Day Four - Part Two

I went out to see Red Rock Canyon tonight. What an incredible site! I took about 400 pictures. True to form, there will be 3-5 pictures that I feel are good enough to be part of my online photography site which I hope someday will be part of my portfolio if photography ever becomes my sideline or my business. I wish! I will keep working on it and see what happens later. Anyway, I digress…

Red Rock Canyon is about 190,000 acres of desert canyons and chaparral in the Mojave Desert and in the Spring Mountains near Las Vegas. The views are spectacular! I am so glad that I took the time to drive out to the canyon. There is a scenic drive that extends for 13 miles through the canyon, though the entire recreational area is huge, extending for miles beyond the areas I saw today. If I had more time, I might consider revisiting the canyon, though I hear that this time of year, the rattlesnakes and scorpions are most active. I did not see any evidence of either today, so I am not sure if I am relieved or if I missed out on something that would make for great photography. Oh well. I did get some nice pictures, and I will retouch those and post them to the photography site as soon as I can.

I brought along three bottles of water and stayed for about three hours. I figured that was enough water, but I was wrong. I wish I brought at least double that. I spent an hour exploring at the first stop along the trail, focusing on the plant life and flowers on the succulents in the desert. The air temperature when I left the parking lot at the first stop was 119°, but that may be a bit dubious, as I was sitting on a huge rock baking under the Mojave Desert sun. When I got back to Vegas, it was only 107°.

I read a quote that said, “If your pictures are not good enough, you are not close enough.” I took more close-up photos and macro shots at Red Rock than I did of the horizon, the canyons, or the mountain ranges. What amazes me is that despite the fact that Las Vegas averages around 4-5 inches of rain a year, when you drive the 17 miles to Red Rock, you find out that the desert is alive with birds and wildlife abounds. The desert in this area is green and full of flowers and vegetation. Red Rock Canyon is spectacular!

Day Four

Today in training, we were introduced to the new gaming platforms that we will see in the field soon. Honestly, the only thing that changed dramatically was the physical appearance of the exterior of the slot machine cabinets. The interior, the hardware, has not changed that much. One thing that we are seeing is a trend towards off-the-shelf components and a gradual convergence with PC technology. That is to say that our slot machines are becoming computers, either Windows-based or Linux operating systems. A few components are standard off-the-shelf items now, especially for handling data storage and video processing. Future generations of the hardware will be very close to actual computers hiding out in slot machine cabinets. Every hardware roll-out is a step closer to that convergence, and that is good for various reasons. It saves us money in development, makes parts acquisitions easier and less expensive, and reduces costs for the casinos in replenishing and repairing the machines, not that our machines are particularly prone to hardware failures.

I found out that we will install these new cabinets in the field in Minnesota within a couple of weeks, so the training seems very timely. The one thing that I am missing here in Las Vegas is a preview of the hardware for the EBay systems. I will begin installing those in Minnesota next week, so a preview would be nice. There is one more day of training yet, so it might happen, but I would not guarantee it.