I just got back from a conference in Baltimore and I have a few fun things I learned while there.
1) Being a conference as a customer, not a sales guy or exhibitor, is a lot more fun.
2) You would be amazed at what a vendor is willing to do for customers. I ate 2 breakfasts, 2 lunches and a dinner all on Rockwell or our motor vendors dime. Rockwell also provided free juice and pop throughout the whole conference
3) I could make robots that would blow your mind given a little time and a lot of money, and I didn’t really realize it until now.
4) Most hotel restaurants suck at making steak. If you are going to put peppercorns on there, you should call it “peppercorn steak” not just steak. The meat stands alone if you do it right people. Seasoning meat is an art not limited to peppercorns. I wish I liked seafood better cuz that seemed to be more prevalent there.
5) The Town Hall Brewery really is the best micro-brewery I have visited, and I can now add two more to my list.
6) Airport food mostly sucks. I never ate airport food until the company was paying for it, cuz I thought it was too expensive. Now I KNOW it is too expensive.
7) Camden Yards looks cool from the outside.
8) It only takes about an hour to get from Washington Dulles Airport to downtown Balitmore….I was afraid the traffic was going to be much worse.
9) The chapters in Hearing God by Dallas Willard are too long. It took me much longer than I would have liked to finish one on the plane. But, maybe I’m just a slow reader.
10) Electrical safety standards are a lot like the government. A group of companies and people appointed to committees get together and write the standard, and then consultants come in and interpret the standards so companies like mine can figure how to make our stuff “compliant” so that when the FCC, or customs people enforce the policies we know we aren’t breaking any rules. I just haven’t figured out who signs the standards into Law yet. 🙂
I got two t-shirts, two notebook sized wireless mouses, and found out about some software that could potentially save me and the rest of our electrical team hours of work each week. I also almost won an ipod Nano on this trip, but lost the last couple of questions to a Japanese guy…I was winning the game until then.
It was a pretty good trip, but I’m tired now. Traveling always wears me out.
Eleanor says
You should come by here (Portland, OR) sometime. We have a ton of microbreweries here (I think we’re number 2 in the nation for microbreweries per population?) and I think a lot of them are nice. 🙂 Not sure how they compare to that one in Baltimore, though.
BigCat says
Portland would be a fun trip, I would love to come up and see your new place sometime.
The Town Hall Brewery is right here in Minneapolis, so fortunately for me, I can get my favorite beer whenever I want 🙂
I’ve also wanted to go to some towns in Colorado where there seem to be a lot of quality breweries, but alas, even with Alex there I have not had the time or money to get to that state. I was supposed to go sometime this month and oversee some contract manufacturer, but they are not looking so hot in the negotiation phase of this deal, so I might not get to go.