Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

Trade Show Travelog #7
Back at the hotel - Wed, 4 Dec 2024, 10:45pm

I'm back in my hotel room now, shoes off and smoky clothes tossed in the closet. Day 3 of the AWS trade show is in the books.

My day started not with the trade show but with doing some customer-facing work from my hotel room. Sales leaders don't appreciate that I'm busy with a trade show they sent me on that I expressed a preference not to do. They still want to move other business forward, and every day counts to then. It's not good enough to have a meeting on Friday, when I'm back from travel; it has to happen today. The fate of the entire company rests upon it, they'd have me believe.

After the totally-could-have-waited-2-more-days work I dressed for the show and walked over. I'm staying at the Wynn now, so it wasn't a brutal walk. I worked the booth on the show floor from 1-6pm. In the past I used to do 6-8 hour shift with minimal complaint... but this 5 hour shift today had me checking my watch halfway through. By the end of the day almost everybody in the booth was grumbling about their aching feet/ankles/legs. ...Everybody except the money-saving genius who decided to forego the carpet padding because it cost extra. Said genius was barely in the booth today, of course.

This evening a bunch of us went to dinner at Sinatra in the Encore hotel/casino. It was an easy "yes" for me because the Encore is connected to the Wynn, where I'm staying now. And also because I enjoy Italian-American cuisine. And that's despite eating there last night, too. In fact some of the waiters and the sommelier recognized me. I made the dinner less repetitious by ordering the veal osso buco this evening instead of the (ginormous) veal parmigiana. The flavors of the meals are as unalike as apples and oranges, but between the two I think the osso buco was the better choice.

Well, like I said, I'm back in my room now. For the night. I have no interested in clubbing or hitting a bar. Drinking too much is a younger person's sport. And I have no interest in gambling anymore; all the games on the Strip suck now. Even watching the ploppies piss away their fat stacks of cash on games with terrible house edges is no fun. It's like cattle walk ploddingly to the slaughter.

Tomorrow will be the last day of the show. I'm scheduled 10-1 but may work as late as show close at 4. My flight's not until around 7pm. I'll see if I can stand-by to an earlier flight. Meanwhile, I should close my computer up soon and try to get more than 6 hours sleep tonight.

North Las Vegas Travelog #14
Back at the hotel - Sun, 19 Feb 2023, 11pm

We took it easy at the hotel this afternoon after finishing up our day trip to Valley of Fire. We soaked in the hot tub again. It's nice that it's close to our room since we're not staying at one of Las Vegas's casino mega-hotels. It's just down two flights of stairs (stairs are right next to us, elevator is not), out the door, and through the gate.

We did feel the call of the wild, though. The other wild, the one of reckless hedonism. The one of those aforementioned casino mega-hotels. We went to downtown Las Vegas for the evening.



Our first order of business was dinner. We parked at the Four Queens and ate at one of their restaurants, a brewery. Then we walked out to see the Fremont Street Experience. I shot the short video above. The Experience is something that Midwesterners gawk at. I've seen it before. And even the first time I saw it, about 25 years ago now, I was like, "Okay. That's gaudy. And somebody has to pay a hell of an electricity bill."

We walked around several of the casinos downtown to check out their vibes. Unlike out on the strip, where neighboring casinos are actually a 15-20 minute walk from each other, downtown they're pretty much right next to each other. We strolled through several with ease.

Vegas is a place that has changed, and hasn't. Many of the same casinos that were here 25 years ago are still here. Some look similar to before, some have changed. A few things that were different:

The casinos are more overt with using sex— specifically, sex that appeals to heterosexual men— to sell. At the open-to-the-street bars many of the casinos now have (which itself it different from years ago) there are pedestals with go-go dancers gyrating to the music. At at least one bar the dancers were simply on the bar top.

There were go-go dancers in some of the casinos, too. And by that I don't mean they were in a club in a casino.... They were dancing on pedestals in the gambling pits. Also, at several casinos being a woman with a large chest and a willingness to show it off in a tight uniform was apparently a job requirement for dealing Blackjack and other games.

One thing that's changed for the better in Las Vegas is smoking. Oh, it's still allowed, and people still do it, but there are way fewer smokers than 25 years ago. Walking through the casinos we could smell the smoke, and our clothes and hair smelled of it when we got back to the room, but it wasn't as fierce as when we played Vegas and Reno regularly years ago.

We did more than just walk through the casinos. I sat down and played Blackjack for a while. I was up a few hundred at one point but then my luck turned and I couldn't make a hand when I had a big bet out. Hawk simply enjoyed watching me. Years ago she would have played herself but she felt way too rusty this evening. ...Which is reasonable because it's a money game. You shouldn't play for money if you're not confident you know what you're doing.

