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I had never been to Las Vegas before, so the first thing that struck me, when I arrived on Tuesday, was the slot machines that were in the airport right where I got off of the plane. I waited there, in the terminal, for a few minutes for Gene to show up, and when he did, we caught a cab over to the convention center.
I got my badge and went in to the show. It was pretty impressive, and I didn't even see the big room until a lot later. The Triticom booth is set up quite nicely, and it only took me a little while to get into the groove of things. It wasn't long before I was giving demos, tossing frisbees, and swiping badges with the best of 'em.
After Interop was done for the day, we went back to our rooms. Jordan and I were staying at Harah's, so we got together and walked over to Bally's to meet Eric. We ate a buffet at one of the casinos, and then went looking around at some of the other casinos. I think the most interesting sight we saw that night was a masquerade show that started up while we were wandering around.
On Wednesday, I woke up and rode to the convention center with George and John. Unlike Tuesday, I had to help set up, so we got the Triticom booth all set up and then I grabbed some breakfast.
There were a few interesting things going on at the booths around us. The AT&T booth had a show that ran about once an hour. Gene, being the extrovert he is, somehow got the lady that rounded up the crowd to say, "Hi, Gene" and wave at us every time she went up on stage, so that provided us with about 10 seconds of entertainment every hour. There was also a show at the EMC2 booth featuring Albert Einstein and Ben Franklin. Gene seemed to like this one, too, since he'd break into dance every time they'd start playing their song.
That night, we met at Treasure Island before we went to eat. Eric and I watched the pirate battle, and then found the others. Ken, Gene, Cozette, Eric, Jordan, and I went to eat at The Dive. It was a rather interesting restaurant. It was made to look and feel like you were in a large submarine. On the way back to the hotel, that night, we stopped by to see the white tiger, and while walking from there to the hotel, I caught a glimpse of the eruption of the water volcano thingie.
So, I guess it's on to Thursday's events. Well, Thursday started off just like Wednesday. We got the Triticom booth set up, and started helping potential customers.
Towards the end of the show, we said bye to the AT&T girl after her last show. Gene had been promising that he'd get up on stage with the EMC2 boys, so for their last act we got him to get up on stage and dance around with Al and Ben. That was a pretty good time. There's rumors that after that, Gene thinking about leaving ATC to pursue a career in acting/dancing. Okay, there's only rumors about that because I started 'em with that last sentence. Is that putting the cart before the horse?
This was the last day, so things went a bit slower than the previous days. At the end of the show, everyone had to takedown their booths. We were no exception. The Triticom booth is very easy to take down, so we got done rather quickly, but then we just had to sit around and wait for the crews to bring us our containers so we could pack up the booth.
I guess that's pretty much it. Oh, ya, I almost forgot the most interesting part. That night, I went to eat with Ken and Tom. After supper, Tom offered to pick me up in the morning, since he had to drive to the airport to drop the car off anyway. I thought that sounded nicer than riding a cab, so we agreed to meet outside of my hotel in the morning. On Friday, I woke up early and got ready fast, so I ended up getting outside (to wait for Tom) about 10 minutes early, so I just sat outside and waited for him. After about 45-50 minutes, I figured that I'd better get to the airport by myself. I figured that he had just forgot to pick me up, and that I'd see him at the terminal. Well, I got to the terminal, and neither Ken or Tom were there. I boarded the airplane and sat in my seat in the back. I saw Ken get on the plane, but he sat way up front, so he didn't see me. I never saw Tom get on the plane. Hmmmm. I guess Ken thought that both Tom and I missed the flight. I found out later that Tom had overslept and just caught the next flight to Minneapolis.
Now, I guess that's pretty much it!
Gluttony and Disillusionment in Las Vegas
For several weeks leading up to Interop97, I was forced to deal with trip envy. Dana, my FiFoKAMSO (Fiancé Formerly Known As Most Significant Other) didn’t believe me when I said it was going to be just another business trip and that I would be too busy for fun. Besides, we both know the budget has no "throw away" portion in it for gambling. (Although, it was convenient that the trip started on the 4th, a time of unusually fat walletitis.) Honey, I protested, remember me at the Northern Lights Indian Casino? My main activity was to get quarters, drink beer, and make observations of people transposing personalities upon their chosen slot machines.
