Reflections on My Brief Career at Hollywood Park

Calls from Human Resources are never good. Every time they say they need you to come over right now it means you’ve lost your job. I got this call last Wednesday as I was waiting to clock in. Oh, well; there went that job, propping for Hollywood Park Casino. I can’t say I was particularly nervous walking down to sign job away, (because it was still my second one), and wouldn’t leave me unemployed. In case I needed any more reinforcement that I didn’t need the job, the whole walk down there reminded me of all the things I didn’t like about that casino.

Casinos are inherently bureaucratic organizations: they produce nothing of value and simply take customers’ money. Thus, casino management is virtually always comprised of layer upon layer of bureaucratic departments whose entire purpose is maintaining the status quo. After all, as long as the lights stay on, no drugs are being dealt, and the employees remain relatively civil, why should anything change? The consequence of all bureaucracies is that strange, inconvenient rules seems to work their way into the organization and soon become just another annoying aspect of it. All casinos have these, but I think Hollywood Park’s HR department might deserve honorable mention in terms of its uselessness.
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A Google Way for Anyone to Buy my Stuff

If you’d like to buy my VTES starter decks you can use Google Checkout. This Google Checkout button charges $35 for the decks and $8.50 for domestic US shipping.

This button, on the other hand, if for my international clients. It charges the same $35, but charges $15 for international shipping.

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First Day on the Job: An Interesting Hand

So yesterday, Monday September 12th, was my first day on my new job at Hollywood Park Casino. I haven’t left my old employer, Normandie Casino, but as the start of the year they announced they were cutting my pay. Then they cut my hours down to part time. Meanwhile, Hollywood Park starting hiring part time. So I pieced together to pay time positions to make one full time position. As it stands now, if all I do is break even at the game of poker, I’ll we working 46 hours for $1270 a week. Which, given the current economic situation, is really nice.

Now first days on the job are interesting, but I don’t know if it’s ever been quite like this. You see, casinos tend to be run pretty loosely, and that applies doubly so for how they treat house players. Most of time your “orientation” is nonexistent and you just start to pick up habits from other house players in a “monkey see, monkey do” fashion. And, of course, I’m coming from a different casino with different habits. At the Normandie it was appreciated if I helped out in running chips for players, because they ended up getting rid of their chip runners. Not that anyone asked me to, but often I was just sitting around anyway. Another related habit I picked up was “echoing” a call for player checks or food service so the designated people could more rapidly attend to the patrons.

So here I am, my first day on the job, carrying on my old habits. A player busts out, and I’m already calling for the chip runner. As I settle into a $3-5 No-Limit game,  I see one of the long time former hosts of Hollywood Park who has recently be made just another house player like me. You see, Hollywood Park used to have a group of three or four hosts on staff who were responsible for individual games. They would gather player information and call them up to get them to come in and play with them.  This particular guy used to be the host of the big NL game, and this was the first time I was really playing with him. I looked forward to playing some pots with him. Continue reading

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US Treasury Bonds Soar on the News of Their Own Downgrade?

Anyone who’s been seriously securities pricing over the last several years has seen a series of bizarre pricing anomalies in securities as markets have gone from boom to bust- back and forth. Taken individually, any of these pricing anomalies as the market moves would be a challenge to Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH) notion that the current price of a security reflects the most current analysis of information regarding that security. EMH proponents have a hard time explaining the internet bubble, or really any security that seems to defy rational explanation.

Still, people put stock in the pricing mechanism of the marketplace and see some wisdom in it. When gold was languishing in comparison to the US Dollar through the 1980s and 90s, the rational explanation was that people no longer felt it was a safe haven. Now, conspiracy minded Libertarians such as myself felt that there was a greater conspiracy at work on the part of the powers that be to get people to believe in the US Dollar as the ultimate safe haven rather than gold. There are certain strange coincidences, such as the decline of the spot price of gold in the wake of most major political news (such as the start of Desert Storm or 9/11) which would be occasions where you would thing it would go up.
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Stock Alert: Time to Shove All-In on Barrick Gold

The Stock Market is full of strangely priced equities. The things that most often make the news are the stocks that are trading far above any rational price. With most banks offering interest rates on savings far less than the government’s own rate of inflation (with a “real” return of -4% or so) you would think that hot money would be flooding into the stock market in search of bargains. So stocks like Barrick Gold (ticker symbol: ABX) and the other gold miners has been an ever increasing mystery to me.
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Paul Krugman: Raving Socialist Moron of the Day

If a Socialist raves in the woods, but there’s no one around to hear it, should the forest creatures still seek to dismantle their private enterprise activities in order to develop a strong public sector? Or, put another way, Kevin sent me another Krugman diatribe. Here he is decrying the debt limit “crisis.”