I've written a few blogs recently about ballot propositions in California: what ballot props are, and problems that can make them thorny to decide on. I started this series as a slow roll leading up to election day, meaning to spend time examining each of the props. Alas I rolled a bit too slow. Election day is just two days away, and I haven't written anything about specific races or measures yet. Thus I'll group together the 7 statewide measures in two blogs.

Prop 1: Protect Abortion Rights: HELL YES!

Proposition 1 is a state constitutional amendment to explicitly recognize an individual's right to reproductive freedom. There's so much I could write about why I'm voting HELL YES on this (technically I'm just voting "Yes"; there isn't a super-like option on the ballot) but I'm not going to bother. It's just the right thing to do.

As a legal matter, Prop 1 is a Legislative Constitutional Amendment. That means it has been approved by the state legislature with a 2/3 supermajority vote and now needs approval by a simple majority of the voters to become part of the state constitution.

Prop 26: Legalize Sports Betting in Tribal Casinos: No.

Proposition 26 is one of two measures on the ballot this election cycle to expand gambling in the state. I'm not opposed to gambling in general but I'm also not opposed to the status quo of how gambling is limited in California. Prop 26 would increase the scope of casino-style gaming allowed at tribal casinos to include roulette and dice games such as craps. It would also allow betting on horse racing at horse racetracks. If this was all the measure did, if it was a simple and clean expansion of gambling, I'd probably support it. But it's not clean. The measure includes opaque language about allowing private lawsuits over gaming regulations. That seems designed as self-dealing by the wealthiest casinos, generally those backed by out-of-state gambling mega-corporations, sue smaller competitors out of business. This stench of industry self-dealing is what turns me against this one. Follow the money. Unsurprisingly it's backed by record amounts of money from casino interests— though not all of them; just the ones that expect they'd get to wear the boot. Vote No on Prop 26.

Prop 27: Legalize Online & Mobile Sports Betting: Heck No.

Proposition 27 is even more of a self-dealing stinker than prop 26. Prop 27 would explicitly allow out-of-state organizations to offer gambling online and through mobile apps to Californians. Gambling has a dark side to it. In California, under the status quo, that dark side is somewhat addressed by gaming creating local jobs and a portion of profits being required to be put into fighting the ills of problem gambling. This expansion of gambling would cause a commensurately large increase in the ills of gambling— but with operations being shifted to out-of-state businesses (including cronyistic accounting secrecy provisions in the measure) we'd lose the ability to mitigate the downsides.Follow the money: out-of-state mega casinos are bankrolling this, along with the few tribes who already have business partnerships with themt. Who's opposing it? Like, everyone else! It's notable that both major political parties and all the big newspapers in California oppose prop 27. Vote Heck No on Prop 27..


Continued in next blog: My recommendations for Props 28-31

While I've been in Las Vegas this week I haven't wagered a single cent. It's not that I can't afford it or believe gambling is wrong. Years ago I really enjoyed playing. And I still do today... or I would if the games were any good.

Everyone knows casinos exist to make money. The games they offer all have proven house edges. I don't object to the house offering the game to make money. It's entertainment at a price. I do object when the house shifts the rules of the game to make its edge over players ridiculous.

Twenty years ago, Blackjack games in Vegas and Reno offered solid basic strategy players a house edge less than 0.5%. The best ones had house edges of less than 0.2%. Craps had a house edge of 1.4% on come/pass bets and fair money on "odds" bets. Roulette wheels were mostly "double zero", with a house edge of 5.4%, while a few offered European style or "single zero" tables with a house edge of just 2.7%.

Last night one colleague and I went looking for "good" games to play. "Good", as in Craps or preferably Blackjack offering the rules that were common in town 20 years ago. They basically don't exist on the Strip anymore. Our hotel's casino, and two three others we walked to, offered only Crapless Craps, 6:5 Blackjack, and Triple-Zero Roulette.

— "Crapless" Craps is a simplification of the game where you either roll a 7 first, or establish a point and try to reroll it before a 7. A roll of 11 no longer pays out immediately, and rolls of 2, 3, and 12 don't crap out. It's simpler but it increases the house edge on the basic Come/Pass bet from 1.4% to a whopping 5.4%.

— 6:5 Blackjack works like traditional Blackjack, except when a player has a "natural" blackjack (first two cards total 21) the house pays 6:5 instead of 3:2. This small change increases the house's overall edge by more than a point. Basic strategy players who used to face a house edge of, say, 0.4% now face worse than 1.5%.

— Triple zero Roulette worsens the already punitive house edge of the double-zero game's 5.4% to a whopping 7.9%. Seriously, who wants to lose an average of 8% on every single bet?

This is the main reason I don't like Vegas anymore. Other things like crowds, traffic, and expensive restaurants? I could somewhat ignore them to focus on gambling, but the gambling just isn't worth it now.

Next: Leaving Las Vegas... Boulevard