Free Office 2007 and Vista Business

The Power of Together, Vista and Office 2007.
I've signed up for this, but can't view the webcasts. It looks legit, though. Basically, you register and listed to 3 webcasts each for Vista and Office 2007, then Microsoft sends you free software. Not a bad deal. If it would work, anyway. I'll keep trying.

Update (12/1/2006) -- this offer is Sold Out now. Turns out MSFT isn't trying to give away their software to everyone

Slots

I spent most of the day yesterday down at the Charles Town Races & Slots in West Virginia. While I've been to Atlantic City on occasion, I had never been to a place that was only slots. I could claim this trip was part of research into the pending decision to legalize slots in Gettysburg, but in reality it was just my neighbor and I escaping for a day. To begin, it was a nice drive down there from York: Over Canal, down 15 through Gettysburg to Frederick, then over 340 into Charles Town. A very pretty drive any time of year, passing through Harper's Ferry too. On the way back, I was on "deer watch", keeping a look out along the dark woods for the flash of an eyeball before something darts out in front of us (we didn't see any deer). Also on the way home we stopped at the Cozy family restaurant, apparently the oldest in Maryland.


On to the slots! The first thing that struck me when I walked in was how empty the place was. For noontime on a Monday, I shouldn't be surprised at that I guess. The next thing I noticed was how quiet it was. I was used to the slot areas in a casino being a bustling area of bleeps, blips and clanging coins (more on this in a second). So the first thing we did was to get our Player's Choice cards -- these are the cards you stick in a machine while playing. Of course, it's primary purpose is data mining for the casino -- how much time, betting style, amounts, etc. at each particular machine. But on the user's end, it tracks "points" that you can leverage for meals and such. Definitely worth having unless you're "off the grid" for some reason. After an overpriced, yet average, sandwich for lunch, we sat down to play. I quickly realized my memories of Atlantic City needed to be adjusted for modern days. There was no clanging of quarters because there are no quarters. The machines accept $1, $5, $10, and $20 bills and tickets. You cannot put a quarter into a quarter slot machine. The tickets come in as you "cash out" of one machine with a balance -- it prints you a bar coded slip that you can insert into another machine or bring to a cashier for real money.

On the games side, I found a couple that I enjoyed for different reasons. While the core part of me likes the old school symbols (cherries and bars) and a single pay line across the middle, most machines aren't like that. The basic change is that they use fewer symbols with various colors. Most games pay out on fewer combinations, but pay out a bit more. On a typical machine, you have the option to play 1, 2 or 3 credits per spin (where a credit is whatever denomination the machine is -- we played mostly 25¢ and $1 machines). For all but the top one or two combinations, the scale is linear. Win 5x for three of any bar for example. But the big jackpots are usually non-linear, which a factor of 2.5 to 5 for the 2x line, and 5 to 10 for the 3x line. If you're going to win big jackpots, there's no argument for not betting the max every time.

But one of the machines I really liked actually changed what things it pays out on for the second credit. So betting one, you can score on the typical bar combinations only (and win your bet back on all blanks). But betting two also scores on various combinations of 7s (the game was called Sizzling 7s). Early on in the day I won about $125 on a spin on this one, which, even though I like the concept, is probably the real reason it's in my top few :)

One cool machine had up and down arrows added to some of the bars. This means that if a bar with an up arrow landed one position below the scoring line it would automatically shift up a notch to be on the line. This really gives you the impression of multiplying the winning combinations, but in reality even though a bar shift paid out $60 to me for 3 triple bars, I didn't win at this one.

Finally my favorite: In The Money. This was a typical 5-line game where there are 3 scoring lines across the middle and two diagonals. Unlike where there's a linear pay scale, you'll want to "bet max" each spin. The first cool part is this "5x bar" that acted like a wild bar and pays 5x, so two double bars and one of these wins 5 times the double bar payout. Nice. Just getting these once in a while on mixed bar lines pays decently. But the really cool part of this game turned it into playing the lottery at the same time. There was a blue symbol that if you get 3 of these showing up in the field (they didn't have to be in a line), it would start playing In The Money and start counting up winnings. Betting the max gives you a 5x multiplier here too. Sometimes the song would barely start and you'd win 25 to 30 credits. Not bad, really, and falls in line with many other scoring lines. But every once in a while, it would just keep singing and singing. About half way through the day (when I was almost out of the $125 ticket I had won early), I scored 750 credits on a 25¢ machine! That's a little over $185 dollars. The catch is that that machine was pretty hot, and I did well, but the odds are stacked against you. After experimenting with many other games, I went back to In The Money, and even though I hit three 7s across the top and 3 bars across the bottom on one spin (110 credits), I never got another big In The Money hit -- lots of little 25s and 50s that eventually eat away at your bankroll.

On the way out, killing a few more 20s, I was playing one dollar machine and doing OK. I got up $20, but then started dropping again, so cached out $30. Hey, 10 extra bucks on the way out the door was OK with me. But Joe was still playing, so I hit one of the 5x/10x machines (another good idea that I liked a bit where symbols would modify the winnings like the 5x bar discussed above). This was just a quarter game, and I was playing standing up behind a stool. I was tired of sitting on those things and getting ready for the 2 hour sit going home. I got a couple dirty looks from a woman a couple machines down who I think felt like I was looking over her shoulder. Or maybe she didn't like my standing. She cashed out, but only moved on further machine down, so maybe she was just goind down this line and had just played the one I was on. Anyway, I don't even recall what hit now, but I won about $85. The thing dinged away for quite a while and I got a much, much dirtier look from the woman then. So I cashed out about $100 to head home. Basically I won back $80 with that last 20 on the way out the door. The gamblers creed says I was getting hot again and should play more. The engineer in me says I got lucky and we were about to leave, so we're leaving with an extra $100 than I would have had after losing the last sacrificial twenty. I bought Joe dinner on the way home.
A fun time. I have more stories, but already have written too much.

