I’ve been reading “Chasing Shadows” by Shelley Bowen Hatfield. It’s the *other* Apache book by a Bowen. It’s about the Apaches and Yaquis along the USA-Mexico border between 1876 and 1911.

It’s pretty fascinating. With the Mexican and USA governments trying to “pacify” and “suppress” the Indian Menace, it seems clear, with 125 years hindsight, that there’s no good guys in this story. The Indian people are forced off of their land, often into starvation. They respond by turning to raids and crime to feed their families, and the governments attack them and slaughter them by their thousands. For a long time, there was a per-scalp bounty for any indian scalp. That kind of brutality is hard for me to imagine, particularly given that it happened so very recently. And, yes, I consider 125 years to be very recent. I know, we’ve done more horrible things a lot more recently.

What’s particularly interesting is how a few thousand Apaches outwitted tens of thousands of federal troops for 30 years, and how those troops persisted in thinking of themselves as superior beings. It’s amazing to me how folks can block inconvenient things like facts from their minds when they are determined to believe a particular thing.

Anyways, I highly recommend this book.

Buy it on Amazon.com

Everybody hates the Alexis Park Resort. But I’m really not quite sure why. So far, my only complaints with it are 1) the ethernet in my room didn’t work (but, seriously, can’t I survive a few hours a day without network?) and 2) breakfast is a little overpriced.

It’s certainly possible that if I did some comparison shopping with other hotels, I’d find that I was paying a little too much, but I like being right there with the conference.

Presumably, some folks don’t like the location, but, as for me, I find it to be adequately far away from many of the reasons that I dislike Las Vegas in the first place. ie, The Strip.

So, in the hopes of receiving useful feedback that will be informative in our choices for next year, I believe that I’m going to have to embark on a quest to collect some of the reasons that people revile the Alexis Park so much. As for myself, I liked my room, I like the folks that work there, and I like the location. Perhaps, as Bill would say, it’s a third world thing. I expect beds to keep me off of the floor at night, and I have very little further expectation about hotel rooms. I guess I tend to think that some folks are just too darned hard to please, and so when they complain that the bar ran out of a particular kind of beer, or that the swimming pool wasn’t warm enough, my reaction is inclined to be “waah waah poor baby” rather than anything more feeling.

Just a touch of clarification regarding my link to the /dev/clue blog.

The only reason I linked to it was that it was mentioned in Chris Pirillo’s keynote, as an example of how the Feedster search engine works. Feedster looks pretty cool, and it was an interesting demo of it.

As to whether anybody asked for clarification of your remarks, well, given that 1) everyone that I have talk to agrees that the conference went really well and 2) I’ve heard a great deal of constructive criticism already, and don’t really have time for people spewing bile. I’m a little unclear why a remark that you use the word “hate” 100 times in a day lends any additional credence to your opinions. However, I’m glad to report that I’m perfectly clam about it. I just didn’t consider your criticism worth pursuing. Thanks for clarifying it on your own time.

At the moment, I’m in the air on the way to Memphis. I had hoped to leave a little earlier, and now I really wish that I had done so, because the guy next to me is snoring like a water buffalo. But the guy at the ticket counter in Las Vegas said that there was a good chance I would not make my flight out of Detroit, if I went that way, and then I’d be overnight in Detroit, which is hardly my idea of fun.

So here I am.

Yesterday, with the conference over, and nothing pressing to do, I found myself actually relaxed for the first time in longer than I can remember. I had no deadlines, no obligations, and no particular plans.

I went up to Comdex, in the hopes of getting on the wireless network and talking with a person or to. I had come up with a possible ending to the novel that I’m working on with CJD, and wanted to tell him my idea. I’m not entirely sure how he felt about it, because the network went down after I told him. But I’ve written out the closing chapter as I see it, and we’ll see what happens.

After that, I took the shuttle downtown and met Dean and Owen for lunch at Planet Hollywood, in one or other of the casinos. I think it was in Caesars. There are so many of them, and they all have a lot in common, but each seems to have their own thing that makes it stand out. The glass flowers at the Bellagio were absolutely amazing.

We walked around the strip for an hour or two – I’m not actually sure how long. At one point, we were out in front of Caesars, and hapened to get there just as one of the fountain concerts started. That, too, was magnificent, with the music and the fountains syncrhonized, and the water shooting 50 feet into the air.

Turns out Las Vegas isn’t *all* gambling and naked girls.

But, geez, it’s very clear where the bulk of the money comes from in that city. There were hundreds of people standing on the street handing out cards and flyers for strippers and dancers. Which is apparently a euphimism for whore, as far as I can tell. With that many folks out there with those cards, even if they are only earning minimum wage, there must be just an enormous amount of money being spent on the flesh business.

What was particularly sad was the elderly women engaged in the hawking. It must be profoundly humiliating for them to have to earn their living in this business. Most of these folks appeared to be immigrants of one nationality of another, but primarily south and central americans.

Anyways, that was Thursday. Didn’t accomplish anything in particular, but I enjoyed my time with Dean and Owen. I don’t think I ever asked how old Owen is – I’m guessing about 2? Anyway, he’s pretty cute.

I don’t know if I ever mentioned anything about Wednesday night. The planners and the various folks that worked the conference went to Quark’s for dinner, at the Star Trek Experience at the Las Vegas Hilton. This was indeed an experience. One of the beverages was the “Warp Core Breach”, which was a large glass bowl, served with a chunk of dry ice in the bottom, so that it bubbled and boiled while it sat there.

My mod_perl handlers talk went ok. Apparently when I was updating my slides, I duplicated a lot of information, which sucked A LOT. I think the talk could go a lot better. I need to revise the talk a few times and do some test run-throughs before I do this one again.