SDWest Day 5: Winding Down with Food

Well the last day is always the hardest and poorest choices. Sitting here in the last session time hoping for a useful talk on Managing Software Debt. We will see.

We ate at the Mall's foodcourt. Lots of Asian food to choose from along with Mexican. We went to find Joann some cold remedies which we found at a Walgreens finally. Seems she now has David's cold. No telling if Steve and I will get it too now. Oh well. All part of the business trip I guess.

I took a forty minute walk at lunch and saw lots of mallards and cranes. Nice walking paths here in Santa Clara/San Jose.

We will drive up to San Ramon (~27 miles) to try a Texas BBQ place called The Back Forty. The original place is up the road another 10 miles so we will stop short at a newer one. It is basically up the road toward the Livermore route. A review will be forthcoming over on the Bubbaqlog hopefully tomorrow or the next day.

I love my girls this much!!!!!!!!!!

SDWest Day 4: Down The Stretch

We have noticed that the last days of SDWest always seem to have less big name speakers and fewer titles of interest. But that is good in away since it helps us narrow down what we want to go see. Finding one speaker every one hour and one-half is good enough.

Nothing notable to report. Lunch was at an In-N-Out burger. The menu has four food items... hamburger, cheeseburger, double-meat & double cheese burger, and fries. And drinks are a minimum too. When we arrived they were on number 54 and we were 72. It took us less than five minutes to get our food. Luckily we found a table big enough for all three of us...luck? Well Joann jump on it when it opened about the time we got our food. When we left they had already went around the number counter past 99 and were back on 50-something. The place was packed and busy. They crank out the food. It is pretty good too. Except for a special sauce a lot like the Special Sauce on a BigMac. Turns out K.T. and Jon Dahl really like this burger joint.

The cardinal picture was just to add some color to this post. I found it online and it was free.

Well time to start another day. I miss and love my girls. See you in one more sleep...God willing and the creek don't rise. :) This Much!!!!!!!!!!!!

SDWest Day 3: Fun Day

Well Day Three was a bit slower. Only hit two presentations out of four but went for a couple of walks and got to visit with Steve and Joann a good bit. One talk was on how folks have succeeded with Agile. It was ok but nothing new to report. The other was a good talk by Dewhurst on C++ idioms.

I worked on making examples of how we use the boost library to design our software. Sorta how we design things.

We decided to eat at Olive Garden and had soup and salad. Yummmy.

I picked up a book yesterday hear at the conference called "Presentationyen." It is very interesting and exciting to think about doing better presentation which at the lab we really need.

No new picture today.

SDWest Day 2: A Better Day

The 2nd Day of SDWest was a bit better than the first. My hip is better but only because I did not run on it in the morning. The two tutorials I went to were actually pretty good. Reminders of good ways to write software in any language. Also one polished up a topic on Agile planning that I have been at a loss on....User Stories. Now just how to apply them is the question.

For lunch Steve and I did our usual tradition, on travel, of eating at a Wienerschnitzel (The Der). Joann excitedly came along with us since she claims to have never had a chili-dog before. Only a hotdog with catsup is all. It was Derlicious. She may be hooked. :)

We found (thank you Mr. GPS) a small street in downtown Sunnyvale that had a ton of cafes and restaurants. It seemed like a popular spot in the middle of nowhere. We ate at an Indian place (Tumeric) and the food was good. We tried one of those blossom ball things (a samosa) that is is posted here. It was good but did not have much punch. Then after dinner we found a new/used bookstore next door to browse.

SDWest Day 1: So it begins

Well the first day was at SDWest was interesting. Went to a morning tutorial on Building Your Coaching Skills then a lunchtime talk by Uncle Bob Martin about Clean Code. Both were good. Bob is a very entertaining speaker. He should follow Agile advice and get a domain expert on his team to help him with his "fun" Physics part of his talk though.

This afternoon I had a hip that was bugging me so I hung out in the room resting it.

There is a lot of Agile Development talks along with some good C++ seminars. Always interesting. It seems there is fewer people here this year. Perhaps the poor economy. SDWest itself does not have break snacks like last time nor the cap and t-shirt like last year. Seems a bit slow here.

Our swanky Hotel is pretty much only swanky in the lobby. It is the conference hotel but does not have much in the room. No free breakfasts or no free WiFi. I am using the SDWest network over at the conference. Oh well. That is how it goes.

Tomorrow is another day with different talks and tutorials. :) I have Emily's laptop almost purring with C++ and unit-testing. Thanks ME for the loan. It makes for a better conference. Just can't wait to use it in a tutorial.

I love and miss everybody. ME I hope your ankle gets better soon.
Love Dad