VEGAS 1. This has been very interesting in its way. Flying in, I had a nice conversation with a young man who is an associate manager for a large retail chain. He is here to do inventory in one of the chain's outlets and then drive several hundred miles with his "team," as he does several times a month. He lives in Salt Lake City, and pays about 650 dollars a month to rent a nice house just outside of town. He likes the place, though he says there's not much to do there and the bars serve 3.2 beer. After five years of faithful service and first-place rankings in his category, he expects to be reassigned this fall to the Southeast, where he would only have to cover Georgia and South Carolina.

I liked the guy, though he operates under an entirely different set of assumptions than mine, and smelled slightly of poo.

I went to the Rio and found some of the Netroots people I'm supposed to work with, and had the usual problems relating. I lost them at one of the casinos, then came back downtown and wandered Fremont Street, taking in the garish light shows and buying a bunch of chips that I lost in games I didn't understand. Vegas, baby!

Tomorrow, some ground-level Netroots coverage.

UPDATE. I ain't even kidding. The ladies at the tables wielded that spatula thing like the devil flash-frying my soul. I thought I knew how to play Blackjack! Apparently there's more to it than I thought.

They were very nice about it, very professional. When I swung around to check, they weren't laughing out loud at me. Of course, in our age of technological marvels, they may well have been texting LOLs and OL DRUNK IZ DRUNK to each other.