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Posted in The Groom
Tags: nerdfaces

I don’t know why I’m getting into blogging.  I’m terrible with taking photos before I eat.  But Monta Ramen was so good that I felt like I had to post something.  Anything.  So here it is:

monta_ramen

Luckily you’ll find plenty of photos on Google, Yelp! and their own site montaramen.com.  Pictured above was Tonkotsu Ramen and Chan-Han.  Tonkotsu Ramen is pork bone broth marrow goodness.  At the top right of the photo in the black bowl is Japanese style fried rice knowns as Chan-Han.  Monta Ramen is a small hole in the wall joint.  The place doesn’t even have 6 tables and there might be 10 seats at the counter.  There is always a line and they don’t take reservations so expect to a wait a bit.

But as you can see from the photo, it’s good to the last bite.

Posted in Las Vegas, Off The Strip

With a new pope and Easter around the corner it’s easy to think holy during the start of Spring.  It’s also the start of the NCAA March Madness tournament and all the college kids will be off for a week.  So there is no better place to kick off the new season than Las Vegas.

My better half has been racking up some points using her Grazie card and she received an offer in the mail for a free 4 day weekend at The Venitian.  I was lucky enough to get Friday and Monday off so that we could attend.  We arrived and received our information package upon check-in.

Very James Bond-ish to receive package with your instructions on what you will be doing during your stay.  She’ll be playing in a $50,000 prize pool slot tournament.  This one is named Topsy Turvy because the payouts don’t pay out according to your place.

If you’ve never played a slots tournament before, here’s a youtube clip of how people mash their buttons:

The tournament was on the Palazzo side of the resort by the Grand Luxe.  We brought the baby with us this trip and we weren’t allowed to keep the baby out on the casino floor.  Luckily the Grand Luxe had a ‘patio’ area where I sit at with the baby while the wifey played.  The tournament had 3 intervals, one each day and we had an 11am starting time for all 3 days of the event.

At the end of Day 1, she had scored about 8,000 points which would get totalled

Posted in Weekend Get Away

My better half has been putting on some miles on the Grazie and it has finally paid off. She received an invite in the mail for a free 4 day weekend at the Venetian and an entry to the Topsy Turvy Slot Tournament

Wish us luck! We’ll be reporting throughout the weekend.

Posted in Weekend Get Away

Windows

Locate the HOSTS file on your computer. Typically it is in one of the following locations:

• Windows NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista/7 – C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
• Windows 95/98/Me – C:\windows\hosts

Open this file with a text editor such as Notepad or Wordpad.

• Right-click on Notepad and select the option to Run as Administrator – otherwise you may not be able to open this file.

Then, open the file. Consider performing a “Save As” so you have an original copy of the file that you can restore later. You will see two columns of information, the first containing IP addresses and the second containing host names. By default, a windows hosts file should be similar to the following:

Filename: hosts

127.0.0.1 localhost

You can add additional lines to this file that will point requests for a particular domain to your new server’s IP address. Example:

Filename: hosts

127.0.0.1 localhost

70.32.88.203 example.com

70.32.88.203 www.example.com

Save your changes.

Restart any currently open browsers. You may also want to flush your DNS cache. In Windows XP, go to Start, and then Run, then type “cmd” and hit enter. Type the following:

ipconfig /flushdns

Visit your new site using http://example.com or http://www.example.com/

Mac OS X

Open Terminal, which is in Applications, then the Utilities folder.

You may want to first make a backup copy of your existing hosts file:

sudo cp /private/etc/hosts /private/etc/hosts-orig

Enter your user password at the prompt.

Type the following command to edit your hosts file:

sudo vi /private/etc/hosts

Enter your user password at the prompt.

You will see a file with contents similar to the following:

Filename: hosts

##

# Host Database

#

# localhost is used to configure the loopback interface

# when the system is booting. Do not change this entry.

##

127.0.0.1 localhost

255.255.255.255 broadcasthost

::1 localhost

fe80::1%lo0 localhost

Add your domain and IP address to the bottom of the file. For example:

Filename: hosts

##

# Host Database

#

# localhost is used to configure the loopback interface

# when the system is booting. Do not change this entry.

##

127.0.0.1 localhost

255.255.255.255 broadcasthost

::1 localhost

fe80::1%lo0 localhost

70.32.88.203 example.com

70.32.88.203 www.example.com

vi tip:

Press “i” to enter “insert mode” so you can type and copy/paste. Press “Esc” to exit “insert mode” when you are done modifying the file. Type “:wq” to save and quit.

