Three-Letter Acronyms & Four-Letter Words

My trip to New Orleans has been a pretty good one, but I am ready to go home.

The NARdi Gras Conference & Expo was good, we had some good meetings and I managed to get a better and better feel for what the real estate agents need and are currently being offered when it comes to technology.

I am sitting here at PJ's (it is like a Starbucks, but all over here in New Orleans), they are the only place in the airport with WiFi. And well, I haven't really been on the computer since late on Thursday. Gotta get back into the swing of things.

I will be in Dallas later this week for at least a day, originally I was thinking two. However, after this morning's conference call I think I will only need to be up there on Wednesday.

All for now.

Laterz.

I forgot to include the 'Voodoo' that I got down at Lafitte's (sp).

It is purple, and tastes a bit like grape.

Today was a take it easy day down here in New Orleans. Angie had a cab picking her up at 1:15pm to make it to the airport in time. Meaning, we had to try to pack in some tourist stuff this morning.

We went to Cafe Demoun (sp) for some coffee and beignets. Then we hit the flea market. I found a few nice things for my mom, sister, mother-in-law and Gina. I also found a coaster that has a picture of the Lucky Dog cart on it, way cool!

We then wandered over to Lafitte's. It had been the longest running bar in the United States. Not necessarily older bar mind you. But longest running. What is the difference, right?

Well here in New Orleans the bars are not required to close. This means that many of them don't. They simply have some really groggy bartenders who are waiting for the relief shift to take over in the wee early hours of the morning.

During Katrina Lafitte's closed down for 2 days. This apparently allowed another bar in New Orleans to surpass them as the longest running bar in the USA.

Anyway, I am borrowing Steve's Powerbook G4, as I cannot get my HP onto the network here. Apparently this is a known problem that PC based laptops cannot get onto their network. They have an Airport wireless. My laptop negotiates and gets passed the WEP security but is never issued an IP address.

Which I find ironic. In the Dallas office I upgraded the Linksys router's firmware in an effort to resolve some problems we were having with dropping connections. Well the dropping connections problems were gone. However, the Mac users could no longer get onto the network. Their laptops would negotiate the WEP. However, no DHCP love.

This would be the exact opposite.

I am here for one more day. I am going to head down to the convention center for a couple of hours in the morning. Then I will head to the airport and work from there until my flight is ready to go. I might see if I can fly out early, but I don't want to jeporidize the reservation I already have.

New Orleans has been an interesting experience. Let me just tell you this, I knew the city was all about drinking and having fun. However, I wasn't aware that it had as much of an arts district as it does. I mean it makes sense that it would. Often times art is inspired by drinking. So in terms of making gross generalizations that makes perfect sense right? Lots of booze = lots of art!

But seriously, the art is great. Painting, sculpture. Even the jewelry down at the flea market was great. Oh yeah, I need to try to get to the flea market before I leave. Gotta buy something sparkly before I go.

Now, I knew that Louisiana had some riverboat gambling. But I didn't know there was a casino in New Orleans. We stopped there a few times over the course of the trip. I only played slots, two of the visits. The first visit I lose $20. The next visit I turned $5 into $26.30. Meaning +$1.30 for the total visit to the casino. Impressive right? Yeah, ok not so impressive. But think about the $5 => $26.30. That is like a 520% increase. Now that is impressive. (power of positive thinking)

The casino was kind of fun. Oh yeah, I should throw out there I lose the $20 playing $0.25 slots. I won the $21.30 while playing $0.05 slots. Goofy huh?

I need to work out the logistics with Steve and Sue about tomorrow. I don't want to drag my bags downtown with me. But I don't want to be a hassle as they both have to go to work tomorrow.

Angie and I went to the National World War II, WWII museum today. She didn't get a chance to see all of the good stuff unfortunately. I will have to buy her a ticket next time we are in town. (She bought the tickets today.) I had a good time, but wasn't able to see and sit through all the exhibits had to offer. They had some good movies. Two of them were 45 minutes each and they had several other 7 minute long ones as well. I will need to comment on my thoughts about the WWII later, as I had a few thoughts about that era vs today while watching the movies.

Ok, I am going to stop blogging and see if I can look up how to fix this PC-Airport compatability problem.

I am leeching computer access from Jack's (Bossman) friend Steve real quick.

The trip to New Orleans has been quite fruitful thus far. Spent a good day at the tradeshow!

And as per the rainbow I have tasted the following colors:

Red = Hurricane, sort of general fruit punch flavor
Green = Jester, sort of a lime flavor
Blue = Smurf in a blender, tastes like you would think a smurf would, you know blueberry-ish.
Yellow = Redbull & Vodka, yup apparently Red Bull can be purchased in a 'Coke bag', just the syrup!

Needless to say all of the colors have been mixed with some form of liqour and therefore tend to have an effect. Luckily Starbucks has a strong presence here.

We are having dinner @ Steve & Sue's house tonight. Ribeyes, potatoes and salad are on the menu.

A cold front has come through the area and has left it quite chilly. I bought a pull-over from a t-shirt shop on Bourbon Street. I wanted to get a jester hat too. However, the old noggin is too big. If my head was shaved I might have been able to squeeze the old cranium into a nice purple and black one. No such luck though.

Well enough being anti-social, I best go join the party again.

Laterz

PS: Remember, I'll shave my head when we get 10,000 accounts. Then maybe I can wear baseball and jester hats.

I am in New Orleans, for NARdi GRAS, the NAR tradeshow/convention.

I arrived about 3 hours ago, give or take 30 minutes. I have been working on work stuff here in the hotel lobby. Leeching the free WiFi, it isn't great WiFi but it is FREE.

We are staying at Hotel Le Cirque, it is a nice place. The room is a little small, but I don't think I will be in there much.

Tonight we are going to take a tour around town and see some of the aftermath. The Bossman has friends that live in town and are going to play tour guide for us.

It is interesting, I need to ask the management here how long they have been re-opened as the lobby bar hasn't been certified to serve anything again yet. I heard either an inspector or contractor talking about plumbing and electrical problems. The owner of the bar (which is independently operated from the hotel) gave me and Bossman free sodas.

At one point someone who looked like they were here for an interview came up to us and asked if we knew who "Rodney" was. Apparently the hotel staff told him we worked in the bar, since we have taken over a table sitting near the bar. "Nope, we don't work here."

It would be nice to have a beer. However, I have been preparing myself for an evening full of drinking. Except for that whole "eat before you drink". I had a protein bar for breakfast around 7am and nothing since. Hopefully, we get a good dinner in before the festivities begin.

Oh yeah, what about the exercise?

Nope, no time this morning to take the bike out or walk around the block. However, I did park in the "Close-In" parking lot @ the airport. Or as the airport sign says the "Walks-alot-lot", yes they have an official poster that says that.

Then there was the walking I did to change planes in Houston. That was probably about the same as walking around the block (almost twice), not to mention the the fact I had about 12 pounds of technology slung over my back (ie laptop and some).

Laterz