My Latest Toy

My parents were here for 5 nights. I plan to post a few pics and observations about their visit and my playing the Las Vegas tourist soon.

Until then, the pic is of my newest toy. It seems like I have wanted a vintage slot machine for as long as I can remember.

Well, I now have one.

I'll leave you with a parting shot of some of the view that my parents had from their studio suite at Palms Place.

RIP Bob Stupak

From the Las Vegas Advisor:
September 25, 2009 Bob Stupak Dies: Entrepreneur, gambler, and self-styled
"Polish maverick" Bob Stupak died today at Desert Springs Hospital after a long
fight with leukemia. He was 67.

In my opinion, Bob Stupak was an "interesting" individual.

The only time I ever dealt to Stupak was at the Ultimate Bet Aruba event. Having said that, it was an extended engagement. He had entered a tournament that started in the early evening and he went deep. All the other dealers left to go do their thing. Sipu and I stayed to deal the final table. It was daylight when we finished. Several times throughout the night he and I stepped outside for a cigarette. On one of those smoke breaks he asked me how I got to Aruba. I wasn't sure if he meant how I landed the dealing gig or how I physically got to the island. I made an assumption that he meant physically. Well that left two options since you can't exactly drive to Aruba. I briefly considered whether he had arrived on a cruise ship but I couldn't figure out what he was driving at.

I said that I arrived on an airplane. (?)

He said that he was stranded on the island.

I said I could think of worse places to be stranded.

He paused for a few seconds and then thoughtfully said that he couldn't think of a worse place to be stranded.

No worse place than Aruba??

HUH?

What he was driving at was that the high humidity in Aruba was taking it's toll on his ability to catch his breath. He was nearly desperate to get off of the island but couldn't get an earlier flight.

If I remember correctly, he chopped first and second place money.

RIP Bob. You certainly led a full life.

Photo Dump

The picture of the most profitable outing is the Wynn picture.
I have been going to the spa at Encore. On Tuesday before I headed upstairs to the spa I entered the free slot tournament and was assigned to the 1:00 PM session. The 11,320 score was good enough to win the session and $500 in free slot play. The session win also entitled me to play in the finals at 5:00PM. I came in second in the finals and that was good for another $750 in free slot play.
Logic told me that it would be best to run the $1250 through a poker machine with a "decent" pay table. At the Encore you aren't going to find any full pay machines......at least I couldn't find any there.
I started out playing a poker machine, but to me a single hand poker machine is BORING and too much like work. I then started bouncing around on penny and nickel machines betting the max. My good fortune continued and by the time I had run the $1250 through a variety of machines I was able to cash out around $1,430.
I went back to the Encore on Thursday hoping to play in the daily tournament again only to be told that you are only allowed to play in it once for the duration of the promotion.
Oh well, the one time was gooooood.
Perhaps the most satisfying thing from my point of view is that after I had played the freeplay through once, I cashed out and left the premises and didn't give any/all of it back (that day at least).

Calling Dr. Freud.

After three days (I work nights) of insomnia I finally get to sleep at a decent hour only to be awakened by this dream:

I'd apparently quit my current job and returned to my previous one back on the East coast. Many of the employees at my previous workplace were familiar and even one person from three jobs ago worked at my last place of employment.

From the time I walked back into my previous place of employment I totally regretted it. I kept thinking WHY did I do this? Is it too late to undo this?

Every printer in every office was spewing paper with enough velocity to hit the ceiling.

There was a line on the floor that didn't exist when I last worked there. Everytime I stepped over it alarms went off and people would yell at me that I'd stepped into the bakery side of the business and that I couldn't do that.

What the hell?

Does anything really matter?

In the interest of full disclosure, I have never cast a vote for a Democrat in my life. I'll admit to having come very close to pulling a lever with a D beside it once or twice (really only once) a long time (17ish years)ago.

I'll also publically claim Ronald Reagan, warts and all, as the most inspirational politician of my life time. During the Reagan years I was truly proud to be an American.

I can also state that in some respects and on some issues, my views settle somewhere left, way left, of the middle of the road. Most of those issues have to do with getting the government OUT of our daily lives which seem counterintuitive

Having said that, with each passing year I become more and more disgusted with politicians of all stripes. There really aren't vast differences between one and the next. There are planks of each platform, right and left, that I find to be full of termites and decay.

Some days I wonder why I bother to read the paper (yes, I still read the paper a few times a week. I'm aging and some habits die hard) or surf the 'net for the latest drivel flowing from the talking (or typing) heads. Hell-in-a-hand-basket comes to mind more often than not.

How is it, from a poker perspective, that the Democratic party is perceived as leading the fight for personal freedoms and the evil Republicans are perceived as the party that wants to keep you from your weekly home game? Something is quite wrong with that picture.

The problem, as I see it, is that the vast majority of the population is closer to the middle than the politicians. The right and left have drifted so FAR right and left that they no longer understand the middle.

How is it that we, as a people, continue to send the same people back to Washington over and over again when polls show our displeasure with those same lawmakers? Do we "vote" one way with our ballot and then "vote" another way when participating in a poll?

