1999 was probably the worst year of my professional life. Unsatisfying office jobs followed by long periods of unemployment and claiming benefits. I’d also missed out on an opportunity to train as a Microsoft certified programmer because I was unable to find a placement. The dream of making my way into the world of employment had turned into an absolute nightmare, at times I felt like a total failure.

Towards the end of 1999 an opportunity arose for me to work in a casino. I’d always loved card games after seeing the glitz and glamour of casinos in James Bond movies. Dissatisfied with life in Northern Ireland, at the age of just 20, I packed a couple of suitcases and ended up going to the Isle of Man to train as a croupier (casino dealer) in January 2000. 18 months later I was working on my first cruise ship, and 18 months after that I was boarding the QE2 (the most famous ship of them all) to do a world cruise.

For a young man from a housing estate in Antrim, Northern Ireland this was beyond even my wildest dreams. On a ferry from Belfast to Liverpool in 1997, I’d once seen a pontoon table and croupier and dreamt what it may be to work as a casino dealer on the high seas.

Everything aboard the QE2 was as you would expect, starting with Captain Ron Warwick, who looked exactly what the captain of the QE2 should look like (Google the name if you don’t believe me). Passenger facing crew were immaculate in their appearance. I could probably have shaved with the crease on my pressed tuxedo shirts, and on a number of occassions when I had been sunburnt in port, I could feel the creases cutting into my tender skin as I dealt the cards that evening in the casino.

The great thing for croupiers on cruise ships is that they only work when the ship is in international waters, in port, the casino must close, and casino staff are free to do pretty much whatever they want. Casino staff have a cabin steward who cleans their cabin and takes away their dirty laundry and brings it back fresh each day. We did a 103 day world cruise which included stops in places like Hong Kong, Sydney, Cape Town, Hawaii, Mauritius, Nagasaki, Tahiti and Singapore to name a few. I managed to do some amazing excursions like diving in the great barrier reef, quad biking in the Namibian desert, and dining in all sorts of fine restaurants, trying delicacies like Springbok, Kangaroo, Crocodile and Kobe beef. We made stops in 5 continents, crossed the equator and even experienced living a Tuesday in consequetive days when we crossed the world timeline. Imagine that, you go to bed on Tuesday night, wake up the following morning and its Tuesday again, but this was far from groundhog day.

The role in the casino was not about taking passengers’ money like in a land-based casino, it was about providing them with fun and entertainment. The passengers were friendly and pleasant, many of them being extremely successful people (I understand the lowest cabin cost for a world cruise on the QE2 was about $50,000 in 2003). A lot of the passengers had never played in a casino and were fascinated to learn and experience the one onboard. Just getting to know some of these people was an experience in itself, and a large part of the role in the casino was simply to entertain them whilst they were in the casino.

There were also celebrity passengers. We would finish work and go to the crew/members bar where we would have guest entertainers like the late Des O’Connor and the magician, the late Paul Daniels down to have a drink. God bless them both.

Was my job the best job in the world? Maybe not for everyone, but it was beyond even my wildest dreams and the 6 month experience, as well as the amazing people I met will be something I treasure forever. I was very lucky to have lived this experience and will always be incredibly grateful for it.

Many years have passed since then and I’ve always missed the buzz of casinos which is how Fun 21 Casino Hire was created in 2021. My celebrities now are anyone who hires the No Money Fun Casino that I provide for parties and celebrations, and I aim to give the same experience that you would expect onboard the QE2.

Avoiding a bad home in advance.

Have you ever had a client who was a buyer “in today’s market” make an offer, get the offer accepted, only to back out after a bad home inspection? Well.. in order to limit this there are some things you as a Realtor can look for while showing the home to your client that are definitely red flags, and at least could be brought up so the client isn’t surprised by a bad report. As a home Inspector and owner of SafeHome Home Inspections (www.safetulsa.com) the easiest thing to look at for somebody who is not trained is a bad electric panel.

A “Bad” electric panel in the eyes of any home inspector means “unsafe” or less safe than other panels. It has been determined by studies, lawsuits, etc that these panels are not desirable.

