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lensmanSo when last we left our intrepid hero I was waiting for my flight, on Alaska Arilines.... It was delayed.... (As you'll see later this seems to be a theme with them...)
We board, and finally get going about an hour later than planned. Overall not a BAD flight, but nothing to write home about... They have these cute little digital video players for rental, so that helps pass the time. Additionally the inflight food... Well I never imagined it was possible to screw up a sloppy joe that badly...
I get in to SEA-TAC and the computers are down at the car rental... Okay, so that takes a little longer. The staff is clueless, and can't give me directions to the hotel. Alright I deal with the map, and it's raining. (Well this is Seattle afterall, so I'm not too surprised. :-) )
By the time I finally find the hotel and get everything up to my room it's 12:30 (3:30AM My time) so I crash for the night, but I have trouble getting to sleep.
Sunday: When I finally wake up I wander around. MS had us all booked in a hotel in the Bellevue suburb. It's a nice area, with a huge mall across the street.
I get some late lunch, and wander around the area. Do a little shopping for a few things I forgot to pack.
I get back in time to get ready for the first meet and greet. Pick up our badges, and sign the NDA's (Hmmm, these look pretty boiler plate)...
The arranged a logo swap. Fortunately I had a couple of USB keys with the school logo on them from the prior weeks school IT conference.
Met up with a some of the guys from Florida State who I knew from last year's TechEd. Went to dinnier at the Cheesecake Factory.
Monday: MS gets us up early and busses us over to one of their bldg's for breakfast and the conf is off and running.... The deatils of what MS is doing are under that NDA, but there should be some better tools this summer. What the other Edu's are doing was interesting to see. But as is uually the case the custom solutions are mostly driven by the unique "political" needs that each school developed because of what they spent money on before... After we were done for the day I met up with someone from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
catling friends list, cow, for dinner and a trip to the Seattle Space Needle.
Of course, my camera's batteries died just as we got tothe needle, and the spares I brought with me were dead as well. Oh well it was still a great view up there.
Tuesday: I over slept and missed the bus... Fortunately they left a second shuttle for those of us (okay just me) who missed the bus, but due to the fun of Redmond traffic I made it there before the main group...
Nothing too new on was passed along to us. The developers behind GPO's seemed to be dodging, not that they actually were, that was just the way it came off to me... Though they took a LOT of notes on the feedback :-) The poor guy who talked to us about lciensing was hammered by the audience. MS has done a lot for Edu's requarding patch management, but they seemed to miss the fact that Edu's do NOT own the machines Students bring in, and that brings us into a chicken & egg problem in that we can't let the student machines onto the school networks untill they are patched, but they can't get the patches until they are connected to a network, and the licenses doesn't let us hand the patches to the students directly...
After all the days talks there was a discussion about Mail / Spam issues. Info came out about major ISP's (Including ComCast, AOL, and others) that have some new consortium that is working on mail ident / verification scheme that appears to be attempting to bypass IETF due to percieved lack of responce to the issue. This group appearently has no Edu input. Appearently due to some membership fee costs being too high. It was suggested that maybe a few of the Edu's could colabarate and get at least some representation, so that we can get heads up on any info / changes that become proposed before they are implemented.
Wednesday: Interesting talks about network security threat modeling, and Server Virtualization.. The conf ends with a trip to the MS company store... MS swag, along with all the MS products... Heh.... I get the Swag for free so none of that was interesting, and I get a better price on the products through our purchasing deals.... Oh well, still kind of an interesting insight in the the culture there....
Then I went back to the hotel and caught a nap before going to meet B at the airport... Of course her flight was delayed... (I said this was a theme). Back to the hotel and we grab a bit at the hotel bar.
Thursday: and the start of vacation time. B and I spent the day with a trip to Mt. Reiner. I'll post pictures after I get them uploaded.
Frriday: We spent a quiet day, that was started with full body massages, a little time at the mall, and ended with seeing Hitchhikers Guide. Overall not a bad movie... Okay they left a bunch out due to time constraints, but it was a faithful adaptation IMNSHO. :-)
Saturday: B and I drive out to meet her cousin, and his family. (They had just adopted a little girl from China). Then a quick trip to the Museum of Flight. Next was a couple of foot massages & pedicues. After dinner we went back and started packing...
Sunday: We finished packing and headed to the airport were we missed out literally by seconds getting our flight upgraded... Then breakfast was a bust of re-heated egg sandwiches, and to top it off our flight was delayed... Yeah here we go agin, but this time we had a connecting flight in Chicago... More of the dis-appointing sloppy joe's.... and so we miss the connections... We get re-booked on another flight... which appearently has no sound insulation, and we're sitting by the back door/galley...
We getin to Logan 2 hours later than originally planned, only to find that B's bag made it through okay, but Mine has been lost somewhere in Chicago....
Slept late today, unfortunately B still had to go in for a 1/2 day of work, and the Airline found my bag, and dropped it off this morning....
We board, and finally get going about an hour later than planned. Overall not a BAD flight, but nothing to write home about... They have these cute little digital video players for rental, so that helps pass the time. Additionally the inflight food... Well I never imagined it was possible to screw up a sloppy joe that badly...
