• I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER?
  It’s lolcats pix with tags! Does also peoples call it cat macros? You may also find non-lolcat pictures — this is a treasure for you. [via metafilter]
  Tags: funny animals

As those of you who subscribe to my Flickr stream will have already discovered, all of my pictures from Las Vegas have been posted there. I’ve also transferred all of my other travel photos over using Taj’s wonderful Export Gallery2 to Flickr script. I had some problems with it in the beginning, but he provided excellent tech support last night and I’ve been able to move everything over.

I wanted to transfer the pictures for a few reasons. First, all of my other photos are at Flickr, and I wanted them all in one place. Also, I have found that Gallery lacks some features - especially tagging - that I like on Flickr. (On the other hand, Flickr has fewer ways to restrict who can view a picture.) I also didn’t like the design that came with Gallery2 - the Gallery1 design was much better, but I never bothered to do anything with the template. Also, the commenting on Flickr is much better than on Gallery2, and you can easily make DVD slideshows with the pictures.

So now I’ve moved everything over and disabled the travel subdomain for my site. I have a lot of tagging to do! Friends and family should sign into Flickr when viewing the pictures - there are a few that are protected to various degrees.

Well, I’m starting to get nervous about my interview tomorrow for the Gallaudet HUG program. I’ll be meeting with the director of the HUG program as well as the head of the Interpreting department. My interview was originally at 10:30 but got pushed to 2:00 so I have some time to wake up and be rested and so forth, but I’m going to miss my 5:00 therapist appointment (which I already canceled). Right now I am brushing my hair out and then I will have to figure out what I’m going to wear.

• RXList’s Imprint Search
  Search through a drug ID database for an imprint code. Use a wildcard for best results.
  Tags: health
• Zinzibar
  Digital art and graphics resources.
  Tags: graphics design
• Weather Bonk
  Weather Channel forecasts, webcams, and more - overlaid onto a Google map. [via missakins]
  Tags: tools weather
• Reflections
  Art hotel in Bangkok with 28 rooms for the individual and intellectual world traveler. [via budget travel magazine]
  Tags: travel

So it looks like PayPerPost, the site where you can make money blogging, has something up its sleeve. But they’re not telling us what it is…they’re making us guess! My personal suspicion is that it’s related to an acquisition. PPP acquiring somebody else would be news, but when they acquired Performancing, the deal went kind of bust, so I don’t think it’s necessarily PPP acquiring somebody else this time - I think they’d rather keep a lid on that rather than have us speculate about it. (Although in the Postie forums, somebody did suggest that maybe PPP was going to buy another pay-to-blog company, which is within the realm of possibility, but it seems like an odd approach to me - I’d expect such a deal to simply force the other site off the web and drive its bloggers and advertisers to PPP, and I don’t think the PPP team would do that.)

So my guess is that PayPerPost is being acquired by somebody else, and it’s going to be somebody pretty big. I don’t think we’re talking on the scale of Google, but perhaps somebody like Yahoo. Yahoo has been buying up services lately - they now own Flickr and del.icio.us - so I wouldn’t put it past them to jump on the pay-to-blog bandwagon by acquiring PPP.

On my last day in Las Vegas, I once again walked a lot - about four or five miles. I thought of something I should have bought at the Star Trek place, so I caught the monorail from Harrah’s to the Hilton. I spent forever in the gift shops again, and got what I needed.

My next stop was to be Luv-It Frozen Custard, which I’d read about somewhere or other. I had only had a muffin for breakfast and the custard shop didn’t open until 1pm, so I figured I’d get lunch on the way. It was a little confusing as I made my way back to the Strip on foot; I had figured I’d be able to get there if I just headed for the big buildings. It was extremely windy, and all day as I walked along I got dust, sand, and grit in my teeth and eyes. It wasn’t pleasant but there also wasn’t anything I could really do about it.

The only place I stopped along the way was a head shop to take a picture of the funny sign they had on display, so I ended up getting to the custard place about 40 minutes before it opened. I wasn’t the only person to arrive early - at about 5 minutes to 1:00 a guy pulled up and sat in his car waiting. Once the place opened I had to wait a bit more for the flavor of the day, but then I got my treat and headed back to the Strip.

