Tag: booze

Photos: Port St. Lucie, Florida – Tradition Field

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The second leg of my Spring Training baseball travels took me from busy touristy Orlando, down to the sleepy, seemingly retirement community of Port St. Lucie, Florida.  It was a pleasant reprieve from the traffic and endless gauntlet of toll roads in Orlando.

Despite the fact that Tradition Field is the home to the stinking Mets, I actually really liked the place, even over the Braves’ Champion Stadium.  This really isn’t that big of a surprise, considering the exorbitant extravagance that was a ballpark in Orlando, compared to a smallish baseball venue out in Port St. Lucie.

The funniest thing about Tradition Field is that being home to the Mets, the general area around Port St. Lucie appears to be crawling with northern transplants, and lots of tourists from New Jersey and New York.  And despite being in a sleepy old Florida coastal town, we were subjected to some very New York-like mannerisms, like having to actually pay to park in a deserted grass field, and being accosted by ticket scalpers, at a Spring Training exhibition game that doesn’t actually count.  You can take the scumbags out of New York but you can’t take the New York out of the scumbags.

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Photos: Dom’s Birthday Game Night

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

My ongoing quest to figure out and capably shoot with a CHDK-hacked Canon point-and-shoot continued, and what better setting to try working shots than with a live gathering where people would be getting drunk and doing drunk things?

Needless to say, I’m pretty sure that if I were a person with a better grasp of photographic terminology to begin with, this might be easier, but I also think that the camera I’m using itself is pretty limiting. Even before I hacked it and added the CHDK firmware, I wasn’t happy with the quality of the pictures in even the most basic optimal settings to shoot.

It’s nice to have some photographic evidence of some of the shenanigans that went down with board games, impromptu pull-up contests, and Dom busting out some drunk-retard strength, but I can’t say that I’m thrilled with the quality of the pictures outright.  For some reason, the camera randomly went into fisheye perspectives or added toy-camera corner filters without my needing to set them in the first place.

I’m this close to scrapping the hope for a good point-and-shoot, and might just make my iPhone my “night camera” at Dragon*Con this year.

But until then, at least there are some photos to remember the night by.

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The time I felt like Rain Man

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s been a little while since I’ve been back from Vegas, but a combination of getting sick, prioritizing getting photos processed and out the door, and simply catching up with post-holiday/vacation life, I simply neglected to write about it. But aside from the Pedro Griffin trolling story, there was another time at the blackjack tables, where I felt awesome, and remembered a story that I wanted to write about but forgot to, so better late than never.

As is often the case with a Vegas trip, this past one was just the same in the fact that I could have actually made it home having made money – if it weren’t for that last day. It’s pretty typical for me that it’s the last day in which Vegas not only catches up with me, but manages to make sure that I don’t leave with all of the money I brought in which to play with, and this last trip was no exception to that rule. I had been gambling shrewdly up until the last day, and it was naturally on the last night, in which I watched the house money diminish, and then some of my own money subsequently. Regardless, it’s not a big deal, because it’s money that’s accumulated for such frivolous purposes, and it doesn’t affect my bottom line or any financial responsibilities otherwise.

Anyway, aside from Pedro night, it was the night prior in which I was having a particularly good time at a table, and managed to walk away with a little bit of a cherry on top. I was gambling at Paris, where I was pleased to have found a single-deck table that also was being dealt by one of the sexy lingerie-clad dealers that seems to be the fortuitous norm for the Planet Hollywood/Paris/Bally’s troika of casinos these days.

Regardless, as aesthetically pleasing as the view is, being the gentleman I always pretend to be, I’m not one to creep on or unabashedly flirt with and hit on the sexy-clad dealers, because I’m sure they get it enough, and I have no game anyway. To no surprise, such a mentality typically warms most of them up to me, because I’m not such an obvious sleaze, and ultimately my goal is play blackjack, not get reamed, and get as many free drinks as I can in the process; the view is just a bonus.

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Thoughts about Vegas and Otakon Vegas

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’m not entirely sure how it happened, but somewhere along the line, I caught something and I’ve been home sick for the last two days.  I do not get sick very often, so needless to say this doesn’t please me in the least bit, but there’s nothing I can really do about it.  However, it’s given me a little bit of extra time to catch up on processing some of the photos I took while out in Vegas, as well as some time to do some writing.

It’s been like two years since I was in Vegas last, and it’s safe to say that there have been quite some numerous changes since then.  One of the conversations had during the trip was about how Vegas was obviously one of the larger casualties of the last economic massacre, and it’s in little things that I think I notice that such an assessment is true.  A few years ago, casinos were extremely generous with coupon books boasting all sorts of match-play tickets, buy-one-get-one tickets, and other offers to stimulate parting money from your hand to the hands of the casinos.  Typically, these were given upon check in to hotels, or upon registering with a different player’s reward program.

Two years of inactivity and returning to Vegas used to warrant some sort of offers to help make up for money of mine they haven’t been getting but neither redeeming new cards, or checking into the hotel prompted any sort of offers of sort.  To me, it’s not a big deal, since I hardly used anything other than BOGO drinks, but the lack of offers wasn’t lost on me either.

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And of course, Happy New Years

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s now 2014.  For the next 183 days, we are winding up the year, with hopes and aspirations of the best outcomes for ourselves and those we care about.  I don’t feel that 2013 was terrible by any stretch of the imagination, but we as human beings all love to feel optimistic that the following year should always strive to be better.  I have no problem with that.

For me, the year started off pleasantly, in the company of fine people, and admittedly pretty tanked.  There are text messages sent that I don’t remember, and this photo that I was too hammered to bother tagging people on that someone less inebriated than I took the liberty to do instead.  I used to feel that New Years Eves were supposed to be awesome and grandiose, but when the day is over, a chill evening with decent people is all I really want to bring in the next year.

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Photos: Disney Vacation

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Y’know, I thought that there would be more to elaborate on when I got to posting the pictures, but it’s really nothing I haven’t already said in the previous post, summing things up.

The trip to Florida was as pleasant as I had hoped it would have been, and I don’t really have any complaints.  I spent a good bit of coin on a whole lot of food and more food, and lots of alcohol, and I rode a lot of roller coasters, got sunburned, and had a fun trip.  And despite taking a vacation from my vacation with a day spent mostly by the pool, I still found myself somewhat exhausted and slept for almost 12 hours in a single night this weekend.

Looking through these pictures makes me realize that there’s a long, long, long, long path ahead of me if I ever want to feel like I’ve got somewhat adequate control over my own camera, since a good 20% of the pictures taken were blurry beyond belief and therefore unusable.  But I kept in a few here and there, because hey, there was some drunken shenanigans, and the blur only adds to the accuracy of how such things might’ve felt.

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