Mega Millions...Just Don't Get It

I don't quite understand the concept of why people buy lottery tickets. It's equatable to taking a five dollar bill and lighter and lighting the bill on fire. I'm a statistics geek and you have a better probability of getting struck by lightning twice than you do of winning the lottery.

How about this? Next time a the pot reaches over $500 million in Mega Millions and you're thinking about buying a ticket take that money a go spend it on something worth while like a cup of coffee. Or even better put it towards the savings for your new iPod, iPad, iPhone or lap-top you were going to get. You'll never miss it.

Think about it this way. There is a reason the pot got so big: no one won previously. It's simple statistics logic. Out of the millions of people who bought a ticket yesterday there were there were only three winners, one from Kansas, Illinois and Maryland (Baltimore County - doesn't surprise me that it wasn't Carroll County).

It would be interesting to see a state-by-state breakdown of how many people bought tickets from each state. I want to confirm my hypothesis that Kansas, Illinois and Maryland were amongst the top five of the stats that sold the largest amount of tickets.

It's all good to dream but the idea of buying a ticket (or two) seemingly gives us the right to fantasize. But dreams have to be somewhat based in reality. They have to have some chance of coming true.

There is a misconception that if you do by any chance get lucky (and that's what it is just pure luck) and win the jackpot, everything in your life will change. But that is not the case. As the legendary rock band "The Beatles" said in one of their many hit songs "money can't buy me love," well money can't buy happiness, either.

(Editor's Note: Actually money may actually be able to buy happiness. You can pay therapists to make you happy...lol. But do you really want that.)

Five Years

haven't posted anything since last year - aka 2011 and I think I need to get back into the habit of putting something up even if it is just random.

I was thinking of a few things today. Mostly back to those college days and golf. Probably since Wednesday was the five year anniversary of "that day." And remember how this weekend, five years ago, was the longest weekend of my life, playing two rounds of golf on, I'm guessing, about four hours of total sleep. It was that weekend that Christine injured her foot on "The Hill" between the third and fourth holes.

But we've gotten over it and moved on. As Randy Pausch said in his time management talk "if things aren't going well, then you're probably learning a lot and they will go better later."

So now let's continue to move forward we can not dwell on the past as I sit here thinking back to my golf days when Coach always preached to us "identify the negative but focus on the positive." (I'm still in the learning stages of this one.)

To close out this blog post I've decided to post the music video of one of my all-time favorite movies when I was a kid: Free Willy. The first one not any of the sequel crap. The first one was, and still remains, the best out of the Free Willy trilogy.