Mega Loser

I didn’t win. None of us won. We had 44 people play $4 each to the tune of $176 worth of numbers and we cleared maybe $15-$17 in winnings. Roughly $0.33 each.

But man, the hype. The Mega Millions made the rounds of two awards shows as joke fodder. The Kids Choice awards and the American Country Awards both had mentions of the big jackpot.

As for myself, I played $20 and even played the numbers from LOST.

Guess what? I lost.

But now that Mega hype has died down the real issues arise. The scandals.

When will people learn? If you are the coordinator of your work’s lottery pool, you need a little CYA quality assurance.

For me, I took the ridiculous task of coordinating efforts, collecting money, buying tickets, and giving out bad news.

But I was smart about it. I collected all the money ahead of time, giving people a Wednesday through Friday window of opportunity. I made sure to offer inclusion to anyone in the office. And then I went to buy the tickets somewhere that I could do without the lines and madness, to ensure that everything was right.

I walked into the local beer distributor near my building and had complete attention of the cashier. She took all my cash, we counted it twice and then we counted the tickets twice to make sure we had the exact number. Then, I scanned all of the tickets into pdfs and emailed them to all of the participants. That way, if we did win, and I stress “IF”, I had no chance to have that awkward, “Well, I bought the winning ticket separately” moment. In fact, I did buy mine separately, later at a completely different location.

Why don’t people get that? We’ve already seen two cases recently in the news where the winner claimed to have bought the ticket separate from the group they bought tickets for and the first one ended up being decided in court, in favor of the coworkers. How does this lady from a Maryland McDonald’s think she’s going to get away with this? Unless she made two separate purchases with different amounts of money and they can place the winning number into the second pool that was her own purchase, she’ll have to share the winnings.

Sometimes lotteries bring out the worst in humanity. You can imagine a tight knit group of people turning on each other like it’s a bad movie. Even with the prospect of the most evil aspects of human nature taking over, I’d still want to win. I mean, duh!

I’d just be smart. Immediately sign the back of the ticket. That’s tops overall. The last thing you want to do is misplace it where someone else can find it. Next, contact a lawyer and get a financial person involved to set up a trust or some kind of shelter so that you can’t take advantage of your urge to go Brewster’s Millions with the winnings… especially, since you may not even have them yet. Then plan the exit strategy.

I say exit strategy because as soon as you go public with the news that you’ve won, you will be inundated with all sorts of ridiculousness. I do think that I would at least treat my family to a week or two long vacation on me at a nice beach house to plan what to do. I’d want to include them somehow, but for everything else, I’ll probably go off the grid.

The fact that the at least one of the winners, scandal or not, has been identified is probably a bad sign. That kind of thing you want to drag out as long as you can. I want enough time to get all my ducks in a row before the world comes crashing into my life.

So, I guess not winning is kind of a blessing. Then again, they keep saying that money can’t buy happiness. Fine, challenge accepted.

WUMF: March 2012 Edition

March is at an end and that means, WUMF time.


Mega Loser
The lottery fever that swept the country for the better part of two weeks is now over.  I didn't win, so I will be back at work on Monday.   Think of it.  Had no one won last night, the potential jackpot could have been close to $975 million by end of business on Tuesday.  Almost a billion dollars for a lottery.  Unreal.  Now, at work, I coordinated our early retirement efforts and bought $176 worth of tickets.  The split for Friday's jackpot would have ended up split 44 ways resulting in around $8 million each.   A far cry from $640 million, but still appreciated. 

My own efforts with my family resulted in a few Mega Number hits but no jackpot.   I even played Hurley's numbers from LOST and got this as a fortune from dinner on Friday night.

"Money will come to you when you are doing the right thing."

Craft Beer Swap 2012

It's happening again, our first beer swap at the year.  Plenty of craft beer to drown our lottery sorrows in since we lost.  My contribution was Southern Tier Eurotrash Pilz.  Other selections are Victory Whirlwind, Breckenridge Pandora's Bock, Anchor Bock, Draai Laag Simon Girty, Blue Point Spring Ale, Anderson Valley Summer Solstice Cerveza Crema, Penn Marzen, Sierra Nevada Glissade Golden Bock, Dogfish Head Aprihop, and Victory Headwaters Pale Ale.

So far, I've had my own and the Whirlwind Wit Bier.  Wasn't a big fan of the Eurotrash Pilz, but the Whirlwind Wit was not too bad.  

Non Runner Sticker Takes Off... Running

Awhile back, I released a sticker on my stores celebrating the fact that not everyone can run a marathon.  Hell, not everyone WANTS to run a marathon.  As I sat in traffic, I noticed cars with those 26.2 and 13.1 stickers on them.   It didn't take long to figure out the owner was a marathon or a half marathon runner.   Personally, I have no interest in puking and chafed nipples.   So, the lazy entrepreneur strikes again.

 

0.0 Non Runner Pack of four stickers

Don't laugh.  It's become my best selling item recently.   

