I did what most people do, played a few slots here and there and, of course, not winning anything.

So I decided to put all the Blackjack practice and tweaking I’ve done to the test and… Came out $55 ahead. The next day I tried it again and $55 bucks ahead and tomorrow I’ll try it again.

First, don’t play slots it’s 100% chance. Play a table game, others may give better odds, but blackjack is my game.
Here are my tips:

1) LEARN TO PLAY! If you do stuff like hit on 16 when the dealer has a 5 showing, or split 10s… These hints won’t help. There are LOTS of the little cards that show you how to bet. Learn the chart and practice for free on the computer, your phone, online, whatever. Learn the chart!

2) Always have AT LEAST 10 times the amount of the minimum bet.
For instance, if the table is $10 minimum, make sure you have AT LEAST $100.
You’re going to lose some hands, no way around that, you need to have money to float until you start winning.

3) Come up with a betting strategy. DO NOT double your bet when you lose to try and make your bet back. Here’s my method that works well:
- Bet the minimum
- Next bet (win or lose) bet the minimum again.
- next bet, if you won twice, double the bet. If you lost, bet the minimum.
- keep adding the minimum to the bet (if you win) but don’t get greedy, you’re going to lose eventually. I usually keep adding up to four bets in a row, then will reset to minimum bet.
- any time you lose, reset your betting.

For instance, let’s say it’s a $5 minimum and I keep winning hands, here is my betting:
$5 - $5 - $10 - $15 - $20 - $25 - $5

This way, after that second minimum, you’re playing with their money.
If you get a blackjack, count it as a regular win.

4) Dont get scared! Stick to the betting method, even if you’re low.

5) if your money is gone, walk away. You can’t win every single time so only bet with what you can afford to lose and don’t fall into the trap of trying to win it back, save it for the next day or next trip.

6) SET AN UPPER LIMIT! Your lower limit is zero, but make sure you set an upper limit as well. A good rule of thumb is to stop when you’ve won 1/2 the amount you started with.
For instance, if you sit at the table with $100, walk away when you have $150.

Some do not dos:
Don’t get greedy, walk away at your upper limit.

Don’t try to win your money back if you’re out, walk away.

Don’t Drink when playing, I know it’s fun but you’ll start doing dumb things.

That’s about it, again you have to learn to play first. Go find one of those charts.

Good luck!
I wrote this on my iPhone, so if it needs editing I’ll fix it when I get home.

** update 9/26
Another $50 this morning, that’s 3 days in a row.

I understand what they’re doing, trying to reinvent themselves as a “hip” company.. but they’re just not and it was a really poor attempt.

That got me thinking about the three main OSs out there - OSX, Windows and Linux (whatever distro).
I started thinking about what I thought the roles should be and here’s what I think:

In a corporate environment:
Linux servers with Windows desktops

At home:
OSX

Linux is a GREAT and stable OS, but it’s not ready for a desktop OS.
It’s still a pain to configure and get stuff installed… although it’s come a FAR way since I first started using it.

Microsoft has the market cornered with the corporate desktop OS.
They’re not hip and never will be.
Strip all the fluff out of Windows and stick to the corporate environment.. it’s a stale corporate OS and it flourishes there… just keep it that way.

OSX is a fun, multi-media centric OS that promotes ease of use and creativity.. perfect for the home environment, not so good for corporate.

I prefer OSX, but I don’t hate any other OS. My main machine is OSX but I have, and probably always will, a Windows and Linux box.

Find a nitch and stick to it, don’t try to take over the world.

This is all just IMHO.. don’t bash me too bad.

Then I just checked the App Store and saw ‘Geopher Tools’. It looks like a Geocacher’s iPhone companion and has a hand held GPSish navigation screen.

Basically you can check Geocaching.com for caches in your are, put the coords in the app and the arrow points your way… I think I might be upgrading sooner than I thought.

I know you can do it with just the Google Maps, just put the coordinates in the map application and make sure your blue dot is heading in the right direction, but this one shows you distance, coordinates for your current location and digital compas.. cool stuff in the App Store tonight.

