October 22, 2010: Open Storage

We were all dragging this morning when we got up in Austin for SpiceWorld’s second full day.  Today is the day when I am speaking and I have very little voice left after two nights of shouting at the bar all evening.

We were not as early this morning over to the Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar where the conference is being held.  Yesterday was way too early.

I drove in to the conference today to make things easier since I have to leave at the end of the day anyway – no drinking for me today.  It is a lot more convenient to drive than to have to deal with the cabs all day.

My talk on Open Storage seemed to go over very well this morning.  It was a mostly packed house as I talked about the “history” of storage technologies and looked at the big picture of how storage applies to small and medium businesses today.  I think that it went well.  I was the one session to work without using PowerPoint slides.  I used cardboard boxes and duct tape for my presentation.  I got a lot of good response after the talk was done.

Work was very, very busy today which was rough as I was at the conference and had to miss all kinds of things while I attempting desperately to keep up.  I had to set up my laptop in the hallway and work from there much like I did last year.  I did receive some notifications and a special “only two people have them” t-shirts to honour my awesomeness.

After the conference was over I actually got stuck working for an hour or two, alone, in the lobby of the Alamo Drafthouse after everyone had left while I waiting for the evening deployments to complete and then for my Windows machine to complete its updated and shut down.

Once I was finally free I went over to the Highball and joined everyone who was there having dinner.  This was the serious conference crew who knew enough to schedule time to get together after the main event was over.  So we had a good time with the people who really knew each other hanging out for several more hours.

Kevin and Pam (yes, from Newark) showed up at the Highball with their friend and we hung out and had dinner too.  That was a bit of a surprise.  Kevin got to meet a bunch of people that he talks to on a regular basis but has never met previously.  It worked out pretty well.

With all of the people hanging at the Highball I ended up staying in Austin far too late.  It was around nine when I finally pulled out and headed north.

No sooner than I came through Round Rock on I35 going north than I blew the right rear tire right off of the Mazda.  Ugh.  So I had to get that changed to the spare and because it was so late at night I could not drive up to Dallas to get the tire fixed tonight.  So back to the hotel for me.

The crew had migrated to the hotel and was out on the patio when I got there.  So I joined them and got to hang out all evening which actually worked out really, really well in the long run.  We had a really good time hanging out.

I crashed on Watson’s hotel floor tonight.  Tomorrow I have to be up and working at six in the morning which is going to suck.  Then I have to deal with the tires as well.  Then drive to Dallas.  That is a lot for the day after the conference.

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