How Not to Write a Trip Report
This is lazy of me- but this is an edited (removed a few names and other details I shouldn't be including, and popped in a couple of hyperlinks, and corrected a few spelling and punctuation errors I noticed- I wrote this from a laptop, and they and I are not the best of friends) version of the report I really did file back to my team in the middle of WinHEC. Yes, somewhere in LA there is a cab driver I owe about $5 to [it's not an easy job, so I really am quite contrite on that one]. As far as I can tell, I'm still gainfully employed in spite of my having filed this report...
Tuesday:
Nice hail (not really as bad as this site is dedicated to, of course). Couldn't find a shuttle from airport to hotel [there's a Marriot at the airport, but this is downtown]. So I took a cab. Next time make sure they take credit cards first [I did have cash, but it wouldn't have been too cool if I didn't]- also was so tired I blew figuring the tip, meaning I stiffed the guy badly...
Dinner was nice, but expensive- xxxx [a co-worker not employed by Microsoft] and Daniel Mihai are also here [no I didn't eat with them, just ran into them in the lobby as I was checking in- since when have I ever been that sociable?]. So was the LA Republican party for their Election night rally- they seemed a bit subdued. Heard McCain's concession while I was eating dessert, although I had done my best to sit out of range of all the TV sets littered about. Managed to lose my sunglasses, probably in the cab. Marriot rooms are really nice. Have to pay for wireless [$10 a day], and I have yet to even ascertain the TV actually works [brought a book to read, instead].
Wednesday:
Shuttle driver was supposed to play a short video on DVD before our trip in began- he couldn't get the player to work, and they told him to get out of the way, so we never saw it. Whatever it was I thus missed, it wasn't a notice we'd been secretly kidnapped and forced to work in an Apple slave labor camp, based on subsequent events, anyway. Got in nice and early- was told to go immediately to speaker room where they then told me rather pointedly they weren't going to be available for another hour... Finally figured out where breakfast was [and it didn't start for at least a half-hour either]. Eventually snuck in before the hour was up, and nobody seemed to care- yyyy [name is irrelevant to the world in general] came in, I asked him about speaker registration, and he told me he took care of it when he saw I was there.
Breakfast was OK- on the way out I noticed the free latte cart [I don't know what SMSC makes {well, OK I do- embedded USB controllers and the like}, but they're now my best friend for giving out free lattes- I'm easily bought]. I went back up to speaker workroom where the regular staff told me I had to check in again because yyyy didn't do it correctly, or something like that. For speaking I got a free luggage strap. Microsoft is now my luggage's best friend. They gave us a nice huge bag, which is cool, but I had to carry both it and my laptop bag around all day. I wound up with both hung around my neck, one over each shoulder- I have the brush burns to prove it. Speaker badge had a nice pen in it for taking notes- but friction from the bag movement apparently led to it disassembling sometime during the day- when I finally got to my room, I noticed I had a nice top half firmly secured in the loop. Here I thought people were looking at me because of the beard...
I actually did something though- keynote was interesting- I suppose I now know what Windows 7 can do- Jon DeVaan and Steven Sinofsky can do a pretty good show, although at a couple of points I began to be reminded of QVC. Perhaps if I went to more meetings it wouldn't have been so new to me. Went to two talks on logo process- people seem to be unhappy with the tests in a number of ways- we didn't unfortunately message back that we had been fixing a lot of those tests. Both meetings were in Petree D. So if you ever have a conference in LA Convention Center, and meeting is in Petree C or D:
- Leave early if you want to catch the start of it
- Wear comfortable shoes.
- Pack a lunch.
- Consider another session that isn't quite such a hike...
I then got hung up with the emails and such from yesterday, with a break for trying to work on my presentation. Not doing too well- it will probably suck, which fortunately means I may never have to do another [BTW, our session at DDC had among the lowest marks for presentation- one person called out as the worst offender was myself]. Had lunch, which was OK- and somewhere in there I finally ran into Ilias, Peter, and Eliyas. We eventually had our meeting with [a vendor who was having problems with KMDF installation- we had arranged to meet them at WinHEC in the hopes we could resolve things faster that way], which I reported on separately. For that we got booted out of our assigned room, and sent to another in which they had a meeting scheduled halfway through our originally allotted time. Turns out we got booted from our original room for a Speaker and staff party after the evening reception. Except most of the speakers [Ilias and I included] never heard about it [Eliyas got corralled for it as he was getting ready to leave, which is how I heard about it at lunch today].
Eliyas mentioned we should see if we can get [a vendor using UMDF] device for compat lab. There are supposed to be quite a few floating around campus, but he wasn't certain who the contact would be- might be someone named Duncan on the test side [my guess would be in WEX, since it was their PMs who were kind of pushing on us when {an engineer for that vendor}was having problems with UMDF]. Ilias and I wandered around the reception a bit after our meeting, and asked a few questions at the multi-touch booths. I loaded up on stuffed jalapenos and mini cheese pizzas, but when I finally got back to my room, I was too tired to go anywhere, so I saved Microsoft the cost of an expensive LA dinner.
