Bankroll Chart

That chart brought into sharp contrast where I was doing well and where I wasn’t. I think I am often less objective than I should be about my money, and this is just the exposure I need.

I think a lot of people probably like the heads-up display that shows you real-time feedback about yourself and your opponents. I watch myself a lot more than my opponents, because I can’t count on my own behavior, yet. I’m still learning whether I’m seeing too many flops, playing too many weak hands, trying to bluff when I have no idea what I’m doing, etc.

The Good

• It works. Just point it at your history files and off you go.
• Steve has clearly understood good graphic design, or at least some of the elements of, say, Edward Tufte. The “dashboard” gives some really simple line graphs with no axes that give you an instant feel for the way you’re trending.
• It’s real-time. You’re getting feedback while you play. Anyone who knows anything about learning will tell you that the closer the feedback is to the action (whether good or bad), the better you learn. Doing post-mortem analysis of a session later imparts different (not less valuable, but different) lessons.
• I find the heads-up display really informative. Again, I’m pretty much a novice, so almost anything helps me.

Areas for Improvement

• As a micro-stakes guy, I’m not sure I can justify the price. I go back and forth on it. I think at $15 or $20 I’d buy it without hesitation. At $50, though, it makes me pause.
• Despite the fact that I’m not getting the most out of the features it already has, I still feel sorta second-class. That is, the Windows people have more features (not that I would know what to do with them if I had them).

I hope more Mac people get into online poker so the demand will be there for rich and useful helpers. I’m guessing the demand is far weaker than for the Windows-based ones, which is a shame.

I’m a consultant, which means that I get to see inside lots and lots of companies. One thing I’ve noticed a lot is that there is very little age spectrum in leadership. Power is concentrated among the oldest, with a very broad gap between them and the next level. It seems to me that the older and more stable an institution (be it a university, government agency, corporation, charity, or church), the more likely it is to have leaders who are two or more generations removed from their lieutenants.A few forces are at work here. People are living longer than ever, the baby boomers just love to work, and wage pressures have been squeezing out traditional apprentice promotion models.

As we live longer, people work longer in their lives. People who reached high leadership positions ten or twenty years ago, continue to have them now. The next generation doesn’t get a shot at those positions until the older generation moves on. It’s like going to get in line at 2:00am for concert tickets only to discover that hundreds of people got there the day before. You’ll get your tickets, alright, but you’ve got to wait for all the others first.

Speaking of working, we have a generational tendency in the mix, too. Baby Boomers work hard. They don’t give up work easily. So their better health, combined with a proclivity to keep on working, means they will stay at the helm of the economy, government, and major institutions as long as they can. Once they’ve earned the right to lead, they’re slow to give over the reins.

Lastly, when you look at the demographic make-up of older institutions, it is bipolar. Very old and very young. The middle-aged folks are headed to places where they can get ahead. The young can get into a government or big-company job and get something out of it for a while, but they’re never going to get promoted to the level of their older supervisors. Eventually, you hit a certain age and you’ve gotten all you’re going to get from the big company or institution. Time to move on to somewhere smaller, where you can make a bigger impact, and you don’t have this impenetrable ceiling of pending retirees. Then there’s wage pressure. When times are tough, you squeeze the fat from the middle. The top folks are unassailable, the bottom folks are cheap, and the middle ones get cut. Well, those cheap, young folks aren’t ready to learn from the top executives, and the middle managers who are ready to learn just got handed their boxes and told to pack their cubes. The pressure on wages—to do more with fewer people, to do more with cheaper people—gets some things done while impairing the process of passing on management responsibility.

What does this all mean for our big institutions? A lack of corporate memory. Older institutions are going to forget what they do and how they do it. Why? Because there’s nobody around to pass the knowledge on to. The middle managers all left or were sacked, and the youngsters were never considered ready to learn the ropes. There are major retirements planned in key agencies in the government. They will leave knowledge vacuums that cannot be filled. New employees are too new to have the requisite experience, and the employees who knew stuff just retired to play golf in Williamsburg.

I predict a period of adolescence in this country. Old institutions run by young people. It’s great if it means new ideas and fresh thinking. It’s bad when it means repeating mistakes we made twenty years ago. In board rooms, court rooms, news rooms, and locker rooms we’re going to see really young folks who had power and authority thrust on them suddenly. We’re going to see them make mistakes. This is bigger than usual simply because it is precipitated by the phenomenon of the Baby Boom. A whole generation of middle managers was snuffed out by systematically removing their jobs and making them shuffle around waiting for the prior generation to move on.

