Unless your faucet is dripping out yellow and brown it's time to switch to just drinking tap water. And if your faucet is dripping out yellow and brown, I'll make this post quick since you do not have an internet connection and are relying on someone else's. I'm psychic like that. Water from the tap is not only a money saver, but it contains nutritious fluoride to help protect against cavities as well! Its a great value AND it saves the trip to the store to buy the water. What else are you saving? The weight of the water case(s) you buy lug down your car causing it to be less fuel efficient.

It's money saving all over!! IF you absolutely must buy water and refuse tap, which defeats the purpose of saving money for a lottery ticket, then buy the gallon milk containers of water. They are usually just a buck or so.

Now get drinking that tap water and save that money! The last jackpot sure quenches my thirst then a bottle of water, and YOU could of won it! Hope that Fiji tasted great.

"Some poor people see playing the lottery as their best opportunity for improving their financial situations, albeit wrongly so," said the study's lead author Emily Haisley, a doctoral student in the Department of Organizational Behavior and Theory at Carnegie Mellon's Tepper School of Business. "The hope of getting out of poverty encourages people to continue to buy tickets, even though their chances of stumbling upon a life-changing windfall are nearly impossibly slim and buying lottery tickets in fact exacerbates the very poverty that purchasers are hoping to escape."

The lottery is a tax on people who don't understand mathematics.  And if you don't understand math youa re more likely to be poor.

I just love the squishly little recommendation this bunch of academics makes though:

In the study, the researchers note that lotteries set off a vicious cycle that not only exploits low-income individuals' desires to escape poverty but also directly prevents them from improving upon their financial situations. They recommend that state lottery administrators explore strategies that balance the economic burdens faced by low-income households with the need to maintain important funding streams for state governments.

So its a great revenue stream for governments (and organized crime) but they want it to be structured in such a way as to balance the economic burdens of the poor with their stupidity in playing the lotto which gives the states the money to economically exploit the poor.

Kind of circular thinking, eh?

Don't take this personal, but...

You're fat. (yes, I mean YOU)

You're so out of shape.

You sweat while doing absolutely nothing.

oh boy - my phone should be ringing off the hook any minute now!

You can't make it up a flight of stairs without gasping for breath.

You're so weak, you can't even open a pickle jar.

I can hear the cash register now... cha-CHING!

Is that your BMI or your I.Q.?

Stay away from the beach, you're making the tide come in, Tubby.

ummm... can I get $5 on the Powerball?

First we create an ArrayList (you will need to declare the System.Collections namespace).

ArrayList numbers = new ArrayList();

We will use this to store and sort our chosen 6 numbers. We will also need to make use of the Random class that the .Net framework provides us with. The Random class generates pseudo-random number, and we can set the range from which this number is selected. We also need to create a variable to temporarily store our generated number in:

Random RandomClass = new Random();
int randomNumber;

Now we need to generate 6 random numbers between from 1 to 49, without the same number being selected twice. To achieve this we use a do while loop, checking that the number isn't already in the list before adding it to the list. We use a for loop to repeat this 6 times:

for (int i = 0; i < 6; i++)
{
do
{
randomNumber = RandomClass.Next(1, 49);
}
while (numbers.Contains(RandomNumber));

numbers.Add(randomNumber);
}

Now that we have our 6 unique lottery numbers, we can call the sort and reverse method on the ArrayList to order the numbers from low to high.

numbers.Sort();
numbers.Reverse();

So now we have the 6 numbers, you need to display them to the user. If you are making a console version you can simply iterate through the ArrayList and print them out to the console. If you are making a WinForm application, you can insert the numbers into 6 text boxes. The quickest and simplest way to do this is to drag and drop 6 text boxes onto your form (make sure you keep them in order). Now we use the foreach statement to cycle through each textbox and insert the next number from the ArrayList:

int j = 0;
foreach(Control c in this.Controls)
{
if (c is TextBox)
{
c.Text = numbers[j].ToString();
j++;
}
}

Remember that this method will only work if there are no other textboxes on the form! I just thought it would be nice to demonstrate another way of populating a collection of textboxes. The more foolproof way would be to specify each textbox name like so:

textbox1.Text = numbers[0].ToString();
textbox2.Text = numbers[1].ToString();

As always, feel free to make comments / ask questions. Cheers!

