Vegas stories by Spike (ongoing TR)
06-11-2022
, 04:58 AM
Oh hi there.
It's me. I'm still alive.
I'm going to find some time in the next week to give an update on the last two or so years. But in the meantime, here are some highlights in no particular order:
1. Took a job with the title I've been trying to get for multiple years; ended up doing absolutely nothing different than what I had been doing for the previous six years.
2. Quit an industry I was in for twenty years to join a start-up where I have roughly zero experience, but I'm getting paid $16k more to do about 60% less work and the new gig is 100% remote.
3. Took up some woodworking during the pandemic. Still not great at any of this ****, but I've been able to build some things, like garage storage:
4. Built and then rebuilt my desk for my home office to have separate personal PC and work laptop areas.
5. Had to put our old cat Sage down. Adopted a new kitten who instantly made herself at home:
6. Had a massive commute (~30 miles one way) so I convinced the wife we should buy me a Lexus hybrid. Had the car 16 days and this happened:
My co-workers welcomed me back to the office with this:
7. Got COVID on Christmas. Symptoms kicked in about a day after I got my booster so I just chalked it up to brutal side effects. Fortunately the wife and I had cancelled our trip back east, but I had to quarantine in my office/guest bedroom.
I'll get into more of this stuff later, but hey, I at least wanted to say hello.
It's me. I'm still alive.
I'm going to find some time in the next week to give an update on the last two or so years. But in the meantime, here are some highlights in no particular order:
1. Took a job with the title I've been trying to get for multiple years; ended up doing absolutely nothing different than what I had been doing for the previous six years.
2. Quit an industry I was in for twenty years to join a start-up where I have roughly zero experience, but I'm getting paid $16k more to do about 60% less work and the new gig is 100% remote.
3. Took up some woodworking during the pandemic. Still not great at any of this ****, but I've been able to build some things, like garage storage:
4. Built and then rebuilt my desk for my home office to have separate personal PC and work laptop areas.
5. Had to put our old cat Sage down. Adopted a new kitten who instantly made herself at home:
6. Had a massive commute (~30 miles one way) so I convinced the wife we should buy me a Lexus hybrid. Had the car 16 days and this happened:
My co-workers welcomed me back to the office with this:
7. Got COVID on Christmas. Symptoms kicked in about a day after I got my booster so I just chalked it up to brutal side effects. Fortunately the wife and I had cancelled our trip back east, but I had to quarantine in my office/guest bedroom.
I'll get into more of this stuff later, but hey, I at least wanted to say hello.
06-13-2022
, 02:33 PM
Quote:
Oh hi there.
It's me. I'm still alive.
I'm going to find some time in the next week to give an update on the last two or so years. But in the meantime, here are some highlights in no particular order:
1. Took a job with the title I've been trying to get for multiple years; ended up doing absolutely nothing different than what I had been doing for the previous six years.
2. Quit an industry I was in for twenty years to join a start-up where I have roughly zero experience, but I'm getting paid $16k more to do about 60% less work and the new gig is 100% remote.
3. Took up some woodworking during the pandemic. Still not great at any of this ****, but I've been able to build some things, like garage storage:
4. Built and then rebuilt my desk for my home office to have separate personal PC and work laptop areas.
5. Had to put our old cat Sage down. Adopted a new kitten who instantly made herself at home:
6. Had a massive commute (~30 miles one way) so I convinced the wife we should buy me a Lexus hybrid. Had the car 16 days and this happened:
My co-workers welcomed me back to the office with this:
7. Got COVID on Christmas. Symptoms kicked in about a day after I got my booster so I just chalked it up to brutal side effects. Fortunately the wife and I had cancelled our trip back east, but I had to quarantine in my office/guest bedroom.
I'll get into more of this stuff later, but hey, I at least wanted to say hello.
It's me. I'm still alive.
I'm going to find some time in the next week to give an update on the last two or so years. But in the meantime, here are some highlights in no particular order:
1. Took a job with the title I've been trying to get for multiple years; ended up doing absolutely nothing different than what I had been doing for the previous six years.
