So, ok, as it turns out I didn’t really need to make a Vegas post yesterday, but there wasn’t a way that I would have known that at the time. My flight to Portland landed slightly early, and when I got there, I was able to get on a 7:30 flight to Seattle rather than a 9:30 one. Oh, and let me just say this about the Portland-Seattle flight: Shortest. Flight. Ever. We were in the air for 30 minutes; not 40, not 35, but I actually timed our trip to exactly 30 minutes. Anyway, a light rail and taxi ride later, I was home with plenty of time to make a post if I hadn’t already made one. Since editing just isn’t my cup of tea, I figured the story could wait 24 hours before it made its debut here.
Having an office again is sort of nice as it actually gives me a real place to sit in between meetings. On top of that, I’m actually near where all of my meetings are going on, so I no longer have to drive back and forth or continually take a shuttle between buildings. Of course, this means my pre- and post-meeting time is now less interesting, but I’m sure that I’ll come to appreciate it soon enough.
Personal - Seattle
Las Vegas: Say whaaa? Another Las Vegas post? From the middle of the afternoon? But that can only mean… Yes, stalkers readers, I chose to volunteer to be bumped from my flight this morning in exchange for a flight later this afternoon and a travel voucher. Besides, my parents were going to be here until 3:00, so it wasn’t like I was going to be alone in the airport by myself, right? Not so quick, logic, because they did make standby on a flight that was essentially supposed to leave at the same time I was supposed to. So, they’re in Dallas, I’m on a 4:30 flight to Portland with a layover there before I eventually get to Seattle, and unless I want to pay for a taxi, there’s no way I’m getting home before midnight tonight.
If I was making this post from the comfort of my desktop in my apartment rather than my laptop in the airport, I would talk about how my calendar tomorrow is relatively empty, but since I do have an office now, I’m done working from home for the time being. In fact, I have something on my calendar every day this week, so having an office will be quite useful. What I wouldn’t be talking about is how I might be sleeping in a little longer than usual since I’m not going to be able to go straight to sleep as soon as I get home, but fortunately my first thing to do in the morning isn’t until 11:00.
Las Vegas, Personal - Seattle
Las Vegas: The show we saw tonight I can’t actually type the name of, so I feel sort of bad for the people that had to do the marketing and promotional materials for it. The name is Le Reve (with the first ‘e’ in “Reve” having the carat-looking thing above it — in math, we’d just call it “e hat”), but fortunately my review of it is something that I can type. It was very good, similar to what I would have expected from O, and it definitely ranks higher than the show from last night. My score: 8/10.
I’m leaving Vegas early tomorrow morning (well, not early, 11:00), so effectively there won’t be anything going on tomorrow aside from waking up, checking out, and going to the airport. My return to my apartment might be longer than desired due to having to deal with a Sunday bus schedule, so we’ll see how that adventure works out. The worst case is that I’ll have to wait up to an hour, but we can hope that I’m not actually going to have to wait that long.
Las Vegas, Personal - Seattle
Las Vegas: Before our show in the Luxor tonight (which inside looks quite a bit different from the last time we were these), I walked over into the Excalibur just to look around some before we needed to be seated in the theater. Now, this was the first Vegas hotel I ever stayed in, so it sort of embodies everything that Vegas is to me. Well, the staples like the entire floor of arcade and midway games are still there, but in this “kid oriented” hotel, I also discovered beer pong tables and dancing girls in bikinis that you could watch while playing blackjack. Maybe they feel they need to adjust their image some, but I just found those two things to be very unexpected in that hotel.
Criss Angel Believe was a show that I felt was suffering an identity crisis. While the magic was impressive, it was either a magic show with not enough magic or a Cirque show with not enough acrobatics. Definitely not my favorite Cirque show (of the Vegas ones at least), and not one that I ever feel like I’d need to go see again. It does, however, get points for being entertaining because the time went by extremely quick rather than feeling like the show was never going to end. My score: 6/10.
Las Vegas, Personal - Seattle
Las Vegas: I may not be the card counting expert that I wanted to be by the next time I came to Vegas (courtesy of 21), but by making $50 on a little over an hour at a blackjack table, I think my skills are just fine. Now, do I keep gambling and risk my positive (for the moment) cash flow, or do I simply enjoy the shows for the remaining time here and be happy that I made anything at all? With two full days left I’ll probably continue to gamble some, but it’s a much different strategy after you’re already up rather than trying to fight to get back to even.
Our show tomorrow is A Cirque du Soleil production at the Luxor called Criss Angel Believe, and as far as I know, it’s what a magic show would be when done Cirque style. Due to the much nicer time zone arrangement this trip as opposed to my 21st birthday, I’ll actually be able to review the shows the same night that I see them rather than need to postpone my reviews until the next day (and post before going to that night’s show even). I doubt it will be able to out do KA, but then again, I doubt almost anything could.
Also, tonight might qualify for the most unoriginal, boring Thanksgiving dinner ever. Because my dad wanted to watch the Texas game, we cancelled our dinner reservations, and my parents and grandparents were just going to do something after the game was over. Well, I couldn’t wait that long, so I headed down and got a hot dog with potato chips. Yes, that’s right, my Thanksgiving dinner was a $9 Las Vegas hot dog. Either way, it was going to be something different than turkey, I guess.
