Orlando Seminar 2007
February 23, 2007
Things had quieted down on the travel front for a while, but they are picking up now. I am sitting in the Orlando airport as I write this. I just finished a week of training. I was suppose to leave next week for Hawaii to do two classes, PM machines and upgrade machines. That has been pushed off until April. There is a possibility of two one day training classes in early April, Mike will be just getting back from vacation so I am assuming that I will do them. This weekend we have Karen's aunts staying at our house Sunday night. The following weekend we have to go to Des Moines to babysit the niece and nephews for the weekend, so we will be busy. There is also a seminar in Pittsburgh coming up soon.
Since I am going to Hawaii in April we are planning to change our vacation from Turks and Caicos to Hawaii. I will tack on an extra week after the seminar is done and Karen will fly down and meet me. We (mostly me) wants to dive with the mantas. They come to Hawaii in early spring. You dive at night with a flashlight which attracts plankton and the mantas swim in big loops in front of you scooping up the plankton. Since this is a night dive I am not sure if Karen will do this. I would rather vacation in Provo, but the diving in Hawaii should be good.
I stayed at the Crown Plaza just north of the airport. It is a nice building, it is L shaped and the inside area of the L is enclosed in glass. Kelly booked my rental car with Thrifty because it was $200 cheaper than Avis. The thrifty rental lot is next to Crown Plaza so that worked out well. The people at the front desk were a little stand offish. When I checked in I was told I could not get a non smoking room until 3:00 PM (I checked in at noon). When I told her I was with Minntech and I had a banquet room there she found a room for me. The front desk people were never rude but they always seemed put out when I asked for something.
The banquet room was small, dark and hot. It was smaller than usual, and we were packed in almost like sardines, compared to the rooms I have had lately. The air conditioning was almost nonexistent. I tried shutting the doors and the room did not cool, I tried opening the doors and it was still hot. The lighting in the room was so bad that I had to buy flashlights.
Even though the room was small dark and hot the banquet staff was great. When I was setting up they checked to see if I needed anything, I asked for another large table and for them to remove one of the small tables from the room and they did. They did forget to get me a small round table that I had requested, but I left a message that night and the table was in the room the following morning. The food was pretty good for hotel food and the servers were very professional. They were polite and very attentive when the food was being served. They would collect the dishes when the people finished eating. this is not the norm, usually they just put a tray in the back for the room for people to set their plates on.
My hotel room was nice, no complaints, well maybe one, the high speed Internet was $8.95 per day so I had to use my dial-up. The bathroom had a marble vanity. The workout room was nice, it had two treadmills, a universal type gym and dumbbells. It is located in the middle of the atrium/glass enclosed area, which I usually hate because I don't like to walk through the lobby in my workout clothes, but this worked out well. I was just a short jaunt from the elevator to the workout room.
All in all, the front desk staff was a little stand offish, the banquet people and servers were great, and the room was unacceptable.
The classes went well for the most part. I got a late start the first day of the first class because, I had gotten locked out of the room Monday night when I was setting up. I went to get some duct tape and when I came back the room was locked. I decided that I would tape the water hoses down the following day. This would have worked, but my computer was not cooperating when I started it the next morning. Somehow the serial port for Renalog had changed and the Zebra printer would not communicate. Also, I got the blue screen of death twice when I booted my computer and it looked like was computer was not going to work. I was finally able to run Norton and seemed to have fixed the problem. Combined with the late start, the first class asked a ton of questions so we went to 3:30 on the second day.
I am always torn about what to do after class, I know Orlando fairly well and I thought about going to City Walk or International Boulevard, but it comes down to the reality that I will have to drive 20 minutes to get there and then look for a place to eat BY MYSELF, then just hang out, go to video arcade, or bar. It just does not seem worth the effort. I actually spent part of Monday evening and Wednesday evening working a project for work. I did drive to The Florida Mall on Tuesday. I needed flashlights for the room and I considered buying a pair of Dockers, most of mine are khaki and I was hoping to get another color, but no luck. I thought about eating at a restaurant near the mall but I don't like eating by myself. So I only made two trips out of the hotel all week.
