dead, well, presumably I'm not having any new thoughts.
(And that was meant to be the end of the post, but as a slight aside, I was reading about how blogs actually make money, and obviously, there are billions of blogs that fade into the ether never to read any kind of level of prominence, but apparently the biggest moneymaker for blogs (other than getting a book/TV deal/other misc. job out of it) is to sell stuff through them. There's the whole issue of blogger's integrity, but if you think about it, a few cents for the however many minutes of entertainment you manage to get out of a blog post is a good price - and it's not even out of your pocket. That being said, if I were to start selling stuff on my blog, well, I wouldn't even know what kind of stuff I'd sell, and I don't even have the audience for it anyway, but maybe I'd sell Heinz Big Red Tomato Chips! Though I don't want money in exchange for people clicking links, I just want more chips!)
Sunday, 14 June 2009
Sucker
I'm one of the believers of getting what you earn, and I'd like to think that were I ever to hold a position of power in a company or something like that, that I would hire and promote people based on merit rather than how much I like them. However, judging from the stories that I hear at work, and the things that I see, things definitely don't work like that at my new workplace. I've heard a few stories about people who are sleeping with pit bosses, and who are now a little higher up the ladder than they should be (in order to become a game supervisor, you need to be trained in three games, and you usually get one game per year, but some people have managed to get two games in one year, putting them just that little bit closer to promotion).
The part that annoys me the most is that I've worked with this awesome supervisor who I found out tonight has been there for years, and yet from what I can see, she seems to be getting passed up for promotion. The thing I love most about her is that she doesn't take crap from anyone. The highlight of my shift was seeing her, this short Asian lady (shorter than me, even!) go off at some guys who were being idiots. She's not one of those customer-service oriented supervisors, and since she has been around for so long, she knows all the retards. She tells me about the regulars so that I know what not to do in case I piss them off (like there's this one guy who apparently went crazy at the dealer because the dealer spun the ball before he was ready - and if he hadn't been laying as much money as he was on the table, he'd probably be lumped with the retards, but since he is loaded, he gets special treatment).
To be honest, I really don't know what I want out of work. Since I lucked out and got roulette, which is apparently the fast track to moving up (the usual route is roulette -> baccarat, and having baccarat is supposedly the biggest money maker, so they must treat their dealers well), if I hung around for a bit, I might make some decent money. If getting a job stays as hard as it is, well, that might end up being my only option. The thing is, I'm not a suck-up, and I don't want to be one. Considering how annoyed I get at zero-gamers, dealing baccarat would be like that only ten times worse, so I'd actually prefer to get poker, even if it means I'm going down the non-super fast promotion route (although, only people trained in poker can be poker pit bosses, so that's one advantage to having poker), because I can handle drunk guys much better than I can handle people who don't speak English.
(Although, I had this guy come up with what I'm guessing he thought was a brilliant pick-up line, "Hey Anna, I know you're single, so let's go and get some tea together!" I don't know why that pick-up line would be good since my first thought upon hearing it was, "Well, gee, thanks. So I don't look like I'd ever be able to have a boyfriend..." So maybe drunks aren't so good. =/)
I had Julian-supervisor for a bit today (his name isn't actually Julian, he just looks like Julian. I want so badly to ask him to say "sick life", but I can never bring myself to do it), and I was asking him about someone who trained at the same time with us, but who quit after working there for a couple of weeks. Julian-supervisor was his buddy, so I'm guessing the guy who quit talked to him about his reasons, and I just wanted to know what he said. I had to wait this long because I think he's normally busy with BJ, so I never really get a chance to speak to him. Anyway, when I heard what he said, it didn't sound right. Apparently the reason was because he wasn't able to get time off for exams, but someone from my training group was in the exact same course as he was, and he didn't have any problems, so I don't really know why he wasn't able to get the same treatment, especially since the guy from my group didn't apply until after the other guy had quit.
The thing is, everyone from his training group and my training group all said that the quitter-guy was an ass, and that he exaggerated stuff all the time, lied a lot, and that you should never really believe what he says. He never seemed that way to me, so I usually tried to defend him. Though I'm compelled to believe Julian-supervisor was telling the truth, which means quitter-guy lied to him about his reasons, and so maybe he lied about other stuff, too. It didn't occur to me until I was on my way home that maybe I am a really bad judge of character.
There is a friend of mine who I sometimes play TF2 with, and there was a game that he was playing with a bunch of our friends, and I joined the game. Upon joining, I heard him saying that he wanted me to "go suck on the other team" which I thought was a joke, so I stayed on his team (due to auto-team balance, our friends were split over both teams) and ended up getting MVP, which I thought was funny, because it meant I did more for the team that round than he did. Later I heard that he wasn't joking about wanting me on the other team, which I tried to verify through our other friends, but nobody I asked said they could say for sure, and it was too long ago for me to even remember who else was playing in that game now. Anyway, in the past, people have said bad things about him, and I've sometimes defended him, but lately I've been feeling like maybe that isn't worth my time, considering how he seems to feel about me - which I would like to add that I was willing to be on his team when he was terrible at DotA, although now I would rather not if I can avoid it.
