If it wasn't for bad luck...Updated 4/17/07

[DaraAllen]

Sunday. Gotta love Sunday.

1. CL_DaraSue rode the rides pretty much non-stop from 10:30 am until 12:30 am Monday. Yes, that's right, about 14 hours. Got a zillion magic pins. Probably 30 or more. Sword pulls - nada.

2. DinosaurFriend (DS6) character also ran pretty much non-stop for the 14 hours. Zillion magic pins. Sword pulls - nada.

3. Sclim (DH) ran his character about six hours, not a single magic pin.

4. I ran Sclim through once, he got a magic pin, and pulled out the sword! Yeah, but wait, read #5.

5. Sclim's Mad Hatter Tea Party pin is no where to be found. Cannot find that thing any where.

6. Sclim dc while in queue for all host games, every single time. DinosaurFriend win once, dc other times - game closed while he (I) was 4th in queue. CL_DaraSue win once, dc other times.

7. All three characters completed Fin's quest, without spoilers, with only one mistake. Only made the mistake once, folks. We're not that dumb!

8. CL_DaraSue received 51 friend requests over the course of the day. Dino received one, Sclim two.

Just wait until you hear about today! lol

 

[Mnementh]

Sorry to hear about the continued bad luck.

Since you probably have more experience than anyone on the Disboards with this, what would you say are the odds of actually getting a magic pin? And since you finally pulled the sword out of the stone with your DH's character, what would you say the odds are of actually winning? Oh, speaking of which, I hope you find that pin. Maybe email the black hole?

 

[DaraAllen]

Again, I am amused by it, not dismayed. The title of the thread says it all. I think I used up all my good luck on my Mickey ears from YOAMD.

Odds, ok well my father is a statistician, so he would reply that each event is unique, so there really are no "odds". I've seen randomized, but this is crazy.

I would say I averaged a magic pin every 15 rides. Some would come three in a row on the same character, and others would be an hour apart on all three (that's like 60 rides, folks, at about 3 minutes per ride per character)! I easlily won 75 pins yesterday, between the two characters I was running and the one DH was. I pulled the sword out once.

So yes, the odds of this are much better than getting Sparrow!

A little experimental psychology lesson for all of you:

In experimental psychology, there are different types of reinforcement. For example, you train a rat that every three times it hits a bar, it gets food, and it will do it all day long. That's called scheduled reinforcement.

The type of reinforcement in use with these rides is called Intermittent Reinforcement.
Intermittent Reinforcement means that there is no rhyme or reason to how often you will be rewarded. Rats in a cage will literally starve to death hitting the bar over and over to get that randomized piece of food, because they exert so much energy.

Intermittent reinforcement is the strongest of all reinforcements to break. Addictive personalities will keep at it for days. Gamblers looking for that one last big hit. VMKers entering one more code for Sparrow, or me, riding those rides on the chance it's the one!

I went to college and earned a degree in psychology. I know why this type of reinforcement schedule works so well. And it does absolutely nothing to stop me! I spent 14 hours, for Pete's sake, of my precious weekend time doing this (OK, so I washed about eight loads of laundry and did something useful).

Back to it I go...

(Pavlov would be proud!)

 

[pinkgalYall]

For once I feel school as a relief.

 

[Laurabearz]

Nice example there Dara! I just wish there was more inter than mittent or would I want more mittent than inter... hmmmmm

 

[DaraAllen]

Yesterday, 4/16, we decided to play family hooky. We've never done this before. You have never seen such happy children as when we announced this to them in the morning! OK, well maybe if you've taken your kids to WDW you have, but you get the idea!

So, I logged onto VMK as CL_DaraSue and logged my DS6 (DinosaurFriend) on in another window. Sclim logged in, as did our DS13, AmazingStrangeBoy (FYI, this was an option that VMK gave him! His previous 4 attempts at a name were denied. Can you believe they would give this as an option?).

Starting around 11:30, we had four characters online, running the rides. CL_DaraSue and DinosaurFriend received quite a few magic pins, no sword pulls. Sclim got one magic pin, no pull. AmazingStrangeBoy received on magic pin on first ride, no pull.

By the time the first host game was due to start, Amazing and Sclim had given up long ago, but logged back on to help with host rooms. All four of us were logged in and in queue, Sclim at like 45, the rest of us in the 100's. As you probably know, it was a tad windy on the East Coast yesterday. Yup, you guessed it. Power went down.

10 seconds later, oh, wait, it's back! Logged on again, now queue in the 800s. Sclim and Amazing said forget this, and went back to killing stuff on World of Warcraft.

I stayed logged in with both characters the rest of the day, for the most part. The magic pins dried up to nothing and I stopped riding around 6:00 and entered Sparrow codes. No luck there either btw.

I tried off and on again with just CL_DaraSue, riding with pinkgalYall, or not as the case may be, still no pins.

I did however find someone to trade me a tea cup pin for a Grand California pin.

 

[DaraAllen]

had a little trouble with CL_DaraSue peeking through everything!

And, no, I lost.

 

[BusyBeaBee]

It was great to finally meet you in the game DaraSue!!!

 

[DaraAllen]

It was nice to meet you too, Be Be.

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