On Sunday Chicago seemed to forget where it was in the relation to the rest of the country and the time of year, it was well into the 50’s… Then on Monday morning it did the same… By Monday afternoon though it seemed to look around a bit and recalled where it was and said, “oh right then, let me correct that” and the temperature quickly nose dived into the 20’s. So the surprise of 50+ degrees in the beginning of March in Chicago was quickly trampled upon.
This temp change does a very special thing for me… It makes my head hurt incredibly because a temperature differential of more than say 20 degrees (especially in a few hours) is usually due to a pressure change and yes there very much was one. I appear to be broken because that causes my head to want to explode. Yes… riding on planes is usually a fun experience as well, which is why if you see me on a plane or within hours of getting off of a plane and I just nod to you and can’t have a conversation please don’t be mad at me, I probably can’t hear you or possibly I can’t even see straight. Even now as I sit on the 24th floor of the Hilton my head still hurts and my ears are still popping. This all started around 4AM Central Time for me (5AM Eastern and 10AM London time for my friends in those locations) when I bolted upright with a massive headache. I took copious amounts of pain killers which was enough to dull the roar so Dean and I were able to present on Monday afternoon.
The presentation went well, everyone seems to quite enjoy our friendly ribbing on the chosen forum this year, including Gil himself. It is all in good fun but seriously… Chicago in March, not a good place for a conference that was previously in places like Vegas and Vancouver. Chicago in say May/June, that could be pretty darn fun. It is a very pretty city.
Dean of course did smashing, his sense of humour, quick wit, and energetic presentations style just ‘knocked em dead’. The English accent[1] was quite popular as that always lends some form of authority to whatever he seems to want to say. For those of you who attended the session and weren’t aware that Dean and his company have training classes, I do highly recommend bringing them in to train you. You will not be disappointed, don’t just take my word for it, Brian Puhl (from Microsoft) said the same thing in his blog. Anyway if you want training from Dean and his crew, ping him over at MSETechnology. I have never heard from anyone who has been in one of their classes that did not rave about it. Having been in many MSFT type classes before I can assure you that isn’t the normal case for most people. Most of the classes I have ever attended I spend the time training the teacher and wondering if they had simply thought just a little bit longer about their career choice if maybe we all would have been better off. You could be the most technical person in the world or so so technical and you will walk out of the class WOWed. Dean constantly surprises me with little pieces of info that I had no idea about. Luckily I think I do the same for him and so we both keep each other quite entertained.
Dean and I both were a little disappointed in the layout of the room we were in… To start, it was just too large. We both tend to prefer an environment which can lend itself to a more casual chat feeling. Also instead of being down at the level with the audience we were up on a stage being blinded and simultaneously cooked by staged lights so all we could see very easily were the first couple of rows which contained some very scary subjects (Hi to Ulf, Laura, Mr and Mrs. Princess Jorge, Darren, the Brian’s (Puhl and Desmond), and some of our other favorite characters). Finally there was no way we could have spoken without microphones which is also an uncomfortable feeling for myself though Dean being the seriously great speaker that he is did fine. All and all though, people seemed to enjoy themselves and I have no doubt we pulled in the most laughing any session will likely have. Hopefully people found the technical information useful as well though admittedly the time spent on the humour slides may have outweighed the time put into the technical slides. The technical stuff was easy, we just know that stuff… the humour, that is tough, you have to make sure you don’t offend anyone toooooo much but you also have to try and gauge what the audience will even find funny. For example one slide that had our friend Katherine on it seemed to fall a bit flat though Dean and I thought it was a riot.
Dean’s laptop decided to overheat at the very end of the presentation. I am both disappointed and quite happy about that. Disappointed that it happened at all but happy it waited until the end. Dean could have easily have just cruised along chatting about whatever making up subjects on the fly, he has that comfort level in a room with 50 or 1000 or 5000 people. That comfort level stops for me when you hit about 20 or so people… As I put in the slide deck, I am not a presenter, I do not deign to be a presenter. I am more of a stand around and chat kind of guy. I mean come on, I live on a ranch (some call it compound) in Michigan… Its a wonder I can even speak to other people properly at all. 🙂
As always, easily the best part of DEC again, at least for me and I think Dean as well, is the people I am meeting and speaking with and seeing the old friends from previous DEC adventures. I am happy to see how many people are using and usually loving AdFind and AdMod and the other utilities. I heard several stories that went something like “joe… we had to modify some 15,000 or 30,000 or 80,000 objects and we quickly put together a command line that included AdFind and AdMod and voila everything got changed to what we wanted…”. That really makes me smile because I was able to help out admins that are otherwise way too busy trying to keep their companies running… Unfortunately though, it also makes me feel bad for being so busy for the last 6 months that I haven’t been able to properly engage on those tools enhancing them even more.
Well anyway, time to start the day… More people to meet, more friends to harass. Luckily I was actually in my bed and got to sleep around 11PM local time (that would be 12 midnight for my friends back home). Yes that is kind of weak for a conference but I really was quite knocked out from the weather changes and from popping pain pills most of the day as well as just being relieved from the presentation going well after being a little stressed about it for the last couple of weeks. The first presentation there was no real level of expectation (at least I don’t think so), this time we were billed as “joe and Dean… truly the next best thing since sliced bread” and that can be a stressful position when you actually care to do well and we both care very much.
joe
[1] Which he is faking now a days btw, he sounds like a Bronx Taxi Driver from Miami in private now because he has been corrupted by living in the States too long… 😉
