Reno and Tahoe

Hanging out with Ken Layne and Marc Brown Thursday night in Reno. A classic conversation ranging across the foothills and peaks of fantasy and pragmatism: Priory of Sion factoids, candidate debates, German pointers, Hunter’s rattler certificate and resurrection, neighbors, VC, incestuous investors, “hip” versus profitable technology, parenthood. Met the lovely Laura, who is due in February. Learned that Charlie and Bonnie also expecing. Marc shot me, mid-night.

(Noticed that CNN now has “blogs” by Novak and Begala. Although they’ve got the reverse chronology, no post-URLs, no links to outside opinion or material, no real personality.)

Friday we drove up the mind-bending Harrah’s casino for Gnomedex. The event was fantastic, but the casino experience soul-shuddering. The weirdness is best summed up by Marc’s fantastic photoblog. Here are the two archive pages: 1 and 2. I met Wil Wheaton, writer, former Trekie and a happy blogad seller. I heard Steve Wozniak tell about the time in High School he put a fake bomb in his buddy’s locker. He got called to the principals office and found himself surrounded by the chief of police, the principal, the vice principal, etc. The principal explained how he’d taken the “bomb” out of the locker and run to the football field to dismantle it. Hearing this, woz started laughing: he’d set the bomb to tick faster when the locker door opened.

Here’s Ken’s account of the weekend: 1, 2, 3, 4, and finally, Ken’s captioning Marc’s photos.

I’d like to call special attention to the couple who got married while attending Gnomedex. Of all the things I saw that weekend — flaming Microsoft-blog toys, flashing Google-lights, 5AM slots players, jazz statues, glowing Google cups, 45-year-old geeks leaping for t-shirts, staggering bachlorette parties, packs of gambling families, elderly cocktail waitresses, a Google staffer who thinks his employer is still in the search engine business, freaky dolls — this was the most disconcerting.