For those of you who were a little confused by my Twitter and Facebook status updates this evening, allow me to explain. As I wrote last year, Anna and I are in a murder mystery book clob sponsored by our local library, and our December meetings have been murder mystery parties. Last year, I ended up being the killer, and this year I was the victim. The setting was Prom Night at Fairfield High in 1959, and I was the quarterback of the football team, president of the student body, and about to be crowned Prom King (of course, yes, it is truly believable!), along with Karen, I mean Anna, who was the head cheerleader and Prom Queen. Over the course of the evening, I reveal how much of a scumbag I really am (no comments from the peanut gallery) and end up getting killed by arsenic laced chewing gum before I can even accept the prom king crown. Fortunately, I didn't have to lay on the stage for the later acts, so my lines were few and my effort minimal. But it was fun nonetheless.

So, David, I wasn't dropping acid, and that, Sean, is what I was on about. Can't wait to see what happens next year!

So I finally broke down to go early vote today. Rather than fight the parking at the old courthouse where apparently most everyone else decided to go cast their early ballots, I chose to head over to the fairgrounds instead. While I was a bit surprised by the length of the line when I arrived, I was also surprised by how quickly they were moving people through the fieldhouse.

What really struck me, however, was that they were offering both paper balloting as well as the new electronic system. The last few times I've hit the polls, I've used the electronic machine, and I don't recall that paper ballots were offered. I haven't slept much since the last election/primary/coin toss, so I might just have forgotten that paper ballots were offered there.

The number of people choosing the paper ballot was also interesting, just from an observation perspective. If anything, I would have guessed that those who have participated in a large numeber of elections (trying to find a gentle way of saying "people older than average") would have opted for the paper system. But in my very limited sampling of people going through, it seemed that the folks choosing the paper ballot were my age or younger.

There was one poor fellow who either ignored the signs advising him to turn off his cell phone, or he just didn't know how to turn it off. Sure enough, just as he placed his paper ballot down and started to mark it, the phone went off. As if that wasn't bad enough, he was standing right next to one of the election officials. As soon as it rang, a chorus of election officials all shouted "cell phones off" and the official right next to him chided him rather loudly. About two minutes later, the phone, and the chorus, went off again. The third time it went off, immediately following the chorus of "cell phone off" he could be heard yelling "stop calling me" when he answered, which was immediately followed by someone else yelling "then turn it off" from the other side of the room. Fortunately, that third call came in just as he was leaving the room.

But the thing that tickled me the most about the entire process was when I got close enough to hear the officials asking each pollster "paper or electronic?" so they could prepare the proper resources for each person. The first time I heard that, I immediately thought "paper or plastic" and then realized that the latter phrase would have worked just as well, as the electronic polling machines are cased in plastic. Fortunately, I was able to keep myself from answering "plastic" when it was finally my turn to respond to that all-important question. Those people didn't look like they had much of a sense of humor...

So this post is supposed to be about Marina riding a horse. Really, it is. We took Marina to a friend’s house so she could ride a horse for the first time in her life. And she did. And so did Anna and I. Unfortunately, I’m the one who got thrown from the horse.

Well, technically.

I did fall off the horse, after he decided he wanted me off his back and took steps (backwards) to make it happen. Anna and I hadn’t been gone on the trail very long when the horse I was riding, an Arabian named Remarq (no relation) began to misbehave. I thought I had him under control, so we continued on for a bit, but his antics continued, so I decided we should turn back and head to the house. That’s when Remarq chose to be the lead horse. I tried to keep him back, and he finally just started backing up rather quickly, not responding to my efforts to make him stop. In fact, I tried the trick of turning his head to the side (as instructed by Clint) and that’s when he basically sat down while moving backwards, tossing me out of the saddle. The scary part, though, was when he continued to roll over towards me on his back after I had planted hard on the ground, and rolled over my arm. Fortunately, he really just brushed off me, so nothing broke, but I’m expecting quite a few bruises.

But like I said, this post is supposed to be about Marina, so here is the evidence of her first experience riding a horse.



























And here are the "before" pics of Anna and I astride horses.

Labels: Marina

The last official day of Summit stars over at the Convention Center for breakfast, and no boxed breakfasts this time. Back to the general breakfast buffet, but it was much better than the two previous days. After breakfast, we headed into the keynote room for presentations and Q&A sessions with Ray Ozzie and Steve Ballmer.

I’ll be honest, keynote sessions like this are mostly lost on me. Sure, it was nice to learn Ray’s background and his ideas for future software development at Microsoft, but I likely won’t be interacting with him directly. And while Steve Ballmer is an energetic and engaging speaker, well, I was probably just tired at that point. Drinking from the mental fire hose all week can do that to you. The Q&A session with Steve could have been more interesting, but several questioners were pretty much blatantly trying to get photo ops with Steve by offering clothing and other items, and I just don’t react well to that kind of activity. I’m sure a lot of folks got a lot out of the two sessions, so I’d honestly have to say that they were well received, I just wasn’t the target audience for that.

MS provided one last lunch after the keynote, and I managed to avoid eating more salmon. Honestly, the salmon I had this week was really, really good, I just don’t eat much seafood, and I thought we were in danger of having competition for the Mexican Food inside joke.

