Went walking to Chinatown for dinner tonight. We were planning on finding a restaurant that had was busy and eat there. But we took a long time to get there; everything looks different in the dark, and what is the deal with all the diagonal streets? By the time we got into Chinatown, it was late and we were hungry. Since I had decided on Cheesecake Factory last night, it was David’s turn to make the decision. We looked at 3 or 4 different restaurants. We passed by one that had a barker out front handing out menus. David decided to go into this restaurant, mostly (I think) because he couldn’t decide on any other. We walked up the stairs and got to the front desk. The maitre d’ was in a tuxedo! I looked into the restaurant and everyone was in suits and sports coats! We were in jeans and sweatshirts. But we were seated and the food was good. The restaurant was named Kan’s and it is located on Grant Street.

A restaurant with a barker and a maitre d’ in a tuxedo… Sheesh…

We had a bunch of sessions on the topic of Smart Clients. I was impressed with the way that One Click Deployment was presented, but then, most presentations are designed to impress the audience. I really think that Salem would benefit from Smart Client applications and I hope to be writing them when VS 2005 is released as beta 2 in late Spring.

I was under-whelmed, however, by the presentations on the Team software that Microsoft is releasing with Visual Studio 2005. I would have liked to see an improved updated version of Visual Source Safe. That product hasn’t been updated in at least 7 years.

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.