travels

October 17, 2004 &bull travel

I was in San Francisco at the end of September for some Windows internals training. That probably doesn’t sound very interesting, but it was actually pretty cool. The guy who founded Sysinternals (and who consequently writes all of the tools) was one of the instructors. A lot of it was over my head, but a lot of it was also very interesting and very helpful. If you are running Windows and have never checked out Sysinternals, be sure to take a look around. Filemon, Regmon, and Process Explorer are must-haves.

Enough about the training — let’s talk about the rest of the trip.

I flew into Minneapolis on the previous Friday night and stayed in what I swear is the crappiest Holiday Inn Express in the upper midwest. It was free, thanks to Heidi’s points, but man, did it suck. I was dying to find something to eat after I checked in (a little after midnight). “Luckily” there was a 24-hour Denny’s right in the hotel parking lot. :\ A vegetarian in Denny’s is like an oil tycoon at the Democratic National Convention. You’re welcome because they are expecting you to pay, but overall you feel a bit out of place. I managed to find something on the menu that wasn’t murdered and happily went on my way.

The next morning I made my way up to Hibbing for my friend Mark’s wedding, which was very cool. The reception was at a bar called “Bimbos.” Take that, mix in the fact that no one was driving (everyone was bussed from the hotel), add an all-night open bar, and then sprinkle on a bunch of thirsty Minnesotans and you have the recipe for an entertaining wedding dance. Seriously, though, it was fun to catch up with Mark and a couple other good friends from Minneapolis. It was well worth the trip.

I was up at the crack of dawn the next morning, drove down to the cities and flew to San Francisco for my training.

On Tuesday night the guys holding the training organized a “dinner cruise” around San Francisco bay. As an added bonus Mark Minasi, the closest thing to an IT celebrity, I guess, was going to be on the cruise and would be giving a short keynote on Windows futures. I’ve been reading Minasi’s Windows .NET magazine column for years and have also read some of his books and occasionally his newletters. I saw him speak once in San Diego and was impressed and entertained. Well, I’m not sure how impressed I was with the speech on the boat, but I was highly entertained. You see, Mr Minasi was completely pissed up by the time his keynote came around. Unfortunately (or fortunately — depending on how you look at it) he decided to proceed with the talk and make a complete ass of himself. I don’t have a transcript of the talk, but when “fuck” and “herpies” are used in a keynote address do you really need a transcript? There’s some evidence of the “master’s” condition in the gallery….

The last highlight of the trip was something I was looking forward to weeks before I left home. Neal Stephenson, undoubtedly my favorite author, was scheduled to do a book signing at a library in San Francisco the week I was there. What luck! I’ve been reading Stephenson books for about five years and have been wanting to go to a book signing for quite some time, but never had the chance. Well, now I did. So, my friend Jonathan, who’s also a pretty big fan and who works in San Francisco during the week, and I decided to make our way to Haight-Ashbury and get our books signed. Two other guys from Qualcomm, who were also at the training, came with us, too. Stephenson read for about 30 minutes and then held a Q&A. It was pretty cool to finally get the chance to see him in person and hear what he had to say about the writing process, etc. There are a couple pics from the evening in the gallery.

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