i like to call it lost wages

Back from Vegas. The chill blast of stepping off a plane into freezing Indiana is getting too familiar.

I have a lot of thoughts about Microsoft’s new product line, which I may or may not go into at a future time.

Good networking, though. Good food, good sessions, saw cool movies/keynotes, played a lot of Gears of War 2 / Rock Band 2. Getting up on stage and singing strange songs is nervewracking. Until you realize that when you did it, there wasn’t even an audience, and now the band going up after you is a bunch of Frenchmen who don’t know any English and are still trying to rock out The Offspring, or the little timid Asian girl who comes up later and belts out Livin’ on a Prayer in front of a full crowd.

Everyone there was using a Macbook Pro running Windows 7. This is probably indicative of a lot of things. Although it’s not a surprise to see great hardware running great software.

I still don’t really like Vegas. Everything is tacky and dirty and old, like no one has bothered to update anything since the 70’s. It’s an exercise in consumerism, where the end goal of every facet you see from dawn to dusk is for you to spend money and make poor decisions. It seems like a playground for the rich, to flaunt nice cars and clothes and wealth and status. But most of all, I don’t like it because you don’t really see people being genuinely happy there.

But I guess I shouldn’t complain about a free stay in the Venetian.

march update

1. compliments of the CGT department and Microsoft, I’ll be flying to Vegas next week for the MIX conference about web development and design or something to that effect. this is yet another entry in the ’someone else pays for neil to fly somewhere and do something’ list, which I assure you still has room to grow.

2. compliments of Heartland Neurology, I’m on round 2 of taking a bunch of random drugs till we find something else that works. Also getting an MRI at some point. Doctor suggested this could all be from a concussion or two back in the football days. seems reasonable.