Today was supposed to be a good day and aside from my outlook it really was. I got up early and took the bus downtown, I like taking the bus, to the convention center for OOPSLA. I managed to get there early enough that when I got in the registration line, it was really short. 10 minutes later I was done and the line was huge. I did think the conference was poorly run. No microphone in the first lecture. No internet terminals for folks to check email and stock prices. No paper or pens in the pack they handed out to take notes with. I did remember to bring a pen just in case but somehow managed to lose it before the first lecture. It was next to impossible to figure out where the lectures were without sorting through the proceedings book which was fairly large. I got lucky for my first lecture, they included a sheet of paper with last minute room changes, the lecture I was attending had a last minute change. I was able to take the time to figure out the room for my second lecture. Oh and the thing that probably irked me most about the conference organization. On the web page they mention that it is at the Seattle Convention Center, but give no indication where in Seattle this is, or even a link to the convention center's web site. I was pretty sure I knew and was I was right, but that seems like a bit of an oversight; not everyone attending was from Seattle (in fact many were not from the US).

Other things that really annoyed me today:
People who just stand on escalators taking up both sides, move over if you are just going to stand there especially when someone makes the effort to make a lot of noise when they get stuck behind you. I got tired of asking people to move out of the way.
The second session I signed up for was postponed for a few hours and to kill time I thought I would go play some pinball at Gameworks. They require you to pay $15 minimum to play any games! This would be fine if I were planning to make an afternoon of it, but I wasn't. It is nice that I can use the remainder some other time, but I am not interested in figuring out if and when I was going to come back. Business seemed alittle slow for them to be turing away business, do they really make that much on the weekends to support next to no business during the week.
People with signs begging for money doesn't really bother me as much as amuse me (no I am not amused at homelessness, I buy about 4 copies of the same 'Real Change' every month). Today when the guy with the sign asking for money asked me outloud for money, I got angry. No I didn't do anything other than think angry thoughts. I was thinking, "What the hell; do you think I can't read? If you are going to ask me for money anyway, why do you have to stupid sign. If I am illiterate, I either can't afford to give you money or I am a high ranking member of the republican party and believe I can help you by giving the nicely dressed man next to you money instead".

I think I have mostly been stressing about the barge, how busy it is making me and how slowly the work is going. I am feeling better after stopping by the barge tonight and seeing a whole lot of work was done today. I think they might even be able to finish up with their work by the end of the week (but I am not counting on it).