Continuing Education

Back in the old days at the brokerage, an email from the Compliance department was usually met with unease--they were the Internal Affairs of the stock trading world, the Eye in the Sky, the people who's radar screen you didn't want to be on. Fortunately, I never had an ethics problem so my annual email from Compliance was just a friendly reminder that I had to spend a day offsite doing more NASD Continuing Education.

It was generally regarded as a pain in the ass because I'd have to drive way out to the west side of town and site at a computer terminal all day reading rules and scenarios. After each section I had to take a test over what I just read. Unfortunately, I couldn't tell you one thing I learned from being continually 'educated', but at least I was meeting my regulatory obligations.

On the plus side, we were given the entire day to do it, but I was blessed with the ability to read and comprehend at lightning speed (Case in point: You're given six hours to take your Series 7 exam. I finished with flying colors in an hour and ten minutes... toot toot goes the Mikey horn). So that meant I'd finish up in about an hour and spend the rest of the day getting paid for lounging around by the pool and drinking beer waiting for my buddies to get off work. (Wasn't I saying something about ethics just a minute ago?)

Anyhow, the point is, nobody in the brokerage world likes the whole 'Continuing Ed' thing. It's a mild annoyance that one deals with for the privilege of manipulating hundreds of thousands of dollars of Other People's Money every day.

Now that I work in a casino and only manipulate tens of thousands of dollars of Other People's Money each day, the rules are much simpler. Yes, I still had to go through the ten-year history and rectal exam from the NGC, but now that I'm in the club, I'm In The Club.

Sidebar: VH1 Classic is playing in the background. Shirley Manson from Garbage is totally hot. Makes it hard to concentrate. She goes on the laminated list...

Anyhow, basically all I have to worry about now is protecting the game, following procedures, and dealing for the benefit of the player, the floor, and surveillance all at the same time. It was intimidating at first, but green and black chips no longer make me nervous, nor does the thought of taking 25K off of somebody that should know better. Dealing to a banana-chip player makes me stand up a little straighter and be a little more cautious, but in the end, most folks playing with thousand-dollar checques treat them the same way you or I would treat a $25 greeney. Nice to have, and we certainly don't want to leave them laying around, but it's probably gonna sting a little if we lose them.

So now that I've been dealing for almost a year, I feel like I've learned about 90% of everything I'll need to know to be a casino dealer, short of picking up new games. Yes, there's always something new to learn, and there are always surprises lurking on the horizon, and there are always better dealers out there I can pick up new techniques from, but overall I've pretty much got this shiat down pat. (That being said, I really need to work on my dice game--I was never that strong in the first place, but I'm gradually losing it by not getting much table time anymore).

I guess the point is that my brain needs more stimulus. Writing helps, as does reading, but like I said, I read so fast that I feel like I get short-changed whenever I buy a book--kind of like I don't get enough value out of it because the experience didn't last as long as I would've liked. So I've been looking for other stuff to help me keep the synapses firing.

A couple of weeks ago a piece of junk mail arrived that has me intrigued. It was from the UNLV Educational Outreach program, offering all kinds of interesting adult-education classes. Unfortunately, I missed the deadline of most of them, and scheduling conflicts keep me from others. However, there were plenty of classes to choose from that piqued my interest:

Photoshop
MS Powerpoint/Publisher
Digital Photography
Conversational Spanish and French
Travel Writing
17 Ways to Make a Living as a Writer

There were some other really good ones that I was quite bummed to miss out on:

Exploring Chardonnay
Taste of Wine I & II
Intro to Beer (Although we'd been formally introduced years ago...)
Cooking Basics: Shellfish & Seafood
Cooking Basics: Sauces & Vinaigrettes
Gourmet Breakfasts & Lunches

However, there was one class that had 'Mikey' written all over it:

Writing Las Vegas & Nevada

The description was as follows:

This two-session workshop is for feature writers and authors who want to tap into the ever more fertile mystique and magnetism of Las Vegas that attracts millions of visitors annually, as well as stirring the imaginations of millions more readers across the country and around the world.

We will review the potential genre and discuss a spectrum of Las Vegas and Nevada topics from working out cliches that need to be avoided, to evergreen angles that just keep on giving, to the new and different emerging in this no-holds-barred, post-modern city of the 21st Century.

Following a first evening of exploration, you will have the opportunity to try your own hand at scribing yet another perspective of Las Vegas or Nevada with a personal writing assignment. You will file your story with the instructor "on deadline" for review and critique and in session two hear more from A. D. Hopkins, special projects editor for the Las Vegas Review Journal, as well as other veterans of the magazine wars.

Had it not been meeting on Thursday nights, the check would've already been in the mail. But that's ok, there's always the summer term.

Mikey