I'm at a conference all day today called Lockdown. Basically all kinds of different computing security isuue talks and other related stuff. I've been having a really good time with it today, it's really quite a good conference this year, but there are some things that just make me laugh. And since I've got the spare time, you get to read about them now.

-The sheer number of acronyms that are in use in IT today. I don't think you can go for more than a minute or two in any presenters talk without some acronym being used. Some can't go more than 1-2 sentances.

-The sheer number of diet cokes that I've put down. Have I mentioned that there is free soda, coffee, and munchies all day? Not to mention an *excellent* catered lunch which has given me a severe case of food coma.

-On that train of thought, where else but at a geek conference can you hit the snack bar and find boursin cheese next to gummy bears? I love it.

-I'm glad to see that multitasking is common across all IT geeks. Almost everyone has a laptop in front of them, and most are managing their networks or doing email while listening to the talks. At least that's what I assume they're doing. The guy in front of me is, I can't see the others too well 8-)

-Dear lord this current guy has the most monotone voice that I've ever heard. This plus food coma is going to equal drool on my keyboard... time for another diet coke...brb

-OK, where was I? Hey, new email in, one more sec! Eh, spam. Dammit. Anyways...umm...gah. I think there was something else that I was laughing at, but I can't remember now. Oh, well. We'll see if these guys are interesting. If not, I'll probably post more soon :D

Here we are, back to normality, or whatever the usual is. Being in Vegas for almost a week was a ton of fun. The first night was spent at the Tropicana, which while it has a great location and a decent pool area, I really can't recommend. The best thing going for it was that it was cheap. But problems with the rooms (our reserved room had been given out to someone else, then our room had busted AC. At least they upgraded us for free), average to low quality everything, and rude dealers made it not that memorable.

The second day we met up with John and Lisa at the MGM Grand, where the first sight that we see is Mike Tyson walking out of the hotel. Fairly amusing way to start things off. I thought the MGM Grand was amazingly good. The check in people that Julie and I dealt with were really helpful and polite, when Julie had something break a bellman spent about 15 minutes trying to call people and search the internet to find replacement stuff for us, and the gaming was really fun. Unfortunately, Lisa didn't have as good of an experience, but I'm going to say that she just caught one bad nut in the bunch, since everything else was so good. While there we saw Cirque du Soleil's Ka, ate at one of Wolfgang Puck's restaurants, and did plenty of gaming, including some time in a very comfy poker room.

We hit lots of other attractions at various casinos this trip. At Mandalay Bay we saw the Shark Reef and had some beverages at The Red Square Bar. We made a few stops at Nine Fine Irishmen for some excellent food and Irish Whisky. Shopping for the girls, well, that was everywhere. I finally got to play some poker at Binion's on Fremont Street while everyone else shopped and wandered around. I got to see half of one of the light shows, so that was ok. 8-)

And speaking of poker, one of the biggest highlights was watching part of the WSOP at the Rio. We saw so many of the top names in poker that we felt like kids in a candy shop. We got pictures with a lot of them. Most all were very friendly and would stop and chat for a while. Many poker sites had lounges set up there where they were giving away free stuff, including UltimateBet, Full Tilt Poker, Doyle's Room, Poker Stars, and Bodog. And no, I don't feel like looking up links to all of them on my work computer :D.

And so, after all that excitement, we're finally back, and I'm even almost caught up on all the emails that I missed while I was gone. Almost unfortunately being the operative word here...enough of a brain break, back to being productive... 8-)

Vegas baby...44.5 hours to go and counting!