#but ya this is missing some things id have as well just due to. limitations of the game. id also want to have a coat closet a linen closet

[nomaishuttle]

i simsed my ideal apartment :]

[boogiewrites]

No. 9: The Body CH. 6

Characters: Diego Hargreeves & OFC Eve Corpuz

Summary:  Eve explores the limits of her power. Diego is still stalking her and finds out more about her. Eve meets Klaus.

Warnings/Tags: Klaus. Talk of past trauma and phobias. Brief mentions of illness, injury and death. 

Click on my icon then go to my Mobile Masterlist in my bio for my other works and chapters. Please like, comment and reblog if you enjoyed it! It helps out us writers A LOT! If you’d like added to the tags, just let me know. This is a multi-chapter fic.

Eve had begun to notice changes in her shape from the training. Work wasn’t as strenuous and honestly, her ass was looking fantastic. Her body was adapting but she felt she wasn’t exercising her mind enough. Out of the two, trying to use her mind and powers was harder to find time for since it was so draining. Using them at work in small increments to help things along was now manageable, but there were no visible results from it. Nothing she could look at, try to heal, and then see healed. So that’s where she started.

Eve wasn’t a stranger to doing illegal things. If you took a look at her juvenile record that would be clear. What she was doing wasn’t exactly illegal but it was certainly breaking some rules. She was finding it surprising how much she could get away with by simply wearing her white coat with her ID and having a determined look on her face. People held doors open for her that she didn’t have clearance for, add carrying a clipboard around on top of that and she could’ve gotten into just about anywhere it seemed. She was starting to understand how Diego was so good at it, and more interestingly understanding why he did it. That little flush of her cheeks and rush of misbehaving came back to her, something she’d not felt in over a decade, fueled her powers, and gave her a little oomph to work with.

She started small, visited patients being held that was out of the ER after surgery, vehicle accidents, and the like, plenty of small cuts and scrapes that no one would notice were gone. She’d look in and find someone resting and alone, not hard to do most nights. She’d find some road rash, a smaller gash, something not too intricate. At first, she thought she needed to put her hands on the person to heal and woke up a few very understandably startled people. But after a few successful attempts, she started to push herself more. By focusing she began to be able to heal cuts over and no scar would be left in its place. Whoever she did this to, she would check on their file until they were discharged, making sure she wasn’t hurting them or causing bad side effects. So far they’d all made a full recovery with no complications. This was extremely promising and made Eve’s confidence grow and therefore emboldened her to push herself.

She’d worn herself ragged running experiments on what she could or couldn’t do. She had a journal she kept hidden that she kept her results in. So far, she’d been able to find some limitations and strengths. No matter how hard she tried, she was no match for cancer. She could help with someone’s side effects momentarily but be unable to cure it. The same could be said for viral and bacterial instances. Once something had infiltrated and infested a body, she could no longer help it. She could only manipulate the body itself. Her hopes of being able to be the cure for cancer, which she would admit was a bit egotistical, were broken after seeing many fade away after brief respites she’d give them from nausea or pain. It was nice to be able to help certainly but having to see suffering and not be able to fix it was a heavy burden she was having to learn to deal with.

It was never easy to lose someone. It was something she wouldn’t say you got used to exactly, but it was something you could come to understand with time. Or at least be able to come to terms with. Since Eve was an emotional person deep down, and the healing she’d been trying to do to help herself manage that was opening up old wounds and was making her feel raw. Every life that slipped through her fingers would hit her harder than it had months prior. Which is what led her to be so reckless, she guesses. So she tried to bring someone back from the dead.

It wasn’t uncommon sadly, for a child brought in after catching a stray bullet from a hit and run or gang violence. It felt so unfair, and the first time she tried the child was rolled in, DOA, her heart poured out for them. She gave it her all, paddles, compressions and when nothing moved the vitals she had a last-ditch effort. A tear-filled pressing of her hands to the chest of the child, nurses looked on with heartbroken eyes for the doctor as she had a rare moment of breaking on the job. For a fleeting moment, a blip on the monitor later ruled out to a technical glitch, but Eve just couldn’t muster it. She passed out onto the bloody floor from her attempts and was sent home.

She’d had mixed feelings about it. Had she almost done it? Could she get stronger? Or had she found a line that she couldn’t cross? The page entry for her recorded attempts had teardrops running her ink on that entry. She felt defeated and decided to take a break.

--------------------------

Diego watches Eve without her knowing, as he sometimes still does. He trusts her, but a part of him always wants to be sure. She’s in an unusual neighborhood, going into an apartment building he doesn’t know. He decided to wait on her to appear again instead of finding her inside. He didn’t have to wait much more than an hour before she appeared again, seeming uneasy as she stepped back into the now dark streets.

He followed behind, spilling out of an alleyway after she passed and started the task of getting closer to her. When he finally got close enough to reach out and speak he was met swiftly with a switchblade and a series of moves he’d taught her.

“Woah! Hey! It’s me!” He says defensively, only a minor rise in key from surprise as he jumped back.

“Jesus fucking CHRIST Diego!” She says with an expression he’s never seen before.

“Hey! Hey! I didn’t know you’d be so jumpy!” He keeps his hands up between them as she huffs out of her nose like a bull, the late winter night air just still barely showing her breath.

“I’m a woman. Alone. At night on the street, dude!” She states obviously and biting as she puts her blade away. “Of COURSE I’m jumpy!” She whispers angrily.

“Look, there are people around and the streetlights are on... I didn’t know I’d scare you.” He explains with hands now on her shoulders. “You okay? You’ve got that wild look in your eyes.”

“I’m just…” she sighs and shakes her head. “I’m fine. I just… Wanna get home.”

