Really Old

[Kellemora]

In nearly every gambling game, the odds are in favor of the house, some games more than others.
The house has fixed rules they must follow, but the player can always opt for another card which might blow his hand.
One would think the odds of getting a flush holding 4 spades and there only being 4 suits in the deck that your odds are 1 in 4 of hitting a flush. But the truth of the matter is, your odds of hitting a flush is more like 1 in 16 tries. So when you shoot for that flush, you normally end up with nothing usable in your hand.
Roulette is a big profit maker for the house, even if they let you bet on splits and corners. Even/Odd or Red/Black odds are not 50%, there is also 2 Green holes on that wheel.

Sounds like you were probably much better at playing chess than I ever hoped to get.
I couldn't remember the patterns when they stared me in the face many times over.

There was another fad game that popped up for a while and many of us moved into paying it, for a while anyhow, then the fad died. I don't remember the name of it, but it was played on a roll out naugahyde board with glass pebbles.

[yogi]

The nature of randomness is that all possible events have an equal potential to manifest. Randomness is why the phenomena of entropy is a foundation of physics. Everything in existence is seeking a balanced state. Games we call gambling violate that rule of randomness when the house intervenes to adjust the outcome of the event. As I mentioned earlier, this alteration of the laws of physics is a necessity for the Casino to stay in business. Everybody knows what is going on, or they should know.

I learned to play chess at a park district field house quite by chance. All my games were played against peers who had no better understanding or skills than I had. It wasn't until I joined the Motorola chess club that I encountered people who consistently played better than I did. When you play those kind of games your skills naturally improve. At least they did in my case. I got to be pretty good at chess, but I was not good enough to be a regular member of the official team. I always regretted that.

I can't think of any game that needed glass pebbles and a Naugahyde board. It probably was not Chinese Checkers, but I loved that game too.

[Kellemora]

Our Internet was out from 8am when I got to my office, until about 1 pm.
Just as I logged in my first stop of the day, our Electric went out and didn't come back on until 7:15 pm.
A whole day I got to use to catch up on my accounting, hi hi.

The name of the game was PENTE, not the board game, the one that came rolled up in a tube.
They are considered vintage already, hi hi.

When a Casino uses Real Cards for a game, their odds are only like 1 to 2% in favor of the house.
But then it does depend on the game also, and whether you are betting against the house or playing with other players.

[yogi]

I noted your absence for most of yesterday, and the day before. I know you can't promise to be here on any regular schedule, but you have been somewhat consistent with your past appearances. Thus when you are AWOL, I get a little concerned about your well being. I'm glad you were given an opportunity to catch up on your accounting and that the reason for your late posts was not more serious than that.

A couple nights ago some severe storms crossed the area. All we got out of that was the lights flickering once. The UPS clicked but there was no interruption in power. I can't tell you how happy that makes me. LOL On average I don't use a lot of power here in the Command and Control Center and my battery backup should sustain operations for nearly an hour. Most power outages in the past have been greater than that, but recently they have become very short when they do happen. Then again, even with the battery backup I might not be able to maintain an Internet connection. It all depends on what's going on at the Spectrum office. If they too lose power, my UPS would be useless. Well, I can shut down gracefully. But that's about it.

I played blackjack at the casino in San Juan, Puerto Rico, one time I happen to be there on business. I thought I knew the game which is why I went to their table with $20 worth of chips. I was prepared to lose it all. There was a spot on the table for [Insurance}. I never heard of it before that time and frankly didn't know what to do with it. I asked the guy next to me but he was vague and said it's protection against the dealer having blackjack, or something. So I put a chip there and nothing happened. Next round the dealer added another chip to the lone chip I placed there originally. Hmmm. Still clueless I left them and if I recall correctly they stayed there for several hands. Then suddenly the pile grew again. I could not discern any correlation between the dealers hand and the payout, but I took about half the chips back and left the others to ride. Well, needless to say I lost it all but a single chip that I kept for a souvenir. As far as I could tell, the big benefit from that insurance square was to take a little longer to lose all my chips.

[Kellemora]

Most places I lived in St. Louis County we were on a grid.
If electric failed on one half of the grid, we got power from the other half of the grid.
The only time our electric was out was if both sides of the grid were down. Very Rare!

Down here in Knox County, electric is supplied point to point, no grid to speak of.
So any interruption from power source to main substation, or distribution substation, or local substation to you house, you are without power.

