Sunday, March 21, 2004

Have blog, will travel

This week, Phil's Occasional Musings is on the road. I'm coming to you LIVE from Novell's annual BrainShare conference in Salt Lake City, Utah. After a long flight sitting in the extreme rear of the plane, I got here about 11 AM this morning. I got to my hotel just in time to see the dreary end of the Mississippi State-Xavier game. I took a quick nap and now I'm sitting in the Salt Palace wondering why Novell doesn't provide free food until 6 PM tonight. A small breakfast and no lunch have left me a ravenous shell of a man. But they have games and sponsor booths to check out, so I'll have something to do until the party gets started. And I can bring it all to you, my few loyal readers, through the magic of wireless networking. Truly, this is the age of enlightenment.

One of the highlights of registration is picking up the BrainShare bag. Every year it's a different bag: usually a backpack, laptop, or duffel bag. I love my backpack from BrainShare 2002 : it holds my laptop, my gadgets, a book, and my lunch, and it goes everywhere. The only problem is that it's falling apart after two years of constant abuse. This year's BrainShare bag was hyped extensively on the Novell newsgroups as "not a backpack" and "not a laptop bag." My guess was that it would be some sort of rolling bag, like airline pilots and stewards use. And that's exactly what we got, in red and gray. I'm sure it will serve me just fine this week, but a rolling bag won't last long on the streets of New York. If the wheels don't fall off after I drag it up and down 86th Street each day, I'm sure it won't survive the beating it will take on the subway. But I'll find a lasting use for the new bag, and they're selling BS2002 backpacks in the conference gift shop, so I can always replace the old one. Or I could get off my cheap ass and buy my own laptop backpack when I get home. Like that's going to happen.

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