“Looks like we need to train on lying.” He smirks.

She stares at him for a moment with pursed lips then shrugs and turns back in the direction she was going.

“Mind if I walk with you?”

“No, I'd like that actually.” She murmurs.

“What are you doing in this part of town?”

“Do you follow me everywhere?”

“No…” he answers defensively playful. “I was around and saw you. Got curious.”

“You can’t send a text like a normal person?”

“Not my style.”

“Difficult is your style.”

“Hey, slow down there with the rapid-fire insults here. Did I do something?”

“Besides stalk me? No.”

“Then why are you being such a-“ he stops as she shoots her eyes his way. “Difficult person?” He tries to cover smoothly.

Once again she stares as if contemplating something. “If I tell you will you stop asking?”

“Sorry, no promises. Don’t think I missed where you didn’t answer why you’re here.”

“Fine.” She begins to walk again. “I’m here apartment hunting. Not so great street, but that apartment is really nice. And I have a fear… a phobia that you’re gonna laugh at me for so I don’t wanna tell you.”

“When have I ever laughed at you?”

She raises her brows obviously at him.

“Okay, I won’t now.” he emphasizes.

“I don’t believe you for some reason.”

“I swear! I won’t.”

“Due to… past trauma, I am afraid of the dark. And I don’t know this part of town and it makes me nervous. I’d catch a cab but I want to learn the subways so I need to walk it.”

He stays quiet for a moment. “Afraid of the dark?”

“Yes, my mom would lock me in the closet and read scripture and scare me and shit. Okay? And it traumatized me so when it’s dark and I’m overstimulated I get really... panicky.” She explains defensively.

“Don’t have to fight me over it, it’s fine. I...get it.”

“Don’t tell me you were locked in a closet too?”

“No, but he did do it to my brother. And it was a mausoleum and not a closet.”

“Fuck.” she exhales.

“Yeah. Pretty fucked up.”

“The more we learn about each other the more often we say that.”

“Get used to it.” He huffs out a laugh. They walk for a moment in comfortable silence while Eve tried to let her defenses down against him. “You know you could’ve just... asked me to come with you ya know? I am pretty handy when it comes to navigating the city. And being a bodyguard.”

“It’s not something I’m proud of.” She shakes her head. “Yeah, Diego? Hey, could you babysit me because I’m a child who’s afraid of the dark and not a grown-ass woman who can handle her own shit?”

“Well, it’s better than you almost stabbing me!”

“And whose fault was that?”

“...your moms if you want to get really technical about it.”

She lets out a weak laugh and he feels accomplished. ”Don’t forget your dad too”

“Oh yeah fuck both of them.” He says eagerly in agreement. They share a smile and he stays close to her side. “Why are you looking for an apartment?” He breaks the silence.

“Some asshole keeps breaking into mine.”

“Seriously.” He grins and smacks her arm.

“Well I’m on salary now and it’s good money so I can afford a better place.”

“Oh. I kinda like your place.”

“I don’t hate it but it’d be nice to have some more room. An office, a view.” They stand at a corner to wait for a light change. “I’d like a place with more privacy. Maybe a doorman for safety?”

“And that apartment had all that?” He motions back with his thumb.

“Yeah, it was stupid nice for the area. I was surprised it wasn’t more-“ both their heads snap to the car that passed far too fast and close, and luckily it wasn’t them, but a bike messenger up ahead that going to be the target.

They see it happen so fast, and they’re both instinctually moving towards the man that’s now on the ground and trying not to scream, holding his leg.

They were the only ones close out of the street and rush to help.

“Ah fuck, don’t call the ambulance I dont have insurance okay?”

“Well, you’re not walking anywhere like that.” Diego states obviously.

“Lucky for you I’m a Doctor. Let me see. Can you move it?” She moves his sock down to quickly see bone through skin. “Ah man, I’m sorry to tell you this but it’s really...broken dude.” She looks at him with sympathetic eyes.

“Ah fuck.” They cry. “My boss is gonna fire me for sure now. I can’t afford to get this fixed… I can’t take time off…” they begin to hiccup and tears come quickly.

Eve stares at the trauma site and furrows her brow in thought. “Maybe I can…” she whispers.

“Doc...?” she hears Diego’s voice, a warning behind her.

“I’m gonna try. I have to.” She says with wide eyes that convince him on impact. She turns back and puts her hands on the busted ankle, “Stay still if you can.” She mutters before going into her focused state.

“What are you? Listen lady I appreciate you stopping but I don’t think praying over it is gonna work.” They offer but their voice slows as they gradually feel the pain disappear. “What the…” they turn their ankle in a circle and their jaw drops. “HOW DID? WHAT DID?”

Eve shares a very excited glance with Diego before he yanks her up. “We’ve gotta get out of here.”

“Wait no! Don’t go!” A now on their feet and the healed biker was calling out as they both ran down the street into the subway below.

She felt alive. Exhilarated. A smile on her face and hand in hand with Diego as they bobbed and swerved through the crowd.

“Did you SEE?” She calls out as they make it sliding just in time into the subway car.

“YES! You didn’t tell me you’d gotten so good!”

“I’ve been practicing!” She says out of breath and glowing from a sheen of sweat that she’d developed in the rush.

“I’d say so! You just...POOF!”

“I’ll have to show you my notes.”

“Notes?”

“I’ve been keeping track of all my attempts. Like a scientific study. Well… sort of…” she shrugs and wipes her hair back.

“You would find a way to make this nerdy.” He laughs.

“Scientific method is not nerdy!”

He laughs out loud. “That’s the nerdiest thing you’ve ever said!”

“That was awesome though right?”

