Checkin at TechEd was fast, people were moving through very quickly. Photo ID required, get your badge, and then down to a different set of people to get a backpack and shirt. From there grabbed a taxi back to the hotel, enough walking for the afternoon. Cooled off for a few minutes, went through the backpack stuff, standard and good assortment of usual flyers and contest notes, saw a lot of effort from MS on being green – a plastic bag to put all the flyers that people didn’t want into to turn back in, a note to turn in badges at end of week, and buses are supposed to ‘low idle’ when waiting. Curious how effective all that turns out to be, but good to try regardless.

From there left to meet up with Steve Jones, Adam Machanic, Allen White, Brent Ozar, Tim Ford, Tony Davis, and Denny Cherry at a nearby hotel bar (whose name escapes me). Naturally I was there just too late to get a seat at the circular bar which had me standing to talk to the rest, but that made a little stranger because the bar rotates…slowwwwly. Just fast enough that about every 45 seconds you need to take a step and a half to stay with the people you’re talking to. Did that for a couple revolutions, gave up on that and grabbed a table with Brent to talk shop.

From there we drove what seemed like across town to Cure, a bar picked by Adam for it’s mixology, tons of brown bottles of assorted flavors with eye droppers for measuring. I just wanted iced tea, sadly all I could get was some rather flat ginger ale. Nice place, but in the middle of a residential area or it seemed like anyway.

From there back to Jackson Square with Steve Jones, looking for a sports bar so he could watch basketball, didn’t find one where the noise level would be bearable, finally dropped the tv requirement and found a brewery/grill a couple blocks off Bourbon St. Ok food, fun to hang out, trading stories about wood working projects, my positive glee when a drawer box turned out perfectly square on the first try, Steve’s unexplainable interest in building the wooden flagpole project from the New Yankee Workshop. Not that my projects are any more explainable! Long dinner, then a quiet (and much cooler) walk back to the hotel.

Ended the day by catching up on a few things for work, getting all ready for Mon morning. Nice slow day, good start to the trip.