Vegas Recommendations

My friends are spending a weekend in Vegas. I've been there countless times, so this post is for them, a quick set of things that shouldn't be missed.



Performances

• Mystere - Saw this the first time November 2005. Fantastic beyond belief. I haven't seen O so I can't compare.
  
• O - Reviews are great, though I've heard from the "locals" it's not as good as Mystere. Still, its ALWAYS sold out. I don't think it could be anything but great.
  
• Blue Man Group - This is just an awesome show - I've seen it twice in fact. You definitely should not miss it. If you do, they are now in a total of 7 cities.

Attractions

• Fountains at Bellagio - Best (free) show on the strip hands down. Don't miss it, and frankly, it's hard to miss anyway. Good vantage points are had in front of the portcullis, on the street, and at Olives (in the Bellagio shopping area).
• Fremont Street Experience - Located in downtown (old) Vegas, and thus off the "strip" this is a bit harder to get to, but worth it. It's really pretty cool, and if you happen to like poker, Binion's is where most of the tournaments are held.
• Star Trek Experience - Pretty fun if you're into SF, but since the Hilton is off the strip, a bit hard to justify the trip. If you do go there, check out the Hilton sports book, it's the biggest in Vegas.
  

Food

• Bellagio Buffet - Easily the best buffet on the strip, it's also one of the most expensive. Go for Sunday brunch. Though they don't serve Mimosas, they do serve unlimited OJ and Champagne. I can't remember ever going and not making my own. And PLEASE don't forget to play Kino. You're in Vegas.
• Aureole - 4 story wine cellar located in my favorite casino - Mandalay Bay. What else is there to say? After dinner, make sure to stop by Red Square (see Bars).
• Stratosphere - Super chill restaurant with a great view.
• Yard Long Margaritas - It's a Vegas thing. Extra credit: find a place that offers an extra shot of everclear for $1.

Casinos

• Mandalay Bay - Aureole. Red Square. Awesome decor. Rum Jungle even. With easy travel between Luxor, New York New York, and MGM, this casino is hard to beat and has been my favorite for years. Only drawback is that it's at the far end of the strip. I particularly like taking a break from the action in the round bar located in the center of the casino. If I get tired of that, there's usually live music right near the entrance to the restaurant/bar area.
• Palms - Hard to describe why this Casino just clicks. But it does. Spend some time here and I think you'll agree. Hit the club, then some gambling, then go up for a drink and the best view of the strip from the Ghost Bar (see Bars).
• New York-New York - Ya just gotta check out the inside, especially the back with authentic steaming manhole covers. It's fun hands down, and if you like Roller Coasters, how about one that goes through the Casino itself?
• Bellagio - Predictably upscale. Don't miss the Chihuly sculpture in the lobby, and the ever-changing botanical gardens. If you can afford to shop here, more power to ya.
  
• Venetian - Take a ride in a gondola, or marvel at the unbelievable tile work just off the lobby. This is what you get for $1.1B, and I gotta say, it's pretty damn spectacular. Well worth the visit.

Bars

• Red Square - My all time favorite. Where else can you chill your Martini on the 4" x 20' strip of ice embedded in the bar - or drink a bottle of vodka Siberian style in the sub-zero room complete with Siberian Coats and Hats? Not a connoisseur? Try a vodka sampler while you're there.
  
• Ghost Bar - Easily the best view of the city, not to mention the parking lot 24 stories below. Hip bar with a lot of energy - all around cool.
  
• Stratosphere - If you missed eating dinner, it's just as good to have drinks here. Chill spot to enjoy drinks and the view. But honestly, the view is better at the Ghost Bar, and the Stratosphere is too far away from the main action on the strip to make it a worthwhile trip on it's own. The roller coasters here are downright scary.

=== What Not To Do ===

• Wynn - There's no reason to go here unless you are a guest. Close your eyes, open them, you'd think you were in the Bellagio.
• Lance Burton - Snore. This guy is older than Dick Clark and still looks 30. I call illegal use of botox.
  