So, back to the Presidential election of 2008. McCain and Clinton (when she ran) represent the older generation’s last attempt at clinging to power. McCain could win, and we’d be stuck with four or eight more years of old ways of doing things. There’s something to be said for experience, but the right thing is to pass it on at the right time. Obama, on the other hand, represents totally new thinking, without the baggage of decades of doing things a certain way. He does, of course, lack four decades of experience.

The fact that thirty-odd years separate the two candidates is exactly the bipolar nature that I’m talking about. All the candidates in their fifties and sixties got squeezed out of the Presidential race, just like they got squeezed out of corporate structure.

Me? I’m voting for Obama. It’s time my generation was put in charge. I’m not kidding myself about what happens if he wins. There will be a mass exodus of old people from Washington, taking the millenia of manyears of experience with them. That gap will be filled by inexperienced youngsters full of crazy ideas. I’ve seen what the tired old ideas have gotten us for the last two decades, though. I’m ready for change.

Do not accept articles from persons who are unknown to you.

also heard as

Do not accept articles from unknown persons.

and so on.

Why can’t we say something like:

Do not accept anything from someone you don’t know.

I wonder how many people with limited English comprehension can understand “persons.” I’m sure they’re taught “people” or “someone” before they’re taught “persons.” If you’re picking up the language informally, you’re surely not going to learn “persons,” though you can probably figure it out. What about “articles”? A non-native English speaker is likely to hear “article” refer to a newspaper, magazine, or even item of clothing. Outside of legal contexts, it is rare to see “article” refer to general items of any kind. It seems to me that “anything” is a much better choice because it’s actually clearer (let’s not quibble over what “article” means: don’t accept anything). Plus, it’s a word that someone is likely to know.

Here’s another phrase:

Report any suspicious persons or activities to the nearest law enforcement officer.

I already talked about “persons.” Even though I’m not fond of “activities” here, I don’t have a better word. In this case, I’m thinking of “law enforcement officer.” What about saying “police or security” here? Again, it seems pretty clear, and anyone who has lived in the US a short time will at least know “police” if not also “security.

On airplanes there’s usually some announcement about “congregating” near the “flight deck door.” That’s the door to the cockpit, you know, the place where the pilots sit. Who calls that the “flight deck?” And “congregating?” Although it may be undesirable to use the unofficial terms, it’s better to be clear. Why not just say “no one is allowed to stand near the cockpit”?

My point is that people try to be overly formal in a misguided attempt to be clear. I think formality is unclear, especially for the masses.

In talking to our driver, I ask why there are so few cabs. He said that the drivers don’t want to work in these icy conditions. Good thing Washington Flyer has a monopoly on taxi service to the airport. Rather than call on outside taxi companies to increase capacity, they make the passengers double up and wait on Washington Flyer taxis. Who benefits? Me? No. Drivers? No. Just the MWAA.

A few other things come out. Although Washington Flyer cabs are required to accept credit cards, the driver pays the credit card fee. That is, it comes out of his share of the fare. Furthermore, the driver pays $2.50 per trip out of the airport, no matter how far he’s going. Washington Flyer’s own brochure even says that they require drivers to:

• Carry more insurance than is considered industry standard
• Purchase a GPS unit (whether they need it or want it)
• Wash and vacuum their vehicles daily

You know who pays for all that, too: the driver.

So, remember how they’re “synonymous with choice”? Who gets to choose something here? The driver got to choose the make and model of his vehicle. I think that’s it. I can’t choose my taxi company, my driver can’t choose how he runs his own cab.

I’m trying to figure out who benefits from this, and the only answer I can come up with is the Metro Washington Airports Authority. They make profit at everyone else’s expense. I wait on taxis, drivers can barely make enough to live on, and MWAA gets profit.

Why not do like every other airport: charge the taxis a fee when they go out (e.g. $3) and be done? Accept every taxi that comes in. It’s simpler to administer, better for passengers, better for taxis, etc. Although you can imagine various arguments like “this monopoly guarantees quality and guarantees that taxis will be available,” I don’t give those arguments much weight. Bigger airports, busier airports, and airports that have more inclement weather and such all do things with unrestricted taxis. Boston, New York, Atlanta, Chicago: they’re all unrestricted. In fact, I’ve flown to a lot of places and have never yet seen another airport like Dulles where the cabs are restricted.

Paco Hope is syonymous with a contented, taxi patron who sees no need for improvement in the system.

The main theme of my counter-rant is “what did you expect to find in a post-Katrina Mississippi casino?” I also want to talk about second chances. I’ll quote excerpts of his original text, and comment in the middle, much like you might do in email.

My wife and I decided to go out for the evening Saturday Night. … It’s been a year since the massive hurricane destroyed most of the Mississippi Gulf Coast and the recovery and rebuilding effort is coming along nicely; with massive amounts of money from the re-opening casinos providing tax revenue and employment opportunities to the residents.

