Primal Sneeze

They weren’t living together long when Pat’s wife-to-be began dropping the phrase, pitter-patter of little feet, into conversation. So off to Joe-the-dog he and I went and bought a 14-week-old puppy. A beautiful Golden Retriever bitch.

A name. She would need a name. We took to the high stool, leaving the puppy to explore the bar, to think about it.

Dee-Oh-G was a runner. Maybe Keh-mere. Barker? Maybe, but what if she turned out to be a whiner instead? We called another round - these deliberations could take time.

Ah for fuck sake, screamed the barman. Look what that bastardin’ dog of yours is after doing!

Unnamed puppy, exhausted from exploring, had climbed on a bench, fallen fast asleep and peed all over it. Awakened by the commotion, she was visibly embarrassed.

The barman tossed a out toilet roll. Here, he roared red-faced, you wipe that up. I’m not going near it.

Pat tore off two small sheets, walked over, gently raised the dog’s tail and dabbed at her butt.

In the late 80s and early 90s, Pat (he of farting through pure silk fame), like many thousands of young Irish men and women, left Ireland to find work in Britain.

Things were tough but what kept them going was the certainty of a wage at the end of the week. And the TV was much better than back home. UK Gold was being broadcast live remember.

One of the most memorable ads aired on UK TV at that time was for the AA. Two old dears sat in their car, one declaring “he’s a very nice man”, the other bettering her with “he’s a very, very nice man”, only for the first to come back with “he’s a very, very, very nice man”. And so on as the camera panned out to show an AA mechanic working feverishly to repair the car in the pouring rain.

But even timeless classics like that didn’t make up for the anti-Irish bias encountered daily. A bias caused, or intensified, depending on your view, by the activities of the IRA. All Paddies were suspect and that was that.

On one trip home, Pat was taken out of the queue at Heathrow and told to raise his arms, place his hands against the wall and spread his legs. He was frisked from the top down.

The other passengers filed slowly by and Pat nodded back over his shoulder. “He’s a very nice man. He’s a very, very nice man.” When the officer’s hands ran up inside his legs he squealed “oooh, eeew, he’s a very, very veeeery nice man”.

Her Majesty’s finest slunk away red-faced.

I’ve written before about betting on horse racing before and even ran a sweep for the Grand National a couple of times. In the post linked I warned of keeping a tight rein of both horse and wallet, so I’m not getting back the whole right-wrong discussion here (so don’t go jumping in with mug’s game comments), but I am returning to bookmakers as an example of how complexity is employed to con the customer.

Pricing services is something all businesses have to do carefully so as to ensure a return.

Tradesmen often use “cost of materials multiplied by 3″ as a rule of thumb to build in time/labour into a quotation. Personally I charge x per hour for my time. If that hour is to be spent giving a course, then I charge xy+z, where y is the hours preparation needed and z the cost of materials handed out. In both cases the customer knows in advance what the final bill will be.

In the case of a mobile phone company the tariffs are so complex that it is virtually impossible to predict exactly what your bill will be in advance. Even if you have a good idea of the minutes you will spend on the phone they are billed at so many varying rates depending on time of day, type of number called etc., that the whole business just becomes unfathomable. If you ever get it right, it is most likely because you haven’t used up the free minutes in your package - you have paid for unused time.

Similarly if you enquire about putting money on deposit the bank will list off what the interest rate for the amount in question is currently (but that it could change) and tell you about how that rate translates into a % APR or AER, which of course may, or may not, be subject to DIRT. Translates? What? How?

But we toddle along making calls on our mobiles to the banks and never knowing what we will win or lose at the end of the day. Why? Because it’s just so complex we are resigned to take their word for it.

Banks and mobile phone companies thrive on this complexity and use it to their advantage, often increasing that complexity to hoodwink us. The bookmakers invented it.

Granted some things are acceptable. Take an over simplified example: 10 horses in race with a theoretically equal chance of winning. Statistically the odds for each are 10/1. The bookie will set the odds at 9/1. This is called an overround book and in practice is a far more complex calculation, but we accept the bookie needs to take a cut for their services.

