Was out for a couple days this week at a conference in Las Vegas. Overall it was pretty interesting, even if some of the talks I attended weren't great. The most disturbing conversation that I had was at the poker table with a guy who was head of security of a bank in florida and nominally there for the conference. And hadn't left the poker room the entire trip. Maybe he's on top of everything and the conference wouldn't have revealed anything new to him. Don't worry about this bank though, apparently he's moving to take a similar position in a fortune-1000 company soon.
On the gambling front I learned not to sit down at a poker table expecting to win off the bat if you haven't played (in a serious fashion) in six-to-nine months. After a bit of a debacle at the craps table, I moved on to the new poker room at Caesar's to try to make some of it back. And went instead the tally went in the wrong direction. Oh well.
At one point my gambling in Vegas consisted of me making money at poker and then losing it at craps. This trip it consisted of me losing money at craps, losing money at poker, and then making all of the losses back in craps :) My last night there I wandered down to the end of the strip and stopped at the table for a bit of a break, and walked away a while later $20 or so in the positive for the entire trip :). The highlight was probably a ten or fifteen minute streak where I was rolling and consistently hitting numbers and the point without getting a seven - it was going so well that I even hit a hard eight and a hard ten in this time and only lost one hard-ways bet...
Oh, and I continue to recommend Bouchon if you happen to be in Vegas and are looking for a nice meal.