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Ten Thousand Hotels
Jun. 12th, 2005 07:54 pmWasn't that the name of a Frank Zappa movie? Well, for me it's been seven different beds in half a month, two bed and breakfasts, four hotels, and Russet's parents house.
The sad thing is that only three of those were shared with my wife.
Tonight I'm somewhere North of the Hoover Dam. I arrived in Phoenix Thursday AM, at 7pm I left for Las Vegas. Now it's Saturday night and I'm on my way home.
I used to work a chess tournament in Vegas called the National Open. It was probably the highest cash prize tournament in the country, possibly the world. It was also one of the largest non-scholastic tournaments. It's held annually at the Riviera, a hotel that suites the tourney fairly well. I have two basic complaints about the hotel. First, the food court is at the furthest possible point from the hotel. Second, I hate the lighting in the convention/tournament area, there's not enough and it's a mixture of tungsten and fluorescent, mainly the latter. It's a bitch to color-correct when you're trying to get good photographs under it. Fortunately the Eos Digital Rebel can do pretty good color correction.
Color correction is one of the areas in photography where I have some difficulty. My initial pictures were too warm because somehow I'd managed to set my camera to daylight color balance. I was working with Audrey, who also has a Digital Rebel, and we worked out how to change the color balance settings. The fluorescent setting worked quite well, as did the auto white balance. But there are still areas in the tournament hall that are just too blasted dark.
A high point of the tournament was using Audrey's image-stabilized telephoto zoom. The lens has a gyroscope built-in – no kidding. It spins an inner lens group and the effect is to greatly stabilize the lens and camera, allowing you to make exposures at ridiculously low shutter speeds. We're talking hand-held at a tenth of a second, something that you can't normally do without a tripod or monopod. And the image compression effect of a 300mm lens is pretty impressive.
Let's jump back to Thursday!
Thursday was a weird day. I get back to Phoenix, Dad picks me up and takes me back to their house where my Rodeo has spent two weeks. After putzing a bit and talking with Mom, I take off and eventually end up at home. I drag all my stuff out of the truck, looking forward to a cold shower and a nap, and I discover a slight problem when I get to my door – there is no house key on my key ring.
Being very happy to have a cell phone, I called Mom. It turns out that she needed to give a key to the next door neighbor to take care of the critters, and Mom's key wouldn't come off of her key ring, so they took mine. They then forgot to put it back.
I was not a happy camper, but what can you do? I had a lot of things to do, and most were contingent upon starting a load of laundry, going out and doing something, coming back and putting it in the drier and starting another load, etc. So shoot that one down.
I did manage to get two things done before going to my parent's. I swung by work and picked up my MP3 player, I refuse to drive significant distances, particularly alone, without tunes. And I stopped at one of my favorite Mexican food places in Phoenix, Jordan's (Central Ave just S of Thomas) and had a wonderful chimi. So back to my parent's, get key, back to my condo. Unpack, start load of laundry, then find out that the post office who has successfully held my mail for two weeks did not manage to get it back into my box the day before my arrival.
Now the second fly enters the ointment.
When I was at my parent's the first time Thursday, I noticed that a couple of my tires were a little low. One was fine, two were down less than 5 lbs, but one was down about 15 lbs. I thought that a bit odd, and pumped them all up. I get back to my condo the first time, not realizing my inability to be admitted, and while getting my Monster Suitcase ™ out of the back that there is a screw head in my left rear tire, consistent with a thin type of wood or sheet metal tapping screw about two inches long.
Thus the Mystery of the Substantially Underinflated Tyre ™ was solved.
But I was soon to be driving to Las Vegas and thus had to get it fixed. I expected said fix to take 30-60 minutes, regardless of how little I wanted to spend the time it had to be done, and there was no way to make it overlap with some other errand. I did get to reload my GPS receiver with a map of Vegas just in case there were any significant detours or I wanted to drive around the city a bit.
Earlier in the day I had spoken with Michelle, she had taken a suitcase home with her from Ohio containing some of my photo equipment and I needed to find out if it was at my place or her place as I needed to take the monopod to Vegas with me. She had quite nicely taken it to my place. She also had a request of me – could I replace her cd-rom drive? It had been plaguing her pretty much since Day 1, but we'd never replaced it, even when I had her PC torn apart to replace the power supply. It was just a little flakey, the main problem had been an inability to occasionally play music CDs or view photo CDs that I'd made for her. Well, this time it was much more important – she couldn't install World of Warcraft. It would start loading the second CD then just stop.
Two convenient things happened. I had recently replaced my PCs cd drive with a DVD burner, so I had a drive literally sitting on my desktop. So I could take care of her problem while she was in Texas for a choral performance. Then she offers to swap cars with me so that I can take her much more fuel efficient late model Chevy Cavalier to Vegas while she picks up her two friends Friday AM for their flight to San Antonio and my Rodeo spends a few days at the airport.
