The contested 2000 presidential election

Tonight on Sixty Minutes, the interviewer made some comment about how some people thought that the Supreme Court stole the election for George W. Bush. The truth is something else again. There was this circus going on in Florida, the aim of which was to steal the election for Al Gore. Al Gore legitimately came close to winning, but the left was not content to let the process proceed to its natural conclusion. Instead, they were intent on ensuring that Al Gore won by all possible means. The Supreme Court put a stop to the circus, which was the real attempt to steal the election.

How to play Texas Cash Five without a computer program

I was talking with a cashier from a local grocery store, while we were both in line. She was not working and buying groceries. She plays another lottery game, but I promoted Cash Five as an easy game to win. Get a pick that has two winning numbers and you win $2. I realized that there might be some interest among lottery players about how to win at Cash Five without using a computer program. I would highly recommend Gail Howard's "master guide" and her book about playing five number games. You can find them on Amazon.com. You want a book so you are able to "wheel" numbers.

The first step is to rank numbers, from the most likely to win to the least likely. A simple way that works moderately well is to rank numbers by the last time that they won. Those that won most recently would be placed at the top and the ones that have gone the longest time since winning go at the bottom. You can make a list of numbers from 1 to 37 and then go the winning history on the Lottery website and find the date when they last won.

I would recommend taking several small wheels and write down the template on paper. I would then fill in the numbers from your orders list. You could play some or all from what is generated, and you would have a chance to win something. A good way to selectively pick what to play from a wheel, so you don't have to play the entire wheel, is to do the process of ranking numbers for ten previous games. Then, use your wheels of choice and fill in the ranked numbers. From what you have generated, figure out what would have won and mark those combinations from the wheel results. Now look over the last 10 games or however many you wanted to do, and look for positions in the wheel that won more than once. I would play those multi-win positions in the current game.

If you have the ability to use wheels without buying a book, so much the better. If you have the books, you can read about some of the approaches that can be tried, when trying to rank numbers.

Facebook problems

Because I was trying to use Facebook from my hotel room, Facebook has gone crazy. I hope that when I am home, using my desktop computer, that Facebook will mellow out. How much do you know about your "Facebook Friends"?. Some of them, I don't know at all, and Facebook wants me to identify them in photographs? Give me a break.

"Former Naval Person Typepad" just got a big jump in traffic

I was interested to see that "Former Naval Person Typepad" had a big jump in traffic, starting yesterday. It may be a temporary spike, but it is back to where the original "Former Naval Person" blog was in June 2007. Too bad there is no advertising that would be comfortable with the blog (NSFW) and that I would also be comfortable with carrying. I have had enough of Triple-X advertising on a PG to R blog. There seems to be no middle ground, however, and I don't understand why. It seems that if Google would allow it, there are suitable advertisers available, but then Google does not allow it, so that is that.

Robert Gates seems to be carrying water for the administration

I am not that tightly locked into the issues, but Robert Gates seems more interested in cutting defense spending than funding what is needed. The GE F135 engine is a case in point. The present administration has little interest in defense spending, except as pork, and is constantly on the prowl, looking for programs to cut.

They ruined Google Chrome

The geniuses at Google ruined Google Chrome. I had started using Chrome as my everyday browser, but now that they made the bookmark manager just a tab, instead of a separate application, they ruined the usability. I want to be able to "organize bookmarks" and get the separate application. Now, everytime you select a bookmark, you go to it (the wrong thing to do) and lose the manager.

Apparently, the surprising news was true

Yes, the news that surprised me was true. I read it on an official website. The reason was the usual one: "tools". I have mixed feelings about all that, as the "tools" were both entertaining and informative. I listened to them all the time in the 1990's and had favorites. Still, a leader could make a lot of money selling "tools" and not necessarily make money from "the business". That was the problem. Our guy got bounced in 2007 over "tools".

I have wondered if there was a lot of wreckage in "the business" after 2001

We have been affiliated with "the business" for the last 18 years. We have been inactive since 2001, although I attended some meetings in Minneapolis in 2003-2004. I had suspected that there could have been continued fallout from some of what started to hit as early as 1998, when there was trouble about "tools" and people being involved in multiple businesses. I couldn't resist searching a few days ago, and was not surprised at what I found. Well, if some of it is true, then I am a bit surprised, as there was at least one couple that I would have guessed would not leave "the business" under any circumstances. That is, they always seemed "squeaky clean" and committed. Sorry, but I am being non-specific for a reason.

Lotto programming

I have several posts at "My Back Pages" about my latest approach to generating combinations for the lottery. One thing that I want to mention is that we won most of our winnings from the last nine months using Gail Howard's wheels. The only game that they really worked well for was "Cash Five", but they worked pretty well. Everywhere I turn, people disparage Gail Howard's work, but I have found that I only started to win when I used her approach. I have moved on from there in the last four days, based on my work with "Pick 3" programming. I have read Isaac Nwokogba's book Ea$y Dollar$ and "Professor Jones's" book The Basics of Winning Lotto/Lottery. I combine the two approaches in my "Pick 3" program. The first uses "hot numbers" while the second uses "positional analysis". Hot numbers could be all you would need, but to win with pairs, you need to use positional analysis. I am now using hot numbers for "Cash Five" and "Lotto Texas".

My new approach

I did a quick implementation of my new approach to playing Cash Five last night. It uses "hot number" analysis and a full wheel. Once I have the wheeled combinations, I check to see if there are lines that have won more than others over the last 40 games. There are such lines and I take some number of those, ordered by descending frequency, and play those. It worked better than what I had been using.