It's strange. Teekay and Lume seemed fine with having me on their arena team, even though I sucked so much and was usually the first one to die. Even though Teekay and I both did OS together, we've only met each other a handful of times, and Lume I only know through WoW. This other friend, I see fairly often (IRL), and usually end up playing games with when I'm not working, and yet he seems less willing to put up with my suckiness. Games have always been for fun for me, but I'm not sure I want to play with people who think I'm bringing them down, and the more I think about it, the more I get the feeling that there are other people who only play with me because I'm their friend and aren't willing to tell me how bad I really am.
I don't know if that makes them better or worse than my other friend, who was at least willing to say that I suck and should work on getting better. I would rather play with people who were happy to play with me than have the feeling that they're only putting up with it because they're my friend. =(
The part that annoys me the most is that I've worked with this awesome supervisor who I found out tonight has been there for years, and yet from what I can see, she seems to be getting passed up for promotion. The thing I love most about her is that she doesn't take crap from anyone. The highlight of my shift was seeing her, this short Asian lady (shorter than me, even!) go off at some guys who were being idiots. She's not one of those customer-service oriented supervisors, and since she has been around for so long, she knows all the retards. She tells me about the regulars so that I know what not to do in case I piss them off (like there's this one guy who apparently went crazy at the dealer because the dealer spun the ball before he was ready - and if he hadn't been laying as much money as he was on the table, he'd probably be lumped with the retards, but since he is loaded, he gets special treatment).
To be honest, I really don't know what I want out of work. Since I lucked out and got roulette, which is apparently the fast track to moving up (the usual route is roulette -> baccarat, and having baccarat is supposedly the biggest money maker, so they must treat their dealers well), if I hung around for a bit, I might make some decent money. If getting a job stays as hard as it is, well, that might end up being my only option. The thing is, I'm not a suck-up, and I don't want to be one. Considering how annoyed I get at zero-gamers, dealing baccarat would be like that only ten times worse, so I'd actually prefer to get poker, even if it means I'm going down the non-super fast promotion route (although, only people trained in poker can be poker pit bosses, so that's one advantage to having poker), because I can handle drunk guys much better than I can handle people who don't speak English.
(Although, I had this guy come up with what I'm guessing he thought was a brilliant pick-up line, "Hey Anna, I know you're single, so let's go and get some tea together!" I don't know why that pick-up line would be good since my first thought upon hearing it was, "Well, gee, thanks. So I don't look like I'd ever be able to have a boyfriend..." So maybe drunks aren't so good. =/)
I had Julian-supervisor for a bit today (his name isn't actually Julian, he just looks like Julian. I want so badly to ask him to say "sick life", but I can never bring myself to do it), and I was asking him about someone who trained at the same time with us, but who quit after working there for a couple of weeks. Julian-supervisor was his buddy, so I'm guessing the guy who quit talked to him about his reasons, and I just wanted to know what he said. I had to wait this long because I think he's normally busy with BJ, so I never really get a chance to speak to him. Anyway, when I heard what he said, it didn't sound right. Apparently the reason was because he wasn't able to get time off for exams, but someone from my training group was in the exact same course as he was, and he didn't have any problems, so I don't really know why he wasn't able to get the same treatment, especially since the guy from my group didn't apply until after the other guy had quit.
The thing is, everyone from his training group and my training group all said that the quitter-guy was an ass, and that he exaggerated stuff all the time, lied a lot, and that you should never really believe what he says. He never seemed that way to me, so I usually tried to defend him. Though I'm compelled to believe Julian-supervisor was telling the truth, which means quitter-guy lied to him about his reasons, and so maybe he lied about other stuff, too. It didn't occur to me until I was on my way home that maybe I am a really bad judge of character.
There is a friend of mine who I sometimes play TF2 with, and there was a game that he was playing with a bunch of our friends, and I joined the game. Upon joining, I heard him saying that he wanted me to "go suck on the other team" which I thought was a joke, so I stayed on his team (due to auto-team balance, our friends were split over both teams) and ended up getting MVP, which I thought was funny, because it meant I did more for the team that round than he did. Later I heard that he wasn't joking about wanting me on the other team, which I tried to verify through our other friends, but nobody I asked said they could say for sure, and it was too long ago for me to even remember who else was playing in that game now. Anyway, in the past, people have said bad things about him, and I've sometimes defended him, but lately I've been feeling like maybe that isn't worth my time, considering how he seems to feel about me - which I would like to add that I was willing to be on his team when he was terrible at DotA, although now I would rather not if I can avoid it.
It's strange. Teekay and Lume seemed fine with having me on their arena team, even though I sucked so much and was usually the first one to die. Even though Teekay and I both did OS together, we've only met each other a handful of times, and Lume I only know through WoW. This other friend, I see fairly often (IRL), and usually end up playing games with when I'm not working, and yet he seems less willing to put up with my suckiness. Games have always been for fun for me, but I'm not sure I want to play with people who think I'm bringing them down, and the more I think about it, the more I get the feeling that there are other people who only play with me because I'm their friend and aren't willing to tell me how bad I really am.
