I apologize for not getting this out yesterday, but I was running on such little sleep that trying to type coherent sentences was quite beyond me. I’m not sure that anything’s changed today, mind you. If I wait any longer, however, this will never get written…

(Also, the LJ crossposting plugin ate Monday’s post. It’s there now, you may just have to dig back through your f’list to find it if you’re reading this via that service.)

The final day of Kaseya Connect posed a small dilemma for me. Checkout of the hotel needed completion by noon, but sessions and meals were scheduled the entire time from 8:30am to 4:00pm, and none of the morning sessions were of the sort I could justify skipping. So, I packed up Tuesday morning and checked out, keeping only the Nook Color and my phone with me.

Have I mentioned that with last Monday’s software upgrade, the Nook Color became quite the little nearly-an-Android-tablet device? It has email, web browsing, and some apps now in addition to being a fairly decent little e-reader. I’m quite pleased.

At any rate. The Four Seasons gladly took my suitcase and gave me a claim ticket, and I headed out for the last day’s worth of sessions. Breakfast wasn’t much to speak of, yet again. (Monday’s involved “breakfast burritos” that were all egg and scallops and almost no bacon or cheese. Tuesday’s involved some kind of egg-and-red-pepper sandwiches. Thanks but no thanks, eh?) The keynote speech for the day involved a lot of business philosophy that sailed clear over my tired little brain, but the actual sessions on Tuesday were generally useful.

The only “business track” session I attended all week was that of the Malwarebytes crew, because hearing their story interested me greatly. Turns out that the guy behind ComboFix is one of their crew, which makes me wonder why they don’t just fold some of that functionality into the main product, but whatever works. I’m certainly not clever enough to justify questioning their judgment there.

Knowing that I’d be at an airport for hours on end without means to get a decent meal, when lunch came I sort of doubled up: I ate lunch (those turkey/stuffing/cranberry-sauce sliders were divine) and followed it up with “dinner” (another slider for the road, essentially).

4pm finally arrived, I acquired my luggage and caught the next shuttle back to the airport, where I read part of a book until the Nook’s battery indicator finally started to gripe at me. I picked up a souvenir, listened to music, caught a plane home (same row as on the trip down, but on the starboard-side window seat instead of the port-side seat… I sat on the east-facing side of the plane each direction), made it home safely and collapsed into bed at midnight after only the most brief of systems checks.

And that, boys and girls, is the sordid and fascinating tale of my first trip to Vegas, my first Kaseya Connect conference.

Years ago I became the “Kaseya Guru” where I work. So, when the opportunity came for a most-expense-paid trip to Kaseya’s annual conference, I decided to give it a whirl. New experiences broaden the mind, and there’s value to us in hobnobbing with our contacts at the company as well as chatting with other users. Great idea!

Unfortunately, this meant flying. To Vegas. Days before payday.

The flight itself wasn’t actually terrible, but getting out of bed at 5:30am on a Sunday is nearly against my religion. (Yes, I’m an atheist. Shut up. It’s been a long damned day.) Then there’s the security theater to get through, please take off your shoes, sir you forgot to remove your laptop from the bag, and so on. After all that, wait. The plane ride itself wasn’t terrible, as these things go. I’ll never be a fan of air travel but I can manage. Descents do bad things to my stress levels and innards, mind you.

Let’s talk about shuttle buses and Vegas. For $6.50, you get to be hauled from the airport to your hotel… eventually. Unless you’re staying at Hooters, which was the first stop on the itinerary. I’m sure those newlyweds are in for decades of wedded bliss, you betcha. The Four Seasons? Last stop. Oh, and along the way, some guy tries to sell you on various amenities available, complete with stand-up-comedian patter. Dude, I’ve been up since oh-dark-thirty, shut up and let me get to my hotel in peace.

And then I learn a priceless, by which I mean expensive, lesson about hotel reservations: If you don’t have a proper credit card but only a debit card, they want to “authorize a charge” amounting to possibly hundreds of dollars, in anticipation of your use of, say, the bar in your room. Great, but I don’t get paid ’til Thursday, I don’t have $300 sitting in my account right now. Even if I cleared out savings, the money wouldn’t be actually available until tomorrow. After some back-and-forth, they settled for swiping my card and going on a “cash” basis in return for my agreement not to use anything from the bar. (Like I was going to? Three bucks for a candy bar, are you mental?) Fine, great, I’m sure I’m the last person on the planet to know this. I’m sure the hotel staff are having a nice chuckle somewhere at the rube from Portland. Whatever.

Of course, right now I’m craving a candy bar, or pretty much anything at all. See, I didn’t buy any food on the plane, breakfast was at 6:30 this morning, and as I write this nearly 12 hours later I don’t expect to be provided dinner for at least another 90 minutes.

At least the two hours of “pre-conference” material was interesting, consisting of a Q&A session with various technical types. Good stuff. Now, can I eat something, please?