It is with deep sadness that we bring you the news of the death of our own Andrea Lewis. She died this weekend of an apparent heart attack at her San Francisco home. She was just 52. Andrea's parents are on their way from Florida. We are planning a memorial service and will let you know as soon as we have details.
- Mitchell Tsai
from Bookmarklet
PURE is collective of dancers and drummers who take music and dance out into the streets for the purposes of healing and peace. Movements from ancient sacred world traditions including Middle Eastern, Chinese, Romani gypsy, Israeli folk, Flamenco, Indian dance and drumming will be incorporated into the PURE experience.
- Mitchell Tsai
from Bookmarklet
DJ Beelzebozo and Szandora the Hula Hoop Chick at the Double Down - Wednesday nights 10 pm - 4 am [Las Vegas Weekly : Events Calendar] - http://www.lasvegasweekly.com/events...
Ordered two Men's Cactus (They throw in a free $13.95 belt). Three left (but the quantity popped up from 1 to 5 as I was shopping). I've been wearing Chaco's for 5-10 years, and they rarely have sales unless they are changing models. Regular price is $94.95, so I stocked up on 4 pairs.
- Mitchell Tsai
Airline Deal (w 5 nights hotel): SFO-LAS for $139, SFO-FLL (Florida) for $227, SFO/LAX/SEA-NYC/MCO for $275 (Prices include all taxes) See FlyerTalk thread http://flyertalk.com/forum...
is having a great time in Las Vegas. 2X Four 6s on $1 Video Poker ($250 x 2 = $500) on Sunday. My best video poker payout so far... Held two 6s for Four 6s ($500), Full House ($45), and Three 6s ($15). $50 -> $560 (+$510 profit).
I hadn't gotten a four-of-a-kind in a week. Then two hands after the Four 6s, I got Four 7s (again holding two cards). Four 7s was on $0.25 though (10-play $0.25) for $62.50. $12.50 -> $62.50 (+$50.00 profit).
- Mitchell Tsai
Someone cleared $3 million in Video Poker from the Bellagio this last weekend. Friday, he got a dealt royal on 3-play $100s for $1.2 million. $800,000 other jackpots for $2 million in 2 hours. Then the day he left, he got $200,000 five times, for a total $3 million payout. He might have been the same person who received $400,000 for a royal at Caesar's on Friday. Might have been $3.4 million for the same person. I've never heard of a video poker payout so high...
- Mitchell Tsai
0.75 (926/1226) - still relatively new here
- mikepk
I only see my stats for the last week (17/14 = 1.21) Please tell me your 670 number is for more than just a week!
- Brian Johns
1.44 (566/391) for brianjohns (after week tally you should see a comma then 'all time' count - I can see it on your page)
- Micah Wittman
OK, sorry. I'm a total dumbass. I stopped reading after the weekly totals...
- Brian Johns
3.74, which seems way off of everybody else's. I wonder what that says. I comment a lot more than I like.
- Cyrus Lendvay
FFers use FF with their own strategy or simply default tendencies. The ratio is an interesting snapshot of behaviour. Thanks for joining in everyone, hope more keep flowing in.
- Micah Wittman
from twhirl
0.66 - I tend to 'like' things without needing to comment further, I guess, and I notice I usually like the things upon which I comment. Well, frequently.
- ɐ ɯıʞ sıɹɥɔ
.39 (2457/6242) I guess I don't comment much. I do 'like' a lot of things, it would seem.
- Bren, Photophobe
0.62 then again i have over 11,000 comments
- Cee Bee
1.23 (5287/4229) - I am put to shame by Cee Bee's participation, good grief!
- Her Lindsay-ness
So far: Average: 1.27 | Median: 0.81 ... (if you average 1 comment per like, you'd be 1.0 ... if you're 0.xx you might herd content more than discuss ... if you're whole numbers above 1 you may not 'like' much or discuss plenty or both)
- Micah Wittman
InPerpetualMotion(Gina k), I really liked this 'Like' of yours (in a series of pics, so I flickr fav'd it): http://friendfeed.com/e... and commented. Thanks!
- Micah Wittman
.68 6986/10194 Someone wrote a great article on the comment-like ratio a few months ago. Search on FriendFeed is crashing on me... I'll try to get the link.
- Mitchell Tsai
Thanks Mitchell (btw, search crashing on me too - lots)
- Micah Wittman
1316 comments/20221 likes (0.06), according to Windows Calculator, although I probably screwed up.
