Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

L.A. Trade Show journal #4
At the show · Wed, 17 Sep 2025. 5:30pm

Today has been the trade show. AWS Summit - Los Angeles. The show's now winding down for the day. People started disappearing around 3pm, presumably to try to beat the traffic home, though the show formally goes through 6pm. This has been my first chance today to catch my breath.

I only got to the show just after 10am. I was busy with other tasks, time-sensitive ones, working in my tiny hotel room on the children's chair at my combination nightstand/desk. I had intended to get to the show at 9 but that didn't work out. So at about 9:55 I zipped up my bag, rode the elevator down to the ground floor, and... walked across the street.



That's right, my morning commute today was a walk across the street. Okay, it was kind of a walk across two streets because I had to get to the diagonally opposite corner. 🤣 This is the entire reason why I booked that tiny hotel room knowing it was tiny— and paid a pretty penny for it. Because it's Right. Here.

Minutes later I'd picked up my badge and registration and was ready to hit the show floor.



Traffic at our booth was steady across the day. That was frankly a relief— from a value-for-our-dollar perspective— from last week's trade show, where we had stretches of an hour or more with no meaningful conversations in the booth.

Things did get busy for me in the middle of the afternoon when I had three scheduled demos in a row with different customers. One brought a group of 9-10 people, ranging from devops engineers to a devops lead, to a manager and a VP. And they kept me busy, firing tough questions at me from all sides. I think I did pretty well, though. I look forward to us moving to the next stage with them.

Throughout the day I also saw, and chatted with, a few customers I've been working with for years. It was great to see them "in 3D" again... especially because some of them I've been working with for over 4 years and don't think I've ever met f2f. Plus a few people who stopped by the booth recognized me from portraying Jenkins at the other trade show last week even though I was "Clark Kenting it" today.

Well, the show's winding down now, but the day's not over. My company is sponsoring an after-hours reception at a bar a few blocks away. "Grab a drink and some snacks with us and wait for the traffic to die down before going home," we've been encouraging people all day.

It's a nifty way of framing the event. I don't know, though, how much of a turnout we'll get. Many people have already left to beat the traffic. And I don't blame them. I know if I were on the other side of the table today, I'd value getting home by 5pm to have dinner with my family over having a free drink of two on some company's dime and then getting home at 8:30.

Update: Keep reading in Back to the Moxy

Today I returned a small headset I bought on Amazon.com. Volume control didn't work with my computer. What good is a headset that has two volumes, 10/10 LOUD and (silent)? I started the return process online two nights ago, which was easy; and today I dropped off the box at the Amazon return counter at Whole Foods when I visited the store to buy a few groceries. The whole thing was easy, even— or especially— dropping off the item the counter. I scanned the return code, the desk agent took the box and applied a sticker to it, and I was done. It all went so fast it was like I barely stopped walking. "Well, half the stuff on Amazon nowadays is crap," I mused, "But at least returns are easy!"

Wait, crap?

Yeah, that's become the sad reality of shopping on Amazon. So much of what's there is cheap knockoffs from overseas, deliberately misleading descriptions, fake reviews, or all of the above.

The problem of deliberately misleading descriptions bit us a few months ago when Hawk ordered a set of pool noodles that were the size of... actual noodles. Social media is full of stories about people getting ridiculous miniatures or low-quality versions of what they thought they ordered. Yes, it's important to read descriptions carefully. This episode illustrates how even normally careful shoppers can be rooked occasionally. Shopping becomes a lot more of a effort when you have to practice extreme skepticism, basically asking yourself, "Okay, how is this seller trying to rip me off?" on everyday items.

Fake reviews compound the problem with misleading product descriptions. "Oh, but fake reviews are easy to spot!" some people will say. Yeah, ten years ago fake reviews were (often) easy to spot. Now they're a lot more pernicious. And platforms seem to have given up on trying to remove them. Arguably they (the platforms) don't even want to fight vendors over fake reviews since the vendors are their actual, paying customers. It's the enshittification problem. But at least the shit's easy to return.