Full source code here

-Nuri

-Lorraine

Sitting at her desk, typing as she stared fixedly at the monitor, she daydreamed. On the walls of her cubicle were photos she had cut from magazines – pictures of bright, sunny places, white sand, blue water. Her own personal escape clauses that let her be anywhere other than here. Someday, she thought. Someday.

Her phone buzzed, making that horrible noise that replaced the old fashioned bell ring of her youth. She winced as it shook her out of both her fantasy and work trance. Picked up the phone, gingerly, as though it might cause her some bodily harm. The voice on the other end said, “Is this Debbi?”

“Yes.”

“This is Rob Marte of WLST radio. Did you enter our Relax & Enjoy sweepstakes?”

“Yes.”

“And what is the phrase that plays?”

“Umm. WLST, listeners sit tight?”

“That’s right Debbi. And guess what?”

“What?” she asked in a whisper.

“YOU’RE OUR BIG WINNER!!! You and a guest will fly on TransAirWorld to beautiful Swangaloo where you will be staying at the Deluxarama. There, on your all expense paid trip, you’ll be staying in a private villa, with a butler and chef at your beck and call. You’ve got a private beach, open bar, and $2,500 cash to spend as you choose during ten unbelievable days. It doesn’t get much better than this.”

“This is a joke, right?”

“No joke Deb. You are the lucky winner.”

“Me?”

“You. And whoever you choose to take with you.”

“I have to take someone?”

“Yup. You and a guest. Hang on the line and I’ll put our producer on with you to give you all the details, terms and legal stuff.”

Debbie breathed deeply, trying not to pass out. A male voice got on the line, “Debbie, congratulations! This is Marc. There are all kinds of details I need to share with you. Where are you now?”

“I’m at work. I can’t breath.”

The voice laughed, “You can breath. C’mon Deb, in and out, in and out.”

Debbie worked at breathing for a minute, “I won? I really won? I never win anything.”

“You really won this time Debbie. It’s quite a prize, too. I’m jealous.”

“I’m really going to Swangaloo? I’ve been dreaming about it since I was a kid.”

“Swangaloo and you. There’s a ton of paperwork and details we need to take care of first.”

“Should I come over to the station?”

“Where are you now?”

“I’m at work, at 32^nd and 18^th.”

“There’s a coffee house not far from there, how about we meet at lunchtime and go over all the stuff?”

“Really? That would be super. I take lunch at 1:00.”

“I’ll meet you there. I’ll be wearing a black WLST t-shirt.”

Debbi hung up the phone, stunned at her sudden good fortune. Ten days in Swangaloo! All expenses paid. She’d have to get the time off from work and arrange for a dog sitter and stop the mail and all kinds of stuff. Then it hit her. Oh. My. God. I won. I won I won I won. Debbi glanced at the clock and saw that she had a little over two hours before meeting with Marc. She got up from her desk and went to the ladies room. Looking in the mirror, she saw her eyes sparkling in a way they never had before. When she returned to her desk, she was more composed, mentally compiling prospective candidates to join her on the trip. If only there was a man in her life. It would be so romantic. Instead, this would be a girl’s trip, which was fun too. Sister or best friend, she wondered. So much to think about!

By the time Debbi hit the coffee house, she was back to earth, but still sparkling. Marc was waiting for her with a ream of papers and lots of legalese. She signed documents, read papers, and they talked and laughed about good fortune finally coming her way. The hour flew by, and Debbi gathered her things to get moving back to work. Marc spoke, “Debbi, don’t forget, we need your travel dates within a week and the name of your travel companion then.” She nodded and smiled a shy smile at Marc as she left.

Back at the office, she was flying high, cloud nine, the works. Nothing could put a damper in her mood, as much as her co-worker, Selma, the harbinger of doom tried. “It’s not real Deb, it’s a scam. Did you even read the papers they made you sign?” Debbie just ignored her, blocking out the sound of her ferret like voice, as she checked the calendar for suitable weeks. Ten days! In Swangaloo!