Krugman’s rantings are rather formulaic, and as he is Keynesian Socialist, you know exactly where he stands on all issues before he even opens his mouth. In fact, I’d say you can make you own Krugman rants by simply mixing and matching the following arguments:

  • The free market is an unstable system that will tear itself apart without strong government intervention
  • Depression is the logical result of an unregulated free market, and the private sector could never get out of a depression on it’s own.
  • Instead, the government must spend money counter cyclically to “stimulate” the economy
  • Private enterprise harkens back to our more primitive natures when it was a dog-eat-dog and we had to fight each other over scare resources. Bureaucratic action tends to be far superior because it is arrived as through consensus and often developed with the benefit of more enlightened minds like… well, him!

That last point is not really overtly stated as implied. But keep in mind, he’s got an Economic prize issued in Memorial of Alfred Nobel. It’s a shame I don’t have my old post on what I thought of Krugman’s Nobel Prize, but I’m sure you can imagine what I would have said about a prize that had nothing to do with Alfred Nobel’s foundation regarding a “science” that is precious little basis in fact.

At any rate, let’s check Krugman’s latest rant and see how we did here. Hmm, well this one’s about how the terrible Republicans have sabotaged the Democratic process by demanding the government spend less money. With all the Republican bashing, I guess we can safely establish that Krugman is a Democrat. Oh wait, I already said that. See earlier where I said he was a Socialist. Continue reading

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The Susan M. Greene Shakedown Survival Guide

It would seem that my last post on Susan Green’s shakedown business, “Susan M. Greene’s Notary Business is Here to Shake You Down” is by far my most popular blog ever. I guess there’s nothing that motivates a google search like someone threatening to file suit for the egregious crime of dialing a telephone number.

One respondent to my last Susan Green blog was Becca Wahlquest, an actually an attorney here in Southern California whose client had received a shakedown letter. She contacted me, and we exchanged information. She shared with me (and gave me permission to pass it on to you) that Susan Greene will go away and not bother you again once you stand up to her. This has also been my experience.

A few people have asked for the exact response letter which Ms. Wahlquist sent to Ms. Greene. I asked Ms. Wahlquest if her client would be willing to provide the actual response letter she sent, and, unfortunately, the client declined. However, Ms. Wahlquist has seen her way clear to provide to general gist of what her response letter contained. Furthermore, given that the San Diego Small Claims Docket shows that Ms. Greene has only filed four claims in the past year, your chances of actually being sued by her are quite small. Indeed, Ms. Greene indicated that she was going to sue both myself and my mother and nothing has been forthcoming. So know in dealing with her that you are dealing with a toothless lion: her roar may be ferocious, but she really lacks any bite whatsoever.

Personally, my advice is to ignore her. However, if you find yourself in such a position whereby you absolutely MUST interact with her (say you’ve been hired to represent someone who’s receiving her threats) you need to keep in mind the relevant facts and time line. I’ve prepared a nice summary for you below: Continue reading

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Tom Hartmann- Raving Socialist Moron of the Day

There’s something about Vampire: the Eternal Struggle players and Keynesian Socialism. I was previously unaware of just how deep this ideology was entrenched amongst VTES players until Facebook came around and I started seeing all of their updates. Holy snikees. Every freaking day I’m seeing updates from such left-wing rags like Media Matters, Raw Story, and who the hell knows what else. I can understand the left’s frustration with Fox News, but the answer is not just to spread your own version of historical fiction.

Kevin, who’s consistently my only reader, brought this to my attention off of David Cherryholmes’s Facebook update.

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Susan M Greene’s Notary Business is Here to Shake You Down

There’s a little business in San Diego called Susan M Greene Notary. It’s specifically located in Solana Beach and is owned by Susan Green. Note that his is not the same Susan M Green whom the California State Bar Association has located in Northern California. This Susan Greene is just a notary, not an attorney. This is an important distinction as you’ll soon see. Ms. Greene is joined in this duty by an Assistant named Joseph Click, JD. Yet it turns out he’s not the same Joseph Click who’s listed in the California State Bar Association either. According to Susan Green, he has a law degree, but has not actually passed the bar.

How did I learn all of this? Well, that’s quite a strange story. The beginnings of which are even stranger. You see, this story started in 1991 when George W. Bush signed the Telemarketing Consumer Protection Act. As part of that law, any company that called someone on the “do not call” list or any company who ended up using an autodialer to dial a cellphone or pager number is in violation of the law. As such, according to the law, the offending party owes the owner of the number compensation. Honestly, the idea that a consumer was due personal damages for the crime of a phone call bothered me a bit at the time, because it seemed possible for someone to make it there living to go after people who call them on the phone. It turns out that one such person was James Kinder.  Continue reading

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The Reason They Finally Got Bin Laden

Bin Laden Playing Internet Poker

The reason they finally got him

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