Good point. Although it had been a year, the recovery was pretty tough. As his descriptions of the conditions confirm, they’re not done recovering yet. And those “employment opportunities”? You can believe they’re not paying top wages. With unemployment as high as it is, there’s no need to pay high wages. People are pretty desperate to get a decent job, like a casino job.

The “I-P” as it likes to be called was one of the first casinos to re-open and in their rush to get back into business they neglected to include any semblance of opulence, luxury, or ventilation.

I wonder how much opulence and luxury was there to begin with. This ISN’T Vegas, WASN’T Vegas, and never will be Vegas. It’s the middle of nowhere, Mississippi. There’s nothing wrong with Mississippi, but on the list of grand, luxurious casinos, it doesn’t rank at all. It sounds like a case of mismatched expectations.

This casino doesn’t live up to that Vegas-image you might see on “CSI”, nor does it live up to that Native-American casino you saw on “Family Guy”.

Frankly, if TV, cartoons, and movies give you your idea of reality, you’ve got a lot to learn.

First, it was hot. Not warm, HOT…as in no ventilation, as in the A/C barely worked. Imagine a throng of thousands; thousands of mostly desperately broke and unwashed people thrown together for hours on end; now imagine them chain smoking, drinking endless rounds of alcohol, and sweating.

OK. No argument here. Probably really true.

Nope, James Bond in a tuxedo playing Baccarat was no where to be seen.

Well, somebody who buys a ten-dollar roll of quarters to play one at a time, will never see James Bond in a tuxedo playing $5000 a hand at Baccarat. I bet if you wanted to play a hundred dollars per hand at blackjack, you’d find the high-rollers room to be a lot more comfortable. Again, mismatched expectations. You expect the casino to spend its money pampering someone who comes in with a handful of dollars to spend? Why? As you attest, they can get throngs of dirty people to give their money freely with no pampering at all.

Second, we decided to have dinner first. … Every other restaurant (I think there was 4) also had a wait of an hour or more.

There was 4? Watch the grammar, Dave. I believe in second chances, as you’ll see below. You use up your second and third chances in this one article alone. On a prime-time saturday night, whether you’re in Mississippi or Vegas, there’s gonna be a wait for dinner if you don’t have reservations. Again, mismatched expectations. Try going to a nice casino restaurant in Vegas on a Saturday night with no reservations. See how long you wait. James Bond in his tuxedo, playing $5000 per hand at Baccarat doesn’t wait. You and I, we either make reservations, or we wait.

We finally got on a waiting list at the Grill, and waited 40 minutes, but did manage to have a nice dinner with good service.

Kudos to you for giving them props where they deserve it.

She asks the cashier for a roll of quarters. The cashier says, “What you want quarters for, you making a phone call?”

A single roll of quarters. A whole ten dollars. That you’ll spend 25 cents at a time. Like I said before: this is not James Bond in a tuxedo betting $5000 per hand at Baccarat. This is the principal mismatch of expectations: these are piddly wagers that are barely worth the casino’s time, yet you’re frustrated that (during prime time on a Saturday night) you have to wait for food and suffer with non-opulent, non-luxurious conditions. You’re not even wagering as much as two movie tickets here. Now, maybe there would have been more to follow if things hadn’t gone so badly, but buying a whopping $10 in quarters does not typically entitle a patron to fancy treatment.

It seems that since we last visited a casino last year, they have done away with quarters or tokens, and now the machines only take paper money and pays off with a voucher ticket.

the machines…pays. Strike two Dave. Subject, object agreement in plurality really isn’t your strong suit.

In the industry, this is called “TITO” for “Ticket In, Ticket Out.” I’m amazed that, in 2005 when you went before, you were able to find coin slots. Most of the big Vegas casinos switched to TITO a long time ago, and many out-of-the-way casinos did, too. My friends who play in a casino in Indiana say that it was TITO back in 2002 when they first went there. That jives with what I know of the industry, which has been steadily eliminating coin machines over the years. Sorry, but this is just the way the gaming industry has been headed for a long time. You happened to catch it late.

The cashier explains this by saying…”Them machines don’t take nothing but dollar bills! You don’t need no quarters.”

Yup. Now, if that’s exactly what she said, that’s not insulting or rude. (The words, anyways. Anything can be said with a rude tone of voice, however).

So, my darling wife goes to a slot machine and puts in a dollar and wins 12 bucks.

As you say, James Bond at the Baccarat table this isn’t.

By this time though, she has thought about the line, “What you want quarters for, you making a phone call? Them machines don’t take nothing but dollar bills! You don’t need no quarters.”