So after getting my potential flat fixed, I swing back by my condo, pick up the CD drive and my spare keys for my Rodeo and the second set for her car and go to her office. She gets my spares and also keeps her keys, so she won't be screwed up for anything else she might need her keys for. I then make yet another stop at my parent's house, this time to pick up my tripod which I thought was at my condo, apparently I'd lent it to my brother and forgotten.
Three trips to my parent's house in one day. Fortunately they're only about eight miles from my condo.
Scurry back to my condo, half an hour to pack, hit the road. Grabbed some food for me, food for the car, food for the MP3 changer and GPS receiver, and cruised. It was 7pm when I actually hit the freeway.
Vegas is typically about five and a half hours driving from Phoenix. I malingered in Kingman a bit, needing a bio break and wanting to reprogram my music to listen to two specific albums rather than randomly flitting through what I'd loaded. Back on the road.
Then came Hoover Dam. Apparently a terrorist can drive a truck onto the top of the dam and blow it to hell, regardless of the water level and the millions of tons of concrete in it, so they're building a bridge across it (must be a witch). Thus there are frequent construction delays. Well, not at 11pm! Aside from crossing the dam itself at 15 MPH, it went quite quickly and soon I was back to 70 MPH or so. Aside from putting too much faith in MapQuest, the final leg of my trip went well and I arrived at the Riviera at 12:30am. Registration was interminable and it was nearly 1am before I got to the room and crashed.
Friday was largely unremarkable. Reunited with friends that I hadn't seen in five years, lots of photography, etc. Saturday was also largely unremarkable, more photography, a twit parent with a screaming 3 yr old in the corridor outside of the tournament hall who would not acknowledge that the kid could be disturbing players through the open tournament hall doors when the kid was bothering me and I'm behind closed doors in a room full of computers and printers. I guess I'm just a Sensitive Guy. ™
I did get to meet and have dinner with an internet friend, Gayle. She works in the reservation center at Circus Circus, we got together after she got off work and went to Tony Roma's. Much good conversation. I met her on eHarmony just before the time that I met Russet via eMode, I have several friends in different cities that I've met in similar manner. Gayle is good people and is eager to meet Audrey and Russet, Audrey was off going to Mystere, a Cirque du Soliel production, and who knows if I'll ever get Russ to Vegas – too much light pollution, donchaknow. Gayle lamented that their renaissance festival lasts all of three days and was envious that the one in Apache Junction lasts two months of weekends.
So it's now Sunday evening. I have a pizza that should be arriving at any time, a hideously messy living room, and I'm really looking forward to crawling in to bed early.
The sad thing is that only three of those were shared with my wife.
Tonight I'm somewhere North of the Hoover Dam. I arrived in Phoenix Thursday AM, at 7pm I left for Las Vegas. Now it's Saturday night and I'm on my way home.
I used to work a chess tournament in Vegas called the National Open. It was probably the highest cash prize tournament in the country, possibly the world. It was also one of the largest non-scholastic tournaments. It's held annually at the Riviera, a hotel that suites the tourney fairly well. I have two basic complaints about the hotel. First, the food court is at the furthest possible point from the hotel. Second, I hate the lighting in the convention/tournament area, there's not enough and it's a mixture of tungsten and fluorescent, mainly the latter. It's a bitch to color-correct when you're trying to get good photographs under it. Fortunately the Eos Digital Rebel can do pretty good color correction.
Color correction is one of the areas in photography where I have some difficulty. My initial pictures were too warm because somehow I'd managed to set my camera to daylight color balance. I was working with Audrey, who also has a Digital Rebel, and we worked out how to change the color balance settings. The fluorescent setting worked quite well, as did the auto white balance. But there are still areas in the tournament hall that are just too blasted dark.
A high point of the tournament was using Audrey's image-stabilized telephoto zoom. The lens has a gyroscope built-in – no kidding. It spins an inner lens group and the effect is to greatly stabilize the lens and camera, allowing you to make exposures at ridiculously low shutter speeds. We're talking hand-held at a tenth of a second, something that you can't normally do without a tripod or monopod. And the image compression effect of a 300mm lens is pretty impressive.
Let's jump back to Thursday!
Thursday was a weird day. I get back to Phoenix, Dad picks me up and takes me back to their house where my Rodeo has spent two weeks. After putzing a bit and talking with Mom, I take off and eventually end up at home. I drag all my stuff out of the truck, looking forward to a cold shower and a nap, and I discover a slight problem when I get to my door – there is no house key on my key ring.
Being very happy to have a cell phone, I called Mom. It turns out that she needed to give a key to the next door neighbor to take care of the critters, and Mom's key wouldn't come off of her key ring, so they took mine. They then forgot to put it back.
I was not a happy camper, but what can you do? I had a lot of things to do, and most were contingent upon starting a load of laundry, going out and doing something, coming back and putting it in the drier and starting another load, etc. So shoot that one down.