Here is a list of bad panels that are very common in the Tulsa area. These panels are likely present in your local market as well, and every or nearly every home inspector will call them out in the report as in need of further evaluation for replacement: Zinsco, FPE (Federal Pacific Electric) Stab-lok, Challenger. These are the most common “bad” panels that I run into here in Tulsa.

You don’t need to do very much work to identify these panels, oftentimes they are labeled somewhere in plain sight. A word of caution though, the access door is fairly easy to open most of the time but you should never open the deadpan front cover, It’s dangerous and would require tools anyway and you might as well leave something for the inspector to do .

I could go into detail about why these electric panels are dangerous and the different studies that have been done about them over the years but why bore you with that? If you want more information you can do a quick google search on any of these brands or look up one of the main studies by Mechanical and Materials engineer Dr. Jesse Aronstein titled “Hazardous FPE circuit breakers and panels: Information for Homeowners, Inspectors, and Electricians”

While you may not have to avoid a home like this completely, letting the buyer know in advance will at least prepare them so there isn’t a shock on the report, and who knows, maybe a seller will still be willing to change out the panel “in today’s market”. If so, that’s a major win for the customer and a great value to your client.

Microsoft Excel comes to mind when considering a suitable reporting tool for businesses. Excel has been a natural choice for years because of its data organization and analysis capacity. However, as systems change and the demands for data analytics become more complex, it has become clear that the software has some limitations, hence it is necessary to shift from excel to power bi.

For organisations, Microsoft’s Power BI provides robust analytics and reporting features. Power BI delivers significantly more insight than Excel thanks to faster experimentation with visualisations, statistical functions, and calculations across large datasets and the capability to derive answers instantly through the quick recombination of fields.

Listed below are a few advantages of moving from excel to power bi:

Excel to Power bi – Accessing and Storing Large Quantity of Data

Microsoft Excel can perform simple and complex arithmetic operations and functions. However, its effectiveness wanes when you have enormous amounts of data that cannot be opened. This makes it less than ideal.

You can view, analyse, and visualise the more significant data sets that Excel struggles to manage with Power BI’s impressive comprehension capabilities. Not only are these things possible, but your files can also be stored and analysed using only 50 megabytes. To import and cache your data inside a .PBIX file, Power BI makes use of robust comprehension algorithms.

Efficiency is one of the most apparent reasons why Power BI is such a valuable tool. It eliminates the need to aggregate or reduce the size of large datasets to show a more comprehensive analysis. Instead, all the most minute details and summaries can coexist in one file and be evaluated through drill-downs.

In addition to having a massive amount of storage space, you can also edit and prepare your data. Many tasks are made simple by Power BI.

Excel to Power bi – Data Protection

Any business has always placed a high priority on data security. For all kinds of organisations, big or small, the growing threats of data theft, unauthorised access, and invasion by foreign entities have become major concerns. Excel has features that safeguard your data. Excel limits access to files, sheets, or any worksheet as part of security measures.

The user can keep any document locked to prevent unauthorised personnel from accessing the data. The read-only option prevents external parties from editing or otherwise altering the document. Excel does provide security features, but they are basic and lack more sophisticated features.

In contrast, Power BI offers data protection features that are highly dependable, scalable, and responsive to current business requirements. Power BI has the industry’s best built-in security control. Role-based authentication, cloud security, risk monitoring, risk identification, and network security are a few of the security features that Power BI offers.

Compared to Excel security features, Power BI’s data security measures are unquestionably more detailed and trustworthy.

Excel and Power BI provide analytics features, but in comparison, Power BI’s presentation of the visuals and analytical results is much more thorough and appealing. Excel offers basic analytical features, whereas Power BI provides advanced, business-focused analytical features.

Although some of the more recent charts are available in Excel, they cannot connect to the data model. Excel’s portfolio does not currently include some of the newest trending charts at the application level. It only has restricted access to the data model as a result.

However, Power BI has all the features necessary to satisfy customers’ new demands interactively. With the help of Power BI, an organisation can access real-time dashboards, performance indicators, and an alert system. Using data from the past, the organisation can visualise the present and future data.