A craps "system" that will actually work!!!

I posted this over at T2V earlier. It's a way to confidently make either $23 or $35 on the craps table, with no doubt involved! The catch? Well, you must have a friend with you AND both of you must own a match-play coupon (preferably a $25 match-play coupon).

If you are a novice craps player, have fun trying to figure this out!

This could go in several different sections; casino gaming, coupons, off-strip casinos, etc. But its so damn cheap, I guess I'll post it here.

It seems Green Valley Ranch is sending out a pretty darn nice coupon book to locals. It's blue and fairly big in size, and it seems to be going to just about anyone. My girlfriend and I both received one and we do NOT play at GVR. However, there are 2 for 1 dining deals, spa deals, and best of all, 3 $25 match play coupons.

So here's where our ultimate cheapness comes in. Each of us will use our $25 match play on the craps table. She'll use hers on the pass-line and I'll put mine on the don't pass during the come-out roll. Just in case that pesky 12 is rolled, I'll throw in a $2 twelve bet. Assuming a 12 isn't rolled, we'll be assured of walking away with a $23 profit. If the 12 is rolled, it'll be a $35 profit and we'll go on our merry way.

With the $23 profit, we'll use another one of the coupons such as the Oyster Bar 2-for-1 entree. Adding in tax and gratuity on the meal, I'd say the chances are pretty high we'll be able to get out of there for $10 total or less, depending on if we get drinks and/or an appetizer.

Best of all, there are three separate match-plays (for August, September and October). So we can flash our frugality three times over the next couple months.

A good weekend

Howdy folks. For those of you who don't know, this past Saturday was my 34th birthday! Unfortunately I had to work 1pm-9pm behind the craps table that day, but I've had the last two days off. Much to my dismay, I was called into work on Friday, which was the day I was planning on catching up with my friend Steve and diving into his bachelor party activities. It just never happened though. My birthday wrapped up a work schedule that had me working 7 out of the previous 8 days, so on Friday and Saturday nights, I just didn't have much motivation to do much of anything. Sorry about my previous post promising the sorted details of the partying, but I just didn't feel like going out and spending all of the money I'd made each of those days on stippers and booze!

Yikes, I guess I AM getting old!!

Instead of hittin' the town Saturday night, I just came home and cracked open the case of Coors Original I've had in the fridge for a couple of weeks now. The beer helped me enjoy the NASCAR race from Bristol that I'd DVR'd earlier that night (and successfully avoided watching at work) and the triumphant USA/Spain Olympic basketball game that I watched LIVE around 2am. I know that's not much of a birthday party, but my roommate Jeff said I looked like I had a great time (as well as the few people that I drunk-texted that night)!

However, on Sunday I got my birthday treat. Danielle took me down to Amore's for some authentic Chicago deep-dish goodness! Like always, I went with the stuffed pie with their awesome homemade sausage, and I even added in a second topping of mushrooms. I don't think I've mentioned this on the blog yet, but I got some blood work done about a month ago and my cholesterol was a little high at 214. I know that's not too terrible, but I've always been under 200. Also, my triglycerides were really high! So I've actually been eating pretty damn responsibly these past few weeks. Nothing but salads, lean turkey sandwiches and fruit at work with some healthier choices at home. I wouldn't call it a diet, but I think I've drank a total of three pops (or sodas, whichever you prefer) the entire month. So Saturday night/Sunday was my time to splurge a little. Well okay, a LOT!!! The pizza and Pepsi were a little shock to the system as I felt pretty lethargic the rest of the day. But man it was good!

After pizza, Danielle and I went over to the Las Vegas Outlet Mall to do a little shopping. While there, I bought a new pair of work shoes (the first new pair I've sprung for since starting to deal last year) and we also stopped by a sporting goods place and I finally made the commitment! I bought my Santonio Holmes jersey! Since I was in the splurging mood, I went with the jersey that is the step above the "replica" jerseys with the better fabric and sown-on letters/numbers (not the cheaper screen printed stuff). I must say I'll be looking pretty damn snazzy during Sundays at work this football season!
A special thanks to my parents for sending me a birthday check with the express written agreement that it much be used to purchase the jersey. I mentioned to them a couple of weeks ago about being able to wear it at work and they immediately told me it would be their birthday gift to me.

I also had Monday off, but didn't really do much of anything. Our weekly geek-squad poker night was pretty fun, even though Chris is back home in Michigan and a couple of the other regulars have moved to New Mexico (a different story all-together). We used to just play a no-limt hold'em cash game every week, but it has slowly turned into a dealer's choice game. One oddball game that I had never considered before was a hold'em "double flop" game, which I actually thought was pretty cool. Basically, you play it exactly like regular hold 'em, but there are two boards to play from. The player who has the best hand on each board gets half the pot at the end of the hand.

