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I spent the weekend at the Community Server Developer's Conference down in Dallas.  Overall, the conference was pretty good.  I met a lot of good contacts and learned some new things that I'm hoping to make use of soon.  I flew on Midwest Airlines, of course, and that was spectacular, as usual.  And, I have to say, I actually love travelling.  I wouldn't want to do it regularly, but I do enjoy my time spent at the airport and in the air.  There is nothing really important going on, so I can catch up on reading or my video games without interruption if I want.  At the same time, even though there isn't anything important, there is plenty of distraction with all of the people, so I can spend time just watching all that if I want to.

The conference was at a country club, and I stayed at the hotel that was right on the grounds.  The hotel room was great - 36" LCD TV in the room, and a comfortable bed.  Didn't really need much else.  I was most impressed, however, by a little card I found in the bathroom.  It basically said that I should put that card on the bed if I required new linens, and only put the towels on the floor in the bathroom if I needed new towels.  I've always thought it was very wasteful of hotels when they replace the linens every day like this, even if the same guest is staying in the room another night.  I can sleep in the same set of sheets for two nights in a row, and honestly, I can use the same towel twice too, it's no big deal.  So seeing that the hotel cares about these things as well is pretty cool.

Of course, no trip is perfect, and I do have some complaints as well.  The first one is internet access.  I'm staying at a hotel with rates of $150 (or more) per night, and they still want to charge me another $10 for 24 hours of internet access.  Why in the world can't hotels just include this at this point?  It isn't like it really costs them that much to provide that support.  It's almost definitely cheaper than HBO in every hotel room, which has become pretty standard everywhere that I've been for several years.  I actually think that airports should be able to do this as well, but I rarely feel the need to be on the internet during my time at an airport, so I don't find that to be as big of a deal.

My other complaint was with the location of the conference.  Like I said, it was hosted at a country club, and I stayed on the grounds, so my meal selection for dinner the first night was pretty limited.  There were several restaurants right next to the hotel, but they were all very high end restaurants.  The hotel's restaurant was the same way.  When I asked the concierge where I could get a meal that wasn't too expensive or fancy, she told me that the Mexican place across the street had the best Mexican around, and it was only about $50 a plate.  $50???  That is absolutely nuts for anything, in my mind, except a top of the line porterhouse steak.  Work was paying for this, but I still like to think frugally about these things.  Anyways, I gaver her a shocked look and asked if there was anything cheaper around there and she kind of frowned, but then mentioned that the bar (about 5 feet behind her) could make me a good burger for about ten dollars.  That was absolutely perfect in my mind, so that's where I headed.  I grabbed my book, had a nice meal, and then went back to my room for the night.  My only problem there was, why couldn't she have mentioned that right away when I said I wanted something inexpensive?  I know that she's not used to clientele like me, but she had to have known that there were about thirty people from a developer's conference staying there for the weekend, so I would have thought that she would adjust.  But it really isn't a big deal, just a little annoying.

So anyways, that's pretty much all I had to say about the trip itself.  On a side note, I did get to meet Donald Driver on the way back to Milwaukee.  He was flying back on the same flight from Dallas as me.  Being the huge Packers fan (and Driver fan) that I am, that was pretty exciting.  I was also impressed that all of the people in both airports for the most part left him to enjoy his time off and nobody was mobbing him or hanging on him like I've seen with other sports stars out in the public.  There were a few good lucks, and a "don't get hurt", but nothing to overpowering, and I'm sure that he appreciated that.  Other than that, I just want to say that he seems as down to earth and classy in person as I've always thought he was, based on interviews and articles I've seen, so that just improved his persona in my eyes even further.  Great guy.

Oh, one last thing, I was convinced by enough people this weekend that I should be posting some of my more wacky (and hopefully useful) ideas and development items somewhere out on the internet.  So that means I'm going to start a second, programming related blog pretty soon, if there are any computer geeks in my tiny audience out there.  I'll post info here when it's up and running.