Tag: conference

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They’re Missing the Point

“The whole point of the conference is to get us out of there and get away from the work orders and the teachers.” Quote of the day, and at least one of the themes for the whole day. Jason was clearly only there so he could not be at work. Some may be puzzled by how this might make any difference at all.

Classes started at 8:30 for real this morning, so I grabbed breakfast and headed into my classes. I was really disappointed by two out of three today, with the first being mostly a sales meeting, or at the very least an introduction to what they do sell. The second class was actually pretty good, though not necessarily very useful since we don’t actually have any Extreme equipment. The third was another dud only because it was an hour class on how to perform fewer than six steps. I don’t even know why it was a class. It could have been almost anything else.

The lunch was buffet-style this time, and pretty awesome. Fried pork chops and baked chicken with tons of extras. It was way better than yesterday, and the carrot cake for dessert was awesome. I failed to win any door prizes, so we headed home right after lunch. I dropped Jason off at his house, then merged back onto the interstate right next to Dale and Allen. I think Heather and Gary left quite a bit earlier in the day, but I don’t know when.

When I got back into town, I decided to stop by the shop to talk to Ben and Zach. Zach got his Pixel 3 XL in, and it seemed pretty nice, but he didn’t seem too keen on handling it much. I’ll get some more time with it once it’s in a case. Once he left work, I headed home to unpack before eventually making it to Summer’s. She had me take her to the football game to be honored for quiz bowl during halftime, and then we came right back home where I unpacked my stuffed swag backpack before bed.

The point is to learn something that you can bring back and share with the department.

Work Adventures

What Puts the Cot in ACOT?!

It was a pretty successful conference day. We started with breakfast around 7:30, and the first classes had been rescheduled from 8:30 to 9, so we had a bit more time to visit with the vendors and fill our goody bags before we got down to business.

I made the mistake of following Jason and Allen to a security class that surprisingly ended up being more of a talk about the company that rented the time slot than how to implement or improve access control, but I chickened out of the leadership class when I found out it was a round table discussion. In the future I’ll just jump right in anyway. I paid my dues.

Lunch was on them, and was barely a step above cafeteria food, but I expected as much. When we finished the day of classes, all except Jason went down to the steakhouse for dinner again, and then Jason wanted me to take him back to the liquor store because he accidentally dumped his in a drunken fit of Mortal Kombat. He, Gary, Heather, and I went to the liquor store together, and one of the guys at the store was so excited for me to buy their new mango habanero whiskey that he ran out to his car to get his own bottle to pour us a couple samples.

When we got back to the hotel, Jason went to his room and we traded him for Dale. Finally, after a brief run around the building looking for a corkscrew for Heather, the four of us sat by the fire until everyone but Gary trickled out to bed. He and I chatted for a couple hours longer before calling it a night, and I got to talk to Dad about our new guy a bit. Gary wants to see if we can get him trained by two generations of Zelnick just to see what happens, and I think that is just a capital idea!

-500 Int

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ACOT 2018

Everything was pretty well organized for me to leave this morning, so I headed home to shower and feed the fish, then packed and left for work. I had a bit more testing in the morning, and then I took care of as many work orders as I could at the junior high in the afternoon before we headed out.

I picked Jason up at his house in Atkins and we made our way to the Wyndham Riverfront in Little Rock. He was super anxious to get to a liquor store, so we drove to a pretty big one about half a mile away, then came back to the hotel for dinner. We all agreed to go downstairs to the steakhouse in the lobby, which actually turned out surprisingly nice. They had an “early bird special” for a buy one, get one free entree, and I decided to get two entrees for myself since the district was buying. So it was two 8oz medium rare filets with carrots, a giant baked potato, and a bowl of butter, sour cream, and cheese of equal mass for me. They increased the district reimbursement to $40, so I paid a grand total of $1.57 plus tip for my meal, plus nearly a whole pecan crusted salmon filet between Heather and Jason’s leftovers.

After dinner, we mostly split up, but Gary came back to my room to have a couple drinks with me. We ended up going out into the courtyard and met up with Dale, and the three of us chatted around a propane fire table for a few hours. An older couple came out and sat with us for a while, and ended up talking a lot of history and politics with Dale, which proved to be super entertaining for all. It was a really great night, and the weather was just perfect out there.

We eventually had to part ways so we could get some sleep before the classes in the morning, but I think it’s going to be a really great conference.

Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un would NEVER go for that!

Work Adventures

ACoT 2017: Day 2

That bed was AMAZING! I’ve never had such a comfortable bed in a hotel in my life. The mattress, the sheets, the blankets, the pillows… Everything was just exactly how I like it. I was really blown away.

I was mostly on my own for classes today. I went to a 3D printing session, and then a couple of sessions on phishing and security with a guy from Palo Alto that I had talked to at the bar the night before. The phishing session ran a bit long into the break, so after a while I got up for a few minutes and then returned with Allen for the second session. When we got there, the guy was leaving for lunch. We checked the schedule with him to confirm that he was supposed to be there, and then the three of us sat down for a really loose conversation for a few minutes before breaking for lunch.

After we ate, we started to pack up and headed back home. I ended up hanging out at the shop for a while until Ben let everyone go home. We chatted for a while, and eventually I made my way home to unpack. It was a good couple of days, but I’m exhausted, and now I miss the hotel bed.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. Let’s do something stupid instead.

Adventure Time!, Work Adventures

ACoT 2017: Day 1

After an early start, today was pretty awesome. We’re at the Arkansas Conference of Technology, and so far the classes seemed really great, and the vendors are always a great plus. While I could have learned as much just on my own given a whole day of focused playing around, this really helped to have a guided tour.

After the conference, we went to dinner at a Benihana in the hotel. I totally got the high score. Then we went to a bar on the Riverfront for a vendor’s shindig. It was just Ben, Ryan, and me, and I had a blast. It’s weird to see a bunch of tech people get down to music that always makes me roll my eyes. You really can’t beat 12 drinks for a $5 tip to the shuttle driver.

Today was a great full-day class, but I’m looking forward to normal classes all day tomorrow. I wonder what I’ll learn.

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