Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Two men and two guns

The neighbors who I have talked about in past blog entries (see "two men and a freezer") have bought themselves new toys.

Their new gadgets: Air guns.

Air guns are basically low powered pellet guns powered by CO2 cartridges.

One of the guns looks like a military assault rifle and the other like a semi-automatic police pistol.

One of the guys told me the police came to their apartment a few days ago with guns drawn thinking they had real guns after a neighbor called police. No arrest was made.

They are moving in a week to North Carolina and are trying to kill their boredom until then by shooting bottles and cans off of the top of the east parking lot wall.

As long as they don't shoot me or my car I say 'let them have their fun'.

Steve Carrell is dreamy

I just woke up from a dream where I had to convince Steve Carrell, the actor on The Office and 40 Year Old Virgin, that he didn't have a deformed penis.

There was nothing sexual about the dream. Just having to draw pictures to demonstrate that he was normal.

I have never met the man, only watched one episode of The Office (I thought the show was awful), and the only movie role I've liked him in is 40 Year Old Virgin. He is probably a super nice guy but I have never thought about him or his no-no parts.

Note to self: Do not eat a Little Debbie Honey Bun right before bed ever again.

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Two men and a freezer are leaving and I have no internet

This post may sound like it was about two different subjects but its actually about one:  Neighbors.

The neighbors who have been the source of the most noise and chaos since I've lived in this apartment (over three years now) told me a few days ago they're moving.  Apparently they're going to North Carolina.

I don't know what they're doing with the freezer.  Its back in their living room so either there will be a freezer sale or they'll use it to keep meat cold for the trip across America.  I hope they have a really long extension cord.

They told me they'll be moving in about two weeks.

The internet issue doesn't have anything to do with them (I think).  I have been using an unprotected wi-fi signal from a neighbor for several months in an effort to save money.  I suppose its a tad bit unethical but I'm financially challenged at the moment so I took advantage of it.

The signal ceased to exist on Friday.  Every other signal near me is protected.  I have debated whether to knock on a few doors and offer to pay part of a neighbor's bill to have access to their signal.  Is that a good idea?  I'm not sure.

I still have my Blackberry so I'm not totally cut off from the internet but does mean that I will end up staying at work longer to do some of the work I was able to do at home.

This situation is creates another reason to find a second job.

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

A Casino Experiment

I like playing slots at casinos.

The main reason I like to play is the same reason most people do:  I like to win.

If you have never been much of a casino person I do have one piece of advice for you:  Sign up for the "club" that every casino has.  Most will give you a card to shove into the machines and more importantly you'll be put onto a mailing list to receive offers for free stuff.

The Tucson area has two Indian tribes that operate two casinos each.  I do a live broadcast at the nightclub inside one of them every other Friday for Mega (Desert Diamond Casino / Hotel).  I like to go to Cosmic Bingo at one of the other tribe's casinos (Casino Del Sol).

I get mailings offering "free play" for both.  They give me free money to play at the casino.  I'm sure its a calculated risk on their part.  They assume most people will keep spending more since they made the trip there.  Its an enticement to go.

I decided to try just using the free play at Casino Del Sol on Sunday.  They sent me a mailer saying there would be $20 on my card for the day.  I figured there must be a smart way to use it to try and win as much as possible.  As you can imagine, $20 in any casino isn't much.  Everything there is pretty expensive (for a radio dj's salary anyway).

I decided to try the quarter slots.  I also decided to just play one credit (quarter) at a time to get the most spins out of the $20.  That meant I had 80 spins to win.  My theory was if there were more spins it would have to increase my chances of hitting something that would win.  And, I wouldn't lose anything since even if I went through the $20 with no wins I hadn't spent anything besides gas money and time.  I'd also get material for a blog post for your reading enjoyment (cough, cough).

I've noticed in my visits to casinos that most people don't just play one credit at a time.  The way the machine lists the payouts the casinos make every attempt to discourage you from being cheap.  I suppose that's how they pay for the fancy buildings and the salaries for their employees and have a bunch leftover to give to the people of their tribes.

It took me 30 minutes to play through the $20 one credit at a time.  I won $11.25.

I had only won $6 until the last two spins.  I had started thinking toward the end that I was barely covering my gas expense for the drive out there.  But I did hit a double bar pay toward the end that helped.

I got another $15 in free play yesterday thanks to a Memorial Day promotion.  I returned to Casino Del Sol to see if I could do better.  Instead I did worse.  Same machine, this time I only won $1.  The woman next to me playing max credits on a similar quarter machine won $300 twice in five minutes.

What did I learn?  If I wanted to score big money at the casino I should have mugged the woman who won $600 while she was on her way to her car in the parking lot.