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April 09, 2005
Attending Conferences
I am currently at NotACon in Cleveland, having a great time. Yesterday, I was out at the Great Lakes Brewing Co. for dinner, and had a lot of fun talking to other folks in Syn Ack Labs, namely Jack Lloyd, Viki Navratilova and her fiance, Larry, and of course, Todd MacDermid.
There's a table that we've set up for Syn Ack Labs t-shirts and stickers, so stop by if you're in Cleveland! There's also a pizza party we're throwing today after Froggy and Tyger's keynote. So, stop by for free pizza if you're in the area.
I was at GFIRST in Orlando from Monday to Friday of this week as well. I think speaking at two conferences in a row if rough, especially if the speaking topics are entirely different from one another. There was a lot of activities sponsored at GFIRST by various corporations, including an excursion to Sea World. I can't say that I would want to ever go to Sea World again. I saw the Shamu Rocks America show, and was disappointed that it was only 20 minutes long.
Well, it was really 30 minutes, but 10 minutes of the 'Shamu show' was padded out by insulting the audience members. Yes, I meant that. There were cameras installed all over the Shamu seating area. For 10 minutes they played these cheesy wedding songs like 'Y.M.C.A.' and panned the camera on just about everyone in the audience. That would have been OK, but they took the liberty of adding bubbles over people's heads and saying what I thought were rude things. For example, the camera panned on a bald guy, followed by a bubble that says 'Bald Is Beautiful'.
I mean, who needs that? There was another panned scene of a guy's fat gut. Oh, by the way, this is all broadcasting on a very large screen in front of the audience so everyone can laugh at the victim's expense. I thought it was mean-spirited. When Shamu splashed water on the audience, the camera of course zoomed in on the kid that was crying as he was being deluged with water. I didn't go to the stupid show to see that, and I definitely would not recommend it to anyone else either. Sea World sucks, big time. I'll just stick to Disney World, thank you.
Posted by Kathy at April 9, 2005 11:20 AM