Unfortunately, Tuesday marks the beginning of another 7 days out of the next 8 at work. The only day off that I have until next Thursday will be Saturday of all days! In case you're wondering, I DON'T particularly care for this kind of schedule. It seems like I get two days off in a row every other week, and the weeks in-between contain split days off. It is VERY good that I'm getting solid hours in at work since our tokes only average about $85 per day, but when I have one of those lonely stand-alone days off, it almost doesn't feel like I have a day off at all!

There's one fortunate aspect of spiking this Saturday off though, and that would be the FIRST COLLEGE FOOTBALL SATURDAY!!! Last week I bought Danielle a Buckeye t-shirt and Buckeye bead/necklace to try to sway her towards the good guys (she doesn't really have a true football college allegiance.......YET) and I've talked her into wearing them as we go watch Ohio State play Youngstown State down at the Boulevard Bar and Grill, a Buckeye backer bar across the street from South Point casino. She's going to make the road trip with me and my friends in October to Michigan State, so I'm just getting her in the mood early!

Okay, that's it for now. It's after 4am on Tuesday morning and I have to be into work at noon. Have a good Tuesday everyone.

Rob's Schedule

Sorry, but Rob is not in right now. Sorry to those looking for some blog updates. Rob's schedule this week includes dates with girlfriend, work and possibly a 2-3 day bender as part of an elongated bachelor party. Details may be given around Sunday when Rob finally has a day-off from the aforementioned activities. Warning: details may also be highly embellished!

Enjoy the rest of your work-weeks folks! :-)

Happy 10,000,000th!!!

I know I've posted this youtube clip in the past, but it hit a milestone within the past week or two. My roommate Chris was the very first person to upload the "Dramatic Chipmunk" onto youtube last year. My friend Tony had forwarded it to me from a different site and Chris and I watched it about a dozen times (it just never gets old!). So Chris decided to see if it was showing up on youtube and, much to our surprise, it wasn't. So over a year and 10 million views later, his posting is still getting daily views and comments, even though it is no longer showing up in the first couple screens in the youtube search for some reason.

The Dramatic Chipmunk was NOT a chipmunk, but a prairie dog. It was a clip taken out of context (and looped at the end) from a Japanese children's show and the dramatic music was added. It had become somewhat of a cultural phenomenon and there are a TON of parody clips circulating throughout youtube. You either love it and think its freakin' hilarious, or you just don't get why people think its funny.

One of the more interesting aspects of Chris' posting is that once it got a couple million hits or so, he was actually receiving emails from a couple media sources asking him the origins and story behind the clip. Probably the most noteworthy email came from a producer at Good Morning America. I can't remember exactly how Chris handled those messages, but I think he either ignored them or responded that he just uploaded it from a different site.

So, once again, please invest five seconds from your busy day to enjoy the Dramatic Chipmunk.

Stuff I Would NOT Buy!

Everyone should know how huge of an Ohio State fan I am. I currently own such necessary items as an OSU wallet, musical Buckeye bottle opener, Ohio State clock, triple-matted framed portrait of Ohio Stadium, hats, shirts, mouse pad, etc. But while I was recently browsing through an online catalog, I found some items that even o h I o would refuse to buy for myself/friends/family/enemies!!!

Folks, please don't dress up your pets. They aren't people, and they DON'T think they are people!! Doesn't this dog look absolutely ecstatic to be wearing this OSU harness!

Here's another dog that just seems so happy and joyful to be wearing that thing!

Oh man, have you ever seen such a happy animal in your life!!

Uh, is this an earring or a malignant cancerous growth?

Nevermind the bullies on the playground, I would like to beat this kid senseless!

An Ohio State Cheerleading garden gnome. Um, okay.

This is a figurine of former OSU great Mike Nugent. I can't figure out if it is recreating action on the field or his participation in a gay pride parade.

SUN BURNT RALLY MONKEY!!!!

Sorry, just taking another opportunity to voice my displeasure with soccer.

This item is actually genius! It's a trailer hitch cover for your car that has a built-in bottle opener! However, at $40, its just a bit too pricey.

This is a thermally lined backpack beer cooler.....for the alcoholic on the go!

A scarlet and gray disposable flask???

Of course every responsible parent should buy this completely necessary and legitimate learning tool. However, couldn't they find someone better to narrate it than Lee Corso!! Was Jim Palmer or Chris Collinsworth busy that day?

Wow, this is the mother of all idiotic items! Let's resist the urge to make the obvious comments on how stupid this looks and go to the higher level of focusing on the irony that his ridiculous looking HAT is also wearing a HAT, which by itself, does not look ridiculous!

You should have seen some of the items that did not make the cut for this posting. Trust me, if I wanted to spend 5 hours on the post, there could have been a LOT more!

