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Day 1 of the Conference. There's now hundreds of people here to present sessions, and others to watch those presentations. And of course, the people who refill the soda troughs. I like those people the most.
| Sunday,
14 September 2003 |
|
| 8:00am | The alarm went off, by design. We remained in bed, by choice. |
| 8:27am | Crud. I guess maybe we should respect the clock's authority. We rushed through the exit preparation process and headed out the door. |
| 8:49am | We reached the conference center, grabbed breakfast (yummy Fruit Loops), and headed off to the lounge area wherein we're stationed. |
| 9:08am | Jennifer, Tubby and I reached the lounge area, and we found two people were sitting in "our" spot. |
| 11:13am | The morning was essentially Tubby doing support stuff, and I working on pre-building the 150+ web pages that will related to the upcoming Don't Tread on Me tour in about a week and a half. |
| 12:58pm | We locked up the lounge area and headed up for the big bosses' speech and stuff. |
| 2:04pm | The speeches were as inspirational as any I've heard this week, and once over, we returned to our homes and places of business. I was saddened to learn, however, that the soda trough is empty, and we're down to a single, regular Pepsi. It's a sad moment, indeed. |
| 5:57pm | We made the last call and booted everyone out to make out 6pm closing time. (If you're wondering why it's been so quiet for updates, well, that's the nature of the job, apparently. Mostly just sitting, helping people with their connection to the network and such, and providing loaner equipment for people who forgot bits and pieces of their computer setup stuff. |
| 6:26pm | At long last, we managed to get the last of the people out of the room when the network finally was turned off for the night. I headed out to the party with Tubby. |
| 6:28pm | We made our way into the arena first, to see what was the matter. We were greeted by the first of several bands (there were more than I could shake a camera at, honestly). |
| 6:31pm | Each of the snack tables have an older Harley on them, keeping in the theme of the 60s and 70s. For what the blue streaks are, stay with me. |
| 6:35pm | We wander outside, and find several couches for lounging about. It's rather nice, I s'pose. |
| 6:37pm | We encounter the second of the bands we saw |
| 6:41pm | And then the third band. As we followed around the round arena, we found there were actually quite a number of people there after all. |
| 6:44pm | Finally, the fourth band of the event. I've promised to stop taking pictures of them all. |
| 6:57pm | We found the source of the blue streaks from the 6:31pm photo -- a plastic cup (sponsored by HP) that has a blue LED in the bottom. They're going fast, too... people are taking the drinks two at a time. Until some party-goers discovered the rack of cups ready to be provided, and they just started cutting out the beverage middle-man and taking the glasses. (One waiter tried to stop it, but it just postponed it a few minutes.) (This sort of shows what I'm talking about.) |
| 7:07pm | We acquired two glasses, but somehow that wasn't enough. However, taking others just seemed wrong (after all, there are people paying to be here). But, having little shame, we didn't have any problems taking them off the bus boy's trays (as they were clearing tables, so in a way, we rescued the cups from the trash). |
| 7:28pm | Tubby and I left the opening celebration (party thing) and headed back to the hotel. He's apparently ready for bed, I'm keen on a movie. I suspect I'm going to get my way. |
| 7:57pm | We figure we can probably hit the 8:45pm showing of Matchstick Men in Santa Ana. Steve (from work) calls and inquires about the alluded-to movie option. |
| 8:18pm | We head out of the hotel for the movie, and call Steve back and explain the proposal. |
| 8:24pm | Steve decides to go with, and we swing by the convention center to pick him up. |
| 8:30pm | Steve arrives at the car, and brings one of the glow-stick liquid-powered cups as a show-and-tell item (no photo, sorry), but it's not nearly as cool as ours. |
| 8:48pm | We get to the mall that houses the theater, but can't find it. We finally figure we'll try the doors to the now-closed mall (closed for the night), and viola! The doors open. |
| 8:52pm | We get to the second floor (past unsecured items in booths and stuff), and buy tickets. It's $8 per adult, which is a bit pricey by our favorite theater's standards, but for the Orange County area, it beats the $9.50 we'd have paid at the AMC theater near Disneyland.* |
| 8:57pm | Steve gets snacks, and we're directed to the theater (we're now on the third floor, between buying the tickets and the snacks). As we approach the cinema, a guy asks us if we're here for Matchstick. We tell him yes, and go into the theater. After a moment, we know why. Despite being 12 minutes late, there's no movie showing (yet). We're the first two people there. |
| 8:59pm | The film is started, and the lights dim, as two other people arrive. Yup, four humans and one duck, in this movie theater at this showing. |
| 11:01pm | We're done. For how it ends, try my Spoiled Movie Ending. If you just want to read about it from Yahoo! Movies, you can do that from here. |
| 12:09am | The day ends with me writing about having told you what I just told you. But the lounge we're running opens at 7am tomorrow, so the alarm is now set for 6am instead of 8am. Bummer, and goodnight. |
| * For Disneyland Annual Passport holders, you can get into the AMC 12 at Downtown Disney for the student ticket price Mondays - Thursdays. I'm thinking of taking in a film there tomorrow, if there's anything out I still haven't seen. | |