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Well, it seems as if the San Diego International Airport has free Wi-Fi within the airport, which is much better than the exorbitant fees you have to pay for Internet access at Pearson or on the airplane! (Although it would be nice to surf in the air.)
I do not have much time since my flight should be boarding in an hour or so, but to make a quick comment of the past week: San Diego is fantastic! The weather here is great, and there is so much to see down here, although I did not actually get to see much due to my lack of time and energy after work.
I was a little disappointed with the food, but it may have been because of the selection of dishes that I ordered.
Let's see if I can run through the events: Landed at night, had a large seafood pasta for dinner and slept. Got up early the next morning and had breakfast at Richard Walker's Pancake House. Mistake #1: I ordered the baked pecan and cinnamon pancake. For one, I was not hungry. Secondly, it was not that good. I think the baked apple cinnamon pancake would have been better. (It would have been more like a pie I guess.)
I was so stuffed after this meal that I had no appetite for the rest of the day. I also had trouble keeping the food down afterward as well and tried not to over eat for the rest of the week.
Went on a trolley tour around town and got a lightning tour of all the tourist traps around town. This includes a gift shop at the end of the tour where I picked up some sombreros for the nephews. Mistake #2: I assumed that I would have time later to pick up gifts for others, so I held off. I should have realized that I would not have any time and picked something anyway.
I was dropped off near the USS Midway (CV-41), so I could take a look at the ship. Mistake #3: when the guide says that you can tour the ship in 90 minutes, they're assuming that you are not reading any of the displays and are running from point to point to point. I think I spent two hours there, rushing around before deciding that I should get back to the hotel to get ready for the convention.
That brings me to Mistake #4: I should have taken more pictures, but I was in such a rush that I did not bring the camera out much. In addition, by being on my own, it was difficult to take shots with me (or anyone else I know) in them, so I felt even less inclined to take any photographs.
The opening gala went by fairly slowly. We did not get too much traffic past our booth, which meant that time went by a lot slower. Mistake #5: Not enough people at the convention. With only two of us, there was not much opportunity for either of us to leave and explore the rest of the convention or city during the exposition. I was fairly uncomfortable being by myself at the booth, and I was fairly uncomfortable leaving just one person there also. So I did not wander off that much.
This also brings up Mistake #6: Not being prepared enough. I had some issues with my system while I was showing off the program. I thought that my system was clean enough, but I realized that it would have been better to show some soft of glitzy video of what our system could do and set up a demo for later, rather than try to show it there where anything can go wrong.
In any case, we finished around 9:30 and walked through the Gaslamp Quarter, which was pretty busy. Lots of young adults, which was better than all of the homeless characters mingling around the rest of the city I guess. I got back to the hotel afterward and pretty much crashed.
Thursday and Friday were pretty similar: Woke up to eat breakfast, walk to the convention centre (the weather was fantastic during my stay here), and stand for eight hours while people would occasionally come by and ask about the product. This included existing clients who had questions about the system. I guess it mostly went well. After a decent sized breakfast, I never had any appetite afterward, so I did not take advantage of all the free food that was available at the convention. My lunches were small and I tended to skip dinner because I was just not hungry.
I would also be pretty tired after the convention as well so I had little drive to get out and eat or do anything afterward.
However, on Friday night with everything done and over with, stress levels were low enough to give me a little appetite, so I decided to try some Mexican food. I looked up some good places on line and settled on Mexican Fiesta. Mistake #7: I should also look up the hours of operation for any eating establishments I would like to try out. I did not realize that this place was more of a lunch place until I got to the restaurant. It look a little more than a glorified shack. They also closed at four, so I had little choice but to find another place to eat.
Mistake #8: I did not have a backup plan. I should have considered the possibility of failing to find or eat at the restaurant of my choice and have a few backup locations to try out in the event of failure.
I went back to the hotel to look up the location for a restaurant that the concierge suggested: Los Panchos. Mistake #9: I did not bring a map with me. I tend to look at a map and memorize the location of the restaurant and general vicinity so I would be able to find out where I wanted to go. Unfortunately, instead of remembering that the restaurant was on E Street near 4th Avenue, I had it in my head that it was on 4th Avenue near E Street, so I ended up walking around the block for a while before I found it. I had their seafood enchiladas, which stated that it had crab meat. I was quite disappointed to see that they had Pollock instead.
It seems as if most tourist points close around five around here, so there was not much left for me to do after the meal since I was not interested in checking out the night life. (Although there were quite a lot of partiers about - mostly late teens or early twenties from what I could tell. Gosh I am getting old.)
So this brings us to Saturday, which is today. I got up a little later than usual, but had time to walk down to Brian 24, which was a 24 hour breakfast bar. The food was actually okay. I had the crab and asparagus omelette which actually had real crab meat.
Oh, now that I am at the airport, this brings me to Mistake #10? Never assume that the airport will have a place to purchase spirits or useful gifts. Sure they had a shop that had shirts, mugs, and key chains, but I found much more interesting gifts at the Mexican gift shop in Old Town. Which brings me back to Mistake #2.
In any case, we should be boarding pretty soon so I should get ready..
Sunday, May 09, 2010 at 12:39:48 (UTC)
Mistake #6: This reminds me of a Virtual Reality course taught at Carnegie Mellon: the students are required to show a live demo of their project but they must have a pre-recorded movie demo ready just in case their system crashes horribly (which does happen).
As for the rest of your troubles, perhaps a GPS wouldn't be a bad idea? If I was in a foreign city with a rental car I'd gladly pay extra for one. Alternatively, a smart phone with GPS and internet access would be a lifesaver for last minute changes in plans.
Mistake #10: What? No alcohol at the duty free shop in San Diego Airport?!
--HKL
GrinningReaper
Saturday, May 29, 2010 at 14:30:56 (UTC)
Yeah, with Mistake #6, I realized that we needed something like that after seeing other booths with similar video displays. Apparently we were supposed to be working on one, but nobody has done it. (I certainly was not the guy who was supposed to be putting some video together.)
Mistake #10: Well, I realized that my flight actually had a layover at another American airport and I was able to find a Duty Free store in Chicago.
QYV