Two Cents and a Thousand Words

I’m not exactly sure why I’ve been so lazy lately. I mean, I have things to do — things I want to get done before the summer comes — but I just can’t bring myself to do them. A month from tomorrow I’ll be out of school.

Here’s a small list of what I want to do before May 17: update my web page, catch up on e-mail and message boards, plan some New Media Society activities, organize the papers that have been piling up in my room, and get through my past TSS episodes that I have on tape. But here I am, sitting, blogging, not getting anything really accomplished. Who knows. Hopefully it will all work out.

The weather doesn’t help; today was one of the most beautiful days in months. Who wants to sit and organize papers or e-mail when I could be biking or walking around campus? I guess I could take my laptop to the Mall and get some work done while sitting in the sun, but that hasn’t happened yet.

Unforgettable image of the day: a three-year-old walking around campus with his dad searching for the Black Bear footprint markers along the campus walking tour route. Why’s this so special? He ran between each of the blue pawprints calling ‘I found another clue!‘ Sorry. It’s cute. On a bright, sunny day, the first of the year, I’m allowed to have something cute in my blog.

And I don’t know about this… Steve’s leaving Blue’s Clues to go to college? The show will never be the same… [ahem]

I just came back from listening to a small discussion on the MLTI (Maine Learning Technology Initiative, also known as the laptop plan). A teacher from PCMS spoke about their laptop program. Though I was one of the only students there (the rest was basically professors and teachers from the area), I learned a lot about how the laptop program could be initiated. It also reminded me how much I would like to be a technology coordinator for a school (ideally HA)… I’d love to help with this plan, even if I worked at a high school when only 7th and 8th grade Maine students get laptops. She was talking about some of the problems and troubleshooting, and it reminded me of the type of work I did at HA. I want to do that.

I’m in the education lab right now typing this, and I think I’m going to go outside until I have my new media class. It’s warm, it’s sunny, and I’ve been riding my bike around campus all day between classes.

Winning it big at the casino is something that a lot of us dream of, and we would do anything to be on our way to the top. However, sometimes these dreams can come crashing down as soon as you step foot on the casino floor. We’ve seen too many players struggle with financial problems or get shut out of their dream slot games for that reason.

The purpose of this article is to share with you a few tips and tricks that can help you navigate the ever-evolving slot game industry.

The Casino Game Industry What Is It?

The term “slot” covers a wide range of gaming devices and it can be hard to keep track of it all. You can find slots in just about every style of casino. Some are slot machines and some are slots of different denominations. Some casinos play games for real money, but others are free. Most casinos have different machines available for different slot games, but at the end of the day, they are all slots.

Some of the more popular types of slot machines are blackjack, craps, roulette, and video poker. When you see “blackjack” on a casino’s sign, you know it’s a slot machine. When you see “gambling” on a casino’s sign, you know it’s a casino. The only type of slot game that exists in every casino in the country is “video poker.” Most casinos have additional slots for slots games like roulette, baccarat, craps, blackjack, and video poker. There are also slots for more casual, “old-fashioned” games like billiards and pool.

In a slot machine, you push a button and win a dollar for each successful spin. On a modern slot machine, your winnings come in at a fraction of a penny. Video poker machines give you a fixed amount of money when you get a “high score,” but there’s no way to take the machine home with you. A video poker machine can be played by only two players (it was once legal to play video poker with up to two people, but that law was repealed in 1993), and there’s a lot of time required for players to beat the machine.

So, in the 1980s, slot machines went online, but only after the internet became available to everyone. That meant that the existing players were cut out of the industry and were forced to find other ways to earn money. This opened up opportunities for new kinds of games: online poker, for example, had a very small player base initially. The problem was that online poker players would be more successful at finding good games than the people who played on slot machines, so the industry pushed online poker heavily. This created a situation where the new online poker players had limited income from slot machines, and a lot of the players who played online poker still do.

We don’t need a full-blown version of the current online poker industry, and we certainly don’t need to build a completely unregulated industry. All I want is to be able to look at the FanDuel sportsbook and place my bets without getting interrupted.

For all four years of high school, I spent an afternoon a month workiing out some pretty difficult math problems at schools all across Eastern Maine. Of course, now with calculus off of my interest list, I would’ve thought going back to the math team would’ve been one of the things pretty low on my ToDo list. That was my thought until today, however.

I happened to see one of the UMaine event directional signs pointing towards Alfond Arena while I was walking to COM 103. It didn’t take me long to remember that the state meet is always held on one of the first Wednesdays in April, and one of the possible yearly locations is Alfond. After psych, I decided to check in on my old buddies.

