Switching Religions

Computers drive me nuts. They are cranky and cantankerous, and incredibly short-lived.

They start out nice and zippy, but within days they start to clog up with nonsense from all the software, and begin to slow. It has always been true that this was far less true of Apple machines than of Windows devices.

Windows computers only live an average of three years before they need replacing. Apple ones last at least twice as long, and often much more.

Apple also includes more than enough software bundled up with their machines to handle every normal task, whereas Windows computers do not.

The obvious solution to minimize all these issues would be to select an Apple computer rather than a Windows one.

What stops me is the cost that Apple charges for its stuff. I would gladly pay double the money to get a computer that lasts twice as long, but they cost a lot more than that. I would pay more to get the software suite, but the Apple price is higher still.

My current Windows laptop has started having all sorts of issues. So far, I have been able to bully it into doing most of what I want, but not everything. I could probably struggle it along for a while longer, but am not feeling so inclined.

Apple has recently come out with a new version of their Macbook Air. It is their lowest-priced laptop, and I am sorely tempted to make the plunge.

I used to game with my computers, and liked access the huge number of titles available. The Apple side had nothing like it, but I am no longer a computer gamer. I use my machines for normal grown-up kinds of things like word processing, spread-sheeting, and going on the web. All of my mobile devices need to communicate well with whatever computer I am using, and they are all iPads and iPhones. They work seamlessly with Apple computers, while it's a struggle to get them to function consistently with a Windows machine. Today my iPhone and computer are refusing to talk to each other at all.

The good news is that no instant decision is necessary. My current Windows computer isn't down for the count.

No Commute

So today the ferries are messed up.

There is a 45 minute delay listed on the BC Ferries website for the boat that I need to take, with the only explanation being, “Mechanical difficulties with vessel.” There is no other explanation, and the Vancouver traffic radio channel didn’t even mention a thing about any delay in their ferry report.

This means, at best, that the boats would run 45 minutes late all day. If this were the case, I could still get into North Vancouver to train. If the delay were to remain at exactly 45 minutes, the beginner class would still be possible in addition to the advanced session. Getting home would also work fine, and I’d make it to the evening advanced class here at home.

However, travel on the ferry has to line up with the city buses, which a 45 minute delay totally messes up. This would have me missing my connections, which would add at least a half hour in each direction. That means no beginner class in Vancouver, and possibly even make it impossible to get back home in time to get to our local advanced class. This version of events has me giving up a local class in exchange for a day of worry, ferry riding, and bus riding, all to gain a single similar class in the city.

Unfortunately, the ferry corporation hasn’t seen fit to give any sort of assurances as to the “mechanical difficulty,” being fully rectified. What if the delays continue to grow or, heaven forbid, the ferry should break down altogether? This could see me stranded for hours until they manage to hobble together some sort of service. I might miss all of today’s classes everywhere, and have wasted an entire day; only getting home late at night.

All of this makes it clear that going riding the ferry is a very bad idea today. Going to the city is off the table. Staying home, and attending our local advanced class this evening is what is now on the planning board.

Flying Away

Getting to the Vancouver Airport is always the start to any of our long-range trips, and that starts with the puzzle of how to get to the ferry. This time around it was easier than usual, as our neighbour Ruth was kind and gave us a lift into Sechelt at 7am to eliminate one of our bus segments.

After our farewells, the bus rolled right in on time, and whisked us express-like to the ferryboat terminal. I had oatmeal and coffee onboard.

We caught the bus on the Vancouver side promptly, and even got seats. That’s a real treat when hauling luggage, even though our bags are incredibly small.

A few years ago airlines started charging fees for checked baggage, and more people switched to “going carryon.” Helen and I already travelled this way, due to the convenience, but now the battle for storage space had begun. People were taking duffels and even full suitcases aboard.

Airlines clamped down, and started aggressively measuring people’s carryons, and made offenders check oversize items, for which they charged hefty fees. This turned into a cash cow for the airlines. To maximize profit, they periodically shrank the size allowable for carryon bags.

Height and width have shrunk, but it’s the restricted thickness that is the killer. It isn’t too hard getting a bag that fits the first two restrictions, but have fun finding one that is under 9 inches in depth. We did.

