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2007-02-09
RSA 2007
Tuesday was a very long day, and I haven't fully recover from it yet. For the trip to RSA in San Francisco, I needed to wake up at 5am to catch my plane at 7. I could have gone earlier at 6am to catch Bill Gates talk, but honestly who cares what Billy boy has to say anyway?
The focus of the trip was the Expo, seeing what companies have been doing lately. Of course, bearing a name tag of the company, people's reactions are pretty extreme. Some seems to be more interested in the potential of being bought by us; some are just nerds trying to show off their technologies; but most of them are just like "You're my competitor! Get lost!" I couldn't complain much, since the trip comes with free good meals (not graduate students' kind of free meals). On top of that I got plenty of freebies.
But the best part? Going to and from the San Francisco airport (SFO). Since the number of people going would require multiple cabs, we got car service. Not just normal car service, but a limo car service. Not just some random limos, but some roomy limos that can sit six people comfortably in a U-shape. It was a really wonder experience.
But the worst part? A typical problem people encounter flying at SFO is that it is often foggy and planes are easily delayed. That didn't happen to me. But who could imagine that it was our very dry Los Angeles airport (LAX) that was foggy and caused delay on the return trip. Some of us have already boarded the flight by the time they announced. This means somehow they can tell that LAX would be foggy in 2 hours, but not soon enough to tell us before we board.
Delaying from 8:30pm to 10pm would cause me to arrive home at midnight. So we figured we could fly to Burbank airport (BUR) instead and have a colleague's wife drive us to back to Los Angeles airport to pick up our cars and still save half an hour. Just as we were about to board the Burbank flight, all of a suddenly they decided that LAX is clear enough. We felt we were keep changing flights. Well, perhaps it wasn't that bad; at least I was able to arrive home at 11:30pm, just some 18 hours after I left home...
(For those of you in Bay Area, I didn't find time to catch up with you since this was only a 1-day trip.)
The focus of the trip was the Expo, seeing what companies have been doing lately. Of course, bearing a name tag of the company, people's reactions are pretty extreme. Some seems to be more interested in the potential of being bought by us; some are just nerds trying to show off their technologies; but most of them are just like "You're my competitor! Get lost!" I couldn't complain much, since the trip comes with free good meals (not graduate students' kind of free meals). On top of that I got plenty of freebies.
But the best part? Going to and from the San Francisco airport (SFO). Since the number of people going would require multiple cabs, we got car service. Not just normal car service, but a limo car service. Not just some random limos, but some roomy limos that can sit six people comfortably in a U-shape. It was a really wonder experience.
But the worst part? A typical problem people encounter flying at SFO is that it is often foggy and planes are easily delayed. That didn't happen to me. But who could imagine that it was our very dry Los Angeles airport (LAX) that was foggy and caused delay on the return trip. Some of us have already boarded the flight by the time they announced. This means somehow they can tell that LAX would be foggy in 2 hours, but not soon enough to tell us before we board.
Delaying from 8:30pm to 10pm would cause me to arrive home at midnight. So we figured we could fly to Burbank airport (BUR) instead and have a colleague's wife drive us to back to Los Angeles airport to pick up our cars and still save half an hour. Just as we were about to board the Burbank flight, all of a suddenly they decided that LAX is clear enough. We felt we were keep changing flights. Well, perhaps it wasn't that bad; at least I was able to arrive home at 11:30pm, just some 18 hours after I left home...
(For those of you in Bay Area, I didn't find time to catch up with you since this was only a 1-day trip.)
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