Stockton Free Boat Cruises

What is better than a free cruise? Nothing else. However, its range is quite limited since the tour only lasts for two hours (it turns around before reaching the Sailing Club marina), but you can't beat free right? (Compared to around $100 normally)

The opportunity for free tours was first available sometime in June, but I didn't see it until reading the newspaper article about it. By that time all of the free cruises that were available (up to end of July) were sold out, that's how popular it is. But not to worry - they're doing more cruises for September starting in a couple of weeks.

Get a reservation via this link.

Protip: They make available 3 cruises per Saturday, 10am, 1pm, 4pm, for 50 passengers for September starting on August 5 at 8am. If you were unable to get a reservation or can't wait that long, you can always wait in the standby line. Arrive around 45-60 minutes early for an almost guaranteed first priority on standby (if someone fails to attend, and it is almost bound to happen, you can go). If that doesn't work, you can call them up to (most likely) get higher up the priority line for the next cruise.

Peppermill: Background TV Displays

Back at the Peppermill again, this time to learn more about the various outdoor scenery that is playing on the TVs around the casino (there's a huge backstory about this, and yes, it is possible to get a behind the scenes tour).

What TV, you ask? Like this one, these TVs in the background are scattered all across the casino, sometimes in pairs of three, one large one at a bar, and others as single screen or two lined up vertically. There's also a channel in the hotel room that displays these backdrops (the tv there is usually flipped to this channel upon first entering). I'm guessing they're too ambient, not a lot of people who review this place mention this at all.

After learning that there were thousands of possible backgrounds that could be played and them being shot on Red One cameras (justifiable since they needed the high resolution to fill up to three 1080p screens), I'll probably be watching them more on future trips... never knew that the background videos had so much behind it.

Desert Oasis Division, Perler Bead Version (Rework)

The second of the CNH Division Logo series (9 total).

There's some ambiguity as to what the most recent logo actually looks like, so I'm using this version found in the CNH Sunburst in August 2012, with minor modifications (usually due to the limit of colors that I have on hand).

I know that the Las Vegas temperatures during the trip weeks ago was hot, but didn't know Central California (and Capital Division) was also equally so with the temperatures hitting the three-digit range, almost at 110 degrees, at least in June anyways.

The bottom actually looks a bit plain compared to the reference image, so there will be a few more details added to the mountains and cactus before it is released on FB.

Note: I don't have active contact with anyone in other divisions other than Capital, so I don't expect the popularity for the CNH Logo Perler Bead series to be high. I'm simply just a completionist, that's all. And I really don't want to deconstruct the Capital Division logo completely if I had other projects I wanted to do involving CKI since at least 50% of that logo can be reused. It will get a soft (non newsfeed) release on FB but that's about it.