Duck Brown Goes To Vegas

30-April-06

This week I have a chance to speak at a conference for software testers. This will be only the second most geeky thing I will do in Vegas, but more on that later. Before any of that, I had to first get there. My ticket was booked weeks ago, and I was excited to be flying direct. I packed Duck Brown and my bags last night, pre-flight, and confirmed the flight before turning in.

This morning I was up by 5:00, out by 6:00, and to the airport by 7:00. That was when reality diverged from the itinerary. When checking in, I discovered that my direct flight to Vegas was cancelled. I’ll spare you the standing-by, line-waiting details, but see if you can guess where I connected though (hint: this city is not between DC and Vegas).

I finally made it to Vegas by 6:00, over 7 hours late, and was underwhelmed. I checked into the Imperial Palace, traversed the cacophony of the casino, and found my mediocre room. There is a little concrete veranda from which I can see the parking garage, and if I lean just so, I can spot Caesar’s Palace.

This was supposed to be my sight seeing day, so I went out to see some sights. It struck me that this town is designed for mindless wandering, because that is what I did. I wound up at the Venetian, which is a casino made out to be like Venice, but not really. I’ve been to the real Venice, so I did a comparison. The biggest difference is that fake-Venice lacks the aroma of real-Venice. It also lacks the pigeons.

I had shrimp enchiladas and a Canonita Margarita at Taqueira Canonita, which was right along a fake canal under a fake blue sky. I choose this margarita because 1) Last time I spoke at a PSQT conference was in Austin, and Shelley I first went to San Antonio where I had the best margaritas ever and 2) One of my heuristics for deciding what to order in a new restaurant is to get something that includes the name of the restaurant (this works especially well at diners)

Next, I went on a gelato quest. Gelato was my favorite part of real-Venice, and I had a tip that great gelato could also be found at Venetian. It took a good bit of exploration and some back-tracking (which seemed very authentic), but I finally found the place. The gelato was decent, but a bit underwhelming. I hope this wasn’t becoming a theme.

My explorations then took me to Treasure Island, where I caught an outside show called “Sirens of TI”. It would be more accurate to say the show caught me, since the sidewalk on which I was walking became un-walkable because of everyone standing around to see the show. Despite what you might think, it had nothing to do with Texas Instruments. The show consisted of a ship of Sirens wearing very short pants dancing around and taunting another ship with shirtless pirates. All of this was set to the soundtrack of every fraternity party I’ve ever attended. I still have no idea what this was all about. After that, it was time to call it a night.