I don't know if that makes them better or worse than my other friend, who was at least willing to say that I suck and should work on getting better. I would rather play with people who were happy to play with me than have the feeling that they're only putting up with it because they're my friend. =(
Monday, 8 June 2009
Ghost of Boyfriend Past
I was driving home from se440 dessert today when I was reminded of YN. Back in high school, we promised each other that we'd take over the world together. He went on to do nanotechnology, and I ended up doing software engineering, a good combo for taking over the world, right? We could make little nanobots that target specific people and hold the world to ransom, or something like that. Anyway, ever since then, even though I still have the ambition to take over the world (it's my rightful place as the Supreme Ruler of the Universe, after all), I'm not really interested in doing it with anyone else, despite the fact that YN and I broke up years ago.
It made me wonder, how much hold does a promise you made to someone under different circumstances hold? There was this story in The Pig That Wants to be Eaten about a guy who shoots a candidate for the republic party. When asked why he did it, he says that 10 years ago, they were friends, and his friend once said, "If I ever become a republican, shoot me." So he did. One of the arguments in that book was that the person that made that comment was a different person to the person who was campaigning for the republican party. Just like how when you're a child, you want nothing more than to spend your days watching ABC Kids, but now that you're older, you're far more interested in going out to dinner with friends. The "you" as a child is different to the "you" that you are now, as you have differing (to some degree) personalities, and differing interests.
So the "me" that was dating YN is different to the "me" that I am now, but still, I feel honour bound to uphold the promise I made to him that I'd take over the world with him. We even divided up which parts of the world we'd get, although I think that "taking over the world" with him now would just mean I take over the world and give him the parts that we agreed he would get. I wonder if he would do the same for me if he took over the world?
I think I have a bad habit of dumping someone and never bringing it up again to find out how they're dealing with it. I don't know if that's good or bad. Towards the end, YN and I didn't talk that often, and we had mostly drifted apart (he ended up going to a different university to me), so after we broke up, we never really spoke again. In fact, the last IM I received from him was one of the acai berry spam messages, and the last IM I sent to him was one telling him that he had that acai berry spam virus. The part that I would have liked to resolve was the curiosity that was triggered when Steve (who went to the same primary school as me, and ended up in YN's class at uni) sent me a recorded message from YN saying, "I love Anna!" which he gave to me after we broke up, but I never asked if he was serious. I was kinda freaked out, to be honest. Although, I can't have been sure that it was YN, it sounded like his voice, but for all I know, it could have been some random guy who sounds similar, and for that reason, I never asked YN about it. Or maybe he was talking about another Anna - I mean, as much as I'd like to think I am, I'm not the only Anna in the world, much less than in Melbourne. Also, I would have felt terrible had it really been him and he had really meant it.
Well, one thing I did learn from the YN experience was that I am less inclined to go out with a guy who spends most of his time offline again. So hard to contact someone who is never on some sort of IM program. T_T It's kinda weird though, because I assumed since he liked games like Starcraft, Warcraft III, and Age of Empires 2, I thought he would be geeky and addicted to the Internet like the rest of us, but I guess I was wrong. Although one benefit to his being more of an RL person is that I can be fairly confident that he's not going to read this blog post.
It made me wonder, how much hold does a promise you made to someone under different circumstances hold? There was this story in The Pig That Wants to be Eaten about a guy who shoots a candidate for the republic party. When asked why he did it, he says that 10 years ago, they were friends, and his friend once said, "If I ever become a republican, shoot me." So he did. One of the arguments in that book was that the person that made that comment was a different person to the person who was campaigning for the republican party. Just like how when you're a child, you want nothing more than to spend your days watching ABC Kids, but now that you're older, you're far more interested in going out to dinner with friends. The "you" as a child is different to the "you" that you are now, as you have differing (to some degree) personalities, and differing interests.
So the "me" that was dating YN is different to the "me" that I am now, but still, I feel honour bound to uphold the promise I made to him that I'd take over the world with him. We even divided up which parts of the world we'd get, although I think that "taking over the world" with him now would just mean I take over the world and give him the parts that we agreed he would get. I wonder if he would do the same for me if he took over the world?
I think I have a bad habit of dumping someone and never bringing it up again to find out how they're dealing with it. I don't know if that's good or bad. Towards the end, YN and I didn't talk that often, and we had mostly drifted apart (he ended up going to a different university to me), so after we broke up, we never really spoke again. In fact, the last IM I received from him was one of the acai berry spam messages, and the last IM I sent to him was one telling him that he had that acai berry spam virus. The part that I would have liked to resolve was the curiosity that was triggered when Steve (who went to the same primary school as me, and ended up in YN's class at uni) sent me a recorded message from YN saying, "I love Anna!" which he gave to me after we broke up, but I never asked if he was serious. I was kinda freaked out, to be honest. Although, I can't have been sure that it was YN, it sounded like his voice, but for all I know, it could have been some random guy who sounds similar, and for that reason, I never asked YN about it. Or maybe he was talking about another Anna - I mean, as much as I'd like to think I am, I'm not the only Anna in the world, much less than in Melbourne. Also, I would have felt terrible had it really been him and he had really meant it.
