I just briefly went into the main room to see Stefano starting off with a keynote on the way the ASF works, but am now retreated back into my hotel room to tinker with my presentation (and get showered - I was up this morning messing around with my computer and forgot to do that). My presentation is due in a couple of hours - tension is arising (english-spoken conference presentation still excite me somehow).
Yesterday, we had a huge brunch in the Ceasar's Palace and went and visited the Apple store afterwards: iPod, iSight and power plugs now belong to us. We went back to the conference center thereafter, with intentions to get some work done, but I ended up chatting with people in the Hackathon. After the Hackathon, we were allowed to sit in silently during the ASF member's meeting, which meant I was observer of myself being voted as an ASF member - yay! Thanks for that. I still have some paperwork to do, but it's great to see several years of ASF involvement culminate into this. I feel really proud.
After that, we headed back to the Strip, inside The Venetian, for a god-awful dinner in some Mexican restaurant. The food wasn't especially bad, but the setting of the Venetian Grand Canal made us all puke in utter unbelief that people would actually pay to visit this. Vegas really is the essence of AmeriKitch. Yikes. On a positive note, it was good seeing Ovidiu back - a man with wisdom and maturity and brains to go with that, and someone I hated seeing depart from the Cocoon community something like a year ago. We chatted about family, becoming of age, people, posturing and open source, and photography of course, and there's a slim chance we'll be going out for the Vegas neighborhood dessert landscape tomorrow morning (sunrise, that is, as in 4AM).
I woke up again at 5:30AM, which was early enough, but not that bad. After all, it's morning over here, and the day has just started, while my family is now in the midst of the evening rites. No pictures for now, maybe later during the day or night.
Congrats for your membership, Steven!
Just heard the good news - congratulations!
Congratulations for the membership!
And even though you don't look *that* good on the picture and the Venetian fake doesn't appeal, I'm jealous! Next time I want to be there...