Okay, I find this funny.
On web servers, the error code that signals "Page Not Found" is number 404. That also happens to be the number of the Munged.Org blog entry for my birthday post last from last week.
Subtle, but I'm smiling at the couple of obvious jokes about my birthday not being found.
Got up early-ish (9AM) and flew to Las Vegas today, missing a connecting flight and thus missing a show I wanted to see. I was supposed to be in Vegas by 5 or so, but didn't get in until almost midnight. Not the best travel experience I've ever had, but then, I was flying American Airlines.
The whole reason for this was to use up an American Airlines (AA) credit on a ticket. So I had to fly AA and suffer. My airline of choice is UA (United Airlines, also UAL), where all my miles and status is. I expected to get shitty seats, indifferent service, and I was not disappointed on either expectation. You simply do not count as an AA customer worth treating well without frequent flyer status. This is to be expected in this day of no privacy, and the information processing power to track exactly who you are making your money from. Thus it was that I had shitty seats on all the flights except the initial LGA to ORD segment.
The actual trip to Vegas sucked dead, burnt, bunnies. For no apparent reason at all, we sat on the ground a Lagardia for an hour or so. Weather here in NYC was pretty clear, and there were no reports of nasty weather in Chicago either. Despite the fact that when a single airport is screwed up connecting flights are usually screwed up too at that airport, my connecting flight to Vegas had long since gone when I arrived at the gate. Actually missing a connecting flight happens so infrequently that I don't actually remember the last time it happened. It must have though, at least a couple of times.
I ended up waiting 5 hours for the next flight. This meant I missed seeing Cirque du Soleil's "O" at Bellagio monday night. But oh well, Tara the Travel Agent said they are supposed to refund my ticket, which is not something they'll claim to do. The actual flight to Vegas was uneventful, in and of itself, I just got to the hotel at midnight, Vegas time.
Steve Wynn built the Bellagio, and is responsible for the fountains and the collecting the artwork and such. The first time I stayed at Bellagio, I was entranced. The staff was incredibly friendly and willing to talk to me, and they seemed to enjoy working to make my stay enjoyable. It was small things, that they'd smile and be at ease when I made my dumb little requests, and never seemed to be in a hurry to get to the next menial task on their schedule.
The second and third times I stayed at Bellagio, that feeling of comfort was gone. It had gone from being Bellagio to being A Hotel On The Strip in Las Vegas. I found later that Bellagio had been sold to the MGM Grand chain.
Steve Wynn built a new casino hotel/resort just up the strip from The Venetian. Called eponymously, Wynn Las Vegas.
The Wynn felt like that Bellagio of that first stay there.
I was staying in a Tower Suite (really just a slightly larger room), rather than in a Resort room, and thus part of this was from being in the higher-class part of the hotel. But I also got this feeling from the public areas, the casino, and the restaurants too. I was talking to one of the massage therapists, a lady that had also worked at Bellagio, and she said one of the big differences was that Wynn liked to have a large staff, and the dude who bought Bellagio from Wynn liked skeleton crews. My impression is that Wynn is good at creating a corporate culture that isn't hugely stressful to the employees, and they transfer that ease of work to all they do.
One of the seriously cool parts of the Wynn was my pet peeve about casinos in Vegas: The fucking bells, beeps, boops, and sirens of the slot machines. They play muzak in the casino, and you can hear it over the noise of the slots. In fact, I'm hard pressed to say I heard the slots at all, unless I was listening specifically for them. Even when I was playing craps 20 feet from the slots, I don't remember hearing them. On any other stay in Vegas, I'm ready to leave 3 days after arriving, just to escape the damn noise of the slots in the casino. I could have stayed a week in the Wynn.
My room was big, and very nice. There was a good amount of room to move around, a desk with high-speed internet (which I didn't use) and an Avaya IP phone, a Gateway 34" HD TV with the usual hotel features. The bathroom had two sinks, a makeup table, separate bath and shower stalls, and the toilet was in its own little room with a door and a phone. There was a small TV in the bathroom, tho I never had it on because it wasn't in sync with the HD TV out in the room, which was disconcerting. The bed was one of the nice new ones all the hotels are switching too, that are super-comfortable. It had a down comforter on it too. Getting out of bed was hard.