Well, one thing I did learn from the YN experience was that I am less inclined to go out with a guy who spends most of his time offline again. So hard to contact someone who is never on some sort of IM program. T_T It's kinda weird though, because I assumed since he liked games like Starcraft, Warcraft III, and Age of Empires 2, I thought he would be geeky and addicted to the Internet like the rest of us, but I guess I was wrong. Although one benefit to his being more of an RL person is that I can be fairly confident that he's not going to read this blog post.
Thursday, 28 May 2009
Monday, 18 May 2009
World of Roulette
One of the questions they asked me during my interview was, "How do you feel about taking money from little, old ladies?" My answer at the time was something along the lines of them paying for entertainment, and it's like paying $15 to see a movie, you're setting aside money for a period of entertainment, and so the money they're betting is the money they've put aside for that night's entertainment. To be honest, now that I think about it, it really sounds like a load of BS, but I somehow managed to get the job, so it can't have been that bad! Anyway, things have changed now that I'm actually on the gaming floor and not just taking fake money from my fellow roulette-dealers-in-training, and if I were to answer that question again, my answer would definitely be different. In all honesty, sometimes it's not so hard taking money, because a lot of the people who gamble at my table are something that starts with A and rhymes with "grass hole". Now that I've been there for a couple of months, I'm starting to recognise the different types of players.
The Zero Gamers
These are the ambulance chasers of roulette. Typically the Asian betters, they can spot a zero from halfway across the casino, and run madly towards the table, not caring about who they knock along the way. They know every single dealer in the casino, and love the "lumpies" (new dealers). The idea is that lumpies aren't able to control their spin very well, and so they will usually spin in the same area of the wheel. Since zero really stands out, and there are standard bets for covering the numbers around zero ("Grand series"/Voisins du zero, or the Zero Game). These are the worst, and when I start to see numbers from the grand series at my table, I die a little inside, because I know it won't be long before my table is surrounded by people shoving bets on as fast as possible. I hate this group the most, because they treat me like some kind of robot, barking thier call bets at me, and getting really frustrated when I'm busy doing other things for the other players and not spinning the ball for them.
Drunks/Stoners
While we're not allowed to let drunk people bet, there are people who are not drunk enough to kick out, and so we have to keep dealing for them until they get drunk enough to kick out, or leave. I don't know what it is about drunk/stoned people, but they seem to have the most luck out of everyone. They usually have no clue how to play roulette, and start of betting both red and black (a number can either be one of red, black or green(zero)). Then they will decide to place chips on a few numbers, and for a reason I'll never understand (maybe God hates me), the ball will always manage to land on one of those numbers. The people themselves are usually cool, and I don't mind dealing to them, but once they win, they usually make lots of noise, and this attracts more people to my table, which means more work for me. =(
Noobs
These are the most fun to deal to, because they're usually the nicest people, but that also means they're the hardest people to take money from. There was this one guy who was at my table on my second shift who looked so much like Stringbeans that I almost wanted to give him his money back. =( The best thing about them is they're usually really polite, and they're more interested in talking to you than playing roulette, so they don't treat you like a robot.
Theory-Crafters
These are the people who have read about some sort of "How to Win at Roulette" thing, and think that roulette is the easiest game to win money from. Funnily enough, I think these are the people who keep the casino in business, because they seem to lose the most money. So advice from the wise - don't just read about some fad betting scheme, think about it first before chucking $300 on a table! The worst theory-crafters are the ones who are wannabe "Zero Gamers" but don't seem to understand the concept that if you're going to play the zero game, you should at least find a table where the dealer is spinning in that section. Also in this group, I stick the people who are Martingale betters or two dozen/column betters, which I've already ranted about.
The Jerks/Rigged Wheel Complainers
I'm not quite sure about the reasoning for this, but my theory is that these are the people who go around and bet on the numbers nobody else has covered because they like being the only winner at the table and like to gloat to all the people who lost all of their chips. My other theory is they think the wheel is rigged somehow, and someone is watching the table trying to find the number that will pay the least amount of money, and make the ball fall on that number somehow. I've had so many people ask me if there's a button I can press to stop the ball, or if there is someone watching from a camera controlling the wheel (no to both, although there are the new "slingshot" wheels where you can press a button to spin the ball, and there are people watching from camera, but that's only for security reasons).
Gidon
He likes to play with the pink chips and bet on the number 13.
