I went to Vegas this past week for PubCon. The guys from BootsnAll(Sean, Chris, and Nick) and I managed to fit alot of fun into a short time.

Monday night, we met up with Jen Leo and her friend John and had sushi at Nobu in the Hard Rock Hotel. After dinner, we drove over to Mandalay Bay and had drinks at Mix. From there, we ended up at the redneck casino, Silverton. It was themed around the outdoors and was tied in with Bass Pro Shops. I really enjoyed the overall atmosphere. Good looking “mermaids”, inexpensive tables, and a custom chopper with a Bass Pro Shop theme to it. Jen made a good call on that one.

Tuesday we spent most of the day at the conference sessions for PubCon. Many of them were boring and some were a repeat of last year. Robert Cringely delivered an excellent keynote in the morning, but there wasn’t much exciting beyond that. That evening, Yahoo! had a party at PURE in Caesars Palace. The portion of the night that Yahoo! put on was not as exciting as last year’s party at Rain, but once that party was over and people started dancing, everything picked up. We had a ton of fun dancing with the girls from LinkConnector. I will be joining them as an affiliate . Around 1am, we left PURE and went to the sportsbook in Caesar’s to watch Australia qualify for the world cup.

On Wednesday morning, we dragged ourselves out of bed to go listen to Matt Cutts from Google answer some questions in the morning session of the conference. As usual, Matt was great to listen to. Sometimes it’s easy to get frustrated with Google, but overall I think they’re really out there to make a good product. I had a few opportunities to talk with Matt one on one over the course of the week. What a great asset Google has in Matt. That evening, we met up with the girls from LinkConnector for sushi at Caesar’s Palace. After dinner, we went over to Rum Jungle at Mandalay bay. Chris and I weren’t overly impressed ($7+tip for a domestic bottle of beer), so we headed over to the Hard Rock Hotel to do some gambling.

Thursday we slept in a bit, had breakfast in the hotel and took care of some business we had been discussing over the week. Around 1, we made our way over to New York, New York where PubCon was happening. We drank, and drank, and drank…then decided to walk the length of the strip to Slots-A-Fun…where you can play $1 blackjack and craps. Someone decided they were up for some Mexican food, so we went to the Hard Rock Hotel (again…that place kicks ass) and had dinner at the Pink Taco. Sean, Chris, and I sat down and played blackjack. I made just enough to almost break even for the week…lost money playing 3 card poker…bad luck with that so far.

Overall, the week kicked ass. Thank you Sean, Chris, Nick, Ioan, Jen, John, and everyone else who made the week fun.

I noticed that Keith added a list of his recently listened to music. It seemed like fun, so I threw one together for myself. It actually took longer to figure out where the feed is than to implement it.

More help here if you want to add your own.

Other than a few minor issues, the new house is coming along nicely. The estimated completion is the end of February.

We’re going to be doing tile in our current house this weekend and hopefully new carpet will go in next week. Once those are done, we will be ready to get it sold. Not sure where we’ll move after that. I want to get a rental house until at least a month after completion of the new house so that we can put new flooring in. We didn’t upgrade any of the flooring from the builder because they wanted a rediculous amount of money for the upgrades. They also didn’t have bamboo flooring, which Christie and I are leaning towards for the hard surfaces in the house. Originally I wanted 24″ travertine, but after looking into bamboo and seeing some samples at Home Depot, I’ve decided that it is a great look.

I’ll be in Vegas next week for PubCon. It’ll be a great time. Sean, Chris and Nick from BootsnAll will be there and they’ll be bringing Ioan with them. Should make for a wild week.

We’ll be in Tucson at the end of the following week for a wedding and some relaxation. I’ll also be going to Portland for the BootsnAll Party.