Day 1 in San Francisco: The Podcaster Pub Crawl

Scott with the first copy of The Rookie

I’m in San Francisco for the FileMaker DevCon 2009. It is a gathering of people who develop applications with FileMaker.

Yesterday was a travel day. The trip from Michigan to San Francisco is a long one. I woke up at 4:30 AM, which is normal for me. Didn’t even need the alarm that I had set, just in case. Flight from Traverse City to Minneapolis was uneventful, aside from the crying baby and the kid behind me who kept kicking my seat. Fortunately, that stage of the trip was short.

So, I’m at the Minneapolis airport. I have just under an hour between flights. I take my iPhone off of Airplane Mode so that I can check emails and see if there were any fires that I needed to put out quickly at work. “No Service!” I’m stunned. How could I not have AT&T service at Minneapolis – St. Paul International Airport? That was very annoying. I was running out of time before my next flight. I tried WiFi. They use Boingo as MSP. I’ve used Boingo in the past with my computer, but never with the iPhone. I go though the steps to setup a 1-hour account. $5 for an hour. (What a rip-off.) Travel is a pain in the but, all Airports should just provide free WiFi. They are getting a ton of money for the flights and crappy food. The least they could do is make the WiFi simple and free. Back to connecting, I go to log in. It tells me my password is wrong. How can that be? I typed it in a note. I copied and pasted into the field. Everything should have just worked. It didn’t. I tried typing it in manually. By this time, my flight was boarding. When I get back, I’m going to have to see if I can get my $5 back from Boingo. Good luck with that one. AT&T, iPhone, MSP, Boingo all get a fail for my experience there. If my AT&T service had simply worked at the airport, it would have all been fine.

The flight from MSP to San Francisco went well. I sat next to a small woman and I was on the aisle, so I was as comfortable as I’m ever going to be in Coach. Those seats were not made for a 6′ 4″ person. This flight was slow to get moving from the gate, but once we got out of there, everything was fine.

The weather in San Francisco was perfect. An absolutely beautiful, sunny day. I got here around noon, which is three in the afternoon back home. At first my iPhone didn’t want to pickup AT&T at this airport either. I was thinking “wonderful, this phone is going to be useless on this trip.” Then just before I left the airport, I restarted it, and it began working again. Weird.

I had a little scare at the airport. I waited for my suitcase at the baggage claim. I stood their and watched while a couple of hundred people picked up their bags. Mine wasn’t there. I kept waiting while a few bags kept going around the carousel. A woman from the airport came along and started picking up the unclaimed bags. So, my thoughts are that they have lost my suitcase. She was just about to go check to see what happened, when mine finally pops out of the conveyor. I have no idea why it took so long. I was just happy to have it.

The Hilton San Francisco is a nice hotel. The room is a little small but nice. The biggest complaint that I’m hearing about the hotel is the fact that their is no WiFi in the rooms. Only wired high-speed Ethernet. Fortunately, brought my trusty little Apple AirPort Express. This little gem hooked up to the Ethernet cable, and then my MacBook Pro and my iPhone have WiFi from right here in my room. Very nice and easy. The hotel does have WiFi in the public areas.

I was starving, so the first thing I did was get a burger at the hotel restaurant/bar. It was a great burger, but outrageously expensive. No surprise there.

Later, Chris Lester of The Metamor City Podcast met me at the hotel and we went out for Indian food. The place was hot, but the food was good, and I had a great time with Chris. Then we headed off to Shroeder’s German Restaurant for the Podcaster Pub Crawl. That was good fun. Dan Sawyer, Scott Sigler, Stephen Nelson, and several podcasting fans. The beer was good, and the company was better.

Scott had the first copy of The Rookie to show us. Oh my God, this book looks awesome! Scott is pulling no punches with this one. The cover looks great, and inside there is a whole section of color artwork. This thing rocks.

Over all, it was a great evening. Sigler was funny as usual, and we just had good conversation with all.

One more thing. Thanks for dinner Chris.

Day two of the FileMaker DevCon 2009 will be the pre-con sessions. Like an idiot is signed up for six of those. That will be six hours of class time today. Should be good stuff though. If you’re a geek. Good thing I am.