• Sahara, Celine Dion, Fashion Mall, M&M Store, Coke Store, Gameworks, Circus Circus, Hard Rock, ...
  

Getting Better

I've been getting a lot of questions about how I am doing now that it's been several months since my accident.

So here's a quick post to answer those questions. If you don't feel like reading on, I've often compared my current condition to the well-known 80/20 rule - I've completed 80% of my recovery in 20% of the. I'm fairly convinced the remaining 20% recovery will take 80% of the time.

That said, a few more details are in order. Overall, my condition is improving, and I live with less and less/difficulty every day. For the most part, I am back to my normal life, with fairly little loss of overall ability to do things I used to do.

There's lots of little things, I have to re-learn how to use my thumb so video gaming is in! :) Yay! Tying my shoes was hard but getting easier....fastening buttons is still difficult, but I'll get it.

Strangely, I keep learning about new injuries I suffered - turns out I also fractured a rib on the left side (sometimes I feel like I fractured one on the right side too), and tore my rotator cuff.

Overall, I've been improving day by day or week by week - sometimes it's hard to tell on a short scale but on the longer scale I'm definitely doing better.

Since my pain level keeps decreasing, and my flexibility/Range of Motion keeps increasing, I haven't been too worried about the long term effects - mostly I figure it's going to just take a good amount of stretching and exercise regimens mixed with the best healer of all: time.

That's about it, thanks to everyone that's asked or keeps asking to know how I feel.

Furl Your Firefox Extensions

I have recently started using Firefox as my default browser. some sites work better with IE, the vast majority work just asor better in Firefox. Plus Firefox is more secure, andsignificantly more features - but only if you can find them!!

That's the topic of this post - I use several different computers, and for whatever reason I also seem to get a new laptop on a regular basis, from spilling coke on it, internal, unexplicable and unpredictable death, job change or whatever. Thus I tend to haveto install stuff I use a lot, including Firefox extensions.

For extensions (and probably in general all software packages although I haven't yet done this), I stumbled upon a great solution: I use Furl to mark each extension I install. When I install an extension I like, I furl it and tag it with the "Firefox Extensions" tag.

On another computer, where I haven't yet installed my favorite extensions, now I can easily find them.

If you want to see which ones I use, just browse on over to my Furl Firefox Extensions.

Motorcycle Crash

On Friday, August 5, 2005, I was involved in a motorcycle accident travelling south on highway 101 near Millbrae. I was riding my Yamaha R1:



I don't remember the accident (the dent in my helmet is a very probable explanation). I remember riding in the fast lane at about 25-40 with a group of 3 other riders in heavy stop and go traffic. I had just moved up to the rider because I felt the space between me and the car behind me was too close. The next thing I remember is lying on the ground, people telling me to not move, and that emergency help would be there. I wasn't in any pain yet.

After being taken to the Stanford Medical Center



I found that I had sustained the following injuries:
A total of 3 fractured vertebra in my back
Amputation of the tip of my left thumb
Partial loss of feeling in my left shoulder

If you take a look at the picture below, there are three main parts of the vertebra, the meaty round part, the spinal cord just behind the meaty part, and the "wings".



I fractured the C-7 (Cervical) vertebra which is the seventh down fromtop of your head. It's right about at the top of your shoulders. My C-7 fracture was just the wing part.

I had "compression fractures" in the remaining two vertebra. They were T-7 and T-8 (Thoracic) which are just about in the middle of your chest. A compression fracture occurs from pressure created by bending over too much. I did not have any damage due to a hyperextension, which would have been significantly worse. Thefractures consist of small fissures in the "meaty" part of the bone shown above.

Any nerve damage to the spinal cord is what results in paralysis which thankfully you can see I did not have.

Also during the accident the tip of my thumb was torn off. It's the part of your thumb that has your fingernail. I have all three joints and hopefully with some reconstructive surgery I will not suffer too much loss of function.

All in all I consider myself extremely lucky.