2. Quit an industry I was in for twenty years to join a start-up where I have roughly zero experience, but I'm getting paid $16k more to do about 60% less work and the new gig is 100% remote.
3. Took up some woodworking during the pandemic. Still not great at any of this ****, but I've been able to build some things, like garage storage:
4. Built and then rebuilt my desk for my home office to have separate personal PC and work laptop areas.
5. Had to put our old cat Sage down. Adopted a new kitten who instantly made herself at home:
6. Had a massive commute (~30 miles one way) so I convinced the wife we should buy me a Lexus hybrid. Had the car 16 days and this happened:
My co-workers welcomed me back to the office with this:
7. Got COVID on Christmas. Symptoms kicked in about a day after I got my booster so I just chalked it up to brutal side effects. Fortunately the wife and I had cancelled our trip back east, but I had to quarantine in my office/guest bedroom.
I'll get into more of this stuff later, but hey, I at least wanted to say hello.
- Well Gtz on the new job.
- Well gtz on your new past time (wood workd).
- So sorry to hear about your cat. That sucks big time, but if that was the best for him then you have to honer that.
- Damn about the car and Covid.
Good to hear from you again. Greetings and best wishes from Denmark.
06-29-2022
, 01:58 PM
The next few posts won't necessarily be in chronological order, but I'm not sure that matters.
The new job I started was at UNLV. I had been in higher education administration for about 18 years at this point, and figured it was time to move on from CSN and try my hand at UNLV. There's a lot of reasons for this, but they're not exactly relevant to the story.
I started at UNLV in late February, 2020. About three weeks later, everything stopped for COVID. I barely had time to learn what my new co-workers do and we're sent home. There was a lot of confusion and hesitation about this "new normal" of remote work, but not from me. I had been advocating for telecommuting for many years within the system. For those of us who were administrators with no direct contact with students, coming to campus every day was a waste of time and space. I remember being in a meeting of the president's cabinet in 2017 where they were discussing renting out thousands of square feet of office space off-campus at a tremendous cost. I suggested finding certain administrators who could be moved off-campus and having them work from home. I was told "No". No discussion, no follow-up, no chance to make my case. Just "No". When I brought it up again, I actually heard someone say "You have to be at work to do work". And they wonder why trust in leadership was eroding.
So once the pandemic proved me right and people were being productive while working from home, our office started to put together a plan of how to operate post-pandemic. We had an executive director, an associate director (me), three assistant directors, a couple of advisors, and an admin assistant. My position was all behind the scenes - data, planning, stats, surveys, systems, etc. My only direct interactions with the public was troubleshooting our platform, and that was all done either by email or over Zoom. Our plan was that most of the public-facing people would be in the office 3-4 days a week, the assistant directors would be in the office 2-3 days a week, and I would do one day a week. This worked for everyone. We had the coverage we needed, and we could tailor our services around student/alumni needs, especially as most of them wanted to meet with us a) virtually and b) outside of normal business hours (when our building would be locked). So no need for us to come back to the office five days a week, right?
Nope.
The VP we hired mid-pandemic who bragged about only working from home two days during the entirety of COVID decided that we were all coming back to the office as of July 1, 2021. Only those with ADA-requirements would be able to work from home more than three days a week, and the VP would be the only arbiter of who could work remotely one or two days a week. As a bonus, my office was told privately that the VP was not approving anyone for any regular remote work. None.
There's no real need to relitigate the arguments for/against working from home, especially as it's all moot at this point. But our office was collectively pissed about the development. Like good little soldiers, we all came back when told. That meant a 45-60 minute commute one-way for me. While I knew that going in to taking the job, and I took the position as an in-office position it was still disheartening.