“Yeah, it was risky but...awesome.” He nods in agreement as they both calm back down and move into whispers of her trial and error.

——————————-

“You just have to remember to be defensive and not just offensive.”

“You know I don’t give a shit about sports Diego.” Eve laughs as she pulls her gym bag over her shoulder.

“I’m serious! You'll get-" he insists with a whine.

"You’ll get yourself hurt when shit gets real.” She says with him and rolls her eyes. “I know! Okay?” She says with a sassy hand motioned his way. “I’ll work on it. Like I always do. I’ve got a lot on my plate right now, cut me some slack.” She groans as he walks her to the front of the gym to leave.

They’re met with a thin and friendly-looking guy their age who she thought looked familiar. Diego’s body language automatically tenses.

“Oh hello there you.” Klaus coos at Eve whose bright friendly eyes don’t match Diego’s already annoyed ones at his appearance. “I didn’t know my brother would be busy with a beautiful woman tonight, my apologies.” He sweeps his hands and takes her's to kiss the back of it.

“Hi.” She stutters with surprise. “I was just leaving. Had a training session. Works got weird hours so your brother is nice enough to see me at night.”

“Oh, I’m sure he’d see a lovely thing like you anytime you wanted.”

“Let her go, Klaus.”

“What is your name before our paths separate and never meet again. I’d never forgive myself for not asking.”

“It’s Eve.” She laughs. “You’re much nicer than Diego. Do you know how to fight too? Maybe you could train me since he’s such an asshole.” She motions to Diego and Klaus lets out an amused sound.

“Alas I’m fairly useless in such things but I make up for it in other ways.” He winks.

“Okay! GOODNIGHT EVE.” Diego says politely pushing her out the door. “Sorry about Klaus He's…an idiot.”

“No apologies he's rather charming.” She teases him more and waves goodbye as she exits into her cab.

“What the fuck was that?” Diego shoves his lanky brother.

“Eve hmmm? A sexy name for a sexy little-“

“Stop it.” Diego groans.

“That’s her isn’t it?” Klaus smirks and begins to float about as Diego closes up.

“Her who?”

“Your mystery doctor.”

Diego doesn’t answer hoping naively that Klaus would stop.

“Oh come on, I’m your bro, your bud. Your pal. You can tell me.” He insists with outstretched arms.

“Yeah. I’m training her.”

“She seems like she’d be the one training you if you catch my drift.”

“It’s not like that.”

“That smile you had on your face before you realized I was watching would say otherwise.” He lilts. “You’re a terrible liar Diego just don’t try.”

“I’m a great liar!” He barks back.

“You’re shit and you should just be honest with me, I AM the psychic after all.”

“You’re not psychic you see the dead and-“

“And what is the difference?!” Klaus flops just hands at his side and follows his brother upstairs.

Diego continues as if he said nothing. “You’d have to be sober to do that so so I’m not gonna hold my breath on that.”

“I actually have been. Not that you supportive lot would notice.” He prances into the apartment behind a grunting Diego. “Because your little girlfriend is causing quite the ruckus amongst the city’s dead.”

“What?” Diego asks with a raised brow.

“She didn’t tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

“She almost brought one back.”

“She did…” he seems deep in contemplation for a moment. “Wait so you HAVE been sober?” Diego’s eyes turn soft and Klaus groans as he’s quickly approached and hugged.

“You are missing the point here Diego dear…”

“I’m proud of you.” He says with emotion in his voice and Klaus manages a heavy sigh and a pat to his back.

“Stop it now before I have feelings…” he pats him and pushes him away. “What do we know about this Eve? She’s messing with the balance, she’s a powerful little thing. And gorgeous I might add, I’d be keeping her to myself too. Unless she was into being shared…”

“I don’t think she is.” Diego falls back into his monotone answering after a brief glimmer of earnest emotion.

“Different strokes, different folks.” Klaus shrugs. “So is that ass as breathtaking as it looked in those leggings or-?”

“KLAUS!”

“What? I’m just a red-blooded American male, I see a nice ass, I admire it.”

“I wouldn’t KNOW.” He answers from behind the doorway of his bedroom, door left open. “But I’d have to say yes.” He adds quickly.

“Ahhhh! There he is.” Klaus applauds his brother's cheeky smile. “Now that you’re not in a prudish mood, I actually do want to know about her. Details, man! Out with it! What’s my little private dick figured out on our newest sibling?”

“Ew don’t say that.”

“I knew you wanted to fuck her.” Klaus smirks.

“Jesus Klaus!” Diego groans.

“Not that it’s stopped any of us before, cough Luther, cough.”

“Hey, we’re not biological!”

“Defending Luther now? Number one? Daddy’s goodest boy? Diego’s sworn nemesis?”

“EW! No! I’m just… saying. It’s a fact so...it’s...valid.”

“Good thing you’ve got your looks hun.” Klaus tsks.

“Do you wanna know about her or you wanna talk shit and get hit?”

“So hostile.” Klaus shakes his shoulders. “Go on you party pooper, tell me about our new super doctor.”

@s-h-e-w-r-i-t-e-s​ @jaegeeeeer​ @diegos-butt​ @anglovesthis

[markmceachran]

Pacing Algorithm for Advertising Campaigns and Inventory Allocations

I’ve was trying to figure out what to do with my Sunday. My options were: build a little header bidding ad server plugin for WordPress; run, sleep and eat; or write up some blog post on a pacing algorithm, because people still seem to be producing crappy ones. Since you’re reading this, you can probably guess which choice I made. I mean, it’s not the first post I’ve written on the subject.