Things had quieted down on the travel front for a while, but they are picking up now. I am sitting in the Orlando airport as I write this. I just finished a week of training. I was suppose to leave next week for Hawaii to do two classes, PM machines and upgrade machines. That has been pushed off until April. There is a possibility of two one day training classes in early April, Mike will be just getting back from vacation so I am assuming that I will do them. This weekend we have Karen's aunts staying at our house Sunday night. The following weekend we have to go to Des Moines to babysit the niece and nephews for the weekend, so we will be busy. There is also a seminar in Pittsburgh coming up soon.
Since I am going to Hawaii in April we are planning to change our vacation from Turks and Caicos to Hawaii. I will tack on an extra week after the seminar is done and Karen will fly down and meet me. We (mostly me) wants to dive with the mantas. They come to Hawaii in early spring. You dive at night with a flashlight which attracts plankton and the mantas swim in big loops in front of you scooping up the plankton. Since this is a night dive I am not sure if Karen will do this. I would rather vacation in Provo, but the diving in Hawaii should be good.
I stayed at the Crown Plaza just north of the airport. It is a nice building, it is L shaped and the inside area of the L is enclosed in glass. Kelly booked my rental car with Thrifty because it was $200 cheaper than Avis. The thrifty rental lot is next to Crown Plaza so that worked out well. The people at the front desk were a little stand offish. When I checked in I was told I could not get a non smoking room until 3:00 PM (I checked in at noon). When I told her I was with Minntech and I had a banquet room there she found a room for me. The front desk people were never rude but they always seemed put out when I asked for something.
The banquet room was small, dark and hot. It was smaller than usual, and we were packed in almost like sardines, compared to the rooms I have had lately. The air conditioning was almost nonexistent. I tried shutting the doors and the room did not cool, I tried opening the doors and it was still hot. The lighting in the room was so bad that I had to buy flashlights.
Even though the room was small dark and hot the banquet staff was great. When I was setting up they checked to see if I needed anything, I asked for another large table and for them to remove one of the small tables from the room and they did. They did forget to get me a small round table that I had requested, but I left a message that night and the table was in the room the following morning. The food was pretty good for hotel food and the servers were very professional. They were polite and very attentive when the food was being served. They would collect the dishes when the people finished eating. this is not the norm, usually they just put a tray in the back for the room for people to set their plates on.
My hotel room was nice, no complaints, well maybe one, the high speed Internet was $8.95 per day so I had to use my dial-up. The bathroom had a marble vanity. The workout room was nice, it had two treadmills, a universal type gym and dumbbells. It is located in the middle of the atrium/glass enclosed area, which I usually hate because I don't like to walk through the lobby in my workout clothes, but this worked out well. I was just a short jaunt from the elevator to the workout room.
All in all, the front desk staff was a little stand offish, the banquet people and servers were great, and the room was unacceptable.
The classes went well for the most part. I got a late start the first day of the first class because, I had gotten locked out of the room Monday night when I was setting up. I went to get some duct tape and when I came back the room was locked. I decided that I would tape the water hoses down the following day. This would have worked, but my computer was not cooperating when I started it the next morning. Somehow the serial port for Renalog had changed and the Zebra printer would not communicate. Also, I got the blue screen of death twice when I booted my computer and it looked like was computer was not going to work. I was finally able to run Norton and seemed to have fixed the problem. Combined with the late start, the first class asked a ton of questions so we went to 3:30 on the second day.
I am always torn about what to do after class, I know Orlando fairly well and I thought about going to City Walk or International Boulevard, but it comes down to the reality that I will have to drive 20 minutes to get there and then look for a place to eat BY MYSELF, then just hang out, go to video arcade, or bar. It just does not seem worth the effort. I actually spent part of Monday evening and Wednesday evening working a project for work. I did drive to The Florida Mall on Tuesday. I needed flashlights for the room and I considered buying a pair of Dockers, most of mine are khaki and I was hoping to get another color, but no luck. I thought about eating at a restaurant near the mall but I don't like eating by myself. So I only made two trips out of the hotel all week.
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