To be perfectly honest, I don't know how long I can keep doing this. A couple of days ago, I had a man lose quite a lot of money on my table, and when he walked away, I started to wonder if maybe he had reached the point where he was going to kill himself over his gambling losses. In the back of my head, I know that even if I wasn't there, he'd just be throwing his money away to some other dealer, but at the same time I don't want to be the person taking the money. Although, I do meet many interesting people at work, and almost everyone I work with is really nice.
The Zero Gamers
These are the ambulance chasers of roulette. Typically the Asian betters, they can spot a zero from halfway across the casino, and run madly towards the table, not caring about who they knock along the way. They know every single dealer in the casino, and love the "lumpies" (new dealers). The idea is that lumpies aren't able to control their spin very well, and so they will usually spin in the same area of the wheel. Since zero really stands out, and there are standard bets for covering the numbers around zero ("Grand series"/Voisins du zero, or the Zero Game). These are the worst, and when I start to see numbers from the grand series at my table, I die a little inside, because I know it won't be long before my table is surrounded by people shoving bets on as fast as possible. I hate this group the most, because they treat me like some kind of robot, barking thier call bets at me, and getting really frustrated when I'm busy doing other things for the other players and not spinning the ball for them.
Drunks/Stoners
While we're not allowed to let drunk people bet, there are people who are not drunk enough to kick out, and so we have to keep dealing for them until they get drunk enough to kick out, or leave. I don't know what it is about drunk/stoned people, but they seem to have the most luck out of everyone. They usually have no clue how to play roulette, and start of betting both red and black (a number can either be one of red, black or green(zero)). Then they will decide to place chips on a few numbers, and for a reason I'll never understand (maybe God hates me), the ball will always manage to land on one of those numbers. The people themselves are usually cool, and I don't mind dealing to them, but once they win, they usually make lots of noise, and this attracts more people to my table, which means more work for me. =(
Noobs
These are the most fun to deal to, because they're usually the nicest people, but that also means they're the hardest people to take money from. There was this one guy who was at my table on my second shift who looked so much like Stringbeans that I almost wanted to give him his money back. =( The best thing about them is they're usually really polite, and they're more interested in talking to you than playing roulette, so they don't treat you like a robot.
Theory-Crafters
These are the people who have read about some sort of "How to Win at Roulette" thing, and think that roulette is the easiest game to win money from. Funnily enough, I think these are the people who keep the casino in business, because they seem to lose the most money. So advice from the wise - don't just read about some fad betting scheme, think about it first before chucking $300 on a table! The worst theory-crafters are the ones who are wannabe "Zero Gamers" but don't seem to understand the concept that if you're going to play the zero game, you should at least find a table where the dealer is spinning in that section. Also in this group, I stick the people who are Martingale betters or two dozen/column betters, which I've already ranted about.
The Jerks/Rigged Wheel Complainers
I'm not quite sure about the reasoning for this, but my theory is that these are the people who go around and bet on the numbers nobody else has covered because they like being the only winner at the table and like to gloat to all the people who lost all of their chips. My other theory is they think the wheel is rigged somehow, and someone is watching the table trying to find the number that will pay the least amount of money, and make the ball fall on that number somehow. I've had so many people ask me if there's a button I can press to stop the ball, or if there is someone watching from a camera controlling the wheel (no to both, although there are the new "slingshot" wheels where you can press a button to spin the ball, and there are people watching from camera, but that's only for security reasons).
Gidon
He likes to play with the pink chips and bet on the number 13.
To be perfectly honest, I don't know how long I can keep doing this. A couple of days ago, I had a man lose quite a lot of money on my table, and when he walked away, I started to wonder if maybe he had reached the point where he was going to kill himself over his gambling losses. In the back of my head, I know that even if I wasn't there, he'd just be throwing his money away to some other dealer, but at the same time I don't want to be the person taking the money. Although, I do meet many interesting people at work, and almost everyone I work with is really nice.
Monday, 11 May 2009
Non parlo inglese
A friend once mentioned that he believed that people who live in Australia (where English is the native language), should at least go to the trouble of learning to speak English. I'm paraphrasing, but his original comment sparked a bit of an argument. What I originally thought he said was that he hated people who speak a foreign language around people who don't speak that language, and that since English is the native language of Australia, everybody should speak that language. I still think that's harsh, but not because I'm multilingual (far from it in fact - 6/20 for today's surprise Italian vocab test - luckily it didn't count for anything!). I just don't think it's fair to impose a language on someone, especially one that can be confusing to learn, and may not be as precise as other languages for certain things.
Then I read this article shared by Awesome Jon, The Ugly American Programmer, which asks the question, "shouldn't every software developer understand English?" I never really thought about it, but most of the terms featured in coding languages are English words, or derived from them (string, int(eger), char(acter), return, etc.) and I wondered whether there were compilers out there for people who spoke a different language and would contain other keywords for those things like maybe num(ero) for number? Then I realised how impractical that would be, as it would make code sharing quite difficult without some sort of converter - which woudln't be too hard to write, as it would simply be a find-replace algorithm with predefined word-pairs - but it would add complexity if you had a programming team of different linguistic backgrounds. Which language would you choose to store your code in? Plus, comments are just a no-go zone, as we all know how bad automated translations can be.