The airlines also allow each person a “personal item.” These are things like laptops, or purses. They also have maximum dimensions, and we carry ones that push this to within a fraction of an inch. We are legal, but barely.

This means we have a shockingly small amount of cargo that we can carry. Suppose you were to go on a three-week trip to Europe, to be followed by a two-week cruise in the Mediterranean. How many pairs of shoes would you take? Be honest. Walking shoes, certainly, but how about runners, or sandals, or dress shoes, or pool shoes; how many?

I have a single pair of shoes, which I will be wearing onto the plane. None in my baggage at all.

Everything else that we take is reduced in a similar fashion. We have few clothes, and they are all of quick-dry material as we wash as we go.

So anyhow, we rode the bus from the ferry to downtown Vancouver. Our flight wasn’t until late afternoon, so we were crazy early. We do this in case of snags, which can easily arise in a trip with as many segments as ours.

We spent time wandering in the big underground mall attached to the Skytrain station. The new charging phone case that I’d gotten from China had packed it in only a few days before. The Apple Store had the precise one I wanted to take the place of my dead Chinese one, so I bought it. I immediately put it onto my phone, and ditched all the unnecessary packaging.

After a while of wandering and using the Apple Store wifi, we caught the Skytrain out to the airport; another lovely trip.

We wandered almost the length of the international flight section of check-in desks without finding any for Westjet. It was far too early, but I did find a check-in kiosk. These only work if you don’t have any bags to check, which is us. We got our boarding passes, and we headed through security to our gate.

There was a much-improved system of loading stuff for the scanner. There was a moving conveyor, and plastic tubs to load and to unload. I barely beeped at all. Soon we were at our gate, and even had power plug-ins to use, and free wifi.

Boarding was smooth. Our seats were in row 5, which is just behind the expensive seats. This meant a bit of extra space slopped over into our spots, and we were the first people the crew served.

After the fancy people of course.

Odds on the Big Fight

I get a kick out of hearing people talk about subjects that they think they understand, but really don’t get at all.

An example is the upcoming mega-fight between Connor MacGregor and Floyd Mayweather, and the betting odds that Las Vegas is offering.

The odds have nothing whatsoever to do with who the casinos think will win.

When betting first opened regarding the bout, the casinos offered payouts that greatly favoured MacGregor. They put the betting line for him at around +950. That meant that if you bet $100 on him, and he won, you would receive your wager money back along with $950 in winnings.

Mayweather’s odds were -2250. In order to win $100 by betting on him, you would have to lay down $2250.

What this was all about was the casinos attempt to put numbers out there that would attract an equal amount of money to be bet to balance either outcome. They want to gather in enough money so that whoever win, Vegas itself would come away with a fat profit after paying off all the winning bets.

It is all about what they think the betting public will do.

As the actual wagering got going, the casino payouts altered to reflect the betting patterns. The long odds seemed to be attracting too many betters to the MacGregor side of the spreadsheet, and so they cut the payments aimed at his supporters, and toward Mayweather fans to get more money headed that way.

At Ceasars Palace as I write this, MacGregor is at +475 ($100 wins profit of $475) and Mayweather at -650 ($650 bet needed to win profit of $100). Likely they will continue to shift until fight-time tomorrow.

Who would a smart gambler support? Interestingly, the only way to win would be to play the same game as the casinos.

Let’s say that back at the opening, you put $100 on MacGregor for a potential win of $2250, and right now you put $475 down on Mayweather to win $100.

So let’s say Mayweather wins, and you win $100, but you lose $100 by having bet on MacGregor. Maybe MacGregor wins, and you get $2250, but lose the $475 you put down on Mayweather. You either break even, or win. The only difficulty with this strategy is you would have to have known ahead of time what the odds were going to do.

If you had blindly put $100 on MacGregor back then, you could still play this strategy by now betting against him.

I’m sure there are gamblers out there that are doing exactly that. There are only two difficulties with this kind of strategy.

The first is psychological. People get emotionally invested in their decisions of this nature, and deep down think that the goal of gambling is to pick the winner, not to figure out how to lose without loss.