Since I found out about this little gem I can’t stop reading about it and see it everywhere I look. There’s WAY too much to list about it, so I won’t go into details until I get my review up, but here’s a Google link so you can read until your hearts content.. or you get sick.

It’s supposed to be the best iPhone clone out there, but I wanted to see if it could even come close to my beloved iPhone so I just ordered one to play with.

It’ll be here in a week or so, so after I play with it for a while I’ll write up a review.. should be interesting.

– Update –
Ok, I just got an email that it’s on the way.

I’m guessing it will probably be here by Monday, so hopefully around Wednesday I’ll put up the review.

I love most apple products and own a few. I have an intel iMac, still my old iMac G3, Macbook, Airport Extreme, an iPod nano and an iPhone… and I’m toying with the idea of getting an Apple TV.

Really though, I’m starting to get a little afraid that Apple is stretching themselves too much…

I’m kind of scared that Apple is going to fall in to the trap of trying to do too much and getting away from their core competencies.

They make GREAT computers and the best (in my opinion) OS available.
Without a doubt, the iPod reinvigorated the company and they’re (again in my opinion) the best MP3 players available.
Then there is all the fantastic software they have released and are currently in release.

Then the Airport /Airport Extreme, AppleTV, iPhone… now there’s rumors abound that they are planning on making a video game console (did anyone actually own a PipPin?.

That really scares me, the more they try to do the more they’ll be losing focus on what it means to be Apple.

A few things that pop in to my mind are:
1) all the bugs related to Leopard
2) The “new” iMovie that is much slower and feature limited than the previous iMovie
3) The AppleTV update that has the most non Apple-like interface I’ve ever seen on an Apple device.

Apple please focus on what you do best and keep doing it, it seems like you’re starting to lose the ‘It just works’ tagline and that would be a shame.

When something good happens in their life they praise God for it, when they are about to go into a situation of conflict (on many levels) they say that “God is on my side”.

My question is how many people REALLY believe in God and how many people just say they believe because they’re afraid not to?

I believe that there are people that truly believe in the existence of a God, whoever your god may be.

I believe that when they go to church, or pray, or ask for forgiveness they are doing so because they truly believe they are being heard and listened to.

As far as I’m concerned that’s great! If someone can have that strong of a belief and if it brings them that much joy and or comfort that’s great, I’m all for that!

Personally I’m agnostic, I can’t say I truly believe or truly disbelieve in God. I’ve never heard, seen or experienced anything in my life that would prove the existence of God. By the same token, I’ve never heard, seen or experienced anything that would disprove it as well.

Basically I am on the fence, I’ll believe it when I see it.

I’ve heard a LOT of people that say “It will be too late by then, you need to believe and worship him now.”. I just think that’s silly, if there is a God I just can’t believe that he would be that petty.

First of all, if there is some sort of all-powerful being, do you really think he cares if we worship him or not?

Second, I’m a good person, I lead a good life, I’m good to people and if there is a God he’s going to punish me because I wasn’t sure if I believe in him or not? Wouldn’t the all-powerful creator of everything have a little more compassion and understanding than that?

When I ask if you really believe in God or are just afraid not to, that’s the type of thing I’m talking about. Wouldn’t God be much happier with someone that was honest about their beliefs then someone who pretended to believe but didn’t really and was just wasting their time?

Just the term “God Fearing” kind of says it all. I realize it’s an antiquated term and it for a lot of people it doesn’t actually mean they’re afraid of God, but for a lot of people it means exactly that because they’re afraid of the consequences if they don’t.

Basically the whole point of this latest ramble is this:

If you believe in whoever your God is, that’s great and more power to you!

If you flat out don’t believe or are on the fence, like I am, then be honest with yourself, everyone else, and whatever else might be out there.

I lost a couple of posts and all the comments, but I think I pretty much got everything back up. I couldn’t even restore from my backup it was so bad!

I apologize if some of the posts look a little funky, I should have them sorted out soon.

I’ve sent out an email to all the existing members with temporary passwords, sorry for the inconvenience.

