In order to further my goal of self-control, I skipped breakfast at Jasmine’s this morning. I had such a great (and late, we finished after 9 pm) dinner last night, that I was not hungry at breakfast time. So why eat when I wasn’t hungry. Self control. My plan was that I would have something to eat at the conference. In the past, they have provided munchies at each break. I expected some sort of breakfast foods during the first break. Also, Salem generously signed me up with the ‘Gold Passport’ at the conference which, among other benefits, provides access to a restricted lounge area that genereally has food stuffs available. Yesterday they had bagels in the morning in the Gold Passport lounge. So I thought I was set if I got hungry before lunch.

Slightly before the first break I went to the Gold Passport lounge to get a bagel. No bagels!!! What’s the deal? Not to fear, I’ll just get some breakfast food at the regular break time.

This year is Fawcette
Technical Publication’s (the host of VSLive!) 15th Anniversary. So to celebrate, they provided cake (complete with butter frosting) for snack during the first break. I don’t want cake at 10 am. Too early.

Bottom line. I’m hungry.

Cheesecake Factory is soooooooooooooo good. I had the Orange Chicken. But we were sitting on the patio and it was very cold.

Then it started to rain. But it was just sprinkles while we were walking back.

This week’s theme might just be all about the food. 🙂

I thought I was going crazy, I couldn’t find out when the conference started today. I knew from an email that the registration desk opened at 7:30a, but not when the workshops actually began. It turns out I wasn’t alone in my ignorance, 2 other people I talked to had the same problem. I went to register at about 8:15a and found out the content started at 9a. Not bad.

I attended the workshop on Introduction
to ASP.Net 2.0. This was good for me, because 90% of my projects for Salem are
Web applications. The content was better than good, and I was introduced to a new
(to me) speaker named Fritz
Onion. I will probably subscribe to his
blog in the near future. The very first sentence out of his mouth this morning
was “When I agreed to do this seminar, I didn’t realize it was on Super Bowl Sunday.”
He is originally from near Boston and is a strong Patriots fan. Needless to say, he
didn’t run overtime, and in fact, let us out about an hour early. There were more
people than I expected who showed up for the pre-conference workshops. It seems like
they are expecting more people this year than last. They have reserved all 3 floors
of the Moscone West conference center, while last year was only 2 floors.

The hotel’s
restaurant is only open for breakfast, and has an incredible buffet. Last year, I was unable to control myself and stuffed myself to the gills every morning before the conference, with the expected results.
This morning, I got the buffet, but only had eggs and biscuits and gravy, and a large bowl of fruit. I wasn’t perfect though: I attempted to drown myself on the incredible orange juice that they serve (3 full glasses). I don’t know how many days I will be able to resist the siren call of bacon cheese omlets, double sides of extremely well done bacon, a bowl of oatmeal, fruit, a sweet roll, some more bacon, and at least 3 glasses of orange juice. Yum, yum.

I love the Santa Barbara Airport.

Toby dropped me off at about 6:35p for my 7:45p flight. I walked right up to the check in counter and had my boarding pass in under 3 minutes. I was told that the plane boarded at 7:20p and that security would open at 7:00p. Huh? I guess they have so few flights (at least on the weekend) that the TSA crew moves from one terminal to another. It was so laid back. I was the only one who went through, no one behind me.

There was only one slight hiccup and it was not a big deal at all. I didn’t check my bag because it was not that big. I had taken it as a carry on on many other flights (to Portland, from Burbank). But this was a much smaller plane, an EMB-120,
and the bag was just too big. So I had to gate check it. Not a big deal. The plane
has 3 seats across, 1 seat, an aisle and then 2 seats. I got to sit in the single
seat! The plane touched down at San
Francisco Int’l at 8:45p, 15 minutes ahead of schedule. I hopped onto the BART train
at 9:15p. At Montgomery
St. station, I debarked BART and hoofed the 5 blocks to my hotel, Courtyard
By Mariott, Downtown San Francisco. I was in my room on the 15th floor by 10:15p.