leaving las vegas. there is now a sense that there will always be another day. there used to be a panic attached to leaving. a "when will i see you again" type of moment. but after a few dozen rounds of goodbyes, in locales all around the globe, you start to get the reassuring feeling that you will see people again. the people you want to see will eventually come back around into your life. even if it's only for one or two week stints. this is just a very general rule of thumb though. because there are many people that i wish i could see more, but just don't get the opportunity to.



but the best thing about getting these opportunities to re-unite is the little moments and memories that are created. and then remembered, and then re-told. a little story to be pulled out three hours later, five days later, three years later. who could forget ameer cruising the public streets of vegas with a glass and flask of crown perpetually in hand. who could forget mental images of the bellagio fountains? who could forget the system (more on that later)? every new trip, every new group of people, creates a web of memories and images that binds them together.



what happens when those memories are old? when all the creation of new memories is gone and all you are left with are fumes from the "good old days?" is there still a bond? is there still something to be held onto? or is it simply that? memories? luckily, i may not know anytime soon because new memories with old people are being created at a fast and furious pace.



like for example. vegas and the system. when james and eric and michigan united came up with a system of craps in december, they really came up with a system. they weren't fooling around. eric wasn't fooling around. he came with sheets prepared. we analyzed and looked at those sheets even though we had all just arrived in vegas and many of us were hungry. we luxuriated around in our venetian suite and pontificated on "what the hell are all these numbers?" no details will be revealed. no numbers exposed. but suffice to say, the system worked. we all won. together. like a team. we all essentially spent a weekend in vegas for free (unless you lost money, in which case, you just feel a little better). that my friends, is a system.



the other thing i've taken out of the weekend is exactly how gigantically dorky we are. porta and louis were cranking out a C++ program to figure out the possible numercial success of our system. there was much discussion of things related to blogs and the internet. there was "it's saturday in vegas and we're sitting here watching alot of television" moments. out of fifteen people, ten of us were engineers or computer science majors. do we sound boring? i assure you we're not. no clubs, no alchohol, just lots of hanging out with a vegas backdrop. and of course, about a bajillion cameras to document everything that twitched or moved. [pictures] [louis' pictures]