NME Final Day or Maybe Felicia Day

Final day of the New Media Expo and we are just saying goodbyes to the folks we met. Also picking up some swag, which as usual is easy to pry. Vendors don't really want to haul it back to there far corners of the world.

Pretty quiet over all today, we see Felicia Day wandering around getting a lot of attention... again. Just couldn't find a good reason to talk to her, and wanted to let her have some peace.

We were quickly distracted by being cited, once again on the WOW Insider Show podcast. We listened in live on my phone.

So we headed out, and home to spend the rest of the day playing some Rock Band and watching some exibition football.

Coverville 500 & NME Friday Night

So we continued our Twitter stalkings @ the New Media Expo. On a side note, Twitter is really the ultimate stalking tool, and we made full use of it, following the Twits to the Rev3 party at the Doubledown Saloon. On another side note, the DD Saloon is the biggest dive in Las Vegas, in what the locals, at least the gay locals refer to as the Fruit Loop. It's small block that is mostly full of gay / lesbian bars and business, the DD Saloon is not one of those. I grabbed a beer there and watched Felicia Day completely pool shark Veronica Belmont. It was pretty funny.

Not much else to do there, it was standing room only and everyone was enjoying the relatively fairly priced alcohol. Hopefully the rest of the crowd enjoyed more than I did because, at the concert the bar prices were outrageous. Now I realize that the Casino is mostly to blame for the prices at the concert, but c'mon. I get an Anchor Steam at the DD for 4 bucks, but it's gonna cost me 9 bucks for a Corona @ the concert. CRAZY shit.

Other than that, the concert was great, but I could have done with a little shorter sets. The Dr. Whatchamacallit guy skit went on a bit long, the suicidal lyrics chick with her guitar was pretty depressing. Jonathan Coulton was awesome, Chance and the Choir showed promise, but at that point we were way to tired to stick around for Richard Cheese. So we missed all the drama from that part of the concert, which I won't further discuss, because it's been talked to death.

I got to briefly stalk Randy Deluxe from The Instance and let him know how much I enjoyed the podcast. Figured it was my last chance to get in a hello since, Saturday at the show as a relatively slow and short day. He was very nice and introduced himself formerly, I really wish I had more time to chat with him and some of the others (NotPatrick) from that group.

Also got to watch Felicia do her crazy little dance around the ballroom, not that we were ya know, stalking anyone or anything like that. Yeah ok, so concert, guess that is about all I have to say, good job Brian Ibbot on the concert.

Kill All Pirate Pink Pigtail Gnomes

So apparently wacky table neighbors are easy to find in Vegas. They have pink hair, think they are a pirate and apparently drink their hubbies under the table.

They are also obnoxious, loud and drunk. But I will let the picture speak for itself.

Borgsphere

So we popped over to the Hilton to get some late lunch. We have been plied with drinks today and why stop now, it's a con. That means drinking in the circles I run with.

So we wandered into the Star Trek area and decided to eat at Quarks. First up the lovely melon Borg sphere, it bubbles, it smokes and apparently attracts Klingons.

The place is pretty crowded, apparently there is an Everquest con here or some such thing. Also with the Experience shutting down everyone is getting in a visit.

Time to eat.

New Media Expo

So we survived the Joan Jett concert and awoke to find the out the encouraging news about additional Blizzcon tickets. You can read more about that on my gaming blog, Rally's Gaming Notes, regarding that entire fiasco.

After breakfast we made our way down the strip to the convention center to the 4th annual New Media Expo.

First impressions, these people like to talk. First stop outside of the exhibit hall was the hospitality suite for podcast-tuneup.com. They treated us to Jackson Hole Soda and cool swag.

Second impression, being at the convention center when it isn't CES and not crowded... damn Comic Con needs to move here.

We are heading back to up there for the one pm podcast demo, should be fun.

Joan Jett and The Blackhearts

So here is my pool side live blog from the JJ concert. Only in Vegas baby... more later.

Defcon Sunday & Postop

So I did not get around to posting yesterday, so I will one shot it here. If I had to describe Defcon in one word, that word would be Beer. There was beer everywhere, everyone it seemed like, was drinking at all hours of the day. At least the hours I attended. Which is cool, I love beer, but it just made me want to drink and I had to limit that participation.

At any rate, I hit a few panels on Sunday, "Mobile Hacking Spaces", "Internet Wars 2008" and "Hacking the Internet, No Really". All of them were very interesting, ok so the first one was not all that interesting from anything other than a curiosity stand point and was thusly attended by the small crowd I had seen all weekend.

The Internet Wars panel / debate was quite lively and interesting, made more interesting by the presence of beer and Dan Kaminsky. The biggest drawback of this panel, as well as all the others, was the lack of microphones for audience questions. The beers this panel was handing out for good questions, however, encouraged folks to walk to the stage and use a mic up there to ask the questions.

The final panel of the day, running right up until the Awards / Closing Ceremony took place, was the technical panel on how the convention wireless network was highjacked and rerouted through a server in NY.

I decided to pass on the Closing Ceremony to have a night home with my honey and we watched a bootleg of Dark Knight. Thus closed my first Defcon, I will be better prepared for next year, to hopefully attend and get a much fuller experience from the con.

Mobile Breakdown

So my best-laid plans to blog mobile from Defcon were foiled by my phones not allowing me to log into my blog. I usually post via SMS messaging and then edit the post for grammar and better photos later on... However, I have since modified my phone and did not have the correct address to mail to and could not log in order to look it up. So my one drafted post got sent when I was home last night and nothing else.

Which brings me to the evolution of this blog and my audience of one. I would like to spend more time writing and less with the random one or two line off shoots. Of course part of that was the chaos of Comic Con, Defcon is a bit more mellow. Not as much happening at once, but still a lot happening. I will be spending the day there today and hope to have a little more of interest to write about then yesterday.

Tomorrow I will know whether or not we can successfully procure Blizzcon tickets and add that to upcoming events. New Media Expo is next week, but I will probably only be there on Thursday, have to work Friday and probably won't go back for Saturday unless something good comes up.

Possibly one other event between now and then, will have to see how I feel about doing a blog from that event, as I may not have a lot of my gadgets with me at that time.

So hopefully with the technical difficulties behind me, on with the show.

Defcon 16

Defcon has landed in Las Vegas and in a bout of spontaneous geeking out, I am here to cover it.

License plate in hand I am off to the "Taking Back Your Cellphone" panel to see what I can learn.

This place is packed with people and electronic devices. A few very amused tourists keep getting lost in the shuflfle of the crowds. It's like Comic Con stuffed into a much smaller venue. This is both exciting and makes me nervous about my having enough geek cred.