Thank you brother! That means a lot to me.

I have no complaints with haters, as I have run like a golden god in terms of readers so far. Everyone has been far more kind than I've expected or deserved.

Hey, SJ, glad you didn't think my love letter was a bit creepy
That personal stuff has nothing to do with you, I don't know of you having any haters. I don't know why I go off on such personal rants.
It was just an elaborate attempt to say, you're writing is fantastic.
You deserve all the readership. Looking forward to more of your adventures.
Thanks.

Thanks Neepeeme! No worries!

The business in Taiwan is concluded. My eyepatch is off. The vision is still a bit blurry, but improving incrementally. Today we take the high speed rail up to the Taoyuan airport, and spend one night at the hotel there. And tomorrow I fly home.

Due to the direction of the flight and the crossing of the International Date Line, I will be arriving in San Francisco several hours before I leave from Taiwan. I'm not sure how long my layover in SF is, but it's possible that I will even get back to Las Vegas before I leave Taiwan.

I miss the grind, and I'm looking forward to getting back to it. That's an encouraging feeling, as I have never once looked forward to getting back to my office job after a long absence.

Congrats on battling time, Mr. suitedjustice, and on 6k poasts.

A true time traveler.

I’m gonna be around town for a few weeks, shoot me a PM when you’ve recovered from Asia

Will do, brother. Tomorrow will likely be dedicated to rest, laundry, sake, cannagummies and Dishonored 2--possibly Fallout 76 if I'm feeling ambitious.

Left Taoyuan airport in Taiwan 11:30AM on Nov 13th. Arrived in Las Vegas at 11:13AM on Nov 13th.

...like a boss!

I'm trying to avoid politarding in this thread, so let's title this Bighead Obama's Magical Nonpartisan Time Machine: Part of the Magic is that It's Nonpartisan.

Bsns Cls on the way home:

Bloody Mary, warm mixed nuts and the first Jason Bourne movie cued up. Somehow I've managed to never see that one before. It was one of the best action movies I've watched in many a year. Perfect pacing, storyline, stunts, dialog and characters.

I must have seen five movies. I can't sleep on the plane. When my body catches me sleeping in a chair it seems to assume that I'm at the wheel, and it jumps into full-on panic wakeup mode. The Polaris pods recline all the way down into a bed, but somehow I still could not get comfortable in it: First World Problems.

I remember three of the other four movies. One was A Wrinkle in Time , which was not good. There were a few too many obvious attempts to wring the feels out of the audience, and not enough development of the characters to the point to where you would have the feels about them. Also, I noticed that the costumes and makeup were bad, and I almost never notice those sort of details, so they'd have to be pretty awful to jump out at me.

Next I saw Gamechangers: Alex Trebek's competent documentary on the history of TV game shows. It was informative, wonky and a bit smug--basically everything you'd expect from a Trebek joint.

The movie that surprised me was Isle of Dogs, wherein Wes Anderson made a stop-motion film where 1/3 of the dialog is in Japanese without subtitles, another 1/3 is in Japanese with subtitles, and most of the rest of it has dogs speaking in English. It was awesome, very inventive and surprising.

I had liked The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, which was a commercial bomb and had carried mixed critical reviews, but I had recognized spots in that where the Wes Anderson quirkiness for the sake of being quirky may have worn on people. Noting like that with Isle of Dogs. It was a fully engaging story with good twists and a great hero and supporting cast.

I can't remember the fifth movie. It must have been pretty meh.

Make that the Watermelon Dew Drops THC infusion and Fallout 4, in an attempt to get the PS4 trophy associated with bringing a large settlement up to maximum happiness. For this, I'm hitting up Spectacle Island, that huge mirelurk-infested property well off the coast of the Warwick farm/sewer treatment plant.

Soundtrack: The self-titled Crystal Method album (2014).




Sad that Ken Jordan retired from the band. Scott Kirkland has kept up with it, putting out the new The Trip Home album this year, but they've lost a lot of funkiness with Jordan's departure.

Jordan is my age, I believe, or maybe a bit older. I don't blame him for retiring. After all, if ever I win 3M or more in a WSOP tournament, I'm done. I'll never work again. But there's a difference: he makes music that people love and cherish, and I take money from bad poker players.

When we meet up I’ll tell you about my half-brother who is a successful musician. He did not manage his money and now he probably wishes he could retire :shrug:

Playing the overnight at Bally's. It's good to be back. Game is currently decent and not reg infested. Just hoping now that it runs until 7AM.

