You might be an audiobook lover if…

  • you’ve left audiobooks in your car an had the plastic container for the cassettes warp around the tapes.
  • you’ve run out of audiobooks to borrow at your library.
  • you’ve listened to books longer than most avid readers have read.
  • you welcomed the day Audible gave you a chance to listen to an audiobook without having to change tapes or CDs.
  • now that you listen on your smartphone, you can’t move the car until the audiobook resumes playing.
  • if the Bluetooth pairing for your smartphone has trouble, you’d rather mess with that before driving off than just do the 5 minute trip without an audiobook playing.
  • you look forward to getting stuck in traffic when you have a *really good* audiobook playing.
  • half of your monthly data usage on your phone is downloading new audiobooks (because you couldn’t possibly wait for a wifi connection to download.)
  • before going on a trip, you download more books than you pack changes of clothes.
  • you use the sleep timer on the Audible app so that you don’t accidentally “read the whole book” when you fall asleep.
  • you’ve forgotten to set the sleep timer and accidentally finished the same book several nights in a row.
  • you feel guilt over telling people you “read” an audiobook.
  • …but then again, Les Miserables took 60 hours to listen to so IT TOTALLY COUNTS!

You might be a dog rescuer if…

  • A coworker starts talking about breeding puppies and icicles form in the air between you.
  • You can’t remember the last time you went looking for a dog to adopt, all of your dogs are “foster fails”.
  • If sanity and/or your spouse hadn’t prevented you from it, you’d have adopted all but one of the dogs you’ve rescued/fostered.
  • The one dog you wouldn’t have adopted would have been because you have your limits.
  • You own more dog crates than dogs.
  • You are long over your fascination with Cesar Millan and now question the suitability of his methods.
  • Other people see a “dangerous pit bull”, but you see a giant teddy bear of a dog.

Kentucky Lottery Keno Game Best and Worst Plays

Most of the play options for the Kentucky Lottery’s Keno Game provide an expected payout of 65 cents per dollar played. However, the worst play on the board is playing one number (1 spot). Its only payout is hitting *that* number, and only pays $2. That means that you can only expect 50 cents back per dollar played.

The best paying option in the game is the two number option. You’ll hit a little more often than 1 in 17 times, but the payout is $11 per dollar bet.

The top prizes in the 8, 9, and 10 number plays get divided up between anyone who happens to hit that prize at the same time as you do. It’s not very likely to happen, but it makes all the expected payouts for the 8, 9, and 10 number plays less than 65 cents.

Keno Expected Payouts, Red Numbers Slightly Lower than Listed Due to Split Prize Payout
Keno Expected Payouts, Red Numbers Slightly Lower than Listed Due to Split Prize Payout

You might be in a man-made disaster movie if…

  • Your doom can be tied to one obnoxiously arrogant bureaucrat or business owner.
  • At least of your main protagonists has a rocky relationship that somehow ends up complicating everybody’s lives.
  • The key person sounding the alarm or capable of fixing things gets arrested or otherwise ostracized by those in power, often after being a hero.
  • When things really hit the fan and protagonists get trapped, they manage to do something completely predictable that miraculously works despite the laws of science being violated, such as driving on wheel rims across a lava flow.
  • A revolutionary way of harnessing energy or dealing with nature is being pioneered (and completely screwed up by) a company or project named after a Roman or Greek god.
  • Everything with the project goes exactly as expected, then almost instaneously becomes an irrecoverable situation.
  • No governmental agencies seem to be have evaluated the possibilities of things going wrong, despite the earth-disrupting power of the project.
  • Science beyond our current knowledge somehow is driven by computers that fail to a DOS prompt the second things go outside normal operating parameters.
  • There’s an implicit attempt to moralize about “playing God” in the outcome of failed experiments.

Kentucky Lottery Pick 3 Best Value

I was going over the Kentucky Pick 3 odds and payouts and noticed something a little peculiar. Not all ways to bet pay the same “expected payout.” Typical on a pick 3 is that the payouts are arranged to average a pay out 60% of the the winnings. Your chances of winning on a 50¢ straight bet are 1 in 1,000, but the payout is $300, and for a 50¢ box bet, they are $50 or $100, depending on whether you have 3 different numbers or 2 of the same number.

However, if you play the 50¢ “Straight Box” bet, the payouts are $350 and $400 for hitting the straight and $50 and $100 for hitting the box bet. The 50¢ straight box costs $1 to play, and is effectively like playing a 50¢ straight ticket and a 50¢ box ticket. HOWEVER, if you played the straight bet separately, you’d only get $300, but the “straight” potion of the payout for a “Straight Box” bet is $350  or $400, depending on your numbers.

This makes the expected payout for the Pick 3 “STR BOX” option, $650 and $700, depending on your numbers, so always play the STR BOX for 50¢ (Which is $1 per set of numbers.)

Kentucky Lottery Pick 3 Payouts
Kentucky Lottery Pick 3 Payouts

The Degrees of Happy Birthday

Inspired by:

There are varying degrees of actually caring to greet someone “Happy Birthday”, from lowest to highest:

  1. Facebook: Liking birthday celebrant’s “Thanks for all the birthday wishes”
  2. Facebook: Liking someone else’s birthday greeting.
  3. Facebook wall post: “HBD”
  4. Facebook wall post: “Happy B-day” or other partial abbreviation.
  5. Facebook wall post: “Happy Birthday” (bonus for exclamation points)
  6. Facebook status on your own page: “Happy Birthday {mention person’s name}” (or Twitter public mention)
  7. Text message.
  8. Sending an actual physical card.
  9. Calling the person in real life.

(Numbers 7-9 may vary in order depending on the introverted nature of the person performing the greeting.)

HGTV drinking game

Take a drink any time you hear the following while watching any home network/reality show:

  • Jack and Jill bathrooms
  • double vanity
  • stainless steel
  • open concept
  • “We like to entertain”
  • gourmet kitchen
  • tall ceilings
  • “we’re pregnant”
  • Complete shock that major overhaul renovation turned up major issues with the house.
  • granite
    • two drinks for “wanting to rip out dated/ugly granite”
  • People scoffing at an “old” house less than half their own age.
  • travertine
  • appeal to the designer’s or contractor’s expertise when asked to do the impossible within time and/or budget
  • yoga studio/hockey rink or any large single-purpose area
  • engineered hardwood
  • [state you’re in] room

TwoDots Level 140 Tips and Strategy

This board seems to generate completely randomly, so that getting a board with a first move square is not uncommon.

You pretty much need a quick route to a square or you might as well exit and come back in to a new board.

The best boards have a natural square available for the first move, but a square using a single clear dot isn’t a bad start either.

Aside from getting a good initial start, make squares, pick the square that clear the most dots, and conserve clear dots.