Day 1 of TechEd over - Highs and Lows

The User Group Leader Summit was awesome! We had a fantastic time, and I was able to meet many fellow INETA volunteers that I hadn't met before. Our partners at Microsoft have some wonderful things planned for our User Groups in the next year. Dave Noderer was bestowed the “Volunteer of the Year” award for INETA. The Summit was a great success. Here is a group picture taken just after the fantastic lunch we were served.

  |  MEDIUM PIC |  X-LARGE PIC |

The day moved downhill from there. I went back to the hotel to discover that my MVP backpack that I received from Microsoft had been stolen from my room. They took my backpack, PDA, and my travel bag that carried my toothbrush, electric razor, etc. etc. I was not a happy camper at that point. I spent the next hour and half off and on dealing with Hotel security while they tried to see what happened. But in the end, my stuff is gone. After dealing with that situation, I had to rush to the Convention Center for a Birds of a Feather Session that I was leading. When I finally found the room, I discovered that someone had screwed up the numbering assignments, and my room was filled with a lab of computers for people who want to take MS Cert tests. CONFUSION!! So I hung around outside the room until about 15 minutes past the scheduled start time. No one showed up. Either that or they were confused when they peeked in the room only to find a lab and not a meeting room. Regardless, I decided to walk back to the hotel.

I caught up to everyone else and we all walked to another hotel for a party up in the Senators Suite. NIIIIIIICE!! A couple of hours later, I was all chilled out and having a good time. And that's as much as I'm going to say about that. :)

All in all, I miss my wife and daughter. Too bad they couldn't be here with me. There was a little girl that sat behind me on the flight out. She kept reminding me of my own “rotten baby girl”. I miss her, and I'm sure she misses her “Dada”.