The second is that there is a built-in gap between the two possibilities of payout that the casinos milk.

Let’s say that there was a fight that the Vegas oddsmakers think will be totally even in terms of betting. Do you think that they will set both sides so that every bet will reap an equal return? No way. They would set the odds for both sides at maybe -125 so that a winning bet of $125 would only gain a $100 return. The House always wins.

They set the odds at levels that will not only protect them from any potential loss, but so that they make a bucket of cash. It’s a kind of sucker tax.

Then there are also the games they play to stimulate increased betting activity. These include, but are not limited to, sudden public shifts in the odds, “secret” information about the fighters getting leaked, press conferences, expert opinions, and more.

So why have the odds shifted in the Mayweather/MacGregor fight. Early long-shot bets clearly tilted the scale too heavily in one direction. To slow this, and balance them out, the odds changed to lower the payout to try and shift things more towards Mayweather. The amount that the shift has had to take to do this clearly has been influenced with MacGregor’s public press coverage, and the desperate desire of UFC fans for him to win.

The fact that they haven’t shifted more is mostly due to the overwhelming prevailing opinion that MacGregor has no chance to win, and the effect that this has on “smart-money” betting.

My only real experience of all this was back in 1997. There was a big-event fight that as a boxing fan I knew was an absolute toss-up as to who would win. However, as one fighter was a major ass, and the other the kind of guy everybody wanted to win, the Vegas odds didn’t reflect the balanced nature of the real probabilities. They showed the nice guy as favoured and therefore with less of a payout than the jerk. People were betting on the nice guy, and to balance this the casinos shifted the odds the other way. The odds on the other guy were +150, meaning that a winning bet of $100 on him would be returned with an addition of $150 more. I put $20 down on him, and when he won walked away with my $20 back, along with $30 more.

Haven’t bet again since, as I’ve rarely seen a fight I’ve been confident was that far out of whack. It also helped that I was in Vegas at the time, and betting was both easy and fun. I spent part of my winnings on a souvenir hat from the event.

Also, please note, I did not bet on who I wanted to win the fight, but in regards to what the public in general had made the betting odds do.

It is all a game related to, but certainly not parallel to, a fight.

Slow Starter

I am ever so glad that I plan things out in advance, but sometimes it can be frustrating.

The real goal is that it will all encourage me to do more training in Gracie Jiu-Jitsu than would otherwise be the case. This should, in turn, make me better at my chosen activity.

To do this, I have set myself the short-term goal of getting promoted in rank in as close to the minimum time period as possible. My current 8-month consideration for rank ends in the closing days of next March. Lots of time to make sure my attendance requirements get met.

The problem is that we will be out-of-country for quite a bit of that time, and my attendance tallies will suffer as a result. Not to worry. I have a plan in place to do as much extra training as I can reasonably squeeze in. This all comes in the form of training with Marc Marins in North Vancouver. It is a bit of a haul getting there, but works for somebody with time on his hands, such as me.

To give you some idea of the difference this makes we should look at what will happen if I just stick around home for training. Instead of finishing on schedule in March, it will take me until the following July. This assumes perfect attendance when I am around. That’s 4 months late.

I already go into the city once each week, but that gets just as disrupted by travel as my regular classes. Even so, that single weekly visit by itself reduces my delay in promotion from 4 months down to only 2. Huzzah, but not good enough.

So, for the month of August, I had it all calculated to do every class I can add to my calendar.

The first week was a bust, as we were camping, so my tally started out weak before I even got rolling.

My next week was looking better,  with my regular training supplemented with my usual noon-class city visit on Monday, and with me sticking around for the evening class, and with another noon class on Saturday. Saturday happened first, and went off without a hitch, but then I found out that my usual Monday midday class was cancelled. No worries; I would still make the Monday late class. However, before that happened, I ended up needing a short-notice doctor visit that very day, so never made the class.

Instead of 3 Vancouver classes, I only made it to one. Not an auspicious start to my ever-so-cunning plan.

This week I am again shooting for the same 3 classes, and seriously hope it will all run more smoothly. You can plan things, but sometimes events have a mind of their own.

That leaves just the final week of the month, which is my least favourite of the entire year. Our local school shuts down completely.

