Okay, anyone else think it's cruel to make a person sing if they're getting kicked off American Idol? I mean, hell, all I'd want to do is cry. WTF?

My hotel room doesn't have a refridgerator. Or a Tivo.

Or even a box of kleenexes. What kind of hotel room doesn't have kleenexes?

Is it a rule that you have to be cute to work at PFChangs in downtown Austin? Because, I swear, each and every guy working there tonight was adorable. At home, when my local P.F. Changs says the food will be ready in 25 minutes, I show up 15 minutes later, because I'll have to wait those 10 minutes at the take-out counter before anyone bothers to catch my eye (despite my staring at each waiter who walks by me), stop, and ask if I need help. Contrast that to this evening where I was approached by not one, not two, not three, not four, but FIVE cute male waiters (and one cute female waiter), asking me if I'd been helped. Holy crap, did I tip well. On take-out no less.

Clearly at a party conference. It's 10 PM and already there are drunk people running up and down the hall. I wouldn't notice, except the wireless is so bad, I have to sit next to my room door to get any signal. If this keeps up, I'm going downstairs to the Starsbuck and jumping on the T-Mobile Intarweb connection.

Austin drivers are crazy. They don't have the excuse of Boston's crappy road system, either. Walking four blocks, I was almost hit three times, even though I was wearing my yellow boarding jacket.

I wish the drunk people would STFU already.

Hmmmm... sitting on the floor isn't so bad. Time to stretch while I work. Should have thought of this ages ago.

I'm surprised at how much I wish I were here with a friend. As much as I enjoy my solitude, I think this conference would be more fun with someone to share it with. On that note, I really wish Kris enjoyed the same projects, interests, and activities (outside ultimate) that I do. It would be nice to share this with him.

Do I type as loudly as the person next to me? If so, geez, I need to practice quiet typing. So should the woman next to me.

OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG.

Okay, time to cut and paste....

OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG.

You will never guess who I just met!

OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG!

So, I was sitting at the Austin airport, having just made hotel arrangements for tonight (yeah, yeah, I messed up my travel arrangements, but hey! I recovered), when I stood up to gather my bags. A guy walked across my field of view when I turned around to pick up my bags. I paused to look at him. I recognized him, but couldn't quite place him. Damn, the man was tall...

And then it hit me who it was.

Jon.

That Jon

Oh crap.

I turned to look at the woman next to him.

Oh shit.

It was Heather.

OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG!

Oh, what do I do? Crap, do I go up to them? You're not supposed to just go up to celebrities, even Intarweb™ celebrities, and fawn all over them. I knew in passing they were coming to SxSW, but I wasn't planning on going to the meetup.

Oh, what do I do? Walk up to them now? Write this up as yet another missed opportunity? Crap!

I made sure my bags were all okay, and walked up to them, walking around Jon.

"So, do people walk up to you and, 'OMG, I totally recognize you?'" I asked.

Jon laughed. "She does all the time."

"But, it was you I recognized first!"

And then I started babbling. Oh, to remember what I said. I said something about how I'm never sure if I should say hello, that I love her writings, or just let you be. How I went to Blogher to meet her, and chickened out. I must have made some good chatter, as I managed to get at least a chuckle out of them. I must have been excited, because I started talking in the full body sort of way that Paul laughs at me about. I just just so happy to have finally met these two.

After a few moments of talking, Heather stuck out her hand. "Hi, I'm Heather."

Oh, fuck.

You know, my friends do this to me. I write here, and they read this, and they keep up with my life, then send me emails or ask me about things going on that I certainly didn't tell them, or reference something that in my mind they have no right to know. It used to freak me out (and, depending on the friend, still does), but now I have to ask people, "Have I told you this already?" before I start telling a story.

And I just did the same thing to them.

I introduced myself, slightly embarrassed, then started wrapping up the meeting, thinking "OMG, I've met Heather and Jon Armstrong. This trip is already way worth it," the whole time.

As I had gathered up my bags to go catch a cab, I heard Heather ask, "So, was it his clogs that you recognized first?"

