After my session for OOW, I had to run to a local clinic to receive my yellow fever vaccinations in preparation for my trip next month to South America for the Oracle OTN LAD conference Tour. It was painful to get these shots and my arm still hurts after it a few days later. I can only imagine how dreadful it would be to catch Yellow Fever and die from it. Anyways I went to some sessions, did work and networked with peers and new friends. On Wednesday night, there was a fantastic concert on Treasure Island with Berlin, Black Eyed Peas (BEP), Don Henley and Dave Miller band. I almost missed it because the queues for the bus were like 6 blocks long at the Hilton where I was staying! So after waiting for half an hour in futile desperation, I took a taxi to the concert on Treasure Island. Here is a good video of the Steve Miller Band:
Now Steve Miller is way beyond my time but he still rocks! I only wish that I had 1/10 of his guitar ability. It was crowded and food was near impossible to get without waiting for hours. So, since I ate already, I decided to grab some drinks and it was ironic how the food lines had thousands of people waiting but the lines for wine and beer were nonexistant! All in all a great time.
I did catch up with old friends like Charles Kim of Oracle MAA fame and Chet Justice.
I spent time camped out in the Zone for OTN lounge which this year was in a tent outside the Hilton. A couple years ago it was inside the Moscone Center. I liked the tent but wish it was inside the Moscone since making the trek from the tent on Mason to the Moscone was quite a walk and hard to make it to every session. Since I was multi-tasking in terms of doing work for a client, working on my presentations, and networking, the Zone Tent for OTN on Mason was my stomping grounds for most of OOW.
On Tuesday night, I went to the OTN night party at Yerba Buena gardens. It was ok but I almost was not able to get into the party as security guards were not educated on who to let in and keep out. Fortunately many of us bloggers had same problem and tweeted en masse and Justin saved the day and we were able to get into the OTN night party. Fortunately I wore a jacket as it was quite chilly that night.
I ran into Tim Hall quite a bit at the conference which was good since we both were not feeling that great and crashed a lot at the Zone OTN tent. Daniel Morgan and Hans Forbrich were around and we had some good chats in preparation for the OTN LAD conference trip. Ran into Richard Foote and Fritz Hoogland many times and these guys are great fun to chat with. Richard has the coolest Aussie accent and I always joke with him to bounce around like a kangaroo since he is from down under. Maybe I can index your foot sometime, Richard?
Of course no discussion would be complete without mentioning our new friend the Java Bean Bunny Guy! This cool dude was walking around the whole place waving and showing us the real power of J2EE.
My old iPhone died the weekend before OOW. So I bought a new iPhone4. Its great and does fantastic HD video and images. I look forward to using the Face time video chat once more folks have it.