You may also need to grant yourself sudo priveleges, if you got a permission error in Step 2. In your “Help” menu, search for “root” and select the instructions for “Enabling the root user.” Follow these.

Restart any currently open browsers. You may also want to flush your DNS cache:

dscacheutil -flushcache

Visit your new site using http://example.com/ or http://www.example.com/

Posted in DreamHost tips and tricks

So I’m a new parent as of November which is why I have not been able to make any trips out to Las Vegas. But just about 30 minutes ago, the wife asked “What are we doing for your half birthday this year? Wanna go to Vegas?” And I’m like .. YEAH! I made my rounds on betterbidding.com and there wasn’t anything up for the weekend of Feb 9th, 2013. So I hopped on to priceline to see what was available.

The criteria has changed a bit now that we have a little one with us. It doesn’t matter too much if we get a room with a casino. It seems a bit more beneficial to us if there wasn’t a casino. It wouldn’t seem so hard to get the baby in and out with a stroller.

Usually I bid for a 4 star hotel in ‘Fremont St vicinity’ because I always get The Golden Nugget. In my view it is still the best value in all of Las Vegas. But the wife wanted to try a 5 star hotel this time since we haven’t gone in a while. This time I tried the Express Deals feature. I wish there was a way to filter these some how by location or star level. But anyway, we saw a 5 star hotel for $124 on the south side of the strip. After taxes the total was $283

I have to admit that there is a great thrill in doing this priceline bidding thing. But what real risk are you taking if you are insisting on a 5 start hotel like we are. We punched in our credit card information and held hands. In unison, we gasped for air and clicked the buy now button.

To display the page must have only taken 5 to 10 seconds but the wife and I must have muttered every casino name in that time.  “Come on Bellagio!”.. “I want Cosmopolitan!” .. and so on and so on.. Finally, the screen changed and look what popped up!

Vdara bitches!  We received a discount of 18% according to this thing.  The same room was listing on  kayak.com for a bit more at $161 per night.  And over at vegas.com the room was showing up for about $334:

Priceline does it again!  Another satisfied customer.  But this trip is all the way out in February.  There might be another Vegas trip or two before then.  Muahaha

Posted in Weekend Get Away

RobbReport.com recently wrote about Kings of the Strip: Seven Perfect Steaks.  But most Las Vegas regulars like to hang out Off The Strip so here is a small list of Steak houses that I frequently visit.  This list is going to include traditional and non traditional places to have your steaks.

We will start with the Non Traditional Steak Places:

Yagyu Yakiniku:
4355 W Spring Mountain Rd
Ste 107
Las Vegas, NV 89102
Neighborhood: Chinatown

This place is well kept, clean, friendly and the waitresses aren’t bad to look at.  But you didn’t come for the cleanliness nor the good looking servers.  You are simply here for some of the highest quality beef you’ll find anywhere.   If it’s a night out with the guys, I would suggest getting the 12″ plate of Kobe Beef.  One for each of you!  If you are with a big group, they have pre set plates that you can order. This place also advertises 29 degree beer which goes well with your meal

Musashi Japanese Steakhouse:
3900 Paradise Rd
Las Vegas, NV 89169
Neighborhood: Eastside

Do you like your chef scream obscene jokes while he cooks for you?  Well you have come to the right place.  This is a Japanese Steakhouse and you receive teppanyaki service.  The Kobe Beef here might be the best in the whole United States.  Not just Las Vegas.

For more traditional steaks off the strip I have complied the list below:

Del Frisco’s Double Eagle Steak House:
3925 Paradise Rd
Las Vegas, NV 89169
Neighborhood: Eastside
(702) 796-0063

This is a loud upbeat place so it’s not a traditional steakhouse in that sense.  You’ll need reservations for the weekends as well.  All your favorites are here.  The fillet, rib eye, t-bone.  YOu can also find some unique sides like lobster mac and cheese!

