Well - I'm just about to leave Houston - my flight leaves in an hour's time...

I'm quite chuffed - sitting here in comfort, enjoying a quick drink and snack in British Airway's Business Lounge.

Comfy sofa, free drinks, free food and - most importantly - free Internet...  This is a fantastic way to unwind from an incredibly hectic (and drunken) week...!

Flight should be interesting - it's the first time that I'll be flying Club World (i.e. business) class.  Unnecessary extravagance, or essential for long-haul trips?  I'll let you know in 18 hours time...

Well - for this year, at least... :)

Oh - what a night.  What a week!  I'm back in the hotel, it's 3am (Houston time), and I'm ridiculously drunk!  Happy days!

Today's opening was fantastic - it was an incredibly moving experience - in terms of the videos, the music and, most of all, hearing from Muhammad Yunus, a Nobel Peace Laureate - what an inspiring, humbling and phenomenal speech...  It's so rewarding to see Microsoft and its Partners supporting such great causes both at home, and abroad.

The farewell party was, well, spectacular.  Imagine a venue heaving with around 10,000 people - all being served with a seemingly infinite supply of free food and free alcohol.  The final closing fireworks were, well, stunning - it's obvious that Microsoft makes lots of money, and needs to spend a fair chunk of it (on top of giving away vast chunks already!)  :)

After the official close at 10pm, I sloped off with the UK Microsoft Dynamics team (Dynamics, for those who don't know Microsoft - is all around ERP and CRM, so think AX, CRM and NAV).  We also managed to catch up with Chris Parkes and James Akrigg...

It was also a great reunion between Adrian Shaw, Hayley Bass and myself.  I attended a Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 course a couple of months back, and Adrian was our trainer, and Hayley a fellow classmate (although she was in the class on reconnaissance on behalf of Microsoft, oh, and maybe because she was a then-newly-installed CRM PTS - they love their acronyms).

Yes - the sheer scale of the Partner Conference was stunning, and it was an absolute blast to catch up with so many folk - both Microsoft staff and other Partners.

On the business and technical side, the trip was incredibly rewarding, and I think has pretty much allowed Well Data Technologies to map out its future.  I think we now have a very clear direction on where the company should be evolving to - so watch out for some fairly major changes very soon...!

Regardless of what happens - I'll be back for the WPC next year, this time in New Orleans... :)

Yep - I have finally been able to buy the Microsoft Zune 80 - two of them, to be precise...

Well - why not?  They come in two different colours, after all... ;)

It has been so frustrating for the longest time, as these were supposed to have been launched in the UK some time ago (the "battle plan" has changed, and the Zune will launch in the UK in 2009 with the release of the 3rd Generation models).  So - bugger global strategic plans - I've flown to America to buy the current models here... :)

What a day of catch-ups... :)

It's been great to be able to catch up with so many folk - inside and out of Microsoft - at the Microsoft UK Welcome Drinks party earlier tonight...

What was especially pleasing was being able to catch up with two of my CRM course companions...  Hayley (Microsoft Dynamics CRM PTS), Adrian (our course instructor) and I (well, OK, it was pretty much all me) caused an immense amount of chaos at the Dynamics CRM 4.0 course taught by Firebrand a couple of months back...

So it was great to be able to catch up with a handful of the "old class", as it were... :)

Ah... I still reminisce about that course - what an utterly fantastic (if gruelling) 8 days that was... :)

It was Eddy's birthday today, and Microsoft were kind enough to organise a wee cake for him... :)

Well - maybe not as dramatic as that, but our visit to the Houston Space Center was somewhat... uninspiring... :(

It was a mix of disappointment at seeing old technology ("here is our Space Shuttle's prehistoric remotely operated arm - see how creaky and old it is, and how it is far inferior to the mechanised arms that you'd find in any car manufacturing plant"), to not seeing things at all ("here is building 25 - it houses some of the most interesting finds ever - rocks and dust from space...  Oh, and there is building number 43, it also contains... things").

Yes - having worked in the IT industry, I guess I'm somewhat deflated when I see that their computer equipment relies on old CRT monitors (no flat-screens here!) and decades-old engineering technology.  Not quite the high-tech, cutting edge toys I was expecting.  Having said that, NASA can claim some impressive feats of engineering, such as below:

OK - maybe I'm impressed because it's genuinely the biggest phallic device I've ever seen... :)

The other thing I wasn't expecting was how saccharine the whole experience was - it's so very kiddy-oriented.  Over the course of lunch, my eardrums were blasted by the soundtrack of High School Musical by Disney FM - sung along to (badly) by a bunch of kids.  There was a Mayan adventure park (that hark back to Aberdeen's crap Rambo-land - if you were a local and remember that) (and also - quite what do Mayans have to do with space travel?)...

And... Sorry if I sound cynical, but why is the Ford logo everywhere, along with random Ford cars splashed all over the place on display...?  When, exactly, did Ford contribute to space exploration (other than to provide cynical sponsorship cash)?