It showed up again last week. I didn’t expect it, but I guess I never do. A saw-tooth pattern on a chart, indicative of a capping of sorts. A chart that says, “I want a thing to happen, but only so much.” In this case it was a traffic allocation. This was a surprise.

A little history

Most of the time when I run into a bad pacing algorithm it’s in the form of a campaign trying to limit itself. It only needs to acquire a few thousand impressions every five minutes, for example. So the hastily written algorithm might divvy up the impression allocation into five minutes buckets. Effectively that’s 12 buckets every hour. So it takes an hour’s worth of impression needs and divides it by twelve. One twelfth of the impressions are purchased every five minutes. Unfortunately at that point it switches to a simple counter that says, “for the next five minutes buy impressions until the number purchased reaches 1/12th of what I need in this hour.”

You end up with a purchase graph that looks like this.

See that blue spiky thing? That’s the one that’ll get ya.

The algorithm has no idea how much inventory is available for the campaign. In many cases it is plentiful. So the campaign serves it’s entire five minute allocation of impressions in the first minute. Then the buying goes dormant for four minutes until the next allocation is released and we start the dance all over again.

Apparently this can happen on both ends of the equation. A media owner or seller can cap the amount of media made available to particular technology partners. In much the same way a campaign pacing can reveal itself with the buying pattern, an impression allocation can show up in a similar way.

Details on the cause

How might one come to write such a curiosity? If this happens to speak to you, then yes, I’m talking to you. You’ve written a odd thing. In an effort to really speak to you about this, I’m doing my best to get inside your head.

Whether due to inexperience, or lack of thought about the magnitude of the problem you were about to introduce as your solution to another problem, or a lack of faith in an alternative approach, you thought this might be a good solution. The thought process probably when something like this:

We have you campaign or impression allocation for the month. Let’s start by dividing that by 30. Now we have a day. Let’s break that down by 24. Now we have an hour. Okay – well, buying all the impressions in an hour right up front might lead to a big spike at the beginning of each hour, right? So, well… let’s just divide it by 12 and we have five minute intervals. That can’t possibly cause a problem, right?

Impact

Problems are what it causes. Not just for you, but for your partners, and their partners, and they tell two friends and so on, and so on. Imagine if everyone did this. We’d have a sixty second blitz of liquidity every five minutes followed by four minutes of empty ad space.

We’d have intensely busy servers to handle the inventory for one minute, and then absolutely idle machines for the other four. Now you’re thinking, “Wait, would I need five times the infrastructure to handle that momentary load?” Yes, yes you would. And so would your partners, and they’d tell two friends… you get the picture now, right? It’s a snowball turned avalanche.

Fixing your pacing algorithm

You might be asking yourself, “How then might one go about fixing this, or rather, build a proper pacing algorithm in the first place?” I’m so glad you’re thinking about this, because I think about it all the time. I think about it a lot when I see some crap, saw-tooth graph. But even when one of those is not available, I still think about it. I imagine the graph just so I can get mad at it.

The answer is akin to flipping a coin, as my friend Dr. Neal Richter might suggest. Rather than basing your pacing algorithm on counting and capping, base it on a percentage allocation of impressions. Instead of serving til you hit the cap, flip a coin and only serve when it lands on heads. Of course, this simplified model only works if you need 50% of the inventory (or are allocating 50% of the inventory to a partner). For a moment though, imagine that it’s a D&D die instead of a coin. Then imagine that you only need to occasionally win, like you need the equivalent of two of the sides of that die, relative to the other 18. Winning twice in every twenty roles is just about perfect.

How to apply a simple percentage based pacing

Mathematically you’d want to boil this down to an equation so that you can write code against it. I’m not going to challenge you with a series equation here. You’ve already written a questionable algorithm, let’s not test the deeper mathematical waters just yet.

Instead I’ll write something akin to pseudo-code. Let’s say allocation requirements are 15% of the available inventory. Your algorithm should do something like:

Choose random decimal number (float) between 0 and 1.

If that number is less than 0.15, then serve.

Almost anyone can write that into code. It’s like two or three lines. Nice, right?

Determine the volume

At this point you should have figured out that you need to know how much inventory is available in order to calculate the percentage that your campaign or inventory allocation needs. Good. You’re asking the right question.

Fortunately you don’t need to burn the house down to make a perfect forecasting solution in order that you might have a better pacing algorithm. You could, I suppose, if you wanted to. Nothing’s quite as nice as a perfect forecasting tool. It’s like a fluffy pillow or a warm blanket. You can cozy up on the couch knowing the exact availability of the thing you’re looking for.

My friends all love to quote Akin’s laws of spacecraft design. In this case: 14. (Edison’s Law) “Better” is the enemy of “good.” So don’t run down the rabbit hole of a perfect forecasting tool.

How much inventory do you have left?

You simply need to determine how much volume you’ve got left available for your campaign’s duration. For that, you just look at what happened in the past, like yesterday even. “Hey, how many impression did I have yesterday? 1,000,000. Cool. So let’s just assume I’ll have 1,000,000 every day.” Seriously, it’s that simple. I mean, you can make it more complicated. Look at last week and divide it by seven, or even last month and divide it by 30. You did that before, remember. It produced a piece of garbage and cost everyone a 5X on their AWS bill, but hey, “learning.”

So, if your campaign needs to run for three weeks it looks like you’ve got about 21,000,000 impressions available to it. If you’re campaign only needs 3,000,000 of those, then you’re allocation percentage is 14.3%.

3,000,000 / 21,000,000 = 0.142857142857143; about 14.3%

Seems like I’m writing a lot of fluff in here for a few simple equations. I’ll be sure to highlight the important bits. Most of us are skimming posts these days and miss things. I guess for news it’s okay. Skimming posts like this might lead you to write a “pacing algorithm,” but maybe not the right one. If you are skimming, you might also be missing all my snark. Sad really. My snark is top-shelf.

