So the reason I was disconnected for 5 ½ hours last week was because I was headed to Orlando for Microsoft's annual TechEd conference. It's their largest conference for their customers and I think last I heard, we had something like almost 15,000 attendees. I went because it is a great opportunity to promote our technologies, such as Server and Domain Isolation and IPv6 (see Sean, I care). We had a ton of traffic at our booth thanks to an awesome demo – oh yeah, and the technology is pretty cool too. J
It was a pretty tiring week just because you are standing for hours on end without really moving around, so your back and legs tend to stiffen up (I'd rather go running for an hour – at least the muscles get moving). Plus with all of the foot traffic, there was a lot of talking involved – ok, I know I never have a problem talking – but to be constantly positive and prepared to answer all sorts of questions from some really technical people was a challenge since I am most likely the "least technical person" on the team. Fortunately the team I worked with was very helpful in case I got in some deep water.
The restaurant highlight of the week was a place in downtown Orlando called Del Frisco's. We had an awesome meal there with excellent service. Check it out if you ever need a break from Disney cuisine while you are in Orlando. And fortunately I decided to head up to New York on Thursday evening instead of Friday morning – there was a huge computer snag within air traffic controls on Friday morning that impacted the entire east coast!