Another One Bites The Dust:Macker's Bachelor Trip starring Usual Suspects

Laughing my tail off at the "Twitchy as a crack whore" comment - as that's me all over today....

Back at work with an 8 AM meeting where I had to present annual performance reviews to a committee for the people I counsel - after my delayed flight got me to bed at 3:30 am - for a 5:10 alarm wake up. My hands were visibly shaking - and it wasn't from nerves. Voice was gone for the first few minutes but I got back in the groove. At my age, these are just the kinds of professional skills you have long ago had to master....

After Sunday night I don't think my BAC dropped to the level of coherence until I was somewhere above Colorado yesterday - and the hangover was raging full on, abetted by a nice older Indian gentlemen in the center seat next to me who pulled out ziploc bags of his wife's best cooking - glowing orange curry slurry that was just the smell I needed if I wanted to launch into heaving fits of stomach clearing splendor. I had to go full fetal in my seat and press my face against the window to get clear of that smell. I also launched a few counter measures of my own gas aimed in his direction - to provide the cabin a more pleasant smell than he was.

Despite the rough re-entry, this was an incredible trip and great memories of balls-to-the-wall degeneracy at its best. Those craps rolls at Margaritaville were a thing of beauty. My mistake is never pressing like I should when things go well - but I learned from a master Thursday night. My jaw was dropping with all the color on hardways - but if they keep hitting every time, you end up with a wallet you can't get back in your pants... Glorious. Lots of ups and downs from that start - but with a great crew even the craps death marches are pretty tolerable.

Thanks guys for making this a trip for the ages. It's going to take my liver a month to recover, but it was so fucking worth it.....

JZB

 

People may wish to watch out for some mlife IT issues apparantly going on in Vegas which affected my recent trip in a minor way, but were annoying nonetheless:

I just wrapped up a phone call with mlife member services....they have completely lost all record of my existence before Friday, May 29th.

They took my Gold card and Drivers License when paying me a jackpot at Aria on Thursday, May 28th.....didn't return either, and in my drunken and deliriously happy state I didn't notice til the next day, and then when at Mirage I hit another jackpot and couldn't give my drivers license so I had to give my passport card. For whatever reason they couldn't find me and had to issue me a "New Member Card"....and then the next night at Monte Carlo THAT card wasn't recognized and I had to be re-issued ANOTHER card.

Additionally when I returned to Aria and requested they check for my drivers license they told me they didn't have it. Later, when I thought about it, I realized it was a pretty quick kind of bullshit "no" and decided to check back. After again getting rebuffed, by a dude who I could clearly tell was completely bullshitting me, I insisted on speaking with the lost and found person directly. Guess what? She had my ID, found it like 30 second, and took about an hour to get it to me. I had to tell her I was gonna miss my flight to get her to even look.

Per the lady at Mlife, the "agent" who paid my handpay, and not some "system issue" are likely responsible. No idea where she is getting this, something to do with the coding of the merging of the two accounts. The biggest issue is the original account was deleted, and the middle account is also gone. This missing history contains a decade of play PLUS a huge day of play on this most recent trip.

So for 80% of my trip, I was completely without my mlife status and benefits. Of course I didn't get a chance to use anything before that as I would always accrue the comps, then use them for a dinner later in the trip or whatever.

I should also mention that another Mlife guy at the Aria desk told me he was aware of issues with some "lost accounts" recently.

This situation wasn't really that awful for me from a comp standpoint, probably cost me a buffet or two I didn't need to eat anyway. But the drivers license situation and the horrific customer service were a complete and total annoyance.

The funny thing is the customer service lady at mlife was not at all apologetic. I didn't ask her to be. But anyone trained in customer service knows the first thing you do is apologize. ESPECIALLY in a situation where you've got clear information that your company dropped the ball and its not an idiot customer.

I didn't really push the situation because it doesn't mean much to me, I'm not giving them much loyalty to begin with and now that I've found 6/8 STP in Cosmo high limit, I'll give all my play that was going to Aria and other MGM's to Cosmo--problem easily solved. But I do want to share the situation with my fellow vegas fanatics, just in case someone else runs into the same thing, hopefully they can at least know where to start.