Varying the time frame

One of the fun parts about pacing with this algorithm is that you get to follow the rise and fall of the traffic tide with your allocation. It just naturally happens! If there’s more traffic at noon, you’re still buying your 14.3% of it. When traffic dwindles at 11PM (23:00) your just buying a bit, but still 14.3%. You get to follow the ebb and flow of internet traffic for free!

Your old algorithm didn’t do that, did it? If it did, you had to do some crazy coding gymnastics to make it work. I tried to help you avoid all this, and I guess I failed some of you. This other post is on the same subject, but it had those tricksy series equations in it.

Varying the addressable audience

We’ve got three more points to cover before you’re ready to go. Firstly, the audience factor. Really this can be any sort of targeting parameter applied to the campaign or inventory allocation. Basically you want to look at how much of the inventory had that parameter in the past, to determine the allocation percentage. It will modify your equation’s denominator. Instead of 21,000,000 impressions you will have fewer. Maybe your campaign is only aiming at shoe enthusiasts and your system only expects to see 8,000,000 of those in the next three weeks. That means your allocation percentage is now 37.5%.

3,000,000 / 8,000,000 = 0.357; 35.7%

Competing campaigns (and how to address)

Now you’ve got your campaign humming along buying 37.5% of all shoe enthusiast impressions. This a really fantastic progress. Consider where you started. It’s really quite astonishing. Nothing can stop you now, except maybe another campaign that is also, for whatever reason, buying up your shoe enthusiasts. Holy Moly! Now what?

Are you supposed to look at all the campaign targeting and try to determine which campaigns are targeting the same users that your campaign is targeting? Good lord, what a mess that would be, right? Can you imagine the (Mom’s) spaghetti code you’d have to write in order to accomplish such an omniscient technology? That’s some Nobel Prize winning ad-tech is what that is. (Yeah, I’m totally in the “dash” camp of ad-tech. Deal with it.)

Don’t overthink it

There must be a simpler solution. There’s totally a simpler solution. All you need to do is incorporate the win rate (or render rate) into your calculation. Imagine you are only winning 65% of the time. Oh, snap! That’s gonna hit the denominator again because the reality is that you’ve only got 65% of your 8,000,000 impressions available to your campaign now. So I guess the math gets a little trickier now.

3,000,000 / (8,000,000 * 0.65) = 0.576923076923077: about 57.7%.

This just makes your campaign buying a bit more aggressive than it usually is. It’s the equivalent of giving your campaign a dagger to go all stabby on the other campaign.

Of course, an alternative here would be to raise the price your campaign is paying for the inventory. I’m not going to assume your system is in a bidding environment. If it were, you could also pull the pricing lever to actually change the win rate to something more to your liking. That’s where things get a little more complicated. You have to monitor how the new prices change the win rate and populate a lookup table so you know what happens at different prices.

For this exercise let’s keep it simple. I’m thinking that you’re just trying to make pacing decisions with non-monetary levers to pull.

Now you’ve got a complete algorithm that, in a perfect environment, will conclude your campaign exactly at the correct allocation without over or under performing. Then again, when was the last time you saw perfection?

Guardrails

Total Cap

Much like the Price is Right, you want to get the exact amount without going over to win that bonus $100. So you need to add a little logic to your pacing system to put the brakes on when the campaign hits the goal. Ad-tech systems are kinda big these days with servers spread out all over the world. Sometimes you just need a handbrake to stop buying on the thing when it’s done what it needed to do. So add that.

Overburn

The other thing you’ll want to do is run your campaign hot. Add five percent to the numerator. If your total cap function is working then you should hit the hard stop in advance of the final hours of your end date. I’m saying five percent for simplicity’s sake. Maybe you over burn at one percent at the beginning of the campaign and five percent toward the end, with some graduated increase over the weeks or months of the run. Heck, maybe you run hot at the beginning, slow in the middle and hot at the end.

I asked my good friend Neal. He says overburn for the first 80% of the campaign’s budget, then you can let it chill on the beach for the last 20%. He didn’t use those words, but the sentiment is there.

I don’t know. Do what feels natural. Fly casual.

Recalculate again and again and again

Absolutely reevaluate your campaign hourly, every half hour maybe? Do it often. Redo the numbers:

How much inventory is available in the time I have left?

How much of that inventory does my campaign need?

What’s my win rate?

The equation

In case you want to start adding more fun stuff to the equation here’s the template to follow:

allocation percentage = campaign goal / (available inventory * win rate)

You’ve finished and you’re winning

If you’ve made it to the end here, good on ya. Thank you for reading. I hope this helps, really I do. I know I’ve been hard on you for the questionable decisions you’ve made in the past, but that’s all behind us now. Let us look forward to a bright future where your campaigns are humming along, or your inventory allocations are distributing smoothly. Turns out that unbeknownst to any of us, you’ve just implemented a sensor feedback proportional controller. Tell your grandparents, they’ll understand.

If you enjoyed this post, pick something out something nice from my Amazon wish list and hit the one-click.