July to October goes by without any real issue, except the AC on my car begins to fail. It already died once before in this thread, so this wasn't unexpected. But the car had over 100k miles and my wife didn't want me sinking good money after bad. Plus, with how long of a commute I had, I wanted to get something more fuel efficient. What we didn't plan on was the overwhelming shortage of vehicles in the western hemisphere. I went to one Toyota dealership, and they had exactly zero new cars on the lot. I called another dealership to ask about hybrids. The guy laughed at me and hung up. A Honda dealership had a total of eight new cars on the lot, no hybrids, and nothing I wanted. We tried a couple of used car dealerships and almost settled for a used Corolla hybrid... then I looked across the street and saw a Lexus dealership. Popped online quick and saw that they had a model called the UX and it was a hybrid. We stopped in, asked to test drive one, and much to our surprise, they had one in stock! The second I sat down, I knew it was a mistake because I was not going to say "No" to this car, so I had to act cool. We test drive, I tell the wife this is happening, and we try to get some money knocked off the $5,000 "market adjustment fee" (aka, the "because we ****ing can" fee). This vehicle was in such high demand, it was the only one in the time zone. While we were out on the test drive, it was set to be transferred to a dealership in California for sale, but we got dibs. We get everything wrapped up, and I drive home in a Lexus.
One of the things to know about Vegas is that the drivers here are terrible. And not just terrible, but aggressive, too. Some might mistake this for stupidity but it's deeper than that. It's more about arrogance and selfishness.
Fast forward sixteen days...
I have about 700 miles on the car at this point, and I'm driving to work. Driving from Skye Canyon to UNLV is not only long, but there are a dozen different ways I can go. The easiest and most direct way is the 95 to the 15 to Tropicana. Sometimes, it's the 95 all the way to the other side of Tropicana. Sometimes, it's the 215 to the airport. And every once in a while, it's all surface streets. Monday, October 25th, the GPS is telling me that there's traffic on most of the highways, and that surface streets will be my best bet. I'm in a hybrid. The windows are down. The music is playing. Life is good.
I'm travelling eastbound on Desert Inn and stop at the red light at Valley View. There's a lot of cars on the road this morning, so I'm probably 15-20 cars back of the actual stop light. I'm sitting there for no more than a few seconds, and then WHAM. Out of ****ing nowhere, I know my car's been hit. My driver's chair is now laying almost flat. My dashboard is showing an error that reads something like "Complete hybrid failure. Pull over and contact your dealership". The automatic emergency notification system dials in to Lexus who ask what's wrong, and they contact 911 for me. All of this is going on and I barely know what's what. A couple of people approach the car to make sure I'm okay, but I'm on the phone with emergency services and don't really want to interrupt that.
EMTs arrive and they ask if I'm okay. Aside from being a little sore, I'm fine. I figure most of the shock will wear off after a while and if I'm in pain, I can always go to the ER later, so I waive the EMTs taking me to the hospital. Plus, the health insurance provided by the state of Nevada is ****ing terrible. If your neck hurts after a car accident, having a neck is considered a pre-existing condition, so it won't be covered.
I take my first steps out of the car and see just what happened. I got rear-ended by a giant F-350.
We're allowed to pull into a parking lot while we start contacting friends/family and whatnot. I ask the guy what happened, and to his credit, he took full responsibility. Desert Inn is a three lane road in either direction. I was in the middle lane, as was the F-350. He claims he was trying to move over to the right-hand lane to take a right at the upcoming intersection, but someone in the right lane refused to let him merge. The F-350 drive took his eyes off the road long enough to attempt to merge (which I think was code for trying to speed up and get in front of the person refusing to let him in the lane), and didn't notice the traffic in front of him had stopped. One solace I can take from all of this - if I had still been in the Scion, I would have been seriously hurt, if not worse. The Lexus, with the better safety system and design, absorbed the impact better than a decade-old hatchback.
After a few days I notice I'm in more and more pain, and the wife recommends I talk to an injury attorney. Fortunately, she graduated from law school with someone who does car accidents and injuries, so we set up a call. She wants to send me to a chiropractor and pain doctor to try and manage things, which is fine, except for one thing...
I'm registered for the Colossus that coming Saturday.