I received a lot of support during my stay at the hospital. I never realized how hard something like this could be until going through it. My friends and family made the experience as best as best it could possibly be.

To those that have sent flowers and cards, thank you so much, there have been some tough times in the hospital on drugs and feeling like my world has collapsed around me. You helped so much.

To all those that visited me in the hospital, I never realized how lonely those things are until I was immobile in bed. I probably only spent 1 or 2 hours alone during the entire time, thank you so much - seeing friends and family really makes a difference.

To those that have helped me out with logistics, finding my keys, driver's license, getting my bike out of hock, giving rides to my wife, I owe an especially large debt.

And finally, my wife, who spent every day and every night, who suffered through my down times, and satisfied my every desire without a single complaint. I could not have made it through without her. Rossy you were an angel in my time of need.

Here I am in the hospital about 1 day before I was released (as you can see, Yumi [Sergei's Girlfriend] is helping me to stay in good spirits):



I arrived home last night, Tuesday, August 9, 2005. I am on a fairly moderate diet of pain-killers - percoset and ibuprofin, and working towards a speedy recovery. I must wear a back brace out of bed to prevent me from leaning forward and stressing my fractures. I must wear a neck brace at all times. (Oh, and with this splint on I can still type about 100 wpm) The doctors are saying I will be able to get rid of the braces sometime between 4 and 12 weeks, depending on my recovery.

Thanks again everyone who helped me through this. I'm going to be just fine in very little time.

Manage Mailing Lists using Bloglines Email Subscriptions

Now that I am an avid fan of Bloglines (if you haven't already done so, setup an account and check it out) the possibilities for RSS feeds/subscriptions have been pouring into my brain.

My latest idea was this: why do I want my Yahoo Groups email notifications pouring into my inbox?  Useless clutter, right?  Right.

So off I went in search of a way to get an RSS feed for Yahoo Groups.  Short answer: it exists, but only for public groups.  Most of the ones I belong to are private.  :(

Turns out Bloglines has already got you covered.  All you need to do is setup an email subscription.

What is an Email Subscription?

I'll let Bloglines cover that:

You can create an unlimited number of special Bloglines email addresses that are tied to your Bloglines account. The email addresses show up as subscriptions in your My Blogs page, and email sent to those email addresses appears as new items.

When you create a Bloglines email address, a subscription is added to your account. If you unsubscribe from that subscription, the email address becomes invalid and mail sent to it will bounce.

Email subscriptions are great for announce-only or broadcast mailing lists that don't provide RSS feeds. They are also useful as temporary email addresses.

To rename or move your email subscriptions, use the 'Edit' link under the 'My Feeds' tab.

How do I set up an Email Subscription?

1. Go to your regular "My Feeds" section in Bloglines.

2. Scroll to the "Extras" part at the bottom.

3. Click on "Email Subscriptions"

4. Name your subscription whatever you want.  Bloglines will give you the email address when you are done.

5. Go back to your Yahoo Groups page (or whatever other mailing list you want) and change the notification email address to this address.

6. Done!

Use Bloglines Already!

If you are here because I recommended you check out Bloglines, congratulations, I really think you're going to love this and wonder why you ever wasted time with bookmarks.

Using Bloglines is super easy, so don't worry if right now you think it's not right for you.  It will be....trust me. Without further ado, let's go!

What is Bloglines?

Mainly it's an RSS aggregattor.  That means it will take RSS feeds (headline data mostly, but any type of data sent in small chunks of data like Slashdot posts, News headlines, whatever) accumulate them in one place and let you browse them easily.  If you like that part enough to start using it, you can figure everything else out on your own.

