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Friday:
For a variety of reasons, I decided to attend fly out on Friday afternoon. Left work at 2pm, fought a bit of NJ traffic and made to the airport right on time. The plane boarded as expected, but for whatever reason ended up sitting on the runway for 2.5 hours. With the delay and a 5 hour or so flight, I was finally able to read Coding Slave (more on that later).

I finally made it to the San Diego, pulled up to the W Hotel to find a line half way around the block. Thankfully that was just a bunch of people hoping to get into the W bar. I was able to check in, made it to my room at about 11 pm PST. The airline served a Turkey-BBQ like substance. Thankfully for about $24 you can get a yummy grilled-cheese sandwich delivered to your room.

Saturday:
Most of Saturday I spent working on a project that you will hopefully be able to see more of shortly. Saturday night I met up with Scott Cate and Micheal Palermo for a drink and a bite to eat @ Karl Strauss.

Sunday:
A couple of weeks ago I was asked to attend the INETA User Group summit. I was honored at the gesture to meet with 70+ others who are very passionate about helping the .NET community. There were many very passionate attendees who spend countless hours helping others in the .NET community. What a great experience.

Sunday night I attended a pretty good gathering celebrating the recent engagement of Doug Seven.

Monday:
First thing Monday morning I attended the keynote, in which Mr. Ballmer announced both WSE 2.0 RTM and the first public talk of Burton (VS Team Services). For most this is the first time they had heard of Burton and I think the news caught them completely off guard. Very cool.

I spent lunch on Monday chatting about blogging, aggregation, etc with Drew Robbings and Kevin Schuler of TechEdBloggers fame.

Monday night was pretty casual. I hung out at Kevin’s room and met with a variety of bloggers.

Tuesday:
On Tuesday I floated around the convention center, but spent most of my time around the Cabanas. The Cabanas were awesome. What a great source of information (both give and take). If only there was a way to have a conference with only Cabanas. Not sure how it would work out, but I think it would be a winner.

On Tuesday night I managed to attend the MSDN party at the Bitter End. Very nice place. For some reason, I decided to drink cranberry and absolute. I lived to tell about it, but it did remind me how far I am removed from the college.

Wednesday:
Wednesday was very similar to Tuesday. However, Wednesday nights party was the "Influencers" party at “Dick’s Last Resort”, and I spend much more time playing pool and foosball than hanging out near the bar.

Another Wednesday bright spot was a nice chat with Sara Williams. It looks like she liked the chat as well.

Thursday - Sunday:
Thursday morning started the same as the other two days. However, at noon I headed back to the hotel to meet my wife (and brother-in-law) who flew out to spend the weekend. We were supposed to spend the weekend in OceanSide with Scott C, Rob, Micheal and their significant others. However, for one reason or other, only Scott C and Rob made the trip. Again, another big thanks to Scott C for the invite. Since I bailed on him twice, he will probably have to think twice before inviting me anywhere again.

On Friday we walked around San Diego for a while and took it pretty easy.

Saturday we went to the Zoo. I should have remembered Memorial Day weekend would have brought out the masses. The zoo was packed. It was actually almost as fun to watch all of the children’s reactions instead of the animals.

Before the zoo on Saturday, we took a walk down Broadway where we found a bunch small marina with a couple of tours. On of the tours was a ferry ride to Coronado. Coronado was pretty nice. We spent most of the day just walking along the small beaches and streets. The two notable items were my first taste of the awesome ice cream shop, Cold Stone Creamery and the brief siting of Bill Walton.

This was my second trip to San Diego and I had yet to have a good Mexican meal (Baja Fresh was good, not what I was looking for). We hopped in a cab and asked to be taken to the drivers favorite place in Old Town, which turned out to be "El Fandango"

I am sure there are lots of people and events I am leaving off, but overall it was a great week. I managed to spend almost 10 days in the area.