Ask the Slot Expert: Making up with my favorite video poker machine

It was probably one of the shortest break-ups in history. I've played the video poker machine that I broke up with three times since I told it "it's not me, it's you."

After years of reliable service, the slot club subsystem on the machine had become increasingly flaky. I've always had rare -- emphasis on "rare" -- problems with the subsystem on video poker machines. Sometimes it seemed to forget that it had successfully read my card and told me to reinsert it. Sometimes the card reader bezel would flash through the colors of the rainbow before finally settling back on solid green, which means everything is hunky-dory. The worst problem I ever experienced was when the whole subsystem crashed and rebooted.

I could tell when it had crashed because the messages it displayed on the machine's screen disappeared. And I could tell it was rebooting from the various "loading" messages displayed.

At least once when it came back up after a crash, it displayed the point balance screen and the screen still showed my name and the number of points I had earned that session. I thought the subsystem might finally be acting like the machine itself, which must be able to go back to the state it was in when something bad happened.

But no. A few seconds after giving me hope, the screen said my card was invalid and I should reinsert it.

I like being able to see the total number of points I've earned in a day on the machine because my goal is usually to play a certain number of points. If I wanted to know session points, I could do the math. When I have to reinsert my card, my session points no longer equal my daily points -- but I can do the math.

Problems were rare, but a few weeks ago the subsystem on my steady machine rebooted each time I played it. Time to avoid this machine.

Easier said than done. The machine was the only one available on recent visits. Well, on my last visit I could have played the machine at the other end of the bank with my ex, but its screen is sometimes a little wavy and it doesn't deal as quickly as my ex.

Fortunately the subsystem has behaved since I broke up with the machine. I haven't experienced any reboots. I'm not sure if I'm going to go back to first checking if that machine is available before sitting down at another machine, but the playing conditions at another machine will have to be nearly perfect for me to not check my ex-ex.

Here are the latest figures from https://www.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#cases.

At the end of last summer, I wrote about how Australia was dealing with the pandemic through travel restrictions. My best friend from college had retired from IT to follow his dream of working in aviation. His new career was just starting to take off and then the virus hit.

Australia practically shut down its travel industry. It limited the number of people coming into the country each week and they were all required to quarantine in a hotel for two weeks. At their expense; the government gives you a bill at the end of your stay. And like on Priceline (Is that still a thing?), you don't get to choose where you quarantine. Not following the quarantine rules is a criminal offense and you may be subject to a fine or imprisonment. (Note that these are the rules for New South Wales. Other states may have different rules. https://www.health.nsw.gov.au/Infectious/factsheets/Pages/hotel-quarantine.aspx)

A few months ago, Howard Stern talked about his friend who went to Australia for a family emergency. He had to quarantine at a hotel for two weeks. When the fire alarm went off, he left his room to evacuate. The guard in the hallway told him to go back into his room and await further instructions. The situation did not require leaving the building, but I suppose some arrangement was in place to keep the people in quarantine separated if it did.

Phil Keoghan is the host of The Amazing Race and Tough As Nails and a New Zealand native. He returned home about a month ago. New Zealand also has a 14-day quarantine rule. He posted a photo of the sunset on his last night of quarantine in Christchurch.

I don't know how effective the travel quarantine is in decreasing the spread of the virus, but both New Zealand (0.5 cases per 1000) and Australia (1.1 cases per 1000) have a much lower number of cases per capita than the U.S. (76.7 cases per 1000). I was glad to see that international travelers were going to be required to quarantine upon arrival under the new travel restrictions announced January 25.

I was disappointed though that I couldn't find any information about how the quarantine was going to be achieved and enforced. Are the passengers going to be taken straight from the international arrivals hall to a quarantine hotel? Are passengers just going to be requested to self-quarantine? The After You Travel Internationally page on the CDC site hasn't been updated since January 4. I suppose they're still working out the details. They could have just announced a voluntary self-quarantine, but they didn't, so I think that there will be a formal quarantine.

The Biden Administration has done more to combat the virus in its first seven days than the Trump Administration did in its last seven weeks, maybe even seven months.

Let me know if there's anything done in the past week that couldn't have been done in the past month.