Unlocking her front door, Debbi smiled yet again. In fact, she couldn’t remember when she last smiled as much as she had today. On her way home, she had stopped at the store for some lottery tickets. Why not, she figured. Her message machine was beeping, pushing play, there were five messages – one from her sister, three from girlfriends, and one from Marc. “I know I shouldn’t be doing this, but I really enjoyed meeting you and I was wondering if maybe you want to have dinner with me someday. Give me a call.” Thinking about his deep blue eyes, she smiled once more, only this time she blushed.

Another day. Another dollar. And a dream fulfilled.

By:  Lauren J. Walter   July 22, 2008

With educational costs rising and the budget seemingly shrinking, people want to know if schools are really benefiting from gambling in Missouri, said state Rep. Belinda Harris, D-Hillsboro.

Harris believes that when people voted for gambling in Missouri, they were expecting to see larger amounts of cash flowing into their local schools, as is the case in Nevada and Mississippi, where gaming is much more prevalent.  "I think they feel misled," she said. "They felt like it would solve the problem of funding education."

Harris said in effect, education may have lost a little of its state funding when the gaming funds came into play.

Two things happen when money is allocated to education through gambling; general fund money seems to be displaced by the gambling money resulting in no net gain for education, and if less money is gambled away by the state there can be a net loss to education funding.  It is terribly tragic for a government to mandate losers and they will either make losers of the people by subjecting them to the horrors of gambling, or make losers of our children by denying them the money necessary to safeguard their educations.

We should never hold a child’s education hostage to gambling dollars and the initiative petition which seeks to remove the loss limit does just that.  A Yes vote is not a vote for schools, it’s a vote against our schools and it’s a vote against our families.

We reported previously that the Obama campaign, in response to complaints from Minnesota's Department of Public Safety, modified its fundraising lottery to allow people to enter without making a donation. It was the opinion of Minnesota law enforcement that, prior to this change, the need to make at least a small donation in exchange for a chance toan expenses-paid trip to the Democratic National Convention constituted an illegal lottery. There is also a question as to whether the winners were really picked randomly, noting that a previous lottery winner was announced before the entry deadline.

The Obama campaign is afraid, and rightly so, that its use of questionable fundraising methods will alienate its supporters, so it is doing its best to censor this information so as to keep supporters and contributors from seeing it. The campaign's moderators and administrators deleted the following blog entry from my.barackobama.com, doubtlessly because they do not want the site's users to know that the campaign ran what might be an illegal lottery.

Post from Juliane's Blog:

Rush Limbaugh is a Fool

By Jules - Jul 10th, 2008 at 1:42 am EDT

Comments |  Mail to a Friend  |  Report Objectionable Content

These are the last two paragraphs in his request at his site;

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: One more opportunity for Operation Chaos Phase II.  "Barack Obama's presidential campaign modified a solicitation for donations on its national website Tuesday evening to comply with Minnesota lottery laws after it was informed by a state law enforcement investigator that it was violating state law." I told you this yesterday, they're running a lottery, and the Obama website was offering supporters "who donated at least $5 to the campaign a chance to win a free trip for two to the Democratic National Convention in Denver." They were going to have ten winners, each winner can bring a guest, a hotel room overnight, and a chance to meet The Messiah backstage at the Invesco Field at Mile High and then to watch his acceptance speech from there.  But Obama screwed up, ladies and gentlemen, one of the most basic rules:  Thou shalt not create a lottery.  Isn't state regulation a b-i-itch, folks?  It gets in the way of everybody, even messiahs.  Anyway, here's the opportunity for Phase II of Operation Chaos.  The Democrats want ten winners out of people that contribute five bucks or more to the Obama campaign.  Wouldn't it be a hoot if some or even all of those winners happened to be Operation Chaos troops?

