A Giant Among Dwarves?

Sunday, November 27, 2011 Posted by Digital Katsu 0 comments
The Biggest Little City draws people in during the winter months with various discounted specials and with the temptation of hitting the slopes (no that's not a racial comment). We were no different. Two free nights stay at the Grand Sierra Resort and a $10 food voucher, was a deal that could not be beat. It does require an initial deposit of $25 that is refunded at the end of the stay; pending on how much damage you do the rooms.

Anyway, the drive was pretty quick considering we ate lunch on the way there. Rachel averaged a speed of 90 mph regardless of the terrain. We got there in 4 hours with an hour stop for lunch. There was definitely enough snow to make the average abominable snow man happy. I really wanted to skii, but budget constraints prevented me from exploring this option for recreation.

Once we arrived we were stunned to scale of the resort. It was really "grand". It towered above the neighboring Walmart making it look more like a Family Mart. The hotel had everything you would want from Reno, but in a huge monstrous super hotel. There were restaurants, a casino, a bowling alley, a spa, a pool, a golf course, a go-kart track, an arcade, a theater, and it was topped off with a Starbucks. A person could pretty much just spend their whole time at the hotel and could get a sample course of what it's like to be in Reno.


The rooms were pretty decent. A distant cousin to what you would see at a motel 6, but with a view that gives you a taste of luxury (kind of how people buy Jordans, but can't afford food). The room was pretty clean, but not perfect. The holes in the sheets and the stains on the ceiling made you realize the room was free and that one shouldn't complain.

The strip during the week was empty and there were pawn shops next to the famous casinos which makes a person understand how much gambling can impact a community. There were homeless people lined up at soup kitchen two blocks away from Circus Circus. There were as many pawn shops and places where a person could get a loan as there were casinos. The pawn shops were all stationed right across the street from the casinos breeding a symbiotic relationship.

Anyway, we spent a lot of money playing Carney games that gave us prizes that we could have probably purchased at the local walmart for half the amount of money we spent on the games. People do spend the money for the entertainment value so it's not a total loss. I would rather gamble because of the slight possibility of winning money.

I did gamble in Reno. I played roulette. I ended up betting on the two out of three possible outcomes which paid double when you did get it. I predicted that you had around a 60% chance of winning because you had 2/3s of the board covered with the bet. I ended up winning around $20 total. I really wanted to play more, but everyone else didn't really like gambling.


The trip was a cost effective venture into another state that I would recommend to anyone that has a few days to spare during the regular work week.
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Success in Failure

Posted by Digital Katsu 0 comments


Crane Games can be very tricky. Sometimes you feel like you have the upper advantage because you can visualize how the claw will precisely grip your prize, but this is really just an illusion. The game does take some skill, but the prediction of an outcome based on the mechanics of the claw should be taken a step further. You can't just assume the claw will pick up an object and drop it. The claw is usually very weak and jerks around even if you get an object. After you take these factors into account I think you can judge the outcome more accurately.



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Google Music!

Thursday, November 17, 2011 Posted by Digital Katsu 0 comments
Google Music is out!
You can upload and have storage for up to 20,000 songs for free. This is an awesome service from Google considering that iTunes is charging a yearly fee to have access to your own songs. The uploading is easy and the quality seems to be pretty good when listening online. You don't have to worry about having copies of your music on every device because this service allows you to just upload your database from one computer and as long as you have internet access you'll have access to the whole database!


http://google.com/music
Check it out. All you have to do is sign into your google account download the application and start uploading. There doesn't seem to be a web based uploader as of now, but hopefully they will implement that instead of having software that you have to install in order to upload.

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Bowling

Friday, November 4, 2011 Posted by Digital Katsu 0 comments
Low, Annie, Lily & I went bowling Tuesday night because it was discounted at Castro Valley Bowl. Only $10 per person including shoes & $1 beer. Anyway, I shot a compilation of videos with my droid x because I couldn't take any pictures due to the low lighting. The ISO was set too high on the Camera which made everything blurry and grainy. I edited the video with Final Cut Pro X. It's condensed down to shots of us actually hitting the pins. Overall we all bowled pretty well considering we're novices. My best was 166 that day. I still need to work on my hook. 
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