Night on the Strip

I know this Vegas stuff will bore most of you, but I'm a guy who will sleep on the ground to keep from spending $60 on a room. Or triple-up to avoid full price. So it's new stuff to me.
My company paid for this, so it's not my dime! So what if I have to sleep on the floor because I'm not used to soft beds?

Here's my iPod plugged into the alarm radio.
...and the large-screen TV (that's Hannibal Lector on TV - maybe the wet-bar has some Chianti and some fava beans?)...
...and the nice made-for-two tub...

...and the TV in the bathroom (note how I've put the spare sink to good use on the left).

Someone explained to me why the cigarette smoke isn't as bad this year - smoking ordinance! It's still allowed lots of places, but only sensible places like bars, casinos, and outside. So I don't have to breathe 2nd-hand smoke in the halls, elevators, or the WiFi area of the convention.

I went for a long walk up the Strip in lieu of running. There's lots of long stairs all along the Strip to help you walk across the street without impeding traffic. These are great workouts. Uphill doesn't bother my knees, so I sprinted up these. Obese vacationers are appalled at such scenes, but I'm not harming anyone. They take the escalators on either side of the stairs. My thighs feel last nights workout.

New York, New York has a good roller coaster - the Manhattan Express. I waited extra long to get a ride in a front seat. Since I was alone, a seat would have been empty next to me but this beautiful young aeronautical engineer from Miami asked if she could sit with me. Man, that made it 4.387451 times more fun than if I had done it alone! I was going, "Woohoo!" and she thought I was doing that because of the coaster.
Then I got popcorn instead of dinner, because for some reason popcorn was all my stomach could tolerate (I was feeling queezy since lunch). A beautiful woman started talking to me and I thought we could hook up, but then her boyfriend walked up. Man, she was my age and didn't have a ring. How's a guy to get lucky?
Then later, the most beautiful woman in all of Vegas approached me. She had to be 20! Oh, I'm such a stud that young, beautiful 20 year olds can't resist me, right? All I would have to do is pay her $300 dollars (minimum) and she had a place a block-and-a-half away.
Keep in mind [remember], I'm the guy who won't spend $60 on a room. I'm desperate, lonely, and horny as an iguana, but $300/hour?!!! That was a great laugh - but not to her face. She may be a hooker but she hadn't done anything to me to deserve insults. In fact, we talked for about 15 minutes, and I enjoyed it. I was surprised she was willing to waste so much time with me without pressuring me to go someplace. That made me wonder if she was a bored vice cop, but I milked it for all it was worth.

Demographics are weird here...
Of the Microsoft conference people, probably 85% are men.
Of the 15% that are women, nearly half of them are Asian.
Of the Asians, men or women, nearly all of them are Japanese.
In Vegas, some very small percentage of the populace, whether local or visiting, are black.
That latter stat is odd because the woman I rode the coaster with, and the woman I met when buying popcorn, and the hooker, were all black. It was as if they all had a meeting and decided that last night was going to be "Extremely Beautiful Black Women for JeffO Night". I'm so glad they did.
The Japanese seem very stoic. Probably because they can't hold a conversation in English. But they're friendly enough when you somehow break through that - although there's lots of clumsy pointing and other sign-language. Hey, maybe if I yell really loud in English they'll be able to understand me? I should try that.

On the way back to my room last night I kept stopping and asking couples if they'd like me to take a photo of them together with their cameras. It's amazing how extremely gratified some people were. It was very cool - repeatedly. My favorite was the old couple that must have been about 70 in front of Caesar's Palace.