This poor homeless guy has something wrong with his foot. It's probably pretty hard getting seen anywhere with no money and no insurance.
All the students near USC are biking across the intersection.
These guys went across the red light, though.
This woman snuck ahead of me in the drive-through at McDonald's.
And then she was whining about something wrong with her burger.
The Art District on the eastern side of downtown LA has a bunch of little restaurants.
Quite a big burger.
Aw, come on, you can roll the cart 20 feet instead of leaving it here.
Those are some bright shoes.
So, I guess that means I can't use cash?
I don't care how unhealthy this is, it's so good.
It has been really hot in LA the past week.
I normally don't like jeans with holes in them, but i think these look pretty cool.
How to make an origami crane out of a dollar bill. That would be neat to leave as a tip.
Ogii had some nasty vegetable soup; I had some some yummy ice cream with chunks of chocolate and gum drops. They looked almost the same, though.
A Mini with an "It's big" license plate.
Ogii really doesn't like roaches. This quite large one was by the front door, so she decided the best course of action was to go hide on the balcony with one foot in the air.
Big difference in the time to Vegas on these different routes.
Lots of accidents and construction.
A car on the way to Vegas. Lucky #13 for me and lucky #11 for Ogii on the left. The license plate was a bunch of 7s and 2s, so maybe that means we should play 72 in poker.
His license plate matches his business name and website.
I wonder if that's just random graffiti or a note about a hole.
Neat pillars on either side of this bridge.
Everyone on the way to Vegas goes pretty much exactly 80mph. It actually makes it hard to pass people because it's only a 2-lane road and someone going 82 will be passing someone going 81 and it takes forever. Here we're going down the mountains because the electric battery is getting charged up.
I don't think three dollars is going to be enough for Vegas. Better get a bit more. An interesting thing is that the ATMs in Vegas give out 100s rather than 20s.
We stayed at the Rumor hotel, a few blocks off the strip.
The living and bed rooms.
The bathroom. The shower was really neat with a head in the middle of the ceiling.
A sock left in our hotel room. I don't think the clean staff does a very thorough job.
One of the suites; this was called the Swinger Suite with lots of mirrors.
Ogii: "There's porn on TV." Me: "No way." Ogii: "Yeah, it's at the top of the channels." Me: "No, there's ballet..."
"... and Berenstain Bears..."
"... oh, wait, yep, there it is. And on channel 69 even."
Purple wallpaper in the bathroom.
Wait, it looks rather vagina-y.
Our first stop in Vegas was Planet Hollywood for a poker cash game. The other players were pretty fun and we were wearing our glitter hats. Ogii was in a big hand where her opponent raised her a lot on the river, and after thinking about it, she called. She had a straight, but he caught a full house on the river. He felt bad for her, though, so he offered to buy her hat for $50. Since we paid like $3 for them, that was a great deal.
CE early in the morning.
The expo hall.
Automated glasses storage system.
Wood frames are becoming more popular.
Very cool bathroom.
I remembered I parked by the Juice Farm; otherwise I would never have found my car.
Even then, I had to use the map on my phone sometimes just to figure out my way around the resorts.
Back to the hotel for a lazy afternoon. My favorite part about the hotel were the hammocks near the pool.
Everything was purple and white.
Or black and white.
Interesting chairs.
A purple... thing by the pool. I guess you could sit in it?
The housekeeping was a little lazy; they used my empty Ross bag as a trash bag.
We ate dinner at the Hofbrauhaus and this 6-foot-plus tall waitress was serving this table. The guys all took a shot and then she spanked them with this paddle.
You'd think she'd take it easy, but she really whacked them.
This guy was the only one who didn't jump.
A big open area.
A live band.
A view from a parking garage to the east.
Ogii and I at the iHeartRadio music festival.
Taylor Swift. She did the exact same poses and facial expressions as she did in her music videos.
I'm glad I saw seated behind guys; they didn't stand up like all of the women so I didn't have to stand up to see over them.
We thought they'd drop all of these balloons at the end, but they did it at the beginning. People hit them around in the air, but after five minutes or so they were mostly gone.
Coldplay. The trees with light-up stars were pretty.