I have a couple of Visa Gift Cards that have been sitting in my desk drawer for a long time. Fortunately they have distant expiry dates because when I say "long time" I mean one had sitting in my drawer, waiting to be used, for 2 years... and the other for over 4 years.

I frankly kind of hate getting these as gifts. I mean, I appreciate the gift. $100 is $100. But $100 face value seems worth a lot less when it's hard to use. And that's the problem with Visa Gift Cards. As Scott Adams memorably put it in a Dilbert comic strip back in the 1990s (well before he turned into a MAGA shill), "Oh, look, a gift card! Just as impersonal as cash but less useful."

I mean, who even gives gift cards anymore? It seems like a Boomer thing to do. ...Though actually GCs are more of a Gen X thing. Boomers would still send checks. 😂

GCs are tough to use because how often is something exactly $100? You might purchase a few small things and have a balance of, like, $12.23 left over. It's hard to use up. But what about buying a big thing for $100? Remember, this is the US, where prices are almost always advertised pre-tax, so a tag price of $99.99 comes to $108.24 at checkout. And a lot of retail stores basically can't handle charging a flat amount of a bill to one card and the rest to another. Even if most modern POS systems support it, my experience is that employee training often falls short.

A few weeks ago I saw the cards again in my desk drawer and, instead of shutting the drawer and forgetting about them for another few months, I thought, "Aha! I know how to get the value out of these!" I'd use them to buy Amazon Gift Cards.

Amazon gift cards are both more useful and less useful than Visa gift cards. They're less useful because they're locked to Amazon. Though Amazon sells almost everything, and while we're hardly Amazon super-shoppers we do buy enough stuff there that I could spend $200. I mean, it might take 6 months, but that's faster than the 4-5 years one of these cards has been around. And Amazon GC are more useful because once the cards are converted, Amazon makes it trivially easy to apply them to pay a specific amount of a larger bill. Getting the full value out of them with Amazon is hassle-free. Even better, when I bought 2 x $100 GCs, Amazon rolled them both into another GC I already had with a balance of $32.78 or whatever. So now instead of three smaller GCs I just have one bigger one. Nice job, Amazon.

A few months ago someone left a pair of pool noodles in our HOA's swimming pool. Y'know, pool noodles, those tube-shaped foam floats that are 4-5 feet long and a few inches in diameter. I don't know about others using the pool, but Hawk and I have certainly enjoyed grabbing a noodle to float around after exercising in the water during our many afternoons in the pool this summer.

The floats are wearing out, though. One noodle has broken into two pieces, and with both of them the closed cell foam is starting to degrade so that they don't float as well anymore. We figured we'd do a solid for the community and buy a few new noodles ourselves to leave out for everyone's enjoyment.

That brings me to the second half of the title of this post. There have been lots of funny pictures/stories on social media lately of people being scammed by buying miniature versions of things online. Like, a woman buys a skirt, cheap, and what arrives barely fits on her cat. Or buys a desk, cheap, and what arrives is a dollhouse-sized desk only a few inches across.

"Always check the size first," I chuckle to myself every time, "And don't believe a price that's too good to be true."

Now with that context I'll bet you can guess what happened next...



Yup, Hawk ordered a set of pool noodles at a fantastic price. It was, like, $6 for a set of 6. I thought they'd cost about $5 apiece. What a bargain! And what arrived were... pool noodles that are only 1 foot long instead of the 4-5 foot size we'd expected. These pool noodles are the length of... actual noodles! I've bought boxes of lasagna noodles bigger than this. 🤣

The good news is that these should be easy to return, since we bought them on Amazon. I still wonder, though... why does this product even exist? I can't think of why anyone would want pool noodles— and they are specifically labeled as pool noodles— this small. They're not useful for anything. I wonder if they're sold primarily to scam un-careful shoppers? Though that doesn't make much sense as long as returns are cheap and easy for the buyer.

