Returned to Boston yesterday afternoon after a week in NY for some home time and the SIA trade show.
Had a nice relaxing weekend on Long Island last weekend. Saw Dad for Father's Day. Had a good dinner and hung out. Good to see my dad. We don't really talk all that much these days, so the chances I do get to see him are nice. The two of us are both very bad at making phone calls, keeping in touch, etc, so it just leads to the two of us not talking all that much.
Headed in to NYC at an un-skadzly hour on Monday morning. Headed straight to the Hilton New York to set up for the show. We were in the Intel booth for this show. Set up went rather smoothly considering it was just me from Egenera. The Intel folks were rather helpful. I was pretty much up and running in about 4 hours, which I think is a record. Sadly, we had a partner doing some exhibiting on our machine and they had issues, so I ended up hanging out until about 5 or so before I gave up and headed to my hotel.
The show itself was pretty good. Talked to some good people. The scanner for the badges was rather inconsistent, so we didn't get as much scanning in as we had hoped for. Hopefully some people we talked to will contact us if we didn't get their information. A lot of people seemed very interested in our technology and saw the power of what it could do in the datacenter. I also see that we are slowly but steadily getting more and more brand recognition, which is a very nice thing. Hopefully this trend will continue.
This show was an interesting one because my trade show manager had some family stuff to deal with, so I played not only technical guy and booth staff, but also trade show manager for this show. Luckily, there were no major issues, so it was an easy job for me.
As for NY, I didn't get out much. Having no trade show manager meant I was pretty much in NYC by myself. I pretty much stuck to the show floor and my hotel for most of the week. These shows do a very good job of wiping me out. Almost every night, I returned to my room and took a nap due to being so tired.
I did get out to Virgil's one night with a number of friends I have known for longer than I care to think about since I know most of them from online :) Food was awesome as usual, though it was a rather quick get together because some people had to catch a train back to Philly.
Show break down was the only bad thing the whole week. Show ended at 12noon on Thursday. Our boxes to pack everything up showed up at 6:30PM. Argh! Sitting around waiting is no fun. Did get packed up in about 30 mins though :)
While I was in NY, Mom took my car in to get tuned-up. Found out that there is an issue with my rotors. The mechanic said they should still be under warranty, so I should go to GM to get them fixed. Oh goody, something else that I will have no time to do.
Took a later ferry than I had hoped to on Friday due to the cat deciding hiding was much more fun than going home. Argh. Of course, she is now the happiest cat alive that she is back in her house. Dumb cat.
My biggest worry about coming home as late as I did was rush hour traffic. Not traffic itself, but the exit I needed to get off to stop by UPS. Luckily, for once, the exit was empty. I got lost about 4 times trying to find the UPS location, but once I did, I picked up my box of goodies from Amazon that I had ordered with my gift certificate that I won from Ximian. I now have 6 new books, 2 new CDs and a new DVD. Yay!
Mom, as always bought me stuff for my apt. I now have a toaster and a kettle. Will be nice to reclaim my pot that I use as a kettle right now. The toaster will make morning bagel much more of a possibility too. Yay! Thanks Mom!
Should be a rather slow weekend, as I really have to wait for my expense check from this past week until I really have any money. Tuesday, Guster is doing a free show in Boston, so I will probably go to see that and then probably stop by for a bit and see Stu.
Now Playing: Ra - From One (Thumbs up on this one!)
On Deck: Audioslave - Audioslave