Even vaguely space-related items get a commercial shoo-in.  Behold the Houston Space Center web site - notice how John Williams' famous Star Wars theme gets blasted out by the site...?  Yeah - there was a Clone Wars exhibition in the Space Center...  I hope the young kiddies don't think this is all educational and real-life...!

Maybe I'm a bitter cynical person, but I came out distinctly unimpressed by the low-tech, and also slightly disgusted by the terribly commercial saccharine kid-oriented experience...

The future of space travel and exploration appears doomed...

Well - I was one of the first (definitely within the first group of 20 out of 10,000 people) to register for this year's Worldwide Partner Conference.

It is the calm before the storm, as the conference doesn't officially start until tomorrow...

Just to give you some semblance of scale here - I've taken photos of the dining area at the main convention centre and stitched a panoramic view here...  It's impressive how the dining tables just stretch out into (almost) infinity...!

A bunch of Microsoft Scotland people and Scottish Partners got together today to tour the Houston Space Center, and to have a beer or seven at the beach in Galveston.

It was great to catch up with so many of the Microsoft guys and, even though this was officially a Scottish party, it was good to see so many of the Reading folk crash it!  So, I spent the day harassing the likes of James Akrigg, Chris Parkes, Steve Clayton, as well as the usual Scottish culprits (what with Raymond, Stevie, James, Peter and Yvonne here, is there anyone left in the Microsoft Scotland office...?)

Hmm...  I spotted this drink "special" at an Irish pub...

So - on the Sunday night, Eddy (the other Well Data Technologies Director), Greg (our Sales Director - now pretty much permanently based out here in Houston), his significant other, and myself descended like locusts upon a Brazilian restaurant - Fogo de Chao.

The concept of food here is simple...  There are giant slabs of meat which are continually cooked by being rotated around a fiery, er, fire...

Each diner is given a simple disc - one side red, and one side green...

Essentially, when you turn your disc over to green - the waiters, laden with these giant slabs of cooked meat, will start slicing meat onto your plate until you turn your disc over again.  This is, in other words, an unrelenting buffet of flesh, all without the need to get up to pick your food...

The food was, essentially, barbequed to perfection - all very tasty!  There were 15 varieties of skewer-roasted meat - and I think we sampled them all in pretty generous proportions...  Like all things American, everything was done to excess - including the selection of wines, and salads...!

Yes - when I return to the UK, I will be a much fatter boy than I already am (if that's even possible)... 

A very short post, this.

Yes - it appears that the rumours are true.  Americans do super-size everything...

And really - I thought I had seen everything Japanese in Japan last month...  Well - this is the American take on Japanese cocktails.  Contains lots of cold sake, liqueurs (not named - probably because it'd take half a menu to do so), and tropical juices...

Let's just say I got a teensy bit drunk last night... ;)

OK - so the whole Cloud thing is becoming very big within Microsoft, and the number of online offerings has mushroomed - just check my post on the Microsoft Live offerings, for instance.

It therefore irks more than a little bit when I find out that some of the services don't play well with each other.  C'mon Microsoft - if you want people to adopt your online services, then make sure they work with each other!

My pet peeve at the moment?  The fact that Microsoft adCenter Analytics doesn't work with Microsoft Windows Live Spaces.

adCenter Analytics is supposed to track web site statistics - traffic and history, campaign and keyword comparisons, search engine performance, etc - all the kind of data you need to make sure your web-site is relevant to the online world.

So - after spending some moments trying to get adCenter to track my blog, I give up and e-mail Microsoft support.  The reply...?

---
Hello,
Thank you for contacting the Microsoft Analytics Support Team.
Unfortunately, at this time, Live Spaces is not compatible with the Microsoft Analytics tracking script.  We are working with them to allow the javascript widget to be implemented.  There is no timeline for when this might occur.
We apologize for any inconvenience that this may have caused.
We hope to add this feature in the near future.
We appreciate your patience in this matter.
Thank you for your inquiry.
Kind regards,
[snip]
Microsoft Analytics Support Team
---

Pah.  Get your respective acts together - Microsoft prides itself on interoperability between its products (that's why it gets sued so often!).  We need this level of interoperability between the newer generation of Cloud services...

(In Microsoft's defence, adCenter Analytics is still a beta product, and is still currently an invitation-only program.  So - small excuse...  But I'd expect this to be fixed when it comes out of beta, or I'll be somewhat disappointed...)

Indeed - I've now just arrived in Houston, and have checked into my hotel (the not-too-shabby Hotel Derek).

There is free wi-fi here, which pleases me greatly... :)

Still trying to adjust to local time - I pretty much got up at 3am UK time to get prepped and ready for my morning flight, so after 20 hours of travelling, I find it's only just turning 5pm here in Houston.  Going to meet up with Greg for dinner - he's our Sales Director, and is now pretty much permanently based out here.

