Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Just in…

I got back from my trip to New York last week. I know it’s been a while since my last post, but I really couldn’t write while I was away and it took me a few days to get settled back in. I’ve only gotten two hits from the bills I brought with me, but I did have to bring a lot of them back. I just couldn’t find enough chain restaurants to buy gift cards in.

It’s not so much that I couldn’t find one as I just wasn’t really going looking for them. For the first several days, I was worrying about attending my cousin’s wedding. I also found out that most of Long Island is resistant to the chains. Thus, I couldn’t roam about town looking for McDonalds and Subways or simply ask my father to pull over on the rare occasion that I saw one.

There was no shortage of Starbucks. I did get to put a lot of money on a gift card. I didn’t want to overdo that. Subway is fairly easy to spend money at. I can go there and spend a good amount of money on a sub. McDonalds is a little less, but I usually eat at one or the other for lunch five days a week, so I’m going to burn off the cash pretty quickly. With Starbucks, I don’t usually spend more than $4 per visit, and that’s usually once or twice a week. I’m going to keep that money a lot longer.

I was hoping to spend a little more at the airport, but the only recognizable chain was Dunkin Donuts, which I don’t eat at a lot. (Not only do I prefer Krispy Kreme, but until last week, there weren’t any Dunkin Donuts stores near me.) I did get to break a ten on the airplane going to New York. Either way, I got some cash into circulation.

I wanted to try something new. It occurred to me that I could post my Where’s George stats in my blog. I don’t know if it’s going to seem like self-promotion, but I do want to keep the blog about Where’s George and the interesting bills that I come across as a result. What better way to keep a common theme?

It’s going to look like this:

You have entered 23,058 Bills worth $61,960
Bills with hits: 1,709 Total hits: 1,909
Hit rate: 7.41% Slugging Percentage: 8.28% (total hits/total bills)
George Score: 1,072.44
Your rank (based on George Score) is #904
(out of 51,965 current users with a George Score. [98.3 Percentile])
Your State Rank in Florida is: 42 out of 6,198 [99.3]

For those of you unfamiliar with the site, it’s going to take a little explaining. The first two lines are pretty straightforward. I’ve entered 23,058 bills and the total value of those bills is $61,960. The bills with hits is the number of bills with any number of hits. Total hits is the number of hits I have. (The difference between these numbers should give you an idea of how many bills I have with multiple hits. The most I have on one bill is 4.)

Hit rate and slugging percentage have a similar relationship. Hit rate is the percentage of my bills that have at least one hit whereas the slugging percentage has to do with the total number of hits. (Theoretically, it’s possible to have a slugging percentage of more than 100%, but this gets harder the more active you are with the site.) George score is based on a formula that I won’t go in to, but can be found on the site. As for rank, I think you can figure that out on your own.

In any event, it’s getting late here. I’d better be going. I still have bills to stamp tonight.

No comments :