Vic & Anthony’s Steakhouse:

Category: Steakhouses
129 East Fremont Street
Las Vegas, NV 89101
Neighborhood: Downtown
(702) 386-8399

My favorite place to stay in all of Las Vegas is The Golden Nugget and at ‘The Nugget’ is Vic & Anthony’s Steakhouse.  If you go on a date, start with the lobster bisque and then go with the Porterhouse for two is something you have to try.

Posted in Off The Strip

We had planned our weekend get away on the July 10th. I started researching for a room on betterbidding.com .. They have a very helpful tool called the ‘Calendar of Wins‘. I’ll put some links together soon with instructions for those of you who have trouble using it. But visit the link above and try it. It’s self explanatory and easy to use without any additional instructions.

Since I’m a gambling man, I like bidding on hotel rooms in Las Vegas. I like bidding on 4 and 5 star rooms between $75 and $125 per night. The wife and I had planned on visiting in time for the Opening Ceremony of the 2012 Olympics. I had no luck bidding on the strip for $125 for a 5 star hotel. So I went ahead and changed my region and bid on the Henderson area think I would end up at Green Valley Ranch .. But to my surprise I ended up with the Westin Lake Las Vegas!

I’ll have to admit that I was a bit disappointed. Being a regular in Las Vegas, I know that there isn’t a casino on this property. Boo!! Seriously, I can understand the need for some people that don’t want to stay at a hotel with a casino in it. But this is Vegas and I really think that Priceline should have some type of option that asks for a hotel with or without a casino. I have Siri set to give me a reminder to write them a strongly worded letter when I get home tonight.

The wife and I both have doctors appointments for the early afternoon so we can hit the road early. We leave the doctor’s offices at about 3:15 from the East Hollywood area. If we hit downtime soon enough we can hop onto the carpool lane before 4pm. Between 4pm and 7pm you need 3 people in the carpool late. The bad news is that we hit traffic! There was a 6 car pile up going east bound on the 10. And it was in the carpool lane! We didn’t hit the 15 north until about 5:15pm.

Keeping in theme with the Olympics / Vegas thing, at the state line I saw that one of the banners outside of the Fashion Outlets Las Vegas was this wonderful Kobe Team USA basketball. Well I just had to stop and take a photo.

We ended up getting to the Westin Lake Las Vegas at about 9:30pm that night. We pull into the resort and come up on the valet to unload the car. We find out that this is not your typical Las Vegas property. There is a $15 charge per night for the valet. The wife is preggers so I didn’t want to self park it. No big deal. We get to the lobby and it is impressive. My wife is getting flash backs of her cabo trip. This property really does look like you are in a different country. Doesn’t feel like I’m in Las Vegas. This is easily a 4 star resort bordering on 5 stars. The services isn’t quite up to the Ritz Carlton but the amenities sure are there.

We get to the front desk and find out they are booked solid at the hotel so we end up getting placed in an upgraded Villa! The room wasn’t part of the hotel. It was off towards the side but well worth the added walk. Here’s a tour of the room.

After unloading the car and then settling in, we made our way to Green Valley Ranch to grab something to eat for the evening and maybe we can catch some of the highlights of the opening ceremony from London. I was hoping for a Freddie Mercury hologram but instead we ended up with Mr. Bean farting at the end of Chariots of Fire. This is my kind of opening ceremonies!

My last couple of trips, I started playing an unmanned craps table. It was all electronic and no dealers. The plus side is the limits are low and it’s a self serve craps machine. The machine at Green Valley allowed for a $3 minimum bet and up to 5x odds and a $2000 max bet. While playing, I didn’t get a chance to whip out my phone but I found this video on YouTube:

My better half was able to get some slots time in on a Superman machine that we have never seen before. We racked up some points and went back to the hotel. We got in and found a door tag for a breakfast menu. We looked it over and found that we were a bit too late to turn it in for morning delivery. I called the front desk and they said to go ahead and fill it out and someone will be by. We filled it out for a standard american breakfast and one continental breakfast and set it for a 9:45 am delivery.