- Tyson Key
A recent change in FF: now the comment count shows total number of comments (previously multiple comments in one thread only counted as one) http://friendfeed.com/e... so all the numbers above are from the old methodology....
- David HC Soul
My new ratio: 0.76 all time (old methodology .52).... this week 1.39
- David HC Soul
Looks like my ratio as flipped again (comments back to dominating again). Seems to match my own awareness I've lately been commenting without Liking (commenting is my inherent recognition of value to me and the additional Like is when it merits an extra bump to help discovery by others).
- Micah Wittman
Darn - 0.52. I guess I need to say why I like something a little more often :-) Liking this thread because I was wondering the same thing recently. Has anybody worked out the average from the numbers here? </islazy>
- Andy Bold
Andy, scroll upward and you'll see a couple calculations from before (January: Average: 1.27 | Median: 0.81)
- Micah Wittman
Rick, you mean that face with glasses I photoshopped tint into with an apparently disembodied arm which is actually very much attached to my eldest son? It's mostly just me :)
- Micah Wittman
Thanks, Michael. Yes, you have a rising tide of comment percentage (oh, wow, you were one of the originals from January - cool!)
- Micah Wittman
Yeah, that's a decent upward rise in comments, Nicholas.
- Micah Wittman
.6 (6,000/10,000) 3rd update - Now it's time to flip this on its head. My goal is to have (16,000/16,000) next time I post here. Regardless of what happens, I'm just looking forward to the next 10,000 comments, likes, posts, and new relationships I make here. It's all good!
- Michael Fidler
1.76 (7539/4290) My commenting habits haven't chanced much, but it felt like I clicked Like a lot less, and this ratio confirms that for me.
- Micah Wittman
.82 as of right now. edit: on January 8th it was 0.39 -- when I saw that, I decided to make more of an effort to comment. When I hit 10k "likes" I decided I wouldn't "like" anything else until I also had 10k comments.
- Bren, Photophobe
Jimminy, I'm copyrighting every single number. It's kind of a honeypot ;) Actually, it was curiosity mostly, but I also hope to build a sampling (small and self-selecting as it may be) for anyone who might want to analyze it.
- Micah Wittman
Wow I didn't realize I was so out of whack!! 12.23 that's got to be a record (and I don't even import my feeds with the summary as a comment)!!
- Chris Myles
Thanks JA, Chris (wow, 12+ is unusual :), Serkan and Nine!
- Micah Wittman
0.89 (17818/19913) (Somebody better make a cool ass graph of all this data!)
- Haggis (Sean Loyless)
Micah.. I told you I take my likes seriously; ). You *might* want to ask (in a separate post) what percentage of likes were used to "bookmark" a post or save it for later VS actually "liking it". I NEVER used like for that.. but I did use a private group that if filled with my own topics (and comments)..
- Chris Myles
OK, so statistically, what ratio results in better interaction on FF?
- Jason Huebel
I don't think I could argue that any particular kind of ratio is "best", because if Lurkers like to Lurk and cultivate (via Likes) and the Chatty-ites love to chat, to pump out much many more comments than Likes, each can be happy and make for a great social experience.
- Micah Wittman
So I'm fairly balanced, it appears. I would imagine it's because I try to comment on every post I like. That's not always true, obviously. But mostly it is.
- Jason Huebel
Just clicking "Like" seems too easy. I feel like I should say something, too.
- Jason Huebel
wow, what a difference time makes, when i 1st posted on this thread, 6.43%, now = 1.25%, for a 5.18% difference, :o (and this is the earliest post to date i've recovered of my activity on ff)
- chaz2b
chaz, I think there's been a big fluctuation for most people (maybe not that much). This is the oldest post on which you commented that you've recovered?
- Micah Wittman
that was my third post... It's interesting to see how the number has changed. of course, I manipulated the number to a degree, because I stopped "liking" things for a while...
- Bren, Photophobe
Bren, the other thing that can seriously throw off someone's stats is a feed that upon each item it imports adds a comment automatically.
- Micah Wittman
true. that can seriously inflate comment stats, of course. Then you have someone like RAPatton, who posts a gazillion comments, in part because of his playlist posts where he will list each song in a separate comment. I found, after this post in fact, that I tended to "like" things much more frequently than comment on them, that I was lurking instead of participating. I have changed the way I use ff rather considerably, and I think for the better.
- Bren, Photophobe
Thanks Paola, Michael, Artemko, J. and Daniel!
- Micah Wittman
1.09 (9990/9105) From and including: Saturday, April 26, 2008 To and including: Thursday, November 12, 2009 It is 566 days from the start date to the end date, end date included Or 1 year, 6 months, 18 days including the end date to reach 10,000 comments.