Here’s the rub, right? This is the crux of the whole evening. My guess is that she was actually a bit embarrassed. She made a simple mistake of asking for quarters when they’re totally useless, and the casino employee mocked her and made her feel dumb. The casino employee was clearly in the wrong. There are an infinite number of nicer ways to say what she said. She could have said “You want quarters for the slot machines? Oh, I’m afraid they don’t take quarters any more. Just bills. But you can bring your tickets back here and I’ll cash them for you.” Right? That employee could have said any number of nice things, but chose to say something mean instead. One of the important things in life, however, is what we do with the choices we have. And it was at this point in the evening that you and your wife had a choice to make: complain, or suck it up.

I think you should have sucked it up. The employee was totally in the wrong. She was rude, she was mean, she lashed out at an innocent person making an innocent mistake. But you should have been the better person and demonstrated compassion and tolerance, rather than try to one-up the rude behavior.

Let’s think about some of the circumstances here. This casino employee has a pretty shitty job. Remember how bad you said that casino was? Hot, smelly, rude drunk people all over the place? Well she lives in it and works in it 8 hours a day. She’s working prime time on a Saturday night–a night most of us get to go out and have fun. And how much bling is she pulling down at this job? Minimum wage. They’d pay her less if it was legal. There aren’t many steady jobs to be had in the area, so they have way more candidates, even for sucky jobs, than they have openings. If she quits or is fired, there are a hundred people lined up for that one shitty cashier job.

This is post-Katrina Mississippi. If she lives close enough to that casino to work there, then she was probably pretty badly affected by the hurricane. And now she’s trying to repair her life with a shitty, second-shift, minimum wage job. Gee, I can’t imagine why she has a hard time putting on a cheery smile and calling everyone “honey” when they come up to her window.

So now you decide how to respond…

She decides she didn’t like that tone, and goes back to the same cashier window to redeem her 12 dollar voucher and asks the cashier for her name.

I’m glad you wrote it that way. She decides that she didn’t like that tone. She chooses to go make trouble. That cashier’s life couldn’t get much worse, but you’ll try. The real thing I want to know, when making that kind of decision, is what was the good outcome that you’re hoping for?

I can’t imagine a good outcome. Is that cashier going to say “I’m sorry sweetheart, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”? I don’t think so, we’ve figured that much out. She’s having a bad day (or a bad life). Is the casino going to consider how she offended one of their high rollers (someone who plays $10 one quarter at a time)? Not likely. Who, really, WHO could come away from this confrontation feeling any better about anything? Did you? No. You came away so frustrated with a predictably blasé response that you had to write a vitriolic blog about it. Did the employee “learn a lesson” or have any sort of epiphany thanks to your approach? No. She just got one more lesson of “man, this is a shitty job. I’d quit if I had an alternative.” And when you confront someone and say “what’s your name? I want to tell your supervisor that you were rude,” is there any reason to be surprised that you get a little resistance? Really: what was the possible good outcome from all this? For anyone?

The cashier apologizes profusely by saying, “I don’t know what you are talking about! I’ve never seen YOUR UGLY FACE BEFORE! YOU MUST be DRUNK!

OK. If the cashier was rude before, she has completely gone off the deep end here. I’m taking you at face value, Dave, and assuming that everything you recorded happened exactly as you say. She’s way wrong. That’s an insult and it’s mean. Let’s be clear, though, it was provoked. If she hadn’t been confronted with “what’s your name? I’m going to tell your boss,” she would have been gruff, but mechanical and would have given you your twelve dollar jackpot with no insults. That’s all you can really hope for in these situations. Your expectations are all wrong.

I think it is highly likely that the cashier had no recollection of talking to your wife, too. Given the hundreds of people she must deal with on a hot, smelly, busy Saturday, she probably tries not to think about any of them. Like I said, this is not a job where she pampers a high-paying customer. She just deals the cash in and out. It is likely that she pays no attention at all to someone’s face or voice or anything. Just count the checks, validate the tickets, pay the cash.

My wife collects her 12 dollars from another cashier and gets the name of the rude cashier from her badge on her shirt, as she turns to leave.

Good thinking: looking at the badge. I think you’ll notice that every casino employee wears them, even the management, if they’re working on the floor.

Now, my wife … still turns heads [blah blah blah].
Also, … we have a Culligan water cooler in our house and she drinks about 12 glasses a day. [blah blah blah]

Come on. By now you must be tired of me beating up on you about the ten dollars and the James Bond comment. Why? Because I took you literally when it was really a figurative comment. You didn’t really expect tuxedos and opulent furnishings. You just didn’t expect it to look as bad as it did. You exaggerated for effect. Me, too. I took your exaggeration literally and then went overboard with it. Why? To point out that it’s a dumb way to make an argument. So, when you’re insulted, just take it as the insult it is. There is no need to defend it on a point-by-point basis and say “I’m not ugly and I’m not drunk.” Duh. If she said “Yo momma’s fat” you shouldn’t discuss your mother’s weight, either. It’s an insult Dave, let it pass.