I walked into Alfond just as they were reading the answers to the final individual round, right before the lunch break. Everything was the same… the sighs and cheers every time an answer was read and the hundreds of tables with math students huddled around them on the Alfond floor. I couldn’t help but laugh (and be thankful I was done with it). After everyone started to leave for lunch, I went down on the floor and caught up with Miss Lynch and the good ol’ HAMT. It’s a good team, and they were in second in their division after two rounds. I talked with most of them about how their years were going, where they were going to college, and the normal stuff. I talked to Andrea Palmer for a while about what she was doing and how I was doing at UMaine. I was also glad to hear that Mike, Ben, and Sam are all either thinking or have decided to come to Maine. It brought me back to my senior year: all the decisions, all the APs. We talked about stupid mistakes, we talked about calcluator games (including on my now-legal TI-89, even though it’s now only allowed on the team round, something I couldn’t’ve standed). I was glad to talk with Miss Lynch and Mr. Worthley about their years and about how I was doing.

As far as the math went, I looked through some scrap paper and saw the same old kinds of problems. I was also both amazed and very pleased to hear and see that the freshmen–yes, the freshmen–on the team were scoring 30 and 40 points, compared to the top scorers on the team with about 50. The tradition continues.

And the Class of 2001 can definitely say they had an impact on EMML: one of the non-creative teams felt that they should copy our t-shirt idea about non-integer numbers {sqrt(2), infinity, pi, -0, etc.}. Oh, well, imitation is the highest form of flattery, I guess. 🙂

Well, I got confirmation today that I’ll have something to do this summer.

What, you ask? Well, I’ll be helping out in Hampden and Bangor through the GO@LS program. It’s a great program devoted to teaching teachers, librarians, and the public how to use technology and the Internet. It should be a lot of fun, and I think I’ll have some leadership part in it, too, setting up something in Hampden. It has variety, which I love; a little travel, which I’d like; and… oh yeah, playing with computers. Gotta love that. I’ve always liked teaching people how to use these things, and I can’t wait to do it as a job. I think it could be a really good experience to see how I like it and get paid some and keep busy in the process. It’s good all around.

So we lost. Yup, overtime, sudden death, to Minnesota. But hey, you know what? I don’t care.

I followed the team fairly closely throughout the year, and I saw them really grow into a great team that really worked together. Even though they lost to UNH in the Hockey East finals, they kicked their… well, they beat them 7-2 in the NCAA semi’s. Am I proud to have a hockey team in the NCAA finals again? Of course. It was great to have them accomplish that while I was going to school here. After they beat UNH I biked around campus and the atmosphere was amazing… everyone was very excited and pumped. We’re all proud of them still.

I really salute Coach Whitehead for succeeding in filling Shawn Walsh’s shoes as much as he possibly could. He did a great job with the team, and standing by the memorial 01 jersey of Shawn, he really led them. Coach Walsh would be proud… even more now that the Interim designation has been dropped from Whitehead’s coach title. The entire team did a great job.

Well, I have a new toy again.

This one’s the New iMac. It’s been really interesting to see the reaction of the people around the dorms; it’s ranged from love (the Mac guys around the dorm practically fondle the thing) to hate (my roommate, extremely anti-Mac, has dubbed it the Desk Lamp of Doom). I personally think it’s the best computer I’ve ever had. I was finally able to transfer my files from my $20 Linux box to my new iMac using an Ethernet crossover cable and a few tweaks, so now I have my complete music collection on my digital hub. I’ve played around some with iTunes and iPhoto, and I also love the combo CD-RW/DVD drive. I’ve also been downloading software left and right; my newest picks are Fire (an all-in-one IM program) and various screen savers. You’ll hear about those soon enough, don’t you worry. But for now, I think I’ll go back to working and playing with my new machine.

It couldn’t have happened at a worse time. I have a speech to do on Friday.

So I’m 19 now.

I got some wonderful birthday wishes on Leoville and from most of my friends, but I wasn’t able to see them for long. I kept busy today, that’s for sure; after my classes I went to the Bangor library to find out some details about a promising job opportunity this summer. Then I went down to Hampden to take some photographs for my visual aid / persuasive speech I’m doing on Friday, and then I went out to dinner at Governor’s with my parents. I bought myself a couple presents: a frame for the photo I got for my birthday and some CDs for cheap to name a couple.

All in all, it was a really great day. Add to that some good quality April Fool’s jokes (once again, Google led the pack [or flock], especially because we learned about Skinner’s views today in psych). I love birthdays. Too bad it was rainy. Oh, well, I’m off to bed. I’m tired and I have a headache. Birthdays are a lot of work.

Well, I was lucky enough to have one of my best birthdays ever yesterday, even though I don’t turn 19 until tomorrow.

Yesterday afternoon my three grandparents and one of my uncle were all in the same house for the first time in years; I got to see them all at once at home. It was great talking to them all at once and getting to see everyone again. I felt like it was easier to talk to them when there was a group there instead of just one or two people.

And of course, I got some really great presents, and some really great cake and ice cream. I received PHP 4 Bible, a very nice custom-embroidered University of Maine blue polo shirt, a color reprint of my favorite newspaper photograph ever, SimGolf, a headlight/taillight combo for my bike, a Borders gift card, and some cards and money. Not to mention, of course, the iMac I’ll be receiving soon. 🙂

Above all, it was great to go home, see my parents, Jemma, and my relatives, and just relax for a weekend. I didn’t even have any homework, so it was a great experience.