Day 503

I am exhausted! I got up at 6 AM and didn't get back to the hotel until 6 PM. In between, I didn't even have time to go to the bathroom. Somebody brought me a turkey sandwich from one of those vending machines about 3 PM, but I didn't have time to eat it until almost five. To say I had "first day" problems would have been an understatement. I had huge problems.

There were no electrical outlets anywhere near the exhibit space, so I couldn't even use my good phantom power lav mics . I had to use the on-board camera mic instead and ended up picking up a lot of noise from the hall. The hall was so noisy in fact that I don't know if there was anything I could have done that would have made a difference. The pictures looked good. The sound: not so good. My video editing software crashed about ten in the morning. Luckily, I have two "users" on my laptop: both me. When I logged in as the "other" me, the software worked again. That was great. What wasn't so great was that my e-mail didn't work for the "other" me. I had never bothered to set it up and couldn't remember my SSL password. I kept logging and out all day long to work on the video and check my e-mail for approvals from Germany and Orlando. One me kept telling the other me that I didn't have administrative privileges and wouldn't give me the files I wanted. Most of my graphic files for the video were on the volume where the editing program didn't work. I kept having to drag them to the public folder and log in again as my other self to access them.

Remember, I originally bid this job with a four person crew. I'm still doing everything the four person crew was supposed to do, but there is only me. The people who were interested in the energy blog wondered why I wasn't writing all day. The people who wanted YouTube videos wondered why I was wasting time writing at all. I wasn't allowed by corporate to Tweet directly to Twitter. I had to e-mail my Tweets to somebody in Florida and then they would we Tweeted later after they were approved. When people out at the booth wanted me to Tweet something, they lost interest real quickly when I told them it wouldn't appear on Twitter until two days later

With all they problems I was having, I'll have to say that everyone in the booth was super nice to me. I think they understood what I was dealing with, since most of them had an insane workload themselves. The show itself was pretty amazing. There were 3-D virtual reality presentations. There was a Flash Mob who came and disrupted things at random intervals with pretty professional acappella vocals. There were elaborate models of things I only vaguely understand. My little YouTube videos were pretty Plain Jane compared to some of the things I saw today.

Hopefully, I'll get a little more sleep than I did last night. I'm not even bothering with supper tonight. I'm too tired to walk half a mile to the restaurant on the other side of the hotel. Sleep actually sounds better than room service too. That's how tired I am.

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Day 502

Well, I've only been here a few hours and I can already tell I've made a few miscalculations. I certainly didn't need to lug a big suitcase full of nice clothes down here. When I went to the orientation meeting at the Magnolia Hotel this afternoon, we were all handed blue logo polo shirts and told to wear black pants. Ironically, this is almost exactly the same way I dress for Dalmatian Rescue casino parties. I could have just worn my roulette dealer outfit and I'd blend right in.

Luckily, my handy 4G hotspot works just fine here in Houston. The only problem is that nobody knows where I am supposed to actually send the files when I'm finished with them. One of the client's marketing people said they'd find me the address of an FTP server to upload my movies to tomorrow. I hope they do. Otherwise I'm just all dressed up with no place to go.

Some of the clients invited me to go to a Brazilian restaurant with them this evening. I went back to my hotel room and ordered room service instead. I knew that was the only way I'd even have a ghost of a chance of reading through tons of PDF files containing the weeks speaker presentations before tomorrow morning. Oh, and I have to get this blog finished too. I can't forget that.

I wish I was staying in the posh downtown boutique hotel where my clients were staying. It's not that I dislike the rundown old Crown Plaza across from Reliant Center, it's just that if I were staying in the same place as everybody else, it would save me a ton of cab money. At this rate, I'm going to run out of the money that I allotted for cab fare by Tuesday.

As soon as I finish this, I'm going to put together a short little practice video to see how long it takes to upload. This definitely won't be a work of art. There isn't much to look at in this room anyway. There's a laptop on a little desk, an iPhone recharging, some room service plates and glasses, some clothes I probably won't even end up wearing and an air conditioner I can't figure out how to turn off.

I need to remember to put in a wake up call for 6 AM. I need to be at Reliant Center by 7:30 AM. It's going to be a long day.

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Day 492

For the second time this week I went to the AT&T store to buy a 4G dongle for my laptop. And for the second time this week, I walked away with nothing. All I wanted was the 4G dongle, but the sales guy kept trying to get me to switch my home phones, internet and TV from the cable company to their own U-verse system. The sales guy didn't even seem to listen when I told him that several years ago a technician had already been out to my house and told me that my house couldn't be hooked up to a fiber optic network because the wiring was too old. He didn't seem to listen when I told him that several of my neighbors had already tried U-verse and hated it so much that they made the phone company take it out again. All he kept telling me was how much money I'd save if I switched and that he'd throw the dongle I wanted in for free if I signed up for U-verse today.

I hate high pressure sales pitches. Just put a price on it and let me decide. If I've got a question, I'll ask you, but you're not ever going to get me to make a decision on the spot. In fact, the more often you go back and talk to your manager to see if you can make me a special one day only deal, the less likely it is that I'll buy anything at all.

I'm still not even sure if I'll have any use for this high speed Internet hotspot. I got a message from my client in Germany today telling me that "Yes, I will definitely be taking photos and video at their booth during the oil and gas conference." Then I looked at the conference website again and it still said "All photography and video recording are strictly forbidden." This ought to be interesting.

Ill be happy to get Dot's bandage off tomorrow, so she can walk normally again. It takes a lot longer to walk and take care of two Dalmatians separately than it does when they're together. Dash seems to like being walked all by himself, but Dot is starting to hate the bandage. I don't blame her. It's been so wet lately that I have to put a thick plastic baggie over the bandage whenever I take her outside. Needless to say, the bag doesn't stay on very well when she sees a squirrel in the yard.

I just noticed that I now have over 1000 Twitter followers. What does one do with 1000 Twitter followers? Twitter is still a bit of a mystery to me. It seems like it ought to be useful, but I still haven't figured out what to do with it.

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Day 490

We had a little emergency today. Dot has a terrible phobia of storms and when we were returning from our evening walk, she saw a couple of lightning bolts off in the distance and panicked. I could barely hold on to both dogs as she tugged on the leash to get up the hill to our house as fast as she could. When I was taking her leash off in the hallway, I noticed blood all over the floor. Dot had completely pulled out one of the nails in her front paw. She was still so upset about the approaching storm that she didn't even notice that anything was wrong. Luckily, our vet is nearby and it only took a few minutes to get her to the hospital so they could stop the bleeding. Dot now has a big bandage on her left foot and a toenail that may or may not grow back. Just about all Dot's injuries have come from being overly excited. Sometimes I wish she was a calmer dog, but she probably never will be. Excitability is just part of her personality.

The publisher of Dallas Dog Life gave me some sample copies of their new 2011 resource guide today. The ad that I ran in the magazine looks great, but I'll be amazed if it brings me any new business. I've run ads for my company in all sorts of magazines over the years, but none of them have really been game changers. Word of mouth still works best for me. I believe in advertising, but I'll be the first to to admit that a good recommendation from the right person can be worth more than five glossy magazine ads.

Slowly but surely, I'm getting all the details worked out for my upcoming trip to Houston. I've got a hotel now. I've got my airline reservations. I've just about decided what equipment I need to take. Now I just need to figure out what is actually going to be happening at the conference.

I know one thing that won't be happening tomorrow. Dot won't be going to training class. She needs to take things easy for a few days and give herself a chance to heal. I just hope we don't have any more rain this week.

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