Suzi's parents are celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary next year. So they're taking the entire family to Disneyland. Grandpa/Grandma Bill and Jean, Aunt Sami and Uncle Brad, Aunt Jenny with Tyler, Desiree, and Kayla, and Suzi, the kids (Ryan, Josh, Katelyn), and I are all going. We leave June 29 from Seattle at 10am on the Amtrak coast startlight train, pick up Jenny and the kids at the Auburn station (or wherever the closest station is), pick up Bill, Jean, Sami and Brad in Portland, and finish the 35 hour (yes, 35 hour) train ride to Anaheim in 4 sleeper cars.
We arrive Friday the 30th of June at around 10pm and head from there to our hotel, the Embassy Suites South, which is right down Harbor Blvd from the main Disney park. We stay there through the 5th of July which is GREAT since we'll be there for the 4th of July celebration. We'll also get a day in at Knotts Berry Farm, which is pretty fun as I remember.
Then, really early on the 5th, everyone heads home on the Amtrak for a 31 hour journey back to Portland. Except for us... Suzi and the kids and I are staying another 4 nights at the Hyatt (a block down the road from the Embassy Suites) in a 2 bedroom kids suite (complete with bunk beds for the kids) from the 5th through the 9th. So we'll get a few extra days at the park and probably hit Universal Studios and also get in some pool time in the sun down there. Then we fly home to seattle (yes, fly, in 2 hours and 34 minutes direct) on Sunday the 9th.
Thanks to Bill and Jean for getting us down there and the first big chunk of the trip. It should be great and we'll get MUCH more Disneyland vacation than Suzi and I ever thought we'd be able to do... Now, I've just got to get the time off of work ;) No problem... worst case I just have the 264 hour (11 days) flu....
Saturday, September 24, 2005
Thursday, September 15, 2005
Day 3 Begins...
Yesterday had several keynotes and some good depth in the seminars on Avalon and Indigo. I think the codenames will stay with those projects forever, since "Windows Communication Foundation" just takes too long to say, and WCF isn't a "catchy" acronym. The codenames are cooler anyway...
Last night was the Universal Studios party. After a nice long wait at the Westin Bonaventure for a bus, we got up there around 7:30. There are no buses from convention center, they're all from the "PDC Hotels", where I'm not staying. They were all sold out, so I rode a bus to the hotel to catch a bus to the party. The party itself was great. They had live entertainment, desserts on tables along the street, and we had at most a 5 minute wait for any of the shows. I ended up booking through it and seeing pretty much everything. I rode Revenge of the Mummy twice and that ride is GREAT. I participated in the Special Effects show, chained to a spinning wall that turned me into a skeleton. I also got to attack another attendee woman with a large cat paw and have my arm cut open with a fake knife (blood and all). I wish I was here with someone else to have gotten pictures of it. I'm sure there are many people in the world who would like to see me chained to the wall of an Egyptian tomb, screaming as I'm about to be tortured and killed. :)
Today I headed over again this morning and I'm going to talks all day long starting at 10am. I'm getting pretty tired of all of the taxis in LA having "the computer is broken" problems with their credit card machines. I know they're full of it, but I don't need to have a huge argument twice a day. I get to personally finance my $100/day taxi fund to get me to/from the conference. Blech. Anyway, the conference itself is solid and today should be another 9 hour day of seminars and talks on Avalon, Indigo, Atlas, Web Service Security, and the one I'm looking forward to the most: Raymond Chen's talk on "5 things every win32 developer should know". Raymond's a story amongst himself and I look forward to hearing his talk.
Tomorrow is a half day and then straight to the airport at 2:30. I'm hoping to get an earlier flight if possible, since my flight now is around 8:40pm. I scheduled it late knowing it would be a zoo to get out and now knowing that I could check my suitcase here at the conference on Friday. So now, I don't have to go back to the hotel first. Crossing my fingers I can get out a few hours early. Don't let me down Alaska Airlines!