- Christopher Harley
Anthony is honored to have just met - and exchanged courtesies with - the President of the United States. And that was, as the kids say, pretty effin’ cool.
you promised us you'd say some dramatic line to him, did ya panic and go with "wussup?"
- Steve C
@Steve: actually no, I cried like a little girl and peed myself, as is my longstanding personal tradition whenever meeting current or former Heads of State. It's simply good protocol; they seem to love it...
- Anthony Citrano
from BuddyFeed
Somehow I believe you, Anthony but still - pics or it didn't happen!
- WorldofHiglet
@WoH: "somehow?" ha, gee thanks! There are no pics of this one, I'm afraid (although there are almost surely pool pics of me at the ropeline early in the night) and believe me it bugs me more than the rest o' yaz. Hopefully @ the next one I get a proper photo op.
- Anthony Citrano
from BuddyFeed
@ahsan: dinner at the Beverly Hilton last night. (sorry, overlooked your q.)
- Anthony Citrano
:) You LA folk have personal photographers documenting your every move don't you?!? Don't tell me that not true because I saw it on the tv....Anyway, it must have been a very special moment. I hope you didn't cry and pee too much o_O
- WorldofHiglet
Cooler than that Best of Day thread about jock itch?
- Matthew DeVries
@charlie: about my personal moment (A: right here), or about the President coming to LA? (A: just about anywhere; pick your media poison.)
- Anthony Citrano
SO, can you tell us a little more about other than the wetting/crying?
- WorldofHiglet
Even though I can't stand Obama, I have to admit, your getting to meet the president is pretty cool.
- Joey Gibson
@WoH - I don't think I'll get into the blow-by-blow here (there's absolutely nothing of substance anyway.) However, I will almost surely draw on the experience for a future article.
- Anthony Citrano
Well I hope you do deign to share some little details with us sometime. When you can be bothered. In other news, did you see the new YouTube video from the WhiteHouseTV entitled "OMG!!!!! I met Anthony Citrano!!!!! For REALS!!!!!! SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!" I hear it's going viral....
- WorldofHiglet
WoH: don't make fun o' me! we've already determined I cry easily. ;)
- Anthony Citrano
Ooopsie - my bad. I forgot you were such a delicate little flower :)
- WorldofHiglet
If you shook his hand, you have been changed. : )
- Phil Boiarski
@Phil - I did twice. Should I not have showered? ;)
- Anthony Citrano
Yeah. LOL. I just made it official, like in the Thriller video...except that I didn't turn into a werewolf and chase her through the woods....
- Rahsheen ™, Coach of FF
Not fair that the lady gets to wear a fancy ring before we even do the church thing. What's the point of being engaged if you can't flaunt it? LOL. Thanks everyone :)
- Rahsheen ™, Coach of FF
Congratulations, Rahsheen! I had a similar thought for Harold when he gave me my ring: "Gee, kind of unfair the guy doesn't get to wear something too until the wedding."
- Kamilah Gill
Do you miss it? Do you want mine? (Just diagnosed with one this year after 19 years of just being near-sighted.) And this is how the universe keeps it balance?
- SAM
Ronin: For the past 23 years, my right eye has been floating between -3.25 & -4.75, and my left eye between -2.75 and -3.75. The astigmatism ranges from -0.25 to -1.0 (Don't remember if it ever went over -1.0). Wish I were better organized. I don't know how much the astigmatism rotated over the years. Astigmatism started when I had a bad bout of manic depression in 1986.
- Mitchell Tsai
Just got 2 pairs of new glasses for $105.44 ($99 + tax) at Eyemasters. New lenses would have been the same price or more (so I got two $59.95 frames for free).
- Mitchell Tsai
My friend Rani got her glasses for $5 in India. Wish I could get those prices. :-) Of course, $5 in India is one week's salary...
- Mitchell Tsai
Mitchell, I had detectable astigmatism for about 4 years in my 30s, but it went away.
- Ha3rvey (Free hugs!)
Ha3rvey: Did anything in particular help your astigmatism go away? In my case, it might have been weeks of scanning slot machines in the distance looking for 100+% machines. :-)
- Mitchell Tsai
I have no idea what happened. Each exam, it went down. My optometrist just shrugged shoulders and said "it happens"
- Ha3rvey (Free hugs!)
from fftogo
I have astigatism as well, but I have no idea what state it's at right now
- Shey, Jamaican of FF
As hotel room prices sink, quality of casino guests also takes dive [Jane Ann Morrison, Las Vegas Review Journal - 11/2/09] - http://www.lvrj.com/news...