Now, in the past, ladies and gentlemen, as your commanding officer, orders from headquarters have never included you spending any money.  This remains your option.  If you go to the Obama website, you find a way, 'cause they've revamped it.  I mean, they haven't pulled it, but they've revamped it.  So if you go to the website, the Obama website, you will be able to see this little contest and send 'em ten bucks as a campaign donation.  I know what you're thinking, "Why should we pay for his campaign?" I understand this.  That's why it's purely elective.  This is not a command order.  But it does represent an opportunity for Operation Chaos troops to perhaps end up on stage at the Democrat National Convention at Mile High at Invesco Field. [Apparent end of Rush Limbaugh material, Juliane's observation is below.[

Now if Mr. Obama picks people to attend he can make sure they have been listed as supporters before on his website or have contributed before so as not to pick Rush's scam artists, so funny as Rush and his people are going to help finance the campaign if this works, personaly I do not think Rush has any pull and he uis the only one that thinks he is important , no one else does,

The Obama campaign pulled this blog entry off its site even though it was critical of Rush Limbaugh, doubtlessly because the campaign obviously does not want its supporters and donors to look into the issue of whether the campaign was funding itself with an illegal lottery. This is something the Obama campaign is terrified that its own donors might see, so we encourage our readers to circulate this story as widely as possible. Once a would-be Messiah's followers see through him and realize that he is a fraud, it is all over for him.

Let me know how that turns out

When I went to go buy my 125 million dollar hopeful, I saw a sign saying the Raffle will hit 8-11 and will cost 50 bucks. No doubt that's the Super Raffle we all know and love. I have my money lined up and ready to take another stab at it. I was a number off the last Super Raffle from one of those Multi Million dollar prizes, however the last Millionaire Raffle I was more then 30 off from getting just a 100 bucks. The odds are funny like that ya know?

I did however win something over the weekend. I won a small little $5 prize from the Classic Lotto! I also happened to find 2 Fantasy 5 tickets worth a buck each behind my desk when I was moving furniture around. Not bad for a weekend of moving stuff around. That'll go towards ye olde lottery fund towards a better future.

So when you go out to get your tickets, remember 125 million!

Look at me, I'm 18! The day started with me opening presents (!!!) my fav? the nike hrm. super cool if ya ask me.

We had got to go to church this morning. I chose an earlier service, I hate getting home at 1:30pm. Anyways... that afternoon- I went to see the new BATMAN movie. All this talk about heathy-boy being crazy good- it's all true. it was super cool if ya ask me.

Hillary came over after that and brought me the balloons noted above and a mini cheesecake, since she knows i love cheesecake! what a friend, huh? she's super cool if ya ask me.

for my birthday dinner, we went to my fav restaurant in KC. but you have to go to my new food blog to hear about it. it's super cool if ya ask me.

After all that we went to HyVee and I bought some lottery scratchers tickets. I came sooo close to winning $4000 I could smell it, but alas, i didnt win anything. that's not cool. but buying lottery tickets: super cool if ya ask me.

**go to TTG (thattallgirl) Fuel, please!**

I want to warn people about a scam where someone sends you a letter with a check stating that you have won a lottery. The letter states that you must send them money via Moneygram to pay for your sales taxes since you live outside of Canada. They say that you have a won a large amount ($450,000 in this case) and that taxes you have to pay have already been deducted from your winnings. You must then send them a portion of that money for them to "take care of it".

They use REAL banking institutions (names and addresses). They have even gone so far as to use an actual bank with LEGITIMATE routing numbers on the check. DO NOT send them any money. Don't fall for it. I know we are in desperate times now with the economy and they are preying upon that with no mercy.

Throw it all away or report it to the authorities [(FBI)/(US Postal Inspectors)]. Your choice.

Yours in safety and success,

Joseph R. Mays
Concerned World Citizen

****WARNING**** ****WARNING**** ****WARNING****

WRONG.

You're in Mississauga!

I went to the Mr Convenience store to collect ten dollars and a free ticket, for myself and my friend, B. I went into the store, and of course, the man there was Pakistani. He could NOT speak very good English. I could not understand him. He took my tickets, tried to throw them away, gave me another ticket and NINE dollars. I said, "Excuse me, sir. I was SUPPOSED to get TEN dollars." He looked at me and said I asked for the Encore ticket, or something to that effect. I said, "I cannot understand you. Please speak English!" He got angry at me, yelled, and said it was all my fault.

Of course, everything is MY fault, because I speak English.

Complicated endeavor, indeed.

-Brenda

-Sharon

-Frances B

I have received my very stunning 24-karat Gold Cards and I have performed the Initiation Ceremony and have followed all of the enclosed instructions. Also, the Bracelet of 7 Jackpot Chances which with four casinos on Native American land so very close to where I reside, I feel I will be lucky. One casino opened last week...my sister in law won $5,000 and she deserves it, we were all happy for her. I enjoyed all your detailed reports and ypur explanations of each card. About the Five of Hearts, I truly believe that boredom is the real enemy of happiness."