By the way, happy 200th post Flyingwinnebago! :-)

Jersey Decision

So I was reading the little pamphlet that is issued to the dealers at work every month and noticed a very nice surprise today. Unlike my previous employers, who would routinely talk about this wardrobe change and NEVER come through with it, my current casino will allow its dealers to wear football jerseys to work this fall on Sundays during the NFL regular season! Woohoo!! I may be overreacting, but I think that's super cool and can't wait to throw aside the polyesters for a nice replica jersey once a week!
So here's the problem. It stated specifically in writing that the jerseys could only be worn on Sunday and "must be an NFL jersey". That kind of sucks due to the fact that the jersey that I wear the most is a throw-back Ohio State Chris Spielman jersey. Spielman is the perfect guy to sport on my back. He was an absolute monster on the field at OSU and in the NFL. He is a super nice guy off the field, currently raises money for breast cancer research (his wife is a cancer survivor), and is an Ohio guy through and through as he now resides near Columbus. Alas, I will need to find an alternative to wear to work on Sundays.

As you can plainly see from this blog, my favorite NFL team is the Pittsburgh Steelers. The problem is that the only NFL jersey that I own is the following:

That would be a Kendrell Bell jersey. Good ol' Kendrell made an impressive debut in Pittsburgh bringing home the defensive rookie of the year award in 2001. I purchased his jersey at a game (I believe in 2002) thinking that he'd have a long and storied career in the 'burgh! Uh, that didn't exactly happen. I think he only lasted 2 more seasons with the Steelers before going to Kansas City and getting lost in mediocrity. He's currently listed as a free agent. So that jersey was kind of a bust (just like almost every single Cleveland Browns jersey that's been sold in the past twelve years).

Since even replica jerseys are quite an investment, I don't want my brand new jersey to become out-of-date a year or two after buying it. I'd like to be walking around at least five years from now and not have people asking me, "who the hell is Kendrell Bell?"

The obvious choice is Big Ben! But that's the problem. EVERYBODY has a Roethlisberger jersey these days, so I kind of want to be a little different. Some other names that come up in the Steelers.com team shop that pique my interest are Heath Miller, James Farrior, Larry Foote, Lamar Woodley, Hines Ward and Willie Parker. Miller is going into year 4 of a five year contract, so that makes me nervous. Both Foote and Woodley have the unfortunate distinction of coming out of the University of Michigan. So as much as I love to see them do well on Sundays, their former activity on Saturdays is a hang-up for me. Hines Ward is my favorite player on the Steelers (and one of my favorites of all-time), but he's getting up there in age and has been banged up the past couple of years. So I'm not confident in him being around too much longer. The same goes for Farrior. Fast Willie would be a decent choice, but I'm just not all that excited about his jersey for some odd reason. I can't put my finger on it, but I'm going to go elsewhere.

That leaves somewhat of an obvious choice for me, one which I've been thinking about getting even before I found out I'd be wearing it to work. I'm leaning towards WR Santonio Holmes. He had good season last year as an NFL sophomore and with his speed and ability, he could definitely take the #1 receiver role away from Ward either this year or next. I believe he's only going into his 3rd season of a five year contract and I'd hope that if he does break out this year, the Steelers will commit to keeping him around as long as possible. Oh, by the way, he also played his college ball in the Horseshoe!!! So that pretty much clinches it.

The only nagging worry I have about Santonio is the fact that he briefly turned into a Cincinnati Bengal a couple of years ago in 2006 when he was arrested twice in the span of a few months. Some assault charges were dropped and I believe the only other trouble was a traffic issue that he paid a fine on, but I still think that's a little cause for concern (even though he seems to have been clean since then).

I'll be thinking about it a little bit more before taking the plunge and making the purchase, but I do want to get it before the season starts. If you have any thoughts or ideas about other players, let me know.

Kicking around on a peice of ground in my home town...

Once again folks, sorry for the lack of interesting posts lately. The number of visitors that I have to this blog still eclipse a hundred souls on a daily basis. I know that's not much in most circles, but its still rather nice to know that over a hundred of you are clicking on the site daily to see what's up!

The only thing of interest that I can think of to write about right now is the story of my very first stint as a dealer on the roulette table the other day. Unfortunately, it didn't last too long. When I first got to the table, I was just supposed to muck for an hour until my shift ended due to the fact that they had nowhere to put me at that time. I could have taken off an hour early, but I'm still not in that voluntary early out mindset as I can use all the extra scratch I can muster. So when I started mucking, the dealer immediately started complaining about how her hand hurt and she couldn't spin the ball very good, etc. etc. She was obviously trying to be lazy and wanted me to take over, but I responded to her complaints with "sorry, I just don't deal this game." "Now's the best time to learn," was her response. Well, I still wasn't happy about stepping in, but damn it if she wasn't correct. There was only one couple sitting at the table betting with the same color of chips. So I got brave all of a sudden and went right in.

