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TechEd – Day 1 & 2

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After some initial technical problems, I finally got my internet connection working in my hotel room. A few things I have learned through all my travels:

  • The internet connection almost never works
  • For some unknown reason, my hotel is always next to railroad tracks – and there is always a train running at 4am.
  • The showerhead never raises much above my navel. I am tall (6’ 4”), but do they really design the shower for people less than 4 feet tall? And I am not going to start on that stupid, tan pill-shaped bar of soap.

 

But overall, everything is going quite well here. At these conferences each group usually has a small party for a few of their customers, VB had one, MSDN had one, etc. Our party was sailboat racing. We divided up into groups and went sailing. The boat that Doug, Ken, and I were on got a late start, so we cheated a bit and took a shortcut, but we still lost by a wide margin. Only later did we find out that just about every other team took a shortcut.

 

The past two days were not all fun and games, though. We met with a lot of customers, helped some people who had their computers with them fix up some code problems. And today I spent most of the day running from one end of the San Diego conference hall to the next, making last minute fixes for other talks, meeting with CTOs of other companies, and trying to track down a little bit of food (I usually don’t eat very much when I am away).

 

But I must admit, my morale is quite low right now. Not because of work or because I am away from home. Yesterday began the one-week countdown to my 30th birthday. I guess I am having my mid-life crisis a little bit early. Sigh.

 

Tomorrow’s schedule: Talk for about 2 hours, take a short break, and then talk for about 2 more hours. After that I meet with customers for a few more hours, give an interview for MSDN TV, and then get back to the hotel room and collapse.

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