So I'm stuck in a weird spot. I could cancel and get my money back, punting my only chance at playing an event in the 2021 WSOP. Or, I can try to tough it out, see if I can make it for multiple hours and potentially multiple days for an event. My degenerate side kicks in and I go with option B.
I pull into the Rio and see the weirdest license plate/frame combination in history:
It's good to be back:
Honestly things go pretty straightforward. No big hands of note one way or the other until about an hour before the dinner break.
My memory is hazy so I don't remember exact details of stack size and blinds, but here's the scene -
I've got about 1.5x starting stack which I believe amounts to about 40bb. UTG raises to 2bb, I call with black 88. BTN, SB, and BB all call. Flop is the beautiful 984, total rainbow.
UTG bets 3bb, I call, SB x/raises to 8bb. At this point, I think SB has either 99, 44, or A9. Maybe an overpair but I'd have expected a pre-flop 3bet if that were the case. I call.
Turn A.
SB leads out for about 10bb. I know he has me slightly covered, but at this point I'm 100% convinced he has A9. I wouldn't expect him to lead with a set here, so it's going to be at least Ax, and I think top two makes all the sense in the world for him to lead out. I know I'm going all in here, but here's the thing: I've never actually beat A9. Ever. Doesn't matter what the situation, A9 may as well be two jokers against me. I know the superstition piece is dogshit, but honestly, I just cannot beat that hand. Can't win with it either. I could be 10:1 chip lead heads up for the Main Event. If I get A9, I'm folding. Knowing my history against this hand, I pause because I consider telling my opponent that I know he has A9, and if he calls my all-in, he's drawing to four outs. I think about it, but decide I'm being silly and just shove. He snap calls.
He has A9.
River 9.
I'm out.
Our good friend Bikeking being as supportive as always:
My co-workers redecorated my office with pictures of local "celebrity" injury attorneys once I finally back it back to campus:
I decide to stop playing live for a bit after that one and stick to online. WSOP has a nice 11pm nightly $5 $2k gtd that usually has a nice $2500+ prize pool thanks to rebuys and add-ons. This has become my bread & butter, especially on non-school nights.
Once my car was ruled a total loss, my insurance company gave me seven days to turn in the rental and get a new vehicle. Unfortunately, as you all know, vehicles were even fewer and further between by this point as they were a month before when I bought the Lexus initially. Fortunately, I was able to find another Lexus - same model but base trim this time around. They did everything they could for me as far as discounts and cutting out the market adjustment fees. But it was really obnoxious that the only day I could get this done was my anniversary. And this all made me late for our dinner.
I wish I could say the accident story has a happy ending and I got a nice fat settlement out of it, but the truth is that I'm still waiting for the insurance companies to get their **** together and pay me.
The new job I started was at UNLV. I had been in higher education administration for about 18 years at this point, and figured it was time to move on from CSN and try my hand at UNLV. There's a lot of reasons for this, but they're not exactly relevant to the story.
I started at UNLV in late February, 2020. About three weeks later, everything stopped for COVID. I barely had time to learn what my new co-workers do and we're sent home. There was a lot of confusion and hesitation about this "new normal" of remote work, but not from me. I had been advocating for telecommuting for many years within the system. For those of us who were administrators with no direct contact with students, coming to campus every day was a waste of time and space. I remember being in a meeting of the president's cabinet in 2017 where they were discussing renting out thousands of square feet of office space off-campus at a tremendous cost. I suggested finding certain administrators who could be moved off-campus and having them work from home. I was told "No". No discussion, no follow-up, no chance to make my case. Just "No". When I brought it up again, I actually heard someone say "You have to be at work to do work". And they wonder why trust in leadership was eroding.
