Monday, May 28, 2001.
The first day of the ODDC conference. The good news is - Richard had no sessions on the first day. The bad news - speakers are expected to be at the keynote speech at 8am. Wives are optional.
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| In the wee hours of the morning (7:30am), the conference attendees get breakfast, mostly caffeinated beverages. | Mitch Kolouris kicks off the conference at the keynote speech, then hands the reins over to Doug Youder from Microsoft, who shows off the new version of Office. | |
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| The attendees at the keynote, looking entirely too awake. | In the latter parts of the keynote, the wives congregate outside, along with Erik, who isn't obligated to attend. |
It was the point of decision for Richard, approaching the end of the keynote - go out touring for the day, or stay behind at the conference? There was lots of geeking to be done, even soaking up a few of the smarter sessions. In the end, it was the scenario of touring that made the decision - three wives and one husband? The gender gap was too big - Richard stayed at the conference. The camera went with Stacy.
The wives: Stacy, Jan (Peter's wife) and Wendy (Dick Moffat's wife) went off for a wander through the Sydney Botanical gardens, not far from the hotel. Their first encounter was with a group of large spiders, set up between the bushes.
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| A small herd of orb spiders in their large webs, hoping for an unsuspecting pedestrian or two, but our ladies are too clever to fall for that... | Jungle orchids bloom among the treacherous arachnids traps, to woo their victims into coming closer, closer... | |
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| A native Australian tree, wide multi-trunk base, big branches, ideal for climbing... if you're a boy, that is. | Nekked statuary! | |
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| Jan and Wendy pose on the lions that bracket a path way in the gardens. | A closer look at the lion statue, sans wife. | |
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| More statues, this time a bronze statue of mare and foal. | The city of Sydney looms in the background of the park. | |
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| Jan snaps a picture, Wendy coming up from behind. | Was this the picture Jan snapped? A pair of ibises comb the grass for insects. |
At the end of the tour of the gardens, the wives headed off toward the Sydney Opera House, easily the most recognizable and famous of the Sydney landmarks. They were able to get a tour of the Opera House, although no pictures were allowed to be taken while inside. After exploring the Opera House, the wives continued on to the Ferry Terminal next door and took a ride to Manly Beach, which is the furthest destination east of the city that the Sydney ferries go. Back from the ferry ride, the returned to the hotel.
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| Stacy, Sydney and the sunset from the ferry on the way back from Manly Beach. | A look down at the entrance way to the lobby, notice the two huge columns. |
The final adventure of the day belonged to Richard - there was laundry to be done. But rather than take the easy route and have the hotel do the laundry (at a rate of $5 Australian per shirt), Richard had asked Adam about Laundromats in the city. Adam had offered to get the laundry done at his home, Richard insisted on doing the laundry himself, but would gladly use the machines at his home.
There were a number of mandates for Monday evening - Richard had laundry to do, Adam had to prepare a session which would involve taking a server from his office. So we were going to have to go to the office before heading back to Adam's place to do laundry, not only was the server there, but the car was there as well. Adam's wife Anastasia was at a strata council meeting for her old apartment and was expecting to be picked up around 9pm by Adam on his way home.
The trip started out from the hotel, with two bags of laundry, laptops, etc. The travelers included Adam, Richard, an SSW employee named Gregory and Peter, a friend of Adams from Adelaide. Gregory was helping out with the server and making sure everything was ready for Adam's session. Peter was attending the conference and was rooming at Adam's place for the duration.
There was some debate as to how to get to the office from the hotel - a taxi was considered, but a bit extravagant for Adam's taste, perhaps the bus instead. And then it started to rain, so there was a multi-block sprint, bags in tow, to get to the bus depot. A short ride on the bus over the Sydney bridge (which you would NOT want to walk across in blowing rain) took us to Adam's office.
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| On a Sydney bus. It is rush hour after all, standing room only. | At Adam's office, Adam pounds away at his session, testing the demos with the server. |
We had planned on being at Adam's office for several hours, which would be great - there's decent bandwidth and lots of pictures to send up. Unfortunately, we arrived rather late, and then Anastasia phoned, the meeting had ended early, she wanted to get picked up ASAP. We packed up the laptops, server and laundry into the car and hurried to retrieve her.
By now the rain had turned to a torrential downpour, and no one had eaten anything. We had planned on having food delivered to the office, but with our foreshortened visit, we didn't have time. So instead, on the way to Adams, Peter and Greg stopped off and picked up Portuguese chicken, salads and rolls.
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| Portuguese take out chicken with the boys. | After dinner, the wreckage of a successful meal. |
Finally it was time to get started on laundry, with the rain pouring down. The laundry room was out the back of the house, but had only a washer in it - no need for a dryer in Sydney, you dry clothes on the line. Unfortunately, it was pouring rain at the time, so the clothes were going to be very difficult to dry. Lo and behold, there was a dryer in the garage - just a little one that hadn't been used in a long time. It was serviceable, but small - only half loads would dry over a long time. The rest of the clothes we hung over portable radiators... there's no central heating in Australia, its hardly necessary even in winter time.
While the laundry took place, the work on Adam's SharePoint session continued, including configuring the server we'd brought from his office.
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| The teeny little dryer in the garage that saved the day for laundry. | Random hug event - Adam and Anna share a warm fuzzy. | |
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| Adam hard at work, late into the night on his session. | Peter fights for consciousness on the bed, after all, we're all in his bedroom. |
By 2am, we were out of energy. All the laundry had been washed, only half of it dried. Adam's session was more or less in order, if we didn't get to bed soon, we'd sleep through the session, so we packed it in, taking the wet laundry back to the hotel room to hang up to dry the next day.