The restaurants are all first class. I've detailed my experiences with food in the daily diary posts.
The craps tables all had a $15 minimum bet, even when nobody was playing them, which is higher than usual for hotels on the strip. My style of play takes $150 for every 5 dollars of minimum bet, so this is something I consider. However, I was betting green chips ($25), so it wasn't an actual problem. The tables all had dealers that seemed to be having a good time, and I didn't see any tables that stayed quiet for to long. Most importantly, I won at them, which was nice.
I did check out Lure, one of the clubs, but it was dead and the only women in the place were working there. I didn't see any chicks dance on tables, which was the line that got me into the place in the first place.
Physically, the Wynn is located pretty much all the way at the other end of the strip from where I'm used to hanging out. If Madalay Bay and Luxor are at one end of the strip, Wynn is at the other. The only hotels I know of that are farther out are The Sahara, and the Stratosphere. I'm not really interested in either of them.
So, I liked the Wynn a lot, and will be staying there again, I would say. If you get the chance, I'd suggest doing so yourself.
The first day in Las Vegas. I tried the buffet, had a massage, shopped a little, saw some shows, and played some craps. I lost at craps, but not so fast that I didn't have a good time doing it.
Tuesday, I got up, took a shower, and when down to try out the Wynn's buffet. In a fit of originality, they've named it "The Buffet". I generally have a low opinion of buffets, in Vegas or anywhere. It is pre-prepared food for the most part, sitting there getting cold or under heat lamps waiting for you to take some. Made-to-order omelets are usually the only exception. And The Buffet and its food didn't change my mind at all. Don't get me wrong, it is the nicest, and best quality food I have ever had in a buffet in Vegas. But any other restaurant in the Wynn except room service would have delivered better food, and I think, for the same or even less money. At least for the amount of food I ate.
Then back up to my room for an in-room for a massage therapy session. Whenever possible, I try to do this in my room, rather than down in the spa, unless I'm planning on doing the hot tub or swim or something. This day, I wasn't intending to do any of that. The therapist was incredible, and mostly managed to straighten me out in the 90 minutes she worked on me. I proposed marriage to her, which I do to all massage therapists who are really good, and she duly declined. (This is a theme in my life, damn massage therapists.)
After working up the willpower to move, I headed off to pick up the tickets for K and Mystere. I went to the MGM Grand to get them both, with the intention of crossing the street to New York, New York and thru to the Luxor and maybe Mandalay Bay. Rather, I walked the strip back up to Monte Carlo, just seeing the sights, and from there took a cab back to the Wynn.
After serious deliberation, I decided to add Le Rêve, the main show at the Wynn to my plan for the night. Kà started at 9:30, with a "Must be seated by 9:15" on the ticket. Le Rêve started at 7:30, and would thus finish at 9:00, giving me 30 minutes to brave people leaving the Le Rêve theater, the taxi stand, and traffic to the other end of the strip to get to the MGM Grand in time to sit down before Kà opened. But, I was going to try it. At the very worse I'd miss out on Kà, which I've seen before.
At the concierge's suggestion, I tried Okuda, the Japanese restaurant in the Wynn. The portions are all appetizer sized, so I was able to try a main course, and do some sushi as well. It was fabulously good. I tried a sampler of saki too, basically made up of the three different "finishes" of Saki. I reaffirmed that I'm not a fan of Saki, tho these were much better tasting than a lot I've tried.
Le Rêve is not an actual Cirque Du Soleil show, though it was designed and written by the guy that did "O" and Mystere for Cirque Du Soleil. Thus, it was exactly a Cirque Du Soleil show in everything but name, and actually felt much more like "O" and Mystere than Kà does. It is very, very cool, and I enjoyed it hugely. Done on a stage in a theater in the round setting. The stage is a pool, with a stage floor that raises and lowers into the pool. I want a room in a house decorated the same way the theater was dressed.
After Le Rêve was over, I made my mad dash to the MGM to see Kà.