Last night was the Universal Studios party. After a nice long wait at the Westin Bonaventure for a bus, we got up there around 7:30. There are no buses from convention center, they're all from the "PDC Hotels", where I'm not staying. They were all sold out, so I rode a bus to the hotel to catch a bus to the party. The party itself was great. They had live entertainment, desserts on tables along the street, and we had at most a 5 minute wait for any of the shows. I ended up booking through it and seeing pretty much everything. I rode Revenge of the Mummy twice and that ride is GREAT. I participated in the Special Effects show, chained to a spinning wall that turned me into a skeleton. I also got to attack another attendee woman with a large cat paw and have my arm cut open with a fake knife (blood and all). I wish I was here with someone else to have gotten pictures of it. I'm sure there are many people in the world who would like to see me chained to the wall of an Egyptian tomb, screaming as I'm about to be tortured and killed. :)
Today I headed over again this morning and I'm going to talks all day long starting at 10am. I'm getting pretty tired of all of the taxis in LA having "the computer is broken" problems with their credit card machines. I know they're full of it, but I don't need to have a huge argument twice a day. I get to personally finance my $100/day taxi fund to get me to/from the conference. Blech. Anyway, the conference itself is solid and today should be another 9 hour day of seminars and talks on Avalon, Indigo, Atlas, Web Service Security, and the one I'm looking forward to the most: Raymond Chen's talk on "5 things every win32 developer should know". Raymond's a story amongst himself and I look forward to hearing his talk.
Tomorrow is a half day and then straight to the airport at 2:30. I'm hoping to get an earlier flight if possible, since my flight now is around 8:40pm. I scheduled it late knowing it would be a zoo to get out and now knowing that I could check my suitcase here at the conference on Friday. So now, I don't have to go back to the hotel first. Crossing my fingers I can get out a few hours early. Don't let me down Alaska Airlines!
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
First Day is over
The first day of PDC is over. There's a PDC Underground event going on tonight at the Westin, and they might have free food so I'll probably check that out before heading back to the hotel. I'm not sure I can sit through 3 more hours of talks today since I've been at it since 7am, though.
Just finished a talk on Avalon ^h^h^h Windows Presentation Foundation and how powerful the separation between design and code is. It was very nice to see major updates to the UX without changing any code. I can definitely see the advantages here, and the UX looks nice and does "the right thing" when it's in there.
Earlier, I went to a talk on using Indigo ^h^h ;) for peer to peer application development, but it wasn't very useful at all. Way too high level and hand-wavy without any meat on the actual problems at hand (e.g. key management for certificates used for message auth, password infrastructure, granting/denying access from groups of connected clients, xpsp2 downlevel specifics vs Vista, etc). Hopefully the other Indigo talks will give more substance.
The bummer is that MSFT employees can't participate in a lot of the goings-on. They had a great deal on a pocket pc with a keyboard, wifi, etc but we can't participate. We also can't participate for prizes in some of the competitions. I totally understand they don't want msft employees coming in and snagging all of the goodies, but I think the separation should be at the presenter/staff level and let the general attendees participate. We're here just like everyone else: learning... Bummer, but I'm sure I'll get over it :)
Just finished a talk on Avalon ^h^h^h Windows Presentation Foundation and how powerful the separation between design and code is. It was very nice to see major updates to the UX without changing any code. I can definitely see the advantages here, and the UX looks nice and does "the right thing" when it's in there.
Earlier, I went to a talk on using Indigo ^h^h ;) for peer to peer application development, but it wasn't very useful at all. Way too high level and hand-wavy without any meat on the actual problems at hand (e.g. key management for certificates used for message auth, password infrastructure, granting/denying access from groups of connected clients, xpsp2 downlevel specifics vs Vista, etc). Hopefully the other Indigo talks will give more substance.
The bummer is that MSFT employees can't participate in a lot of the goings-on. They had a great deal on a pocket pc with a keyboard, wifi, etc but we can't participate. We also can't participate for prizes in some of the competitions. I totally understand they don't want msft employees coming in and snagging all of the goodies, but I think the separation should be at the presenter/staff level and let the general attendees participate. We're here just like everyone else: learning... Bummer, but I'm sure I'll get over it :)
PDC Keynote (and lunch) is over
Lots of info at the keynote this morning.
Atlas -- AJAX tech built into vs.net
MAX -- saw the demo on this a while back when it was Project M(ilkshake)
Office 12 first ever demo
Sidebar and gadget development
Windows SideShow (2nd display for laptops, also a home for gadgets)
QuickTabs in IE7 -- ability to show all of your tabs and save them all together as a single favorite to bring up all of your sites at once
RSS integration and the RSS data store to build apps on
New Office12 UX -- Great stuff here (maybe i'll finally care about how to use Excel)
CryTek "next technology" demo, although not sure what this has to do with Vista, it's more a testament to faster hardware and much better GPUs
WPF / E -- E is for "everywhere". upcoming tech for lightweight runtime to run WPF (aka Avalon) on other devices/platforms. XAML + Javascript
POCKETPC OFFER. This wifi phone/pocketpc/keyboard/vga screen/supergizmo looks pretty cool at first glance. Need to spend a bit more time checking it out at the Mobile booth.
