Good morning Todd, Beth, Pio, Bigk,

Pio, I find your hamster situation...disturbing. Sounds like they are running the household. Who wears the pants over there?

Todd, I'm fine, thanks for asking. Are you well?

You & I agree on the fact government ought to step out of our lives on many levels, cigs, helmets, drugs (illegal), prostitution, to name a few. However, we likely disagree on the government's financial involvement/contributions. You have a strictly hands off policy where I would like to see financial backing, without daily management of, some important areas all citizens gain from.

I absolutely agree with you on too many people taking SATs & this is, perhaps, one reason the scores are lower. However, there are kids who have not done well in school, won't do well on their SATs but in the proper atmosphere, with good teachers to spark their interest will find something in college they can excel at. Yes, tech schools are an excellent choice for many.

I'd like to see less emphasis on SAT scores & more on the individual & their particular capabilities & their level of desire to achieve a goal. This would require lots more work for colleges & universities to determine who would be a good fit for higher education, but, in the long run, may just get them more committed students.

I also wonder about going right off to college after high school. Many can & should, but a year off for those who are less certain, doing something (intern?, apprentice?) related to some fields of interest, rather than some crappy job just to get by, would help many kids find a direction. A City Year program type of concept.

I also agree with you on lack of personal responsibility. I tell my boys their education is in their hands. Our schools have excellent resources, teachers included, & it is their responsibility to take the lead. I tell them if they want questions answered, are having problems, need help, they need to ask for it a seek out help. In all likelihood the teacher will be more than happy to help them, seeing that they are making an effort. The way most classrooms work is the focus is on the lower end ability kids & the higher functioning must help themselves.

I understand the thinking behind this. No child is un-educatable & all should be provided with an opportunity to learn. This just doesn't work in its current form for the middle on up.

Now Pio, come on. You know better than this. Your chances of success in the lottery are roughly 1 in 40 million. Some are a little lower some are much higher. With a little education and application, you can consistently make a nice return in the stock market.

I have been a stock trader for 12 years. By trader, I don't mean investor. I buy and sell stocks according to technical analysis which primarily makes use of graphs. Much of the time, I only know the ticker symbol; I couldn't even tell you the name of the company or what they do. I couldn't care less. It can be simple or complex depending on your goals and approach. A seasoned trader can consistently make 15-20% annually without taking on undue risks. If you are willing to undertake risk, IOW, experience large standard deviations, you can make much more.

Many people try trading the first time each year. Most bomb out for the same reasons people bomb out of everything: they are not prepared and do not have a well-thought out approach.

Well we made the gingerbread house finally. It took me about 4 hours of labor and WW one hour of labor. We have about $1,700 invested in sugar, flour, spices and decorations assuming we don't count labor. WW wants to make more and sell them. She is thinking of asking 150 SR (about $40) but thinks that might be too much. She plans to do some market research. She is torn between trying to up the unit cost to about $60 or lower it to about $20 to increase sales volume. The good news is that there aren't that many man-hours left between now and Christmas so my projected losses do have a ceiling.

The cure for losing money is to make it up in volume.

So then you recommend the lower sales price. Should I then add the cost of the NoDoz to the unit cost or just consider it overhead?

Something you may not have factored in - labor is considering a walk-out.

Here are some photos. Keep in mind that we are limited here in what we have available as adornments and the base is a cheap piece of plywood because we are going to give this one away to a friend of WW's and I refused to part with anything more valuable.

house 1

house 2

I was thinking. Unless you place the GB house in the middle of a table and, say, place it on a counter against a wall, you can't see all four sides. So I got the idea to make the houses like a Hollywood movie set and only make GB house fronts and corners. No need to make a back and it would reduce the unit cost.

Okay BigK I found a way around the proxy server finally and got to see the squirrel melts. I was going a different direction. I have noticed that about half the baby hamsters have light and dark markings that are very similar. I have also noticed that they have similar colorings to chinchillas. Factor in that WW has always wanted a fur coat and influenced by the fact that DDs were watching 101 Dalmations yesterday and I got a brilliant idea. I have decided to raise baby hamsters so that they can make a fur coat for WW. I did a search on chinchillas and see that it takes about 2000 chinchillas to make a fur coat. Doing the ratio for size and rounding up, I guess I need about 4000 baby hamsters. At the current rate of production, this could take some time so I am now adding smoked oysters to papa's diet to get his libido up. At the same time I am looking for tiny little needles and thread. I haven't quite figured out yet how to teach the hamsters to sew though. I don't really understand how those little animals can make fur coats. I guess that's why it takes so many? <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />

Or maybe they have a union?

Pio - the houses look great.

