Right Now @ christoperj|[.com]

Another weird Walmart experience -- must be a day that ends with y

Right Now @ christoperj|[.com]

I feel like we lost a big ol game of Angry Birds last night. Apparently the red bird is good for something. . .

Right Now @ christoperj|[.com]

Right, wrong, or indifferent -- theres really nothing like a final Game 7. . . Lets Go Rangers!

Right Now @ christoperj|[.com]

Lets Go Rangers. . .

Right Now @ christoperj|[.com]

The biggest blue jay ive ever seen just landed on fence -- apparently he supersizes at mcdonalds too. . .

Right Now @ christoperj|[.com]

Its going to be one of those games. . .

Right Now @ christoperj|[.com]

Go Rangers!

Right Now @ christoperj|[.com]

Back from Vegas, trying to catch up. . .

Hard Rock Vegas Memorabilia Museum

Before the Third Eye Blind concert, I had a chance to explore some of the memorabilia on display at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino

DJ AM (aka Adam Michael Goldstein) exhibit

Closer look at a set list with notes written in his handwriting

Closeup of the turntable and mixer

Nameplate of the exhibit. Reads: "Adam Michael Goldstein, 1973-2009, His stage Name 'DJ AM' stands for his first and middle names. Adam's first residency as a DJ was at Babys in the Hard Rock Hotel before regular appearances at Rain and Pure made him one of the top DJ's in Las Vegas"

Blured shot of the DJ Tiesto exhibit

Closeup of DJ Tiesto's MTV EMA and other awards

Shot of the Avenged Sevenfold exhibit

Some B Roll pics of the backlist guitar decor along the museum wall

Past the casino towards the restaurants, signed guitars from various artists have been backlist along the hallway

Hanging above some of the hallway intersections, these saxaphone lamps give an extra something to the decor

The Linkin Park exhibit

In kind of a side display, a small Peral Jam exhibit. Sign reads: "Pearl Jam began to form in 1990 when trio Stone Gossard, Jeff Ament and Mike McCready, of 'Mookie Blaylock' was joined by Eddie Vedder in 1990 to become the band that you all know as Pearl Jam. There are many legands to what the name Pearl Jam may mean but the official story is that they thought the name was cool. Not that it was Eddie's Grandma's peyote laced jam."

Large exihibit for Collective Soul

Close up of Dean and Ed Roland's guitars

An exhibit for The Who, complete with a busted up Pete Townshend guitar

Closeup of the busted up guitar, signed by Pete Townshend

Closeup shot of "The Joint" sign in the main concert area

Various Santana concert posters on display in "The Joint"

Outside shot of the iconic neon lit guitar over the passenger drop off area to the Hard Rock Hotel

Better shot of a similar guitar over at the actual Hard Rock Cafe

My favorite of the guitar shots

Faux Bono at the Hard Rock Vegas

(Probably Fake) Bono came down from the VIP area at The Joint and got everbody excited. At the time, I thought this was real. Looking back, very doubtful. WTF would the real Bono be doing at a Third Eye Blind concert for McAfee Focus11?

(Probably Faux) Bono posing with other McAfee Focus11 Attendees. . .

Views from Hotel Rooms -- Palazzo Resort Hotel, Las Vegas, Nevada

Random shots of the view looking east from my suite at the Palazzo Hotel during the McAfee Focus11 conference.

With the Wynn Resort to the left, The moon rising over Frenchman Mountain.

Looking ESE towards McCarran International Airport.

Down towards Sands Avenue.

Same angle the next day.

Better shot, looking down Sands Avenue and the Las Vegas Monorail.

Frenchman Mountain rising over Las Vegas smog and haze.

Looking NNE towards the Wynn and Encore hotels.

Richard Branson, Keynote Speaker (Among Other Things)

Richard Branson was the keynote speaker at the McAfee Focus11 security conference. A surprising choice it really didnt have anything to do with information security, but it was a fascinating interview about his business and life philosophies

Pregame at the McAfee Focus11 keynote event. Everybody was taking their seats around the stage.

Richard Branson being introduced by Miles O'Brien, who was hired as a freelance journalist/interviewer for the event

Somewhere in the middle of the interview

What the Crap, Ducks Unlimited Denton? (Part 2)

Found a event page in Facebook for the Ducks Unlimited Denton Banquet and sent the listed organizer (John Withers) an email directly concerning the issues.

Been a couple of days, no response yet, but I still keep the faith. . .

Mr. Withers,

In regards to the Banquet @ the Knights of Columbus center a couple of nights back. The facebook event page was forwarded to one of my neighbors and it was suggested we contact you directly as the organizer about some of our observations of how your event's guests treated the neighborhood.

I'm actually one of the people who live near the KoC and I was hoping we could have just a friendly conversation.

While I support the conservation aspect of the Ducks Unlimited cause, I'm taken back at how 70+ people parked illegally in the City of Denton Water Tower land to attend the function. How they cut across the field and over the curbs into our neighborhood looking for an easier way out. The couple of hours of duck calls made from people leaving. The one illegally parked car that remained overnight until 4pm the next day before the city red tagged it and somebody eventually came and got it.

But most of all, all the spent beer and snuff cans they left in the field before they took off into the night.

We've had problems with illegal overlflow parking from the KoC in this field before. It's Water Department land, so sometimes the city issues tickets and redtags as warnings if they see it. Sometimes they dont. But usually its limited to 5 or 10 cars who park on the treeline. So it's not been that big of a thing.

Never have we had rows of cars 3/4 of the way to Santos. And never have we had so much litter left behind. Your event set definitely a new record in both regards.

The missuse of and littering on public lands seems like a level of disrespect for the envionment that Ducks Unlimited as a group would be against. But right wrong or indifferent, its obvious that the message was simply lost on more than a few individuals celebrating your cause.

That said, several of us already took trashcans out and picked up all the litter (About 30 +/- beer & snuff cans, along with some other odds and ends). And this years drought has made the ground hard enough to prevent any significant tire rut damage to the field. So thats all good now.

But I got to know, is this going to be a yearly event? Will you be able to take steps next time to address the parking and littering problems? Surely there's some middleground we can find here between your group's fund raising, and our desire to keep our neighborhood safe and clean.

Let me know

Thanx

Christopher

(Original email had a handful of typos, which have been corrected before reposting)

Views from Airplanes -- Leaving LAX towards Vegas

Shots from the window of a month old AA 737 flying my last leg from LAX to Las Vegas

Looking North out the window towards Malibu and a fog covered Pacific Ocean

Sun behind the wing of the plane

Contrails of northbound planes

Sunset falls behind the wing of the plane