Tuesday Night Phil Picked me up and we schlepped off to Vegas to catch the IAAPA (International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions) show, which of course showcases the current and future trends of Family Amusement Centers, theme parks, arcades, etc. We arrived at the Strip around midnight, and we tried to find the motel that we used during our Nationals trip. We picked the motel next to it without thinking lol. The lady was cool though and we got our room and conked out.

Wednesday morning was the first day the Public could enter, and Phil was able to secure VIP tickets through his company Paper Tickets Inc (the company behind the Redondo Fun Factory). We were waived the $89 entrance fee. A small breakfast at Carl's Jr and we were still pretty early, so we decided to walk to the LVCC. The motel was across the street from the Stratosphere, and the walk was only maybe a mile and a half, so even carrying my backpack it was simply a brisk walk.

Approaching the LVCC there seemed to be another convention on gaming as well, this however was for casino-type gaming. I personally wanted to check it out to see what they had in there, but Phil was adamant on getting to the show on time for the first day. Fine. There was some confusion when we got our tickets as He signed me under Paper Tickets but he signed himself under our own "company" Fistful of Quarters (FFoQ). They spent about 10 minutes trying to just change the name of his company back to Paper Tickets, but it was just a communication error between Phil's ghetto English and the Asian lady being too quiet. It was resolved though 5 minutes before the show opened.

Rather than go through what the days were I'm going to bullet list the more awesome stuff we saw there.

-Free Samples of food. Oh my god there was no need to spend money at this show, as all the concession companies brought free samples of their product. Carrie's Pizza, Noble Roman's pizza, Perky's Pizza (very delicious, best of the three pizza vendors); A mini-donut and pancake company, Coca-Cola was there promoting Vitamin water, Fuze tea, Full Throttle Twisted energy drink and Fanta Apple along with the main standbys and free Minute Maid frozen lemonade cups and pops, dozens of candy companies, Two companies that had grease-free frying methods were shelling out corn dogs, fries, jalapeño poppers, and other traditional "fried" foods; ICEE was there promoting a new flavor, several slushee and shaved ice companies were there, Dippin' Dots, 2 similar and other ice cream competitors were spread around the convention. A company called Chipstix had multiple locations and a cool idea of spiral-cutting potatoes and frying them on a stick, which gave them a chip-like look but way more potato flavor, and they had like 18 different seasonings you could try. Also a Capris Sun wanna-be company that had decent juice. Phil took crazy advantage of the free pizza while I gulped down more ICEES than I have since was like 9 years old LOL!

-Arcades. Andamiro, Sega/ICE, Raw Thrills, and a few chinese companies brought the heat with new, amazing "arcade" cabinets. Aside from the sit-down driving games like Sega Rally 3 and H2Overdrive (which are already out), Raw Thrills debuted a Terminator: Salvation arcade based on what looked that Ghost Squad game. There were a lot of Deluxe Cabinets with motion sensing and rumble support. Pretty much every driving game had an "attraction version" which cost like $20k more and had a stand-alone simulator, sort of like how Daytona USA had the life-like car mockups. There were a few prototype racing games set on pneumatic pylons that really moved the player around in 99% accurate g-forces to a race car. On top of that there were some enclosed simulators like the classic roller coaster ones we all know and love, except these rolled and spun in every possible direction, including upside down spinning. Very intense and it actually upset my stomach a bit.

-Mang Stainless Steel Art. Very cool sculptures at the show, including the people who made Chuck E. Cheese (he was there!) and the Ripley's Believe it or Not and Medieval Times wax sculptures (Lifeformations). Add that to a display of some of the best Pirate/demon sculptures (the Pirates of the Caribbean folks) and you had a lot of world-class talent in the halls with some great anamatronics. There were a few surprises as well with smaller puppet companies (the Goosebumps puppeteers) having some of the most bizarre presentations.