"Ah, no. But I was surprised at how tall both of you are."

"He's 6'4"."

"Really? Wow! Is that with or without clogs?"

No, I didn't take a picture. I figured that would be just TOO MUCH. Yeah, I can't believe it either.

Random shots from Boston these last few days:

How much must it suck to discover you can't bullshit a coworker in a different department at work?

A client of mine works at a large enough company that the company has its own IT department. We were adding a new website for the company, and needed a new host added for the company (which means, Mom, you can go to newhost.example.com as well as www.example.com - the "newhost" and the "www" are host names for the domain example.com).

The client requested the host name change, which the IT department provided last week. The IT department then messed up and reverted the change at some point, losing the new host name. This was after my client had announced to various places the new site, at the new host name, was up. So, now the new site is down.

So, the client contacts the IT department and nicely says, "WTF? Put back the host name, please." The IT department responds with a "We did. It'll take a day to notice the change." Except, they didn't. How do we know? Well, my client looked up the information. If you know where to look, you can see the updated changes as they are saved. The IT department made the changes, took back the changes, then didn't put them back again when requested.

And were caught.

My client called them on it. Using the IT department's own tools.

How much must it suck to discover that, hey, yeah, your coworkers know how to do your job?

They just don't want to do it.

I didn't take a taxi this morning to the conference. If I had known that Bostonian drivers couldn't drive in the rain, I would have slept in and skipped trying to make the first session of the conference.

Instead, I stumbled down to the lobby, where I had arranged to meet up with a co-conference attendee to catch a taxi ride together. We were told the taxi wait was 30 minutes, because traffic was so bad, how about taking the bus to the subway?

Uh... okay.

First, start by standing in the rain for 15 minutes on the corner over there. The free local shuttle bus will pick you up and drop you off at the subway station. The directions were actually "go through the building over there," but we missed the "through" part, and hence the bus that arrived every 15 minutes.

So, my conference companion, Troy, and I started asking each and every pedestrian walking by which way to go.

Well, actually, I asked them. Not sure it didn't completely annoy Troy, but well, I didn't care much. If I'm up this early, I want to get where I'm going as quickly as I can.

So, we missed the bus. Again.

One woman finally gave us the brilliant suggestion of taking the ferry. The ferry? Sure! it takes you to the Aquarium, where you can catch the blue or green line.

Uh... okay. I'm so full of this pauses and agreements today, I can't stand me anymore.

So, we head down the pier to where a boat is coming in. It was an itty bitty boat, with maybe an 80 person capacity - waaaaaaay smaller than the Seattle to Bainbridge Island ferry I'm used to riding, but, hey, so what. If I'm lost in Boston next to the Boston Naval Yard, why NOT take a ferry where I need to go?

The ferry took us to the Aquarium. What I found most entertaining about the ferry was the slide the ferry did as it pulled into the dock. The ferry ended up parked, er, docked at a 90° angle to its incoming direction. Quite enterntaining to both realize this was happening, and watch it actually happen.

So, off the ferry, then off onto the street, and off we go. It was three blocks before I remembered one of my travelling cardinal rules: "Always look at the map before you start out, don't trust the map reading directions of your companions." We started out all of 20 yards from the subway entrance, and ended up about 200 yards from where we were going, backtracking the way back.. Eh....

So, back we went, onto the subway,. This time, I did look at the map. The helpful subway guy told us to go a particular way than what the submay map indicated we should go ("less walking"), so we went the way he suggested, ending up only slightly lost, but catching each train as we went along.

The subway ride was uneventful. I did notice that everyone on the trains seemed to be living an extrememl ordinatry life. Is that all we are? I wondered. Completely ordinary?

Eventually, after two subway stops and their complementary track changes, we made our final stop, walked up the stairs and hoofed it to the event center. If we hadn't wasted the first 15 minutes standing in the rain, we would have ended up at the convention center at approximately the same time as the people who called a cab 10 minutes before we arrived in the lobby.

I'm not sure they had the better trip.