The recession officially began in December 2007, and he noticed the change early in 2008, as room rates sank. "There are more cigarette burns on the carpet, more flat screen TVs broken, more holes in the walls." People are throwing things and breaking televisions that cost $2,000 to $3,000. Plus, there are more cases where security responds to domestic violence in the rooms.
- Mitchell Tsai
from Bookmarklet
In March 2003, bemoaning that with war looming in the Middle East, the average Strip midweek room rate was down 24 percent to $104 and the average weekend rate was down 11 percent ... to $249. By the end of 2007, the average daily rate was more than $132.
- Mitchell Tsai
Fast-forward to last Fourth of July, a three-day weekend, when the average room rate was just over $94, barely higher than the most recent average rates. This August, the average daily room rate was not quite $93, a year-to-date drop of 25 percent from last August, when it was $124.
- Mitchell Tsai
Landry’s Restaurants Tuesday reached a buyout deal with its top executive to take the parent company of the Golden Nugget private in a transaction valued at $1.2 billion including debt. Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Tilman Fertitta had his offer of $14.75 per share in cash accepted by the company’s board of directors, a 37 percent premium on Monday’s closing price of $10.76 per share.
- Mitchell Tsai
from Bookmarklet
Fertitta, who owns nearly 55.1 percent of the company’s stock, would acquire all shares of Landry’s that he does not own. The transaction is subject to Landry’s refinancing a portion of its $915.3 million debt load. Bond analyst Barbara Cappaert of KDP Investment Advisors priced Fertitta’s out-of-pocket expense to acquire the stock he does not already own at $108 million.
- Mitchell Tsai
People in the company of Clark County prostitutes collectively reported having $1.4 million in cash and goods stolen from them during the first nine months of this year — dupes of a larceny genre better known to police as the “trick roll.”
- Mitchell Tsai
Passage of Issue 3, as it was called in Ohio, is expected to lead to opening as early as 2012 of casinos providing both table games and slot machines in Cleveland, Cincinnati, Columbus and Toledo.
- Mitchell Tsai
from Bookmarklet
More affected than the southwestern Pennsylvania casinos, however, is MTR Gaming Group, the West Virginia-based firm that owns Mountaineer Casino Racetrack & Resort in Chester; Presque Isle Downs, an Erie County racetrack-casino just over an hour from Cleveland; and Scioto Downs, a Columbus harness track still denied the right to have slot machines or table games.
- Mitchell Tsai
When Presque Isle Downs opened, officials said they were counting on Ohioans to make up at least one-fifth of their customers. The casino, which generated $13 million in revenue last month, already places eighth of the nine Pennsylvania casinos in revenue.
- Mitchell Tsai
And at Mountaineer, where more than half of the customers come from Ohio, revenue was off 11 percent in the third quarter of 2009 from a year ago.
- Mitchell Tsai
Owned by the Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians. Red Hawk has underperformed since opening last December. Red Hawk cut staffing to around 1,500 full-time equivalent employees, down from 1,750 on opening day.
- Mitchell Tsai
from Bookmarklet
Lakes Entertainment, based in Minnetonka, Minn., said operating earnings in the third quarter came to $723,000, compared with a $484,000 loss the year before. Net income totaled $2.3 million, or 9 cents a share, compared with last year's loss of $5.7 million, or 23 cents a share. Revenue fell to $6.6 million from $8.4 million, mainly because of a one-time gain in revenue last year of $1.8 million.
- Mitchell Tsai
ChexSystems Consumer Assistance The Chex Systems, Inc. network is comprised of member Financial Institutions that regularly contribute information on mishandled checking and savings accounts to a central location. ChexSystems shares this information among member institutions to help them assess the risk of opening new accounts.
- Mitchell Tsai
from Bookmarklet
In Video Poker Mania, Dwight Crevelt says that all 10 cards that might be used for a video poker hand are selected when you press the Deal button. Five cards are displayed. The remaining five cards are used in one of two ways. One way is to keep them in a stack and cards are dealt from the stack to replace discards. This is called "serial draw." "Parallel draw" is the other method, the...
more...
- Mitchell Tsai
Video Poker Mania was published in 1991 and things have changed since then.
- Mitchell Tsai
Fast forward to the late 1990s. In a presentation at a day-long seminar for slot operators at the World Gaming Congress, James Maida of Gaming Labs International (GLI) described a group of RNG cheats in the midwest. One of the people in the group was the son of a slot distributor, so he had access to the game EPROM and disassembled the code to figure out the RNG algorithm. With the algorithm, he was able to write an RNG simulator program.
