The Eanes Family: April 2011

Just got back from my first Microsoft conference, in Atlanta with 9,000 of my closest friends. Here are a few observations I made along the way, but waited to post until I got back:

There's a liter bottle of Dasani in my hotel room. If I open it, it costs $6 plus tax. Just typing that made my wallet hurt.
If I get hungry in the morning, I can get a yogurt parfait from room service. That would be $9 + $3.50 delivery charge + 21% service charge. Or perhaps a three-egg omelette for $15 plus the charges...
There's a remote control next to the bed to open the motorized curtains. Because apparently that was a lot of effort or something.
I'm using my iPad at a Microsoft conference. I haven't been kicked out yet, but I'm pretty sure it's coming.
At the convention center, it's pretty incredible how many people there are whose sole job is to stand there, greet people, and every once in a while, give someone directions.
The iPad onscreen keyboard has a picture of the little raised lines on the F and J keys, just like a real keyboard. Of course, these do absolutely no good.
It's mildly entertaining to watch people grab extra snacks from the snack tables and stick them in their bags (I won't pretend like I didn't as well). It's like they really think they're sticking it to the man.
There are people from as far away as New Zealand at this conference. I really feel sorry for them, and I wonder how in the world their company justified the expense of sending them.
Having live music and an overly peppy host to kick off a keynote address that starts at 8:30 AM is a bad idea.
This isn't really a technical-oriented conference, but it's still really weird to me that the male/female ratio is about 50/50. Just not used to that. Although the one technical session I went to was the more-familiar 99/1 ratio.
The people taking pictures of the Powerpoint slides with their cell phones were cracking me up. I don't know if they weren't aware they were available for download or if they just couldn't wait.
Tuesday morning, the conference itself seemed to be going a little slow. This may or may not be related to the open bar Monday night.
Tuesday night, we were taken out to one of those Brazilian restaurants where they bring around the meat on the big skewers. I did not discriminate; if Noah had gotten really hungry while on the Ark, that's pretty much my dinner.
I wonder how old I will need to be before I stop feeling like the only child at an adult dinner party when I go to these conferences.
As of Wednesday morning, they said the conference had consumed 22,500 cans of soft drinks. A good chunk of those were mine.
I'm pretty sure the speaker at the last session I went to was the female version of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Literally the exact same accent and everything, just a little higher.

So after I had finished the draft of this, I read my entry from a conference I went to back in 2003. I pretty much could have copy and pasted it. Read it here.