In the end, it worked perfectly, and in fact better than I expected. Le Rêve ended at 9:00, and I was out of my seat on the way to the door as the cast was doing their curtain call. Rude of me, but I was on a time-table. I beat pretty much everyone out of the theater, even with a stop in the restroom. I beat everyone to the taxi stand. The cab driver knew that the strip was not mobbed, and took me in a much closer entrance of the MGM both from a taxi ride perspective, and a walking thru the casino to the theater perspective.
I got to the snack bar at 9:15, and was in my seat 10 minutes later.
Let me just mention my seat for Kà. Usually, for Cirque Du Soleil, you want to be up a bit, so you can see everything. All the shows have action going on over and behind the audience. You want to be able to see all this, as well as take in the whole stage, since Cirque makes very good use of all of it. That was the kind of seat I had the first time I saw Kà, so I told Tara the travel agent to put me down front a bit. And she did. My seat was down front as it could be and not be on stage. Row A. Seat 4. At times, there was action going on 4 feet away from me. It was very cool, though I was glad I'd seen it from back farther once before.
Kà ended, and by the time I got to the cab line, it was stupidly huge. So I again intended to walk over the New York, New York, and points beyond, in the search of some gambling or something. The night was yet young. What I ended up doing instead was going across the street to the Hooters Casino Hotel.
Yes, Hooters, the cheesy restaurant in almost every city in the country dedicated to dirty old farts like me, has a casino hotel in Vegas. It isn't a huge one, but it is there, and reasonably close to The Strip too, just behind the Tropicana. (Another one I've not been in but should check out some time.)
The casino of Hooters looks exactly like a Hooters restaurant anywhere in the country. EXACTLY like any hooters anywhere. We are talking tacky wood plank floors and paneling, crap stapled to the walls. There was a country western band playing in the casino, and rock band playing in a club toward the back. The girls were the same not-quite-pretty girls wearing t-shirts, short shorts, and pantyhose so thick you doubt their legs are real you see in all Hooters except the ones in Atlanta. (The only Hooters I've every been in where I thought the Hooters girls were actually good looking was in Atlanta. And the Hooters in Manhattan has the worse looking Hooters girls of any Hooters I've been to anywhere.)
The casino is small, smaller even than some of the casinos in downtown Vegas. Only one of their 3 craps tables was open, and it was a $5 minimum bet. I'd have played, just to say I did, but it was also overly full already.
From there, I caught a cab back to the Wynn. I dropped my programs and coat in my room, and went down to play some craps. I went in with $900 (due to bad planning, I had to break a 100 dollar bill earlier), and played for about an hour or two. Being down $400 sounds big, but I was betting greens ($25 dollar chips) and you can loose $750 in one roll at that level, so this is actually not to bad.
Then, it was late, and still being on east coast time, I was winding down, so I went to bed.
Day 2, basically. I paid to see a Ferrari dealership's collection of cars, did some shopping, napped, got a shave, saw Mystere, played more craps. I won at craps, and am up $300 dollars on the trip total.
I slept in until nearly noon. It was unbelievably comfortable. When I did finally roll out and get moving, I went down and had lunch at Tableau.
From there, I walked over to the Penske-Wynn Ferrari dealership, at one end of the Wynn. There is a Ferrari gift shop, right next to the dealership. And that gift shop is the part of the experience you can get into for free. If you are not going to actually buy a Ferrari, you have to pay $10 to get in to look at the cars. I paid. But at least you get a coupon for $10 off anything you buy in the gift shop in exchange.
What can I say. A Ferrari is always beautiful, and is even more so in person, up close. They have a Ferrari Enzo on sale there. Based on a story in Car & Drive magazine a couple of months ago, it may be the last one in the world not spoken for. I forget how many digits where in it's price. When nobody was looking, I touched one of the 430 spiders, to leave a finger print for posterity. They had me arrested.
Then I went across the street to the Fashion Show Mall, and looked around. It was a mall, but I enjoyed it. From there, I went to Caesars Palace, and window shopped over there. Then I walked over to watch the fountains of Bellagio, and also did some shopping there too. Then I came back to the Wynn, and did some shopping there. I intended to actually buy something, but never did. If a man shops in a casino hotel and never buys anything, is it still shopping?