It's funny, I was just about to post this blog when I thought about how hard it would be to comment in Asian languages (or any language that isn't based on the alphabet and has lots of foreign characters). In fact, one person commented on the blog post that his Python interpreter died from his strange characters in his comments. Anyway, I came across this article, Mandarin Chinese programmer communities, which is also worth a read.
Then I read this article shared by Awesome Jon, The Ugly American Programmer, which asks the question, "shouldn't every software developer understand English?" I never really thought about it, but most of the terms featured in coding languages are English words, or derived from them (string, int(eger), char(acter), return, etc.) and I wondered whether there were compilers out there for people who spoke a different language and would contain other keywords for those things like maybe num(ero) for number? Then I realised how impractical that would be, as it would make code sharing quite difficult without some sort of converter - which woudln't be too hard to write, as it would simply be a find-replace algorithm with predefined word-pairs - but it would add complexity if you had a programming team of different linguistic backgrounds. Which language would you choose to store your code in? Plus, comments are just a no-go zone, as we all know how bad automated translations can be.
English: How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?Just for practicality, it makes sense to have an agreed upon language that everyone uses, and it's apparently the most technical language, so English is it! While it's not like people are beating other coders up for commenting in another language, it just seems like if you don't want to learn the language, then you're going to have a lot of difficulty finding supporting documentation.
Italian: Quanto legno nel mandrino potrebbe una marmotta nordamericana bloccare se una marmotta nordamericana potesse bloccare il legno nel mandrino?
English: How much wood in the mandrel could a North American beaver block if a North American beaver could block the wood in the mandrel?
It's funny, I was just about to post this blog when I thought about how hard it would be to comment in Asian languages (or any language that isn't based on the alphabet and has lots of foreign characters). In fact, one person commented on the blog post that his Python interpreter died from his strange characters in his comments. Anyway, I came across this article, Mandarin Chinese programmer communities, which is also worth a read.
Wednesday, 6 May 2009
Ugly Layout
Sorry for the ugly layout, it just occurred to me that the default layout for this template uses about 50% of the page for content, and the rest of it is blank, and it also kinda annoyed me that one of the few non-emo/retarded templates that I haven't already used for a previous blog is pink, so I've changed a few things, but I don't really have the time to make it pretty right now, so I'm just settling for it being not-pink, and the rest will have to come later!
Saturday, 2 May 2009
Set It Free
If you love something, set it free; if it comes back, it's yours, if it doesn't, it never was.
At work two nights ago, a guy at my table was trying to pick up two of the girls sitting at his table. He had been buying them drinks, was pretending that he didn't care about money by throwing chips around, and letting them bet his chips (although the sad part was, once they left, the $50 notes that he had been throwing around carelessly starting becoming $20, which then became $5/10 notes and loose change - and he was still playing when I left). Unfortunately for him, when the girls were ready to leave, they admitted to both being taken (one was engaged, one had a boyfriend). I thought that was really poor form from the girls. I mentioned it to my supervisor, and he was of the belief that it doesn't matter whether someone is taken. He said that if you want something, you should take it. I asked him how he would feel if some guy was flirting with his girlfriend, and he replied with:
If you love someone, set them free; if they come back, it was meant to be, if they don't... hunt them down and kill them.
I couldn't really tell if he was joking or not, but then I came across this thing in mX where a girl wrote in asking other readers for advice.
"My boyfriend is going on a world trip and I'm scared he'll cheat. What do I do?"
-Worried, mX Friday, May 1
"What happens on tour stays on tour. Let him have his holiday romance and he'll come home to you."
"Worried, chances are he will cheat when he's away. It's part of the experience. if that's not OK with you, move on and save the worrying."
"Worried, give your boyfriend the best going away present before he leaves - then he'll know anyone else can only give him second best."
"Tell him you're not waiting for him. If it's true love, he will fight for you on his return. Then you don't have to worry about something you can't change."
"If he truly loves you he shouldn't have the heart to leave you for so long."
"If you're so worried about your man cheating then maybe there is a bigger issue going on. And it's probably best to address that first."
There's something I've spoken to Julian about a couple of times, and it's the idea of letting MrMan5.5 have another girlfriend. The rationale behind it is, if we never break up, he'll never know what else is out there. He'll have nothing for comparison, and he might be in the worst relationship ever, but he'll never ever know because he doesn't know that there could be something better out there! Julian ended up marrying his first girlfriend (without having dated anyone else in between), and he said that he doesn't mind it - although he has only been married for a month, so only time will tell. Hopefully it doesn't turn out bad though - fingers crossed!
Anyway, I thought a good time would be when I go overseas. One factor I hadn't taken into account with the whole second girlfriend thing was that I would still be influencing him, so he might decide to spend time with me instead of her just because it's easier - since we're past that awkward just-starting-to-go-out stage. So if I'm on the other side of the world, it won't be so easy for him to ask me to go over to his house to watch DVDs, or eat pizza. Physical presence seems to change so much. The way I thought about all of the Perth WoW guys was so different before and after I met them IRL, and talking to them online just doesn't feel the same - although it is so much easier to think up things to say to Kalg when it's not face-to-face.