However, overrounding occurs in other situations. When a horse at 6/1 wins in a deadheat you would expect to be paid on odds of 3/1. Wrong. It will actually be 5/2. Another somewhat complex calculation.

Tattersalls Rule 4 is the bane of the punter’s life. If a horse is withdrawn at a late stage and insufficient time is available to reset the odds, then a deduction is made from any winnings based on the odds that horse was at the time. It can vary from no deduction to 90c in the €.

There are many, many, many, many more rules that affect payout. And to further complicate matters, individual bookmakers may, at their discretion, lessen the deductions or increase the prices in the guise of special offers.

See where I’m going here? No matter what odds it says on your winning docket, you can not be confident that is what you will be paid out on.

While the bookmakers invented complexity to confuse the customer and other businesses followed suit, my punter pals tell me of a case of a reverse knowledge transfer from the phone companies. Here’s the way it works.

A punter hands in a docket just as the race begins. (The local betting chain accept bets up to 10 seconds after the off as a favour or special). This is scanned in, as you would an photograph into your computer, the exact time is automatically recorded in their computer system, a photocopy of the docket is returned to the customer and the information on the digital copy is later manually entered into the system by the staff.

If the horse wins but the docket was scanned in past the 10 seconds after the official off-time (as transmitted from the racecourse system to the bookie’s system) the bet is declared void and only the stake is returned.

Fair enough you’d say, the staff, as humans, can’t be expected to monitor the off-time versus bet-placed time accurately and especially so in a busy shop.

But here’s the scam. If the late bet is a losing one, it remains valid and the stake is not returned.

Suspecting this to be the case one of my pals and I organised an experiment. We wrote out two dockets. 1€ on the short-priced favourite (expected to win) and €1 on a rank outsider and presented both as close to the passing of the 10 seconds as we dared. (Any later, and the staff member would know it was too late). We made sure to pass the one we expected to lose win* over the counter first. [*Hat tip to emorindo for correcting the wording.]

Sure enough the favourite won and we were told the bet was void as it was late. When we presented the second docket we were told it was a losing one. When pressed about the timing the staff member told us it was valid as it was placed before the 10 second grace period. She even allowed us see that on her screen.

The conclusion was the software detected a loser and clocked back the timestamp. It begs the question whether wining bets placed, at say 8 seconds, are clocked forward past the 10 mark. That is an experiment we have yet to conduct.

Bottom line, complexity, but a little more in this case. It is akin to being billed for unsed minutes on your phone tariff.

Grannymar’s post on a Woman’s Poem and a Man’s Poem reminded me next weekend two of my best friends celebrate their 12^th wedding anniversary. I knew the 25^th anniversary is silver and the 50^th gold, but I had to check Wikipedia for the 12^th. Why would I bother? Well because Pat will call me today, as he always does a week before. Here, have ya got the Internet thing on? Will ya look up what I’m supposed to be giving herself on Saturday. If he doesn’t burst his butt laughing when I tell him what the 12^th is I’ll be surprised.

They met in London. She was nursing England. He was building it. Within months they both knew they had found their match.

That summer they came home for a holiday and stayed with her parents. Things were going very well until the third day when he was left alone with Maureen Waters for the first time.

Maureen can be daunting at first. I know that myself. Straight-backed and always immaculately groomed, her accent and even her gait betray a background far above her husband’s station.

So, Patrick, tell me again what it is you do? I understand it is in the area of construction.

Groundworker mainly, Mrs. Waters. But I can turn me hand to anything, as they say.

A groundworker? What exactly does that entail? Would one consider it a skilled profession?

Well ya have to know what you’re at. We get the ground cleared and lay down the drains and the paths and the foundations and all that.

It does not appear to be quite an important role. Or indeed, skilled. Unless of course I am misinterpreting what you say, Patrick.

Oh it is important, missis! Shur if we don’t get our bit right then the whole lot could come tumbling down.

I see. And the remuneration?

Huh?

The money, Patrick. As a career, is it well paid?

