joshkelahan.com

I woke up this morning, and just inside the door to my room was a piece of paper. I went and picked it up, and it was your standard hotel check out paper.  I started freaking out.  My reservation is supposed to be for one more day! What the hell! Where am I going to stay!? OMG will I have to be in the airport until tomorrow!?!?

So I ignored it for a minute and used the restroom, when I was done with my business, I pulled up my hotel reservation online, and sure enough I am booked through tomorrow.  So I started looking harder at the paper, and as it turns out, they just put it under the wrong door.  Don’t these people know I have to present a paper to a room full of geeks two hours? I don’t have time to be stressing over someone else’s stupidity.

But first things first, off to breakfast.  Mmmmm melon, again….  It’s kind of disappointing that in a few short days it will be back to pop-tarts & crappy cereal.  Oh well.

Our presentation went well I think, though we did the whole thing in 15 minutes, so we were a little short. I am not sure however, if we had had a longer presentation if we would have been able to do it without going really far in depth.  There were several questions from people that seemed to want us to go more in depth, but we tried as much as possible to skirt around that. The biggest problem with our design, is that it currently requires Novell Zenworks’ Imaging Engine to put the files down on the computer.  I am sure there are other open source equivalents that do the same thing, but I don’t know what they are.  I guessed I was most surprised by the number of people in the room, we probably had at least 50 people I would say.  It was really weird standing up there in front of so many strangers talking, something I am not really used to.  I could feel the blood rushing up into my head as we switched back and forth throughout our presentation.

The closing plenary was very interesting, a discussion about “emerging social media technologies and ubiquitous computing for teaching and learning.”  There were some interesting bits about web 1.0 -3.0.  Where web 3.0 builds off of 2.0 adding semantec designs like the mashups between different technolgies like blackboard and facebook for example.  I wish that our full staff meetings were more like this at work.  It would be nice to hear about non-slu things, things that aren’t melt your face off boring.

After the plenary, I was cornered by someone who had seen our presentation this morning, and he was completly blown away.  He said that right now, our limiting bit is Novell, because no one really wants to have to buy zenworks (I can’t blame him). But if we could move to a completly open sorce alternative we could literally blow everyone else out of the water.  That really surprised me.  After the presentation this morning, I was concerned by the questions I mentioned earlier, and I wasn’t sure if anyone really understood what we were talking about.  But now I know that at least one person did, and he said he would be in contact.  Thats pretty cool I think.

I headed off to lunch, and went to a place called Pastini Pastaria.  It was kind of a swanky place, but the pasta ended up being really inexpensive. All fresh of course. :)  After lunch I walked a block down to Finnegan’s Toys, which is supposed to be the end all beat all of toy stores in Portland.  It was kind of a neat store, it had all the toys from back in the day: lincoln logs, kinder blocks, red wagons, chutes and ladders, Hi-Ho Cherrio, etc.  It was kind of neat, but it was a really small store, and so kind of disappointing.  I guess its one of those things that just seems to lose its magic as you grow older.

Next I headed over to the Portland public library.  Someone had told me that it was really nice.  The picture above is from the second floor.  There are more pictures here.  On the way back to the hotel I picked up some souviners for everyone (yay…hold your applause).

Tomorrow, I head back to the ‘ol STL.  In fact, by this time tomorrow, I should be back already.  My plane leaves early tomorrow morning, with a oh so lovely two and a half hour layover in chi-town. Woo?  I should be in STL around 5pm, which should put me at home around 6-6:30. I am not as nervous this time around as I was coming. Maybe its just cause last time it was the first time I had flown in years. Don’t get me wrong, there is still a little bit of apprension there, but nothing like before I flew out here. Hopefully, my nerves will stay calm(ish).

I woke up early again today for that free breakfast. It was the same as the last 2 days.  I think I have probably eaten at least a pound of melon this past week.  Don’t get me wrong, its very good; I wonder where they get such fresh tasting fruit.  After breakfast, Chris and I worked on our presentation a little bit.  We present tomorrow morning. Everytime I talk to someone here at the conference, they express intrest in our paper.  I wonder if they are really interested, or if they are just being nice.  I guess I will find out tomorrow at 8:30am.

For lunch Chris and I headed over to Red Star Tavern.  It was an upscale place, known for burgers around the Portland area.  The burger was actually very good, though I think it was an entire half a cow….I couldn’t even finish.

This evening was the Gala event at the Portland Art Museum. I looked around at some of the art for a while before eating dinner.  For the most part, I really don’t “get” most art.  There are some pieces that I liked, but the majority just fell into the WTF category.  The dinner was less than appetizing. Afterwords, it was back to the hotel, where I sit now writing this up.

