#MSTECHED Day 1- the drive

Well most trips we take end up with me being irritated at Kerry because he’s sitting around on his butt while I am running around like a fool trying to get things ready. We should not assume this time would be any different. I had all my items packed and ready on Saturday leaving me just the cooler and food to pack up on Sunday. Of course he’s discovered a computer issue at home and spends nearly an hour working on it, and it’s still isn’t fixed. (Hopefully I can find someone here to talk about Exchange with.) In that time I got the car completely loaded and ready to go. Departure was 8:22 am a mere 22 minutes later than I had planned on.

First stop, was a mile down the road to get gas and for me to program the address of the hotel into the car’s navigation system. As we were driving south on 65 and got to see all of the hard work TDOT has done. They have been widening 65 S since I moved there, okay not really but you know those big constructions projects make you feel that way.  We commented that since we had moved to TN we’d never been south on 65.

A few random shots from the drive down.

We got to Alabama and there it is the ROCKET! Kerry’s never been so I suggested we stopped for a quick look and a few pictures. Then it was back on the road, I made us lunch around noon and we just kept rolling on.

Rocketcity – Huntsville Alabama

My #sqlfamily Karen and Yanni  were running a marathon the Rock and Roll San Diego. It was Karen’s first full marathon and the girls had asked for people to tweet them during their long journey. So that kept me pretty busy for a bit. Really hard to come up with things to say when they are not talking back. At one point I felt the need to take a little nap, I called it the 26.2 mile nap. HOWEVER I was woken up when someone in the car yelled “OMG THAT IS A C5”. What ever the hell that means, since I can see the runway and a plane I can only assume that plane as a C5 and something worth looking at. Ok back to live tweeting my peeps! At one point I had an idea, I remembered that someone is on ISS and that I was following them on twitter. Do you think that if I tweeted them they would give Karen a shout out? I mean she’s had her picture taken with him and she does go to ever space social she possibly can, but would it work? She did tweet him a few times earlier in the day. So I am quiet pleased that it happened.

Tweets from space.

We did finally have to make a fuel stop, we must have been about 3 hours out. OUCH that was a scary place. Didn’t get out of the car and was even afraid to open the door to get air. Maybe it wasn’t that bad but it sure seemed that way. We rolled into NOLA around 4 pm just like Summer (the name of my car) said we would. Into the hotel to find out they don’t have any rooms ready, WHAT?! OMG!? So off to park the car and check in at TechEd to avoid having to do that in the morning. Call the hotel over an hour later and look there are rooms ready and they didn’t call.

This is the line to purchase a Microsoft Surface, seriously?! My sources tell me that by 5pm 4,000 units were sold and there are only 10,000 registered. AND that there are SKIDS of these devices sitting in the back. I think I can wait a day or so.

Line to purchase a surface.

We met Mark for dinner and had a lovely walk, I think I hit 11k steps.

The conference center is OMG HUGE! There are casinos but they are not “on” the water like they are in Indiana. The booze laws are crazy, open containers NOT GLASS are just about allowed everywhere. There are very few dedicated liquor stores as it can be all sold in any store without restrictions and no dedicated days/hours. I have even heard there were 24 hour bars down here. I might have been disappointed that I thought it was Mardi Gras down here every day but really I just saw beads laying like trash along the ground. Our hotel is 2 blocks from the conference center (EXCELLENT). Over all the drive here was better than the drive to KC. Sorry KC it is just corn all the way there.