The post Pacing Algorithm for Advertising Campaigns and Inventory Allocations appeared first on Mark McEachran.

https://j.mp/3fGtvDd May 11, 2020 at 01:33PM

[haeroniel-doliet]

thoughts on ice skating

supposed to be under read more, sorry if mobile is weird! 

i mean ive missed multiple weeks and alll in all the society/ practice is quite weird like the beginners teacher dude keeps rambling off about like olympics skating or how higher levels have this and this move and look ive taught that advanced kid over there and heres how they do that technique rather than concretely helping us develop those basic skills that were apparently flawed at. like how do i do that correction youre just showing me bc clearly im about to fall over bc idk how to do it. and i tried being all professional and interested and make the most of it for myself, but cant help the frustration when it goes out of the easy shit into the stupid spins because apparently i just cant do it. be it my skates are too thin or too sharp blades or my ankle is not strong enough  or enough support thats why its going bad? idk even but i cant spin. cant do it. idk i kinda know multiple things that are fucking up and its frustrating and annoying and its just not gonna work yknow i can kinda turn 180. no i cant do the multiple spin spin spin that seems so easy. is it my skates or is it my inadequacy? im not getting new skates tho, im only here because i have my own skates a while back, im clearly so shit that im not even gonna be a milkly good figure skater im not gonna get in on that. i might as well do fuckin ballet rather than this. im actually looking into that kinda now id love to try. 

ice skating is dumb in the way that ive done it since im a child but never as a hobby, like ive done it with most the time my own owned skates since like 3-4 yrs old like young. but school only ever teaches forwards and basic backwards (apparently its cheating backwards) and basic stop and turns and idk things you learn somewhat naturally and my coolest tricks always been sausages (or bubbles as they call them here) and those are apparently baby level beginner stuff and im just :| yeah i can do those tho. and now ic an do them backwards which is kinda cool, and im more confident one foor skating/gliding. but like never as a hobby so i guess none of that matters, i did try to do intermediate and could keep up to an extent but i guess my basics are so shoddy i wasnt doing well enough for my own standards, and even now looking over tho the teacher is better and more encouraging, everyone seems to be doing crazy tricks and jumps and spins and one leg up fancy shit and im just... ya. guess i cant be over there. cant do it. lemme just stand with mr blabber mouth. it is frustrating bc yeah maybe i wanna be that intermediate level, maybe i wanna go skate with my family/old friends and show off bc look i can do like 3 4 cool things im almost a real skater. but fuck i guess my skates are limiting me and i should try use the rental skates? that are dull af but have better support? idk, ive got blisters from them the last i used them and i dont particularly wanna use shitty skates. but i dunno even what to do, i dont particularly wanna drop on some fancy skates just to find smths wrong again and im shit and cant do it. maybe id suddenly improve and feel a lot better about myself and take it as a proper hobby but realistically nah. im actually kinda frustrated i dont even know if i wanna continue. yes i have a friend that goes, yes i have skates and you only get better by spending time on ice and id like to be better bc only recently ive realised how shit i am, (trust me its confidence boosting to have skated with bambis on ice who are afraid of moving at all and then i can at least go kinda fast if i want) but i cant even turn properly, cant stop properly neither. its just ugh, i dont think im getting as much out of it as i should be, i dont know if its the teachers fault, my skates fault, or my own personality/inability. 

no im not doing the dumb kinda competition theyre organising in a few weeks. the criteria for intermediate (that i havent participated in enough anyway recently) is fuckin hops and drags (my skates do not drag! to sharp? idk) and spins and fancy shit i havent even ever tried to. yeah sure i could for the fucks of it do the beginners bc its uh, bubbles forward and backwards that i can do, and i can kind of do the chassee thing kind of. but i cant do a god damn spin for the life of me apparently so i might as well save my 5 pound and ‘pride’. ugh. besides the fun part was that he was talking abt the higher levels leg up glide thing, and had us do it against the wall bc ‘afraid well just face plant’ and i guess i can bring my leg up decently high when supported by the wall which is fun, and otherwise im not the worst of the 5 beginners that showed up. but yeah im just frustrated with it over all. dunno how long the clubs even gonna continue for, theres only one friend there that i would continue for which isnt great considering means i dont consider the others easy to make friends with or ones i could be fond of enough to over look the struggle of the hobby. 

i think my plan was to call my dad not only to ask if they had a preference for when my friend would fly down to visit  so she could buy her tickets, but i guess also i was going to say about the skate apparently being too soft and too thin/too sharp and express this frustration that i still cant do shit, that maybe even using unsharpened (and uncomfortable) rental skates could be better for skating and just wonder what im even doing abt this all. clearly not competing but idk even if we could just come to observe/skate for fun during the competition etc or if i should just skip to catch up/pack and clean idk. also im kinda annoyed at myself otherwise bc i just tuesday saw with J and shes off for a few weeks and i made such a good verbal plan saying id do an email and a summary im weeeeeks behind on on tuesday evening and prep for class today (didnt prep but it went okay anyway) and today i would have gone to class and to skating with a healthy meal (check check check) and come home to sign up and send the other email thats been bugging me, and then do my report due midnight i havent even started on. said id work after midnight if it was taking so long so id have it done..... i had a nap instead. not even a god damn shower i was planning to have tuesday and now its 3 am on thursday. ayy. sure i could skip classes tomorrow to shower and clean my room and maybe complete a task before i drag myself to an archery arrow lesson and badminton after (no thatll be fun, but ill be back rly late) but ive skipped so many classes and i wana see and be with my friends i might as well go, and if i get abandoned work on work somewhere in between classes and maybe actually get something done? gasp. shock. and still get home and do smth like clean and do dishes to be productive while anticipating fun thing, do it and come home and actually sleep bc im fuckin that over eh. but fuck. its not just that i have 1 overdue summary from two weeks ago, i have another summary due thursday night. maybe, in between classes i could do both, miraculous i guess yes but would be cool. do two summaries, send off both and an apology email for the other, take the spare chance to book myself another experiment if theyre still running and if not send an apology email bc i missed one in class one and ask what now. and then maybe even since the calendar is out get my 3 planned viewings booked so that i can see them b4 going back home and dont get fucked. maybe even add the corrections i got yesterday to my other report. wow wouldnt that be great. i could do them now but i should get to sleep right now heres hoping ill remember the corrections then. and then id need to look at the video for the assignment that was due yesterday and bring up the files and find the debrief and begin filling it in and maybe email researcher if i need to, and do the easy part. so that maybe logical me in a clean room will fill in the ethics part between classes on friday or after class or gasp on saturday bc im not going to st andrews after all... its a lot.. i hate that two days are wasted already. ugh. uGH. well get by. lets just try stay positive, now im going to sleep and wake up to go to my 11 class prepared to do some easy work between classes. yes yes. its probably weird that who ever has read this far has read all this shit and maybe i should just keep my shit personal and not post on my main blog bc surprisingly its open to anyone who just slightly would wanna see it,and though you likely dont know me in person its a bit weird huh idk. maybe this is here so my cousin can read it if she happens to , maybe its so that you can read it and be like ya i do that and i think like that too pretty cool im not alone, maybe its for me to read back and not have to be exposed to my worst ugly vents on my plain vent blog and can remain positive thomaybe not. its under read more anyway. lets try bury it guys. 