I'm so curious though. If he knew what it was like to have a different girlfriend, would he regret having asked me out? I asked him, and he said that even though I gave him permission, to him it would still feel like cheating and he didn't want to do it. Curiosity. T____________________T
Monday, 20 April 2009
What Are the Chances?
Given that I've been practically living at work this past week, you can probably guess what's on my mind. Seeing as it's bad customer service to tell people that their "systems" are complete crap, and I'd probably get fired for it, I guess I'll have to complain here instead. I've picked up on a couple of "systems" that people seem to have for beating roulette, and the most common ones seem to involve red/black or the two out of three dozens bet.
The first one is the idea that if you see someone spin a long line of numbers that are one colour (say black), then a red is sure to come up next (see: Gambler's fallacy)! That happened last night, when I had a streak of seven black numbers on my board. So I had a guy start to bet on red. Unfortunately for him, I spun a few more black numbers and then a zero, and then two more black numbers, and by that time, he had run out of money. It's true that the chance of getting a hundred billion numbers of one colour is low (1/2^hundred billion), but on any one spin, the chance of getting either colour is the same (48.6%, or 47.3% on a double-zero wheel). Work-Paul says that if anything, you should bet the streak, rather than trying to bet the opposite colour, although I'm of the opinion that both are bad lines of thinking.
Although, there are the people who have the idea that they can bet red/black, and if they lose, they just bet again and double their last bet, and keep doing that until they win, so eventually they will win, winning back their loses, as well as their original bet. Eg. You bet $5 on red, but lose. So you bet $10 on red, and win, getting you $10, leaving you with a total of $20, minus the $15 (5 + 10) that you bet, you made a profit of $5. It does work in theory, but if you think about it, you have two things working against you. First is the table maximum. You can only bet up to a certain amount, and while even on the cheapest table the max is $1000 for red/black, you might be really unlucky. The second thing is, the bets get out of control really quickly. The second thing is, the bets get out of control really quickly. I should really have just linked the wiki article (Martingale Betting System), thanks Julian and YC for reminding me what his name was.
| No. Losses in a Row | Current Bet | Cumulative Amount |
| 1 | 5 | 5 |
| 2 | 10 | 15 |
| 3 | 20 | 35 |
| 4 | 40 | 75 |
| 5 | 80 | 155 |
| 6 | 160 | 315 |
| 7 | 320 | 635 |
| 8 | 640 | 1275 |
| 9 | 1280 | 2555 |
| 10 | 2560 | 5115 |
So if you'd be risking over $300 if you were unlucky and happened to get 5 losses in a row (which I have seen - I managed to spin three zeroes in a row once - and zero in roulette is neither odd, even, red, nor black), and even after only 8 losses in a row, you've already hit the table maximum if you're going to try and win your money back. All to make a measly $5, which if you really had $5115 to risk, you'd have to be asking yourself why you're going to so much trouble for $5.
The second bad line of thinking is the two dozens/columns idea. If you bet red/black, odd/even/1-18/19-36, your chances are just under 50% of winning, but some people have the idea that if you bet two out of the three dozens/columns, your chances of winning are better than that (which is true), and so it's kinda like you're beating the system! For the non-roulette players, you can bet on three different dozens, 1-12/13-24/25-36, or on three columns (imagine the board divided into three columns) and if any of those numbers comes up, you win back twice what you bet (and you keep your bet).
So say you bet $5 on both the first and second dozens, if any numbers between 1 and 24 come up, you win $10 (double your bet), but you lose $5 (since at least one of your bets will have lost), leaving you with a total of $15 (10 + 5, the bet that won) minus the $5 you lost, meaning you won $5. However, if any numbers between 25 and 36 comes up, or a zero, then you lose $10.
Your chances of winning $5 are 24/37 (on a single zero wheel) = 0.65
Your chances of losing $10 are 13/37 (on a single zero wheel) = 0.35
Your expected return = (0.65 x $5) + (0.35 x -$10) = -$0.25
Chances are you will lose your money, so why do people keep insisting that this is a sure way to win?! T_T I guess if you're only playing for a few spins, then this is one of the better odds you can get on the table, but it's not a good idea long term.
To be honest, after a month of working there, I've only seen one winning system:
...you've got to ask yourself one question: Do [you] feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?
Thursday, 2 April 2009
Saving Up!
