EclipseCon Day Zero: Tired but excited
Whew! What a long trip, but I'm finally at the Hyatt for EclipseCon 2006. Up at 5am this morning, NC to Phoenix, then San Diego, then finally to San Jose. Total travel time: 9 1/2 hours. Blergh.
Originally I had this nice 2:30pm flight lined up, which would arrive at 10pm. But then Ian had to go and schedule a blogger get-together for 6pm. Well, I couldn't miss that could I? But 5am is rough.
One thing I've gotta say about Southwest, is they're incredibly efficient. They don't let the planes sit very long on the ground, hurrying passengers out and back in pretty quickly. The only holdup was all the people with so called "carry-on" luggage. C'mon folks, if it doesn't fit in the trunk of a small car it's not carry-on.
The trip from San Diego to San Jose was nice. Got some good views of the coastline. I guess once in a while those instructions for using life preservers are actually appropriate.
I got a new toy to bring along on the trip, a Nikon Coolpix P3. Ordered one last week at buy.com, then the next day they told me it might be delayed. The email said that if I needed to talk to a real person I could send an email and they'd send me a phone number. So I did that and got an email response that said if I needed to talk to a real person,... well you get the idea. The next day they finally sent the phone number, and I found out they were out of stock. Great inventory system there guys! So I canceled the order and got the camera through a store on eBay. Had to pay through the nose for overnight Saturday delivery, but it arrived. I'm still playing with it but the VR (vibration reduction) feature is extremely effective (optical, not digital).
The room at the Hyatt is incredible. For the standard conference rate, they gave me a huge 2-room suite in room 1218, with two fridges, two bathrooms, roomy dining room table, stereo, the works. According to Bjorn, they make it up on the $67 coffee that they charge the conference organizers.
I thought the internet access was supposed to be free like last year, but I asked the front desk and they said it wasn't. I could either pay t-mobile $10/day for 6 days, or $40/month. Hmm... And unfortunately it seems to be incompatible with the P3's WiFi feature (probably because of the need to log in). Oh well.
Out my window I noticed what looks like a roller coaster. Maybe I'll check it out (like I really expect to have a moment of free time, ha!). Anybody know what this is?
Well, that's it for now. Tonight I'm going to Ian's blogger get-together, and tomorrow the tutorials. Stay tuned...