Not to long ago a car hit a utility pole, on a side road yet, that knocked out the power to the local substation. It took them 30 hours to repair.
Now if something like that happened back in St. Louis County, they would redirect power from the distribution to a second local substation that could feed your area. Almost every electrical feed system was a dual system.
Think of Power Distribution Line A on the East side of your subdivision, and another Power Distribution line B on the West side of your subdivision. If either DLA or DLB went down, you wouldn't know it at your house. The only way you would be without power is if BOTH DLA and DLB were not getting power, or the distribution line on your own street was down, or the transformer to you and your neighbors houses failed, or the fuse blew, hi hi.

Comcast was down for a good portion of our area all morning, including the businesses they served.
Around 1 pm the Cable TV part came up, and around 1:15 pm the Internet came up.
But no sooner than it did, our power went out. Didn't get it back until 7:15 pm.

Also interesting was our cell phones did not work from around 8 am until around 10 am.
I guess that shouldn't surprise me since most of our cell towers here are tied into the Internet.
But one of the strangest things of all is, even if the stores all have electric, it is hit and miss which ones have Internet service or not. Those with satellite dishes are usually up and running after a pause, but all the smaller stores, if the Internet is out on the main drag, it affects most of them, but not all.
That being said, there are like 4 to 6 different secondary trunk lines running down Chapman Highway.
AT&T is the only one who's Fiber Optics are buried underground, and one other is working on getting theirs underground.
But not Comcast of course, since they lease from AT&T in areas it is available to them.

It's been over 20 years since I played BJ at a Casino.
But an Insurance on the Dealer having BJ, is usually only available if the dealer has an Ace showing.
If you do put a chip or amount up to half of your original bet on the hand, and the dealer did get BJ, it pays 2 to 1.
The odds are 33% of a BJ by the dealer.

Some players will put a chip on the Insurance spot so it is there if the dealer has an Ace up on a hand.
But it also means that you must play 2 chips on your hand, if you only played one chip, the insurance chip will ride and pay nothing, but it won't be taken away either.
I normally did not use the Insurance spot.
FWIW: Many casino's now use a 6 deck shoe, which makes the casino's odds like 7% in their favor.
The more players at the table, the more the casino rakes in.

[yogi]

Thank you for the details on "insurance" in BlackJack. I now understand why the chips sat there for so long. Since I only allocated $20 for my entire adventure in the casino, more than likely I was only betting 1 chip per hand. All I recall is that I spent more than an hour at that table before the original chips and any winnings were given back to the house.

I have a fair understanding of the electric grid and I have a feeling it's more complicated that two sources for a given area. We've lived here for just over five years now and I recall only two or three power outages that lasted more than a few minutes. The very first one lasted several hours because a private plane crashed into some major distribution point somewhere out in the country. We called Ameren to find out when power would return, and all we got was a recording saying they didn't know. LOL The outages during storms seem to be of short duration, but those on calm days last longer. Go figure.

Word on the street is that Spectrum has the best cable service here in the O'Fallon area. When we were new to the area and looking for a service provider the real estate agent suggested them. I did some research and according to the surveys I found Spectrum did indeed rank #1 for customer satisfaction. However, that top spot got only 56% of all the people surveyed to be happy with them. The other two or three services were in the 40% range for customer satisfaction. The Internet portion is pretty reliable, although I swear they throttle it at times. The cable part seems ok but I rarely watch the boob tube. There are times when the picture becomes pixelated. Apparently that is due to low signal level. It's odd because I've seen it happen a few times early on Sunday mornings, before 7AM. I would think that would be a time of light loading on the network. I'm currently sending Spectrum just over $200 a month for phone, Internet, and television service. That's up about $50, or $10 a year, since we first moved in. I've not seen any improvements to account for the increased pricing. I might have to think more seriously about some of those 40% companies if this keeps up.

[Kellemora]

I'm surprised your chips on the Insurance spot held on so long.
If the dealer has an ace face up, and doesn't get BJ, you lose your Insurance Chip.
Despite the odds only being 33%, I've seen a dealer get BJ like 8 times that he had an ace up.
But that is rare, really rare. Well except on electronic games that are rigged, hi hi.

There are many types of grids in the electrical distribution system. The nationwide major grid is why you see a huge chunk of the country go down all at once. There are supposed to be fail-safes in place to prevent that, but they don't always work as they should. As far as major grids go, our local nuclear reactor feeds like 8 or 12 grid systems, and those are linked with other power sources as well. So if one suddenly draws more than three times what it should be drawing, it gets detached. Then once they get it back in balance again, the attachment is restored.

Many years ago, when most of our electric came from the dams or from steam plants, I learned a little bit about both.
If a dam has 6 turbines, they are usually only running 3 of them or 4 of them at peak times, but sometimes they had to kick in the 5th. Plus they rotate around between all 6 of them. Turn on #6 and as it comes up they power down #1, etc. Seems they had to monitor the load fairly close, and power up or power down turbines as necessary to prevent a brownout or overload on the grid.

