Remde TechEd Diaries - Tuesday

Happy TechEd Tuesday!  <yawn>

Man… I’m getting too old to stay up too late and get up too early… but here I am.  I have another 5 hours of Hands-on-Lab proctoring to do today.  (Come see me in the Server Infrastructure area and say ‘hi’!)  Maybe this afternoon I’ll be able to squeeze in a nap before the evening activities.

Yesterday started early.  At 6:45 I was cursing my decision for an 6:45 wake-up call… but I spent a little too much time configuring my new and now fully charged watch.  (Geeks and their toys, y’know.)  I got down to get in line for the shuttle at 7:40am, and the folks standing there have been in line for 30 minutes already.  We wait another 15 when a shuttle finally arrives.  I’m not going to make that mistake again. I must get down there early if you want to make it to the convention center by 8:00am.

Hands-on-Labs weren’t too busy yet.  I LOVE the setup this year.  For one thing, it’s nice to be able to see how many there are in one room, compared to the multi-room setup of last year.  Also, the circular ‘all PCs face the center’ arrangement of each area is very efficient for people requiring assistance.  Soon, however, Chris Henley and I decided to volunteer to help fix one of the labs.  HOL163 was having problems, so we decided to see if we could fix it. 

…several hours later  we were closer, at least.  Much of our time was spent documenting the things that needed to be changed right up front so that the virtual machines would come up with the right pre-lesson configuration.  Eventually Chris had to leave to go prepare for a webcast, and I was told that they needed any new images up soon for the evening’s upload.  So I proceeded to build and save the new pre-lesson configuration… and we’ll just have to try out the lab again tomorrow.  The network there was too slow to copy the files from one machine to another.. so eventually I had to just carry a workstation into another room so they could copy the files down. 

Following that, I took a brief tour of the Exhibit Hall, and then went to work my 1.5 hour shift on the Microsoft Across America “Mobile Experience” truck. 

Then it was back to my hotel for a quick shower (“The Blog!” shirt under my blue Microsoft shirt was a bad idea) and quickly back to the Exhibit Hall for the hall reception.  There I was drafted to help out for awhile at the TechNet booth, asking questions and handing out prizes at our “Wheel of TechNet” game.

Following the reception, I met up with Chris Haaker and several other bloggers and blog-readers for our Geek Dinner at Bahama Breeze.  Good food and conversation, and very nice to meet people you’ve only previously corresponded with via e-mail or blog comments.

Then it was off to the TechEd Jam Session! 

Entertaining as usual!  (which means, sometimes long pauses between songs, and “Hmm… I think maybe the drummer really can’t hear the tempo that that guitar player is laying down”…) A lot of fun!

So now this morning again at 6:00am I was again cursing myself for thinking I would prefer a 6:00am wake-up call… <yawn>  My editing of the video shot yesterday will have to wait a bit.  I probably won’t have time to post one today.   (Well.. okay… maybe later, a short one.)  See you at the labs!