Need to get more info on:
Transacted storage (registry, file system, plug in your own data store, etc)
Big WinFX slide from msdn / comnet
Dumb:
The NetFlix demo was GREAT but showing the TabletPC value of "hey, you can use the stylus as a mouse pointer" was totally stupid. If that's the biggest value prop that developers can add to support the tablet, then that segment is in big trouble.
Got "The Goods", nearly 30gb of DVD content and software. Haven't cracked it open yet, but I'll probably put VS.NET 2005 RC0 on my laptop by EOD. Not going to risk driver issues with Vista on my laptop. I can install a later build of it when i get back to the office. I'm running later builds there anyway.. ;)
Spent some time in the booths. Most of it is "new chart controls!" or development tools integration (build, project/process management, version control, etc) that we don't need in our group since we already have them.
Off to breakout sessions to get more in depth. Oh, and the internet connectivity here is pretty poor...
Atlas -- AJAX tech built into vs.net
MAX -- saw the demo on this a while back when it was Project M(ilkshake)
Office 12 first ever demo
Sidebar and gadget development
Windows SideShow (2nd display for laptops, also a home for gadgets)
QuickTabs in IE7 -- ability to show all of your tabs and save them all together as a single favorite to bring up all of your sites at once
RSS integration and the RSS data store to build apps on
New Office12 UX -- Great stuff here (maybe i'll finally care about how to use Excel)
CryTek "next technology" demo, although not sure what this has to do with Vista, it's more a testament to faster hardware and much better GPUs
WPF / E -- E is for "everywhere". upcoming tech for lightweight runtime to run WPF (aka Avalon) on other devices/platforms. XAML + Javascript
POCKETPC OFFER. This wifi phone/pocketpc/keyboard/vga screen/supergizmo looks pretty cool at first glance. Need to spend a bit more time checking it out at the Mobile booth.
Need to get more info on:
Transacted storage (registry, file system, plug in your own data store, etc)
Big WinFX slide from msdn / comnet
Dumb:
The NetFlix demo was GREAT but showing the TabletPC value of "hey, you can use the stylus as a mouse pointer" was totally stupid. If that's the biggest value prop that developers can add to support the tablet, then that segment is in big trouble.
Got "The Goods", nearly 30gb of DVD content and software. Haven't cracked it open yet, but I'll probably put VS.NET 2005 RC0 on my laptop by EOD. Not going to risk driver issues with Vista on my laptop. I can install a later build of it when i get back to the office. I'm running later builds there anyway.. ;)
Spent some time in the booths. Most of it is "new chart controls!" or development tools integration (build, project/process management, version control, etc) that we don't need in our group since we already have them.
Off to breakout sessions to get more in depth. Oh, and the internet connectivity here is pretty poor...
PDC Kick Off
After a much longer than expected taxi ride that didn't take plastic >:( I arrived at the LA Convention center and had a nice breakfast. I talked with Vincent from Schlumberger who used to work in Austin at the campus I used to partner with when I worked for Pervasive. We had a good chat about the new version of VS.NET Team System and AntiVirus / security issues for consumers and corporate customers.
The keynote starts in about 30 minutes, so I'm off to find a spot to sit and see things really kick off...
The keynote starts in about 30 minutes, so I'm off to find a spot to sit and see things really kick off...
Monday, September 12, 2005
Cue Twilight Zone Theme
This is the strangest place I've ever been, and no I don't just mean Los Angeles. The Mondrian Hotel is great, but it's very... strange... As a fellow Microsoftie whom I met on the plane mentioned (he had stayed here in the past), it's very "rock star-ry". It's very Austin Powers groovy baby yeah and everyone is dressed in all white, many in Dr Evil-esque outfits. I didn't get any pictures tonight, but I will before I leave. This whole place is very white. White curtains, white tablecloths, floors, ceilings, everything. There are barely any bare walls, they're covered with curtains. I have a nice balcony room with a GREAT view of downtown Los Angeles and the hotel is right across the street from The Comedy Store and next to The House of Blues. George Thorogood will be there tomorrow night. Might be worth checking out to have a beer and listen to some music...
It was late and I was hungry so I ate at the hotel restaurant. Accounting will be very displeased if I eat every meal here, but I don't know my way around and I needed to eat so I ate at the Asian Cuba restaurant. Quite the expensive (around $20 for an appetizer, $35-50 for entrees) but also quite the good. I kept myself to an entree of Beef Spare Ribs in a spicy asian sauce rubbed in orange sauce with rice and black beans. Mmmmm... Tasty...