Locally here, Alcoa Aluminum has their own hydroelectric generating system, and even they only keep 2 of their 4 turbines running at a time. Sometimes only 1 turbine is running. But then as they begin a smelting operation they may have 3 or 4 of them running, plus using electric from the grid. Their smelters use both electric and natural gas, usually at the same time, but how I have no idea. Seems I read they have one heck of a lot of carbon arc rods stockpiled for the smelters, for when they cannot get enough gas.

I know a few folks on Spectrum and they get crazy high Internet speeds most of the time.
Comcast does throttle your speed based on what speed you are paying them for.
But not all cable companies work that way.

[yogi]

As far as my BlackJack insurance goes, it may not have happened exactly as I explained it. It's been 40 years since I've been to that casino and never gambled in any other since. I do recall the chips staying in the insurance square for more than one hand. And I also recall the number of chipa building up to a point where I thought it was prudent to remove half of them. The insurance coverage probably did not last every minute of the time I was there. As I mentioned earlier, I had no clue what it was all about anyway, so that keeping track of it was futile.

The reason why Spectrum was regarded above the rest is due to its Internet speed being 100 Mbps. I have a sniffer on the router and a graph to plot the traffic. It rarely get up to the 100 Mpbs level I'm paying for, which isn't always easy to see since the sniffer is calibrated in MBps. Of course I know that Spectrum's network isn't the limiting factor. The server I'm downloading from and the routing it takes determines what my sniffer sees. But, certain sites are notoriously consistent. Microsoft, for example, will max out my system almost every time I download from them. In fact I've seen 150 Mbps on some of their downloads but never heard from Spectrum that they increased the speed. I can pay them for 300 Mbps, but I'm not aware of any intermediate speed plans they might offer. So, when Microsoft downloads slump to 40 Mbps, I have to wonder. Is it Big Brother in Redmond, or is it Spectrum playing the throttle game?

Ameren Missouri had a big campaign not too long ago regarding the benefits of smart metering. They were supposed to upgrade all their customers, but I don't recall them doing anything but cutting trees away from their power lines and using a helicopter to do it. I'm guessing my electric meter is smart and the network it's connected to has some brains as well. The outages here are probably less than what I experienced up north, but then the grid up there was way bigger than what is going on here. The density was also much greater than I now am part of.

[Kellemora]

The time before last that I was in a Casino was when my cousin came to visit and we took a rural country drive, following those old roads marked Other on road maps. That was a most enjoyable trip as far as sight seeing goes and finding interesting old stores and the like. One road we were on came out by an Indian Reservation and we decided to stop there to spend the night. The hotel had a Casino. I played the slots for a bit, then a wheel of fortune type of game, it was almost like a carnival game. The wheel was vertically mounted and they didn't spin the wheel until every number on it was purchased. Buying a slot took longer than playing the game because they had to go around the players and sell each slot, then repeat among the same players until all slots were sold. There were only like 25 slots on the wheel. Once I figured out how it worked, I would go ahead and buy five slots. The house kept the value of 5 slots for themselves as their fee. I managed hit once in three turns, so was ahead and stopped. We went to dinner and then to bed. Started our journey toward home the next day, still taking the old roads marked Other on the map.

I think some of the websites we visit might still be using dial-up they are so slow, hi hi.

They do a pretty good job of keeping trees away from the main power distribution lines, but very little in older residential areas.
We have Kudzu down here, thanks to the federal government, and it grows so fast, it is not uncommon for it completely cover utility poles and the wires between them in under 3 months time. They do try to keep it cleaned off of some wires, but not others where they just let it go until there is a problem. Like the wires running down a side road to a farm will never get cleaned.
Folks who live in such situations might cut the vines at the utility pole cleaning about a 2 foot gap off the poles, but that's about it.

[yogi]

Several weeks ago there were quite a few stormy days. Some were severe, but most were quite ordinary. As is wont to happen, people started complaining in the local newsletter about the high frequency of power outages. I hadn't noticed more than one, and that was for about 15 minutes or less. Somebody was upset enough to call Ameren Missouri and inquire about the reason for so many outages. The answer was that in spite of Ameren's best efforts, a lot of people are not allowing them on their property to trim the trees. That sounded reasonable at first, but then I got to thinking that all those power lines are on an easement and readily accessible by the power company. The lines from the easement to the residence are the responsibility of the homeowner to maintain. Thus something didn't sound right there. My power lines are all underground. The only visible wires are the high tension lines about a mile off in the distance. Those might suffer lightning strikes, but fallen trees would not be a problem there.