Well I’ll put it to ya this way, Mrs. Waters. If that lassie of yours sticks with me, in no time at all she’ll be farting through pure silk.

Would you mind setting this up for me, asked ordered the neighbour. You know me and gadgets - I’d just make a dog’s dinner of it.

No hassle, I lied. It’ll probably need charging. I’ll drop it over to you in the morning all ready to go.

Now ladies and gentlemen of the bloggery, this wasn’t like any gadget I’d tinkered with before. No. This was class kit. Audio and video transmitted over a secure and shielded wireless connection up to 190m. This was going to be fun.

Unintuitive buttons on both units meant I very quickly realised this was going to be one of those rare occasions of having to RTFM. So I did.

“Using a ridiculously small Phillips screwdriver, remove the cover of the parent unit and insert 3 AAA rechargeable batteries (supplied). Replace the cover and secure using a ridiculously small Phillips screwdriver. Charge for 8 hours.

“Using a ridiculously small Phillips screwdriver, remove the cover of the child unit and insert 3 AA regular batteries (not supplied). Replace the cover and secure using a ridiculously small Phillips screwdriver.”

Good: I got to use my ridiculously small Phillips screwdriver. It came in a set of 3 tiny replica tools taped to a joke birthday card. The card giver’s intention was that I’d giggle a bit and bin them a day later. I let them down by expressing excitement and storing my new precision instruments carefully in the pocket of a tool case.

Bad: I would have to wait until it was fully charged to play with it. There is nothing more disheartening than a new toy sitting there with a “do not touch” sign hoovering over it in mid-air.

Ugly: The AAA batteries didn’t fit snugly in the parent unit. I reRTFM. “Using a ridiculously … blah … AAA rechargeable …”. I’d been doing like it said. So why wouldn’t they fit? I could tell the AA ones would. This was all wrong.

Frustrated, I decided to leave it and try again in the morning.

I reRTFM again. No joy. I RTFBox for clues. And it dawned on me.

To a techie, parent unit means base unit. In this case, the transmitter. Child units are devices that connect to the parent. In this case, the receiver.

In this instance the terminology was reversed. The child unit was the video camera/audio mic. The parent was the screen/speaker.

I now know all about Baby Monitors.

You’ve probably realised from the title and some previous stories that I take the P out of the postman quite a bit. Sometimes I get the upper hand, sometimes I don’t.

Why is that? you may ask. Well, I may tell you, we grew up together and have been playing practical jokes on each other since we could walk and slagging each other since we could talk.

I was invited to his wedding. A blacktie affair the invitation said. Well it was for me and no one else. I stood out like a right dick in my monkey suit. I got him back for that the week he came home from the honeymoon - he came out one morning to find “Just Married” sprayed on the post van in shaving foam and a clatter of tins cans tied to the back. He was half way through his round when someone pointed out the banner trailing from the aerial - “I got my first ride”.

For months now he’s been at me to put a postbox at the entrance. For months now I’ve been putting it off just to bug him.

I relented last week and bought one. But I couldn’t hang it on my own, so I figured who better to help me than the man who would use it most. On Friday he held it while I bolted it on. He even got to pick the spot it went. I thanked him most profusely: That’s grand. You won’t be coming into the yard annoying me now.

Yesterday I seen him pass by the window. A knock on the door. I ignored it. He came to the window.

Open the door, ya bollix ya.

How do I know it’s you?

You can see me, for feck sake.

Not good enough. Have you ID? And anyway, the postman always knocks twice.

He knocked on the door again and I opened it.

Would ya not use that grand postbox I bought ya?

I have a parcel. Won’t fit. Why didn’t ya get a decent size one?

Me? Me? You’re blaming me? Shur it was you put it up.

I did not. You did.

No I didn’t. As sure as the dog’s me witness, I seen ya. I was standing there right beside ya on when you put it up. Not my fault you put up a box that’s too small.

I noticed something protruding for the box later. He’d gone and stuffed it full of advertising leaflets.

I left them in it. We’ll see what happens today.