How All on One Equals Quantum Physics

I’ll admit it. I play the lottery. I do. Whenever my brother-in-law has tickets from the Legion and I have a couple of bucks, I try to be the good neighbor and buy at least one. Then they disappear and I don’t find them for months, well beyond the redeem date. I usually don’t win anything, anyways, so no big loss there. It was only a couple bucks and even though a hundred dollars is nice, it’s not the end of the world if I miss out on it by some act of sheer laziness on my part.
However, on occasion I do play the big jackpots and I do pay attention. Around here, that’s Powerball and Megamillions. A few million dollars is quite different than a hundred dollars. Of course, after taking the lump sum and giving the government the assist for their [sarcasm]effort [/sarcasm], I would probably end up with that same hundred dollars I overlook on the local punch tickets. Yet, whenever the jackpots for either big ticket lotteries inch over $100 million, I will walk into a convenience store and put a few bucks towards the tax on the stupid, as it has been called.

‘A tax on the stupid.’ That sounds about right. Considering the odds it takes to actually win one of those jackpots I could die from being in a plane crash more times. And I’m not talking about being on the plane. I’m talking about being in my car on the way to work and a plane falling out of the sky and landing on me. Still, whenever that jackpot rolls into three digits to the left of the leading comma, I will play.

But, I am not a die hard. In the world of lottery players I am a poser. I’m a cherry picker. I’m a fair weather fan. I am the office schlub who throws two bucks into a football pool, of which I may know nothing about, and will win the whole shebang. Those are the people you truly despise, right? You do all your research, watch Sports Center, look at the injury reports, the weather reports, the psychological state of the teams and then consult a psychic before making your picks. Then Bob from accounting goes home and asks his cats to pick a winner between the Detroit Lions and Green Bay Packers and ends up taking home $400 for little to no effort. Of course, I can’t equate my luck in office pools to winning the lottery because I’ve actually won office pools.

Truth is I don’t make a habit of playing because I know what the odds are. Then again, I live an hour away from Jack Whittaker. In fact, there are several small to medium jackpot winners in the area of which I live with Jack being the King of jackpot winners. Yet, that went horribly wrong for him. Still, regardless of how many people say, ‘Money can’t buy you happiness,’ I would be happy for the chance to disprove their theory.

So, I go into the Gas and Sip or local Kwik Stop and will throw away my money on the chance that I can say, ‘You know what? I’m not coming into work today and I don’t think I’ll be in tomorrow, either.’ That’s usually when my trouble begins.

You see, I am a casual player, as I said before. I don’t want to spend a great amount of time in the store making my purchase. I’ve got places to be. I want to go in, give my money and get out. I’m not there to consult the stars and fill out Scantron sheets or remember all the birthdays of everyone I know, their anniversaries and social security numbers. I want to go in and say, ‘Give me five dollars on Powerball, please,’ and walk out. And I have a system of spending, too. When both the Powerball and Megamillions jackpots are real close to $100 million, I’ll put five dollars on each. When either jackpot goes over $100 million, I’ll up it to maybe $10 for tickets. If they get into the $200 million range, I’ll spend $20. If I’m lucky, I may win a few dollars which just goes towards my spending on the next drawing. If someone hits and the jackpots reset, I quit until they get back up there.

So, I don’t spend a lot of brain power on this. But, man, there are people who are crazy about playing. They play every day. They spend unseemly amounts of money on lotteries. They come in with a list and a purpose. They take 20 minutes to go over each and every ticket as they buy it and have their own language for doing it. They are usually in front of me.

Awhile back, I stopped into a gas station on my way home from work to spend five dollars on a weekend drawing. There was no one else in the store besides me and an older gentleman. I took a couple of seconds to check my tickets electronically, only to find out I had won nothing from the last drawing. Meanwhile, the older gentleman got in line next to me and then pulled out a piece of paper. He then proceeded to spend the next 20 minutes rattling off numbers and combinations of plays that would have made John Nash say, ‘Can you stop for a second while I grab another calculator and an MIT grad student?’ I couldn’t even understand what he was saying except that I think there was a niner in there somewhere. Meanwhile, the cashier continued to type with fingers of lightning as if they had some kind of psychic bond and she could anticipate his every move. I’m guessing because this guy probably comes in a lot and does the exact same ritual every time. Mid way through his display of mathletic abilities he starts turning around to see the line which has now formed behind me. Then he starts calling out to various people. Give me a number. What day were you born? What’s your anniversary? He asks the other cashier for a number and they rattle one off without missing a beat. The whole time, the original cashier works the register like an account with an adding machine in a spending montage on Brewster’s Millions.

Finally, the guy finishes and it’s now a half hour later and I’m late. I walk up and say, ‘Five dollars on Powerball, please.’

Simple.

Quick.

Painless.

She then asks me, ‘All on one ticket, OK?’

I froze. She was speaking some foreign language to me. She repeated it and her voice became all slo-mowy and distorted. I was asking for an apple and she was asking if I wanted a motorcycle horn and urine sample and it was all in a language with clicks and whistles and niners.

‘Um? Yeah sure.’

The entire time the old guy went on predicting the next solar eclipse and forming a string of numbers that mathematically explained LOST seemed effortless. I get asked a simple question and totally blanked.

This guy was Jeopardy and I was Wheel of Fortune.

‘All on one, OK?’

Mind blowing. It was the equivalent of saying the true name of God and having your head explode. I went home and trepanned myself with a power drill. Now, I don’t worry about such things. I just stare at the trees and watch the leaves blow in the wind. At peace.