Nicki Minaj. She rapped Flawless a capella, which was really cool.
All of the previous bands started with their first big hit, did three other songs, and then ended with their latest hit. Bastille did covers instead.
Pretty lights.
Alicia Keys came out to do one song.
It was very simple and a nice change from the over-the-top performances of some of the others.
Back to over-the-top with Steve Aoki and Will.i.am.
Cool lights again.
I guess Steve Aoki is known for throwing cake at his fans on stage.
Pete Wentz crowd surfing in an inflatable raft. Although it was really just some big guys carrying him around rather than actual crowd surfing.
Jason Derulo dancing.
Motly Crue letting the audience sing.
Guitarist up front.
They had the most pyrotechnics of the evening.
More fire.
The Zac Brown Band. They didn't play their hits, instead doing covers of The Devil Went Down to Georgia and Bohemian Rhapsody. Weird, but still good. Also, there was still tons of smoke from Motly Crue.
More neat lights.
Ariana Grande. The background had spaceships flying around, so we spent more time watching those than her.
Usher lit his shoes on fire while Chris Brown sang.
Onto a daily tournament at Planet Hollywood. Wow, what luck! Table 13, seat 7. And I'm out of the tournament on the first hand after one other guy and I were all-in and he got lucky on the river. Then Ogii got knocked out a few hands later. Obviously Planet Hollywood is not the casino for us.
We were going to go to the Orleans casino after that because people said it was really fun on Friday night, but when we showed up on Sunday, it was only a few tables of regulars, so we went to Aria instead. It had cool metal cards on the walls.
I got AA and went all-in and three people called. Usually that's not good since someone else is going to get lucky, you really only want one or two other people, but I won and tripled up.
Ogii playing on her table.
I got AA three more times, crazy good luck, and they won every time. I was the chip leader, but then lost a lot semi-bluffing the other two big stacks at my table. The first one got lucky when she hit her straight and the second almost folded but called in the end with a very small pair. Then I was pretty low on chips and went all in with AJ vs 88 and he hit two more 8s to make four of a kind. As the big stack you want to be more aggressive to pick up extra chips, but I guess I shouldn't have gone after the big stacks and should have picked on the middle stacks instead. Good to remember for next time.
Sunrise by the southern hotels.
A charging station; nice.
It says free, but it also says you have to tap your card below, and I don't have a ChargePoint card. Oh well; one of the best things about Vegas is all of the free parking anyway.
Breakfast at the Aria's buffet: lots of meat.
And seafood.
Eat fast before you stomach realizes its full.
Driving back home and crossing the border to California.
And all of the bikers can now split lanes.
Traffic was either fairly empty or packed.
16mph; this was one of the packed areas.
This checkpoint was one cause.
A little tornado on the side of the road.
There's a Domino's just a block away from our apartment, so I went there one night.
They have these little order screens, but really, why not just use the counter? Even if someone is there, you have to wait, what, a minute or two?
This should be a won match for me. We're even in pieces but I have a very advanced passed pawn.
I sacrifice a bishop for a pawn...
... to get my rook down here faster.
I got a queen which he took with a rook. Then a mistake here; gave away my knight for free.
Followed immediately by another mistake: giving away my rook for free.
Although thankfully he missed it and moved somewhere else.
And once I get this queen it's over.
I've been experimenting with this opening to the queen's gambit because it's full of little traps.
Unfortunately, since I don't know it that well, I fall into a lot of traps instead.
I guess I'll defend my pawn with my other pawn.
Oops, that gives away my queen for free. Well, I learned that is not a correct opening sequence.
Again, I have a very dangerous pawn almost about to queen.
At one point I had three pieces defending that square so I forgot about it, but when I moved all of those pieces, checkmate for him.
The power of the bishop: I can easily defend two pawns against his rook.
He somehow let me get a queen (which, really, there is no way should have happened; he had three pawns to my one on the left side, so he just needs to use his rook to keep me from queening and block my king a bit), which got me a win.
Facebook face recognition is a little off; that's my hand, not a face.
Three of the fat spitting guys at once in Reaper.
$10 a month isn't bad, but we get a ton of channels over the air for free.