Blow You Away

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

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.

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.

English: How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

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?

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.

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.

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!

Why We Do It

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