Post AU Post

This was my week:

Monday:
The hubby and I arrive at the the Venetian. 9000+ people did the same thing. I picked up my badge with flair. The rest of the night, stays in Vegas.

Tuesday:
The opening session, "Designing the Future," was a little...overwhelming? Sensory overload, but cool. Thousands of people in a dark room with techno music going. It was just a few hits of X away from being a rave. No rave is complete without Yves Behar, Lynn Allen and Carl Bass.

"Highway Interchange Design" was very useful. I've always had trouble grading gore areas, and Andrew Walther helped straighten a few things up for me.

"AutoCAD .NET Basics" parts 1 and 2 with Stephen Preston was a little less basic than I was hoping, but still useful. It is currently my new personal mission to learn VB.NET.

The hubby and I went to Zumanity. Nuff said.

Wednesday:
Wednesday morning I went to my first session but was fighting a migraine. I ended up going back to the room to take medicine, then rested till it passed. The afternoon was 5 hours with Partha Sarkar. Learning about the Civil 3D API's. By the end I think Partha thought I was stalking him.

That night was a Caribbean Party...which basically meant that the parking garage where we ate had different color table cloths. I did see Dana and the crew from EE. I finally met James Wedding in person. Such great people. Right next to them was the gang from Eagle Point. It was a one stop social shop.

Thursday: "Polylines to the Rescue" by Michael Choquette was great. Even though he works for a competitor reseller, I had to admit he knew his stuff and was a great presenter.

Then I stalked Partha again at "Subassemblies Using .NET"

Mark Scacco, of EE, taught us how to make a slick spreadsheet and play with pipes. There were lots of, "I never thought of that!" moments.

Dana taught about stormwater management tasks. Which is good because it is what I used to do in the "real world." I never thought of turning on my elevations to see a better 3D relief. Hot damn!

"Scripting your way to Sanity" with John Herrman was dangerous. I can now delete and add registry keys with a few lines of text. Muaahhaahaa.

That night's reception theme was "Party Like It's 1982." By then I was a little too fried. A common assumption people make about me is that I like to party. Well, I do, but with way fewer people. I'm a little crowd-phobic. We ate and ran. Fast.

Friday:
Were they saving the best for last on purpose? Road reconstruction with Radomir Lazic was killer. I learned the most new stuff from this session. Plus Rad has a rad Aussie-Russo accent.

Then I had Visualization Techniques with Jack Strongitharm. Not only do I want to pick the man's brain about everything he knows, I want to do it over a few pints of Guinness. He seems like a hoot. And his presentation was excellent.

Ahhh...and done. A long, hard week of thinking, negotiating crowds, schmoozing, learning, keeping up with support email, prepping for a class next week, and oh yeah, dealing with Vegas. I'm not really a Vegas kinda gal.

And that's all folks.