SUNDAY 6/6/2010
While sitting in the conference center for Tech Ed 2010, I thought, why not blog about my trip. Even though, I’m not really attending the conference itself, the company that I work for and my wife are part of it. So, what follows is a little bit of details on the trip there, hanging out and our lovely roadblocks that kept our day going and going and going…
Note: This is not my normal blog style, but sometimes, I think it is good to just ramble on and on. I hope you don't get too bored. 🙂
Our Travel Details
Sherri and I woke up around 4 AM (SUNDAY 6/6/2010) so that we could head out and meet the Brian Knight and Bayer White to make the drive to New Orleans. We left Jacksonville Florida around 5:05 am and hit the road. We arrived in pretty good time and it was good thing too, because Brian and Sherri had to set up the booth for the conference before 5 PM.
While They Were Setting Up
While Brian and Sherri were sweating their butts off setting up in the hot convention center area, I figured that I would make best use of my time and thumbed through the latest issue of SQL Server Magazine and then started this blog post. Not exactly the way I wanted to spend my Sunday afternoon, but I wanted to use my time wisely. A while later, they came out and away we went to grab some dinner.
Our First Dinner
After leaving the convention center, we had to find a place to grab some grub. We thought let’s head on down to the French Quarter and find some good New Orleans cuisine. Upon finding a parking lot, we all got out and noticed our front driver side tire was nearly flat. So, we grabbed some dinner real quick and then got our tire fixed. Finally we were ready to get settled into our hotel rooms.
Where We Stayed
The flat tire sort of threw a kink into schedule a bit, so all of us were just ready to check into our hotels and hit the rack. It had been a very long day! At any rate, some of us stayed at the Omni Hotel just a two minute walk from Bourbon Street. See the location on the map here. This is where we will be staying and I will be working.
Although the hotel was quaint and my wife loved the style of the old architecture, I am more of a new age kind of guy and like the big flat screen televisions that a lot of places have updated to. This gives me the opportunity to use the TV as an extra monitor while working on my laptop. J So, with this place being pretty old, I was out of luck on that one. One big negative from my perspective is that one must pay an additional $37 to park their car for the night. So be sure to get a good rate on PriceLine before forking out the more cash than you have to on the room itself! Regardless, the hotel was actually very beautiful. The staff that greeted us after our long day of travel, setup and a flat tire to top it off was very pleasant. They did have a fitness area and a pool up on the 7th floor which is also quite a view during the day. I can’t wait to see it tonight with the city lights.
Again, although I would have loved to be able to attend the Tech Ed events, I will not be able to tell you anything about them because I have to work.
Until next time, “keep your ear to the grindstone” – Good Will Hunting
Brian K. McDonald, MCDBA, MCSD
Business Intelligence Consultant – Pragmatic Works Consulting
Email: bmcdonald@pragmaticworks.com | Blog: BI Developer Network
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