I have to hand it to the folks at the Westin Lake Las Vegas. They really do what they can to make sure you have a wonderful stay. Breakfast arrived on time and it was yummy!

We spent some leisure time at the resort most of the morning. In the evening we made our way to the Montelago Casino at the other side of the lake. We pulled up to the valet and walked down to the casino. You take an escalator down to a small tidy casino floor that can’t be much bigger than The Gap at your local mall. Not much to see at as far as gaming. But we did make our way to the back which lead us to a shopping / dining area by the lake. We found out that they have Saturday Night Jazz at the MonteLago Village. You can find the full schedule here:

http://www.montelagovillage.com/the-village-at-lake-las-vegas/events/saturday-night-jazz-on-the-lake

We were lucky enough to watch Marque Woolfolk perform by the lake. The lead singer did a melody of artists that recently passed like Whitney Houston and Etta James. Out of all my visits to Las Vegas, this was the first time I ever got a sense of community. The wife and I started looking for jobs!

We were able to walk into a couple of shops and restaurants. Because the wife is showing her baby bump, people are more friendly about ignoring the ‘Restrooms are for customers only’ signs. Here are a couple photos from Luna Rossa.

Here we were out on a beautiful summer evening by a lake and a live band was playing. We couldn’t believe that we had to leave the next morning.

Posted in Weekend Get Away
Tags: Olympic Opening Ceremony in Las Vegas

SSH access is often required to make edits to your DreamHost account.   To log into your domain on DreamHost using SSH You will first need to make sure that the username for your domain is a Shell username.  This is done in the DreamHost panel.  Once you are logged in you will click Users -> Manage Users and under the Actions column for the username you will click Edit pictured below:

After clicking Edit you will then choose Shell for the username and click Save Changes

After about 15 minutes you can log in by opening Terminal.  Go to Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal or you can open a Finder window and near the top right type Terminal and choose the black icon that appears in the search results.Using Terminal you can log in using the following command:

ssh yourusername@server.dreamhost.com

If you have a VPS like me you are going to use the VPS number and dreamhostps.com like so:

ssh aaaanewuser@ps15094.dreamhostps.com

You will then be asked if you want to log in.  The text will look like this:

Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)?

You will type yes and hit enter where you will then enter your password.  After typing in your password you are now logged into your DreamHost account with Shell access and can use Linux commands to make changes to your domain.

Posted in DreamHost tips and tricks

I would like to thank my cousin Jordan for his fabulous work on our family sing along wedding video. A professional editor can make terrible camera footage and real bad acting along with lip syncing look like a true MTV music video. All in all we had so much fun in the process and have this video to show for it.  In case you missed it during the wedding or would like to see it again, you can find it here:

Posted in The Bride

Sheryl is from Northern CA and I’m from the Los Angeles Area.  We both have rather large families and we thought a lot about where we were going to have the Ceremony and Reception.  I didn’t want her family to travel down here since we already lived in the LA area and I did not feel that it was fair for her family to have to travel since I already took her away from the Bay Area.  Sheryl is adventurous and felt that if my family had to travel for a wedding then everyone is going to have to travel.

This is how we ended up with Las Vegas.  We had searched several reception areas which included Mandalay Bay, The M hotel and casino as well as The Golden Nugget.  All are excellent values.  You can basically have Steak or Seafood for the price of chicken in most places in California.  The Golden Nugget even has a Steak and Lobster meal that is unbelievable for the price.  All of these hotels have great upsides.  The ball room coordinators are all very seasoned and we just knew that these folks knew how to throw a wedding reception.  But we had visited all three and while we felt they were all great values, these venues did not give us the warm and fuzzies when we saw them.

We did have one final meeting and that was with Angela Dorman of Caesar’s Entertainment.  We met her in a hallway where Bally’s and Paris meet by the escalators that lead to the self parking.  Now I have stayed at Bally’s and Paris several times and I have never seen the hallway that leads to the ballrooms.  But when we met Angela and she walked us over, we saw the entrance hallway and we knew this was where we wanted to have our Reception.

