..and rather unsurprisingly: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

So here I am! The mystery second trip for this year. I didn’t want to write about it until all the details were confirmed and I was actually going.

The plane trip was about the most excruciating thing you can imagine. 20 hours between leaving my apartment in the morning at 5, to ariving at the Venetian in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA. Helsinki to Frankfurt, Frankfurt to Chicago, Chicago to Las Vegas. The return trip will be pretty much the same, except through.. Denver I think. Horrible. And with the 10 hour time difference, I am utterly and completely fucked.

The first night we dined at I Love Burgers, right here in the Venetian. Excellent burgers, although I was so tired, and so .. lost, I wasn’t able to finish my ‘Ultimate Cheese Burger’. Tasted great though. After that, I didn’t stick around for any nightclubs or bars. I went straight to bed. Then, I woke up at three in the morning local time. Two hours of whatever, half a sleeping pill, back to bed after that kicked in. Wake up late. Croissant and a coffee. Bought a pair of very nice Maui Jim sunglasses from Optica. It’s about time I got proper sunglasses. I’ve been running on cheap 10-20 buck sunglasses for the.. well all my life, and now I have proper sunglasses, polarized, with a proper warranty that covers a lot of breakage.

After that, we took Detours of Las Vegas to Hoover Dam. Nice trip, although hellishly windy. I mean, it was literally hard to stand up at times. Visited the new bridge that crosses the Colorado river, and then the Hoover Dam complex. Walked over the Dam to the Arizona side, and then back again. So I’ve now visited two states during this trip 🙂 . The Detours driver/guide was an awesome guy, kept giving us great bits of info as we were driving to the dam and back.

I guess I faded after that. I wanted to take a short nap around four in the afternoon, and wake up for our organized evening activities at seven, but that failed spectacularly. I woke up at 2300. Again, a few hours of whatever (I think I actually did some work), and then back to bed. Sleep late. Miss breakfast. Time for the actual conference.

I won’t get into much details, it’s mostly corporate and very like… industry specific stuff. Sufficed to say, I’ve collected a nasty amount of t-shirts and other free schwag, which is always one of my primary goals at any conference. After that was done, it was time to concentrate on the lectures, breakout sessions, keynote speaches and workshops.

Monday night was spent at Gilly’s (Gilleys?), which was a western/cowboy/cowgirl themed restaurant on the strip. The waitresses wore..well, bikinis and chaps, and cowboy boots. There was line-dancing. There was mexican food (excellent by the way, and so was the servce). We stayed there until the kitchen closed, and then headed our separate ways. For me, that way was…. bed. A wholesome night of sleep.

Wake up to a bunch of work stuff, including urgent disasters. Fix problems. Take bath. Head out to the conference.

As I’m writing this, it is Tuesday afternoon. Last lecutre of the day, about NAS. Then it’s time for Hooters. Ho-boy. I wonder what that’ll be like. I’m dead-tired, surprise surprise, so I guess I’ll go grab something to eat, maybe one drink, and then bed.

I’m not sure why I am not scaling like some of the other people, who seem to be up 24/7 drinking and eating and whatever. I just can’t.

There are .. so… many… people… here. I can’t guess at the total amount of attendees here at EMC World 2013. Last year saw 13,000 attendees, at least. This is at least as big. The crowds are nigh impenetrable. WLAN is spotty at best (well any system trying to run this many subscribers will be…). Lucky the rooms have wired broadband, which seems to work mostly, and fairly well.

Ok. Time to call this post. More on the trip later.