I get in to SEA-TAC and the computers are down at the car rental... Okay, so that takes a little longer. The staff is clueless, and can't give me directions to the hotel. Alright I deal with the map, and it's raining. (Well this is Seattle afterall, so I'm not too surprised. :-) )
By the time I finally find the hotel and get everything up to my room it's 12:30 (3:30AM My time) so I crash for the night, but I have trouble getting to sleep.
Sunday: When I finally wake up I wander around. MS had us all booked in a hotel in the Bellevue suburb. It's a nice area, with a huge mall across the street.
I get some late lunch, and wander around the area. Do a little shopping for a few things I forgot to pack.
I get back in time to get ready for the first meet and greet. Pick up our badges, and sign the NDA's (Hmmm, these look pretty boiler plate)...
The arranged a logo swap. Fortunately I had a couple of USB keys with the school logo on them from the prior weeks school IT conference.
Met up with a some of the guys from Florida State who I knew from last year's TechEd. Went to dinnier at the Cheesecake Factory.
Monday: MS gets us up early and busses us over to one of their bldg's for breakfast and the conf is off and running.... The deatils of what MS is doing are under that NDA, but there should be some better tools this summer. What the other Edu's are doing was interesting to see. But as is uually the case the custom solutions are mostly driven by the unique "political" needs that each school developed because of what they spent money on before... After we were done for the day I met up with someone from
catling friends list, cow, for dinner and a trip to the Seattle Space Needle.Of course, my camera's batteries died just as we got tothe needle, and the spares I brought with me were dead as well. Oh well it was still a great view up there.
Tuesday: I over slept and missed the bus... Fortunately they left a second shuttle for those of us (okay just me) who missed the bus, but due to the fun of Redmond traffic I made it there before the main group...
Nothing too new on was passed along to us. The developers behind GPO's seemed to be dodging, not that they actually were, that was just the way it came off to me... Though they took a LOT of notes on the feedback :-) The poor guy who talked to us about lciensing was hammered by the audience. MS has done a lot for Edu's requarding patch management, but they seemed to miss the fact that Edu's do NOT own the machines Students bring in, and that brings us into a chicken & egg problem in that we can't let the student machines onto the school networks untill they are patched, but they can't get the patches until they are connected to a network, and the licenses doesn't let us hand the patches to the students directly...
After all the days talks there was a discussion about Mail / Spam issues. Info came out about major ISP's (Including ComCast, AOL, and others) that have some new consortium that is working on mail ident / verification scheme that appears to be attempting to bypass IETF due to percieved lack of responce to the issue. This group appearently has no Edu input. Appearently due to some membership fee costs being too high. It was suggested that maybe a few of the Edu's could colabarate and get at least some representation, so that we can get heads up on any info / changes that become proposed before they are implemented.
Wednesday: Interesting talks about network security threat modeling, and Server Virtualization.. The conf ends with a trip to the MS company store... MS swag, along with all the MS products... Heh.... I get the Swag for free so none of that was interesting, and I get a better price on the products through our purchasing deals.... Oh well, still kind of an interesting insight in the the culture there....
Then I went back to the hotel and caught a nap before going to meet B at the airport... Of course her flight was delayed... (I said this was a theme). Back to the hotel and we grab a bit at the hotel bar.
Thursday: and the start of vacation time. B and I spent the day with a trip to Mt. Reiner. I'll post pictures after I get them uploaded.
Frriday: We spent a quiet day, that was started with full body massages, a little time at the mall, and ended with seeing Hitchhikers Guide. Overall not a bad movie... Okay they left a bunch out due to time constraints, but it was a faithful adaptation IMNSHO. :-)
Saturday: B and I drive out to meet her cousin, and his family. (They had just adopted a little girl from China). Then a quick trip to the Museum of Flight. Next was a couple of foot massages & pedicues. After dinner we went back and started packing...
Sunday: We finished packing and headed to the airport were we missed out literally by seconds getting our flight upgraded... Then breakfast was a bust of re-heated egg sandwiches, and to top it off our flight was delayed... Yeah here we go agin, but this time we had a connecting flight in Chicago... More of the dis-appointing sloppy joe's.... and so we miss the connections... We get re-booked on another flight... which appearently has no sound insulation, and we're sitting by the back door/galley...
We getin to Logan 2 hours later than originally planned, only to find that B's bag made it through okay, but Mine has been lost somewhere in Chicago....
Slept late today, unfortunately B still had to go in for a 1/2 day of work, and the Airline found my bag, and dropped it off this morning....
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no subject
Date: 2005-05-02 11:11 pm (UTC)... because dinner at the Cheesecake Factory is even betterer than dinner anywhere else? ;)
Sounds like a good time to me, and I especially approve of the massage theme. *hugs*
no subject
Date: 2005-05-03 04:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-03 07:47 pm (UTC)I adored the arboretum, because as much as I like the lush greenness of that area, it's mostly all cedars and pines. Eventually, all the trees look alike, so I was missing the variety of shapes and sizes we have here. But the arboretum had that in spades. It was magical.
And mostly everyone was really really nice -- no MassHole drivers! -- and the place is really really clean. If it weren't so far from those I love, and if it didn't rain as much as it does, it would be a wonderful place to move to -- especially since it never gets as cold as it does here, and it never gets as humid as it does here. In fact, the average temperature of under 70 seems absolutely PERFECT! I'm totally tempted. To move.