Playing Catch-Up

Man, it's amazing how quickly three weeks can pass by!

It's been a pretty busy three weeks, for sure.  There was the election, of course... then a number of work and personal milestones.  Then the annual international gaming trade show here in Vegas, so more work deadlines and general busy-ness.  Got rear-ended by Kenny, part of a four-car incident at lunch time during the show.  Very exciting that, I was lucky enough to escape with barely a scuff on my car, while Kenny's car has been in the shop for a couple of weeks now.  The guy behind him fared poorer still, as he got smooshed between Kenny's car and the BMW in the tail end that apparently started the whole thing.

And last week was Thanksgiving, of course, and my parents decided to come down for the holiday this year.  Which was nice, I got to hang out with them for four days, without work responsibilities (normally they show up mid-week, rarely on weekends, so I've got to juggle schedules).  We had Thanksgiving Dinner at the top of the Stratosphere, which is the tallest building in Vegas.  I believe it's twice as tall as Seattle's Space Needle.  The restaurant is located at the 106th floor, about 860 feet above the Strip.

After dinner we visited the outdoor observation level, where Dad snapped a fuzzy picture of me with my phone (for quick distribution to a couple of friends). 

(Click image to enlarge)

It was a lovely clear night, a bit cool but not cold.  I was able to take a few pictures with my regular camera as well, and I learned some important lessons about taking nighttime pictures of bright lights from a distance.  Mostly I learned that one of the settings on my camera takes decent shots, while all of the rest of the settings take complete crap shots.  And I also learned that next time, I really need to be organized about figuring out which of those settings is the right one, because apparently just changing settings randomly while snapping shots is a somewhat ineffective technique.

(Click image to enlarge)

So anyhow, in all that time there have been numerous important stories to talk about, issues to consider, and a whole sea change election to cover.  Hopefully I'll be able to put a little more time into that now.  I'd like to welcome Jason on board, and I look forward to his contributions moving forward.

On with the show!

Comments

[phriedom]

Those are a couple neat pictures. Even the snap shot of you looks cool if it isn't blown up large. I sure was having trouble recognizing particular buildings in the second picture though. I figured the green building at the left side had to be the MGM and the red one out to the right had to be the Rio, so I must be looking south, but I couldn't find anything else, like the pyramid or the eiffel tower or the giant Mandalay until I finally remembered that Las Vegas Blvd. has a big bend in the middle and the things I was looking for would be over in line with the green building.

Anyways, I thought it was funny the way that preconceptions keep you from recognizing obvious things.