Journey was a total non-event - and despite what people say about coming into the US, I found passing through their Customs and Border control a breeze - from stepping off the plane to stepping into a taxi took no longer than 30 minutes, by my reckoning.

There was a lovely big "Welcome to Houston" banner that Microsoft placed in the airport, in preparation for the WPC.  I was tempted to take a geeky photograph, but didn't in the end - worried that the heavy security presence here would rugby-tackle me, presuming me to be taking photos in order to plot some sort of 4th July terrorist incident...!

Anyway - I'm off to unpack.  Ta ta!

...And finally, some of this superstitious mumbo-jumbo actually affects lives in a very detrimental way.  For instance - our family owns a fairly large house in the Hong Kong mainland, near the border to China.  The house is not too old (around 15 years old, I think) and in good condition.  It's more than habitable, what with two lounges, two kitchens, two toilet rooms, four bathrooms, 12 bedrooms and a big open area rooftop.

Here's a link to a panoramic view from the rooftop patio (stitched using Windows Live Photo Gallery).

So - nice house.  But, it spends most of the time uninhabited.  Typically, it'd be used by my grandparents, as they're the only close family living in Hong Kong at the moment (well, apart from my aunt, who has quite a nice place of her own, so I can't see her and her family moving in).  Anyway - why have my grandparents recently gone and bought an apartment flat to live in instead?  Poxy, backwards superstition.

You see, for those who don't already know, one of the reasons for my returning to Hong Kong (after avoiding it for the past decade) is to visit my grandmother, who has recently been diagnosed with cancer.  Her cancer is one of the main reasons why she can't live in the family home in our rural village.  In the more rural areas of Hong Kong, cancer is still very much an unspoken disease - I think the locals must've not heard about the massive progress in medical technologies for diagnosing and treating cancer.  So - it's seen as a bad omen, and usually signifies that a person with cancer must've done something incredibly evil in their life to be punished like this.

And thus, my grandparents have moved out of the village and are living in a small apartment, hoping that the local villagers never get wind of the fact that my grandmother has cancer, and by association must have done something unspeakable...  If they do find out, she'd never be able to move back to the village - as she'd be treated as a stigma and pariah by the other villagers.

Yes - the Chinese aren't generally religious.  But sometimes they're as equally obtuse, due to their insistence in clinging onto mad superstition and old traditions.

There are also the bizarre traditions - the old wives tale of tiger bones being able to enhance one's life, and sharks fin bringing wealth and prestige.  And thus, tigers are hunted for their bones (which are ground into dust to be used as an ingredient in herbal medicines), and sharks are slaughtered in their hundreds of thousands, just for their fins.  It's not pleasant either - sharks are fished out of the ocean, fins sliced off them whilst still on the boats, and the hapless animal - still alive at this point - unceremoniously dumped back into the ocean, now without the ability to swim.  Needless to say, they don't last long in this state.

OK, so some people in Hong Kong are slowly coming to a more modern way of thinking (see picture below), but the majority still live their lives believing that consuming Shark's Fin brings them great health benefits.

I know that there are certain traditions and guff that need to be respected (I grudgingly accept mother-dearest's penchant for fortune tellers and charms, for instance), but really - is it acceptable in this day and age to slice off random appendages from animals in order to brew a soup that is purported to bring its drinker great wealth and prestige?

Given the cost of the the ingredient and the backlash from the growing awareness of this cull, I'd have thought any drinker would get the exact opposite of what they were looking for...

Well - it's 5am, and I'm sitting in Aberdeen Airport, currently awaiting my flight to Heathrow, where another plane will whisk me off to sunny Houston.

As I'm bored, I thought it a perfect opportunity to sit at the BT Openzone area, stealing their electricity, and updating my blog courtesy of my Vodafone 3G datacard.

So... a dribble of updates await!

Yes - it's a very sad day when one gets all wet about a new Bluetooth headset...

As you may recall, I bought a Jawbone headset last year, and what a fantastic headset it was too...  OK - perhaps it didn't look particularly sexy (what with it being as fat and out-of-proportion as its owner), but the noise cancellation technology was fantastic - people were generally not able to hear any background noise when I made calls in the car, for example.

Well, the Jawbone 2 (although don't call it that in front of manufacturers AliphCom - they maintain that it must be called "Jawbone" - identical to the original) has recently launched.  A smaller, sleeker device - it also has the next iteration of AliphCom's fantastic noise-cancellation technology (funkily called NoiseAssassin).

As I've broken my original Jawbone (the earloop keeps snapping due to my bad care - I've gone through about 4 earloops now), I thought I was well justified in buying the new device.

So behold, my sexy new Jawbone 2 (modelled by equally sexy owner).  I'll let you know what sound quality is like when I get a chance to use the thing...

If you're excited about such things (and yes, I'm one of those types) - here's a box shot, and also a shot of the old Jawbone (left) with the new one (right)...  More photos can be found here.