Friday, August 22, 2008

Crazy Lottery Story (and other addictions)

I can't believe the Times printed this story without mentioning the words "gambling addiction" or "pathological gambling".

OK, there's a snippet of a quote from the executive director for the New York Council on Problem Gambling. How much you wanna bet (ha ha!) he had more to say?

Sorry, I know this is a little off-topic for me but when you have a regular guy with a wife & kids who spent $30K (of his $40K take-home pay) in one year on the lottery - doesn't that sound like a guy, with a problem? Yet somehow the article presents him as just another amusingly eccentric New Yorker. Odd tone.

And speaking of addictions, I just put my formerly waterproof camera in the mail to Colorado, which turns out to be the only way to get one of the Pentax Optio WP models repaired. I can actually get to the northeast warranty repair place on my lunch break, it's just up by Union Square, and I actually took it there back when I first bent the hinge. I had high hopes of a simple, quick repair - but it turns out that there's some special equipment for testing the seal in the waterproof ones & without that, they've got no way of verifying that they've closed it up right, so they just won't touch 'em. I've been warned that I shouldn't get my hopes up as these newfangled technological toys are generally not designed with repair in mind 'cause by the time you break it, there'll be a newer cooler one you're supposed to want to buy - but I'm hoping that something as straightfoward as a battery compartment door with a bent hinge can be replaced for something considerably less than the price of a new one.

Which, considering the level of enjoyment I get out of this particular toy (thanks again, mom & dad!) isn't all that much when it comes right down to it, but it WOULD cover the cost of, oh, say, a couple of dinners at the Space Needle!

(did I mention we're going to Seattle? Yippee yippee yippee!)

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