Jeremey's Weblog

Vegas, Baby!

Well I've been in Vegas at Interop since Tuesday evening, at the Mandalay Bay. When I got here they upgraded my room for some reason, so I got a corner suite. I paced off the main room, it's easily 45x16 (but cut by some angled windows). And it has two master bedrooms, one on either end. Sweet. Big screen TV (but nothing on, of course).

America West plays trivia on the TVs during their flights (especially the short ones where no movie would fit, I guess), so I learned that 10 of the top 10 largest hotels in the world are in Vegas. I believe the Mandalay Bay is the largest.

Interop was interesting. I'm always two people, especially at this kind of thing. There's the me that would rather go play music on the beach or go photograph the mountains or do something real, and that part thinks that all the pomp & circumstance that goes into this stuff is just burning money for the fun of it. The other me, the me that lives in the software industry because the first me can't pay the bills (or for the guitar, the camera, the trip, etc.), found it pretty useful. I didn't learn much in terms of education, but that wasn't the goal. I learned a LOT about the market our product is in, and gained some larger-picture vision about where it should go. Every senior engineer/developer/hacker type should go to these things. Otherwise they develop tunnel vision and that drives their code.

Oh, and I got a bouncy ball with flashing blue LEDs and a stuffed whale. That was the best part. Gabriel gets the whale. :)

Chinatown

So last Saturday (I haven't had time to write in a week!) we spent the day in San Francisco, mostly in Chinatown. Even though I lived out here for three-ish years in the mid-90s, I never got to Chinatown. Weird. Anyway, Chinatown was really cool. We went to a highly recommended but off-the-beaten-path restaurant (The Pot Sticker), which was amazing. The people were really nice and friendly and the food was SO good. They accidentally made too many pot stickers so they just gave them to us. I was really full.

Then we spent some time wandering around... we were looking for Ten Ren tea company, which we found... so cool!

They have TONS of loose tea (all of those large gold canisters lining every wall), of varying grades. Basically you decide the kind of tea you want and then they have several grades of that kind, and you pick based on smell, look, and price. I got 2 ounces of several different things, including some hand-rolled "pearls" (shape, size) of jasmine tea. I also got a tied green tea (it looks like a ball, about 3/4" in diameter) which opens when brewed, revealing red and yellow leaves inside... looks like a flower. VERY cool.

Also turns out Ten Ren has a website. Nice.

Chinatown also had cool shops with cool shoes, but alas, none in colors I really wanted, and definitely none that fit.

And cool architecture.

[apologies for the general lack of photo quality, these were taken on my phone (6620)]