Update: It turns out the noodles are NOT returnable. THAT is how this scammer makes money!

Yesterday afternoon I ordered an item on Amazon. Fast shipping with a delivery date/time this morning was offered for free through Prime. As there seemed to be no point to waiting longer, and in some cases literally paying to wait longer, I took the free-fast delivery. Indeed the package arrived at my doorstep this morning at 8am... just 14 hours after I completed the order last night.

This leaves me wondering why. Why did Amazon offer such fast shipping on this item?

I know that likely a big part of the answer is not "why" by how. How it got here fast is apparently that it came from nearby. The shipping records don't indicate where the Amazon warehouse was, but an email notification at 2:27am said that it had left the warehouse, and a shipping record timestamp at 4:51am said it had arrived at the carrier's facility ~10 miles away from me.

But still, there seems to have been some intentionality on Amazon's part to expediting this shipping. Nearly everything I've gotten delivered by Amazon (I mean specifically via their in-house delivery service) for the past several years has arrived between 6-8pm. Basically we're near the end of the drivers' route. But this time the delivery left the carrier facility at 6:33am— which is about when 8pm arrivals go out on a truck, too— and landed on my doorstep at 8am. Apparently this order was given priority.

This wasn't a big order, BTW. It wasn't like, "Oooh, this guy's buying thousands of dollars of stuff, let's treat him right!" I ordered a small item that cost under $30 all-in. And ironically I didn't even care if this one came fast. It's a consumable item I use regularly. I ordered the refill 2-3 weeks before my current supply runs out— because, in the past, it's occasionally taken 7-10 days to ship. Except this time, when I was in no rush, it's like Amazon moved heaven and earth to deliver in 14 hours.

Hawk and I have bought a new bed mattress. Our old one, really not even that old at just over 8 years now, developed a sag in one side and needed to be replaced.

First store: Good mattress, but it's $3,000

We began our mattress shopping on a whim. The weekend before last we were out getting lunch on Sunday (this is after coming home Saturday night from our aborted Bassi Falls trip) and said, "Hey, there's a mattress store across the street, let's stop there and look around." We stopped in, and with the help of a reasonably knowledge store manager immediately picked a short-list of mattresses to try. All were at least close to what we wanted. One, a particular Stearns & Foster model, was on the money. Speaking of money, there was good news and bad news. Good news: it wasn't the most expensive mattress in the store. Bad news: it was still $3,000 for queen size.

Checking online: Seemingly credible options from $600

During the week I spent a bit of time shopping online. On Amazon I found seemingly credible options from $600. That's obviously way cheaper than $3000. The thing is we can afford $3k if that's what it takes for the right mattress, but the $2,400 difference is real money to us. We're not that well off! Moreover, when there's a 5-to-1 price range even after crossing off the cheapest and priciest products it demands careful shopping to understand what differences lie beneath such disparate prices.

I scoured through product listings on Amazon and cross-referenced them with manufacturers' sites and third-party reviews sites. The first difference I found was, basically, foam mattresses vs. coil or coil-and-foam hybrid mattresses. We knew from trying a foam mattress at the first store that we both hate their feel. Alas, they are less expensive. But knowing they're also the wrong thing for us made it easier to cross off the cheapest products.

The next thing I checked was the price of name-brand mattresses online. Are brick-and-mortar stores like the one we visited gouging with huge markups? Actually they're not. The big name manufacturers regulate the pricing so you see the same price online as in stores.

That still left a bunch of lesser-known brands of coil based mattresses priced well below $3,000, like half or less. The challenge there is that we're both sensitive enough to what we need in a mattress that we're unwilling to buy without testing it first. So back to other brick-and-mortar shops we went.