[isaacathom]

thooough kevlar is supposed to stop bullets, ya. so in theory, even if the Captain had managed to get the shot off, Esther could have still been reasonably fine. understandably shaken and probably bruised, but fine. of course that also depends on what GUN the Captain actually has? like ive basically been working off something thats not remotely automatic. no burst fire. basically a semi auto. a rifle would be ideal except that the scenario is is close quarters, making a rifle pretty fucking stupid, so it has to be some sort of handgun. raising the question Why does he have a handgun if the military is expected to be at range, and how did he get the scenario to let him get so close as to invalidate his rifle?

also he probably would actually have an auto of some kind, but for dramatic purposes id rather not? simply because then its far more difficult for him to be disarmed without basically killing Esther in the meantime. if its semi-auto, then in theory he can fire one shot that misses and then be disarmed before a second bullet can be fired. if he has an auto, you squeeze the trigger and youve already launched a small volley and even if Seora bends the goddamn world to stop it, at LEAST one would likely hit Esther, not to speak of the multitude more bullets that could then be fired between the initial trigger pull and the disarm from Seora. so for dramatic purposes he cannot have an automatic. like a full auto.

which then means the actual circumstances surrounding the shot have to be changed in order for him to even be capable of using his semi auto rifle with any confidence. which works fine, i suppose. maybe the reasoning behind the military having semi autos rather than full autos is because they’d likely want to be picking off combatants at range with a /degree/ of stealth. considering in general the combatants are Blue Mages that’d be pretty important. the moment they’re alerted, you basically can’t really get them as easily. immediate dirt wall, immediate scalding hot guns, etc. toasty. so like.... i guess like sniper rifles???? except theyre just.... regular rifles..... yknow actually that doesnt make a fuck ton of sense. hold on. uh.

actually, one important thing re: guns is that they were likely invented AFTER the schism and after any fighting between the two countries. so the guns would never have actually been used for their intended purpose, that being to shoot Dusk Maidens before they can use magic. So they are unlikely to have been field tested in the practical sense. plus theres the fact that metals are rare in the Light Kingdom, so they might have been limited in terms of just how much progression they could make on this front. so since there hasnt been open warfare since like 300 years ago, the military’s non-sword equipment is probably Pretty Ordinary. technologically behind the times relative to the rest, mostly due to the structure of the kingdom separating Maidens from crafts. unlike the Dark Kingdom, which likely has a stronger technological basis, with stronger and more advanced weaponry, armor, etc, especially if its derived from metallic substances. more “organic” substances would be the realm of the Light Kingdom. so its a bit complicated. so the light kingdom probably has these older style of guns because they decided, well, the guns dont matter TOO bad as long as theyve got decent range and dont break. we’ll focus our limited metallic resources onto things like phones and shit.

meanwhile the dark kingdom would have a far greater industry for weapons, with their Warrior Maidens being Fucking Kitted Out. the actual Dusk Maidens among them wouldnt have guns (no real need, tbh) but the few human members would, they’d all have decent armor. the onl downside is that this tech is the only thing the dark has OVER the light, because they still lack in more organic resources like GD food. they’ve got a few farms clear of darkness that are responsible for a majority of organic produce, a few people manage to scrape out tiny farms in their homes, some people have come up with the idea to dig up piles of tainted dirt and place them in pots to then be cleansed, allowing them to grow shit like tomatoes or carrots or smth. meats are rare because the only consistent sources of animals are mountain dwelling, and over hunting probably already forced a few species to extinction. fish is still available on their limited coastline (the light kingdom kept almost all of the coast following the civil war) but its not ideal by any stretch and they certainly dont have ENOUGH of it.

uh shit so i guess like.... the light kingdom have great tech in terms of software and such, while the dark kingdom has stronger “practical tech” like industrial shit. we got good cars, we got good infrastructure (except in some particularly bad joints), got good weapons, etc. niice.