-Addicting Redemption games. Pretty much everyone now knows about Stacker, one of the recent and super addicting pseudo skill-based prize games. There were a lot more of those at the show this year from LAI games and competitors. Lai had a new version called Crack the Code which is a Price is Right-type game where the game gives you 9 numbers, and you have to push the button on the right numbers to crack it. of course the farther you get into the code, the faster the light meter spins. It also has the Stacker premise that you can stop at 6 numbers and get a worthless little prize, or hit continue to crack the last 3 numbers (if you can!). Kind of cool, but it wore off just like stacker. As far as the Crane games, Andamiro has a new one called Winners' Cube, which gives you control of a pole that you must move to poke through a hole in a window to push a prize out. If anyone has played Barber Cut (the fun and annoying game which has prizes on strings that you have one chance to move a razor blade to sever the string and win the prize) then they will know how annoying Winner' Cube is. You get only 2 buttons, Up and Right. you can only push each button once so if you fuck up, game over. Still addicting gameplay though and while me and this one lady were trying to figure it out, she mentioned "what if we were paying a dollar every time" and we both laughed nervously.

-New Game concepts! There is a game by Benchmark games that really impressed me called Big Tony's Pokerkard, which is a bar-style game that is all touch-screen, and 4 player texas hold-em. The trick is that when playing multi-player, you physically have to hold your hands over your own cards to check hem and so your opponents don't see. It added a level of personal interactivity to a game that I never saw before. Plus you get a card to hold all your credits (it's play money) that you tap on the game and it remembers how much you win or lose, and of course put in more money and you can rebuy if you want. There was also a gigantic balloon popping game. Skee-Ball corporation had a fun ticket game where you had to drop a token in on a spinning roulette wheel in numerical combinations to hit 21, which was a cool mix between Blackjack and Roulette. DJ Max Technika was there along with it's 2-player Chinese bootleg companion (thankfully they were placed far from each other).

-Uniforms, plush toys, mascot makers, umbrella sellers, and theme creators were also there, allowing any newbie FEC person to turn a drab arcade into a futuristic wasteland or tropical paradise or cartoon wonderland, all that corny theme stuff like how employees dress and sculptures, toys, etc. PLus customized items like purses, candy, pretty much anything you can think of in a theme park, there was a company and a rival for it. Fog machines, musical acts, special guests (there were 2 stunt dog companies and 3 special bird performers there [Owls have fucking crazy necks])

-INFLATABLES HOLY SHIT! The inflatable jumpers you see every so often are pure shit compared to the crazy amazing monstrosities they had at the show. Water slides, rock walls, pirate ships, monster trucks, tidal waves, robots, dinosaurs...we are talking two-story tall (24ft) adventureland goddamn obstacle courses with trick walls, ball pits, house areas, nets, slides, in every color you could possibly think of. I was in awe of the amazing construction they are capable of nowadays.

-Super Auctions had a booth there, this is where Phil, JSB and Erick got a lot of their machines for very cheap. The next one is December 19 and I plan on going to see whats up.

-Courses. I've been interested in ropes courses since high school but I've never been able to do a zip line or rope course before. There was a setup in the hall of a demo course (yes this is how big the hall was), and as I went on I loved every second of it. I'm heavily considering somehow going to one somewhere. RCI (Ropes Courses Inc.) had a very good model. There was also a Laser maze course that felt right out of the movie Entrapment, where a person would walk into a room and suddenly all these fucking lasers appear, and the goal is to get to the other side of the room, touch a pad, and get out as fast as possible without tripping the lasers. Tripping a laser adds 30 seconds to your time. There are beginner, easy, medium, and expert laser levels. they didn't show the expert levels, but the fucking beginner was hard enough for me. I had a million ideas in my head about that, and I really REALLY want to have one. Then of course there were baseball pitching machine/batting cage vendors, etc.

-Waterslide/Roller coaster vendors. These guys were the legit creators of actual theme parks around the world, and some of them had samples of the giant machinery it takes to move thousands of gallons of water or tons of steel track. The innovations in technology so far are crazy, and a lot of the cool new themes in roller coasters are displayed in the middle east (Dubai specifically) and China/Hong Kong. There was a vendor there, Aquarena, which had a heart-stopping launch capability for waterslides called AquaDrop: Most waterslides have the redlight/greenlight, where either you or a lifeguard push you down onto the slide and you continue. Aquadrop has you stand in a chamber with a countdown timer, and when it's time, the floor falls out from under and just drops you onto the slide already going fast. Doesn't sound like much, but it's like 0 to 2.5 G's in 1.5 seconds. Plus other people can watch you drop and it's just amazing. the demo the company had was a launcher into a short slide down, but that was enough to prove to me how amazing it would be for like a dropout-type slide, to just be standing, then instantly falling at 40 MPH into the slide with no horizontal movement to cause burns...ARRGH



