A History of Seth: March 2007

Another hotel . . . this time, the Riviera. Here's the bed.

The table in the room.

This is the TV. Not in an armoire, for a change.

The doorway into the room.

The sink in the bathroom.

This is the showerhead. This is the first room that I've stayed in for a while that had an old showerhead. I don't like old showerheads because they never spray enough water. But this one actually wasn't too bad.

This was the tub in my non-smoking room. You can't see the mold on the shower curtains in this picture, but trust me, it was there.

This was the cigarette burn on the tub in my non-smoking room.

And this was the sprinkler in the bathroom. It seems like the bathroom wouldn't be a likely place for a fire, what with all the water faucets and spigots and all. Apart from the rust, notice also the mold on the walls.

The hotel room in the Riviera was beat up and used, but it was clean, and they did make an effort to make it nice, like this. I think this is the most elaborate tissue flower I've ever seen in a hotel.

So I was here in Las Vegas again for the International Roofing Expo 2007.

Here's the pre-registration area, featuring self-registration stations for the first time.

This is the rest of the registration area.

I had to take a window seat on this flight instead of an isle seat, so I have some pictures out of the window of the plane. Technically my camera is supposed to be off at this point, I think. This is a picture of some of the Strip properties.

And this is the picture of even more of the properties on the Strip.

I was playing with the zoom feature of my camera and got a good picture of the New York New York and MGM Grand hotels from the runway.

This Sanyo blimp was flying around the whole time I was in Las Vegas. I think it might have been here for the Photo Marketing Association convention, another Experient client, which was also in the LVCC with Roofing.

Not only was this blimp flying around the airport, but so were a few helicopters. This is a picture of one of them.

If you wanted a good picture of a Mexicana jet, here you go.

This is kind of a traffic jam. I think one plane takes off about every five minutes, so the last of these eight planes is probably 40 minutes away from takeoff. Even if a plane takes off every three minutes, that's still 24 minutes to wait.

These are some houses right outside the airport. The Strip was on the other side of the plane.

Some steps in a mountain on the way to San Jose.

A dried-up lake bed. I think.

Here are some farms. We will do some compare and contrast later on.

And some mountains on the way. Again, some compare and contrast later.

Another dry lake bed. I think.

This is an interesting picture to me because it shows there is snow on the sides of the mountain that get no direct sun.

This is also interesting to me, because it basically shows where people can live, which is below the part where there is snow all the time. So we live below this altitude and above sea level, which is not a lot of space in the scheme of things.

The tops of the mountains, covered with snow on all sides.

A crevice in the mountains that goes down far enough to lose the snow.

Another layer effect. This time the clouds with all their moisture were trapped behind the mountains, which made it look kind of like a shore line next to a body of water, which it sort of was, only thousands of feet in the air.

Once we got over the mountains, to the other side with all the clouds, there were farm fields everywhere. This is very different from the farms on the other side of the mountain.

A picture on the approach to SJC. Notice the green hills as opposed to the brown ones on the other side of the mountain.

I flew into San Jose to visit my brother, who currently works at Stanford. This is the Hoover Tower on Stanford's campus. It is the tallest thing on campus and they let people go up inside it. This makes me happy because I like to go up in tall things and look out over everything.

The spires at the top of the tower.

A picture of the fountain from up in the tower.

This is a view out of the Hoover Tower. In the distance, just left of center in the picture, is the Clark Center, where my brother works.

The radio antenna on Stanford's campus.

Again playing with the zoom feature on my camera, showing this time the radio antenna close up (relatively speaking).

A picture of the church quad.

Zooming again, a picture of the quad, close up.

These are the bells in the Hoover Tower. They won't ring them while there are people up in the top of the tower. That's a shame.

Still more of the Hoover Dam! This model is in the Hoover museum in the tower.

Once again, the purpose of the dam.

This is the clock tower. It's not quite as tall as the Hoover Tower.

Here's the tick-tock mechanism inside the tower.

I spent some time driving around while my brother was working. This is a picture of the M5 Industries sign, known to Mythbusters fans everywhere.

This is the only sign I saw of the Mythbusters. I really didn't expect more. The M5 Industries web site makes it plain that coming here is completely pointless. Not that I let that stop me.

I also drove down to Santa Cruz. This is a picture off of the shore of Santa Cruz. No surfers in this picture, but there were about 30 people surfing. In March. In water that must have been fairly brisk.