Allergies

So I have lived my whole life as one of those people with food allergies. Chocolate and shell fish. Since I've been a small child, I've had to watch out for these items. This means both Halloween and Easter sucked. The most chocolate I ever got was the black-coated Reese's Pieces; for Easter, it was white chocolate as the only option. What it also means is that every buffet style gathering - family parties, weddings, trade show events, etc. - I had to diligently stick to a couple of the items that I knew were safe from crab or shrimp contamination. When you live your whole life like this, it becomes a core part of who you are. Sometimes there's jealousy when you watch other people dig into various dishes or savor over desserts, but early on you develop a defense mechanism to deal with it. Shell fish are scavengers -- it's like eating seagull or rat. Chocolate makes you fat and gives you zits. Good riddance to both.

One more issue is that my wife is allergic to nuts. She ended up in the hospital in anaphylactic shock, ready to die without adrenaline. She carries adrenaline wherever she goes and avoided eating in a restaurant or even anyone else's cooking for nearly a decade. So I know the severe side too. The kicker here is that if both parents have food allergies, there's a 60% chance your child will have them too. So we were diligent with both our children. No wheat until 9 months. No milk until a year. No egg until 18 months. No nuts until 3. Watchful. Ever alert to what they might reach or someone else might offer them unknowingly.

We just took our girl down for her 3-year-old skin test, and she passed with flying colors like her brother did 2 1/2 years ago. Phew. We dodged that 60% bullet twice. We had actually considered not having kids for a while because we both knew what life was like as a person living with food allergies.

While we were there, I had myself tested too.

Negative.

For 5 different kinds of shell fish and for chocolate.

It's like living your life as a blind man then waking up one day and realizing your hat was just too big.

This has spawned a lot of thinking back, tracing down how it was that I was assumed to be allergic to chocolate and shell fish. When I was about 5 at Newark Days in the Mall at UofD, I think I had a brownie. I think I ended up in the emergency room with a swollen eye. But I don't know if I was ever actually tested for a chocolate allergy. And talking to an expert today, I found out that almost no one is actually allergic to chocolate. Many people will react to something in the chocolate, but they're not allergic to the cocoa itself, or to chocolate specifically. Then when I was 7 and we were house-hunting, we stopped at a Howard Johnsons somewhere (not our regular HoJos). My father had the all-you-can-eat fried clams, while my brother and I had whatever kid's meal (hot dogs?) with fries. Hours later while looking at a new-construction model, I was sick to my stomach. The catch was that the water wasn't on, so it made for an awkward time throwing up in this model home. The story is that I must have got into some of my father's fried clams. But how likely is that, really? I certainly wouldn't have dived into them, and I'm sure I'd have noticed the difference between that and a french fry. Isn't it much more likely that I got a bad hot dog? Or was wound up from house shopping all day that I had an upset stomach? Why did it jump right to "shell fish allergy"? I don't recall being tested after that event.

Now, I did and do have environmental allergies -- cut grass and cats come to mind. I got allergy shots for years. But cats still can bother me, and freshly mowed lawns make me sneeze. I may have tested positive for mold too. I don't recall when exactly, but I had slowly introduced chocolate into my diet since college. Never in large quantities, but enough that I began to convince myself that I probably wasn't really allergic. At least not violently. Similarly but accidentally, once I ate half a shrimp egg roll in college and also had many spoonfuls of Maryland crab soup. (Both were delicious, and I only found out what they were because each time I commented 'wow, this is great!' which prompted further investigation.)

Maybe I "grew out" of these allergies? But that's not likely either. The kinds of allergies one grows out of are like wheat and milk as an infant. Then they grow out of them by 3 or 4 years of age. A 7 year old doesn't grow out of a shell fish allergy. And as I mentioned before, it's unlikely I was ever allergic to chocolate.

I will be in Tampa next week for a trade show. I'm looking forward to trying out some shell fish and see what I've been missing the last 30 years. At least the last couple Halloweens have been better, but I'll still stick to jellybeans on Easter. Oh, and our kids only ever had a 30% chance, not 60%, which probably would have changed their early lives too. But at least they won't have 30 years of constant diligence and missed enjoyment to worry about.

Fatal Error CS0009

fatal error CS0009: Metadata file 'c:\Documents and Settings\ed\My Documents\VNI\conferences\SC06\tasks\ImslCS.dll' could not be opened -- 'There isn't metadata in the memory or stream'

I got this error for what I think is a known reason. We're actively working to support both .NET 1.1 and .NET 2.0 with IMSL C#, and it's proven to be quite a challenge. Many of our Acceptance Tests (ATs) failed under 2.0 because Microsoft decided to change the way they deal with double values. Anyway, we've got various working DLLs now and are moving onto a question of needing both 64-bit and 32-bit DLLs for .NET 2.0.
As part of this test, I took a 64-bit .NET 2.0 DLL and dropped it onto my system running 32-bit Windows XP and tried to build a very simple example. The error I got is what's quoted above. Reading around on the Internet, I see lots of people running into this because they're using COM DLLs rather than .NET Assemblies. And the MSDN Page is less than helpful. So while you may see this because you don't have a .NET assembly, you might also see this when you know you've got one. But now you need to find out if it's an assembly built with /platform:x64 while you're running on /platform:x86.