Gonzo Lotusphere 2008

In the days of yore, the CLP lounge was on 5th floor at the center of Swan. A nice place, a double-room suite with a balcony. You know, head over, get your CLP sticker, have a seat for a while, get a snack and a soda, hang out on the balcony and watch the world go by, get a massage, pick up some cool freebies from vendors or IBM.

Well, that was then.

They moved the CLP Lounge to Europe 10.

No soda.
No CLP stickers.
No fun toys.
No balcony.
Barely any snacks.
Crappy chairs.
And practically nobody from IBM/Lotus there. No Barbara Bowen.

Just a bunch of Cert/FX brochures, a signup sheet for a massage right in the same room, no windows, no nothin'.

Oh, well. It was fun in the old days. Like I said, not sure why I bothered to go over. But I did, because it's what I do.

Other lame things: the battery in my iBook isn't giving nearly the life it usually does. I should check and make sure I have the "good" battery in it.

Yet more lame things: complete lack of wireless on the Showcase floor, apparently so that vendors will pay for the per-connection Ethernet drops. Shit, Lotus, do you charge them for electricity and air, too? Of all places, bandwidth should be in abundance here. Me, I have to go back up to the Rotunda (aka the Nipple Room) to post things. Wireless in the conference rooms is not good.

Even more lameness: the time at Islands Of Adventure seems to keep getting shorter and shorter every year. Back years ago, we'd roll out of the hotels at maybe 6:30 and stay till 11:30 or midnight. And now it's 7:30 to 10:30, and the crappy part of that is that Universal is so damn far away you spend half an hour on the bus getting over there, and then it's a long-ass walk to the actual park. Find food, a beer, and ride one ride, and they're already chasing you back to the buses. I can see why some people skip the Wednesday Night thing now.

Well, almost on reserve power, so time to take the White Wonder upstairs and plug it in or get the other battery. Or get the MacBook Pro. Its battery life isn't great, but at least it doesn't mislead me about it.

Technorati: None

1. Gregg Eldred01/28/2008 10:23:50 PM
Homepage: http://www.ns-tech.com/blog/geldred.nsf

To say that I was disappointed with the CLP Lounge would be an understatement. For some reason, I liked that someone would look you up in The Book to confirm your status to use the Lounge. And, that it was one floor removed from the basement, didn't sit well with me. It seemed as though it was an afterthought.

Maybe "next year" . . .