I did manage to get two things done before going to my parent's. I swung by work and picked up my MP3 player, I refuse to drive significant distances, particularly alone, without tunes. And I stopped at one of my favorite Mexican food places in Phoenix, Jordan's (Central Ave just S of Thomas) and had a wonderful chimi. So back to my parent's, get key, back to my condo. Unpack, start load of laundry, then find out that the post office who has successfully held my mail for two weeks did not manage to get it back into my box the day before my arrival.
Now the second fly enters the ointment.
When I was at my parent's the first time Thursday, I noticed that a couple of my tires were a little low. One was fine, two were down less than 5 lbs, but one was down about 15 lbs. I thought that a bit odd, and pumped them all up. I get back to my condo the first time, not realizing my inability to be admitted, and while getting my Monster Suitcase ™ out of the back that there is a screw head in my left rear tire, consistent with a thin type of wood or sheet metal tapping screw about two inches long.
Thus the Mystery of the Substantially Underinflated Tyre ™ was solved.
But I was soon to be driving to Las Vegas and thus had to get it fixed. I expected said fix to take 30-60 minutes, regardless of how little I wanted to spend the time it had to be done, and there was no way to make it overlap with some other errand. I did get to reload my GPS receiver with a map of Vegas just in case there were any significant detours or I wanted to drive around the city a bit.
Earlier in the day I had spoken with Michelle, she had taken a suitcase home with her from Ohio containing some of my photo equipment and I needed to find out if it was at my place or her place as I needed to take the monopod to Vegas with me. She had quite nicely taken it to my place. She also had a request of me – could I replace her cd-rom drive? It had been plaguing her pretty much since Day 1, but we'd never replaced it, even when I had her PC torn apart to replace the power supply. It was just a little flakey, the main problem had been an inability to occasionally play music CDs or view photo CDs that I'd made for her. Well, this time it was much more important – she couldn't install World of Warcraft. It would start loading the second CD then just stop.
Two convenient things happened. I had recently replaced my PCs cd drive with a DVD burner, so I had a drive literally sitting on my desktop. So I could take care of her problem while she was in Texas for a choral performance. Then she offers to swap cars with me so that I can take her much more fuel efficient late model Chevy Cavalier to Vegas while she picks up her two friends Friday AM for their flight to San Antonio and my Rodeo spends a few days at the airport.
So after getting my potential flat fixed, I swing back by my condo, pick up the CD drive and my spare keys for my Rodeo and the second set for her car and go to her office. She gets my spares and also keeps her keys, so she won't be screwed up for anything else she might need her keys for. I then make yet another stop at my parent's house, this time to pick up my tripod which I thought was at my condo, apparently I'd lent it to my brother and forgotten.
Three trips to my parent's house in one day. Fortunately they're only about eight miles from my condo.
Scurry back to my condo, half an hour to pack, hit the road. Grabbed some food for me, food for the car, food for the MP3 changer and GPS receiver, and cruised. It was 7pm when I actually hit the freeway.
Vegas is typically about five and a half hours driving from Phoenix. I malingered in Kingman a bit, needing a bio break and wanting to reprogram my music to listen to two specific albums rather than randomly flitting through what I'd loaded. Back on the road.
Then came Hoover Dam. Apparently a terrorist can drive a truck onto the top of the dam and blow it to hell, regardless of the water level and the millions of tons of concrete in it, so they're building a bridge across it (must be a witch). Thus there are frequent construction delays. Well, not at 11pm! Aside from crossing the dam itself at 15 MPH, it went quite quickly and soon I was back to 70 MPH or so. Aside from putting too much faith in MapQuest, the final leg of my trip went well and I arrived at the Riviera at 12:30am. Registration was interminable and it was nearly 1am before I got to the room and crashed.
Friday was largely unremarkable. Reunited with friends that I hadn't seen in five years, lots of photography, etc. Saturday was also largely unremarkable, more photography, a twit parent with a screaming 3 yr old in the corridor outside of the tournament hall who would not acknowledge that the kid could be disturbing players through the open tournament hall doors when the kid was bothering me and I'm behind closed doors in a room full of computers and printers. I guess I'm just a Sensitive Guy. ™
I did get to meet and have dinner with an internet friend, Gayle. She works in the reservation center at Circus Circus, we got together after she got off work and went to Tony Roma's. Much good conversation. I met her on eHarmony just before the time that I met Russet via eMode, I have several friends in different cities that I've met in similar manner. Gayle is good people and is eager to meet Audrey and Russet, Audrey was off going to Mystere, a Cirque du Soliel production, and who knows if I'll ever get Russ to Vegas – too much light pollution, donchaknow. Gayle lamented that their renaissance festival lasts all of three days and was envious that the one in Apache Junction lasts two months of weekends.
So it's now Sunday evening. I have a pizza that should be arriving at any time, a hideously messy living room, and I'm really looking forward to crawling in to bed early.
