Hyperlameity

Holy crud! Still tired from Oracle OpenWorld last week where I was made to feel real dumb, inspired to learn more, stranded at the CalTrain station with no way of getting a ticket (second time that's happened), and the recipient of an Oracle umbrella. My first umbrella since my ex took my Stanford umbrella a long way back.

So, last Monday, I made it to OOW around Noon. I had to run my gear to my sister's house in the Marina and then get back to the conference. I had a gig on Monday night in the Richmond district and wasn't going to leave my gear in my car. Four guitars later, you know not to leave musical gear in your car. Not only does it promote the theft of the gear, but is usually really bad on your windows.

First day of OOW can be summed up like this: Business Intelligence, Web 2.0, Dashboards, Green, Next Generation [any word here]. The night before the first day there had been a shooting at the Metreon because some kid didn't go down the escalator fast enough. Another action pushing the culture as a whole an evolutionary step backwards. Got home Monday and was exhausted after pounding Diet Cokes through the gig.

One note about the gig, is that the guy who used to play drums for the band showed up. I think he is aware that I clowned him and also have already stated that I'll never play with him again. I watched him tune his floor tom for a half hour one night while we were late for a start and he also wears socks with Birkenstocks and I'm sure by now the Birk's have evolved into Crocs. What a fucked up world we are living in when people can do this. Managed to get home around Midnight and get into bed whilst having one pair of clean pants left to wear the next day that were a little short, to be honest. Whatever, floods at a dorkfest shouldn't be too bad.

Second day of OOW. I had missed the cocktail reception the night before, but this crowd didn't party real hard, so everyone was pretty with it. There were over 40,000 people at this conference and sessions were held in a ten block radius that you could get to via an intricate shuttle system that must have cost Oracle a fortune. It was clear from the onset, however, that money really wasn't an object at the conference. Some highlights:

-They shut down Howard street between Moscone North and Moscone South to build a tent a block long where events were hosted and meals served. It was impressive.

-They had a customer appreciation event at the Cow Palace and booked Billy Joel, Lenny Kravitz and Stevie Nicks and Mick Fleetwood. They also had Envogue. That's pretty tight.

-They were running a fleet of full-on tour buses between the hotels and also their headquarters in Redwood Shores.

-They provided palatable lunches everyday. I had a Thai wrap that could very well have been unstoppable. I would eat it again.

-The tchotkes at the conference were some of the better tchotkes I've ever seen. I think it was Tuesday that I saw about twenty people walking around with Guitar Hero III from the NetApp booth. My Oracle bag is pretty nice, too.

That was the second day. Business Intelligence sessions and a little bit of PL/SQL in there. I went home Tuesday and managed to get some laundry done.

The third day was the day of the big concert at the Cow Palace and Larry Ellison's keynote with Michael Dell. The next day the concert was followed by reports of noise complaints from the event from as far as ten miles away. They must have just rocked. I think I still would have been more impressed by the keynote that day. It was bigger than some rock shows that I've been to and people were pumped. Pro tip-for the next 5 years, at least, "Green" is the thing. That is all anyone is fucking talking about besides dashboards, of course. I think I fell asleep at like eight that night. Walking around with 40 pounds of backpack and sneaking work into session breaks was taking its toll on me.

Now, by the fourth day, I was done. I bought a new book for $75, but it was to replace one that was stolen a while back and it's super good. It was a slow day as everyone had left or was tore up from the night before. I still went to a bunch of sessions and talked to some guy from the UK for a while about database development and footie. I wrote some random notes down in my notebook during one of the sessions, though. Here they are:

-Jawas in the exhibition hall. These are the old Asian people that comb the tradeshow exhibition hall for branded junk. They are easily spotted by their bags full of stuffed bears, thumbdrives, hats, mouse pads, key chains, etc...They will take anything and are absolutely unqualified leads. They also bug the shit out of me because I used to do tradeshows for a living.

-Keynote Speaker Cellphone Videotapers. At least four of these guys were in front of me during the Ellison/Dell keynote. I was concerned that I would catch their hyperlameity. I did, however, send a few texts during it and was genuinely impressed by an uninterrupted data migration between two 11g servers. I would never tell anyone that, though. Seriously, though, impressive.

