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Last week I spent a couple days at the Coverings Show in Las Vegas. Usually, I’m very focused at trade shows on meeting readers or advertisers and talking about their specific interests.

The last two years remind me of running in the San Diego Marathon. It was a brutally hot event. At the starting line, race organizers distributed salt packets and issued dire warnings to slow our pace – or face the consequences.

The International Builders Show (IBS) always delivers panache. Building product manufacturers use the industry’s biggest stage to unveil their latest and greatest designs, often with the excessive exuberance needed to stand out among the sea of products on display.

Canvassing the International Builders Show (IBS) usually is like drinking water from a fire hose. Fortunately, this year’s version was easier to ingest.

At first, I did not notice the all-access design of the NextGen Experience house. But then I spotted Waldemar Alameda, a 39-year-old father of two. He was using a walker to navigate the crowded house.

Blame it on the recession. Concerns over water quality seem to drop from the public’s radar for much of 2009 and 2010.  

I’ve been thinking a lot about engineers lately and concluded they must be alien beings. For reasons I do not understand, God sent these advanced life forms to earth to keep people like me from mass chaos. There must be an engineering angel whose job is to keep us from self-destruction.

I’ve been feeling pretty good about 2011. There are several signs the economy is rebounding. Many construction-related firms throughout the supply chain have indicated they are gradually climbing out of their respective holes.

Whenever pro-amnesty groups would claim we need illegal immigrants to do the work U.S. citizens do not want to do, my blood would boil.

In the last two weeks, I’ve traveled to Las Vegas twice for construction trade shows. While there, I had to turn off the TV in my hotel room to escape the tidal wave of negative political ads.