We took home some brochures and exchanged contact information.  A couple weeks later, signed the paper work and dropped off a deposit.  In August, we were introduced to Tara Landaz who was the ballroom coordinator.  We scheduled our food tasting with her for September.  The food tasting included some appetizers and some main dishes.

Tara really was great.  She did everything we had asked and is full of very pleasant surprises.  She is still old school Vegas and has a lot of friends on the properties.  Anyone thinking of having an event at Bally’s or Paris would be very lucky in having Tara as the ballroom coordinator.  She provides accurate timelines and clear expectations on what is going to happen on that date.

Posted in The Bride, The Vendors

The Guardian Angel Cathedral is located on the corner of Las Vegas Blvd and Cathedral way just north of the Encore parking structure.  The diocese of Las Vegas has some strict rules for people wanting to get married from out of state.  You are only allowed to get married at The Gardian Angel Cathedral and you can only have your ceremony begin at 10AM or 7PM on Saturdays.  Father Timothy and his crew are old school.  He does not have a computer and handles things over the phone.  He does have his act together but you just have to get in sync with his ways. The church has a 70s feel to it and comes out spectacular in photos.  We had a rehearsal the Friday before at 2PM that lasted until about 3:30PM.  On the day of the Ceremony, me and my 2 best men met in the back room to prepare at about 9:45AM.  Sheryl arrived just before me and was given a room at the front of the church where she could do some last minute touch ups.  Our ceremony ran for just under an hour and we were given until 11:30 to take pictures.  

Posted in The Bride, The Vendors

We took several trips to Las Vegas from Los Angeles because Sheryl wasn’t comfortable with the people doing her hair and makeup.  We finally found Perfect Hair and Makeup after going with 4 different vendors. You can see from their web site, they take before and after photos straight from their iphone.  As you can see the photos are doctor’d and the ladies do great work.  I’m not kidding, Sheryl was so happy with the trial that she started crying.

Perfect Hair and Makeup – Las Vegas

Michelle and Irina are true professionals.  They arrived with their team at Sheryl’s hotel room on time and ready to go.  They worked fast and efficient even when a couple of the girls showed up late, they were able to improvise.

Perfect Hair and Makeup – Las Vegas

Perfect Hair and Makeup – Las Vegas

Posted in The Bride, The Vendors

You read that right, our wedding was in Las Vegas and the flowers came from Santa Monica.  About a year before we started looking for vendors, we went shopping for Christmas ornaments during after Christmas sales.  We saw some as low as 80% off from places like PierOne and Stacks in Pasadena.  We did not think that we were going to be using flowers for our wedding and reception so we turned up with a bunch of Christmas ornaments.

Fast forward a few months and we find out that we want to go with flowers.  We met with Tweeny and told her about our ornaments and she said she could incorporate them into our arrangements.   When you check theflowerlab.com, you will see why we went with Tweeny.  The arrangements are effortless and spectacular at the same time.  The flowers just seem to fit without taking away from the space.  If we had a regret, it would be that we did not have enough photos of our flowers taken.  The pictures we do have are found below.

The Flower Lab – Flowers for Weddings and Special Events

 

The Flower Lab – Flowers for Weddings and Special Events

Posted in The Vendors

Ernie Treu is my cousin and was able to come down from Denver Colorado for the wedding in Las Vegas.  She’s asked if she could tag along to help build her wedding portfolio and our actual photographer, Tyler Freear did not mind at all.  Ernie is really close to several of my family members so she knew the family relationships and knew how to group people for photos.  I also asked her to take “behind the scenes” photos so you will see several photos of photos being taken =)

Anyone in the Denver area looking for a photographer should consider Treu Image Photography.  You can see her gallery by clicking any of the images below.

Treu Image Photography

Posted in The Vendors

Our day of coordinator was Marsha Sydnor of www.preciseplans.com.  We reserved her services several months prior to the wedding day.  We met with her a couple times prior to the day at her home office in Burbank.  She gave us an idea of what to expect and the services she would be performing for us.  We gave her a long list of items that we wanted done for both the church and the reception hall.  We met in Las Vegas the night before the wedding so they could pick up some things from us.  We went over our final plans and they executed for us.