Glad you’re back! I’m at the sig til Sunday then cosmo for a couple of days so once I get over this head cold I just caught I’ll be back out there.

I’m hoping to feel better in time for the promos during the Sunday football games and clean up those promo bums (said the kettle)

I'll pm you on Sunday, see how you're feeling. I'm getting a bit of a cold myself, so I might take tomorrow off.

5AM. Down to one table. Sleepy Mike, the ultimate promo nit, has arrived to begin his incredibly long day.

The game broke at 5:40, no thanks to Sleepy Mike, who bugged out the minute we were five handed

Big props to the two gentlemen who played three handed with me for the final ten minutes, after hearing that I needed exactly that much time to earn the free buffet--very classy and generous.

True gentlemen gamblers. Mark Twain approves.

Gentlemen at the poker tables!

I drank 2 Odwalla smoothies, took afrin, Advil and also a dose of Tussin every four hours and today I’m feeling much better. Would recommend

Odwalla smoothie is now an official part of my search history. Can I get a half pint of vodka with them or is that cheating?

Pick up some when you hit Smiths for the Odwalla juice and smoothies

I have seen--and at times taken part in--more acts of kindness at the tables than I ever expected when I first got into this business.

As for Mark Twain, he lives in my top 5 favorites. His career stretched from roughly 150 to 110 years ago, yet his prose to this day still rings as clear as a bell. He had a part in shaping what modern American English sounds like.

To my great and lasting shame, I still have 3 Las Vegas library books written by Mark Twain, overdue from the last time I lived here. That means the books are coming up on their 20th anniversary of being overdue.

For all these years, I've been afraid of looking up the overdue fine structure, afraid of what I would find. So, just now I took the first step of seeing if there are any days of the year when Las Vegas might grant amnesty on their overdue books.

There have been 3 amnesties in the last 20 years; but hold your horses, just check out the rules from the Second Amnesty in April of 2007.

A cardholder must pay their outstanding balance in full in order to take advantage of the program.

Fines and fees for lost, damaged or overdue materials owned by the Las Vegas-Clark County Library District will be waived up to $25, upon payment in full of any remaining balance on the account.



What kind of amnesty is that? Serve your entire prison sentence and we'll commute the rest of it. Likely I'm reading the boilerplate wrong, but that's some godawful unclear writing, coming from either a librarian, or a Review-Journal reporter, or some collaboration between the two.

So it's time now to look at my fines. I don't want to be an item of curiosity and minor revulsion decades from now when some younger relative or random stranger has to return those books 50 years overdue.




It looks like it could be as little as $12. Am I reading that right? $4 max per book? It's possible that they turned me over to a collection agency. I didn't have a landline at the time, and I never gave out my cell number, so I would have been difficult to find and harass. Collection agency fees could be $10-$30; it's unclear whether it's per offense or per book. And then there's the $10 overdue fine threshold, whatever the **** that is.

Anyways, it looks like it's going to be $50 or under, so I will bite the bullet and return them on my next day off. Of course, it could be a trap. The Library Police will take me away and you'll never hear from me again.

Here's a quick piece from Twain from his early memoir/travelogue Roughing It, from 1872.

SURFING

In one place [in Hawaii] we came upon a large company of naked natives, of both sexes and all ages, amusing themselves with the national pastime of surf-bathing.

Each heathen would paddle three or four hundred yards out to sea (taking a short board with him), then face the shore and wait for a particularly prodigious billow to come along; at the right moment he would fling his board upon its foamy crest and himself upon the board, and here he would come whizzing by like a bombshell!

It did not seem that a lightning express-train could shoot along at a more hair-lifting speed. I tried surf-bathing once, subsequently, but made a failure of it. I got the board placed right, and at the right moment, too; but missed the connection myself. The board struck the shore in three-quarters of a second, without any cargo, and I struck the bottom about the same time, with a couple of barrels of water in me. None but natives ever master the art of surf-bathing thoroughly.

Sick day today. I had the sniffles pretty bad. As I've mentioned before, I don't believe that it's ethical to cover everyone's cards and chips with my diseased sputum.

Thursday (Friday Early AM): Bally's and Flamingo: 5 hours:
+$86

^There's an example of unclear writing. I took a sick day today, and did not play.