Well, here I am in wonderful Vancouver. The plane ride last night was ugly with a 2 hour delay due to weather. I get in to YVR and for some reason, they pick me for some extra screening and I spend more precious time talking to an immigration officer. It might have been my friendly disposition due to the flight delays. By now, it is past midnight PDT and I figure I grab some cash (Canadian), jump a taxi, and get to my hotel. First ATM machine is not handing out cash to the person in front of me so on to the next. Second machine I get to it a Royal Bank of Canada machine and I put in my card, punch my digits and after processing, it just returns to the initial screen as if I was never there at all! What! Second try, goes through the workflow again and the machine starts to make noise like it is going to issue me my cash, more noise, more noise, keeps on machine the sound like it is issuing cash but no cash is being dispensed. Arg! I hit cancel until the machine surrenders my ATM card back to me. It is times like these where you wish you had ‘lsof’, ‘dsniff’ and a few other trusted tools on this ATM machine to figure out what they heck is going on. Oh well, I end up doing to the Exchange counter and handing them some USD for some Canadian coin. In the taxi, to the hotel and it is almost 1pm PDT. Unpack and lights out.

Wednesday morning, the registration is at 8am according to the schedule. 7:30am, I have Starbucks in hand and when 8am rolls around, no one is in the registration area. ☺ I love this conference. Reminds me of being back in Hawaii and everyone using appointment times as a general suggestion to when the event is to begin. Its almost 9am and it looks like registration will begin soon. Unlike previous CansecWest con’s, there is no breakfast served today so off to Starbucks again for some food. I’ll do my best to report on the sessions as the day goes on. If what you seek is content, there is no better con than Cansecwest (IMHO).

… it is now 9:45am and still no registration. ☺ We have progressed over the past hour 45 to at least have a table setup. Boxes of stuff are on the table but nothing that looks like registration will be open anytime soon.

…my last comment on this posting is that it is 12:15pm PDT and I am finally getting my badge from registration. No complaints. I am sure the content will not disappoint. Every year there is some CanSecWest schwag and this year it is a very cool jacket. Very nice.

--tk