Oracle Open World Day 0 - Arrivals and Meetups

Yesterday was arrivals day at Oracle Open World, with my flight getting in around 1pm and arrival at the King George Hotel around an hour later. Although I said to myself two years ago that I'd never stay in the King George again (I remember having to phone down to reception each night to ask them to turn the building heating on, this was in December) having stayed at the Ramada Downtown last year, I decided to trade a slightly nicer hotel for a much better area. The King George is just one block away from the Hilton, where the user group events are being held this year, and it's local for lots of delis, restaurants, bars and so on - the Ramada was local for adult cinemas and derelicts which wasn't really what I was looking for.

The other good thing about the King George is that many of the people I know are staying there - Tim Hall and Andrew Clarke I met yesterday, Jonathan Lewis is staying here as are quite a few others that I know. As an experiment, instead of going to bed more or less as soon as I arrived yesterday, I actually stayed up and went around a few bars (including the Thirsty Bear, not bad actually) and stayed up to around 10pm - which meant I'd been awake for 24 hours, something I'd not done since my clubbing days back in the late 90's. Of course the combination of several pints, no sleep for a day and a lot of travelling meant I didn't make much sense by the end of the day, but the trick seems to have worked and I woke up this morning at 7.00am, rather than the usual 4 or 5am that I've had the last few years.

As I know the area now, and I'm pretty much used to being in the States now, this morning was pretty good and I did the traditional thing for a Sunday morning for me over here - pick up a copy of the San Francisco Chronicle, breakfast of English Muffins, Eggs over Easy (see, even got that bit right) and ham, coffee, and then a walk down to the Hilton. The only slight hiccup was my foolish attempt to re-do my demo a few hours before my session - luckily I'm using a VM and I had a backup - but for now, it's down to the ODTUG BIW SIG meeting, followed by a few hours off and then my Oracle BI Server session at 3.30pm in Sutter A/B.