Percona Live: MySQL Conference and Expo @ Santa Clara : April 1-4

April 1st - Traveling and Tutorial Sessions:
Percona Live: MySQL Conference and Expo was held at Hyatt Regency in Santa Clara from April 1-4, 2014. I was selected as one of the participants to attend this (mysterious) event after undergoing many inhumane, excruciatingly painful trials that would put Hercules' 12 labors to shame. Then again I still have doubts as to the validity of the event given it starts on April Fools' Day. What is April Fools' Day?

Google's version of April Fools' Day was Pokemon Hunting, I managed to find 52 of them before saying, "I'm done for the night".

Anywho, March 31st, 2014, one of the saddest day of my life, How I Met Your Mother aired their finale of the season and the show... It was painful and tear jerking an hour long episode. Even then, it is still one of the best shows ever! I'll miss The Couple - Marshall & Lily, The Player - Barney, The Alien (Is Canada even located on Earth?) - Robin and most of all, The Romantic - Theodore Evelyn Mosby. Oh! Of course the poor kids who sat on the couch for 9 years without even a bathroom break in middle of the long and arduous story-telling by their dad.... 

After that silly moment, here I am after less than 4hrs of sleep, on Southwest flight flying to San Jose and then driving to Santa Clara. I've never been to that part of California before. SD booked us (3 people) flight, rooms and the tickets for the event! I hope I get to learn much at this conference about MySQL and Hadoop and everything about creating and managing them along with other sessions on Database Administration.

On the other hand, it's April 1st, which means the semester ends in less than 6 weeks. And classes for next semester are already up. 

Fun thing abt domestic flights, they are hardly ever full during weekdays, at least from my brief experience. I was reminded of this when the captain ordered all of us to sit on the windows seats to trick other flights into thinking we had a full house. And of course the hostess and hosts act less formally, which is nice! Like wearing an oxygen mask as a cap (it ends up looking like a fez, fezzes are cool!)? Or tying the seatbelt around ones head or trying to hypnotizing us.... "You are sleepy.... You are not thirsty.... It is dark outside... Peanuts makes you gassy.... You don't want to eat them.... You are sleepy.... You are not thirsty..."

Southwest flight at the airport as we are boarding, open seat, so I get to pick my favorite position, right next to the wings:

The flight about 3mins into takeoff:

Whee Las Vegas in the day:

Crop circles:

In-flight stats:

Weird stuff on the mountains:

     

Scary part about flying through clouds is not whether or not another aircraft is heading against you, but whether or not there is a wall in front of you, or predators like sharks are waiting for you or not.... I mean a hurricane in the Pacific Ocean could sent those beasties into the sky... Or the kraken... I hope I could hear the words... "Release the Kraken!" Before it crushes us... Or plays with us....

Santa Clara is supposed to have a wet weather this week! As much I love rain, I hope it's good rain! I mean a torrential storm wouldn't go unappreciated.... 

In-flight stats about 10 minutes before landing:

San Jose from the sky, what are those weird things... in what I think people call green color???:

    

San Jose airport:

Santa Clara:

Hyatt Regency:

Of course their magazine selection for me in the room:

Black magic happening right outside my window! There is water falling from the sky!:

   

First hands-on-tutorial - From Relational to Hadoop - Migrating your data pipeline:

 
Lunch @ the convention. They served some great choices:

Dinner @ the hotel bar:

April 2nd & 3rd & 4th - Keynote, Sessions, Expo Day!:
Keynotes:

Where are all the attendees from?:

Sessions - By Baron Schwartz (author of High Performance MySQL) [left], Continuent [right]:

   

Hiring board (everyone was looking to hire!):

Passport - Gather stamps from various booths:

Fusion io was there making buttons for visitors to the booth. Of course, I got some custom made... also got my first restraining order for not following the rules :D :

The fun fusion io folks and the photograph in evidence for the restraining order:

I managed to snag 4 buttons in all (left to right, top to bottom, the order in which I got them):

Among various other swags, I also got a sword (and got it past airport security as well!):

I also got to meet folks from: Dropbox, Twitter, Yelp, Facebook, Western Digital, Micron, and tons of database companies like Blackbird, Maria DB (Skysql), Percona, etc.

The hotel displayed various info and models of things from Alcatraz, the once a lighthouse, then military fortification, military prison and federal prison, for example - the prison cell, photographs, keys, etc.

     

    

    

            

 

Also one morning, while waiting for coworker to descent for breakfast, I score my highest on Threes ever:

April 4th - Flying back:
San Jose airport has special seats with power options!:

The flight was delayed by 25mins and with the boarding and it being a full house, took more than 40mins to take off:

    

San Jose from the sky:

Excerpt/Monologue:

So I have boarded the flight taking me back go Las Vegas or El Paso if I fell asleep and my compatriots were being devious. Well they are devious... Whether they are devious to me is the question... Typically I love return journey, it's always appears fast... Except this time, the flight was delayed abt 20mins and we were fully boarded abt 35mins later. The plane was not cleaned so I got ritz cheese biscuits at my feet. Also the AC is turned on at full blast so basically the basic flight and safety instructions fell on occupied ears of mine.... 

Las Vegas from the sky:

   

Whee landed:

So the main question - How was the conference? What did you gain from it?
Answer: It was an interesting conference. I've learned much and lost much. Some talks I understood, some took a while, and some I'll never know.