Rag Hand

What kind of business model is this?
Poker is still around, but it peaked some time back. So, what do you do?
Well, what you don’t do, is stage a poker dealer’s tournament here in Vegas with a $2500 buy in.
There are not enough interested poker dealers to fill the required seats, and if there were, lot’s of luck finding enough interested dealers with $2500 in their pockets.
This putz has also set up, or at least planned, various bosses tournaments and even an owner’s tournament.
The number of qualifying persons gets smaller, the buy-in gets higher, and the interest diminishes with each event.

Needless to say, the dealer’s tourney attracted a couple of dozen players (maybe), and generated less nationwide publicity than Oscar’s neon light fiasco.
–You remember Oscar and all those tight shots, so you couldn’t see how pathetically empty Fremont street was, or maybe you don’t. It’s not like there was anything to see.

What this guy, who obviously has very deep pockets, needs to do, is stick to someplace like California, and invest some of that cash in weekly dealer tourneys with a $100 buy in and decent giveaways.
This way he makes friends among the dealers, who can supply him with news and gossip for his website, and he can create a niche market, at the same time creating local celebrities. Hopefully, also creating enough local interest to get his readership up to the point that he can sell enough ads to make a few shekels.

Poker may not be dead, but it’s been done to the point that, what would have been a good idea two years ago, is now a waste.
And like Oscar’s lights, this would have been a bad idea two years ago.

It’s like putting a rubberband powered propeller and paper wings on a brick. –No matter what you do, it just won’t fly

Another piece from the NYT:

Insulated from lawsuits by their corporate structures, private investors in nursing homes have cut expenses and staff, sometimes below minimum requirements.

In the BBC comedy “Waiting for God,” an incompetent corporate manager tries to cut corners and costs at the expense of the residents. The residents always win in the end. –This is funny.

This article is about real life predators, and the residents never have a chance. –This is not funny.

A simple summation:
Habana Health Care Center, a 150-bed nursing home in Tampa, Fla., was struggling when a group of large private investment firms purchased it and 48 other nursing homes in 2002.

The initial buyers then became landlords and sold the facilities to another corporation, and received rent and consulting fees that were based on the profit of the home. –But they just owned the land, and as such had nothing to do with running the facilities.

The new investors hid themselves behind a mass of other corporations, making it nearly impossible to find out who to sue, and equally impossible to collect if someone does successfully sue.

In the mean time, the care in these corporate homes is far worse than in private homes.
Invariably the staff is cut, the care becomes all but nonexistent, and the guys at the top of the food chain make millions of dollars. —By trading on the misery of others.

Here something I read in the NYT.
It seems that a company in Florida started a rumor about Canada offering asylum to illegal immigrants so for $400 this outfit will help them fill out the form and point them in the general direction of our northern border.

In Naples on Thursday, Jacques Sinjuste, the general director of the Jerusalem Haitian Community Center, denied that he had urged undocumented immigrants to seek asylum in Canada or told them jobs would be waiting there. Mr. Sinjuste said he and a small group of volunteers at the center had merely helped immigrants fill out applications for asylum, he said.

Mr. Sinjuste, a Haitian immigrant who founded the center in 2000, said he had first heard about the possibility of seeking asylum in Canada from a client who brought one of the applications to his office two years ago. Since then, he said, the center has helped about 300 undocumented immigrants fill out Canadian asylum applications, charging $400 per person.

Mr. Sinjuste said he had recently fired a lawyer who worked for the center for describing the charge as a “fee” on the center’s Web site.
“It’s not a fee; it’s a donation,” he said. “Mostly it goes to pay the volunteers who help us do the job and to buy ink and paper.”

“It’s not a fee; it’s a donation.” —–But, if you don’t give them this “donation” you’re s.o.l.

Yet another scam, taking advantage of frightened people who don’t understand how things work.
—Still with odds just a little worse than 2to1 against it might be worth a shot.

I read an item on consumer complaints about various computer related support issues.
In the article, the writer seemed to be of the impression that things were getting worse. I haven’t been able to tell any real difference in the last twenty years or so.

This is the process:
After sitting on hold for at least fifteen minutes, the first person you speak to may or may not speak English, but if they do, their accent will make communication difficult at best.
Assuming for the moment that, after calling back several times, you connect with a person you can understand, they will then read off a series of incredibly stupid questions, that all lead to the inevitable conclusion, that, yes, your computer is indeed plugged in.

This person will then imply that you simply aren’t very bright and are making some sort of very basic error. After managing to maneuver past that obstacle, they will put you on hold for at least thirty more minutes while they connect you to a senior technician.
Depending on the company, you will either get another person who doesn’t speak any language you are familiar with, or you will stay on hold until everyone you need to talk to has gone home.
At which you will have the privilege of listening to a recording asking you to call back during normal business hours. –Repeat as necessary.

If your fairy godmother is in an exceptionally good mood, you will eventually get to someone who not only speaks a language you understand, but who also treats you like you might be smarter than the tech support you’ve had to deal with up to this point.
At this time you will be asked to return your problem child to the factory, because there is nobody within several hundred miles of where you live who is an authorized repair center.
This person will give you a magic number. This is called and RMA, without this, your device will vanish into the great unknown, from which it can be restored only by the sacrifice of a black goat, using a silver knife.

This has been the way of things, since the days when companies built rll hard drives with an mfm interface.

On the WordPress Dashboard there appeared among the usual collection of themes and plugins, a box labeled support job.
This link led to Photo Matt’s site and a link to Automatic.

Of the two positions listed, I like the title, “happiness engineer.”
The requirements are:
* Patience and grace.
* Excellent writing skills.
* Working knowledge of WordPress, HTML, and CSS.
While I fail the basic requirements, I do like the job description, especially the “patience and grace” part.

The other is systems wrangler. —If this is not self explanatory, perhaps you shouldn’t apply.
This one sounds like it’s best left to an ubergeek.

It sounds like a good group to work for, if you have the discipline required to get the job done without someone constantly nagging. –This is easier said than done.

When they have a position titled, senior grouch, I may apply.