I woke up early today for the free breakfast (the conference is paying, woo!). They had exactly the buffet that I had yesterday…only $17 cheaper!  The watermelon and muskmelon (cantaloupe) were really good.  Afterwords I talked with some of my peoples for a while, and then went out in search of a camera.  At first I was thinking I might just get an el cheapo disposable one, but its so hard to do anything with that, so I started thinking about just buying an inexpensive digital one.

I walked the 3 blocked over to a nearby Ritz Camera, and after the salesman showed me several cameras, I decided on the Nikon L18.  I went with the blue one.  The camera can take AA batteries or a rechargeable, which was very important since I didn’t want to have to wait for it to charge up.  The camera was on sale, and also, since there is no sales tax here I was like, well…why the fuck not buy this? And it came with an accessory package: some fuji photo paper, a coupon for free cleanings (which I will probably give away), a coupon for free classes (which I will also give away), some rechargeable batteries (precharged), and a 1gb memory card (which isn’t a lot, but it was free).  So I got a pretty good deal I think.

After my purchase I hopped on the yellow line and took that up to Old Town (6 blocks).  There is a haunted pizzeria up there that sounded interesting, and it was.  I managed to get out of there for pretty cheap even though I had a small pizza and a soda (their small is very small). My own pictures here.

Next I went to the Portland Classical Chinese Garden.  The garden was amazing, but what really surprised me were the smells.  As you walked through the garden there were these light fruity smells that varied from location to location.  I took some pictures of this as well.

Afterwords, I caught the blue line back down to the hotel where I promptly fell asleep for about 3 hours.  When I woke up I was pretty much starving, so I went down to the hotel restaurant for dinner.  I am not going to say it was the best steak I have ever had, but it was good (and for $28) it should be.

After dinner I watched Heroes and My Own Worst Enemy in my room (yeah I know I know) before falling asleep.

It was a pretty good day.

I got up today at 8:30, chilled in the room till about 10, and then met Chris for breakfast at the hotel resturaunt.  I got the buffet, which is everything, but it was really expensive.  Glad the university is picking up the tab on this one!  After breakfast, we headed over to the oregon museum of science and industry.  It was a really long walk, or at least is sure seemed that way.

The museum is geared a more to kids, but that didn’t stop us from playing with all the exhibits anyway.  They have the submarine there that was in the movie, Hunt for Red October.  I didn’t get a chance to go in, but I looked at the sub from outside, it looked pretty cool just sitting there in the water.

After the museum, we started walking back to the hotel, and decided to stop and eat at a restaurant called “Rock Bottom Restaurant & Brewery.”  The food was pretty good, and they had good root beer as well (what? you know I don’t drink.)

In 6 minutes we have the noob orientation, followed by the opening banquet…

I woke up this morning around 4:20am.  I didn’t sleep well last night.  I am always like this before I fly, I just get nervous or something.  So I got up, turned off my alarm, got my things together and headed out.  I caught the Metro-Link in Fairview at 5:48am.  It took a whole hour to get to the airport.  That really surprises me, but oh well.  I met up with Chris at the gate and after a little while, we were under way.

The flight to Chicago was the worst, not because anything happened, but because I had been so nervous.  When we got to O’hare, we walked around a bit, and then decided to grab some breakfast at Macaroni Grill.  I ordered the French Toast, but my nerves weren’t helping me get it down any.  After breakfast, we started walking back to our gate.  We got there, and I was about to go use the restroom, and Chris wanted to look out the window, when I heard, “Last boarding call for Portland.”  The last boarding ended up being about 20 minutes early.  I didn’t know that could happen.  The flight from Chicago to Portland was a lot easier, my nerves were settling down.  Around 4 hrs later we arrived in Portland.

The airport in Portland is a lot nicer than the STL airport; its also a lot bigger.  We probably walked a mile just to get our bags.  Then Chris needed to go check on a rental care he wants for later in the week.  After that, we hopped the Red Line from the airport to the center of Portland where are hotel is at.

When I first found out that this thing was going to be at the Hilton, I was all gung-ho about it….but as with all other “luxuary” hotels I’ve stayed at, I am kind of dissappointed.  I guess when you hear a name like Hilton, you expect your room to be above and beyond that of a normal hotel room, but this is probably the most basic room I have ever been in.  2 beds, a tv, a tiny bathroom, and a closet.  Hell, every Drury Inn room has a fridge, why doesn’t Hilton?

After checking into the oh so not very swanky hotel, we wandered aimlessly around downtown for a minute before finding a hole in the wall pizza place to eat at.  It was pretty good pizza.  Chris wanted to go check out a toy store, but they were about to close, so I guess we’ll check it out tomorrow.