Las Vegas

I'm in Las Vegas this week for training. Monday I'm training in the office here with a keyframe account manager, which will be my job in Shanghai. I had Sunday evening to check things out a bit. I have a lot of photos of signs... kinda sad. I also stuck the $5 Curns gave me in a slot machine. He won't $5 right away but then lost it all. :-) That's probably the extent of my gambling here. I cannot believe how many slot machines there are, and how extragavant the hotels are. All from gambling... seems so strange to me! I can't stand sticking my money in a stupid machine that doesn't give it back!

Fountain in front of the Paris hotel/casino.

The Effiel tower and some video boards (not ours.) They look pretty bad close up.

Sony PSP board (top right) which is ours. It happened to be frozen so I had Dave restart the sign service. I like the light spilling onto the sidewalk here, but the photo isn't that great.

Anyone else see the irony here?

FOR SALE>

The only major things we haven't sold yet are the cars and the bedroom set. I love our bed. We got it last year as a Christmas present to ourselves. However, it's not worth it to store for 2 to 4 years. *sigh* Today I posted an ad on the Keloland.com classifieds. We'll see if anyone is interested in it.

Need help - What should I enter?

The Outdoor Campus is having a photography contest. I am going to do 2 categories for sure, Prairie Landscapes and Prairie Animals. Which of the above should I enter for Prairie Landscapes? Please vote by leaving a comment. Also, please vote for an animal below.

THANKS!!

I need you to vote!

Which of the four do you like best? Leave your vote in the comment section. Thanks!

China moving forward....

A guy named Cody has made an offer on our house, we countered, so he countered and we counter offered - and he accepted it. So... pending inspection we have a buyer for our house! We'd close May 25th. Exciting.

This article struck me as a bit funny. Definitely not because of the word "dark" brown translated into, but because you see mistranslations everywhere in China! The woman is suing the translation company. It seems a bit strange to me that her label is the only one with that word... we'll see what happens. The guy who sold the couch never even heard the word, which says alot about the lack of the usage it.

Matt is amazing. If you have a few hours to spare check out his site. I am seriously considering doing a video too....

WTF.....

What is happening to our world? How can a 23-year-old guy be screwed up enough to murder 32 people? Why couldn't anyone help him?

The polar opposites of good and evil amaze me. It astonishes me that a man who survived the Holocaust still believed there was good in the world. I don't know that I could save everyone but myself, as he did, in that situation.

In Rapid City, South Dakota, high school shut down due to a gun scare. It amazes me that this can happen in South Dakota. It scares me too, because we think we are safe here.

In September, one of Daktronics' interns was murdered by an office manager. His supervisor is in my book club and was also Jon's supervisor previously. When I worked in Dak's IT department, I talked to the accused murderer, purchased his cell phone and helped him with his accounts. He was nice. It is absolutely insane. I can't even put into words how unfathomable this is to me.

WTF.....

Blogging Blocked in China

Jon mentioned he hasn't been able to get on my blog during his trip this time. It turns out that the Chinese government blocks blogger.com and blogspot.com, plus numerous other sites. More information is here. I am not sure how to get around this.... I'll have to look into other hosting options.

http://greatfirewallofchina.org is a good place to test sites. I can see my emilyminor.com page works, but emilyminor.blogspot.com doesn't. Maybe I can use my site to host blogger or something.

Teresa's photo of Boots

Teresa has been staying with me. She loves Boots. Last night she took about 10 photos of her. Boots loves Teresa too. She is such a friendly cat.

Blue Man Group

The Blue Man Group came to Sioux Falls Saturday! My co-worker Dave bought a code on eBay for $1 that allowed him to purchase tickets slightly before they all went on sale. So, he had 4 tickets in the 3rd row on the floor. Dave, Teresa, Jon and I all went - the show was amazing!!! Very cool. Daktronics did their theatre in Vegas - I think now I'll definitely have to go there and see it. :-)

Easter

Jon flew out early this morning, and I went to Howard for Easter with my parents and brother. This evening after supper we drove around a bit. I didn't bring my camera but used mom's point-and-shoot. First stop was the calving pasture. Dad has about 230 cows there. This little guy was a day or two old. Dad implanted embryos for someone in Texas into these cows - he will be paid a certain amount for each live calf that he raises until weaning. So, this calf's mother (red feet behind him) isn't his biological mother.

There's quite a bit of standing water around.

This was taken about two miles west of the farm.

For Sale

Our house is on the market and you can see it online. Besides the house, we still have a Taurus, Oldsmobile and Buick to sell.... plus our bedroom set. Other than that, most major items are spoken for!! I don't think it has really sunk in yet.

New stuff

The next morning after my last post, we'd discovered someone had smashed in the back window of our rental car. Fun stuff dealing with getting a new one! Oh well. I'll post some photos from the CCO sites later. It was great seeing all of the digital displays! (I am such a geek.)

Saturday - We met with our realtor, Mandy, who used to be our next-door neighbor in Brookings. I held book club at my house for the last time. Dave, one of my co-workers, managed to get a Wii for us in Brookings at midnight. Jon and Gilv drove to Brookings to get it, then played it til 5 AM. We have been trying to get one of them for months... it is pretty cool. I am very anti-video game, but this is so interactive that you start sweating when you are playing, and almost everything is multi-player. Playing double tennis is pretty sweet.

Sunday - Picked up the house all day. From now on it has to be show-ready at all times.

Monday - Came home to a "For Sale" sign in the yard. A bit of a stark reality - we are really selling everything we have (ok, so just major items and things we don't want to move or store) and moving to Shanghai!