ok so then. light kingdom has shit guns, probably timelocked to a specific era. potentially circa a time JUST before the civil war, as that would have allowed the proto-dusk maidens to help in their creation and lay down the groundwork for their blueprint to be slowly adapted by the light kingdom. so thats like..... uh...... can that be semi auto???? i suppose with the use of magic itd be fairly uncomplicated for the advancement of tech to be faster than our own. so if the story itself takes place around 2000, even though in our world the first semi auto wasnt until the 1880s, with magic being present its not unfeasible for them to have been successfully made ~300 years ago, so the 1700s (perhaps late? or maybe just 200, so 1800s still, but earlier than us). except then following this there was the civil war and the separation of the two countries, separating the light kingdom and their human-exclusive military to these semi auto rifles that they couldnt really improve without significant expense. so theyre probably timelocked to the early 1900s? maybe up to around the M1 Garand? which is still a solid weapon, but not like, a machine gun or anything. whereas the dark could easily have continued tech progression past this point up to present day, so they’d have shit like..... uh... whats a really modern gun. idk. get shit like AR15s and M14s at any rate, or even just the AK47 (i couldnt remember that for the life of me, wild). though again, considering the fact that the majority of the military possessed magic, the extreme advancement of guns was definitely not a priority for the people, so i dont need to get /super/ modern. jsut modern enough to where you could easily fuck up a guy with an M1 Garand which wouldnt be difficult, surely. maybe even a lil further cback from the M1, w/e, shit like that.

however the lack of general gun usage from the Dark, and the general understanding from the light that their military is exclusively magical in nature (which was true for quite a while) light military protection is PURELY against magical shit. a human Warrior Maiden with a gun could very easily kill any number of light military troops, because they simply arent prepared for be fired upon. which would be a fun revelation at the climax for the Captain, when his troop headed for the castle’s main room is under a hail of fire and many of them are easily killed because No Fucking Shit, lads. meanwhile the dark military is aware of the solely human military and very capable of understanding the guns they use. they’d only need to recover a SINGLE gun from the troops (likely during the first failed attempt to recover Seora) to work out exactly what sort of defences they’d need in order to fight the light side safely, ie how many layers of the Good Stuff. really, provided the dark are prepared (they sure are) they would easily, at this stage, win a war. the only way to lose would be ambush, having their tech reverse engineered (a little tricky but technically possible) and running out of food. a quick war would easily favor them.

so then, in THIS case, that means when the Captain reaches the castle for the second time in his second brave quest to save the maiden Seora, his squad is substantially smaller than it was at the start. they specifically probably weren’t under fire, as they would have entered through the back rather than the through the dusk maiden army guarding the front gates. but its in the lead up, after the first shot WAS fired (by the light army under someones command, probably not the Captain’s specifically) that he wouldve lot a solid number. mild earthquakes, raging heat, bullets?????? the army basically served to divert attention while they dove the fuck for cover and his squad went ‘oh shit, time to go NOW’ and bolted for it. a few of them might have been shot as they ran. idk. good fun! then they get into the castle through the same entrance they used the LAST time (it was at least partially deliberately left open. there are folk waiting on the inside but theyre basically in shadows just in CASE)

so when the captain enters the room with Esther and Seora and the other small group of Dusk Maidens who are present, he is probably one of the few if not the only person in the room with a gun. his troops likely dropped theirs in the chaos (either from the quakes or the heat, or just general pants shitting terror). he’s got his gun out. everyones ready to fuck up, but noones firing off yet. he’s probably yelling something about it being Esther’s last chance to turn over Seora before more people are killed, Esther’s going all ‘yea cool but a) my troops are winning by all accounts and b) youre the idiot who didnt listen LAST time you came here! she doesnt want to go’ seora going ‘right. fuck you’ captain ‘>:o thats it!’ and then fires on Esther. Seora makes that first shot miss, but now the dusk maidens are fucking Ready to Fight and leap forward. before the captain can take a second shot at Esther, Seora and Esther disarm him (making the gun too hot to hold and then flinging it the fuck away with that Windy Business) and then that whole long fucking post from last night ensues. nice!

which is cool. but i THINK, looking at tech, the M1 miiiight be too strong for kevlar. might? im not positive. numbers are confusing and im bad at math. but i thiiiiiiiiiink its penetration velocity is too high for ordinary layers of kev. yea no theyre too high. hold up. we need to back up the semi auto time frame a little. plus, m1s can do 40-50 rounds a min, thats a few too many. oh bitch i can bring back the model 8, oh fuck yea, i love the model 8. oh perfect. mm yup thats a good one. ok so that means that roughly speaking, light kingdom gun advances stop in the early 1900s, with dark kingdom advancements continue up till around the 1950s. its a bit fiddly because the light probably did have resources left over from before the civil war that allowed them to continue development for a while, but if we basically stick to model 8 era (not 81, generally). but because the dark kingdom contained the majority of the experts (even if a number woulda eaten dust from that Dark Plague Nuke) they’re far closer to that M1 level. M1s, AKs, the fun shit, really. that shit and beyond. meaning that, in theory, sufficient layers of kevlar (approx 6-8?) could block a model 8 shot (at range, anyway) allowing for the dark to be Kitted The Fuck Out. niiiice.

i lost my train of thought because of my mum which is pretty bad because this post is incredibly stream of consciousness...... dammit.

uh tl;dr dark side better weapons, armour, and infrastructure. light side better organic industry (farming and fabrics, also glass shit). dark side has jack all food and relies on limited coastal fishing and a few specific mountain creatures plus their limited farmland.

gun? light kingdom stuck at arooooouuunnnnddd model 8 level tech. its a good gun, and it gets the job done, that job being to shoot maidens before they can fire back. it was developed before the civil war and proved instrumental in many of the fights. however, in the time SINCE then, they havent progressed at all. the dark kingdom has continued to progress, especially in terms of armour (w/ the goods like Kevlar available for all Warrior Maidens) and they have stuff closer to m1 garands. the dusk maidens dont typically use guns, but the human members of the Warrior Maidens are usually given them. for uh, obvious reasons.

unrelated aside - most of the gems used by the Light Kingdom are made of glass, due to the lack of actual gemstones on their side of the border. just sorta how it goes