I’m trapped.  At 8:30 they put us on a bus and shipped us to the Hewlett-Packard campus.  The sessions have been non-stop each day, with only five-minute breaks between each session.

The campus itself is amazing, in a natural setting that is almost totally unrecognizable as a manufacturing facility.  It looks like a wooded office park. There’s also an exercise room, but also security guards at each hall intersection.

As for the sessions, most have been sales spiels, either from HP or third-party partners.  Most were discussions about future products, which I can’t discuss because of a non-disclosure statement I had to sign.  It also included a tour of their server manufacturing floor.

The best session, by far was David Thornburg’s presentation.  He has lots of cool toys, and I want his job.  There were several online tools he told us about, including the Visual Thesaurus, which creates a mind map from a given concept.

We had about  30 minutes at the hotel before loading back on the bus and heading to the Downtown Aquarium.  The dinner was excellent, but the aquarium itself was extremely lame.  It’s headline attraction was a miniature train that went through a shark tunnel.  There was an overly loud, over-the-top narration as this train went through a 30 foot tunnel.  The actual aquarium displays had goofy setsand loud animal sounds playing throughout.  Of course, to exit the aquarium, you HAD to walk through the gift shop.  Definitely not of the same caliber as Monterrey Bay.

So this brings us to now.  I’m sitting in a workshop about data warehousing.  They have us captive here again.  after this is one more workshop, then they ship us to a place called County Line Barbeque, with no stop at the hotel.  More later.

One very strong margarita later…

The County Line had good ribs, but we were seated at the very back, so by the time the plates were passed, they were out of the best stuff.  It also took forever to get dessert.  Apart from that, it was fun.  Back to the hotel, check e-mail, check the UFFP, pack, then an early turn-in for tomorrow’s indoctrination and long travel