You’re not African-American, Asian-American, Mexican-American, etc… You’re just American… get over it!

Let me clarify that statement a bit.

If you were born in America, you’re American. If you were born in another country, then I could see you saying you’re Insert_country_name-American.

And before people rant about “American”, yes I know America is the continent, but South American countries have names, Canada is north of us and through the entire world the country is known as America (when it’s officially United States of America).. so get over that as well.

Even French-Canadian, what’s up with that. If you were born in Canada, you’re Canadian. If you were born in Germany, you’re German. If you were born in Japan you’re Japanese.

I’ve hear the argument that that people want to distinguish their roots, which is great you should be proud of your roots, but if that’s the case why stop there?

How about I’m Space_Dust-American, or if you’re religious, I’m Adam-American or Eve-American.

The common comment is, because the USA is so young, there’s no such nationality of American. That’s just flat out ridiculous. The country is America, if you were born here you’re of American nationality therefore you’re American.

Just like were not black, white, yellow, whatever, we’re just people. In fact people have been trying for a LONG time to break down being distinguished by color.

If you were born in Germany, moved to the US and got your citizenship, then feel free to call yourself a German-Amercan. If you’re just living here, without citizenship then you’re still German… feel free to substitute Germany with any country.

Also, the term Native American… anyone born in America is a Native American. Enough with the labels for everyone already.

Ok, I’m done ranting.

Just about every product they come out with, or announce, I want to get.

Even with all its limitations I considered running out and getting an AppleTV, I didn’t, I thought about it.

The MacBook Air is the first Apple product in a long time that I just really don’t want.

Don’t get me wrong, it looks really slick and the screen is beautiful. I can’t by any means say it’s a bad machine, it’s just got some limitations that I’ve dealt with before on “ultra-portable laptops”.

The biggest thing for me is no optical drive.
I had a laptop a couple of years ago that had no optical drive (external one), and it was just flat out a pain in the ars.
Sure they play it up that you don’t need it ’cause it has built in 802.11n and they have a way for you to access your drive on another machine (which, you could do before anyway), but for me that won’t cut it.

I deal with a lot of people and a lot of people still give me things on CD / DVD, I don’t want to wait until I get home to load these up, especially if it’s business related.

Then there are CDs and movies. Granted most of my media is ripped, but the thing only has an 80 gig drive on it, so it’s not like I’ll be able to store my whole library on there. Plus, because I don’t like to deal with DRM, I still buy CDs and DVDs and then rip those, so I wouldn’t be able to do that on the road.

No Firewire
I do some multimedia stuff, so most of my external drives are Firewire, I guess enough said about that one.

No Ethernet
Uhh.. did I miss something? Is there no Ethernet port on this thing?

Don’t get me wrong, for the right person this might be a SWEET device, but for me it’s just not going to cut it.

Until the entire world is covered by WiFi, or until they add the ability to get on the cell network, I think the device is just way too limiting.

I’ll just stick with my “old school” MacBook.

Right now this is pretty much for myself since no one is reading my Blog yet, but HAPPY NEW YEAR anyway.

Besides the fact that I shouldn’t be blogging since I’m working, all I can think about doing is playing Halflife 2 Episode 2!

Yes I know it’s been out for a while now, but I just got a chance to get it recently.

In this entry I stated that I was sick of First Person Shooters, but Halflife 2 is in a different class. It’s not the typical space setting where something went wrong with some outpost.

The thing I really like about the Halflife series is that it’s a REALLY fun FPS, but you also have to figure out puzzles and stuff. Granted the puzzles aren’t anything overly challenging, but it’s still more fun than strictly run and gun.

Also, in my opinion, Halflife 2 and both episodes have the best levels of any shooter, both in layout and visually. Plus for some reason I really like that it takes place on Earth.

Anyway, the last work day of the year and “I don’t want to work, I just want to play Halflife 2 (episode 2) all day..”

I’m hoping to get some techie stuff for Christmas, so I’ll post my ramblings on whatever I get.

Be safe and have fun!