-Velez

Now something about that just doesn't feel right. For one thing, it's not exactly a reasonable hope: the odds that someone will actually win a substantial amount in the lottery are astonishingly low. Furthermore, many lottery winners actually end up losing everything due to poor spending and investment strategies and the strains that develop in one's marriage or family relationships (although thankfully, there are some exceptions). Acquiring sudden wealth more often than not amplifies character flaws and changes the way people see you. Rather than a person, you suddenly become a source of easy money. It's not for nothing that the apostle Paul cautioned Timothy that "the love of money is the root of all evil." (1 Timothy 6:10)

Aside from the personal problems associated with winning the lottery, a case can be made that it is very anti-American. Matthew Warshauer reminds us that for most of America's history people understood that in order to take full advantage of the opportunities America had to offer, they would have to work hard and spend wisely. "Americans have traditionally centered their efforts on thrift and hard work...For many the goal was not extravagant wealth, but, rather, economic independence and the opportunity for social advancement through financial gain."

But due in part to industrialization and the concomittant decline in the value of skilled labor, people's perceptions began to change. After World War II America's obsession with accumulating material goods accelerated, leaving behind earlier generations' vision of prosperity. The irony is, as Warshauer explains it, is that "[this shift in values] has actually spurred rather than lessened the people’s desire to achieve the American Dream.  Yet the real difference is that the Dream has become more of an entitlement than something to work towards.  Many Americans no longer entertain a vision for the future that includes time, sweat, and ultimate success.  Rather, they covet the shortcut to wealth.  Many who are engaged in work view it more as a necessary evil until striking it rich."

And one of the main factors encouraging this perception is-yep, you guessed it-the lottery: "All one needs is "A Buck and a Dream," boasts the New York Lottery...the lottery focuses on the hope of easy money with minimal effort.  One does not need to work hard in order to choose a series of numbers."

Of course, there's nothing wrong in itself with the notion of getting a financial boost when one is in a tight spot or to begin the realization of a dream, like opening one's own business or paying off a mortgage. And the Lottery can boast of generating large amounts of revenue which directly benefits the city or the state. Warshauer reminds us that "In 1612, the British crown authorized the Virginia Company of London to hold a lottery to aid the Jamestown colony.  During the colonial period and after, Americans held lotteries to raise funds for internal improvements and defense."

But it's the underlying mentality which is symptomatic of a distortion of the desires of many Americans. Easy money, it is fair to say, is often more trouble than it's worth. In financially challenging times, the best medicine can be the acknowledgment that life will include setbacks and hardship (again, welcome to the VUCA world) but that these can be overcome with the resolve to make the most out of one's talents and abilities and never give up.  Another very important part of the medicine is the realization that "life is more than food, and the body more than clothing." (Luke 12:23) I know it may sound hypocritical to say that when I personally am not in any danger of losing my food and clothing. But if and when that time comes I will try my best to keep that lesson always before me.

The true meaning of life is not to be found in consumption, even of necessities. It is found in rightly ordering one's desires towards the true end (telos) of human nature, which is life with God. And that life is truly without limits of any kind.

Two or three months ago, Republicans' biggest fear was that Obama's sophisticated Internet network would raise enough money to overwhelm McCain with limitless funds for advertising. Barack Obama believed this as well, as shown by his decision to reject Federal funding (and spending limits) for his campaign.

The following E-mail from David Plouffe now reports, however, that McCain's admittedly more primitive fundraising system is outperforming Obama's system. It also suggests that disgruntled Obama supporters are closing their wallets and purses to further solicitations. Potential explanations include spreading scandals about Obama's methods of raising money or its equivalent--including Internet lotteries of questionable legality along with misuse of tax exempt church resources--and his campaign's sanction of anti-Semitic, misogynist, and racist hate speech along with actual libel at My.BarackObama.com.

I have some big news we want to share with you.

In the month of June, supporters like you helped raise $52 million. And together with the DNC, we now have nearly $72 million in the bank. That's a very strong financial position to be in.

But we remain at a massive disadvantage to our opponents.