So once the pandemic proved me right and people were being productive while working from home, our office started to put together a plan of how to operate post-pandemic. We had an executive director, an associate director (me), three assistant directors, a couple of advisors, and an admin assistant. My position was all behind the scenes - data, planning, stats, surveys, systems, etc. My only direct interactions with the public was troubleshooting our platform, and that was all done either by email or over Zoom. Our plan was that most of the public-facing people would be in the office 3-4 days a week, the assistant directors would be in the office 2-3 days a week, and I would do one day a week. This worked for everyone. We had the coverage we needed, and we could tailor our services around student/alumni needs, especially as most of them wanted to meet with us a) virtually and b) outside of normal business hours (when our building would be locked). So no need for us to come back to the office five days a week, right?
Nope.
The VP we hired mid-pandemic who bragged about only working from home two days during the entirety of COVID decided that we were all coming back to the office as of July 1, 2021. Only those with ADA-requirements would be able to work from home more than three days a week, and the VP would be the only arbiter of who could work remotely one or two days a week. As a bonus, my office was told privately that the VP was not approving anyone for any regular remote work. None.
There's no real need to relitigate the arguments for/against working from home, especially as it's all moot at this point. But our office was collectively pissed about the development. Like good little soldiers, we all came back when told. That meant a 45-60 minute commute one-way for me. While I knew that going in to taking the job, and I took the position as an in-office position it was still disheartening.
July to October goes by without any real issue, except the AC on my car begins to fail. It already died once before in this thread, so this wasn't unexpected. But the car had over 100k miles and my wife didn't want me sinking good money after bad. Plus, with how long of a commute I had, I wanted to get something more fuel efficient. What we didn't plan on was the overwhelming shortage of vehicles in the western hemisphere. I went to one Toyota dealership, and they had exactly zero new cars on the lot. I called another dealership to ask about hybrids. The guy laughed at me and hung up. A Honda dealership had a total of eight new cars on the lot, no hybrids, and nothing I wanted. We tried a couple of used car dealerships and almost settled for a used Corolla hybrid... then I looked across the street and saw a Lexus dealership. Popped online quick and saw that they had a model called the UX and it was a hybrid. We stopped in, asked to test drive one, and much to our surprise, they had one in stock! The second I sat down, I knew it was a mistake because I was not going to say "No" to this car, so I had to act cool. We test drive, I tell the wife this is happening, and we try to get some money knocked off the $5,000 "market adjustment fee" (aka, the "because we ****ing can" fee). This vehicle was in such high demand, it was the only one in the time zone. While we were out on the test drive, it was set to be transferred to a dealership in California for sale, but we got dibs. We get everything wrapped up, and I drive home in a Lexus.
One of the things to know about Vegas is that the drivers here are terrible. And not just terrible, but aggressive, too. Some might mistake this for stupidity but it's deeper than that. It's more about arrogance and selfishness.
Fast forward sixteen days...
I have about 700 miles on the car at this point, and I'm driving to work. Driving from Skye Canyon to UNLV is not only long, but there are a dozen different ways I can go. The easiest and most direct way is the 95 to the 15 to Tropicana. Sometimes, it's the 95 all the way to the other side of Tropicana. Sometimes, it's the 215 to the airport. And every once in a while, it's all surface streets. Monday, October 25th, the GPS is telling me that there's traffic on most of the highways, and that surface streets will be my best bet. I'm in a hybrid. The windows are down. The music is playing. Life is good.
I'm travelling eastbound on Desert Inn and stop at the red light at Valley View. There's a lot of cars on the road this morning, so I'm probably 15-20 cars back of the actual stop light. I'm sitting there for no more than a few seconds, and then WHAM. Out of ****ing nowhere, I know my car's been hit. My driver's chair is now laying almost flat. My dashboard is showing an error that reads something like "Complete hybrid failure. Pull over and contact your dealership". The automatic emergency notification system dials in to Lexus who ask what's wrong, and they contact 911 for me. All of this is going on and I barely know what's what. A couple of people approach the car to make sure I'm okay, but I'm on the phone with emergency services and don't really want to interrupt that.
EMTs arrive and they ask if I'm okay. Aside from being a little sore, I'm fine. I figure most of the shock will wear off after a while and if I'm in pain, I can always go to the ER later, so I waive the EMTs taking me to the hospital. Plus, the health insurance provided by the state of Nevada is ****ing terrible. If your neck hurts after a car accident, having a neck is considered a pre-existing condition, so it won't be covered.