Now to get my stuff together, look through the schedule and get some sleep for tomorrow morning. I'm going to need to allocate time to get there. It took me an hour to get here from the airport. I'm betting on 30 minutes to make the 8 mile journey by taxi from here to the LA Convention Center. And they supposedly have breakfast there at the conference so I can skip out on the restaurant... ;)
I'll upload a picture of the view in the morning when the sun comes up. My night time pictures didn't come out very well.
It was late and I was hungry so I ate at the hotel restaurant. Accounting will be very displeased if I eat every meal here, but I don't know my way around and I needed to eat so I ate at the Asian Cuba restaurant. Quite the expensive (around $20 for an appetizer, $35-50 for entrees) but also quite the good. I kept myself to an entree of Beef Spare Ribs in a spicy asian sauce rubbed in orange sauce with rice and black beans. Mmmmm... Tasty...
Now to get my stuff together, look through the schedule and get some sleep for tomorrow morning. I'm going to need to allocate time to get there. It took me an hour to get here from the airport. I'm betting on 30 minutes to make the 8 mile journey by taxi from here to the LA Convention Center. And they supposedly have breakfast there at the conference so I can skip out on the restaurant... ;)
I'll upload a picture of the view in the morning when the sun comes up. My night time pictures didn't come out very well.
At The Airport
Welp, after spending 45 minutes getting shuttled in and then spending forever in the "express e-ticket" line, I've comfortably arrived at the airport bar in Terminal D. The news is flashing that there's a major power outage and traffic jams in Los Angeles, including West Hollywood, where I'm headed. I'm not going to pay for airport internet access since I only have about 30 minutes before I board the plane into utter electronic-less despair, so I'm caching this for later. I'll upload it assuming the power comes back on when I get there. It should be a joy hitting LAX and downtown at 6pm in weekday rush hour when there's a major power outage. Let's have a moment of silence and pray for a lack of looting :) Fortunately, I'm not renting a car, so I'll let someone else fight traffic and get me to the hotel...
Wednesday Night at Universal
I'm not even there yet and I'm posting pictures as if I were. Alert friend of mine (hutzelmath) found this picture of the pass for the party on Wednesday night. The "not so fun" part is that I'm not at a "PDC Hotel" so I get to do some extra shuttling / taxi-ing to get to/from the buses and get back to my hotel afterwards. Ah, such is life... ;)
Sunday, September 11, 2005
Getting ready for PDC
Tomorrow I leave for Los Angeles and the PDC. The pre-conference actually starts today but I'm only attending the main conference run. I'll be staying at the Mondrian Hotel on Sunset Blvd, which from the pictures looks pretty sweet :). I get in Monday afternoon and come back Friday night. The conference starts Tuesday morning, Wednesday night is the big blow-out party at Universal Studios Hollywood, and we're all done Friday at 2:30 so everyone can run to the airport.
There are about +/- 20 other folks from the MSN division where I work (I'm a dev lead in OneCare) that are going, but I don't know any of them personally, yet. Most of them are of the PUM / Corporate VP type. There are a few other "trench workers" such as myself going as well ;).
The conference is sold out and when I reserved over a month ago the Mondrian, at 8 miles away from the LA Convention Center, was the closest "Microsoft-approved" hotel that wasn't sold out. It's going to be PACKED down there.
This is my first PDC to attend and I'm looking forward to it. I'll post as regularly as I can about sessions, events, activities, the party, and just general sights and sounds around LA. Hopefully I won't end up on the cover of "The Star" or "The National Enquirer"...
There are about +/- 20 other folks from the MSN division where I work (I'm a dev lead in OneCare) that are going, but I don't know any of them personally, yet. Most of them are of the PUM / Corporate VP type. There are a few other "trench workers" such as myself going as well ;).
The conference is sold out and when I reserved over a month ago the Mondrian, at 8 miles away from the LA Convention Center, was the closest "Microsoft-approved" hotel that wasn't sold out. It's going to be PACKED down there.
This is my first PDC to attend and I'm looking forward to it. I'll post as regularly as I can about sessions, events, activities, the party, and just general sights and sounds around LA. Hopefully I won't end up on the cover of "The Star" or "The National Enquirer"...
Yard Update
Quick splash of pics from the yard as of Sept 10...
The backyard BEFORE we moved in (with all of the blackberries):
The backyard now:
There's still a lot of debris to get out of the way, and there are a lot of dead leaves to get picked up, but we have a LOT more yard, and a LOT less blackberry bushes.
The front has been updated too... Latest front yard pics:
The backyard BEFORE we moved in (with all of the blackberries):
The backyard now:
There's still a lot of debris to get out of the way, and there are a lot of dead leaves to get picked up, but we have a LOT more yard, and a LOT less blackberry bushes.
The front has been updated too... Latest front yard pics:
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