I took an hour and a half nap, so I'd be awake for a marathon craps session that night after Mystere and dinner at SW. After I woke up, I went down the the Spa, and had a shave and a beard trim in the barber shop. I was getting a leetle overly furry by that time, not having shaved all week. I had to apologize to the stylist who was doing this, because she shaved me twice to get a clean shave.
The show for the night was Cirque Du Soleil's Mystere over at Treasure Island. I walked across the street to see the show. Mystere was the first Cirque show I'd ever seen, and it has paled in comparison to the other Cirque shows that have come since. But I wanted to see it again to see how it stood up for real. It doesn't. It is still really good, and I highly recommend it. But I enjoy the other later ones more, personally, now that I've seen them. I suspect that "O" would not be as interesting to me any more as well, though it was my favorite until I saw Kà.
After the show, I walked back across to the Wynn, and had dinner at SW, the primo steakhouse downstairs at the Wynn, located looking out over the "Lake of Dreams". It was excellent. I also got to see 3 runs of the Lake. All I saw were cool colors playing on the water and the waterfall, on all three songs they did. The server told me that there are other effects and stuff, including a 2 million dollar polyvinyl frog that sings something. But I never saw this show, or anything else. It was cool, but I hope to see something more interesting next time.
After dinner, it was craps time. I played for a couple of hours, and did pretty good. Part of the fun was two dealers, Tania and Chris, that were goofing on each other, hitting each other with the stick, dishing on all the overdone guests walking by (it was Vegas and there were some people that were just asking to be made fun of), and generally having a good time. It was enjoyable to be around people working and having fun while handing me my chips. There was also "Tie-guy". A loud dude, having fun, who would give people at the table names if they rolled really well. There was "Big Guy", "Plaid Shirt Guy", "Boring Shirt Guy", "Princess", and "Joe" (who's name wasn't Joe, or anything close to it). When I checked in to the hotel, they told me my key card was also my players card for the hotel, and I used it to be rated when I played. So the pit bosses and dealers all knew my name, and were talking to me, and when I left they all told me to have a good night.
I was up $900 when I quit at 1 AM, having been up and down much more than that at times. I tipped the dealers $200, and that put me up $700 for the night, and up $300 for the trip so far. It wasn't exactly the marathon craps session I was thinking I'd have, but I was betting to much to have it last to long. And it was so very much fun.
Thursday I left a wake up call for 9:00AM, since I needed to be on my way to the airport at or before 10 to catch my 11:35 flight out. One of the nice parts about having a real human make your wake up call, is you can ask them to send up breakfast. The operator transferred me to room service. And that is when the day started sliding into the crapper.
Due to a gas-line problem, room service had no gas to cook anything with. They had no hot food, unless you wanted waffles or oatmeal. So I ordered oatmeal and fruit sent up, and then took a shower.
No gas also apparently means no hot water too. I was not in a good mood for my flight home.
At the airport, the flight was delayed a half hour, but then sat on the ground until after 1:00PM. Again, I missed my connection in Chicago, when I finally got there. It was pushing back when I got to the gate. But, flights to New York City from Chicago on AA are frequent, so I got on the next flight, which left at 8:30 PM.
I got home after midnight and collapsed in bed.
I had decided quite a while ago that it was time to get a new cell phone. My reason had to do with wanting a Bluetooth phone for wireless headsets. I had kind of settled on one of the newer Motorola phones, the Razor or KRZR (pronounced "krazor"), but was open to whatever there was out there.
And then while in Vegas my cell phone wouldn't stay turned on, even plugged into the charger or with a full battery indicator. It had times were it would work, but it would usually die in the middle of trying to listen to my voicemail or something. A new battery didn't help. Sprint said it wasn't them when I called to check, and to consider replacing the phone.
So I went to my local Sprint store here in Astoria, a store I hadn't been to lately. I'd had some bad experiences in other Sprint stores in Manhattan lately. I was hoping that the local, Astoria, store, would help, as they had always seemed to be ahead of the curve for me in the past.
Again, it seems Sprint has given up on selling mobile phones from their stores.
First problem, was that some lady asked to take my name and put me on a list for service. I suppose this makes sense, since my experiences in Sprint in the past were kind of like a rugby scrum. I was 5th on the list, I counted 9 other people or couples waiting, and a total of 6 employees.