The plan says this is unacceptable, so I will be going in to Vancouver to train on Saturday, and 2-classes on Monday, along with a class on Wednesday, and another on Thursday. That all adds up to 4 visits to Vancouver totalling 5 classes. That’s more like it, but I’ll probably be especially sick of ferry rides by the time it’s over.

For next seven months, I will continue my weekly Monday visits, with Saturdays layered on top. The ferry schedule gets slashed after the summer, so no more evening classes are possible.

Step Up

Time for some tedious prognostication.

Our local club is going through some turmoil right now. Our main instructor, Shawn, spends about half of each year living down in Mexico. This has been no difficulty, as we had a couple of other certified Gracie instructors to take up the slack for the rest of the time.

However, one of them moved away about a month ago, and the other will also be leaving in a few weeks. We will be instructor-less for half of the time.

There has been a huge question mark over who would take up the running of things.

Luckily, one of our students had agreed to take on a big part of the load. Than is a businessman, and has all the skills necessary to run the operational side of things. He is also willing to do the coursework necessary, and to head down to Los Angeles, in order to become a certified instructor.

However, he doesn’t want to invest every weekday evening of his life teaching all the myriad classes. He is willing to do a share.

I am the most logical choice for an instructor role, but also fall short. I have no interest or willingness in teaching any part of the children’s program, and although I would be happy to teach the adult classes, I am away a lot of the time.

Another good thing is that another person has turned out to be interested in teaching kids, and is thinking about earning instructor certification as well.

A very good aspect of what we’ve got figured out so far is how so many different people are willing to step into the void. No one person can take on everything, but perhaps together we can do it.

Another good thing is that everybody is pretty much assuming that whatever is done by anybody, it will be done without any thought of financial compensation. In Gracie Jiu-Jitsu, the norm is that instructors be paid for their time. We will be paid merely by having the club survive.

This takes a lot of pressure off of things like the kid program. It is usually a net generator of revenue. We are trying to accommodate one, but there will be less necessity to do so.

Latest

Just got my latest wee Jiu-Jitsu promotion. It was easy this time, as my training has been way over the required goal; by more than 40% actually.

It’s my next that will be a bitch.

There is an 8-month (34 week) minimum period before another promotion can be awarded.

All I have to do, is to accumulate 30 weeks worth of training during that time. That sounds eezy-peezy, and with a 4-week buffer to boot.

Turns out it isn’t so slick. First off, I will be starting a week late due to camping, so in 34 weeks I can only do a maximum of 33 weeks of training.

And then there’s the fact that our school shuts down for a week in August, and for two more at Christmas. That means that with perfect attendance at every single class between now and the end of March, I will only be able to get exactly the required 30 weeks of work done.

Unless you count our upcoming trip to Europe. There goes another 5 and a half weeks of mat time.

And one mustn’t forget our trip to Singapore; another 5 weeks. Most likely there will be a month spent in Arizona.

That all means that when the calendar hits the goal date 34 weeks from now, my attendance will be 15 weeks short, even with perfect attendance whenever we’re home.

First-world problems.

The good news is that I do extra training. Every Monday I’m off to the big city. By goal time this will make a difference of about 2.5 weeks. I can easily add another blob on top by going city-ward on Saturdays. That will shrink my shortfall to 10 weeks.

Also, if we go to Arizona, I can train as much there as at home, so only the drives down and up will only be, “lost time.” The red ink shrinks to 6 weeks.

I could let things sit there, and just finish a couple of months late, but why not fix things if I can.

For the rest of this fine month of August, we will be home. Also, the ferries will be running on a somewhat extended Summer schedule, meaning that I could stay for a second class when I go in to Vancouver to train on Mondays. There’s another week regained.

Also, when our school shuts down for the stupid-week that it stupid-does in stupid-August, I can switch my attention to the city rather than shutting myself down as well. This can add almost 2 more full weeks to my recovery.

I’ll still be a bit short when my potential promotion time rolls around on March 27th, but will be closer by far. Private sessions with Shawn will help even more, just as injuries will work against me, but I will have done all I possibly can.

Thankfully, the time after this one everything should all run as smooth as silk.