My apologies to anyone who showed up at SQLPass this morning for the pre-pre-conference talks, which was supposed to include a day of SQL Server 2005 for developers given by me. If you were there, you probably noticed that I wasn’t. A storm called Hurricane Jeanne saw to that. The Orlando airport was closed from 5pm Saturday to noon today. Thought I’d be arriving too early (Saturday night) but I wanted to make sure I’d make it. That wasn’t soon enough. The talks may be scheduled for some other venue, but not at SQLPass. The rest of the conference is proceeding though, starting with Tuesday’s preconference.
I’ve never had to cancel a conference or class before. The closest was interestingly, a VSLive in Orlando. I had a Sunday flight for a Monday talk. Portland to Denver to Orlando. Only someone left a door open at PDX, leading to the evacuation of the airport. Planes were all at least 2 hours late, but I cruised into Denver with confidence, knowing I had a “direct-with-one-stopover” flight. However, the Denver-to-Orlando portion was cancelled and I received a ticket for the next day. Sigh, I called and cancelled.
When I went back to arrange for tickets back to Portland and told the person at the counter my tale of woe, she said “there’s another alternative but you probably don’t want it”. The previous person had told me there was no alternative. Oh. The alternative was to fly from Denver to LAX and then to Orlando on a red-eye. Arriving 6:15am. I jumped at that one, called and un-cancelled, and arrived at 7am for a 10am talk. And I don’t sleep on planes at all.
After that incident, I always arrive an extra day early, to “be sure“. Saturday, running through possibilities and remembering last time, I even checked the LAX-to-Orlando red-eye for Monday morning. It was cancelled too.
So I’m home in rainy Portland OR, in the rainy Pacific Northwest. Last SQLPass I attended was in rainy Seattle, where folks complained about the weather. It’s going to be over 80 degrees today and sunny here all week. Oh well…