I agree!
I haven’t been since the SOA annual meeting a few years back. And I had a humongous suite at the Cosmopolitan, with a kitchen and two bathrooms and a huge balcony overlooking the fountain at The Bellagio… and every time I was out there trying to enjoy the fountain it reeked of cigarettes.
As did every restaurant. 
Vegas is great. People watching, people listening. Fun to sit at a blackjack table and have the guy next to you tell you his theory on hotdogs or grabbing a drink sitting on a ledge watching people walk down the strip.
Plus ya got tons of people who like sports, like numbers. You got good weather with fancy pools.
I enjoy the stank of cigarette smoke, legit, so that didn’t bug me. But I don’t enjoy gambling in the least, and the one time I went was with my ex at the end of our marriage, so it wasn’t for me. Would give it one more try I guess. Mr. NA also does not enjoy gambling, but we do enjoy people watching.
I have never played the lotto. It isn’t fun. I have received some scratch off tickets as holiday gifts in the past. I think I won a few bucks on those, but never claimed it. Not worth the effort.
How would you know if you never played it?
All you had to do was bring them to the grocery store with you. Or the gas station. Or 7-11 or liquor store.
And presumably wait in a line and talk to someone.
NA, since you are here in the grocery store already, just wait here for 2 minutes and I’ll give you $5.
Would you do it?
Nah. Usually (back then) I had my kids with me, and was probably running late for something if I didn’t. I’d do it for $50, probably not less.
What’s your address? I’ll send you a SASE and you can mail the ticket(s) to me. I’ll cash them in…
Reminds me of a scratch off story.
My kids’ grandfather (my wife’s dad) sent them some scratch offs along with their Christmas presents last year. One kid won $20, another $50 and my son a cool Benjamin. Sweet, right?
Thing is, Pop Pop lives in Florida and we are in NJ and he sent us Florida lottery tix.
We had to mail him the winning tickets and have him cash them and them mail us the proceeds. Which he paid via check.
I used to go to Vegas annually in November for an internet marketing conference.
I’m supposed to meet another insurance guy there, we coordinate to meet at the elevators. I’m waiting, out comes the guy I’m waiting for. “?”. Yep! that’s me, he says. So we go grab a beer.
we’re sitting talking conference related stuff, then we get talking about insurance. The guy’s got NO idea what I’m talking about. I’m aghast, and keep pressing. This? No. This? No, I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.
Finally I said “are you ?”. Nope, he was . Wrong guy.
We headed back to the elevators where the two people were supposed to meet had figured out what was going on and were waiting for us. The four of us ended up becoming good friends over many years. One of them was a super affiliate, the other guy ran an adult toy store online and used to tell us about the emails he’d get from people raving and reviewing the products.
Did they like have the same first name or something?
Like:
SL: Are you Bob?
Wrong Bob: Yes!
(Figures out Wrong Bob doesn’t know squat about insurance.)
SL: Wait, are you Bob Smith?
Wrong Bob: Nope, I’m Bob Jones!
Just trying to piece together how you thought you had the right guy when you didn’t.
So your contact met up with the pr0n guy first? And, oh yes, 
.
Close. Like Rob and Bob. that’s what caused the confusion.
Met a lot of people at that conference. The four of us were sitting at slot machines at like 4am and some guy at the bar turns around with a glazed look and bloodshot eyes and says ‘hey, are you guys at that conference?’. So he joined our group. Then he saw a weird username at the conference which reminded him of someone from HS, so he reached out, sure enough it was that guy so that was six. That guy then was working with a bunch of british guys, so the culmination of that was about a dozen of us riding around vegas in a pink hummer limo.
I also had lunch with a guy that was doing some shady amazon affiliate stuff - that he grossed 750K in one year from doing. I took his shady stuff, turned it straight and ended up making some decent coin on other stuff, though nowhere near that much. And the other thing that came out of that conversation was the start of my antique insurance book collection.
Now I’m starting to miss the early years of the internet. 2000-2010 or so really was the wild west. A one man show could do really well by networking and working hard. These days it’s turned pretty corporate.
I just bid on a basket with $200 of NY lottery tickets.
It’s a fundraiser for my church.
Below EV?
I didn’t calculate it (yet) - it looks like a variety of scratch-off cards, so the EV may vary.
It also comes with a few bottles of wine + candy, but I figure that, all together, is worth about $30.
Anyway, my bid was at $150, the starting price. I will likely not bid higher if someone exceeds me. I’ll just buy a few raffle tickets instead.
I don’t like Vegas, but i had to go every year for a while when I was grading exams. I went to shows. Vegas has a lot of shows, in all price ranges. I went to cirque du Soleil, I went to magic shows, I went to comedy shows…
I also strolled down the street and people-watched.
But there are a lot of places I’d rather be, including mountains, cities, and my own home.
Mega Millions rolls over to $1 billion. Cash option would be a little over $600 million. Backing out federal taxes, you’re already down to “only” $380 million, give or take a million.
Maybe if the cash value gets to $1 billion, I might throw money at it just so if I win, I can go full Dr. Evil at the press conference.
Gotta be in it to win it!
I’m in a pool at my client’s office. We won I think $12 two drawings ago (reinvested in the next drawing) and then $30 last drawing (reinvested in upcoming drawing).
They do the Megaplier ($1 extra to increase the non-jackpot prizes), which I’d rather not do, but whatever.