- Mitchell Tsai
When a video poker machine selects all 10 cards at once, a cheat has all the time in the world until he presses the Draw button to figure out what the five replacement cards are. The cheats played a few hands and entered them into the RNG simulator program, which had the RNG algorithm and was able to determine where the RNG was in its cycle. Once the program knew that, they were able to enter the five cards they were dealt and have the program tell them the five cards that would be used to replace discards.
- Mitchell Tsai
Because of this incident, Nevada changed its video poker regulations to require that machines select five cards on the draw, continue cycling the RNG, and then select replacement cards only after the Draw button is pressed.
- Mitchell Tsai
The Standards for Gaming Devices document on GLI's site implies that they prefer that video poker machines select replacement cards only after the Draw button is pressed, but that it is not required. The method used depends on the regulations in your jurisdiction.
- Mitchell Tsai
3rd picture is a 10-Play Dealt Royal in hearts ( Video Poker ) The odds of a dealt royal flush are 1 in 649,740. I've seen two. Saw a 3-play dealt royal at the Orleans ($6,609.00 for a $3.75 bet) a few months ago.
- Mitchell Tsai
Contact improvisation (CI) is a dance technique in which points of physical contact provide the starting point for exploration through movement improvisation. Contact Improvisation is a form of dance improvisation and is one of the best-known and most characteristic forms of postmodern dance.
- Mitchell Tsai
The first performance work recognized as Contact Improvisation is Steve Paxton's Magnesium (1972) which was performed by Paxton and dance students at Oberlin College. Five months after Magnesium Paxton led the first Contact Improvisation performance series at the John Weber Art Gallery in New York City where dancers performed Contact Improvisation in marathon fashion on mats.
- Mitchell Tsai
Job Offer [One project]: Lisa at Contact Quarterly (CQ) is looking for a web programmer for a project. http://ff.im/b6H9k
- Mitchell Tsai
My friend Nita Little is looking for her friend Lisa....She is trying to "struggling to bring CQ [Contact Quarterly] website into a new existence while getting ready to leave [on tour] ... etc. i may as well ask you: DO YOU KNOW a javascript programmer--web maker who knows advanced programming? if you do, please send a name...." anyone know of help for her? I will pass it on. Help will be greatly appreciated. Hope this note finds you all well. Thanks, Nita Nita Little (Nelson) nitalittle@me.com nlnel@ucdavis.edu nita@nitalittle.com www.nitalittle.com
- Mitchell Tsai
Bank of Internet USA jumped to the top of our rankings of nationally-available accounts by paying 2.50% APY on its Advantage Savings, with a $100 minimum deposit.
- Mitchell Tsai
from Bookmarklet
SFGI Direct, the online division of Summit Community Bank in Moorefield, W. Va., is paying 2.25% APY with a minimum deposit of only $500.
- Mitchell Tsai
from Bookmarklet
It did that by raising the best rate on its “Silver CDs” to 2.55% APY from 2.50% APY at a time most banks are lowering their returns.
- Mitchell Tsai
from Bookmarklet
National City Bank ($3/month = $36/year) heard about it in a branch.
- Mitchell Tsai
Bankrate.com and creditcards.com are usually pretty good, but they are lousy at rating credit cards for people who need to rebuild credit. Fees to watch out for are (1) sign-up fee (2) monthly/annual fee (3) credit limit increase fee (4) closing fee - Some good info http://askmrcreditcard.com/secured...http://www.creditscoring.com/credits...
- Mitchell Tsai
Read http://fatwallet.com/forums... and https://libertysavingsbank.com/savenow... While there are no minimum deposit requirements or fees for the use of the account, participants are limited to $5,000 in the average daily balance that may be credited the three percent interest rate incentive at the end of the program period." Therefore, on $5000 at 3.25%, that's a free $162.50 in interest.
- Mitchell Tsai
National City Bank also offers $75 to people who open a bank account on-line ($150 offer requires that you have received a targeted promotional letter). https://www.nationalcity.com/persona...
- Mitchell Tsai
The Treasurer is limited by section 135.63 of the Revised Code to investing no more than twelve percent of the state’s total average investment portfolio in all linked deposit programs, including SaveNOW. This program would be available initially on a first-come, first-served basis until $25 million of deposits are spoken for by participants. * While there are no minimum deposit...
more...
- Mitchell Tsai