Full wheels

I was pleasantly surprised that my recursive algorithm for generating unique combinations worked for 25 numbers. The algorithm produced 53010 combinations for 25 numbers. The algorithm produces "full wheels". I am currently using the algorithm for playing "Pick 3" with hot numbers. I also use "positional analysis". Between the two, we have won four times since a week-ago Monday.

Google Street View is simply awesome

I was talking with a woman about Denver, and about where I lived for 8 months in December 1994 to August 1995. I lived near the corner of Havana and Mississippi. There was a King Sooper supermarket there. I tried Google Maps to refresh my memory and then realized that I could see the street view for the corner. I can see from Google Street View that the King Sooper supermarket is still there. I was just inside Denver from Aurora, as I remembered the location. I could turn around and see what seems to be the mall on the opposite side of the street. The Conoco station is still there, as well.

Neanderthals

I was interested to read what should have been obvious: Neanderthals were part of Homo Sapiens, not a separate species. The fact that they could be part of fertile cross-breeds confirms that fact. I have long suspected, as have many other people, that Neanderthal traits have survived to this day in the general populace. E. M. Smith has a blog post with a photograph.

Bess Levin of DealBreaker

I have been interested in Bess Levin for a few years.

The Observer has a picture and story.

Lost freedom

A striking feature of life in 2010 is the gross over-regulation and criminalization of doing unhealthy things. As recently as 1998, we still have many freedoms left. Now, someone restricts businesses from letting people smoke in separate enclosed rooms, hurting small, locally-owned restaurants, people are required to do all sorts of things in their cars (often observed more in the breach than in compliance), and criminalizing activities that used to be considered to be "fair use" under the old copyright laws. Fines are now usually excessive for traffic violations and local, state, and federal government constantly intrude on our lives (or they want to, at least). The courts have stripped us of our constitutional rights because they figure that some good is accomplished by doing so. In the United States, though, we are in better condition than the Europeans. Britain and the Netherlands seem doomed, if they continue as they are. In the U.S., government risks driving the people into rebellion through repressive laws and enforcement. I find the whole prospect frightening, as I liked our situation even prior to 2001, if not prior to 1999.

64-bit binary news readers?

I wondered if there were any news readers that might take advantage of 64-bit processors and Windows 7 64-bit. The answer is yes, at least with News Bin Pro.

A banned news group?

I had seen a reference to a group in another news group. Neither of my news providers carry the group, so perhaps it is banned. Now, searching with Google, it looks like a news group that I would not want to see anyway, given the topic mentioned. There are several ways to check groups online. One is with http://binsearch.info. There are some other sites that list news groups, at least. The news group I had seen seems to be valid, not carried by my two news providers, and now seems to be a non-interesting topic (although from binsearch, that was not obvious).

How did we do in Cash Five on 12 January 2009?

We didn't do that great, as the winning pick for 12 January 2010 was 5-7-10-12-30. We just won $2, by my count:

1-4-26-30-31
4-8-17-28-30
4-13-19-30-34
1-2-4-28-36
5-6-10-17-33-won $2
11-17-18-33-34
4-17-20-23-33
5-14-15-17-34
5-17-19-23-31

Some Texas Cash Five picks for 12 January 2010

I have never won more than $58 on any one day playing Cash Five. However, I frequently win something. Here are some picks for today's game (12 January 2010):

1-4-26-30-31
4-8-17-28-30
4-13-19-30-34
1-2-4-28-36
5-6-10-17-33
11-17-18-33-34
4-17-20-23-33
5-14-15-17-34
5-17-19-23-31

There are no guarantees here. You take your chances. I will report how they do after tonight's game, just for fun.

How about some Mega Millions picks for 12 January 2010?

OK. Here are some Mega Millions picks for 12 January 2010. There are no guarantees. The best that I have done so far in Mega Millions was to win $30 in a recent game. (In this case, we didn't win anything, mostly because the winning pick had a Mega Ball that was a low probability number: 5-9-31-37-56 Mega Ball 16)

Pick              Mega Ball
15-18-39-40-45     6
11-13-18-28-48    39
 7-18-28-41-50    36
 8-18-28-37-55    15
 8-13-28-39-41    44
 4-22-27-39-46    23
22-27-39-43-46    46
 4-27-43-46-55    40
 8-18-44-48-56    27
 1- 6-31-53-54    27
 1-27-45-50-53     2
 6-15-45-53-55    24

How we did in Cash Five for 11 January 2010

Well, we didn't do too great. We won $2 for 8 sets of picks.
(January 11, 2010):

8-14-19-23-28
11-14-19-24-32 - won $2
8-10-14-16-33
6-10-14-24-37
3-13-15-19-33
3-16-19-23-24
3-17-19-28-32
6-13-16-19-28

What I have been doing since August 2009

Since August 2009, I have been working hard on a family of computer programs, for my personal use, that use AI techniques to "predict the near future". I use several layers of heuristic rating methods to generate sets of predictions. I also generate reports that show the historical performance over time. I am not trying to prefectly guess the future. I just want to make a little money in the process. On example of what I can do are some picks for the Texas lottery game "Cash Five" for tonight (January 11, 2010):

8-14-19-23-28
11-14-19-24-32
8-10-14-16-33
6-10-14-24-37
3-13-15-19-33
3-16-19-23-24
3-17-19-28-32
6-13-16-19-28

This week, I am mostly playing on paper, not actually spending money buying picks. I would not recommend buying these, but it would be interesting to see how these perform in tonight's Cash Five drawing. I will give an update and some picks for tmorrow night's game tomorrow.