Posted in The Vendors

Our photographer was Tyler Freear who came highly recommended by the reviews we found on weddingwire.com, brides.com and theknot.com.  Tyler has received the 2011 Wedding Wire Bride’s choice award and chosen as The Knot Best of Weddings 2011 award.

Our wedding reception was at the Paris Hotel and Casino.  While looking for a photographer, we found some wedding shots taken in front of the property and instantly fell in love with Tyler.

We booked Tyler about 10 months in advance.  During one of our visits to Las Vegas, we met him at a Las Vegas bridal show for a meet and greet.  In weeks leading up to the wedding, we sent him a wish list of photos.  A few days prior to the event, he kept in contact with me and the day of coordinator Marsha Sydnor of Syds Design.  Over the phone and by email we went over how the day would go.  Tyler called the night before to get the room number from me and he showed up to the brides room on time on the morning of the wedding.  He was assertive when needed and transparent when appropriate.  We were simply blessed to have him around for the big day.

Tyler Freear

Tyler Freear

Tyler Freear

Posted in The Vendors

Full disclosure here, the owners of digiboxdiaries.com are friends of the family =)  But even if they weren’t they would get a great review from me.

digiboxdiaries scrap book

Rather than the traditional photo booth setup, we went with the photo back drop / mini photo studio.  Long before our wedding reception began, EJ and his crew were setup in our ballroom.  The setup included a portable photo backdrop along with a couple 6 foot tables where they had their photography equipment and computers setup to take photos.  They had Christmas themed props to go along with their mini photo studio.  This included Santa Hats, goofy winter caps, sun glasses and a picture frame.  They had an automated camera with a countdown monitor.  The photos spit within 5 seconds with a boarder that was customized and themed towards our wedding.  To our surprise, we also received a scrap book station where our guests could take copies of their printed photos and create congratulatory scrap book pages.  Our guests were very impressed with the setup and we all had fun with the accessory to the event.  Within ten days after the wedding, we received a USPS package with our scrap book and a CD that came with all the photos for the night.  They had also posted a subdomain where our guests could view the photos from the wedding reception.  EJ was great about keeping in touch.

They also created a website so our guests can view their photos from the night.  You can see this by going here:

I made it a point to take photos with all my vendors so you can see EJ and the crew from Digibox Diaries here:

Posted in The Vendors

Sheryl, known to her family as ‘She She’ and Art, known to his family as ‘Bombing’, were originally married last year on Friday December 10, 2010 and one year later is when they are having their church wedding and reception.

Dinner at COMME ÇA

The 2 met in November 1998 in a crowded hall way while waiting for an accounting class to begin. She was soooo not interested at the time. Through the years, the two kept in touch and even got to hang out a few times.

One magical weekend while Sheryl was visiting Los Angeles, Sheryl and Art finally got together as a couple.  The weekend included a tours of LA landmarks such as the Walt Disney Concert Hall, Our Lady of Angeles Cathedral, LACMA and the Edison.  It was on this trip that they saw their first movie, The Hangover.

The couple now live in Alhambra, CA where Sheryl now works as a Project Coordinator in downtown Los Angeles and Art works as a Tech Support Rep for New Dream Networks.  They share their apartment with the lovely Nina a 6 pound tan Chihuahua.

Posted in The Couple

Why are you searching for discounted rates when you can get into these strip clubs for free.  The Vegas Regulars knows that Las Vegas locals get free entry into all Las Vegas strip clubs.  Just show your Nevada ID and you will be let in for free.  When a tourist goes to Vegas and takes a taxi to a strip club, the club has to pay the taxi cab driver for taking tourists to the club.  Now what the Vegas Regulars know is that the strip clubs hate to pay taxis.  And here’s the secret.  If you have a group of guys that want to get into a strip club for free, just call the club by noon the day of the event.  Give them the number of guys that want to attend and give them the location where you want to get picked up.  The first night, we wanted to check out Crazy Horse 3.  We were hanging out at The Cosmopolitan and made arrangements for 12 guys to take us to their fine establishment.  The limo driver called my cousin when he arrived and there was a 20 passenger party bus ready to pick us up.  We were dropped off at the club and everyone chipped in $2 to tip the driver.  The bouncers at the club let us in for free and the dollar bills went flying.