So, two days of that nonsense. On the First night I went to Stratosphere Casino to try my first ever casino game of Texas hold-em. I watched for about a half hour on the sidelines, then when a new game series was announced ($1/$2 blinds with a 50 BB buy-in) I figured that was pretty much in my range, and I picked up $200 in chips. I sat in as the 8th person at the table, which was a pretty cool bunch of folks except for one asshole who thought he was hot shit at poker, talking about percentages and skill and all this shit, complaining that everyone was playing tight yet folding to everything as well. I really hated him but the other people were cool. Which was good because as I formally sat down I was stupidly nervous. My hands were shaking as i moved the chips around, and my voice was wavering. But within 5 hands I was able to 1.5x my chips (ie, I had around $325 in chips). It was a cash game so I could have (SHOULD HAVE) gone and left since I was ahead. but I kept playing to build experience.
Then I also forgot that the casino chicks give free alcohol. So 2 strong jack and cokes later I think I was getting cocky as I made one older guy leave the table (he was really cool about it though, we both played well), and one other former casino employee cussed me out after my A/J beat his A/8. I folded a K/3 when the flop and turn ended up being Q/J/A then 10. I kind of hit myself for that. After that though I think I was getting cocky and the asshole player was talking to this one Swedish player, ON HIS DICK about swedes being "amazing poker players" because "they respect the money" and "weren't easy money like this guy"-and he points to me, the fucker- even though I already took people out. I think he called me that because I folded as BB before the flop even with no raise. Fuck him. Well to the Swede's credit he was trying to ignore the guy and put up his hoodie and baseball cap to discourage, but the guy would not shut up, and so the guy started taunting the other players and in general being a nuisance, but I guess that was his strategy? I lost a few hands, then I lost it all when I went heads up with the Swede. I had A/9 and the flop was 6/4/9. Yay I thought, top pair unless he had pocket something higher than 9. He raised and I called, the turn was useless and we both checked, last card comes out and it's a 6. I'm like fuck yeah two pair (6 and 9). He goes all in and I call it.
Fuck he has the third 6. I bust and leave the table, but not after the dealer compliments me on my singing. Wonderwall was playing and I was kinda singing along quietly, but I was to the dealer's right. She heard me and said I really sang it well :3 So all in all even though I lost $200 I consider it a benefit to get over my casino jitters in a major Vegas casino (rather than the bullshit ghetto casinos here in LA), learn to ignore the shit-talkers, watch the quiet guys, and be nice to all the normal people. Tip the dealer if you win a decent pot, and watch my tells (I did this by constantly smiling and acting like I was distracted and not caring about my hand, only checking the cards once). I feel good about going to an LA Casino now and owning face, so I want to do that pretty soon. Or maybe going to Vegas one last time in December under the auspices of the DDR Finals, hehe.


Overall My new impossible life goal is to repurchase the land that Malibu Castle and Monsoon Lagoon were on and remake them into a destination again with an arcade, new minigolf courses, a laser maze, batting cages and either go-kart track or ropes course to take a lot of the open space. I'll be lightly looking into the square footage and price of that parcel since it' only used as trucker stop at the moment.

If A picture is worth a thousand words


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uo7ClgbVFxw


Then this is enough for an entry

FRIDAY: Friday morning was spent doing some laundry and in general getting the stuff I needed together for the trip. I had spent the last couple of days with Dustin attempting and mostly failing to set up a LAN with his friend Christian's router. Seems Linksys doesn't have the drivers for Windows 7 Ready yet, so I could not play Borderlands with him. We were able to play Battlefield 2 for about 30 minutes though, and what we did do was fun. So when that failed Dustin took me back home and I packed my backpack and Pirate bag to get ready.

Phil picked me up and though I understood we were going with Ervin, we also had a new passenger: Dickey. So now there would b 6 of us in Ervin's Altima: Me, Phil, Fob, Tiffany, and dickey, along with Ervin driving. Well then yes, I was crushed in between dickey and fob the whole journey, and we had to switch between leaning forward and back because my shoulders were just too big (haha). Anyway, we were really late in getting on the road as we had to wait for Tiffany to finish work and the Traffic which everyone else going had already reported was atrocious. Ervin thus delayed our trip to 7pm. We stopped for Gas and were on our way. The traffic wasn't that bad anymore, but we still arrived at Vegas at round 1:30.

