In direct contrast with my last trip to the Bay Area, this one is going well so far. I'm in Mountain View for Mashup Camp. The flight down was actually early and nearly empty - I had my side of the bulkhead row to myself. On the other side of the aisle was Todd Biggs from MSN, who was the one who announced the availability of free tools for building IM bots and MSN Messenger Activities with Conversagent. Long time readers of this blog might remember that I've been involved with programming to MSN Messenger in the past, so it was great to spend some time with someone from the product (service?) team.
To top it off, Avis was out of normal cars, so I ended up with a red convertible Mustang. Yes, I can hear your pity coming my way now.
Of course, no trip is all early arrivals and convertibles. As my wife wrote a week ago, ours is the House of Plague. Everyone back home is still sick to some degree. And to top it off, today is Patrick's birthday. We had his party yesterday morning, so really the celebration was all weekend, but it's hard enough to be gone much less when my boy is turning three.