I have mixed feelings about road trips. Generally I have a destination in mind, plan to get there as quickly as possible, and travel the shortest rout. Since I do most of the driving, my time on the road piloting our vehicle can be quite tiring. Boring is more like it. My wife, however, is an explorer. She has no problems traveling 300 miles down a dirt road to get to where she is going. That way, she claims, she avoids all the tension of dodging traffic on the highway. Well there are some interesting things to see off the beaten path, and if that were my goal I'd have no problem doing it. Otherwise straight and to the point is my modus operandi.

I'm not the most frugal person you ever met, but gaming to me is like throwing money away. I don't need to pay to waste my time. However, if I were to get interested in gambling, it probably would be something like horse racing. The time or two I went to the track was quite exciting for the 2.5 minutes the outcome of my $2 bet was being decided. Some people put a lot of effort and study into the horses, but then it gets to be work instead of fun.

[Kellemora]

Hmm, that does sound odd, since they are allowed to climb over fences to get to poles on the easement and do work. We were not allowed to plant anything that grew over 3 or 4 feet high in a utility easement, and they could remove anything in the easement at their discretion. So if you plant there, they can remove it if they want and you can't say anything about it.
I do know they always went to the pole through my yard, because the neighbor behind me had big dogs they were afraid of, hi hi.

I'm like you, if I have to go somewhere, I take the fasted driving route possible.
But the trip with my cousin was simply a sightseeing trip, nothing more.
It just so happened, where we stopped for the night, the hotel was part of a casino, hi hi.
I don't think my cousin got over 35 mph on any stretch of our trip, unless we ended up on a large road that split the road we were following. We hit quite a few areas where the original road was broken by a newer road, so you had to go a half block or so down the new road to continue on the road you were following.

I don't go to inside theaters for any reason, and rarely go anywhere for entertainment purposes.
However, I did have an entertainment fund for myself that was rarely used, so it built up to a tidy sum.
When Debi and her niece would go to the theater, I would put ten bucks in my entertainment bucket, hi hi.

[yogi]

That neighborhood newsletter has quite a few petty complaints in it. The people who post are complaining only to other neighbors who bother to read what is in there. Nothing can actually be resolved via that newsletter but a time or two a responsible party does reply. Like this type of forum, when confronted with reality and facts, the comments start to deteriorate. I'm pretty sure the lady who complained about power outages is one of those the Ameren official was citing for making life difficult. When we moved in and got a list of instructions from all the utility companies, they clearly stated that nothing, as in NOTHING, should be placed within ten feet of a utility box. I have one of those boxes at the corner of my property and I have indeed left it vacant. Two of my neighbors, however, built there fences inside that ten foot perimeter. One is less than a foot away and the other is about 5 feet away. I don't think Ameren would tear down the fences to get at their box, although they have a legal right to do so. They would just let the power stay out until the neighbors moved their fences. LOL

[ocelotl]

It's always a good idea to have a power grid. Specially in areas where getting hit by storms have high possibilities, and specially in major metropolitan areas. As far as I can remember, we down here in the city have had only a major problem where the ammount of people left without power for several hours could be counted in the millions, and it happened within the last two years. Even when being shielded by mountains and altitude, every now and then we get the tail of a tropical storm remnant. Yes, we have floods in the lower parts of the city, but power is restablished quicly, specially in the last 10 years or so.

[Kellemora]

In my mom n dad's subdivision, there was a huge box at the corner of his and two neighbors property lines.
And even though the services were underground, there was a utility pole between each four houses, or in my dads case only three houses. For a short time, until they moved it, the utility pole was in the center of the corner slab of his driveway, not right behind the big metal box like everywhere else. Those who installed it made the mistake so had to move it.
The wiring to each house was fed from the utility pole. A few feet past the big box was a smaller metal tube-like box that belonged to the telephone company. All of their wires were underground to the houses. Cable TV was not on the scene during that era.

[yogi]

The house prior to the one I live in now was custom built by us on unincorporated land. We had to incorporate in order to get a residency permit. All went as well as one could expect until the first power outage. We discovered at that time that the transformer at the corner of our property was at the junction of at least two electrical grid zones. The problem that arose was in regard to which electric company office was responsible for the maintenance and repair. As it happened the two possible responsible parties were in different counties. We were close to the county line as well. There was a delay in getting power back, but we thought the problem was resolved. Next power outage resulted in the same indecision over who was going to flip the blown breaker this time. All that happened the first couple years after which time somebody at the electric company figured it out. After that it normally took an hour to get things running again. Apparently the responsible power company was not the closest power company.