After waiting 10 mins, my turn came, but not from the employees in the front, where I would have guessed, given I told them I didn't know what phone I wanted to get, but one of the stations in the back. The woman there proceded to tell me that I could get $75 off any phone in the store. I told her which one I wanted, and was told I could have that one for $50 dollars more, after rebate, than Sprint's web site said it costed, after rebate.
I argued, and when the manager came over, he said they didn't have the phone I was looking at. Or anything like it. In fact, once I asked, it became obvious that out of the 15 or so phone models Sprint had that aren't PDAs, they had only two of them in stock.
I walked out.
This was the last straw. If Sprint doesn't want me to buy a phone from them, then I won't. There is a Verizon store half a block away....
So I'm now a Verizon customer.
How could I not be? The Verizon store had at least 9 people serving 6 customers, and the kid who helped me was "up", listened to me, and seemed to enjoy what he was doing enough to do it right. I got the phone I wanted. I used the occasion to get off the $200/month unlimited minute plan I no longer need into a 2000 minute plan that is more like what I probably need now.
When I asked, they managed to transfer all the names in my old Sprint phone into the new Verizon phone. It would have been better if they had been able to transfer the phone numbers with the names, and they tried twice, but they couldn't get it done. So even if I have to put the numbers in again, at least I know who to put numbers in for.
The only other casualty would be voicemail, but I think I had it cleared out.
Everyone I know who is on Verizon says they get fantastic customer service. I would have to say that things started out on a pretty good note for me.
I've been on a couple weeks of vacation, and the first week I stayed home and tried to remember to be domestic. Specifically, the place needs to be cleaned up. Badly, needs to be cleaned up. This week, Monday, I got on an airplane and went to Las Vegas. I just got home.
I went to Vegas last year for my birthday, and ended up changing my tickets from American to Frontier airlines because I changed my plans slightly. Thus, I had a American Airlines credit that needed to be booked before the end of Wednesday before Thanksgiving. I found out about this detail, Tuesday before thanksgiving. I couldn't think of anywhere to go, other than where it was originally booked to, Vegas. I could have booked, and then cancelled again, I think to give the ticket another year, but each time you do that they charge you $100, and it wasn't a really expensive ticket to start with.
The plan was, fly out Monday, stay at the Wynn Las Vegas, see Cirque duSoliel shows O, Ka, and Mystere Monday thru Wednesday nights. I was going to rely on Wynn hotel restaraunts for dinner plans. I was was not going to do any tours, and going to try to maybe do some shopping or something during the days. I was planning on staying up late in the casinos, and sleep in late.
I had a great time, even though I'm sick and tired of Vegas now. It helped some that the Wynn is such a great place to stay. And it helped more that I didn't bring any computers along with me, so I had nothing to do in the room, and was forced to go out and find things to do. And for the most part, I found things to do, or just places to go, and ended up having a good time at it.
This site requires javascript to post on now, if it didn't before. The reason: comment spam.
One side of spam you only see if you run your own blog is that of blog comment spam. In addition to making comments that point towards questionable sales pitches like you receive in email, I also get about 120 comments a week that just seek to have a URL posted. This kind of comment spam is intended to improve a site's search-engine rank. Fortunately, they are mostly posted on older entries, I presume on the idea that the site owner won't notice them.
Moveable Type sends me mail when a comment is posted, and assuming you put in a real email address, I can even just hit reply and sent you email back. Well, most of the mail I get these days is from munged.org sending me mail saying a comment has been posted, and most of those emails are about spam comments.
So I've picked up a small plug-in for MT, designed to add a javascript-obfuscated tag to the form used to post, that must be correct or the comment will be rejected. The tag is unique to each page, and is invisible in a browser. Your browser will automatically send back the tag, and MT will accept the post. The programs spammers use to post to MT in theory will not know to post this tag, and would have to read the page, execute the javascript, to know how to post comments. It is believed currently that the programs spammers use to do this do not have this ability yet.
I give it two months until they do, personally. But it is an effort worth doing for me, even it if just cuts down on the number of comment spams that get posted.
