So we are finished with the day, and man am I tired. (Actually I am starting this blog at 4:45, before the quiz bowl, but I anticipate tired pretty well (it’s 11:20 now, and I was right!)).  Started off with a rousing meeting to discuss SQL Saturday with a lot of the people who have run an event.  Quite an amazing bunch actually. The really great thing is that SQL Saturday has been and for the foreseeable future will be a loose confederation of events. As a Baptist, I know the pros and cons of this model really well. There is a governing group that tries to maintain some quality, but in the end it is up to the individual groups to get things right. The good thing is that every event stands alone, but the bad thing is that if the SQL Saturday name ever gets besmirched, well, SQLDayBeforeSunday will need to be formed (or Southern SQL Saturday, perhaps?)

This was followed by an afternoon of presentation prep (it is getting pretty smooth now…not 100% but it never will, really), a quick nap, and an episode of Mythbusters on my netbook (Tivo Desktop works great on this thing.)  Nothing like a good afternoon free to clear the head and prepare for an evening of activity.

When I got back to the convention center, bumped into my esteemed editor Tony Davis, and then my coworker David Bower. I barely realized that he was here, and we are at different hotels even (I made my own reservations to save a few bucks and to stay at a Hilton property…I am a points zombie… Points… Must have…points

Anyhow…Quizbowl was decent enough this year… some of the questions zipped right over our contestants heads (like Before and After…) so when they got to the one ridiculously hard category, it felt a bit like we were punishing them.  I hope everyone had fun, and could hear well enough. There was some mixup with the timing and the sound people didn’t get quite enough time for us to do a proper sound check… But the keynote people did practice, so for those of you who make it there… you shouldn’t be let down (an anonymous person named Denny Lee promised some exciting stuff 🙂

Finally, I bailed on the volunteer party because I was pooped out, but Anabel from RedGate gave me a ticket to the SQL Server Central Party, so I went and gambled with fake money.  Didn’t win anything gambling, but I did get a couple of movies (Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and a 4 Film Disc of the Christopher Reeve Superman flixs).

All in all, a great day, I think, and looking forward to tomorrow. I will have a table during the Birds of a Feather to discuss Database Design, and sometime the next few days I will be signing some books at the RedGate booth with Tim Ford (not our books, but random other books) so look for a tweet (http://twitter.com/drsql) or possibly a blog entry…And who knows, maybe I make it to a session or two tomorrow.  See you tomorrow!