On the second night, we decide on the legendary Spearmint Rhino Las Vegas.  If you didn’t know, now you do..  The Spearmint Rhino in Las Vegas is easily my favorite strip club in all of Las Vegas.  It is the Bellagio of Strip Clubs.   Just in case you don’t believe me, be sure to check out the reviews on Yelp.  So one of the groomsmen put the call in just after lunch.  We asked to get picked up at 11:30PM from The Cosmopolitan and they where there.  We were given the back door entrance with no cover charge and we were then let in.  We felt like rock stars driving in and given the back alley entrance with no line.  The money we saved on cab fair and cover charge was well spent on lap dances and drinks.

Book your free limo now:

Crazy Horse 3 Las Vegas:  702-673-1700

Spearmint Rhino Las Vegas: 702-796-3600

Posted in Bachelor Party

Yes, a Vegas bachelor party is cliche.  But it is really good value especially if you are a Vegas Regular like myself.  My favorite hotel in all of Las Vegas is The Golden Nugget in downtown Las Vegas.  I can see you rolling your eyes when I mentioned Downtown Las Vegas.  And to quote a conversation between Trent and Mike (Vince Vaughn and John Favreau in Swingers):

Trent: Oh Mikey you don’t want all that “Pirates Of The Caribbean” horseshit, or the “Rock and Roll Grunge Tip”. Guys like you and me gotta kick it here, old school.
Mike: Oh this is definitely ‘old school’. This place is dead.

The Golden Nugget is old school but the most modern of the Downtown Las Vegas hotels.  It’s a four star hotel and is usually within the same price range as the Stratosphere and Harrah’s.  Both hotels are far less than 4 star hotels.  The Golden Nugget is 4 stars and you can still get some of the great values of old Las Vegas for staying there.  Now I found a secret for staying at this resort.  When I was looking for a room to book for my bachelor party, I was looking at hotwire.com and discovered something.  The only four star hotel in downtown Las Vegas is The Golden Nugget.  So there is no mystery when you are booking your room.  So I called up my cousins and told them about the deal.  A light bulb went off in one of their heads.  You can name your own price on priceline.com .. So I did some research over at betterbidding.com and confirmed that if you are searching for a four star hotel in downtown Las Vegas, the only one you can possibly come up with is GN.  So hotwire was offering the weekend of my bachelor party $99 per night.  I went to priceline and placed a bid for $85 per night for the four star hotel in DT Vegas and they gave a counter offer for $95.  I ended up taking the deal.  Other sites like vegas.com listed the same hotel for the same weekend at $121 per night so I jumped at the offer.

I’ll be posting later about getting free entry into Vegas strip clubs along with free limo rides to those strip clubs so be on the look out for those as well.

– SpadeZilla.com

Posted in Bachelor Party

Syds Designs Photography is a dynamic creative husband and wife team, Brian and Marsha.  Their innovative vision behind the lens resulted in some great photos. We ventured out to Downtown Los Angeles for our engagement photos. Feeling a little nervous to be their subject…they coached us to smile big and just pretend they were not there. We decided to just have fun with it and after a moments time we were all smiles and even danced like no one was watching. Happy with the way the pictures turned out we visited the Disney Concert Hall, the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels and the Bradbury Building.  Please visit their web site http://www.sydsdesigns.com/

Posted in The Bride

Thank you for visiting googgly.com. We are very excited and looking forward to seeing everyone later this year to celebrate our big day. To all our family and friends a big thank you for supporting and loving us over the years.  We encourage you to visit the web site often as we will be updating it with information about our wedding.  We have already made arrangements for a discounted rate at Bally’s Las Vegas and Paris Hotel and Casino.  Visit ‘The Accommodations‘ page to book your room now.  The discount is good through November 7th so book your rooms now! You can also view ‘The Ceremony‘ page and ‘The Reception‘ page for information about the church and the reception venue.

Posted in The Event