Tuesday, November 06, 2007
TechEd day 2
Before the conference I noted that my faithful day-in-and-day-out M&S trainers had finally fallen apart. The soles had already worn out of tread but now the side had split so they went into recycling. Pretty impressive longevity - over 15 months.
This meant I had to fall back on my "pretty" blue Adidas trainers - they're OK to wear (or seemed to be anyway) but the laces have little grip and keep coming loose over time. After walking miles in airports, between the hotel and the conference, around the conference, and then carousing in Barcelona last night, I find a nice set of blisters. Walking to the conference this morning was not as fun as it could have been...
On top of this the three bottles of beer at the opening of the Ask The Experts area, the rioja, the booze at the Marley bar and the minibar cans meant that I didn't feel great in the morning. For some reason, I didn't think of taking the aspirins I packed for this precise eventuality until I was at the conference (and they were not). Additionally there is a chemist on my route which didn't sink in either. So from 8am to 8pm (when I got back to my room and spent 10 minutes searching for them) I felt not 100%. Yes, I did skip breakfast.
One thing I had forgotten is that it is not always wise to drink a lot of water in the morning to rehydrate yourself. What this seems to do is awaken whatever you drank but your body hasn't processed yet so the stomach starts to decide it isn't too happy at the moment. Just how far are the toilets from the Ask The Experts area? It didn't seem that far yesterday ....
The helpdesk stuff is going OK.
1 They ask me an ITPro-style question (Dev questions get tefloned to someone else)
2 I exhaust my knowledge on the subject (varies from seconds to tens of seconds)
3 I ask them for their email address
4 I research question
5 I email them the answer/response
After lunch I scanned the schedule for the useful or the interesting.
1:30pm
"WIN201 - Next Generation Networking in Windows Vista"
This was a good overview from a Polish expert by the name of Rafal Lukawiecki who's working in the UK. The focus was on IPv6 which we need to implement world-wide in the next 3 years before all the existing IP addresses run out, 70% of which are allocated to US companies and as a result most of them don't see what the problem is. China, on the other hand, have a different opinion.
The 2:45pm slot didn't have anything that appealed so I tried one of the WCF hands-on labs. The combination of my groggy head and the dry qualty of the lab led to me giving up after a while but with a little more practice under my belt. Another 40 hours should do... :-)
5:00pm
"MED204 - Microsoft Robotics Studio"
Although something that felt like a meeting of model aircraft enthusists, there's a lot of serious work going on with robotics (e.g. NASA space exploration).
Afterwards I hung around until 8pm reading email and generally taking it easy. Back at the hotel, once the aspirin kicked in, I had a bath and then some more Halo 1 on the PC. Boy, do I suck at Halo on the laptop (and I'm playing campaign, not online) but it passes the time.
This meant I had to fall back on my "pretty" blue Adidas trainers - they're OK to wear (or seemed to be anyway) but the laces have little grip and keep coming loose over time. After walking miles in airports, between the hotel and the conference, around the conference, and then carousing in Barcelona last night, I find a nice set of blisters. Walking to the conference this morning was not as fun as it could have been...
On top of this the three bottles of beer at the opening of the Ask The Experts area, the rioja, the booze at the Marley bar and the minibar cans meant that I didn't feel great in the morning. For some reason, I didn't think of taking the aspirins I packed for this precise eventuality until I was at the conference (and they were not). Additionally there is a chemist on my route which didn't sink in either. So from 8am to 8pm (when I got back to my room and spent 10 minutes searching for them) I felt not 100%. Yes, I did skip breakfast.
One thing I had forgotten is that it is not always wise to drink a lot of water in the morning to rehydrate yourself. What this seems to do is awaken whatever you drank but your body hasn't processed yet so the stomach starts to decide it isn't too happy at the moment. Just how far are the toilets from the Ask The Experts area? It didn't seem that far yesterday ....
The helpdesk stuff is going OK.
1 They ask me an ITPro-style question (Dev questions get tefloned to someone else)
2 I exhaust my knowledge on the subject (varies from seconds to tens of seconds)
3 I ask them for their email address
4 I research question
5 I email them the answer/response
After lunch I scanned the schedule for the useful or the interesting.
1:30pm
"WIN201 - Next Generation Networking in Windows Vista"
This was a good overview from a Polish expert by the name of Rafal Lukawiecki who's working in the UK. The focus was on IPv6 which we need to implement world-wide in the next 3 years before all the existing IP addresses run out, 70% of which are allocated to US companies and as a result most of them don't see what the problem is. China, on the other hand, have a different opinion.
The 2:45pm slot didn't have anything that appealed so I tried one of the WCF hands-on labs. The combination of my groggy head and the dry qualty of the lab led to me giving up after a while but with a little more practice under my belt. Another 40 hours should do... :-)
5:00pm
"MED204 - Microsoft Robotics Studio"
Although something that felt like a meeting of model aircraft enthusists, there's a lot of serious work going on with robotics (e.g. NASA space exploration).
Afterwards I hung around until 8pm reading email and generally taking it easy. Back at the hotel, once the aspirin kicked in, I had a bath and then some more Halo 1 on the PC. Boy, do I suck at Halo on the laptop (and I'm playing campaign, not online) but it passes the time.
Labels: Microsoft, Spain, TechEd
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