Palm Developer Day trip: Day 1
Mood: excited
Posted on 2010-04-23 21:01:00
Tags: palm travel
Words: 490

I'm in Sunnyvale, CA for the Palm Developer Day. The story thus far:

When I booked my Alaska Airlines flight on Orbitz, there were only like 2 seats available, so I reluctantly took a middle seat. This morning, I checked in online, and there were suddenly more seats available, so I chose 6F, the only window seat.

Andrew graciously drove me to the airport, and I had grabbed lunch (tacos!) and was sitting by the gate when I heard the gate agent mention to someone else that row 6 was right against the bulkhead. This meant that I wouldn't be able to put my backpack in front of me (since there was no seat), so after a little deliberation, I decided to switch, even if it meant no window seat. So I went up to the agent, and she moved me to 7C, an aisle seat. As I was leaving, she said "Thank you, Mr. Johnson". I paused, but didn't see anything on my new ticket that said "Johnson", so I didn't say anything.

Anyway, we boarded, and two people were assigned seat 6D (aisle seat), one of whom was named Johnson. So the gate agent came on and said that Johnson was supposed to be in 7C, so I got up and sat in first class with another displaced passenger while the gate agent went back to the terminal to try to sort things out. Finally after another 10 minutes she said we could just stay in first class!

I felt a little bad that the whole situation seemed to be my fault, but first class is pretty sweet - cushier seats with more legroom and horizontal room, complementary food and drinks (even alcohol! Shoulda taken advantage...) and a personal entertainment system on which I watched an Arrested Development and a Simpsons, and started The Fantastic Mr. Fox before changing my mind and reading.

Continuing the theme of "Greg makes mistakes at other people's expense", upon arriving in San Jose I called the hotel about their shuttle, and after a moment the clerk told me to just take a cab and they'd reimburse me. Pretty sure I was supposed to schedule the shuttle in advance. Oh well.

After arriving and relaxing a bit, I went out walking in search of dinner and something to take notes in at tomorrow's sessions. Dinner was easy to find (an Afghani place right next to the hotel), but finding a place with a notebook took an hour of walking.

Tomorrow should be fun! I just read on Twitter (search for #palmdev for the latest info) that attendees today got a Palm Pre Plus developer phone, so I'm hopeful I will too :-) The hotel loses points for no WiFi in the rooms (cabled only) but gets some of them back for providing tea bags...

Apologies for the length - maybe I should add support for lj-cuts to LJ for WebOS :-)

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3 comments

Comment from onefishclappin:
2010-04-28T08:08:03+00:00
I didn't realize that you were heading out to SV - I could have clued you on to some great restaurants. Which hotel were you at?

Comment from gregstoll:
2010-04-28T11:26:06+00:00
Doh! That would have been perfect...oh well.

I stayed at the Grand Hotel off of El Camino Real.

Comment from onefishclappin:
2010-04-28T12:09:10+00:00
Note to self - don't go to the Grand Hotel. We usually do Residence Inn (right next to AMD), Plaza Suites, or The Biltmore. But those are also on the company's roll, not my money.
There's a great burger place that was about 3 1/2 miles walking from your hotel.

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