[Kellemora]

Wow, now that is interesting.
I think all of St. Louis County, and some surrounding counties were all handled by Union Electric. I think they changed their name to Ameron UE.
Had an uncle who lived in Crawford County, and that is who they got their electric from.
But when something serious happened, I think Phelps County Electric flipped a switch to power Crawford County until the fixed whatever it was.
Some said it was an old boiler that blew up at the Crawford power plant, others said the boiler didn't blow up, a flywheel exploded. In any case, it took them 3 months before it was repaired.

Where I live here, I can be without electric, but my neighbor is not, because his power comes in from the other end of the street.
I tried to get KUB to connect me to that end of the street, they said no, but they are switching my side of the street over to their new substation. They may have done that, but we are still without power quite often, usually to a pole getting knocked down.

[yogi]

One year, as Chicago is wont to do, a terrible blizzard was forecast. This was not going to be a normal storm, but one of hurricane proportions. They saw it coming a few days ahead of time and were warning people to stock up and prepare to be without power for an extended period of time. To the power company's credit (Commonwealth Edison), since they had advanced warning they called in emergency work crews from surrounding states ahead of the storm. Well, the predictions were correct. It was one hell of a blizzard. My wife of many years was enjoying that month with my daughter down in Florida so that it was just me and the dog to face Old Man Winter. The winds were what they thought they would be but not so bad in my neck of the woods. The strongest parts of the storm lasted for three or four hours, and we did lose power; several times in fact. The power went out and about 15 minutes later it was restored. Twenty minutes later it went out again and was restored just as quickly. This happened at least four times during the blizzard and is the only time in all my years living in that house where the power was restored so quickly. I was singing praises to the power company for calling in the extra troops. Ask Silver Yogi about it. It was there with me during that horrible storm.

[Kellemora]

Twice when I lived in Missouri, a tornado took out the main distribution towers, leaving us without electric for three weeks the first time, and two weeks the second time. This was prior to 1960 also. At least we had a dynamo for our greenhouses to keep the boilers up and running. Plus a few generators to keep the flower coolers cold.
Old Uncle Joe was quick to act and acquired an ice cream semi-trailer and parked it behind the greenhouses. So everyone in the family emptied their freezers at home and placed all their stuff in this large freezer.
He also bought about 50 five gallon cans of #1 Diesel, which was enough to keep it running until the power came back on.
I think he had to drive all the way to Illinois to get it too, since nobody's pumps were working.
Dad just kept the stuff from our fridge in the basement flower cooler.
One of our flower coolers had a water cooled compressor, which required an employee to sit there by it and keep filling the tank since we had no water in that building during the power outage. But leave it to ingenuity when faced with a chore like that. The employee took an old steam pipe from the pile of pipes, a chain for the ventilators, the wheels from an old bike without tires, and old tractor inner tubes cut into circles to make a hand cranked pump. Similar to the way the old crank cistern pumps used to work. While building it he still had to carry water for the compressor every 15 minutes or so. But once he finished with it, he could just sit and spin the wheel when the tank got low, hi hi.
I guess I should say, he tried about three other ways first that didn't quite work very well, hi hi.

[yogi]

I cant imagine what I'd do without power for three weeks. I had a 2500 watt generator at the old house which was intended to run the sump pumps and a spare fridge we kept in the garage. The problem with that was that the generator only ran for about an hour on a tank of gas. I had a two gallon container for gasoline, but that was used for the lawn mower and not always full. Fortunately we only had to fire up the generator for it's intended purpose one time. The power was out for something like 17 hours. I ran the generator for one hour and kept it off for one hour. No food was spoiled and the basement stayed dry. It was after that outage that I had a battery backup sump pump installed.

The few times we were without electric power for any length of time were challenging in the sense that there is nothing to do without power. We lit candles and read books, but for me that only works for about ten minutes. LOL It's a bit amazing how life comes to a screeching halt when the electricity is not available. After three weeks all the battery operated devices would be dead and anything that needed gasoline probably would be dead as well. I guess that all depends on the extent of the outage. A distribution tower covers a big area.

[Kellemora]

I had a huge China Diesel generator at my old house. After a fight with the electric company I ran it for a full year. At the end of the year when we switched back to UE, based on my past electric bills, I was like 3 bucks ahead of the game. Now if it was legal to sell electric to my neighbors, I could have doubled my money for each one.
It only used about 45 gallons per month running continuously.
The only thing bad about having only one is you have to shut it down to change the oil and fuel heater filter.

The last time our electric was out here, we had enough LED lights I could still work my jigsaw puzzle, hi hi.