When I heard about this episode, I immediately took my wife to the front desk of the “Imperial Palace Sucks” and asks to speak with someone about this cashier’s rude behavior.

At this point, you’re doing the right thing, but remember that we got here because you went to make trouble in the first place. If you didn’t go up to the cage with demands for name, rank, and serial number, you wouldn’t have gotten an insult at all. Although you had been treated rudely once, there was no way to improve the situation. No additional rudeness or politeness on your part would repair that event. The best you could do would be to avoid the rude cashier and hope to find a nicer one. The worst you could do is what you did: go be rude right back.

I was offered a form to fill out, but declined and asked to speak to a manager personally. After a few minutes, my wife and I was greeted by a Casino host.

You was greeted, huh? Strike three.

We asked if we could speak privately about a rude employee, but was told that where we stood would be fine.

You was told, too, huh? Strike four. Look: everybody has bad days. People deserve second chances. Nobody needs to be beaten up over a single mistake. Just like your wife shouldn’t have been treated rudely just because she asked about obsolete quarters, the cashier shouldn’t be abused just because she had a bad night and snapped. You shouldn’t be beaten up because you goofed in a blog and used some bad grammar. I’m not going to spell-check or grammar-check my writing here, so there will probably be at least an error or two in it. Cut me some slack.

The casino host took down our name and address, the name of the cashier, and then weakly apologized by saying, “I’m sorry you experienced that, we’ve never received a complaint about that person; I’m not saying it didn’t happen, and we will address it.” That’s it.

This is where I again start to wonder: what did you think would happen? Did you expect the host to march to the cashier and say “You were rude. You’re fired. Get out.”? Did you expect her to walk with you over to the cashier and treat the cashier like a 4-year-old kid: “Miss Cashier, you hurt Mrs. Robinson’s feelings. We don’t use naughty words like that. Please apologize to Mrs. Robinson. You’re going to have a “time-out” in the break room for 45 minutes (one minute for every year you are old).”? What could you possibly and realistically expect?

Even if the host was going to take significant disciplinary actions against that cashier, it’s none of your business. You do not have any right to see it happen in front of you. It’s a private matter between the employee and the employer. So if you were hoping for some victorious moment where you’d see the cashier get her come-uppance, you should plan to be disappointed. It would be very poor form indeed (and almost certainly illegal) to make private employment disciplinary actions public.

Oh yeah, she did say, “I hope you give us a second chance.”

Exactly. Second chances, Dave. People deserve them. You, me, your wife, the cashier. Everybody deserves them. One strike does not make an out.

I then told her, that I was not impressed with her apology

Ugh! The host did not get on her knees and beg your forgiveness. You sound like the great Patriarchs of the Bible. “So wondrous is my wrath that it will not be satisfied.”

I thought that the cashier needed to be moved to a NON-customer service position

Yes. I can see where your one visit per year, playing tens of dollars each visit would give you the broad vision of how the casino should handle its employees. And, like I said, for the employer to tell you what the disciplinary action was going to be would almost certainly violate employment laws of one kind or another.

You expected, as a result of two rude comments to a single patron, that the casino management would immediately demote or move that employee? All I can say is that I’m glad I don’t work for you. You know, I do good work, but I have been known to put my foot in my mouth every once in a while: with colleagues, customers, managers, etc. Thankfully, Dave, they don’t react as you would like: They don’t immediately fire me or remove me to a back-office position after a single mistake. I have no idea if you ever had a boss treat you this way, but I hope you would quit if they did.

and that I would be writing a full-fledge-righteous-indignation blog post on this very night and to please inform her bosses to please read “The Imperial Palace Sucks” at “On The Road With Dave”

That’s “full-fledged,” Dave. Strike five. Anyways, when I read your blog out loud to some friends (who were staying with me at the Imperial Palace in Las Vegas), this was the line that made them snort out loud. I think the only threat more terrifying than “I’m going to blog about this” is “I’m going to tell my mom!” And I’m sure the casino management all went to their computers with trembling fingers and searched for your blog entry–afraid of what horrors they might find, yet unable live with the terrible uncertainty of not knowing what you had said in your blog.

Right after that, I asked her one last question, “Could you give me directions to The Biloxi Grand Casino?”