My first spin was a thing of beauty. It had to have gotten about 20 rotations in, one of their numbers hit straight up and I paid out their $35 with ease. It went ALL DOWN HILL from there! I knew damn well that the first spin was complete luck. I had only ever tried spinning the ball on the roulette table once before, and I KNEW I didn't have the skills. But since the dealer and supervisor had never seen my past shenanigans before, they got the impression from that first spin that I was a seasoned pro in hiding. Within the next 10 minutes, I got about one good spin in for every 3 or 4 "no-spins". One ball almost made it out on the strip. One ball skimmed past a player's head. Another somehow found its way through the very small space in the plastic right next to the wheel camera, and multiple balls just chunked around inside the glass like a cousin of pinball. It wasn't pretty!

The supervisor finally had the whining original dealer tap back in and I was relegated back to mucking, which is even more of a subservient role now that the casino has installed automatic mucking machines on 2 out of their 3 tables! Now when I muck, my main job is to punch the side of the mucking machine tube when too many chips get in there and clog up!

When I left the table to go home, the supervisor made a little flippant remark like I "need to practice a little more" or something like that, as if I actually WANTED to deal the wheel at that point. I silently replied to myself that the next time my back hurts on the dice table, I expect little Miss Whines-alot to come over and give me a break, damned whether or not she knows how to deal the game or not (which I assure you she doesn't).

Okay, sorry for the craps elitism creeping through. I am getting more shifts on dice though than any other game, so I feel like I'm turning the corner to finally feeling comfortable dealing craps, no matter what the situation is, even on a jammed up table with 8 players to a side mixed with idiot strokers and slack-jawed tourists.

Other than work, I've just been doing what the title of the post suggests. Last week, I set up 2 Roth IRA accounts at the bank in an attempt to actually start putting away some cash for retirement. Aside from being vested after five years at the university, I've done virtually nothing along the lines of retirement savings. The accounts are ultra conservative, just investing in cd's and money market, but at least its something. I also called the benefits number for my current casino and got started in their 401K plan this morning, which I just became eligible for. That will be a bit more aggressive I think!

I have my first dental appointment in 2 years next Monday. I don't have dental insurance, but I found a coupon in one of those Valpack's that everybody gets in the mail and usually throws away without opening. $38 for an exam, 4 x-rays and simple cleaning. Pretty damn good deal if you ask me. I'll probably go through with it unless I show up and find some dude with various pointy metal things sitting in the back of a non-descript white van. I've never had a cavity and pretty much have good teeth, but 2 years without a cleaning doesn't set well with me. When I made the appointment, they sounded on the up-and-up, but I'll know for sure once I show up.

I can't think of anything else going on right now, at least nothing that tops the thrilling excitement of retirement savings and oral hygiene! Have a happy hump-day!

27 Days and counting!

The light at the end of the tunnel is nearing. We've had to endure 7 months without college football, and its about damn time it got here. August 30th will be the Buck's first game (at home vs. Youngstown State) and I can't wait! One great perk of Chris paying for DirectTV is that I actually get the Big Ten Network, something a lot of people in Ohio can't even say. Makes a lot of sense for most of Ohio to miss the YSU game while some schmuck in Las Vegas can see it! There's a Buckeye backer bar across the street from South Point casino (near where I live now) that carried Big Ten Network games last year, but driving there every Saturday morning will no longer be necessary. Since I'm now working day shift, I'll probably miss a lot of the games live, but that's what my trusty DVR is for! Ahhh, the wonders of technology!

It's getting so bad that I've found myself watching replays of Buckeye games on the Big Ten Network these past couple of weeks, even games like the 1997 Michigan game when I knew they lost. Danielle had to sit through a little OSU vs Iowa from 1990 earlier this evening (watching the likes of Greg Frey, Robert Smith, Steve Tovar, Alonzo Spellman, etc.).

Along the college football front, I was approved for a week off from work last week and will be making a trip with Danielle back to Ohio in mid-October. Aside from visiting as many family and friends as possible, the main motivation for the specific dates I chose was to go on the Buckeye road trip with my friends in Columbus. This year we'll be visiting East Lansing, Michigan for the Michigan State game!

I made a very similar trip last year in early October, which involved the road trip to Purdue. In case you weren't with my blog at that time, you can visit the following link for some pics of that trip. Unfortunately the pics are out of order, but it'll give you an idea of the trip.

Ohio and Indiana trip

The overriding memory I had of that day was that we tailgated the entire day in 95 degree heat.....in Indiana.....in freakin' October!!! The trip this year will be two weeks later than last year, so I'm praying we actually have good "college football weather" as opposed to the sauna we were in last year!