Setting up Bloglines, in a few easy steps:

1. Get an account by visiting the Bloglines Registration Site.
2. Go to my public site.  If you already had Bloglines setup, this is pretty much what you would see except with your sites instead of mine.
3. At the bottom, right click the "Export Subscriptions" link and select "Save Target As...".  Save this to a file ("export.xml" is fine) on your desktop.
4. Log in to your bloglines (which should be empty).
5. Click the "Edit" link located directly below the "My Feeds" tab.
6. At the bottom, click on the "Import Subscriptions" button.
7. In the window to the right, Click the "Browse" button, enter the file you saved, and click the "Import" button.
8. You are done!  Just click the "My Feeds" button.  Now you will see all of my Bloglines feeds imported into your Bloglines.  You can add/edit/remove these as you like once you get the hang of using Bloglines.

Top 5 Reasons to use Bloglines:

1. Save time! Don't visit every site you like every day or even multiple times a day.  Do it all in one place.
2. Remove head knowledge! You automatically know if there is new content and how much new content there is!  This single feature not only relieves your brain from having to remember what articles you read where, but saves you immense amounts of time.  With all that time, you have MORE time to read other interesting stuff you never would have before.
3. Track Packages!  This is amazing.  Put a package in and track it using bloglines.  Remember, Bloglines remembers the last information you saw, so if the package changes location, you'll know immediately.
4. Discover the Tail!  Ever hear that phrase about Web content and Web accesses?  It says that the Web usage has a long "tail".  What this means is that besides the big popular news items, there's also a lot (a LOT) of little content too.  Because you can keep track of any site automatically, even if the traffic is low, you'll know immediately when new articles are available.
5. Get Mobile!  This works so well when you are on the road if you have a mobile phone which can browse the internet.  Bored at the airport?  Read the latest updates on bloglines!

James Lee, a friend of mine also has blogged about why he switched to Bloglines, in case you need some more convincing ;-).

Motorola MPX220

So I bought a Motorola MPX220.  Here's my review: it rocks!

I won't bother linking to any of the zillion places you can buy it, but it's available either thru Cingular (my carrier) or through Amazon or through a billion other places (if you don't already use Froogle and Pricegrabber you really should).

I also am not going to bother making a serious review, since there are many many reviews online.  I think the most detailed I found to date is here on Smartphonethoughts.

What I will do is highlight what I think are it's strengths and weaknesses (no more than 5 each to keep this one short)

Strengths

• The screen.  It's awesome, beautiful, and high res.
• Contacts.  They sync perfectly with outlook and integrate very well with apps on the phone.  I especially like the manner in which you select contacts.  If you know T9, Motorola has their own version of this technology, except when you are searching for a contact, you start hitting letters and names, parts of names, etc. are all displayed in a list.  As you keep hitting more letters, the list gets whittled down to the remaining possibilities.  Example: Hitting 7 (pqrs), 2 (abc), 8 (tuv) matches both Paul and Raul.
• Voice Recognition.  There is no training.  It will recognize names (first or last) in your contacts without any special training.  It's not 100%, but it works great and once you get used to it (speak slowly, pause between word/names) and also it's better to use the full name of the contact, it works wonderfully in the car!
• Doom.  'Nuff said.
• MP3 player.  1GB miniSD cards just came out and are rumored to work with the '220.  The sound quality is fantastic. I highly recommend getting the motorola headphones/headset so far I have only found them at BestBuy.
• Home screen (yeah it's 6, but I had to sneak this in).  It's fully customizable using an XML file which defines the graphics and colors for an entire scheme.  On the home screen, status indicators such as date, time, number of messages, MRU Application List, all are implemented via customizable (via the XML file) plugins, and app developers can write whatever they want (can you say RSS?).  This site has some kickass home screens.

Weaknesses

• Bluetooth is difficult to set up for ActiveSync.
• Power/USB connectors are proprietary.
• Syncing mail can only be scheduled 15 min/30 min/1 hour etc.  It'd be better if I could schedule more frequent intervals during the day, and less at night (syncing sucks battery life big time)
• Doesn't come with a synchronize application for Outlook Notes.  Fortunately there is a great one here but it costs $12.95.
• Camera sux.  But I never wanted one anyway.

Wine Clubs

Following up on my love of wine, recently I have joined two wine clubs.