Second store: Similar mattresses, snotty salesguy

This past Saturday we tried another local store after lunch. There are basically 2 chains that run basically all the standalone mattress stores nowadays. We went to the one that's not the one we checked the previous weekend. For being a different brand store, the selection was pretty similar. That kind of makes sense as most of their selection is the same handful of big-name brands. Pricing was the same.

We were more serious about buying a mattress on Saturday than the weekend before— we decided we would "Buy It Now" for the right product at a fair price— so we asked more questions of the salesguy who helped us. At first he was helpful, then he seemed to be avoiding us, then he started negging us. Negging, as in giving snide or critical answers to reasonable questions we asked, clearly implying with his words and intonation that we were foolish for asking.

Fuck. That. Shit.

We left.

Third Store's a Charm!

Having effectively visited dozens of area mattress stores by sampling one each of the two chains I next looked for independent stores. I found one 5 miles away, so we went there next. It had lesser-known brand name mattresses at lower prices. But they were on display so we could test them. We found one that provided all the firm support we need in a mattress, at a price less than half the $3k mattress we liked at the first store. And, the store owner who helped us was knowledgeable and patient with answering all of our questions. We not only bought a mattress from him but started eyeing a replacement bed frame and a new dining room set, too!

Last weekend when I was searching for replacement parts for my electric shaver I found an interesting alternative to replacing some of the bits: a whole new shaver for $20! That was less than half the $47 for the replacement bits, let alone the $125 cost of buying a whole new shaver in a 12 year old design. (The more modern ones cost even more.) And, to boot, this shaver is small, a good size for travel.



How small is small? Well, you can see it above in my hand. It's, like, barely 3 inches tall and less than 3/4 inch thick. It's not just American small, it's Japanese small. It's actually imported from Japan with most of the packaging printed in Japanese.

Obviously I bought one. I mean, it's obvious because I'm holding it. 😅 I figured, "Hey, for $20 I'll try it." If the replacement screen and blades I bought don't improve my 10 year old shaver, I could switch to this until I'm ready to invest in another more-expensive shaver. And this could be a good travel shaver. I could leave it in my bag so I don't have to remember to pack my shaver when I travel.

Why have a second shaver just for travel? Because having two sets of things is a technique that makes frequent travel easy. For years I've had two sets of my regular toiletries: hair brush, hair products, toothbrush, toothpaste. I keep the travel set with my bag. It's way easier than having to grab all sorts of things from the bathroom every time. I've never had two shavers, though. The main reason is I never wanted to spend another $75, $125, or more. But for $20? I'll try it.

How is it? I tried my first shave with it today. It shaves reasonably close when I have a light stubble. It's definitely good for everyday shaving or for fixing a 5 o'clock shadow. Reviews online said it's not so good with longer stubble. Maybe I'll give that a try this weekend. And there's no whisker trimmer on it, so it's not good for keeping sideburns sharp. That alone limits its use to maybe at most a 2-night trip for me. But like I said, I'll try it out. Worst case I'm out $20 plus tax.

Recently I noticed that my electric shaver hasn't been giving me as close of a shave as I expect. It's missing a lot of hairs even when I work it over the same spot on my face or neck a few times. It worked way better when it was new. That means it's time to throw it out and buy another one, right? Wrong! Key parts on electric shavers are replaceable!

There are two parts that can be replaced on many electric shavers, the blades and the screen. The screen is the mesh cover up at the top. Underneath it are the blades. The blades are the cutting tool, and they oscillate back and forth rapidly via the electric motor. They naturally dull over time and don't cut as closely. The screen covers the blades so they don't touch your skin. When the screen wears down it can result in the blades getting too close, causing skin abrasion, or not getting close enough, causing less effective trimming.

I looked up the model number on Amazon. The first thing I saw is that I can buy a new one of the same model for $125. That seemed like waaay more than I paid years ago. Out of curiosity I clicked through the link... and on the product page Amazon helpfully told me, "You last purchased this item in 2013." Wow, 10 years!