Way to stick it to ‘em. They’re going to miss your ten dollars. How will they possibly survive? Actually, if you did anything to hurt them it was by making their salaried casino host spend time talking with you. That was valuable time that she could have spent doing something productive. You were a lost cause by the time she spoke to you. You had probably already vowed to be self-righteous and never come to that casino again. So she was wasting her time to even talk to you. That cost them in salary dollars. Your piddly wagers are nothing to them. Your storming out simply made room for a bunch of other suckers who will throw away hard-earned cash–cash they can nary afford to lose. Whoopdie doo. Way to stick it to the man.

In closing, I just want to add that I-P may stand for Imperial Palace, but I think the more appropriate choice would be:

Inconsiderate People, Incredibly Poor, and Icky-Poo.

Actually IP doesn’t stand for “Imperial Palace” any more, because when they sold the Imperial Palace in Las Vegas to Harrah’s (in 2005), they were probably required to change the name of the Biloxi property (which was not sold to Harrah’s). They probably sold the name “Imperial Palace” to Harrahs, and thus had to change the Biloxi to “IP Casino, Spa and Resort.”

Holy cow, though. Reading your blog I come to understand that you’re a stand-up comedian? You’re kidding right? “Icky-Poo”? That’s it? That’s the best you can do? Good grief.

So, in summary, two points:

• Set your expectations right. Mississippi is not Monte Carlo. Ten dollars in slots play does not get you James Bond treatment. If you show up to a popular restaurant on a Saturday night without a reservation, you will wait. Casino employees with shitty lives, shitty paychecks, and shitty jobs may actually be rude sometimes. Amazingly, some of these folks are really decent and rise above every excuse to be rude and are really pleasant. Still, if you catch one on a bad day, don’t be so shocked. It happens.
• People deserve second chances, even when they do rude things. There was no value in berating or confronting that cashier. There is no value in boycotting a casino based on a single unpleasant night. There is no reason your wife deserved rude treatment just for asking a simple question. She deserved a second chance, and so does everybody else.

The system can only handle US ASCII characters in song titles. I have a few disks with foreign characters in them. Some are not very weird, like some excellent modern tango from La Revancha del Tango by the Gotán Project. Notice the accent over the a. For a whole lot of accented characters, consider the Finnish group Viikate. The album I have is Parrun Pätkiä and it includes titles like Kevyesti Keskellä Päivää (which, loosely translated, means “whole lotta umlauts goin on!”). When one of their songs comes on, the display doesn’t update. The old song’s title and artist still displays. In fact, the screen stays jammed for a while. I can hit the next track button and it will sort itself out. But if I leave it alone for a while, it will just stay stuck. Music plays fine though.

Finally, as you know, I have an iPhone. This thing isn’t really made for iPhones. For one thing, you have 2 choices when you connect your iPhone: go into airplane mode (thereby missing all calls, SMSs, and emails), or stay connected to the network(s) and have this annoying bt-bt-btbtbtbt-bt-bzzzzzt happen every so often (very loudly). Some of the blame here really belongs to Apple, but the iHome was made before the iPhone was in general release, so the integration is a bit weak.

The sound on this unit is great. It fills our kitchen / dining room / living room area nicely. It’s got good dynamic range, too.

Consider “Texas Two Step Chicken” on the back of my jar of salsa. The two steps are basically “buy some chicken” and “bake it.” I mean, you do put the salsa and some other prepared condiments on it before baking, but that hardly qualifies as a recipe.

My wife gets a magazine whose purpose is to provide simple recipes. One of the ways they keep costs down is to print readers’ suggestions. Let me tell you, there’s some pretty non-creative readers out there. For example, one recipe consisted of essentially store-bought ravioli, with a store-bought alfredo sauce, and topped with bacon. Since when is buying stuff at the grocery store and heating it up a recipe? Hey, with that as the benchmark, I could make all kinds of “recipes.” Just replace the store-bought alfredo sauce with store-bought marinara, or bolognese, or vodka sauce, or anything else. Top with gratuitous bacon.

There’s another pet peeve, while we’re here. I live in the South. Everything is better with bacon. Potato salad? Yeah, put some bacon in there. Corn chowder? Make it with chicken stock and add some bacon on top. My friend Ryan over at vegblog.org became a vegan a while ago. He told me a story about the subsequent family Thanksgiving dinner. A well-meaning relative told him “since you’re vegan now, I made my fish entree without the bacon.” “Well,” he told her, “there’s still the fish.” Oh. Right. People just don’t think about the gratuitous meat.

It’s really no wonder that Americans are so fat and so culinarily deprived. We get vegetables that are flavorless and bland because we breed them for shape, color, and durability during shipment (none of which favors flavor). Then, when we try to spice things up, we add a bunch of fat (chicken fat, chicken broth, bacon, etc.) to make up for the bland taste. Nutrition goes down, calories and bad stuff go up. Simple equation.

