We landed in Las Vegas just after 11.00 pm. My first hours in Las Vegas I spent waiting in line. First for a small train from the terminal to the luggage area, then for the luggage. Then I stood in line for 45 minutes to get a cab (reading my magazine) and even at the check-in counter in the hotel there was a 15 minutes line. I arrived in my hotel room around 1.30 am. I quickly tested the equipment that I had brought with me and set it up to run overnight, and went to sleep.

The next morning I felt like I had slept in due to the 3 hour time difference, and there was a Starbucks in the hotel which was very good. I met a colleague and we took a metro rail to the conference center.

We had our business meetings in the morning so in late afternoon so we had a few hours to walk around. My colleagues had been here before but I saw the city for the first time. We walked from our hotel over the strip, towards the Belagio. There was a copy of the Eiffel tower in hotel Paris and we took the elevator to the top.

The entrance to our hotel from the metro rail.

The city of entertainment.

Excalibur, a hotel styled as Medieval castle.

The boulevard on the background is The Strip.

Win this car!

A roller coaster on top of hotel New York.

The M&M merchandise store.

The Bellagio. In the background Ceasar's Palace.

An artist in ice for 24 hours.

There are 4 show girls inside also, "to keep him warm". The girls leave the ice every 4 hours, the magician plans to stay for 24 hours. The ice needs constant maintenance.

Funny that there is a name tag on the tower so the audience knows this is indeed, the Eiffel tower.

Gustav's bar.

On top of the Eiffel tower. Unlike in Paris there is a quick and efficient elevator all the way to the top.

The Strip, with in the background the desert and the mountains.

The hotel next door.

Hotel New York, on the way back.

So Jordan Sparks won American Idol, good for her.

In the break of the show there was a commercial for a new Fox TV show, New Amsterdam, about an immortal police officer in New York City.

I'm traveling back from Las Vegas, and I'm now in Memphis, TN after a rather short night sleep.

My flight left Las Vegas around 11.00 pm, and with the 2 hour time difference I arrived at 5.00 pm local time... too short! Luckily this airport has a Starbucks and WiFi.

My connecting flight leaves at 9.00 am, in two hours.

St. Paul, Minnesota, last Sunday.

Memphis, Tennessee today.

I'm going to Las Vegas!

My flight leaves around 6.00 pm tonight, and I'll arrive in Las Vegas around 11 pm, local time. I'll have a 2 hour layover in St. Paul, MN.

Tomorrow morning we'll give a presentation at an event in Las Vegas. I'll be traveling with a lot of equipment, including 2 laptops.

I now have a plant in my cubicle at work.

There's great story about "duck" that I'll share once later.

A few months ago we bought a sound system for in the living room. Nothings fancy, but it's a nice system with surround speakers and a stand-alone amplifier. I've connected it to the TV and DVD player, and now we can listen to FM radio in the living room also.

Most of the time I listen to music through the computer thought, and tonight I finally connected my laptop to the sound system. It's nice to be able to listen to internet radio.

The cables I have at home aren't long enough, so I connected 2 cables using a switch. When I moved to the U.S. 2,5 years ago I brought a lot of cables and this switch, and now I finally found a good use for them, if only temporary.

Last weekend we were at the seaside we saw the highest dune in North America, Jockey's Ridge.

It was so beautiful! There's a path on a wooden bridge that leads from the visitor's center to the start of the dune. As soon as you leave that path you're almost in a different world.

It was very windy but we had an excellent time in the park.

You can see the sand being blown by the wind, and the pattern that the wind generates.

This weekend was graduation weekend for Duke university, and when I came home Friday evening the parking lots near our apartment were full with cars of parents and families visiting students.

Over the weekend a lot of undergraduate students started moving out of their apartments so there were a lot of rent-a-trucks, helping parents and goodbye parties.

I played with Antlr, a parser generating tool this weekend. It may sound nerdy, but writing parsers is a lot of fun.

When we were at the beach in North Carolina the weather wasn't great. That didn't stop us from having a great weekend.

Saturday afternoon when we arrived we went to the beach. The hotel had a long pier into the sea.

The beach.

Pier.

Behind those two poles, lies Holland.

Mysterious hole.

Mysterious animal.

Another one.

The beach is full of mysteries.

We had a great weekend. We made a road trip to the Outer Banks.

The Outer Banks is a string of beaches and barrier islands on the east coast of North Carolina, and it's about 4,5 hours driving from Durham. We took more time than that, with various breaks and enjoying the journey.

Around 5.00 pm we arrived on Kitty Hawk, one of the barrier islands. It's a really narrow patch of land, with at one side a sound and at the other side the Atlantic Ocean. A long bridge connects the islands to the main land.