I searched my 2013 orders and found that I originally bought this shaver for $75. First of all, wow, I thought I spent way less than that. I usually buy an inexpensive shaver because I don't need fancy features. Though ISTR choosing the Panasonic even though it was more expensive than certain other brands because I'd had a good experience with a previous Panasonic after poor experiences with 2-3 other major brands. Second, $125 today vs. $75 ten years ago doesn't seem so bad considering inflation. But OTOH, third, this is now a 12 year old model.... Shouldn't it be cheaper now? Well, it kinda is... the newest models are $150 all the way up to $400. 😳

It took some careful shopping but I did find replacement bits. Amazon helpfully remarked above the product image of a blade replacement "Purchased Aug 2017". The manufacturer suggests replacing blades every 1-2 years, not 4-6. Well, here I am now. And I'm replacing the screen for the first time in 10 years AFAIR. I found a blades-and-screen combo for $47.

I paused for a moment before ordering. On the one hand, $47 seems like a lot of money to spend renewing a 10-year-old, $75 item. OTOH, it's less than one-third the cost of the cheapest new, current generation technology. And it seems quite likely it'll rejuvenate my old shaver well enough that I'll be satisfied with it for at least another few years. I bought it.

Now the only problem is the parts have to ship from England. 😂 They'll take 2 weeks to arrive.

It's about 5pm and I've gotten back to my hotel. I checked out this morning but left my suitcase with the bell desk so I wouldn't have to lug it through the conference. Yeah, I could have gone straight to the airport from the show if I'd taken it, instead of trudging on foot almost a mile back to my hotel, but the waits for taxis, Lyft, and Uber from the conference hotel are crazy. It's actually somewhat quiet back here at the Resorts World... but only somewhat, as people are streaming in for National Finals Rodeo (NFR), one of the biggest events of the year in Vegas.

I worked the show all day today, 10am-4pm. I actually arrived at the booth at 9:45 when almost nobody else was there. The few who were noticed that I was early, though, and thanked me. One of my teammates didn't even show up at all today. Trade show discipline has sadly never been a priority at this company. Though maybe that's changing now with new people in the marketing events team. ...Until they all turn over again in 6 months, then who knows what comes next. 🙄

I dressed up as the Jenkins the Butler again today, after lunch. I'd done it earlier this week on Monday evening. Overall recognition of the character was poor. It's not quite the best demographic here at this show. I got a colleague to join me on making a round through several other vendors' booths this afternoon. The idea was we'd have some fun and stir up some trouble. ...Trouble by challenging competitors with a living mascot, that is. Sadly the competitors' booths didn't have many technical people in them, so few people were aware of the prank we were playing.

I did score an interview with a roving AWS re:Invent TV crew. I told them I'd just come back from the Rap Battle booth, and spat fire on a few verses live for them. The interview loved it and did a mic drop for me on camera.

I'll post more about the Jenkins cosplay soon.

True to plan, I'm back at the airport 16 hours after getting home last night. As crazy as this fast turnaround seems it's not too bad. I planned ahead before my previous trip so that I could dump my suitcase from the first trip and repack quickly for the next. That plan was in case the turn was even tighter, e.g. if my Sunday night flight was late or something else went wrong. Instead nothing went wrong (yay?) so I had more time than planned. I used that time to wash and dry laundry last night and catch up on work email/Slack this morning.

So, here I am at the airport. It actually seems busier today, judging by lines at check-in and security, than at the same time yesterday— and yesterday was reportedly the busiest travel day since 2019!

This trip I'm headed to Las Vegas for work. The AWS re:Invent trade show is this week. I'm working my company's booth. That means over the next 3.5 days I'll talk to about 500 people about what my company's products do. Five of those 500 will actually care; the other 495 will just want a free t-shirt.

How's it going so far? It's not trending well. I'm not even to Vegas yet and already my flight's delayed.