The Luxor is a very beautiful casino on the outside, but it's a complete mess of interior design on the inside. Maybe this is to replicate how pyramids are built in real life? Passages that dead end, 4 different corners of the hotel that aren't connected, and a completely separate building that takes a hidden pathway to get to. We got lost trying to find the two rooms, which ended up being in the hidden building. Once in we met up with Brianna, shauna, and Cory; Ryan, fatguy, Ash, drea and James. Later on we saw Alex Taubman, Pike, and Blake pop in. Even though we had two rooms, it was still like the other Vegas trip, with people sleeping at all angles and on the floor. Turns out these were temporary rooms anyway as they would be moving on Saturday. Bri (who paid for the rooms) wanted connected rooms with the doors between them. It's late and a few people wanted to start getting high, but thank goodness Shauna cut that out and everyone went to sleep. Little did I know that would probably be the last time I saw some of my clothes ever again :(

SATURDAY: I was only able to take small naps because I knew Edgar would be coming by to pick me up very early for the main reason I was in vegas: Watching the final Table of the World Series of Poker. "The November Nine": Darvin Moon, Jeff Shulman, Phil Ivey, Steven Begleiter, Eric Buchman, Joe Cada, Kevin Schaffel, Antoine Saout, and James Akenhead. Joe Cada definitely had the most passionate crowd with him, as they went berserk every time he won any amount of chips. "Begs" also had a cool backup crew, as well as the Frenchman SAOUUUUUUUUUT who had like 200 peopel with him singing in French. There was almost a fight in the first two hours of the tournament when Saout and Cada's people got in each others face. but luckily everyone only wanted to see poker and the French moved across the auditorium.

Anyway, I had to take a cab to the Rio because Edgar forgot to pick me up. He was early in line though and I was able to get in. We got some free swag including an issue of Bluff magazine and I got a hat from Milwaukee's Best Light beer (an atrocious liquid I would not want anyone to ever drink) and a Final Table commemorative poker chip. Edgar had a picture from his brother characterizing the nine players. It was pretty awesome and a lot of players and people complimented him on it. We joked that Oscar might become an official WSOP character artist! Our first seats were in the corner and not very good, though I had a clear view of maybe 2 players, most of us watched the huge screens around the Penn&Teller theater. After the dinner break at 9pm, we are able to score much better center seats. The tournament started at around 1pm, and continued to 5:57am the next day. Edgar was sick and I was falling asleep, so we left at the 3am break while there were still 5 people left at the table.

When I got back the the Luxor everyone had already moved to the new rooms, but Phil, Fob and Tiffany were basically "squatting" in the old room since the key cars still worked. they had free beds so I guess that was good. I was there for a few minutes but decided to go up Just in case we got caught by housecleaning. Upstairs was a MESS, with busted ramen noodles all over the floor and random shit just all over the place. Typical Vegas room so it was alright. I snagged a spot on the floor again. Got to sleep around 4am, meaning I pretty much stayed up 24 hours with only a cumulative 2 hours of naps spread around the day. Turns out while staying that the tournament, I missed a DDR Regional Qualifying tournament at Gameworks and a Great time with everyone drinking and having fun. Others will have to fill me in on that later.

SUNDAY: We all woke up in general around 10am since we had to check out. Everyone packed up and we went to Harrah's for the Flavors buffet. Sunday Brunch was delicious as usual although they didn' have waffles this time, the French Toast was better than last time so it balanced out. I was able to ration my breakfast and lunch food with dessert this time, so I felt very "complete" when all was said and done. which was good because for most of Saturday I didn't eat anything and only had some soda as nourishment. Being stuck in that theater was something else.

After Harrah's I hopped in the car with Ash, Drea and Jantzn since I didn't want to get crushed again. I figured out I lost my black everlast shorts, grey "23" sweatshirt, and an Evil Controllers t shirt in our old room. I don't really care since they were kind of sleepwear and I have more shorts, but it kind of sucks about the sweatshirt as I've had that since High School :(

Traffic was ridiculous, so we pulled into a Taco bell and ran into fatguy and Ryan! we spent maybe an hour there partly because of the traffic but partly because the service was so slow. I ordered one chalupa and it took about 15 minutes for it to come out. Eventually we set back and dropped of drea and jantzn at Aaron's house, then Ash dropped me off at home.


