55 degrees this morning. No formal walk. Didn’t walk near as much yesterday, about 6,500 steps.
Talk about a sudden drop in temperature! 55 degrees will be akin to freezing out there! Of course, it is supposed to get to 71 degrees, but it really won’t seem warm. I will need to bring along a light coat today, which will be a hassle later when it warms up. On the other hand, maybe not, with the wind, 71 degrees can still be cool.
First day of conference went well yesterday, had several sessions that were different and I actually learned a lot. Keynote speech was a disappointment, basically the wrong speech and person for a Keynote, but that happens.
Learning about the Uber “surge pricing” (especially when no competition like “Lyft” is around). Basically surge pricing is their normal fare. Fortunately it still isn’t that much in absolute terms and I have found that “surge pricing” can be waited out in just a few minutes. The most we had was 1.2 times “normal” fare (which really isn’t their normal fare!) and there was a lot of wild 2.3 times etc that we just waited out for about 5 minutes. Still very convenient.
Rain yesterday, which cast kind of a damper, so to speak, on the conference. Didn’t bother us since we didn’t have any outside activities planned (I don’t go to a conference to play golf!), except for travel back and forth and, with Urber, it is door to door anyway. .
A variety of seasons today, as always, there are so many things planned you just make a selection and hope you picked right, and if you really made a mistake, you get out and go to another session while you still have time.
Actually, most of the sessions are relatively good and you rarely get one that is really worthless, it is more a matter of which one is more valuable to you.
I run into people I have known, in several cases, for over 40 years. It is amazing, I see them once a year for that long. Of course,, they have changed a bit, just like me! Oddly enough, some of them really don’t change much, others I would recognize at all.
I have some high hopes for some of the sessions today, we’ll see what happens. Basically every day (except for Sunday) starts with a Keynote of some sort, and then goes to breakout sessions.
Since I am paying for the conference myself, I feel free to attend any session. Normally, I tried to take the sessions I thought would benefit my job the most when it was paid for by my employer, which is only fair, but now I am the one paying, so I select what I think will be best for me!
What I really enjoy about the conference is the variety of people I meet and interact with. For example at the first session, my “team” was people from Florida, Illinois, Kansas, California and New Mexico.
The second one included Tennessee, California (always!), Massachusetts, Arizona etc.
One year for some reason I keep meeting people from Denmark and I develop a lot of respect for Denmark as a result. That was the memorable year that I rode a $7,000 bike.
I am trying to keep my “conference notes” on the iPhone, rather than writing them down and transposing them later (or not getting around to it!). I am a little disappointed at how fast the battery went down on my iPhone yesterday. While it is almost 2 years old, the battery (based on my experience) should be good for long time yet.
Conferences are always a little bid of unreality because of the suspension of normal activities. I was thinking yesterday was Monday all day.
It will be interesting to see what happens tonight at the debate. Fortunately (or notI) the conference activities will be over in time for us to watch it, plus we are taping it in case we miss anything.
That’s it for now, Monday, September 26, 2016.
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