Straight Flush

How much money have I lost so far? Letsee: $60 on craps, $20 on blackjack, $30 on slots/video poker, $60 on crappy fast food, $30 on amazing internet access.. a lot. (I did get a Straight Flush on one of the video poker games, but since I was only playing with nickel bets that comes out to around 75 cents winnings).

My luck just isn’t here, for some reason. It was fine the first night but ever since then the craps table has been cold. I played a little today and got maybe $15 on top so I pocketed the $20 I started with and played until that $15 was gone. I suppose if you come out even in the end you aren’t a “loser”. I think the whole problem with gambling is this: You play until you don’t have any money left to bet. So even if you win some you end up playing all you won and the money you started with as well. (Obviously, that’s what the casino’s are betting on). I’m certainly glad I’m on the night shift as I don’t feel like playing any games during the day. If I had all night with nothing to do I’d probably have spent more than I have!

We went to the Hoover Dam earlier this week, which was pretty cool. While it was really really hot, inside it was nice and cool, especially 8 floors down into the generator room. That place uses tons and tons and tons of concrete! The guide said they could easily make a sidewalk all the way around the world, on the equator, with all of the concrete they used on the dam. We had passed a place that did helicopter rides over the dam, something we might check out later.

Due to boredom during the day, I have been able to read a lot. I finally finished Red Mars which is a great book, though a little slow in spots. I think it’s great because there’s tons of politics (Earth’s corporations vs “Martians” vs government vs everyone else) and lots of interesting facts on Mars itself. I’ll be picking up the second book when I return home. I just finished my first Neil Gaiman book, Neverwhere, last night: it was awesome. It’s nice to read a “fantasy” book that isn’t the normal unicorn, sorcerer, and warrior mix. The book is very gritty and a little dark, though a light, easy read. The only other book I brought with me is Isaac Asimov’s Prelude to Foundation. I’m resisting starting it because I don’t like jumping between series of books. I’d like to either a) finish the Red Mars series first, or b) read all of the Foundation books before starting the next Red Mars book. I’m going to try to go to the bookstore and pickup another Neil Gaiman book (probably American Gods).

Well, I’ve been here for 7 days so far and I’m tired of it. Some of us are planning on going to The Strip this evening to catch what free shows we can and get dinner (so hopefully I won’t be bored tonight), but I’m really really tired of the smoke and slot machine noises and fast food. Next Saturday won’t come fast enough!

There’s a lot of activity at Nellis AFB, even during our evening shift (6pm to 2am). Nellis is very large and has a lot of fighter squadrons with F-16s, F-15s, E-6s (A-6s doing counter measures), B-52s, and assorted cargo aircraft. Last night while we were waiting at EOR two F-16s and two F-15s did go-arounds, which means they abort their landing and go around to land again. When they go-around they put in full afterburner and stay low to pickup speed before returning to pattern altitude. This put them about 200 ft above us - which put them about 300ft away (good ol’ trigonometry). It was very cool to see and feel them fly by that close. (Thank God we had our double hearing protection on).

Since there are 5-6 other squadrons here (from out of state) participating in Red Flag, EOR can get very hectic. There are usually 8-16 jets there waiting to be armed or de-armed, which can cause problems for us when one of our jets can’t find a place to park except are the far end.. makes us run around a lot. Among other excitement at EOR: one of the F-16s (from another squadron) had hot breaks after a fast approach. Due to high speeds they can easily overheat the breaks after landing and even cause them to explode. Thankfully that didn’t happen, but they did catch on fire. The ground crew was able to quickly put the fire out and preventing the tire from exploding but it still caused quite a ruckus. I think there were 5 fire trucks there in a matter of minutes waiting to see if anything else exciting happened.

I did see some F-22s from Edwards AFB fly around and takeoff. I was hoping to find some on the ramp but haven’t run into any yet. I really want to catch them cycling their bay doors so I can see how the missiles and bombs attach to them and get tucked away.

So it’s not been a terrible trip, I’m just bored crazy when I’m not working!