Currently Mlife IT is looking into my account and apparantly in 24-48 hours they will be able to "revive" my history from archive. Of course that's pretty useless when you are just BACK from the Vegas trip.

Kudos to Mlife for somehow failing to meet even my lowest of expectations with so much as a quick passing apology.

 

I think Mlife just hired "Nick Burns" to work in the IT Department.

[video=youtube;dNB_RjpWnsI]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNB_RjpWnsI[/video]

 

That sounds par for the course when it comes to MGM Resorts IT...honestly, I have never seen a company with worse IT than MGM/MLife. There is always a "system issue" or "system maintenance" going on when you ask any of the rank and file. Good luck getting your information back but it'll probably be screwed up for years to come. On the bright side, you should be able to parlay it into having multiple identities at MLife. You can rotate them to get two sets of offers.

BTW, thanks for ANOTHER epic live trip report. It was Beeejay's classic (post) trip reports that actually brought me to VMB and I still contend that Beeejay pioneered the "live trip report" and nobody does it better.

 

Thanks CJ for the super nice comments, really appreciate it! Yeah those first few live reports were a real chore, the HTC Windows phone was a BEAST, I think I burned up a few at the pool doing updates. And it seems like i had to do a summary with pics at night then. Was so uncomfortable resting the laptop on #@$#@$ *%*^ and not watching porn for a change

 

That I Heart radio concert we were hanging around for until they kicked us out is on The CW on Thursday, June 11th......would be hilarious to see pphold, gaggles, borat and myself surely fighting to finish our buckets of beers from Brady before security booted us....

 

What a read. Thanks to all u crazy drunks posting pics! Historic TR. Is there a Hall of Fame on VMB? Someone may need to get on that

 

I don't want to overstate things or be over-dramatic, but it's obvious BeeeJay has a skill in doing live trip reports. No slam on anyone else, but he's the best. If you all follow sports and sports writing at all, these reports are like Bill Simmons in his heyday writing for ESPN. That's the best analogy I can come up with. As with Simmons, these are funny, timely, and spot on. And to have Packer, Plee, the crazy Canadians and all the rest in tow this past trip for a Perfect Storm of events, this was a magnum opus. Kudos to you all and thanks for taking us along.

 

Ahhh, a Windows 8 Phone...

 

Just getting back to the land of the living. That was my best roll by far of the year. Thanks for the Hard Way bets from yourself and Begas Beejay. And thanks for the table at Beachers. That was a top three trip of all time and bst bday in over a decade. I literally won everywhere I played right up until the hour of 7-9 am.

 

This tray was almost empty when I picked up the dice. Between my roll and Vegas Beejay it was a decent comeback at the table he and Shifter got for us.

I will take that cash out anyone on a $300 buy in!

 

Then while we waited for Vegas Beejay and Shifter the winning continued as I hit these in about 10 minutes:

 

Then.....this happened.......

 

Which lead to this.....

 

And in the mean time....

 

Followed by....

 

Then on my way back from the bathroom I dumped a quick hundy back into VP and got this!
Yes, MGM actually paid me to go to the bathroom.

 

After I could take no more of the free booze that was generously provided by my cramps table partners....I slipped the cab line guy some $ to bud in front of 100 others and went to Cromwell. I used to have a Platinum card but I'm down to Gold. So yup I paid. And I apologize for nothing to the peeps who are too cheap to stand in line for 30 minutes in a town paved by money. Then things got serious....

 

The original live reports were way before windows 8, that was actually the last one I had before I phone. I believe the HTC Bricks with slide out keyboard were in use initially....I think there is a pic of an HTC 8525 from a 2009 trip report. Those phones were so painfully bad. I think a lot of those 2008-2010 trip reports might no longer be on the board

 

Earlier we went to Cortez Room at Gold Coast for dinner and then when we left we played a little vp and let me tell you the pay tables were not the Strips pay tables..I managed to hit this on triple play.