Finally, the time came and I caught my flight to Vegas. I caught a good view of the city as the plane circled for landing. I had to chuckle; the strip looked like a giant amusement park, only without Mickey and Bugs. (They used to have a Bugsy, but he had an accident.)
I stopped in a bookstore at the airport to pick up a guide to Vegas. There were quite a few: some specializing on finding cheap shopping deals, some on sightseeing, some how-to’s for gambling, and some covering the proper etiquette for behavior in cat houses. I stuck with the standard Fodor’s guide for pictures and history.
Next stop- Bally’s. A two-tower hotel; this was the former MGM Grand that caught fire in 1980. I’m guessing that the South Tower was the older of the two, and my "low roller" appearance is what got me a room on that side. To get to my elevator, I had to walk through the casino, past the Keno lounge, and around a magazine and toiletries vendor cart.
I was happy to find, however, that my room was on the second-from-top floor near the corner of Las Vegas Blvd. and Flamingo Rd. There was an excellent view of Caesar’s Palace, Rio, Barbary Coast, the Flamingo Hilton, and with some visibility of the Mirage and Treasure Island. It turned out to be better than I thought when the lights came on at night. Every hotel has some kind of light gimmick- I guess the coolest was Caesar’s dome with strobing geometric light patterns moving across the surface. Framing the whole scene was a ring of mountains that looked awesome at sunrise and sunset.
Next, I thought I’d walk the strip to get to the convention center. I needed to pick up my Interop badge and I thought it would be a good way to see things up close. Well, it turned out to be a long two miles and the sights were not sustaining. The first half mile was all hotel-casinos- lots of people walking around in the heat of the afternoon. I saw a newly married couple and they asked me to take their picture- ho hum.
I thought I might check out the local Vegas newspaper- after all it seemed there were about ten newspaper-boxes on every block. Whoops- they all were filled with papers like "Adult Entertainer", "Wild Night Life", and "Totally Nude". A few blocks later, I saw big stacks of the mags placed at ten foot intervals on top of the bushes lining the sidewalk- in case people are too busy to walk to a box, I guess. It made me wonder if this was normal or if the Interop convention represents a boom-time for the local entertainment services. Probably the former.
I finally made it to Convention Center Blvd, turned right and realized I had another ¾ mile to go- but the goal was now in sight. Overweight men with polo shirts were swarming in the distance. I made it to the center, picked up my badge and hopped on a shuttle bus back to the hotel to soak my sore feet.
The next day I started with a breakfast buffet at Bally’s. Superb- next to the view, my favorite part of the trip. Shouldn’t everyone eat prime rib, crab legs and fried shrimp with their omelette, pineapple, and Belgian waffle breakfast ? This time, I stuck to the shuttle bus to get to the show.
The rest of the day, I spent hiking the giant convention floor and yakking with network product vendors. This was it, I must say- Mecca for networks. The big guys were out in force- 3Com, Cisco, Bay Networks. Sun, HP, Microsoft, and IBM all had large regions for themselves and their third party partners- mainly showing various niche network/system/application management software products to go with Java/Solaris, OpenView, NT, and Tivoli respectively. Cabletron had a huge, double decker "booth" that looked more like the bridge on the Enterprise. Network Associates had a big screen projection TV, but all I saw it do is play their TV commercial with the sexy lady hacker- "Do you know where your data is ?"- Oooo scary.
I saw many hardware products for supporting 10-100-1000 networks. Hardware based tools for ATM/LAN/WAN testing. VPN products. Some ADSL. It seems like companies need products to support hybrid networks as they evolve from old to new technologies.
I found the "back wall" section the most interesting. There I found many SNMP products and saw a demo of SNMPv3 in action. Java-based network management products are popular as well, and there were even a few TCL based net-mnge apps as well.
