Lance and i spent last week in Denver. I was there for a work conference, and then we stayed through the weekend. This was our second week “on the road” as we had spent the previous week at the beach. I think we’re both glad to be back home, and Nugent is certainly glad to see us.
The conference, which our company was hosting for our software users, was superb. I had an easy time of it, too – most staff members who attended had some number of jobs, such as manning booths or live-blogging or holding up time cards for the presenters. My only job was to attend talks and talk to people, make them feel comfortable, and if possible find out how they are using our software and what we can do to help them do their jobs better.
The keynote speakers were amazing – someone called them “Nerd Celebrities,” and they really were. The first keynote was probably the person the attendees most wanted to hear from – our fearless leader John Sall. The second speaker was Jeff Ma. If you don’t recognize that name, then you might recognize the book that was written about him, Bringing Down the House by Ben Mezrich. Or, the movie that was created from that book, 21, with Kevin Spacey. He was part of an MIT Blackjack team that won many millions of dollars by counting cards at Vegas Blackjack tables. He was amazing. His new book, The House Advantage, is targeted toward the business world. One of the great things about this conference – they not only engaged him to give a keynote, but also to give a Blackjack demonstration one evening. He basically taught a whole bunch of software geeks, engineers and scientists how to count cards. Oh my, what has he unleashed should we all go to Vegas?
David Salsburg was another Nerd Celebrity. He wrote a book called The Lady Tasting Tea. I read it this summer. It is a history of statistics. Sound dry? Well, it wasn’t your everyday page-turner, but to a mathematical person, there are lots of interesting stories and politics involved in the development of statistical methods.
Jonah Lehrer was the final keynote speaker on Friday. He wrote How We Decide, and is probably the most well-known of all the authors. Lance and I have both read his book, which is fascinating. His talk focused around the subject material of the book, which studies how our brains work, how we make decisions. He talked about things like moments of insight, gut instincts, and having a name or word on the tip of your tongue. He was a great speaker.
Lance spent the first two days of my conference in Denver essentially alone in the hotel room playing MegaMan. I was busy with conference activities and didn’t have a whole lot of time to spend with him. However, that changed beginning Thursday night, and we spent the next three days doing all sorts of interesting things in and around Denver.
Denver itself was pretty amazing. First of all, it was absolutely beautiful! You’ll be walking along downtown and turn down a side street, and off in the not-so-distant-distance are these friggin’ gorgeous mountains! The 16th Street Mall was pretty cool, too. It is just a street like all the other streets, but it is home to lots of shops and restaurants, and the only traffic allowed is the free shuttles, which go up and down 16th Street all day long. You get on, you get off, no tickets, no nothing. How nice is that?
Baseball – Thursday night, the conference crowd was planning to go to the Rockies game. I said “See ya!” to them, gave my ticket up to a customer on the wait list, and Lance and I went to the game with the regular people. It is a pretty neat ballpark. Six rows from the very top, there is a row of seats that is painted purple (see Lance below, with purple seats in background). That row represents the point that is exactly 5,280 feet high. Of course we went up there and experienced it. I’ll tell ya, those seats were HIGH and STEEP. We both got a little dizzy looking down. The Rockies lost to the Giants, 5-8.
Dog Agility and Georgeann – Friday, the conference ended at noon. For me, it ended a bit earlier, as I skipped the final bit in order to get ready for our afternoon. For $39 we were able to rent a car with unlimited mileage. We drove 30 minutes south to a town called Castle Rock where my cousin Georgeann was competing with one of her dogs in an agility competition. What a neat thing. There were jumps and teeters and tunnels. I’ll have to write another whole post on the thing. Afterwards, we followed Georgeann back to her house, another 40 minutes south to Colorado Springs. We talked and drank gin & tonic (my first, yum), then went out to this amazing restaurant. I wish I remembered the name. They made their own guacamole, and they did it table-side. I have never cared for guac myself, but this stuff was delicious. One of my first tasks when I get home will be to buy the ingredients and experiment. I could be a real hit if I bring this stuff to dinner parties.
Snooze – Breakfast was at Snooze, which I had heard recommended from multiple people throughout the week. We were two blocks away when we saw a crowd of people hanging out on the street. “What are the odds that crowd of people is waiting outside our restaurant?” Sure enough, they were. It was about 10 am on a Saturday, so of course a popular breakfast house was packed. We were told the wait would be 75 minutes, but luckily it was only about 30, as many people were bailing without telling them. The hostess would call a party’s name, and they would no-show, this happened for about half the names called. The food was SO GOOD. Well worth the wait, even if we had waited the full 75 minutes. Very unique dishes, and very very tasty.
Ballpark Tour – Our “thing” that we’ve been trying to do in any big city that has a baseball team, is take the ballpark tours. We can’t always go to a game, because of course sometimes we travel in off-season months. But we CAN usually get a tour; it seems all of the ballparks have tours available year-round. I find them very interesting, as there is usually lots of history. The Coors Field tour was a little disappointing compared to some of the others. Only four baseball trivia questions for the whole 90-minute tour (Lance went 4-0 on those, by the way). The tour was a female, and i hate to say it, but the women just don’t seem to give the most interesting tours. The best ones are the geezer men. We do enjoy getting down on the field and sitting in the dugouts, though.
OSU Alumni Club – There are Ohio State Alumni Clubs everywhere! We wanted to find one so we could watch Ohio State play Miami, Fl. In fact, there are two alumni clubs in Denver. The first one we tried to go to was so packed we could hardly get in the door, but three blocks away was another one, Maloney’s, which was also dedicated to the Ohio State game. It was a good venue, despite having to watch OSU lose. It turned into a dance club after the game, which was fun for a little while.
The Unsinkable Molly Brown – Margaret Brown (apparently no one called her Molly until Broadway and Hollywood got ahold of her story) and her husband bought very nice home in Denver around 1900 after he struck copper, gold and silver in the mountains after the silver crash and everyone else had left. The house they bought had all the cutting edge technology of the time, such as electricity and running water. Molly Brown is well-known as one of the survivors of the Titanic. The house tour was interesting to me, although I think Lance didn’t care that much.
All in all, a great time. As i said, we’re definitely glad to be home though, getting back into our usual routines.
Tags: vacation
