I’m home! Whew! More when I wake up…maybe. Or maybe later :-)
Thu, 2005-04-21 (Apr 21)
Layover in Cincinnati
I’m (almost) back! We missed our flight in Las Vegas at 10:50pm, and had to reschedule for an 11:30pm flight out, through Cincinnati, OH instead of Atlanta, GA like we came through on the way out. The first flight was only three hours instead of four, but we have a three hour layover instead of two, and we’re arriving home an hour later than we would have. Which is kind’ve annoying, but we ate a really good meal at Applebee’s (I had a great prime rib that practically melted in my mouth!) before we left, which is what made us late enough to miss our flight (we were an hour early, but checkin and security were too long to get through in time). But I’ll be home around 8:53 this morning!
Right now I’m sitting in the Cinci airport, listening to the wonderful country music [sic] playing loudly out of the Cinci Sports Pub behind me, blaring into the terminal. Fortunately, Josh hates country music and I just dislike it, so I guess I get the better deal :-) My feet keep tapping and they aren’t under my control! But I’d be happy without it. But perhaps it’s keeping me awake a bit, which is kind of good. At least I get to sleep when I get home if I want, because I didn’t sleep on the plane much (maybe dozed a bit).
“My camera”:http://butterflyphoto.com/shop/product.aspx?sku=FUJIS5100 should arrive today at my office, it arrived at the FedEx facility last night at 10:40pm and I’m hoping it will be delivered before I drive past work on my way home from the airport so I can pick it up, otherwise I have to go back to pick it up later in the day (and believe me I will, even if I have to sleep through doing so ;-)
Down to about 9.5 hours ’til I see Ruth again, and counting more slowly than I wish it would…
Looks like it’s going to be a nice day, around the same temperature I just came from in Vegas the first half of the week! Then rain through Monday. Oh well, at least I get some welcome-home sunshine…the best of which doesn’t come until around 3:30pm ;-)
Oh yeah, I got to go to “Star Trek: The Experience”:http://www.startrekexp.com/ while I was in Vegas! Very, very cool, even for a once-Trekkie who’s cooled a bit now that he has a real life (and I mean the past few years, not the past few weeks :-) Very awesome to be ON the ACTUAL SET of the bridge from the Star Trek: The Next Generation series that they actually filmed on, which was part of the show! I even got to wander around and look at stuff during the time I got my picture taken in the Captain’s Chair between shows, it was awesome, there were aboud 5 of us and the guide/photographer (named David…he was cool), and they took the pictures using a “Fuji Finepix S7000”:http://butterflyphoto.com/shop/product.aspx?sku=S7000, which I though was great since I have the next lower model (the S5100) arriving tomorrow, and the S7000 has the same sensor resolution as my point-and-shoot E550! Weird coincidence! I’d have bought the S7000 if it weren’t around $500 still (although it does have a 6x zoom vs. the 10x (both optical) zoom on the S5100. And I just checked, and it came down to $437 at ButterflyPhoto! But it’s out of stock, and I’m out of money :-)
More pictures to come at some point, I might try uploading some from the airport here. Hundreds I haven’t gotten to upload due to technical issues with the internet connection I had at the hotel! Lots of the Strip, more of the convention, and lots at Star Trek (they didn’t allow photos in the rides though :-(
I think I convinced Pastor R to do Star Trek tomorrow instead of golf in the afternoon after the seminar he stayed a day later for :-)
On to try uploading some pics! I’m trying to stay chronological so I won’t get to the Trek stuff right away!
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Tue, 2005-04-19 (Apr 19)
Wonderful Hotel Internet :-(
Well, the pictures from yesterday, all several hundred of them, should have been uploaded overnight but the Flickr uploader tool kept timing out. A few uploaded, which you can “see here”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/existdifferently/sets/244083/ for now, I’ll add to the set and post here when I get a chance to upload the rest. Unfortunately the ones that did get posted (since I’m posting in chronological order approximately, at least by memory card) are from the NAB conference, and not from The Strip at night, which I also got a lot of! Some not as blurry this time :-)
We went go-karting last night on some go-karts that look like your average local fun park go-karts, but they weren’t speed-limited and could go up to 40 MPH! We had a lot of fun with those, the testosterone was certainly flowing strong :-) If it hadn’t cost $25 per ride of about 10 minutes or so, we’d have gone a second time for sure. But once was probably good, since several muscles got sore from use even that first time!
I actually got to bed by 1am last night Vegas time, and got up at 8:30 this morning. 7.5 hours…feels good, the last two nights I got just over half that :-)
Gotta go get ready for the day! The show is so huge it’s amazing. Many football fields in size, in each of several buildings!
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End of Day Two in Vegas!