-Personal Space Invaders. After two days of people walking right into me constantly and bumping into me almost twice as constantly, I started to believe that I may have become invisible. Could people seriously bump into me that squarely if they could see me? It defied all explanation. I also became a fan't of the person who gets on the escalator and puts a head in your ass. Seriously, this dude had his nose in my ass going up the escalator one day. Perhaps he was a budding proctologist, but he was violating my personal space in a bad way.

-Grown Man Stuffed Menagerie Makers. These are the grown men in jeans and sport coats with brown boat shoes and branded stuffed animals. I managed to spot one with three different types of plush toys and made a tiny little prayer to myself that he was going to bring them home to his son or daughter because it wasn't even really desk worthy.

-Escalator Standers. The rule is that if there is room in front of you, then walk. It's not a fuckin' ferris wheel. It is meant to speed your travel from one point to another faster than it would take to walk the stairs. It is to decrease time, not your effort, you fat fuck. Put down the cookie and start walking. Look what happened on the Metreon escalator (even though it's totally wrong and uncalled for). Escalator related violence is increasing at an alarming rate, so please follow the rules of the road, therefore, decreasing the chance of anyone experiencing Escalator Rage.

-Lunch Chasers. The lunches served were very decent, but they still came in a box. Is there any reason that you should be seen running across a plaza to get a ham and cheese sandwich? If you've done this, you should probably roll a ten sided di to see what damage you just took to your dignity.

-Beanbag Sleepers. These folks were definitely web 1.5, but they are still out in full effect. For some reason, if you are sleeping on an Oracle beanbag, you don't look homeless sleeping on a concourse floor. That's right. People are merely a shower, laptop and a beanbag away from looking homeless sometimes. I will kind of stick up for these people, though. The conference was super exhausting.

-BO Aficionados. There were dudes at this conference that brought BO to a new level. Sadly, every time I would get behind a guy that smelled of BO, I could only think of Sting. Why did he ever get into singing that as his thing? It worked the first time, but he throws it in everywhere live. BO is to Sting as "Dyno-Mite" is to ________________. A little SAT prep thrown in.

-Cookie Cutters/Collectors. These are the people that would cut in front of me at cookie time. Everyday around 3:00 or 4:00, they would bring out the coffee, cookies, and soda and people would go ape shit. It was like feeding time at the zoo. I have to admit that I found a tremendous amount of pleasure in watching the whole event. A couple of the days, I would jump in for a cookie and a dude seriously pushed me out of his way the way my grandma does at Christmas and Thanksgiving. I seriously thought about leveling some old Chinese guy over a cookie. Instead, I just let him get his handful of cookies and went for one when the frenzy had died down a little bit. The cookie was really good, though. It was peanut butter and not too hard or too soft. I cared for it.

-Tennis Shoes and Suit Wearers. I've been trying to pull off a variation of this at work, but no matter what you do, you end up looking like Rick Nielsen from Cheap Trick without a hat on. Sometimes, though, I've almost sold myself on the look. Black Adidas Gazelles can almost compliment some slacks better than dress shoes. It's a sense of aloofness combined with a projection of "I'm very serious about getting some work done today, but could still ride a skateboard home" vibe.

-PPT Slide Photography Enthusiasts. There was not one presentation that you could not get on a thumbdrive or download that was presented at the conference. There was, however, people that insisted on taking fuzzy pictures of the PowerPoint slides with their iPhones and e-mailing them to themselves. Was there something that I was missing that enhanced a PPT slide if it were caught in it's natural environment? Was it like seeing a lion on a safari versus seeing one at the zoo? Fuck these people.

That pretty much sums up my last week. I mean, yeah, Thursday night I got into a beer chugging contest with a guy named Bjorn from Germany and a guy named Edmundo from Mexico. We ended up bar hopping and I lost two credit cards and got stranded in the city, which lead to a night on my sister's couch and a commute of shame the next morning, but that's just a Thursday, isn't it?