Cave Markings 

Day 0 began at 4:30 am!  You have to get up early to defeat terrorism, you know.   For the first time, I have traveling companions to Tech Ed.  This made the whole experience of dealing with airports much more pleasant.

After a short flight, I made it to my "hotel."  In truth, I have a small apartment for the week, overlooking a golf course, no less!

After unpacking we went looking for a prime lunch spot.  We hit the jackpot with Nile Ethiopian Cuisine.  None of us had eaten Ethiopian before, so it was an adventure.  If you are in Orlando this week (or any time), you should check out this gem. 

I met with Shawn in the afternoon to get our ideas together for the BOF on Friday.  After this discussion, I'm very excited.

In the evening we made our way to the Party With Palermo.  Jeffrey put on a great shindig.  I got to catch up with DonXML and Paul Ballard.  I also enjoyed meeting Josh Holmes and Chris Coneybeer.

After packing our copious swag in the car, Geff, Randy and I retired to my "crib" for pizza and cigars.  Whew, the conference hasn't even started and I'm exhausted.

More to come,

++Alan

PS Check out Randy's blog for more pictures and info.  Here's a pic of Randy on the plane, since he saw fit to grab one of Geff and I.

I'm on an early flight to Orlando tomorrow.  This will be the first time I've stayed at "unofficial" lodging for Tech Ed.  This means I won't be able to take advantage of the free bus transport, which, in turn, means I will have to watch how many beers I consume at the evening events.

On a brighter note, I will be co-moderating a Birds of a Feather session with Shawn Weisfeld from the Orlando .NET Users Group on Friday morning.  I love the BOF format because it allows many points of view to be shared.  Join us if you can.  Here are the details:

BOF26 - Binding GridView, DropDownList, etc. with CRUD

Friday, June 8 10:45 AM - 12:00 PM, S331 A 

Join in a discussion of binding with ASP.NET controls such as GridView, DropDownList and DetailView and others. Share in the discussion of techniques using automatic code generation, using the List<> generic to bind data in a form to data in a database, and using other techniques that have worked well and not so well. We Birds of a Feather can help each other by promoting discussions of how to bind into templates for highly customized views of the data with nearly zero code, providing for GUIs.

See you in sunny Florida,

++Alan