Well today was the first day of talks here at RailsConf.  DHH kicked things off with an opening speech.  He spent some time talking about Rails 3.0 features but unfortunately it was hard to follow the slides in the back.  Somebody on #railsconf thought it would be cool if you could broadcast slides to everyoene's laptop during the live talk.  That would have come in handy for this.

The talk was good despite the sound and slide difficulties.  I always enjoy hearing how other programmers approach the challenges of their job.  DHH was talking about how "renogiation of requirements" can ultimately lead to a huge productivity gain.  He described a time at 37 signals where he spent two weeks trying to solve an impossible task.  He ultimately came up with a much simpler solution and proposed it to the client.  Client was indifferent ("Sure, whatever") and he was done in 48 hours.

The talks this morning have been pretty good so far.  Mercifully there is no smoking in the conference center so that is a welcome change of pace from the rest of the hotel.  My main complaint so far would be that the chairs have metal backs with no cushion so they're extremely uncomfortable.

One last thing I would like to mention is the state of the Rails community.  There are lots of first time RailsConf attendees here this year which is a great sign.  People also seem to be mixing a lot better instead of hanging out exclusively with the people that they came here with.  The Rails community really seems to be moving in a more positive direction, despite minor flare ups and distractions along the way.

I really think the whole Rails - Merb merger sets a good example for how much everyone stands to gain when setting aside ego and just work together to write the best possible software.  Constructive criticism is fine but collaboration is even more productive.

@GreggPollack put together an excellent RubyHeroes presentation before the keynote.  In addition to recognizing some of the great contributions these individuals made, Gregg suggested that we all take a moment to thank at least three people whose work has made our lives that much easier.  So instead of getting caught up in minor complaints about the accomodations or speeches, I decided to throw out some more positive energy.

1. GitHub - I'm not going to waste a lot of space talking about how much of an impact GitHub has made on the Rails community.   Its not like these guys are toiling away in anonymity but their contribution has been so important that I'm just going to go on record as saying "Thanks."

2. Phusion - Again, everyone knows what these guys have done for simplifying Rails deployment.  Just because they get plenty of "Thank Yous" doesn't mean I can't throw my own two cents in here.  I also had the opportunity to thank one of the Phusion guys in person at dinner this evening.

3. ResourceController - James Golick's plugin finally convinced me to embrace REST.  If you're not familiar with it, its a great way to simplify the implementation of your standard RESTful controller.  My controllers became way more DRY as a result.  Again, saw James at dinner and shook his hand in person but it doesn't hurt to say it here.

Honorary Mentions:

• DHH and RailsCore for Rails (DUH)
• Chad Fowler and company for organizing RailsConf
• Gregg Pollack for the Ruby Heroes presentation, conference videos and the entertaining RailsEnvy podcasts (along with Jason Seifer.)

I've been in dozens of airports around the world but stepping off the plane at LAS conveys the immediate impression that you have arrived somewhere different.  The first thing you see as you come out of the jetway are tons of slot machines.  I have nothing nice to say about the airport ground transportation options.  I used the 30 minute ride to my hotel (which was like 5 miles from the airport) to come up with about half a dozen ways to design a better system.  You can start by knocking down the worthless fucking monorail that they have and replace it with a proper light rail system that would actually connect people to the one place everyone wants to go - the airport!

Went out last night with @hackerchic, @tunagami and Sonny (twitter account not shown.)  Took the afore mentioned monorail to the MGM where we had a good time at the Centrifuge bar.  Every 20 minutes or so some dance song would come blasting on and the bar tenders would all jump up on the bar and start dancing.  So that seemed to be a pretty authentic Vegas experience.

Cigarette smoking is completely out of hand here.  I'm really not used to people smoking indoors and it seems to be everywhere.  My eyes and throat are really irritated from all of the second hand smoke.  On the plus side, you can drink beer anywhere you want (including in the middle of the street.)  Its kind of strange to be drinking a beer while in line to check in to your hotel (next to the guy smoking a cigarette.)  Even stranger is the notion of just walking outside with a giant 32 oz. beer in your hand.