Some specific products:
Simplesoft Inc. makes an automated SNMP Agent Tester and a Multiple SNMP agent simulator for $3500 and $10000 respectively. Pricey for windows based, software-only tools.
ARINC makes "Taboret", a custom SNMP management app builder for $15000 + $500 for run time licenses. This is a great idea, I thought, a visual editor that lets you build custom management apps quickly. I played with it for a while and talked to the vendor, and found it to be limited. In fact, they used ILOG products to provide the visual editing environment and app controls. All they added was code to support dragging MIB variables into the editor. Applications built with their tool needed to use NetView or OpenView to perform their SNMP I/O- they couldn’t be used "stand alone". Any complex processing of MIB data had to be handled with TCL/TK scripts. This kind of product remains a great idea, though.
Advent Net, Inc. makes "Agent Builder", a custom SNMP agent builder for $2500 with 5 run time licences and $100 for additional run time lics. This tool was semi-graphical, but the user has to provide Java code to handle Get and Set tasks. The upside is the agents run on platforms supporting Java 1.1.
Anyway, there’s a lot going on in the industry. Enough for miles and miles of company booths. If I cover Interop again, I’ll try renting a wheelchair and pretending to be handicapped.
That night JCB, ERM and I taxied to the Rio hotel to try the buffet there. We passed up the seafood buffet (I would have pushed for it, but I filled up on seafood for breakfast) and ate at the other, huge buffet with everything else. It was good- the tamales were tasty. We cruised through Rio’s casino and then Caesars’, but didn’t find much of interest. Sometime this evening JCB parted ways with his driver’s license. He wasn’t sure, but it might have been the lobby collision with someone "in a hurry". He can tell this story better than I. After parting ways, while walking back to Ballys, I did get propositioned. Ah well, still got the touch.
The next day (surprise) I ate more buffet for breakfast. I focused on prime rib this time.
Fortunately, for Wednesday, I scheduled a workshop covering SNMP. This meant NO Walking- all day. Not only that, the class was a good experience. Dr Case is a great speaker and his company, SNMP Research, is one of the few selling SNMPv3 tools already. The last third of the class covered competing, web-based technologies for network/system/application management. Their mantra was "The Right Tool for The Job" meaning, while they see coexistence as reality, they argue SNMP gives the right combo of functionality with complexity for most situations. Oh well, this battle will go on. The SNMP camp is right to be nervous, but for the time being everything else is vaporware.
That night, KJT, WEP and his better half took us to "The Dive" for dinner. As ERM recounted, this was a submarine motif, not a seamy underbelly belly filler. I was happy for the changeup- we enjoyed appetizers with many spice sauces and I had the shiskabob with artichoke. (Good for those on diets).
That night, I called Dana and told her all the details of my trip. I wanted to convince her of my suffering in the line of duty. I left out talk of food, focusing instead on all the walking. Since my summary of the show was not interesting, and complaints are not interesting, I only had one other safe subject. George Carlin. George was the entertainer doing nightly shows at Bally’s and so channel 20 on the hotel room TV was 24 hour-a-day-Carlin standup. I saw ten years of Carlin, which was pretty good stuff for the most part. Even better, Wednesday I saw George in person get off the elevator in the lobby. He was wearing a cap and sunglasses and had his collar turned up. I guess he’s had his fill of fan appreciation, so I didn’t do anything to blow his cover.
I finally convinced Dana of my suffering when I remembered the worst thing about Vegas- they have a lousy newspaper. Not only is the Vegas paper a rag (I found one in the hotel gift shop) but people I talked to wait to read the L.A.Times when it arrives in the afternoon. This is almost as bad; the L.A. Times reads like the ABC Evening News mixed with Entertainment Tonight and Hard Copy. Here I was, a reader with a two-paper-a-day habit (and Wall Street Journal on the side), stuck with USA Today as my only source. Dana was highly sympathetic.
I know this article is growing "Tuba-esque" in length so I’ll wrap it up. All that was left was a Thursday morning trip to see a few last vendors at the convention, a taxi to the airport, and a flight home.
Here are all of the pictures I took while at Interop in Las Vegas. They are separated by the date that they were taken.