I had to get up and get out the door even earlier than I normally would even when going into the office on the early side. The event was held at the Sheraton at seventh avenue and fifty-third. That means that I had to take the PATH to the World Trade Center and then the “E” train to seventh avenue. That meant that it took longer to get there than my usual walk to Wall Street and they wanted people to be there as early as a quarter after seven in the morning which was pretty early. I was shooting for a little closer to eight.

The morning keynote was pretty good and we got to see one of the Microsoft Technical Fellows speak and saw several demonstrations. We were provided a breakfast – orange, blueberry muffin, granola bar and orange juice. Then we had the morning technical session which ran until a quarter after one in the afternoon. We ate lunch during the session since I was in the “lengthy” morning session that had no scheduled lunch break. They provided a grilled vegetable sandwich, pretzels, red delicious apple and a Milky Way candy car.

I did get a short break between the sessions mid-afternoon so I hiked across seventh avenue to 810 Deli & Cafe to grab a large coffee and a tuna and avocado wrap before returning to the next session. I needed some caffeine to keep me going.

The afternoon session ran until just after five. All of the other sessions only went until four but I tend to be ambitious. The crowd had dwindled significantly by the time that we were leaving.

I beat Dominica and Oreo home but just five minutes. She came home and cooked dinner.

Dominica picked up Munchkin Cthulhu by Steve Jackson Games today. She has been dying to get her hands on card games for several days now.

On Sunday while hanging out with Ramona and Winni, Ramona was talking about sailing in the British Virgin Islands and mentioned this hilarious British red callbox that had been converted into a shower and installed at the end of a dock where they had, appropriately, docked. I said that I thought that that sounded exactly like the cover of Simon Winchester’s book “Outposts” which I had just read a few weeks ago – possibly while Ramona was in BVI. So I sent her a picture of the book and she identified it as the very same callbox. Now there is an incredible coincidence. Such a tiny, unremarkable spot on the face of the planet and I didn’t have a clue where that picture was taken and for her to actually have been there just a week ago and to be talking about it – madness, as they say in Belfast.

We ate dinner and watched some It’s A Different World and then I had to get to work to make up a bunch of things that didn’t get completed today because I was at the Microsoft show. So I worked about two hours until a bit after eleven. Dominica played more of MySims while I worked.

We had another Amazon order arrived today. I received “Interface Oriented Design”, “More News from Lake Wobegon” Audio CDs and the fourth season of Allo, Allo from the BBC circa 1987.

Unfortunately because of the short notice Dominica and I haven’t had time to contemplate a vacation at all. This year is our five year anniversary and her thirtieth birthday and it would be a perfect chance to travel a little and actually take some time off. We really wanted to go somewhere for our anniversary this year but everything will be incredibly expensive doing it at the last minute. So we have no idea what we are even going to attempt to do let alone be able to do. Dominica does not have any vacation time saved up at work so it will be extra difficult (and expensive) for her to take time off. So we have no idea what we are doing.

Tomorrow is the Microsoft 2008 Release Event here in New York City. I got approved to be able to go to that a month or two ago. So I will be at that tomorrow up in midtown all day. It will be a nice change of pace. I haven’t had an opportunity to go to any of Microsoft’s sessions in the last two years. I used to go to these things all of the time. Although this is the last really big launch event since the 2003 Launch Event which I felt was quite valuable.

I stopped in at Airlie Cafe on my way into the office this morning and grabbed a breakfast sandwich as well as a salad to have as my lunch. That is all that I managed to eat all day and I was really hungry and tired by the end of the day at the office.

Dominica and I spent a lot of time today trying to figure out what me having two weeks off means. Does it mean that we should go on a vacation – a vacation with no money and no time to plan and without any firm details? Because we didn’t know until this morning that I was going on furlough she doesn’t have any vacation time saved up with causes additional problems. We thought about going to Europe but with the US dollar in such horrible shape against the Euro that seems like an extremely bad idea. So we are talking about maybe going to Mexico. But we really have no idea.

If you like Star Wars you will love “Star Wars According to a Three Year Old“.

I ended up getting stuck in the office quite late.  Much later than I had anticipated.  Some schedule work that I had from eleven in the morning got rescheduled until one thirty and then didn’t actually start until after three and took four and a half hours.  So it turned into a long day quickly on me.

I got home and Dominica cooked a really cool new dish that involves corn muffins, sautéed vegetables and baked acorn squash.  It was delicious.  We ate out dinner and watched the first two episodes of A Different World, the Cosby Show spin off about college life.  Boy did that show bring back memories.  I had totally forgotten about that show and I must have watched it all of the time.

We only got forty-five minutes of relaxation or so before I was paged out and had to work for another hour.  It has really been a long day now.  So that took me until nine thirty before being really done at the office.  Then I took half an hour to do some consulting work for a certification exam that I am working with but that took very little effort.

Dominica spent the evening alone playing MySims that I got for her for Christmas.  She didn’t even play it once for two months but has been playing it a bit the last few days.  I went to bed just after ten and we watched one more episode of our show while falling asleep.  Tomorrow is a very early day for me so I will be rather tired.  I will also be away from the office all day.

Today was my chance to check and see how SGL did in the month of February with my first full month of Google Analytics data. The most interesting things to note are that my technology articles are by far the most popular things that I write and that people from sixty countries read the blog just during February. I is amazing to think of how many people from all over the world are interested in SGL. Here are the countries, in order of visits, that have come to SGL this past month: United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, India, Australia, Malaysia, Sweden, Ireland, Netherlands, France, South Korea, Mexico, Poland, Switzerland, Italy, South Africa, Japan, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Netherlands Antilles, Denmark, Romania, Turkey, Finland, Thailand, Azerbaijan, Spain, Austria, China, Brazil, Hungary, Trinidad and Tobago, Serbia and Montenegro, Belgium, Singapore, Dominica, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Colombia, Russia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, French Polynesia, Sri Lanka, Greece, Cyprus, Chile, French Guiana, Czech Republic, Costa Rica, Taiwan, Kyrgyzstan, Estonia, Ghana, Iran, Norway, Luxemburg, Israel, Philippines and Argentina.

Here are some additional interesting facts about my visitors: Firefox beat out Internet Explorer as the most popular browser. While Windows was clearly the most popular operating system to visit SGL, Linux visitors neatly doubled the presence of Mac OS visitors. Solaris even made a reasonable showing at .4% more than doubling visitors from the Sony Playstation Portable. Somehow the hideously small 1024×768 was by far the most popular screen resolution. About one half of one percent of our visitors see the site as ScottAndDominica.com and not as SheepGuardingLlama.com.