Well, short post to mention that day two in Vegas, the first day of the NAB convention, is over. I’m going to bed. New photos are uploading, most aren’t public yet I need to go through them. So I won’t link to them now, I’ll give you a link later, maybe tomorrow night, maybe later…depends on when I have time! I only have web access at night, even though I have email during the day (wireless at the convention is $25/day! Hotel is $10/day. Which would you go with?).
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Mon, 2005-04-18 (Apr 18)
In Vegas!
We arrived in Las Vegas around 9pm Vegas time, or 11pm home time. Took around an hour to walk terminal, get luggage, rent car…then we drove to the Strip where we’re staying at one of the hotel/casinos (I might post which one after we get back). Quite an amazing drive for three guys who’ve never been to Vegas! So many lights and so much money spent on looks!
We took a walk after checking in to the hotel, didn’t get too many pictures as I forgot to grab my camera on the way out the door at first, but got a few. Oh well, more later. You can “see the pictures here from Las Vegas Day 1”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/existdifferently/sets/241080/.
Walking down the strip, we walked past so many pimps passing out handbills I couldn’t keep count; they hold them out with one hand and try to offer them to you, and do a little flicking motion and makes noise against the paper as an extra attention-getter. Plus, the sidewalk was littered with handbills the size of playing cards, often well within 10 feet of each other (or less) they were so dense in certain areas. Like walking on nearly-naked confetti (but without looking at them closely you can’t make out anything other than they weren’t fully naked, they are playing-card sized after all, and many on the sidewalk were upside-down with just words (phone/advertisement/coupon/whatever) showing, too. Pretty sad. Fortunately I have less than zero desire for such a shallow relationship, not to mention the sin or cost issues involved, being on a church trip…numerous things would keep me from pursuing the adverts even if I were so inclined, which like I mentioned I’m not. What a wasted life for most of those girls and their pimps though.
We haven’t solified things, but we may see “Blue Man Group”:http://www.blueman.com/ at Luxor on Tuesday night! And “Star Trek: The Experience”:http://www.startrekexp.com at the Hilton is on the possible list as well…right down the street!
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Sun, 2005-04-17 (Apr 17)
To Las Vegas!
Well, this afternoon (Sunday the 17th) I’m off to Las Vegas! A pastor from my church (the media pastor), the Technical Director, and me are all going to “NAB2005”:http://www.nabshow.com/ (the National Association of Broadcasters trade show/conference). It’s going to be fun, and we’ll hopefully pick up some good pointers for what we want to do in the future with our video/media. The show is Monday through Wednesday, and we’re coming back on the red-eye Wednesday night and should be back in town Thursday morning (fortunately I have Thursday off). My girlfriend Ruth is taking a couple of hours off work early on Thursday so I can see her soon when I get back (and finish sleeping Thursday morning, depending on how good the overnight flight goes), she’s so awesome :-)
Depending on what kind of internet access we have in Vegas, I may be posting some pics online while I’m there or perhaps when I get back, time permitting. I may shoot a few good ones over to this blog, but you could watch my “Flickr photostream”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/existdifferently/ directly for any new ones coming down the pike!
Also, in case anyone’s interested, Fuji has a nice $50 rebate this month on their “Finepix S5100”:http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/S5100/S51A.HTM SLR-like digital camera! It’s 4 megapixels with a 10x optical zoom, among lots of other good features, which you can see by reading the review the name is linked to. Best price I’ve seen (it’s where I ordered mine) before the rebate is from “ButterflyPhoto”:http://www.butterflyphoto.com/ and you can “see the S5100 item listing here”:http://www.butterflyphoto.com/shop/product.aspx?sku=FUJIS5100. Just $249.95 before the rebate, or $199.99 (yes, that’s less than $200!) after the rebate! This camera was at least $275 before shipping at the cheapest location I’ve ever found for it, back a couple of months ago when I bought my “Finpix E550”:http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/E550/E55A.HTM (buy it now for “$247 at ButterflyPhoto”:http://www.butterflyphoto.com/shop/product.aspx?sku=FUJIE550 which is over $60 less than I paid for it!) which is another awesome camera but more along the point-and-shoot lines (but is VERY nice for that type of shooting, and I’ve taken over 2,000 pictures with it since I got it around two months ago!). Anyway, I ordered this last (Friday) night and it should get here either next week around when I get home, or at the latest the beginning of the next week. I already have a second 512MB xD picture card to use in it…best price on those is “eCost.com”:http://www.ecost.com/ecost/ecsplash/shop/detail~dpno~269806.asp as far as I’ve found (free shipping, small handling fee, $10 for overnight shipping). The xD picture cards are a bit more expensive than traditional flash storage cards but the data transfer rate is much higher unless you buy a high-speed card of another type, which would likely be priced the same. But all xD cards are the same high speed, no need to double-check :-)