They are :

1. Martin Ray : I've been a fan of Martin Ray since discovering it when it used to be the Martini & Pratti winery.  The best thing about going there in person is the 2 liter jug of red wine tapped from the barrel for $12.

2. Beringer : Yes, a little more commodity than I normal go for, Beringer does have some great reserve wine (the mid-range is nothing to write home about though).  Join the club for a minimum shipment of ~$40, and you get your reserve wine tasting fees back + a good discount.  All in all a sweet deal.

I'll have more to say on my favorite hidden wineries in the future...

Update:

I ditched the Beringer club as I figured I would, not worth the money. Instead I have invested in:
Folie A Deux

Aerating Wine Funnel

While on a recent wine trip to the Napa Valley, I stumbled upon this little gem:




After buying it on site, I found it at Amazon.

Update: You can now find it at Pottery Barn also.

Writing Your Resume In HTML

References: PDF 995 Mozilla

I'd like to suggest that there is, contrary to popular belief, more than one program that can be used to write your resume.

I won't promise you that along the way you're not going to run into a few bumps.  What I can promise is there are alternatives, and if you like to keep current on Web technologies, maybe there is something you can learn too.

For the past I-don't-know-how-many years, my resume has always been in Word format.  It's the de-facto, if frustrating, standard enforced by practically every company and recruiter in the known world today.

What, might you ask, is wrong with this?  Here are a few examples:

o Semantic overlap of data and presentation
o Differing file formats for differing versions
o Bloated format (big files)
o Publishing to the web is terrible
o Word is not FrameMaker

So I decided after one too many fights with Word to make it display my resume the way *I* wanted and not the way *it* wanted, I would take back control of my resume!

HTML and CSS

By now you're thinking sure HTML, what's the big deal?  And CSS too even that has been around for a few years so what.

Well, CSS and HTML are the first steps towards what Tim Berners Lee views as the next revolution in web technology, the semantic web. 

With CSS, you can write clean HTML and not worry about the formatting.  If you tag the HTML data in the right way, it is possible to tinker with the look of your document in a clear and consistent manner, and the end results can be spectacular!

I'll have more to say on CSS in the future.  But for now let me illustrate the benefits I achieved by sitting down to write my resume in HTML plus CSS:

o File size - 15Kb vs. 35 kb
o Ubiquitous - everyone has a web browser
o Clean separation of data and formatting
o Web ready

So what are the drawbacks?

o People still expect Word format. 

Well most people still expect a resume in Word format.  My answer is to send them a pdf which I create using PDF 995, a free driver that creates PDF documents, a file format nearly as ubiquitous as Web Browsers and Word documents.

o Ease of Editing.

Personally I prefer to edit my HTML by hand, since most tools still generate far too much garbage HTML for my liking.  But if you absolutely must edit something using WYSIWYG, try the Mozilla suite of products, their composer tool is just what your're looking for and it's free (as in beer).

I hope you see that there are some good reasons to consider writing your resume in HTML and CSS.  Stay tuned for more ruminations on CSS, including some links to some sites that show the amazing potential of CSS.

Password Management Software

I simply must make mention of this little software gem called Roboform.

If you've become inundated with passwords over the past few years like I have, you're likely to appreciate the power of this piece of software.

I found it because I imagined writing some software that could manage my passwords in a secure form, especially in a portable manner using a pen-drive, and then selling that software to make millions.

Turns out someone already did exactly what I had imagined and more, and although not perfect, it meets all expectations and then some. I highly recommend you look at it too. It's free for the first 30 days, after that it will continue to manage 10 passwords -- not nearly enough for me so I actually kicked in the $40 to buy it outright.

Just a quick break down of some of it's main features:

• Manage all of your passwords securely


• Site login is only one click away


• Keep passwords on your computer


• Keep passwords on a removable drive - use securely at any computer


• Unobtrusive and easy to use UI


• Easily generate cryptographically secure passwords


• Master key unlocks all passwords


• Fill any kind of form prevalent on the web with your personal info including name, address, phone, email, credit card (including security panel code!) and more