Today so far:
Wrote my meeting report about 4:30 AM because I felt so guilty about not doing it last night, then realized I was really tired. Kind of dragged out of bed about 8:00 AM- obviously not very alert, because the bus was halfway here before I realized how comfortable my feet felt- I'd put on my nice comfortable walking shoes instead of the black dress shoes required by the dress code. But as far as I can tell, so far I'm the only one who has noticed. Had two of those free lattes [SMSC is definitely my best friend] with a tiny breakfast in between. Another keynote [server stuff this time- not as energetic, but OK], and then off to see how Abdullah [my lead's manager] gives a presentation. I thought he did pretty well, actually [even though he might read this]. Room was about half full, and there were a few questions. I sat at the back [most of the other folks in the team sat at the front in case questions came up, but WDF tools weren't an item], and I saw a lot of heads not attached to blue shirts nodding affirmatively as he hit his main points. So I really do think it went well.
After lunch and my third latte I did a little email and went to a Chalk Talk that was followup for Abdullah's presentation. It was fairly interesting- unfortunately it had more attendees than seats, and I sat on the floor so customers could get the nice seats. That screwed up my neck enough that I had to leave a bit early, and I've been back in speaker workroom ever since, trying to catch up on my email and take another stab at internalizing all the logo stuff. I thus have missed the WDF chalk talk, and will probably miss Daniel Mihai going over some Driver Verifier things. But I missed the SDV sessions I wanted to catch yesterday, so nothing new there. At least my back has topped hurting.
Tonight is a big party at some club in Hollywood. Gambling (big whoop, I already know how to lose), but there are also going to be some XBoxes- but unless they guarantee GoW2 (and maybe not even then), I think I'm going to eat and get some more sleep instead. I also verified that I can fit the laptop into the big WinHEC bag, so at least I only have one bag to cart around today.
Tomorrow I get to cart my luggage and additional bags around with me all day, but I get to go home, too. Well, I also have to actually give that presentation tomorrow morning, as well- I'm rather surpised that people are so complacent so far about us including fault injection as a logo requirement- perhaps tomorow they will actually figure that out and I can face an angry crowd again [cue memories of my misspent youth].
There have been a few reported movie and TV star sightings. By mutual consent, though, they and I have successfully managed to avoid each other, so far. ;->
[OK, maybe I'll write a real one when I can use a real computer to write it]...
The rest of the story...
I miss Paul Harvey [my father used to listen to him a lot- just remember hearing him as we drove around various errands as I was growing up] at times- probably doesn't fit the KING FM client base, probably, and classical seems to suit my driving needs [except on long trips, when I whip out my CDs and listen to pretty much what I hear at work]...
I'd promised Craig Rowland I'd be ready to assist in his chalk talk around the WLK because we would have tools there. I completely forgot about it- fortunately, Ilias and Eliyas went, and no WDF questions surfaced, anyway. But I need to remember to schedule appointments like that. Ilias then showed up to remind me- we had a "tech check" at about the time the party I mentioned was to start [get the microphones- check out the room and sound system, locate the slides, etc].
On the way I took a look at the main floor outside the South Hall in the LA Convention Center from outside the meeting rooms on the topmost level, and a pattern began to emerge. For some reason I'd thought the floor just had worn areas from heavy traffic [dumb idea in retrospect, but it tells you a bit about how I'm used to living]- but now I could see it was all new and deliberate. "That looks sort of like Hudson Bay- that might be Greenland- no, it's on the wrong side, if that were North America- wait- that is definitely the shape of the Great Lakes..."
After the tech check, Ilias called a few friends to decide if he wanted to visit them or go to the party. I continued my perusal of the floor. "Yes, it is a map- I'm just not quite getting the scale and curvature- there's Alaska and the Aleutians- there's Central and South America- that's the Bay of Fundy, Florida, Baja California- there's Japan- there's Korea- there's Taiwan, Southeast Asia, Philippines, Indonesia... Vladivostok is about there...". When Ilias finished his call, we had to go down to that floor, so I stopped him and said "I've always wanted to do this", and walked over to Japan, put up my arms, and began stomping on the floor, doing my best Godzilla imitation [it was a rather poor one, alas]- to quote the song "Oh, no- there goes Tokyo..." I then, of course, had to explain all this to my befuddled colleague. To prove my assertion we walked around to LA (marked with some big symbol on the map, of course), and a couple of other spots.
We then set out to look for Greece, of course. But alas, the map ended somewhere in the middle of Asia- didn't even reach the Caucasus, unless I'm forgetting something.
So I wound up going to the party (and we had a huge delay getting a bus there, due to traffic), where I was supposed to meet Ilias, but he says he got an opportunity for a photo op with a waitress, and she was much prettier than I. But I did manage to find an unattended XBox 360, and played the Halo 3 campaign on Normal from start to the final Wraith battle at the end of the Tsavo Highway level. I have to admit it was a bit odd having people watch me play Halo [I'm no pro gamer], but then again, that's what I had been doing earlier...
Friday came in due time, and two more lattes were needed to prop me up before our presentation. We presented to maybe 40-50 people, and it was fairly uneventful. Then rush back to the hotel, finish packing, check out, catch a ride to the airport [this time one that took credit cards]. Wound up sharing that ride with an attendee who lives in Owego, New York [where I worked for 10+ years at the IBM plant that is no longer an IBM plant on Bodle Hill Road]. Made it home ,but not in time to get Gears Of War 2.
OK, this post should get the "Life At Microsoft" tag out of my system for a while...
That should at least portray the chaos of a large conference as this attendee experienced it.
Now Playing: Yuki Kajiura- Fiction "Cynical World"
Followed by: FictionJunction- Madlax OST "Margalet"
