Last day! We’re nearly there! Also, have moved by ‘Shout Outs’ & ‘Tips’n’Tricks’ to different posts, just so this isn’t overloaded!
Friday, 6th Sept
At this point in time, I was extremely surprised I was able to keep going. 7am rolls around – snooze. 7:30am rolls around – snooze. 8am rolls around…I figure 6 hours sleep should be enough, so I decide to get up. Feel a bit bad because I *REALLY* wanted to go to the Minecraft Azure session (especially if I could win Minecraft props! That’d just be awesome!)
Finally made it out the door around 8:30 and to the convention centre for around 8:45. Stuck my head into the Minecraft session – prizes already given away and I’d missed the beginning, so felt like I’d missed all the important parts (and, as you can see above, can easily go watch online later) so thought I’d go hang in the expo hall. Didn’t hang around for too long because I wanted to line up for the next session to make sure I got a seat.
Next sessions was Hack-Ed. If you think that sounds cool, IT TOTALLY WAS! Really awesome session – “Hack-Ed: Wheedling and cajoling your way to success” so I totally suggest you spend some time looking at it. I know, I know – they’re kiwis. Try not to hold that against them. I promise, really entertaining and really, *really* useful stuff. It was standing room only by the time they started, and I figured their next session (after morning tea) would be the same, so I vowed to be there early.
Morning tea time – now this is a nice little side anecdote. Morning tea food was, and I QUOTE from the serving signs: “Waffles with mixed berry compote, chocolate sauce, maple syrup and fresh cream”. Now, I could see the waffles. I could see the berry compote. I could see the chocolate sauce. I could even see the fresh cream. There was NO MAPLE SYRUP. How you could serve waffles without maple syrup is just beyond me. So I may have tweeted about it >.>
Cue my saviours who HAD maple syrup and kindly offered to let me partake of their maple syrupy goodness provided I obtained waffles for them. This I was more than happy to do. So Off I toddled (you’re imagining me doing that, aren’t you?) with my waffles, looking for the “Maple Syrup Man”.
So that was morning tea.
By the time I’d finished all my waffles and licked my plate (and hands) free from maple syrup I realised I was already running late for the next session. Based on how packed it was, I knew there was literally no point in me going – and to be honest, I felt fine as I had pointed a lovely SQL DBA in the direction of the session so that she’d get something out of it and I was told later that she really did. Chilled with the Microsoft people I know for a while until I received a phone call telling me my better half had decided to head down the coast early (he was staying the night as we had a family dinner to go to on Friday) and would I fancy some lunch and Movenpick icecream.
MOVENPICK ICECREAM HELL YES! O.O
Again, for those who don’t know me, Movenpick icecream is one of my weaknesses. It is the food you bring me if you’ve done something wrong, want my favour or just generally want to suck up. Favouritest flavour of all time: Hazelnut (in case you were interested)
Went to Koi (again – and I can’t speak highly enough of this place, the food is just fantastic!) and had a lovely leisurely lunch and then grabbed some Movenpick on the way back to the convention centre. Felt a bit bad, was a tad late for the last session I attended “Feature Spotlight on Windows Server 2012 Active Directory and Dynamic Access Control” but it was fine – snuck in the back door, quickly grabbed a seat and started nomming on my icecream while paying attention. Seriously, the amount of information in this session was just mindblowing. Watch it. Watch it again. Watch it a third time. You still won’t have got everything out of it, promise you.
Time for the Lock Note/Closing presentation – not as many people left for this, but managed to find my group of peoples, and away we went. I’m probably in the same boat as others – I wasn’t paying a huge amount of attention (although it was very tech focused, which was pretty cool!) I was wanting to see the prizes be drawn. I WANTED THAT DAMN TRAIL BIKE! No such luck. The guy who won the giant present (which was filled with swag from all the vendors who’d been at Tech.Ed – would’ve REALLY like to win that too!) looked totally stunned though, which was quite funny! Once the prizes were all drawn, everyone wandered on out and most either headed back to their hotels to grab their stuff or back to their hotels because they were staying down for an extra night/s. I was lucky, was staying down for an extra night, so was able to go back to hotel, have a relaxing bath and just chill…while thinking over how AWESOME the last few days had been!