This was our travel day from San Diego to Las Vegas for the NGS 2013 Conference at the Las Vegas Hotel and Casino. The flight was uneventful, except I talked about genealogy with my seatmate, a young lady attending the University of Utah. Her grandmother wrote a book about her heritage, but my seatmate doesn't have a copy of it. I urged her to get a copy made, to talk to her parents and their siblings about their family history, etc. We discussed Ancestry.com, DNA tests (she was really interested in that - she's studying to be a nurse). That was fun!
When we got to Las Vegas, we got our two bags easily and quickly got a taxi cab to the hotel. $20. When we got out of the cab at the hotel, Linda asked "where's my walker?" Hmmm, I don't recall finding it on the baggage carousel. Oops. After we checked into the hotel and got into the room, I left at 2:15 p.m. to go back to the airport to pick it up. I found out the monorail doesn't go to the airport - it's really cool, but doesn't go there. I paid $5 to go to the MGM Grand, then took a cab ($13) to the airport. I easily got possession of the walker, and headed back to the LVH (another $20). That was an expensive mistake. When I got to the LVH, I went to the NGS Registration desk and got my tote bag and press packet.
We realized that we had missed lunch, so we went downstairs and checked out quite a few of the restaurants. The only one open at 4 p.m. was the Superbook Deli. Linda managed to get a salad and corned beef dish at the deli (no bread because of her allergies) and I had a sub sandwich. Linda wanted to look into a tour, so we stopped at the concierge desk and heard about some options and took some brochures. We found the ice cream shop and treated ourselves to a cone. Linda went shopping and I headed off to check out the wi-fi setup in the conference center, and to locate the presentation rooms.
While around there, I ran into several geneabloggers and Genea-Musings readers - the San Diego group arrived on the bus around 5 p.m. I met Yvonne Demoskoff (Yvonne's Genealogy Blog) and her husband. I finally got to meet geneablogger Judy Russell. Leo from SCGS, Michael Hait and Harold Henderson were talking with Judy, so I chimed in, along with Jane Neff Rollins. Denise Levenick had just arrived too. I had seen Terri O'Connell and Jen Baldwin (another new face for me!) earlier.
At 7 p.m., there was an APG Roundtable, welcomed by Kimberly Powell, with a panel moderated by Jean Wilcox Hibben on the subject of "How APG Chapters Can Help You" (my paraphrase). The panelists included Kimberly Powell, Michael Hait, Sandy from Colorado (whose name I didn't catch) and Kim von Aspern. I sat with Harold Henderson and Connie Sheets (another new face for me) - it's fun meeting genealogists!). Craig Scott was in the audience and contributed many thoughts on the issues discussed. I'm still not a member of APG mainly because /i don't need another time commitment and I'm not a genealogist who takes clients. The meeting broke up at 8:30 p.m., and I'm not sure I got much out of it. I did manage to check my email and all of the day's blogs while there!
After saying my goodbyes, I came up to the room and decided that I'd better write a blog. The stinking LVH wants "Only $13.99 per day" for "unlimited access for 24 hours, per room, per device." Yeah, like that's going to happen (let's see, laptop, iPhone, tablet... - $41.97 (I was a math major once) a day!
Aha, I know why I brought the tablet (it's a Samsung Galaxy, but an older model with 3G) - I can use it as a hotspot, assuming there is a Verizon cell tower on the Strip (1/4 mile away). Yep, works fine. I can live with the short delay for the web pages to load!
The tote bag and packet I received from NGS at check-in included a Blogger Press packet, which included all of the previous press releases about the conference, the syllabus on a flash drive (I already have it on my laptop and desktop after downloading it last week), and the Conference program in a 5 x 7 format with everything about each presentation in 6 point type (I think - it's really small - I can't read it with my glasses corrected to 20/20. This is a MAJOR FAIL in my opinion - it should be 8.5 x 11 with 10-12 point type. By the way, this is the ONLY place I've found that lists the presentation room numbers. There are signs outside each presentation room listing the day's sessions, but I didn't think to take pictures of them. I guessed at the room numbers for my chosen sessions, and wrote them on my blog post printout.
So that's my report for Day 0 at NGS - saw some friends, met some new ones, and I'm ready for the Conference to start on Wednesday.
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Copyright (c) 2013, Randall J. Seaver
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