I'm looking forward to a relatively calm week before the madness starts up again next week: going back to vegas for the IAAPA arcade show and other stuff!

Recently, in large French city, a poster featuring a young, thin and tanned woman appeared in the window of a gym. It said:

¨THIS SUMMER DO YOU WANT TO BE A MERMAID OR A WHALE?¨

A middle aged woman, whose physical characteristics did not match those of the woman on the poster, responded publicly to the question posed by the gym.

To Whom It May Concern:

Whales are always surrounded by friends (dolphins, sea lions, curious humans). They have an active sex life, they get pregnant and have adorable baby whales. They have a wonderful time with dolphins stuffing themselves with shrimp. They play and swim in the seas, seeing wonderful places like Patagonia, the Barren Sea and the coral reefs of Polynesia. Whales are wonderful singers and have even recorded CDs. They are incredible creatures and virtually have no predators other than humans. They are loved, protected and admired by almost everyone in the world.

Mermaids don’t exist. If they did exist, they would be lining up outside the offices of Argentinean psychoanalysts due to identity crisis. Fish or human? They don’t have a sex life because they kill men who get close to them not to mention how could they have sex? Therefore they don’t have kids either. Not to mention who wants to get close to a girl who smells like a fish store?

The choice is perfectly clear to me; I want to be a whale.

P.S. We are in an age when media puts into our heads the idea that only skinny people are beautiful, but I prefer to enjoy an ice cream with my kids, a good dinner with a man who makes me shiver and a coffee with my friends. With time we gain weight because we accumulate so much information and wisdom in our heads that when there is no more room it distributes out to the rest of our bodies. So we aren't heavy, we are enormously cultured, educated and happy. Beginning today, when I look at my butt in the mirror I will think, ¨Good gosh, look how smart I am.

Samsung Jack!

I could not afford the additional unlimited data plan that the iPhone has (my Unemployment is out and entering the first extension as of the next check), so I went for a proven method and simply upgraded my phone to the current model. I bypassed the Nokia e71x simply because it had a brand new OS that I wasn't sure about, and windows mobile is really nice as far as compatibility with my own PC. I stored all my numbers in Outlook before I changed phones, so the SIMM card I have is almost worthless, since it's much easier to maintain and transfer numbers to every new phone from outlook and just load them into my phone's internal memory.

While the MicroSD slot is still there, they moved it to a retarded location behind the battery cover, so I have to take it out to change the card. Luckily I never need to since I can transfer all my videos/music/photos with the USB cable. Also I have an adapter to use regular headphones with the phone, so add yet another mp3 player to my collection (sixth one now). This is of course, more convenient since it's my phone as well. I'm still kind of in love with the Walkman I won at CHEDDAR though, so I'm separating genres into each device.

I'm still mucking with the phone but it seems solid right now. only after i really test it out will I have a solid rating for it.

So I saw Paranormal Activity yesterday at like 2pm, and by the time I went to sleep I was still paranoid about a demn coming to get me, especially since the closet right across from my bed has a trick door that leads into our attic (and access to basically the whole house from there). For a movie made under $10k, it just goes to prove that, at least with horror movies, less is more. People lauded the first Saw as a great movie because it mostly centered around two guys in a room in a psychologically disturbing scenario. Paranoia, claustrophobia, and the addition of the "trap" made each character powerful; of course since then Saw has developed a ridiculous storyline and has wandered from it's initial premise (correcting a moral flaw) with a dependence on the trap gimmicks (which are awesome, but lose the awesomeness when their purpose is lessened).

Paranormal Activity relies on the same claustrophobia, but extends it to the house these folks live in. By halfway through the movie we pretty much know where every room is, every light switch. Most of the scary parts are telegraphed in advance by the Night shots, where the man sets the camera up in the bedroom facing the door and the bed so he can try to catch the demon on film. The story goes through about 3 weeks, and of course, the night shots are the most intense. In the theater I went to, there was an excellent bass system and the kids whom I thought were going to ruin the movie (a bunch of 9th graders or something) actually helped it because they were screaming and silent at all the right times. They all jumped at one part i didn't even find scary, but the reactions themselves made the moment better!

