david-s.net - David Schlosnagle's Words, Photos, and Links

Those of you who know me most likely know I’m not much of an early riser. So what does a nocturnal person do when they have to be up early? The answer of course is that if you never go to sleep, the end of the night is the beginning of the morning. I’m now wide awake and enjoying a pumpernickel bagel with a little garlic and herb cream cheese. Sidenote: why is pumpernickel so delicious, while I dislike rye? Maybe its the molasses. All I need to do is make it to Dulles…

At this time, I should be on board my least favorite airline, Delta, and heading toward my least favorite layover city, Atlanta. For a little background about why Delta is the worst airline on the face of the earth, see my notes for 2003-03-08 and 2003-03-15 on my trip to California two years ago. If all goes well, after hitting Atlanta I’ll be in Las Vegas by 3pm Vegas time.

A year ago, I had just been offered a job, was in Daytona Beach, Florida for spring break, was reading Oracle Night by Paul Auster, and listening to Appleseed Cast. Now I’m working said job, reading Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut, and listening to Christopher O’Riley playing Radiohead on the piano. At least I still get a spring break with my grad student friends.

See ya in a week, hopefully with tons of new pictures. Now that I’ve finished packing everything into one carry-on, it’s time for my 3 hours of sleep until I have to get up.

One of my favorite weblogs to read is Rands In Repose. Rands has a bunch of hilarious (but mostly true) Vegas related posts such as How to Win at Low Limit Poker, and Rands Vegas System. This will be useful next week in Vegas.

Also, don’t miss N.A.D.D., the management glossary for decipering business conversations, and incrementalists vs. completionists.

There are a ton of posts and articles to read. Definitely worth the time check out.

Until today, I had never been in a Wegmans. I never visited the one in State College for a two main reasons: I was a poor college student, and it was the farthest grocery store from me. Wegmans opened up a new store right down the road from my apartment on Sunday. I was going to stop by the grand opening to check things out, but I decided better when I made it to the intersection by the new store and there were about 10 cop cars all over the place directing traffic. They had managed to fill the entire 2 level parking garage, along with a few miles of pavement leading to that packed garage. I decided I really didn’t want to see something like the Ikea Riots. (Sidenote: I’ve been disappointed with the whole neo-modern Swedish/Scandanavian country direction they’ve been going).

Fast-forward to today. I’ve heard good things about Wegmans’ cafe, so I decide to check it out over lunch, the only problem is everyone in a 20 mile radius had the same idea. Finally, tonight I got to check the place out. It was nothing like I had expected. Take the largest super-ultimate-gigantic-trashy Wal-Mart and replacing all of the nastiness with yummy food. Never before had I been to a grocery store with an elevator (Note: its a pain if you’re parked in the lower level of the garage and you just want to get out of the store) to get you to one of 3 floors.

Once the novelty wears off, I think it will be a nice, close place to shop, and if nothing else, it will create even more competition for all the grocery stores and make the checkout lines shorter at Safeway.

I just got my flight and hotel booked for Sin City next month. The timing for this trip is perfect, since this comes after another huge release at work so I can use up my comp time. It’s even better because I get to meet up with a couple friends on their spring break from grad school.

My goal for this trip is rest and relaxation, and maybe if I’m lucky I won’t lose too much money. I hope I can steal a little luck from my old supervisor who $18k on Party Poker.

I’ll let you know how I do.

(One little note, the taxes and fees for the flight and hotel came out to be around 17.5%! Doesn’t that seem a little extreme considering the TSA still doesn’t really provide any security?)