I take my first steps out of the car and see just what happened. I got rear-ended by a giant F-350.
We're allowed to pull into a parking lot while we start contacting friends/family and whatnot. I ask the guy what happened, and to his credit, he took full responsibility. Desert Inn is a three lane road in either direction. I was in the middle lane, as was the F-350. He claims he was trying to move over to the right-hand lane to take a right at the upcoming intersection, but someone in the right lane refused to let him merge. The F-350 drive took his eyes off the road long enough to attempt to merge (which I think was code for trying to speed up and get in front of the person refusing to let him in the lane), and didn't notice the traffic in front of him had stopped. One solace I can take from all of this - if I had still been in the Scion, I would have been seriously hurt, if not worse. The Lexus, with the better safety system and design, absorbed the impact better than a decade-old hatchback.
After a few days I notice I'm in more and more pain, and the wife recommends I talk to an injury attorney. Fortunately, she graduated from law school with someone who does car accidents and injuries, so we set up a call. She wants to send me to a chiropractor and pain doctor to try and manage things, which is fine, except for one thing...
I'm registered for the Colossus that coming Saturday.
So I'm stuck in a weird spot. I could cancel and get my money back, punting my only chance at playing an event in the 2021 WSOP. Or, I can try to tough it out, see if I can make it for multiple hours and potentially multiple days for an event. My degenerate side kicks in and I go with option B.
I pull into the Rio and see the weirdest license plate/frame combination in history:
It's good to be back:
Honestly things go pretty straightforward. No big hands of note one way or the other until about an hour before the dinner break.
My memory is hazy so I don't remember exact details of stack size and blinds, but here's the scene -
I've got about 1.5x starting stack which I believe amounts to about 40bb. UTG raises to 2bb, I call with black 88. BTN, SB, and BB all call. Flop is the beautiful 984, total rainbow.
UTG bets 3bb, I call, SB x/raises to 8bb. At this point, I think SB has either 99, 44, or A9. Maybe an overpair but I'd have expected a pre-flop 3bet if that were the case. I call.
Turn A.
SB leads out for about 10bb. I know he has me slightly covered, but at this point I'm 100% convinced he has A9. I wouldn't expect him to lead with a set here, so it's going to be at least Ax, and I think top two makes all the sense in the world for him to lead out. I know I'm going all in here, but here's the thing: I've never actually beat A9. Ever. Doesn't matter what the situation, A9 may as well be two jokers against me. I know the superstition piece is dogshit, but honestly, I just cannot beat that hand. Can't win with it either. I could be 10:1 chip lead heads up for the Main Event. If I get A9, I'm folding. Knowing my history against this hand, I pause because I consider telling my opponent that I know he has A9, and if he calls my all-in, he's drawing to four outs. I think about it, but decide I'm being silly and just shove. He snap calls.
He has A9.
River 9.
I'm out.
Our good friend Bikeking being as supportive as always:
My co-workers redecorated my office with pictures of local "celebrity" injury attorneys once I finally back it back to campus:
I decide to stop playing live for a bit after that one and stick to online. WSOP has a nice 11pm nightly $5 $2k gtd that usually has a nice $2500+ prize pool thanks to rebuys and add-ons. This has become my bread & butter, especially on non-school nights.
Once my car was ruled a total loss, my insurance company gave me seven days to turn in the rental and get a new vehicle. Unfortunately, as you all know, vehicles were even fewer and further between by this point as they were a month before when I bought the Lexus initially. Fortunately, I was able to find another Lexus - same model but base trim this time around. They did everything they could for me as far as discounts and cutting out the market adjustment fees. But it was really obnoxious that the only day I could get this done was my anniversary. And this all made me late for our dinner.
I wish I could say the accident story has a happy ending and I got a nice fat settlement out of it, but the truth is that I'm still waiting for the insurance companies to get their **** together and pay me.