Las Vegas, Personal - Seattle
Las Vegas: I’ve obviously spent most of my life in the Dallas area, now followed by Seattle. In third place is most likely Hot Springs considering how often we went to see my grandparents when I was younger, but my best guess for fourth place? Well, that would (surprisingly or not) have to go to Vegas according to my count. Yeah, with 12 or 13 trips here, I’ve probably spent close to a month in this city which would put it (as far as I can tell) in the fourth slot.
Vegas doesn’t seem like a city that shuts down for Thanksgiving, so I’m sure there will be plenty to do tomorrow during the day (aside from gambling, that is). One of my Vegas staples is actually available to me in Seattle now (eating at Fatburger, and it’s quite convenient for me even), but it will probably be the locale for lunch tomorrow. Dinner tomorrow might be a very interesting affair, so tomorrow’s post is very up in the air right now as far as it’s tone goes.
Las Vegas, Personal - Seattle
When I get to Vegas tomorrow at 8:00, I’m going to think that it’s 8:00. When my parents are sitting at our hotel at 8:00, they’re going to think that it’s 10:00. Hmmm, so even though I don’t change time zones at all, the two hour difference still bites me. My solution to this situation is that I’m going to force myself to stay up late tonight while waking up at my normal time tomorrow morning, and then hopefully I’ll be tired enough tomorrow night to go to sleep at the same time my parents do. After all, if they’re going to sleep and I’m still wide awake, there are only so many forms of entertainment I can engage in that aren’t distracting to them.
My plan is to leave here around 2:30 tomorrow afternoon, and that should get me to the airport about an hour before my flight boards. I doubt I’ll be able to have Chili’s as a meal based on previous experiences, but I will (hopefully) go by Sbarro and have it for the first time since I left Dallas. I don’t know why Seattle feels like they have to keep all the good restaurants at the airport; I’d be just as happy to eat at these places on a regular basis as opposed to whenever I’m flying to another city.
Personal - Seattle
So, work with me here: since my laptop uses Apple’s special mini-DVI adapter (which I’ll be honest, I’ve never seen on anything else), I need a little converter if I’m ever going to use it with an external monitor. I could either buy a VGA and/or DVI adapter from Apple for $19 each (and yes, I would need both since the DVI one can’t then have a standard DVI-VGA converter attached), or I can hit up my favorite store Monoprice, buy the exact same thing, and have them cost about $6 each. In addition, I threw in some $1-2 ethernet cables and a couple $3 HDMI cables because, you know, the need for one of those might arise spontaneously. The thing that surprised me the post was that Priority shipping was actually cheaper than standard shipping (both USPS). Perhaps their accountants have a reason for this, but I decided that saving a little bit of money was worth getting my items a couple of days quicker.
The only thing I had on my calendar for Wednesday is now no longer present, and since I don’t see anything coming up that would add a meeting, tomorrow is effectively my last day to actually go into work this week. I might, maybe, possibly have an office tomorrow, but I still need my admin to tell me exactly where it’s going to be. The fact that I have one does me no good if I am unable to find it.
Personal - Seattle
While I am enjoying my new Horde character, I’m giving some love to my various Alliance alts also. After playing one for a little while, I realized that I had really been using them more for the crafting aspect than actual second (and third, and fourth…) characters to play, and that quite a few of the crafting professions were essentially “service” ones where leveling them up would be nothing more than a pointless grind for me. So, I ultimately told myself that with one exception, I’d only level up the stuff that came naturally from playing the game, and then if I want to go back and farm for the professions once I’m a super high level, I can go do that then. Hopefully this will keep my more engaged with WoW and not make me burn out so fast on playing all of my alts.
The person who has been occupying my office should be vacating it soon (all dependent on when the movers take his stuff out), so I might have a place to sit tomorrow that isn’t a teaming space I’ve some to be quite familiar with. Once again, my day is nicely compressed, so in the event that I don’t, I won’t be left sitting out in the open for too long. It would be nice if I had one by Tuesday, but after that, I’m really not going to care for about another week. By then if I still don’t have one, then Microsoft just has some bigger issues to deal with.
Personal - Seattle
2012 was, by my standards, a good movie. It wasn’t as good as Independence Day, but I’d rank it higher than The Day After Tomorrow. If there was one big thing that I could change about it, I’d actually tone down the special effects a little, especially towards the beginning of the movie. I’m all for suspension of disbelief and all that fun stuff, but I like my movies, no matter how fantasy/fictional they might be, to at least seem like they could happen by following the laws of physics and stuff (The Matrix series excluded). Will I get it on DVD? Well, that’s questionable. It definitely ranks above my purchasing bar, but I’m just not sure if I would watch it that much. My score: 8/10.
I convinced Andrew to restart WoW also (*insert diabolical laugh*) with a 10 day free trial, so when he was playing I was actually giving my new character a little bit of rest. I think the hardest thing about playing any of my old characters is that I relied on addons for so long in order to play them, going back to them is going to require a massive inventory and action bar cleanup so that they’re manageable sans addon frenzy. What would actually be nice is if I could have my stuff customized one way on my desktop and a different way on my laptop/other computers (and for all I know, WoW might have added support for that), but without that in place, it’s safer to just go with the lowest common denominator.
Personal - Seattle