Well I am terribly behind and I blame my job. They are just wearing me out. So try to bear with me as I play catch up over the next several days.
So I know many of my friends know that I have provided training across my company to many levels of technical skills for our rollout of SSRS. Most of the people didn’t know SQL Server Reporting Services was so cool or that there was a great thing called PASS. I helped shed the light and trained over 200 people including a few online sessions with our teams in Japan. I am telling you this because it took me a year to finally submit to present at a SQL Saturday. There were a few mishaps where submission dates had changed from what I had added to the calendar and a few times were we just couldn’t commit to being gone.
So I finally made it! Not only was this my first time to present, my first time in Kansas City it was our first time to travel so far for a SQL SAT. All of this was just icing on my cake, of course because I am working on #gethawt I can’t actually eat the cake. 🙂 It was just a week or two before the trip and we just decided to leave on Thursday so we could rest on Friday and I could be ready for my big debut.
It was so gracious of Bill Graziano [blog | twitter] to have all of us who arrived Thursday over to his place for dinner and hanging out. For a guy who doesn’t cook that is one nice kitchen. The wine fridge really caught my eye. It was a nice way to relax after spending 8 hours in the car. It’s funny that we are both from Indiana and have really forgotten what it was like to drive through such a flat area. We both chuckled when we saw a grain elevator as we passed through Illinois, apparently we’d not seen one of those in a while either. Oh right Kraken rum, I almost forgot. Since we were going to be there a few days we opted for a room at the Candlewood Suites and we packed snacks, beverages and breakfast. I wanted to pick up a fifth of rum to take and thought why not pick out something new or different from my normal Sailor Jerry. The guy at the liquor store talked me out of the Kraken and into Captain Morgan Black. Kraken had been purchased for the arrival of Tom and Bill offered to make me a beverage. WOZA! That was some good stuff!! There was nothing wrong with the Black but the Kraken is a new favorite! Hope I can find it in handle.
Friday Bill chaperoned a group of us to 3 KC BBQ Joints. Now I am not here to argue about BBQ, I honestly don’t like BBQ sauce and was worried about how this would end up a saucy mess. It is quite impressive to see the number of BBQ joints in KC. We started out at Danny Edwards BBQ, then hit Rosedale BBQ , and finally Woodyard BBQ. At each place we just ordered poundages of meat and some sides, then passed them around or put them out on a table for everyone to walk past and pick up goodies. We had burnt ends, brisket, fried balls of corn, chili and so much more. Funny enough we picked up a bag of Pecan from the Woodyard (DUH!) to use in our smoker. After I returned to work my cube mate said he’d wished he knew we were going there that is where he gets his rub.
Friday night led us downtown to a small venue called Screenland for the speakers dinner. The first thing Kerry and I noticed was the odd, large metal doors. We were very curious as to what the building was prior to being a movie theatre. Come to find out it was some sort of meat processing/packaging place and all those doors were fridge doors. It was a small crowd and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. I think that Karen and I were most excited about the free pop corn. The box of fancy chocolates were really tasty, I really could have eaten far more than just one.
Saturday the main event. What a great venue and the perks of that venue were amazing! I heard a few folks that were really excited about the open soda fountains. The internet connection was awesome, easy to connect, managed to allow all of us to use it and it was PDQ (that is Pretty Darn Quick). Come to find out that building was a casino that Cerner bought and turned into their training center. One of the event organizers actually works there and told us that Cerner actually uses the building heavily and even started hosting client events there. They were well organized and I didn’t see or hear of any issues. What a great day. My presentation went really well, considering I was buried at work and had created the slide deck Wednesday, tested Friday morning and just installed a new SSD with the added bonus of upgrading to Windows 8. I think I will reformat the handout I provided in my training classes so I can supply it as a quick “cheat sheet”. I wasn’t nervous at all but there was the odd “Kerry is watching” me feeling that makes my ability to mouse with precision somewhat nonexistent. I think I am over it so, bring it NEXT TIME! I was very happy with Bea, she didn’t do any of her cute tricks the entire time I was up there.
Saturday night was downtown for a little Irish fare at the Dubliner [Facebook]. By this time I was ready to sit down and eat a meal, on a real plate with silverware. It was lovely! I had a crab cake sandwich (no bun) and fries. It was really a fun place. That whole area was like a giant block of attached bars. This causes them to have rules that don’t allow customers to have glass on the streets, so no purchase of shot or pint glasses. Prolly the one thing we usually do on a trip but failed on this time.
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