Is this what was envisioned 230+ years ago?

http://buchanan.org/blog/pjb-socialist-america-sinking-1600

After half a century of fighting encroachments upon freedom in America, journalist Garet Garrett published “The People’s Pottage.” A year later, in 1954, he died. “The People’s Pottage” opens thus:
“There are those who still think they are holding the pass against a revolution that may be coming up the road. But they are gazing in the wrong direction. The revolution is behind them. It went by in the Night of Depression, singing songs to freedom.”
Garrett wrote of a revolution within the form. While outwardly America appeared the same, a revolution within had taken place that was now irreversible. One need only glance at where we were before the New Deal, where we are and where we are headed to see how far we are off the course the Founding Fathers set for our republic.
Taxes drove the American Revolution, for we were a taxaphobic, liberty-loving people. That government is best that governs least is an Americanism. When “Silent Cal” Coolidge went home in 1929, the U.S. government was spending 3 percent of gross domestic product.
And today? Obama’s first budget will consume 28 percent of the entire GDP; state and local governments another 15 percent. While there is some overlap, in 2009, government will consume 40 percent of GDP, approaching the peak of World War II.
The deficit for 2009 is $1.8 trillion, 13 percent of the whole economy. Obama is pushing a cap-and-trade bill to cut carbon emissions that will impose huge costs on energy production, spike consumer prices and drive production offshore to China, which is opting out of Kyoto II. The Chinese are not fools.
Obama plans to repeal the Bush tax cuts and take the income tax rate to near 40 percent. Combined state and local income tax rates can run to 10 percent. For the self-employed, payroll taxes add up to 15.2 percent on the first $106,800 for all wages of all workers. Medicare takes 2.9 percent of all wages above that. Then there are the state sales taxes that can run to 8 percent, property taxes, gas taxes, excise taxes, and “sin taxes” on booze, cigarettes and, soon, hot dogs and soft drinks.
Comes now national health insurance from Nancy Pelosi’s House. A surtax that runs to 5.4 percent of all earnings of the top 1 percent of Americans, who already pay 40 percent of all federal income taxes, has been sent to the Senate. Included also is an 8 percent tax on the entire payroll of small businesses that fail to provide health insurance for employees.
Other ideas on the table include taxing the health benefits that businesses provide their employees.
The D.C.-based Tax Foundation says New Yorkers could face a combined income tax rate of near 60 percent.
In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson called George III a tyrant for having “erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.”
What did George III do with his Stamp Act, Townshend Acts or tea tax to compare with what is being done to this generation of Americans by their own government?
While the hardest working and most productive are bled, a third of all wage-earners pay no U.S. income tax, and Obama plans to free almost half of all wage-earners of all income taxes. Yet, tens of millions get Medicaid, rent supplements, free education, food stamps, welfare and an annual check from Uncle Sam called an Earned Income Tax Credit, though they never paid a nickel in income taxes.
Oh, yes. Obama also promises everybody a college education.
Coming to America to feast on this cornucopia of freebies is the world. One million to 2 million immigrants, legal and illegal, arrive every year. They come with fewer skills and less education than Americans, and consume more tax dollars than they contribute by three to one.
Wise Latina women have more babies north of the border than they do in Mexico and twice as many here as American women.
As almost all immigrants are now Third World people of color, they qualify for ethnic preferences in hiring and promotions and admissions to college over the children of Americans
All of this would have astounded and appalled the Founding Fathers, who after all, created America — as they declared loud and clear in the Constitution — “for ourselves and our posterity.”
China saves, invests and grows at 8 percent. America, awash in debt, has a shrinking economy, a huge trade deficit, a gutted industrial base, an unemployment rate surging toward 10 percent and a money supply that’s swollen to double its size in a year. The 20th century may have been the American Century. The 21st shows another pattern.
“The United States is declining as a nation and a world power with mostly sighs and shrugs to mark this seismic event,” writes Les Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, in CFR’s Foreign Affairs magazine. “Astonishingly, some people do not appear to realize that the situation is all that serious.”
Even the establishment is starting to get the message.

Zombies

I am continually frustrated by people who cannot think for themselves. If the "computer" tells them something, they accept it as gospel. Any attempt to analyze, or actually use a thought process is lost on them.

Case in point.

Last night I visited the Carl's Jr. at the corner of Spring Mtn. and Decatur. The sign in the window advertised two Western Bacon Cheeseburgers for $4. The sign also said that you could make it a combo for $2 more. Alrighty then.

The guy says $7.13.

Now, I know that the sales tax rate just went up in Nevada. The new 8.1% tax rate isn't as easy to calculate as the sales tax rate of 5% when I lived in Maryland. 5% was a piece of cake to calculate, but I don't think this has any bearing on what happened last night.

Deep breath.

I say to the guy, lets assume that the sales tax rate is 10%. It's NOT, but let's make this rather simple for you. IF the sales tax was 10% we could take the $6 charge for the food and make a simple calculation to determine that the tax would be 60¢ for a total of $6.60.

By this time another guy, who I assumed was the manager had joined the "discussion".

By what you are telling me, the sales tax would have to be near 20% to arrive at $7.13 (actually it would have to be 19% but at this point......nothing was getting through)

The "manager" guy says to me "Sorry, I'm not good at math."

Sigh.

You, sir, are not good at logic either.

And I won't give you a passing score at customer service!

I finally gave up, left the food on the counter and walked out without paying.

Yes, the computer was not programmed to make this transaction automatically. As I learned via a phone call to the on duty manager this morning, the operator had to manually deduct 60¢ to arrive at the advertised price.

I'll NOT be a customer of this restaurant again.

I've already barred myself from the McDonald's closest to my house for a similar incident. In that case, after I tired of "arguing" with the cashier I asked for the manager. She listened to my story, looked at the computerized total and said "That's the total the computer is telling me, that's what I have to charge you."

SIGH!

When did people stop being able to THINK!

This wide spread problem has vast political and social implications, at least in my mind.

If you didn't know it already, we're pretty much doomed to live with stupidity.

Donkeyote

As I waited to push onto table 2 a few nights ago, I noticed that the 10 seat had a 3-4 inch plastic donkey that he was using for a card protector.

I asked him if the donkey had a name.

He said, "Just donkey, but you can name him if you want".

I said, ok, I name him Don Quixote.

He looked at me very strangely and asked who Donkey Otie was.

Sigh.......