OK, so since I've started working, and after I've paid myself back for Christmas and my "21st", I've saved a grand total of $1725.84, plus the money I had saved up before that, but that I don't really want to touch because I'm kinda saving it for a car/moving out (yes, it'll happen someday!). I'm still a bit uncertain about whether I should go to Italy. While I have wanted to go since high school, I know it'll still be there in a few years, but hopefully the economic crisis won't be, and it'll probably be better to travel when things aren't so bad. Plus, Julian suggested I travel around Australia, so that if I am spending money, at least it'll go back into the Australia economy, rather than overseas. The only thing is, other than the Monopoly streets, there isn't really anything that I want to see on the other Australian states. It's not like they have lots and lots of pizza or anything... >_>
Since I'm not training full time any more, my roster is kinda all over the place, and I can't really rely on a set income now, so MrMan5.5 suggested I work out how much spending money I want to leave myself every week (or fortnight, since I get paid fortnightly), and move the rest into a savings account that I can't touch.
So I tried to work out what my spending habits are like, and this is what I came up with:
Lunch $5 x 5 = $25
Dinner $20 x 3 = $60
Movie $15 x .5 = $7.50
Baking $15 x .25 = $3.75
LAN $2.50 x 1.5 = $3.75
I figure I have lunch at uni every weekday, dinner weekends and usually one weekday, see a movie every couple of weeks, bake something at least once a month (chocolate is expensive T_T), LAN for a few hours every couple of weeks, and that works out to be a weekly cost of $100.
I get about $16 an hour after tax and other costs, so if I work the minimum of 2 shifts a week, 8 hours per shift, I'll be making $256 a week, that lets me save $156 a week.
Let's say I leave for Italy in Feb next year, so there are about 36 weeks to save money, leaving me $5616, plus the $1725.84 that I've already saved. I kinda thought I should leave about $1000 for presents and Christmas so I don't go into Christmas debt again this year, which leaves:
$6341.84
I figured it'd cost at least $10,000 for a trip overseas, maybe even more, so the decision to wait a bit before going to Italy is probably a good thing. Just looking at that, do people think that's reasonable? I really have no idea where my money goes, I just get paid, and all of a sudden, I'm broke again, although I have a sinking suspicion that most of it goes towards food, books and DVDs. =/
So thinking of ways to save money, I could probably eat at work, since they feed us food for free - but the more I eat there, the faster I think I'm going to die, so I really don't want to be eating there. T_T I've started using the library a lot more, and renting DVDs rather than buying them. I'm kinda glad MrMan5.5 isn't rich either, because it means neither of us really wants to go to some super fancy restaurant to eat food - and to be honest, most of our "dates" have been at Hungry Jacks or McDonald's, so it's not really like we're spending hundreds of dollars just to spend time with each other, which I really like (although, I don't think eating that food is really all that much better than eating the food at work >_>). Sharon and I have been talking about learning to ride a bike, because other than the initial cost of buying a bike, and possibly the pain of learning to ride it, it's something that's free to do.
I hope that even if I decide not to go to Italy, that I'll still have the motivation to save up money. >_<
Since I'm not training full time any more, my roster is kinda all over the place, and I can't really rely on a set income now, so MrMan5.5 suggested I work out how much spending money I want to leave myself every week (or fortnight, since I get paid fortnightly), and move the rest into a savings account that I can't touch.
So I tried to work out what my spending habits are like, and this is what I came up with:
Lunch $5 x 5 = $25
Dinner $20 x 3 = $60
Movie $15 x .5 = $7.50
Baking $15 x .25 = $3.75
LAN $2.50 x 1.5 = $3.75
I figure I have lunch at uni every weekday, dinner weekends and usually one weekday, see a movie every couple of weeks, bake something at least once a month (chocolate is expensive T_T), LAN for a few hours every couple of weeks, and that works out to be a weekly cost of $100.
I get about $16 an hour after tax and other costs, so if I work the minimum of 2 shifts a week, 8 hours per shift, I'll be making $256 a week, that lets me save $156 a week.
Let's say I leave for Italy in Feb next year, so there are about 36 weeks to save money, leaving me $5616, plus the $1725.84 that I've already saved. I kinda thought I should leave about $1000 for presents and Christmas so I don't go into Christmas debt again this year, which leaves:
$6341.84
I figured it'd cost at least $10,000 for a trip overseas, maybe even more, so the decision to wait a bit before going to Italy is probably a good thing. Just looking at that, do people think that's reasonable? I really have no idea where my money goes, I just get paid, and all of a sudden, I'm broke again, although I have a sinking suspicion that most of it goes towards food, books and DVDs. =/
So thinking of ways to save money, I could probably eat at work, since they feed us food for free - but the more I eat there, the faster I think I'm going to die, so I really don't want to be eating there. T_T I've started using the library a lot more, and renting DVDs rather than buying them. I'm kinda glad MrMan5.5 isn't rich either, because it means neither of us really wants to go to some super fancy restaurant to eat food - and to be honest, most of our "dates" have been at Hungry Jacks or McDonald's, so it's not really like we're spending hundreds of dollars just to spend time with each other, which I really like (although, I don't think eating that food is really all that much better than eating the food at work >_>). Sharon and I have been talking about learning to ride a bike, because other than the initial cost of buying a bike, and possibly the pain of learning to ride it, it's something that's free to do.
I hope that even if I decide not to go to Italy, that I'll still have the motivation to save up money. >_<
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