Thursday, June 5, 2003. 1:36PM

See? You knew deep inside that that spate of logs last week would lead to a delay later on, didn't you?

Not without good reason, I might add. Last week, you see, was the last week of semester, and as such we had no end of assignments due. I submitted them all on Friday - a day of extreme franticness. I calculated that through lab changes, going up to level 17 numerous times, looking for groups, finding paper to print with, stealing mouse balls, and generally being hectic I climbed the equivalent of a 100 story building up and down. Still, it all solved itself, and at about five thirty I got home. On a wall is the roster my mother wrote up for the chores me and my sister have to do, in her vague attempted to be out of our lives and yet still control them. Anyway, according to the roster, Friday night is the night we go out for dinner. Me and my sister are without transport, so her friend Univ came round and drove us down to the local Malaysian place (Univ amuses me because he used to be Jewish and vegetarian, and then a few months ago he renounced and ate a ham sandwich on Passover. In his defense, he claims that he was unaware that it was Passover at the time, although I my opinion that's a bit of an anti-Jewish strike right there). Afterward they went off to a party somewhere, and I spent a few moments gathering myself before heading off to Carlton where I was meeting some friends for drinks. It was one of those nights where you see people you know with usual frequency, so having seen several of my friends, I finally arrived in Carlton. What followed amused me greatly, but without you all having a detailed knowledge of the politics and histories of these people, I can't think of a way to tell it that would even make sense, let alone be in the least entertaining.

On Saturday, Chen-so and the M-Man came around, and we stayed up all night drinking coke, swearing, and playing computer games. This occupied much of Sunday, also, and what with the being tired from lack of sleep, and in that strange out of body experience you get from too much coke, it pretty much accounted for the weekend. Monday I had to go to uni again to make some dodge ass presentation. On the way home, I ran into Neil (as I quite often do at stations) and he came to my house for a few hours. I cooked him dinner, we played pool a while and listened to music. He suggested that the next day we do something, and I concurred (we agreed to do something 'soon' everytime we meet, but it never really happens). We met in the afternoon, and went to Footscray to pick up his car. After a little while we wound up back at my house where we sat down and figured out how to beat the casinos. So here it is: my plan in life.

Basically, the theory is this. You play Blackjack. You start at ten dollars. Every time you loose, you double the bet. Every time you win, you go back to ten dollars. In this way, you make ten dollars, nothing more, nothing less, every time you win. The downside is you need a bit of capital to get you started. Assuming that you will win at least one in every ten games (the odds of wining in Blackjack are just about even - slightly in your favor if you count cards), you need $10,120 to cover yourself if you have to go all the way. The chance, by the way, is about 0.09%. Now, this is pretty small, and for me, it's acceptable, but you can reduce the risk still further by having more money if you like, or even increase it and live on the wild side a little by having less money, however, the less money you have the less this becomes a system for beating casinos and the more it becomes gambling. Now, I reckon that playing like this, you could probably clear about sixty dollars an hour. Sometimes more, sometimes less, but on average, about sixty. Assuming you work nine to five, five days a week, with an hour for lunch, toilet, whatever, this leaves you up $2,100 a week. Okay, now, you're at a casino all day, so you're going to have to buy a few drinks, and you have to upkeep your apartment or whatever, so I'm going to allow for $1,000 a week in expenses. Now, that's good living by anyone's standard, so you don't spend it all. You tuck a little away each week for when you do loose ten games in a row and fuck yourself up, or if you get banned from the casino and have to move states or whatever. Either way, it's plenty of money. Now, with the $1,100 you get every week, you add that to the gambling pile (I picture it as a briefcase full of cash you convert to chips and back again every day). After ten weeks (actually 9.2, but we'll say 10), you'll have $20,240. Now, this is enough to cover one more loss, but rather than use it for that, I say you raise the minimum stake from $10 to $20. Oh! What's this? You've just doubled your weekly income! That means that in another 10 weeks, making twice what you were making before, you should arrive at $40,480.