I was going strong for a few days and then my adult ADD kicked in and I was on to other things.
I have way too many interests so I tend to get sidetracked on to other projects.

Here are some updates of my previous posts:

1. I still don’t think I’ve settled on a blog editor. I’m using Ecto now and really like it so think I might stick with this one for a bit.
2. I did end up getting an EVA8000 and LOVE it, I’ll post that review (that I said I’d post 2 months ago).
3. We made it through the fires fine and didn’t even get evacuated. Pretty much the whole county was on fire and some were headed our way, but fortunately we came through it fine!

I’m going to try to focus on keeping this updated, probably not every day but at least a few times during the week.

They’ve evacuated about 250,000 people and the fires are still burning strong.
We have high (40 - 50 mph) dry winds, dry brush and low humidity.. perfect for a fire.

So far our house is OK, but my best goes out to all the people that have been evacuated!

I had a setup using SageTV and a media extender, but it wasn’t HD, was a bit buggy and kind of slow.
After looking around a bit it came down to the Dlink DSM 520 and the Netgear EVA8000… I tried them both..

This review will be of the DSM 520.

Here are some of the things I’m looking for in one of these devices:

• Have both Ethernet and Wifi built in
• Be able to stream some HD video
• Be able to view pictures, and play my MP3s from the server
• Be fast and easy to use (important for the W.A.F.)
• A bonus would be some online content such as podcasts, youtube, RSS, etc…

Being a Dlink fanboy, I first tried out the DSM 520.

I brought the box home with very high hopes, most of the network hardware (wired and wireless) in the house is Dlink stuff and I’ve been VERY happy with it.
The setup was a breeze, I had the thing ready to go in about 5 minutes.
It requires the install of a media server, which it comes with, but you can use something like TVersity as well.

The device recognized my PC (once the software was installed) no problem and I was able to access all my media.
Actually, I should say I was able to browse all my media.

One of the things I was psyched about this product is that they were going to add support for YouTube and other online media sites on October 4th.
When I set up the device (on October 7th) I didn’t have those options so I checked for an update, and guess what.. there was one available!

I downloaded the update and anxiously looked for the online media… still not there.
Apparently the sales department and technical department don’t talk much at Dlink because they recently changed the date for these services from 10/4/2007 t0 “coming soon”.

The GUI on this thing is horrible. It’s almost like they slapped something together really quickly before shipping the unit.
I messed with the device for a few hours and it locked up at least 3 times.

Of the media it found, I was able to play some of it.

One of the selling points for me is that it plays MP4 directly, which my camera records in, so I didn’t have to convert any of my home videos.
This was hit and miss playing these. Same camera, same settings and some files played and some didn’t.
Some of the other videos I have from MPG to Divx / Xvid were hit and miss as well.. although they’re supposed to be supported.

Another HUGE problem (in my opinion) with the video is when you stop the video, then go back into it it doesn’t remember where you left off.. very bad for watching movies (especially with a 19 month old in the house).

Pulling up pictures worked well, but was REALLY slow.

I have no complaints about the music player portion, it worked really well.
It did take a little longer than I would have expected to load the initial song, but after that it was good.

That’s about as far as I got with the device.
I got so fed up with it that I unhooked it, boxed it up and got it ready to return to the store.

Now keep in mind this was over 802.11G, so if you have it hard wired it may be a little faster.. but compared to the Netgear EVA 8000 (I’ll post that review tomorrow), it was MUCH slower over the same connection.

If you’re thinking $200 is cheap for a media player like this then there’s a reason for it.
If you can get it on sale, or use some gift money or something for $100 it might be worth getting, but I wouldn’t spend any more money than that on it.

Anyway, I’m back and the family is gone, so get ready for the ramblings to continue.

Recently he’s been saying “Pooh”, but he used to call him “Bah-boo”.

BuhBoo is as close as I could get to BahBoo. BaaBoo, Bahboo, Baboo and all other iterations I could think of were taken.. ARGGG!

I kind of like BuhBoo anyway, a tribute to my little guy and still kind of catchy.