As I mentioned in my video message earlier in the week, the McCain Campaign and the Republican National Committee finished June with nearly $100 million in the bank.

We can't stop now. It's going to take everything we've got to defeat John McCain and his allies in November.

Can you make a donation of $5 now to strengthen our movement for change?

https://donate.barackobama.com/junenumbers

I know this isn't the first time we've asked you for financial support, and it won't be the last.

We have developed a strategy -- a very aggressive strategy -- that will only work if our millions of supporters continue to contribute their time and their money.

That strategy will work, and it has to. The stakes are too high and the need for change too great.

But victory is only possible with your continued help.

We can't do this without you.

Thanks,

David

David Plouffe
Campaign Manager
Obama for America

Read carefully. Barack Obama's sophisticated Internet campaign was, until this summer, raising what seemed like limitless funds. Now, however, McCain and the RNC actually have more money in the bank than the Obama campaign. Furthermore, Mr. Plouffe must now beg for five dollar contributions because many of Obama's supporters are wising up to the campaign's questionable fundraising methods, along with its sanction of racism, anti-Semitism, and even libel.

We reported previously that Minnesota law enforcement officials complained to the Obama campaign about its use of an arguably illegal Internet lottery to raise money for the campaign. Not only that, the correction (allowing people to enter a drawing for an expenses-paid trip to the Democratic National Convention without donating money to the Obama campaign) that the campaign promised to Minnesota's authorities was at best cosmetic and perfunctory. The campaign is still sending out highly deceptive E-mails that contain all the elements of a lottery.

1. Payment of consideration (a donation of at least five dollars to the Obama campaign). Only when one looks at the donation page itself, and one has to look rather carefully, does one discover that one can enter the drawing without payment.
2. Element of chance: ten lucky winners will get an expenses-paid trip to Denver to meet Barack Obama.
3. A prize: the aforementioned expenses-paid trip

This is not the first such solicitation we have seen from the Obama camp, and previous ones required a donation for a chance to win a dinner with Barack Obama. It is quite possible (not legal advice, we are not lawyers) that these were in fact illegal lotteries that should be reported to the Federal Election Commission. As a matter of fact, we still have them on file; this one is from July 31 2007.

Last week we started planning our second dinner, and on Friday evening at 6:42 pm, a woman named Dorothy Unruh of Lakewood, Colorado made a donation.

I'm pleased to announce that Dorothy will be one of my guests for the second dinner. You could join us if you make a small donation before 11:59 pm tonight, July 31st:

It is also a matter of record that, in June 2007, Obama misused the United Church of Christ's tax exempt resources by giving a speech with campaign-related content at the church's annual synod in Hartford CT. Obama's knowing and willful--because the church told his campaign the rules in advance, and he and his people indicated understanding and agreement--misuse of the church's tax exempt resources resulted in an Internal Revenue Service investigation of the church. The IRS concluded, and rightly so in our opinion, that the church did everything possible to comply with its tax exemption. The United Church of Christ should not be held responsible for Obama's betrayal of its trust.

There is finally the matter of anti-Semitic (e.g. "Zionist Thought Police" and "Jewish Lobby"), racist (Black Clinton supporters are "House N*****s" and George Bush is a "honky"), misogynist ("Hillary Clinton is a b****" and an assertion that Clinton shows that women are not qualified to hold public office) and ageist hate speech at My.BarackObama.com. To the hate speech may be added a wish that President Bush had been assassinated, and another sentiment to the effect that John McCain is an "old man" who should "pay a well-deserved visit to the undertaker." My.BarackObama.com is also an overflowing sewer of actual libel in the form of false accusations of crimes that are directed at identifiable individual and corporate "persons."

Contrary to the disclaimer that the Obama campaign does not endorse or approve My.Barackobama.com's content, the campaign exercises editorial control over the site by deleting and banning content it finds "objectionable" or "disrespectful." The campaign must therefore sanction (tolerate, if not actually endorse) the hate speech, wishes for the deaths of public figures like Bush and McCain, and actual libel. It therefore comes as no surprise that Barack Obama's own supporters are waking up to his and his campaign's "ethical challenges" and are slamming shut their checkbooks, wallets, and purses in response to David Plouffe's appeals.