I'm back from the Las Vegas Dev/Win/Exchange/Sharepoint Connections conference at Mandalay Bay. Over the week I was there:
- I gained five pounds due to overeating and interruption of my normal exercise regimen. I knew I'd gain some weight but I wasn't expecting to pack on five freakin' pounds. My plan, lame as it was, was to climb the forty-some-odd flights of stairs in the hotel a couple of times over the week but for various reasons it didn't happen. The one time that I tried I discovered that people had been using the stairwell for cigarette breaks and the air inside was all but unbreathable. Oh, well. Next time I'll bring Mount Elden along with me or else visit the hotel fitness center.
- I learned more about Microsoft's Exchange 2010 mail/calendaring server than I thought I would. The last couple of these Microzombie conference thingies I've been to boiled down to big multi-day marketing sessions. Exchange Connections surprised me with the depth of some of the presentations. Exchange 2007 was already a pretty damned spiffy mail server but Exchange 2010 just makes it better. The Firefox/Safari-enabled Outlook Web App (OWA) is going to be a very welcome change for non-Windows users.
- I saw only two birds the entire time I was on the Las Vegas strip, both of which were male grackles. They looked kind of stressed out and eager to go elsewhere. By the fourth day I was feeling the same way.
- I was astounded at how low the water level was in Lake Mead versus the last time I drove over the Hoover Dam seven or eight years ago. Without even leaving the car it was readily apparent how far down the lake was just by looking at the large white "bathtub ring" along the shoreline. There is very serious trouble brewing for anyone dependent on Lake Mead (and probably the Colorado River as a whole) for water. The Lake Mead Water Levels chart I found is downright scary. I don't think most people living in the southwest appreciate just how dire the situation really is.
- I wondered how blackjack dealers, roulette croupiers, and other casino gaming workers can go home at the end of the day and feel good about a job well done. I mean, how can they feel job satisfaction about helping to funnel money from people who clearly don't understand basic probability and into the coffers of huge corporate entities with no-one's best interest at heart? I can't think of a single good social quality of these jobs beyond providing basic sustenance for the workers.
Judging from the high percentage of minivans and older cars in the employee parking level of the hotel I suspect that gaming jobs don't pay well at all. The idea that those waitresses walking around the casino floor wearing hot dresses and offering cocktails to the players could be single mothers living lives of quiet desperation kind of took some of the fun out of the experience. I suspect that the casinos really don't want their guests thinking too deeply about this.