You are too much man.
*wiping away tears of laughter*

Todd,

I need some help. I have a math problem and you, being good at math and all, might have a solution. While I was in the shower this morning I began thinking about the 4000 hamster target and I realized that I was thinking too simplistically (imagine that!). While I was working on ways to increase the rate of baby hamster production, it hadn't occurred to me that I needed to consider the mortality rate of baby hamsters as well. To be honest, I don't even know how long baby hamsters can live. We have yet to have one go from natural causes. For all I know they might live to be hundreds of years with no natural enemies in their environment. Maybe like sea turtles or something. That will definitely be an independent variable. Considering natural enemies, I was going to estimate the number of stray cats and work out their consumption rate of baby hamsters mitigated by their opportunity (i.e. incidence rate of garage door left open). But then it occurred to me that any animal's population will be proportional to its available food source. I got that from a National Geographic special on the Serengeti and substituted "hamster" for "lion". So it logically follows that if WW accidentally continues to provide a food source for the neighborhood cats and we increase the rate of incidence of that food source, then we should get some proportion of more stray cats. This is where it is all getting very complicated. I also have to account for the hamsters' other natural enemy. I just caught DD2 last night barely in time. She had put her Barbie goggles and snorkel on one of the baby hamsters and was filling up the bathtub and another hamster was "surfing". Okay I caught that on in time but how many other times am I NOT going to get there before the damage is done? So there must be a way to work out the math. What I need is an estimated date by which I will reach the 4000 hamster mark considering all factors. I can do the differential calculus but it is the actuarial math that confuses me. Don't they use factorials or something?

BTW, I have now found a way to keep the troublemaker hamsters under control. I propped up a wallet size photo of DD2 near their cage. Any time they get fiesty, I just hold the photo up for them. Gets their attention. I admit I am also being a little cruel to the hamsters. Every time I walk by the cage any more I "meow". It is just so funny to watch them "ball up". Can't do it in front of WW though - she hits me.

You know, of course, fur is wrong.

ex's mother was the oblivious type. She wanted, & got, a fur coat. A jacket & a stupid little girl looking hat that tied under her chin. I picked her up one day to go with the me & the boys to the local aquarium. Well, she had on her fur. I suggested she leave it in the car as she might get hot, but nooo she wore it in. She got the nastiest looks & interpreted them as jealously. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif" alt="" />

Hey nams,

I don't create the market. I don't wear fur myself. But if I don't teach my hamsters to sew, I am 100% certain that there will be tens of thousands of Chinese hamsters sewing night and day - sewing their little paws to the bone - to try to undercut my manufacturing costs. At least I'll give my hamsters one day a week off and only work them 18 hours per day. OMG - Do you think they'll want medical? <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/eek.gif" alt="" />

Pio - if you touch newborn hamsters, the mother rejects them and usually eats them. Keeps the numbers at bay.

Okay Todd,

The math just got even MORE complicated. Need to factor in a "touching" variable.

That makes all other calculations a moot point.

The ratio of baby hamsters that your DD will touch is 25:0 per 25 baby hamsters.

Thus the population of your hamsters will gradually decline, but the good news is the stray cat population will maintain its status quo.

If you can work your way around the touching thing, I've heard the carrot and stick plan works well for teaching hamsters to sew: the carrot really is a carrot, and the stick is electro-shock aversion therapy. It will teach your hamsters to greatly dislike not sewing.

Neak is nutso....

So if I understand the concept correctly, the exponential growth curve representing the rate of change of the population and the instantaneous slope of the asymptotic death rate curve representing the cumulative effects of mortality by both natural and external factors are infinitely divergent???

Bummer...

My final word on hamsters - I remember being delighted when some little aussie boys came knocking on my door. They said they'd asked their mum and they were each allowed one each. Two of the boys were known to me and the other two were their friends. They already had a couple of cages because they'd had them before and we gave them some sawdust and hamster food to start them off!

What a waste of time. These vile little ferral kids were launching the hamsters into the swimming pool - a kind of "how long will the hamster live if we abuse it" game. They have since been sent to boarding school in Oz because they are out of control.

Well I found DD2 putting bandaids on troublemaker hamster's feet. I was curious so asked why. She refused to talk. I took the hamster and removed the bandaids and found that he had blisters on his little feet. I was furious and asked how that happened. Again - silence. After much pressure she finally showed me what had happened. She was taking the hamster and pushing him quickly and repeatedly along the floor and yelling "vroom vroom vroom". I asked why. She replied that it worked with her wind-up car. She was trying to make him run.

With regard to how far you can throw things, I will say that I know for a fact that it is possible to throw a water balloon from the 14th floor of the Al Wasl tower in Dubai and have it land on Sheik Zayed highway. It only looks impossible. I don't have any more I want to say about that.

Actuarial math? It would seem to include conditional probabilities, Markov chains, stochastics, Poisson, CLT, Brownian motion and probability distributions. Probably permutations and combinations, yes. Unfortunately for your sweat shop hamsters, they are victims of several forms of the Gompertz Law and the neighborhood cat and DD2 seem to be competing for the title.

There can't be any Brownian motion. All my hamsters are grey.

Oh BTW, my DD2 is quite the scientist and has been doing some laboratory experimentation. She has now disproven the hypothesis that, if you cut off what little tail a hamster has, it will grow back AND, more importantly, she has disproven the notion that the little bit cut off will grow a new hamster.