It's been one hell of a great day.
Quick images:
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Having a beer called "moose drool" at the Taphouse with Sean, Alan and Cindy White
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Bumping into Pinal Dave in the Sheraton elevator
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Playing the business card shuffle with several guys in the lobby
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Passing Andy Leonard on the way to register
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SQLFool (what is your name, woman!) asking for a MidnightDBA button. (And you can have one!)
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Seeing Denny Cherry's blue hair. Nice effect…
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Sean talking Kenpo to Grant Fritchey
But let's back up a bit first. Timeline of random thoughts:
Nov 1 2009, 11:15am
So I'm about a zillion feet in the air, in seat 11E – the middle seat. Sean is sitting in the aisle behind me, and the people in my row and I are steadfastly ignoring each other. The man to my left is reading a book and eating a deli sandwich with packet mustard, and it smells good. I have to surpress the urge to say, Hey, can I have a bite of that? Just to see the reaction. I might under other circumstances, but over the years I've found that not everybody gets me, and we're stuck in here for another three hours.
11:51pm
Just glanced out the window. I love the circles in squares look of the landscape below. Some are even done in pie chart form, where only a third is dark. It's clearly due to farming plots that have circular irrigation systems, but I prefer to think they've done this to please me.
12:07
From Twitter Wit: "I absolutely live for small dried fruits. They're my raisin d'etre." And,
"A haiku is like
A poem with OCD
Now go check the stove".
And, "Sometimes I worry I'm one of those people from the black & white parts of infomercials whose lives are held hostage by things like pockets."
12:19
Flying over the Rockies. I think. Maybe they put in a new mountain range while I wasn't paying attention. Beautiful though.
12:32
Cool, the webcam on the netbook works. I love this little machine. Battery says it has 2.5 hours left, and that doesn't suck.
1:17pm
Post visit-the-loo-and-hang-around-stretching trip, one more from Twitter Wit: "Overheard: If you torture data long enough, you can get it to confess to anything."
1:21pm
Rediscovered: "Take 5"s are AWESOME.
1:30
*sigh* and another, because I actually do this: "When I fake-type on my desk and feel like I've made a fake-type, I fake-backspace to correct it. This is my life."
Note: An hour after my netbook said 2.5 hours left, it now says 2:20 hours left. I don't know how much of the time I've had it open though, so that's hardly news.
Ooh, gotta start following @PirateParenting.
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Got in on time, got out, got a cab. We're going to meet Alan White, SQL Server MVP & friend of Sean's, at Sheraton, & get something to eat that isn't candy. (We picked up a bag of 50% off halloween candy before we left. That may not have been a good choice.) Really glad to be here.
I've never been to the PASS Summit, and I've never even been to Seattle. I was born and raised in Anchorage, though, and this place has a very familiar feel, with the cool air & personable landscape.
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7:19 pm This is amazing. Simply amazing. In 2 hours, I have met something like 15 Tweeps and 20 SQL MVPs and muckety-mucks (all 3 groups overlapping). We're standing in the conference center right in front of the registration desk, groups of people forming and moving and reforming. It's definitely summer camp…the only thing lacking is someone squirting someone else with a water bottle.
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9:05 pm. We've done little but meet one person after another after another, and it's been – to coin a phrase – totally cool. A quick and incomplete list (sorry, no links):
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statistics io – jason massie
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arcane code – robert c cain
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aspiringgeek – Jimmy May
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sqlfool –
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sqlstrate – Jason Strate
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benchmarkit – calin stasiuk
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billinkc – Bill Fellows
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Adam Machanic
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Pinal Dave
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Brad McGehee
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sqlandy – andy warren
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Brad McGehee
We hung out with Alan White and his wife Cindy (I SO hope I got that right) most of the evening, and got a great DBAs @ Midnight interview with him filmed! Great GREAT folks, by the way, though I feel quite sorry for her, hanging around a bunch of IT nerds like us 🙂 Probably used to it…
We hit the hotel hot tub and now we're chilling in the room, doing blogs and tweets and work. I know…we should be at one of the half dozen hangouts going on right now. But it's gonna be a loooong week, and mama needs some sleep.
Night all!
-Jen McCown, http://www.midnightdba.com/
Blogging for http://www.sqlserverpedia.com/