I passed the Stratosphere but decided the rides at the top probably weren’t operating due to the high winds, so I didn’t go up. I kept walking, and I suddenly noticed that the NASCAR Café had a roller coaster in front of it - and it was operating! I had thought I’d already hit all the coasters on the Strip, but since I hadn’t been on this one I went in and paid $10 to ride. When I was done I headed right back out to the Strip and kept walking south.

I was heading for the Mirage, because I wanted to see the white tigers and the dolphin habitat. We had passed the tiger display the night before going to the Love shop, but the big cats had already been put to bed for the night. I cut through Treasure Island to get to the Mirage, and headed for the dolphin area first. Let me tell you: that is the biggest ripoff on the Strip. They had three dolphins doing tricks in a main pool for just a few minutes, and then they were put back into a small, featureless pool with underwater viewing windows. If you’re not familiar with dolphins, you might not know this, but they are extremely intelligent and require play and ways to entertain themselves. Their holding pool was 100% empty, but the permanent “smiles” on their faces fooled most visitors into thinking they were happy anyway. There were two more dolphins in a huge research pool elsewhere, but those two were just hanging out by the gate, hoping to get let through. I was so disappointed at the situation these dolphins were in that I couldn’t even look at the garden included in the $15 admission price. If you have ever seen a dolphin elsewhere, then you already know what they look like, so don’t waste your money visiting these. I’d love to do the Mirage’s $500 “trainer for a day” program and find out more about their facilities, and why they treat them the way they appear to be treating them. On my way out, I went by the tiger display, where there was a single bored-looking white tiger pacing and occasionally catching a drink.

I got back to the hotel and I was ready to relax for a couple of hours, but A’s training let out early and she came in 45 minutes after I did. We decided to have dinner at Cafe Ba-Ba-Reeba, a tapas place that was recommended to me. The wait for an inside table was 30 minutes, but they had those patio warmers around the outdoor seating, so that’s where we sat, and we were plenty warm! Their specialty seems to be sangria, so we ordered half a pitcher of passionfruit sangria and some tapas. We finished the sangria pretty quickly and the waiter offered to bring us some more, so we ended up having a merry time during dinner. I took A into the Wynn on the way back so she could see their lovely bright mosaic floors. Once we were back in the hotel room, she started to pack and I started on my solemn duty of drinking up all the leftover soda and vodka - so I had a very fun last few hours in Vegas.

Our trip home today was entirely uneventful. We arrived at the airport in plenty of time, waited in the long security line, and headed for the gate. The flight itself was long with lots of turbulence, but otherwise fine.

I did a lot of walking yesterday - about six miles. I played on the computer for a while in the morning, had a way over-priced breakfast in the Grand Canal Shoppes, and then set out around 11:30 for the roller coaster at New York-New York. I got to the casino about 30 minutes later, and it’s 1.5 miles, so that’s right about average walking speed for a human.

The line for the ride was pretty short, but I was annoyed that I’d had to put everything into a locker. I was there by myself, so without my Sidekick or iPod I had nothing to do. But the line moved along pretty quickly, and I rode by myself (with nobody next to me, that is) in about the middle of the train. The coaster itself was really good, probably because I had no idea what was coming. The entrance and queue are inside, and from street level you can’t see much of the track, so it was all a surprise and I enjoyed it.

I thought I’d go over to the M&M’s World across the street and see about getting lunch there, but it turned out to be just a giant store. I put together a bag of M&M’s from the colormix section, but that was all I felt like getting. I had lunch at a Mexican place next door and then went back to the hotel, walking through the Aladdin’s shopping mall area. It’s too bad they are tearing it down, it’s really attractive - the interior architecture makes me think of browsing a market in Casablanca.

In the evening, we had tickets to see Zumanity, the naughty show by Cirque de Soleil. We had a hard time getting my purple corset closed because my jeans were baggy, but we managed and A laced me up. We were going to take the Deuce bus to the show but the driver went right past us, so we scrambled to get a cab instead. The show itself was Cirque’s usual type of thing, but with more boobies. I really could have done without the heterosexist commentary from the guy on the left, though. There is one male homoerotic scene, and the guy was saying “ew” to himself. The rest of the time, if the performer was male, he was saying things like “where are the chicks,” and then when they appeared he said “yeah, now we’re talking” - I swear I wanted to pop him a good one. But overall the show was very good, although our seats could have been better.

