san francisco -- day #4 -- "You like extreme?"

Final conference sessions today. OK, but nothing fantastic.

Great lunch at House of Nanking. The waiter arrived, said "Your first time here?" When we said yes, he took our menus. No idea what the dishes were, but they were all super-excellent.

Then got a taxi to the airport. After a few minutes of silence, the driver asks, "You like extreme?"

I'm not sure I hear him right. He asks again, "You like extreme?"

Yep. I had heard him right.

Pause....... I'm not sure if I'm going to get invited to a cock fight, or what. I guess that maybe he's asking if it's OK to play his favorite thrash metal CD. "Uhhh.... extreme music?" I ask.

He explains, "No! Extreme! Like X! .... Games! Extreme. Sports."

I respond, "umm. A little?"

The rest of the ride was enclosed in blissful silence.

san francisco -- day #3

Noisey street. Some sleepy sessions. A couple awesome ones -- displaying debugging and profiling support for XQuery.

Then the final session of the day. At first, I'm thinking... blah, a mailing list archive viewer? Oh, how wrong I was. Sweet zombie Jesus, it was cool. Or maybe Jason Hunter is an great speaker. Or maybe both?

It was also very applicable to the work we're doing -- transforming and enhancing XML and non-XML assets into an normalized XML form and storing the results in MarkLogic.

san francisco -- day #2

Noisey street + hotel room close to street = no sleep.

As the opening session begins, I realize I can't focus. Then I notice the strobing migraine precursor.... Today is going to be awesome!

Interesting sessions. One of the sessions on the technical track of the conference seemed like a waste of time, but most of the others were interesting. And an added plus, presentations by the vendor and one of our competitors seem to validate our current architectural approach.

san francisco -- day #1

Flew to San Francisco for a technical conference. Flight uneventful, and in a teeny CRJ200. Only 12 and a half rows of seats.

Googled up restaurants near the hotel. I've been craving Vietnamese all the time lately, so I decided on a hole-in-the-wall place with good reviews -- Golden Flower Vietnamese. Just a couple minutes walk from the hotel.

Pretty good, but not the best I've had. The imperial rolls were greasy, and more mystery-meaty than I'd have preferred. The bun with grilled pork and shrimp was tasty.

In order of worst to first:
Pho Cali -> Golden Flower Vietnamese -> Pho Hoa -> Shanghai Cafe -> The deeee-licious versions Dien made for us over at Mark's house. Mmmmm.

Also, it's less fun to travel without coworkers. Wandering aimlessly is less fun to do on your own... it feels more like getting lost than having an adventure.