'I don't know how to put this, but I'm kind-of a Big Deal'

OK, so I won a slot machine at my company's holiday party. (Way to go, me! Hypothetical High-5...awesome.) I mean, a genuine article. Something you read about, or try to win in a charity raffle, and as an employee, pretty much give up all hope after the second year of company raffles. It's now in the "John Room" (aka the basement) at 1280, waiting for visitors to drop in the occasional quarter to have a bona-fide player experience in a non-smoking environment. As far as Nic and I are concerned, it's a giant piggy bank.

But that's not the big news. On his second-ever coin drop and pull of a slot machine, my beloved Nic unknowingly hit a jackpot: 3,300 quarters on a "multiple nudge" whereby all 3 reels moved a smidge up and/or down, transforming the payline from 3 blanks to a triple bar, triple bar and double bar -- all bonus symbols. All this on one one quarter.

You want proof? Here you go. (Click to enlarge)

Notice him pointing to "3300" on the "Winner Paid" display. The funnier thing is that I've had this thing turned on for all of 20 minutes, troubleshooting, and testing it for functionality, yadda-yadda. It did have a past life at some casino in the U.S., who probably returned it to my employer because the slot manager may have known it was just about to burst. (If so, a pretty accurate forecast, given that it was 3-5 pulls away.)

Had Nic bet the maximum, he'd be that much more fortunate (3 times, actually), but I guess he's saving "the big payoff" for that full-ride athletic college scholarship to Stanford or something equally awesome.

Anyhoozle, I set a maximum coin payout of 300. Since the machine was just turned on, it had less than 5 quarters in it. So now I have a machine that I can't play because it has a tilt I can't clear unless I clear the memory or put 295 coins in the hopper so it can honor the payout. (I understand that there are bigger problems in this world, but what are the odds of this Blauthified conundrum?) Maybe I should call it a wash and put it in that leftover VW Westfalia Campmobile I scored in September (which I have since named "Weiss-ty"; see 10.12.2007 post) so my mixed blessings can live together in a collective state of limbo.

Long story short, I got Nic on a technicality. He's not 21, so all jackpots are voided...But some part of me thinks he's somehow going to get me for the $825 he arguably earned. (There are rumblings of him seeking legal advice.)

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A Tribute
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