We decided to walk back, and I saw a number of women staring at my waist, heh! We stopped in at the Mirage to visit the gift shop for Cirque’s show “Love,” which is set to Beatles tunes. I didn’t find anything there for myself because the pretty stuff was so expensive, oh well.

Wednesday was a day of showmanship. I did very little in the morning, just stayed close to the hotel because I knew A’s conference would be letting out around noon. I did make it back down to the Flamingo to take pictures in the habitat, at least.

In the afternoon, we took the shuttle to the Liberace Museum, which was great. I don’t know why I find Liberace cool and Elton John annoying, but I do. The museum has a bunch of his cars and pianos in one building, and then in another building they have his costumes (including one that weighs 200 pounds ) and replicas of some of his rooms. The second building is adjacent to the original restaurant Liberace opened in the 1980s, but that wasn’t open while we were there. The costumes are just astonishing…did you know he was the first entertainer to convince the IRS to allow him to deduct the cost of his costumes when tax time rolled around? The onsite cafe wasn’t that great, but the gift shop was fun - A got this cool shirt to wear for patriotic holidays at work (and so forth); I wanted this shirt but I already bought a Hello Kitty Las Vegas shirt (at the Sanrio store in Fashion Show Mall) and I couldn’t bring myself to spend $35 on this one. I did get the World of Liberace DVD though.

I was a little cranky in the afternoon, but we went to the Bellagio for shopping. The water ballet was performing when we got there, but my camera’s batteries died again. When we were done in the Bellagio, we got a bite to eat in the food court at Caesars Palace. We took a quick nap back in the hotel room and then it was time to go see Penn & Teller! The shuttle from Harrah’s was full of people who had already started drinking, but we made it to the Rio just fine. The show was awesome. I have never seen them live before, and I still don’t think I’ve seen everything…my jaw was hanging open and I was cracking up the whole time! I noticed that Penn has got really amazing hands. He plays the double bass in the preshow band and during the show itself, and obviously he’s a magician, but his hands were just so animated. I kept expecting him to break into sign language, because his hands were always moving into different shapes and I felt like they were communicating. So when the show ended, I realized I wanted to take a picture of his hands. How weird is that? But he let me do it, and so did Teller, who actually talks to the audience after the show. Penn accused me of planning something nefarious involving Photoshop!

We had a great time last night at the Star Trek Experience! I was practically skipping through the casino of the Las Vegas Hilton, following the signs to the attraction. We bought our tickets first, and then went downstairs to Quark’s Bar to get dinner. We decided to be brave and order a full-size Warp Core Breach, which is $25 and has 10 ounces of liquor. It comes in a giant fishbowl with dry ice coming off the top! Believe it or not, we managed to finish it all by ourselves, which is more than the next table did, and they had three people working on it! Of course, I was more than a little loopy by the time we finished dinner, but it was fun. The giant drink, plus two entrees and a dessert, only came to $60 - and our table was visited by a Ferengi, a Klingon, and an Andorian. How cool is that?! I would seriously not mind going there all the time.

After dinner, we looked around in the gift shop; to my dismay I didn’t find anything there to get. So we got in line for the ride, starting with Klingon Encounter because that’s the one you’re usually told to start with. Unfortunately something went wrong with that one, so we ended up seeing Borg Invasion 4D first. It was rather disappointing - you’re given 3D glasses to wear, but they didn’t work very well for me, because I kept seeing double anyway. It was also kind of annoying that Robert Picardo was obviously reading cue cards the entire time. Once we finally made it onto Klingon Encounter, that one was much better - it’s a full-motion simulator, for one thing, and the “interaction” with the characters (Riker and Geordi, mostly) was much better.

I would be totally thrilled to have a job at the Star Trek Experience. To work in that environment every day must be awesome. I only wish I could have found a decent souvenir to take home!