PA is easily one of the best suspense/scary movies to come along in a long time, possibly in a decade with the exception of the first Saw film. I encourage anyone who likes the "handicam" realism effect and just being scared in general to go see it.

I had a dream about a game.

this game has a board which has 12 holes in it. under the board is a device that shoots water, or needles, through some holes, randomly. That is to say, there is a spout under each hole, but only some of them erupt in each round. Each player is given about 5-6 chips, and they can place the chips over the holes on the board. The goal of the game is to have the least amount of water/needles pop up through the board. So If you place 6 of your chips down and the water that comes out happens to hit all 6 chips (and thus doesn't pop out of the board) then your score is 0 (the game uses reverse scoring). Of course if you put your chips down and all 6 miss (ie, the water comes out on 6 other holes), then you get 6 points.

I kind of like the concept of this game, even though it's pretty much reliant on luck since the water comes out at random. Now that I think of it, there isn't really a game like this on the market. Maybe it would be fun for kids. Or maybe it could be programmed to follow some sort of pattern to make it kind of skill-based.

On Monday, Phil and I did what we have been saying we were going to do for a few years, and traveled with a Ryder truck to the TILT arcade at Puente Hills mall (near AI) and bought a ratty old Pump it Up machine. After dropping it off at Erick's house for storage, we had an apt celebratory dinner at the new Manna Korean BBQ at Fox Hills. Since we are pretty much cool with the owner now we got complementary veggie pancakes in addition to an extra bottle of Hite beer when we ordered our food. Awesome. This was Edzel and Erick's first time at a kbbq and indeed at the newly-remodeled "Westfield Culver City". The entire mall now has a heavy Korean slant (haha!) with a Kyochan in the food court, and a Korean bakery on the first floor, among other Korean touches.

Tuesday was mostly hanging around the house playing Guitar Hero 5 and getting DLC for it. That night I played Marvel ultimate alliance 2 and Carcassonne with Ryan, Shauna and her boyfriend Anthony (which I still am totally speechless at, especially hearing him call her "babe"; it's a trip to hear that). Fun times, and I had an abrupt conversation with Crystal, who is calling me more and more. I'm hurt more than I thought that I can't go visit her; moreso than Nisha, who has been a very fun...companion recently.

Wednesday was the first day of officially fixing up our machine.
Cabinet: Perfect Collection
Left Pad: SX style
Right pad: DX style
Game software: Exceed 1

so it's really a Frankenstein monster, and Ervin and I took both pads completely apart to clean them quite thoroughly. We are planning on raising the brackets so the pads are closer to flush with the brackets, but we are having problems replacing the top screws (very flat headed screws are surprisingly difficult to find.) Friday will be fiddling with the inside of machine including the amp, the computer, and dusting the interior and checking the monitor which already seems fine and bright. If the machine was really ours, I would replace the speakers with 5.1 Bose surround sound and give the amp a good 1000w boost, but our overall plan is to sell it to Clyde, who as we know works Keystone bowling alley. We heard from him that DDR Supernova isn't doing too well and he was looking to get a Pump. Fist Full of Quarters (FFOQ) is making its first transaction! haha Maybe I should make this my day job.

Speaking of which, I had a phone...discussion with a Talent Acquisition person from Northrup, where I had a great talk about where I belong in the organization. As I feared, my life and how it's reflected on my resume makes me a poor candidate. Graduating with the Econ degree says one thing, but being employed by tech and game companies sends a conflicting message in a corporation where specialized skills are seen as more important. So I'm going to take this weekend and find out the one thing I really want to do (although after thinking about it, I think I've already known and was just denying it).

Speaking of this weekend, it sure will be busy. There is an ITG tournament (CHEDDAR) I want to visit, as well as the Underground Street Fighter IV tournament on Saturday, there are two movies I want to see (Where the Wild Things are and Law Abiding Citizen).

Well the Camry is now off our insurance, so it's pretty much officially dead. I take it short distances when I want food fast, but it tends to creak and stall and not even start up anymore. It's like watching an old pet lose all its abilities one by one :(

The job hunt is ridiculous, these past 2 weeks I've stepped into overdrive and I still haven't gotten a bite. It's simply ridiculous how hard it is to secure a job. There are plenty of openings, so I don't get it. I should barge in somewhere and just demand one lol...