Since so few people cook much sophisticated food any more, what qualifies as a recipe has had to shift. Nobody knows how to make a roux any more (I always have to ask my wife the proportions), much less a sauce based on a roux. So we resort to so-called “recipes” that are little more than shopping lists for prepared foods and heating directions.

How many recipes can there be? One might say “an infinite number,” but I think that’s too generous. There’s only so many unique combinations of stuff that are likely to appeal. And remember that we’re trying to appeal to the most basic of people. When you look at the recipes I’m talking about (on boxes, jars, cans), these are written for people who have little more than the box, jar, or can of product being promoted.

So, for the challenged marketing wonk who has to put some passable “recipe” on a product, here’s Paco’s Special <insert adjective> <insert product>:

• Take 2 chicken breasts (it’s always 2 chicken breasts)
• Apply 2 tablespoons of <product>
• Preheat the oven to 400 degrees
• Bake 15-20 minutes or until done (duh. Don’t bake more or less than ‘done’)

Congratulations.

Now I’ll make some comparisons that seem completely unrelated, but they’re not. There are people who smoke and do not get cancer. There are people who do drugs and do not get caught and do not have major health problems. There are people who get in car accidents when they’re not wearing their seat belts, but they survive with little or no injuries. There are examples of all kinds of things that you should not do on a regular basis, but yet someone gets away with it just fine. There are probably plenty of 13-year-olds who can handle the Deathly Hallows just fine. The existence of some does not mean that it is good for all.

Secondly, let me try to make one final point clear. (I’m about ready to give up on this point as one that is too subtle for younger readers). The fact that you can read the book, that you understand what it says, does not mean that it is good for you to read it. There are all kinds of things that you can find—online, in print, at movie theatres—that you would fully comprehend. That doesn’t mean that it’s good for you to learn those things at this age.

Finally, if you want to go on record as a representative of your age (i.e., “I can read it so everyone my age can”) then learn to write. Otherwise, we’ll all conclude “well, maybe 13-year-olds can read, but they sure can’t write.” Don’t go down on record as the illiterate representative who cannot spell, cannot use punctuation, and who types on a computer keyboard as if she were typing on a phone.

Give me Copy and Paste! There’s no way to copy and paste from any app to any other app. Apple invented the whole concept of copy from anything and paste to anything. Here it is 20 years later and they introduce the first device that has no concept of copy and paste at all.

Give me access to the storage on the device! It does something with iPhoto so that iPhoto sees it as a camera that can download pictures. It does not, however, give me access to the raw disk space. Why not? iPods do it. Why can’t the iPhone?

Let me rotate more apps! The wide keyboard (usable only under Safari) is easier for me to type on. Unfortunately, since SMS, Mail, and Google maps don’t rotate, I can’t get that bigger keyboard.

Give me wireless data transfer! I want to bluetooth synchronize with my iTunes. I want to send sounds (i.e., ring tones, MP3s, etc) to the phone via bluetooth. I want to get photos onto and off the phone via bluetooth. If AT&T ever gives me a dumb-ass picture-mail service where people get emails that tell them to go to web sites (instead of just sending the picture in the email), I’ll scream. Verizon has started doing that and they even convert your JPEG to Flash (FLASH!) for maximum non-usability. The carriers are SO not interested in what their customers want. They’re only interested in what they can do to create barriers that you have to pay to overcome.

Well, I’ve decided that I have to take various multi-player recreational activities (the term I’m using for the superset of all this stuff) and sort them into buckets. My current working theory has 5 buckets, which is really more than I wanted. Thank Sean for the 5th bucket. Amusingly, the “game” bucket is still the least defined, but I now have places to put things and I can clearly say “these are not games.”

The Categories

Play

Play is just fun for fun’s sake. When you’re running around the yard with kids, throwing balls at each other, wrestling, tickling, etc. That’s just play. There’s no particular rules, no stopping time (except dinner time), no end goal, etc. No one wins, no one loses. Throwing a frisbee is play.

Contests

Contests have rules and end goals. They might be loosely defined, or very strict. There are winners and losers. The biggest thing that distinguishes a contest from the other types of activities is the fact that you are independent of the other players. Nothing they do essentially influences whether or not you win. Classic contests are fundraising and pine-wood derbys.

Sports

The major distinguishing thing behind a sport is the physical skill required. Having read the discussion of a contest, one might conclude that bowling, golf, and archery are contests, not sports. I’m making the distinction that, in a sport, you might know what to do and know how to do it, but you might not succeed as a result of physical limitations. Either you are not physically capable of bowling a strike (e.g., you’re inconsistent), or you have a superior opponent who prevents you from making the most advantageous moves that you (intellectually) know you should make. Tennis and wrestling (i.e., Olympic-style wrestling) make good examples of where you can know what to do and be a world-class player of the game, but be defeated by a physically superior opponent.