I ended up bailing early from the lunch to head back to the hotel and deal with some client issues, so I didn’t sit in on the optional afternoon sessions. I did head over to the Sheraton where the sessions were held and had several hallway sessions with other folks, including Jasminder, Andy, Jason, Jeff, and a couple of MVP Leads, including Brian who had interviewed me for his podcast on Monday. At 6pm, Steve’s SBS User Group meeting kicked off in one of the rooms, and we had an interesting presentation from a vendor who’s putting together a new service offering for assisting partners with streamlining SBS installs. And after that meeting we headed to the Elephant & Castle for food, drinks, and fellowship. I had a long conversation with Ted and Dave, and got the opportunity to interact with several of the user group members.
Again, the steam ran out before 11, so I headed back to the hotel. I knew my roommate, Jim, had a really early flight (left at 6am) and would be getting up really early (3am) to get ready and head to the airport, so I didn’t want to get in too late. And that ended my last official day at Summit.

Labels: Summit2K8

Went down to breakfast again with Amy this morning, and sat with Tom and Debra Shinder. No Dalai Lama today (he and his entourage checked out yesterday) so we were in a different room, but the boxed breakfast returned. I opted out of the “warm” chipotle wrap, so Amy and I ended up making a run through Starbucks on our way to the bus. I grabbed a coffee cake, and she picked up a hot chocolate.

We bussed over to the Redmond campus again, and went through another full day of NDA material, some of it really, really, really NDA, which makes me wonder if I just violated NDA by saying that we heard stuff that was extreme NDA. Maybe not.

At the end of the day, we shuttled back to the hotel, and we got back early enough that Amy and I made a side trip over to a Cold Stone Creamery for ice cream (something I learned about Amy from our Australia trip is that she hardly ever turns down an opportunity for ice cream). We got back to the hotel and eventually took the shuttle over to the Experience Music Project (EMP) near the Space Needle.

Wow. Several of the MVPs mentioned that they had an event at the EMP two Summit’s ago, but I was blown away. First, they had karaoke with a live band (the band was great, the singing varied greatly) going throughout the evening. Second, they had a room dedicated to Rock Band performances (I lasted all of about 30 seconds in that room before I had to leave). Third, there were buffets and bars set up in multiple locations throughout the venue.

Amy and I browsed through the venue together for most of the evening. We started off in the Science Fiction museum, and wow was I impressed. Definitely worth a repeat visit when there are fewer people going through (and fewer people who either didn’t read/understand the “no photography” signs or decided to ignore them, leading to several staff members throughout the night telling people to stop taking pictures), but quite an impressive collection of historical items related to the Science Fiction industry. Brought back a lot of memories of favorite TV shows, movies, books, and magazines from my younger days. Also had me thinking that it’s about time to re-read Frank Herbert’s Dune series once again.

After we finished the Science Fiction Museum, we started through the Music Project proper. As it would take too long to describe all the exhibits we saw, I will point out that I spent most of my time drooling through the guitar history exhibit, longing to reach out and play a number of the guitars that were encased behind the glass. We also headed upstairs to the “studio experience” area (have no idea what it was actually called) where we witnessed (and got video) of Dean playing drums and Stuart either egging him on or trying to play bass along with him.

Dean "playing" drums (105MB, will edit and compress later)
Dean drumming, Stuart on bass (50MB, will edit and compress later)

I still managed to get totally exhausted fairly quickly, so we headed back to the Hyatt a little after ten. Still, an invigorating and exciting day all in all.

Labels: Summit2K8

Tax day, and for once I’m not thinking about taxes. Except that I just mentioned it, so I guess I was. Starting off with a digression, not a good thing.

Headed down to breakfast with Amy a little before 7am. Today was the big event at the hotel with the Dalai Lama, and the meeting room next to where we had breakfast at the hotel was filled with the people for that event, and the line to get in was loooooooong. We were quickly ushered past the crowd and into the room where we picked up our boxed breakfast.

Yes, I said that correctly. Boxed breakfast. I’ve never had a boxed breakfast before. In the box was a muffin, a bottle of OJ, a fruit cup, and plasticware wrapped in a paper napkin. There was a separate bag you could get with a “warm” ham and egg croissant. Fortunately, my egg wasn’t runny. But it wasn’t that warm, either.
After breakfast, we headed over to the Redmond campus for our deep dive meetings. And, of course, I can’t talk about that.

We took a shuttle from the Redmond campus over to a dinner cruise on the lake at the end of the day, and spent a wonderful couple of hours on the lake mingling through discussions with many of the folks from the SBS and WHS crew, along with a number of MS employees. As was the case for the week up until that point, the weather was chilly and raining, and that kept most of the folks inside on the boat, but otherwise it was a delightful evening. I was able to have a number of discussions with several folks that were beneficial to me and my business, but most of all, it was good just to interact with the wide variety of people who were involved.

After the cruise, we took the bus back to the hotel, where I promptly went upstairs and went to sleep. Yeah, not that exciting, sorry. But that’s how it was. I’ve adapted to the time zone, but I’m still needing 6-8 hours of sleep a night, and hopefully I’ll continue to get that.

Labels: Summit2K8