In the process of adding this capability to the site, I trashed some stuff. I think it all got recovered from backups, but I'm still watching it.
If you are still reading this far, please post a comment, and see if it works. If not, you can send me an email at wookie on this site.
I'm laughing. I was told this would happen. I'm not surprised at all, but still for some reason it is funny that I got the email I just got. My boss at EMC, the company I left 8 weeks ago, asked what happened to my corporate laptop. And if I still had it, could I send it in.
During my exit interview, the HR lady told me that this would happen. I didn't doubt her, I'd never seen any evidence during my tenure that EMC had a good IT hardware tracking system. The laptop in question was 4 years old when I gave it back to them, being the only laptop I'd ever had thru SMARTS to EMC|SMARTS.
Since HR knew this would happen, the HR lady (wish I could remember her name) suggested that I have the IT dude, Nick, send her an email saying he'd received from me, one laptop and all the accessories. I watched him do it. You would think this would be enough for that laptop to be locatable later. But I guess not.
I wasn't aware people were still committing fraud on paper, I thought they had totally moved into the online realm. But some time this week, I got a chain letter in my snail mail. A pyramid letter, really. "Remove the person's name at #1, and move all other names up one number (#2 becomes #1, #3 becomes #2, etc.) and add your name and address as #6.... then send to 200 other people."
The letter even gives a company with mailing lists where you can get 200 names and addresses. I figure this company actually started this letter in the first place. But I figured I can find 200 addresses myself. I'll start with all 50 state's attorney generals, postal officials, law enforcement, .....
Most people now days know football better than I do. My travel schedule (fly out on Sundays...) means I haven't really been able to keep up with the NFL. Tonight, I had a good conversation with a dude that put my non-fandom of the Minnesota Vikings into perspective, along the "it could be worse" direction.
When the Vikings lost their forth Superbowl attempt, my brother changed to being a LA Rams (the Rams were still in Anaheim then) fan pretty much before the next season started. It took me a few years to totally loose respect for the Vikes, but the damage was done and it happened eventually.
So tonight, the comment at the bar was: "Well, look at the Buffalo Bills, they went to the Superbowl 4 times, in a row, and lost them all too".
Conforting. Somehow.
I was carrying my computer bag, with both personal and work Macs in it, and my camera backpack, plus my jacket. My camera bag gets opened and looked at about every other time going thru security, because it has lot of wires, tubes, and electronics in it. This I'm used to. The TSA people just swab it once, their chemical sniffing machine beeps once, they zip the bag up for me, and I'm on my way.
Yesterday, the machine did something I've never seen it do: make a quiet alarm noise, rather than a beep. The TSA guy doing the check looked at me and said "This is going to take a while."
The machine said "NG", which I had to ask about. It stands for Nitroglycerin, a component of dynamite and is also used medicinally. It is a classic heart medication. They asked me if I had a heart condition. This whole thing had pretty much given me one, but I figured the joke wouldn't be appreciated.
I was carrying a computer bag with 2 Macs in it (work and personal and assorted accessories) in addition to my camera bag and my jacket. When the machine went off, the supervisor came over to conduct the search of my lugage. While she was going thru my camera bag, another dude did a full pat-down while a third went thru my computer bag. They swabbed everything and tested it all with the machine. They even swabbed cables, and the two small bottles of lense cleaning solution. They asked me to open all the lenses so they could see thru them. They looked thru the camera. They turned on the flash and saw that the dispaly lit up.
Funny, I expected the third degree on the lense cleaner. Two 2-ounce bottels, one squeeze tube and one spray bottle. Their only comment was "You are supposed to have these in zip-lock bags, sir."
While they were doing that, they drilled me on how I might have come in contact with nitroglycerin. The camera bag has been to Death Valley, Las Vegas, Milwaukee, Chicago, and Des Moines, so far this year. I doubt I have any explosives in my appartment. So I really had no idea. When the supervisor re-swabbed and re-tested the area where the first guy did that tested positive, it came up negative.
The supervisor said asked how I got to the airport, and then said I probably picked up some nitroglycerin from the car service I used. I suspect this is a smoke-screen for a false positive they can't explain. So i won't be calling the car service asking them what the hell they are carrying in their cars.