Competitions

This is the weird fifth category that emerged in my discussions with my friend Sean from OWU. For right now, competitions are essentially open-ended contests. They have rules, strategy, and perhaps even a means of determining the winner, but there is no clear end. Thus any determination of a winner is simply a snapshot in time. “The current winner is Fred with 1000 points…” One could argue that most kinds of collecting (stamps, baseball cards, fine art, etc.) fit this definition. You can measure a collection by how many rare items it contains, how much money it is estimated to be worth, or many other attributes. There are obvious rules, too, such as which items are authentic and which ones are not. There is no end, however, and thus you can only state which collections are the best at a given moment in time. In many competition situations, you can even have unknown winners or people who have not declared their full score. They could be winning, but nobody realizes it.

Games

I had to save the most important for last because I was mainly determining what a game was through subtractive reasoning. I removed everything I could think of that was NOT a game, and what’s left must be games, right? OK, given that, what do these things have in common?

• Multiplayer games have rules and the actions of one player have a significant influence over the decisions and strategy of the other player(s).
• There are clearly defined winning conditions.
• Unlike sports, if the move you want to make is legal, then you can make it. Making a free throw shot might be legal in basketball—a sport—but the player might miss it. If the move you want to make in chess—a game—is legal, then you can make it.
• I believe that games have an element of resource constraint, not just a time limit or number of turns before the end of the game. In some games, e.g., Monopoly®, poker, Scrabble®, you might not have a time limit, but there’s a limited number of properties, money, and letter tiles respectively. In other games, you have both time and resource limits.

Visualizing Whirled Peas

How can we see this a little bit graphically?

Surprising Classifications

If we take my classification system to be something useful, and then we start looking at various multiplayer recreational activities, we will apply some surprising labels to the activities.

Billiards, Darts, Archery, Golf

These are all sports. Archery and golf probably don’t surprise, but billiards and darts might. The distinguishing fact about sports in my classification system is that physical dexterity and skill determine whether or not you succeed. The strategy in darts is essentially the same for all players, but some are more consistent and capable than others.

Pac-Man®

This video game is a contest. It’s you against the computer. Maybe you and your friends will play and see who gets the highest score. But it’s just a contest where everyone plays by the same rules and we see who scores the highest points. The physical dexterity thing might be a question here, right? Could Pac-Man be a sport? Interesting question, huh?

MMORPGs

Massively multiplayer online role-playing games are either sports or competitions. Many of them are totally open-ended. You can just keep accumulating gold, skills, hit points, whatever. The current “winner” is just a snapshot in time. Some of the first person shooter (FPS) games, like Halo (or Doom for my generation), are sports. There are clear rules, clear beginning and ends, and a clear winner. Whether or not you win, though, is a combination of strategy and physical dexterity.

Blackjack (as played in a casino)

This is a competition. The casino’s dealer is a robot, executing an unvarying set of actions. It’s just you against them. Given the research on blackjack, in fact, it’s just a competition of luck. Professional players execute pretty robotic strategies themselves. Whether or not you are currently winning is just a measure of the money in front of you.

Slot machines

I just had to put a dig in here against slot machines. People who play them are idiots. It’s not a game. No action that you take has any influence over the outcome of the game. In fact, that’s the law. Bring all the lucky rabbits’ feet you want. You’ll lose your money every time.

Candyland

Not any kind of game at all. You have no decisions. You just do what the cards say. You can basically shuffle the cards and determine the winner immediately. It’s completely deterministic.

Olympic figure skating, gymnastics, “Dancing with the Stars”, etc.

At best, these are subjective contests. All rely on judges to issue subjective judgments. In the case of a TV show, it’s obviously based on ratings and popularity and such. In the case of figure skating and gymnastics, judges make an effort towards objectiveness, but concerns like “style and individuality” (from US Figure Skating Rules) just cannot be measured objectively. So they’re close to sports because of the physical rigor and athleticism of the participants. However, unlike a sport (e.g., golf or bowling), not only is it uncertain whether the athlete will be able to do what they intend to do, but it’s unclear how much credit they will get for what they actually did.

Conclusion

So, has this helped me? Yeah. I think I know what a game is now. What about bud.com, the “game” that got me into this in the first place? It’s a competition. It’s like stamp collecting. It’s a recreational activity, but it’s not a game. I welcome comments and thoughts about what is or is not a game. Have I left out any categories? Is there something you can’t classify? Is there something I’ve misclassified?