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With the upcoming conferences, I thought I'd share my favorite conference story...

Back in 1998, I attended the VBits conference in San Fransisco.  I’m never the person to turn down a trip to the bay area, but I should have skipped this one.

I was on a project where I was providing a C++/Com Wrapper to a VB Client and responsible for handling asynchronous communication between the two.  If you’ve played with Com at this level, you know that the task isn’t easy – some even say it can’t be done.  Thread marshalling is tricky and the documentation surrounding it was sparse at best.  Looking to get a better handle on VB 6, the VBits opportunity looked like time well spent.

The consulting firm I worked for at the time had a developer who had to back out of the conference.  They asked if I’d like to attend, but the developer cancelled his hotel reservations and that’s where the fun started.  VBits and Java One (or whatever it was called back then) were running simultaneously and rooms were running at a premium.  With less than a week to go before the conference, the company’s travel agent set me up with a hotel room for “around $100”.  I was very suspicious, but I figured I’d run with it and see how it went.

I got off the place and into a hotel shuttle around 12:30 at night and asked the driver to take me to the “Charlton” hotel (this isn’t the real name).  He looked puzzled and asked “where is that?”

Welcome to “Uh-oh” moment #1

I checked my itinerary and gave the driver the address and he smiled and said “oh, ok.”

We drove through a seedy party of town and he stopped the van between a porn theatre, a “massage” parlor and the astute “Charlton” hotel.  Figuring “what the heck”, I got out of the van with my luggage and laptop and walked into this place.  My first thought went to the $4000 laptop strung around my neck – I immediately decided to carry it by the handle.  I walked into the hotel and this place looked just like the halfway house from the movie “Shawshank Redemption” – remember the place where the old guy hung himself? That guy actually had a nicer room.

At this point I’m getting curious so I walk up to the guy at the front desk and he’s actually very pleasant.  I show him my reservation and he looks puzzled, adding “this must be a mistake, our rooms normally go for $40/night instead of $100.”  

He asked me if I really wanted to stay there and I said “let me check out the room.” 

By that time it was pressing 2 o’clock and I really needed to find a restroom.

He gave me the room key and I proceeded to the third floor.  The room didn’t have a bathroom – it had a shared bathroom outside the room. Now I don’t know about you, but a shared bathroom in a seedy district of San Francisco didn’t interest me in the least.  I held it.

I entered the room where a window was open and the place smelled like urine.  I exited the room and went back down to the lobby.  From there I called the travel agent’s home (that’s 3:30 in the morning where she was) – I explained my situation and she said “go the conference hotel – they may have reserve rooms.”  I explained the situation to the guy at the front desk and he kindly hailed a taxi cab for me.

With that experience aside, the conference hotel gladly charged $350/night for 2 nights.  They told me I had to leave on the third day, but I offered 100% price hike and they gladly offered one more night.  It was way too much money, but I was stilled p.o.’d about getting stuck with a travel agent that set me up at the “Charlton” hotel.  The next day I found another hotel a couple blocks away for the remainder of the stay – but I’ll certainly never forget that trip.