I played pretty heavy last year in California and was up about $2k between March and August. I was using a progressive type system I saw on Steve Player's blog. I can't post a link yet, but you can just Google "pick 3 progressive wagering" and find it. It's basically a Martingale system where you play until you win, increasing your bet when you pass the break-even threshold.
The first series I ran I was into it about $1200 when I hit a number with 3 tickets played. Pretty nice net. The luckiest hit I had was when I started another series and missed buying into the Midday draw, so my tickets spanned one day to the next. I was buying a week ahead, so when the seven days were up without a win, I overlapped the previous series by buying a ticket starting in the afternoon draw and had a number come up while holding wo tickets (so just over $1k with $240 into it.)
I quit playing when I lost my nerve. I was far enough into it that I should have been playing at the 5 level (so just over $2k out of pocket) but couldn't quite bring myself to play $100/day. I switched to playing 4 tickets/day and was going to just quit when I was back even from where I started. I did that 3 days and managed to collect another hit holding 4 tickets, so ended up down about $200 for that series.
My thoughts regarding the randomness of the lottery are always along the lines of the games have to be random because imagine the story that could/would be written by some news outlet about them not being random.