Portland

I was at Portland over the weekend to speak at the PostgreSQL Conference West.  I flew out on a flight so empty I had three seats to myself.  The flight back was packed like sardines.  Go figure.  While there, I

• missed my bus home because it was four minutes early, and thus spent twenty minutes in 40 degree weather in a T-shirt waiting for the next one.  I know it was four minutes because that's how early I got there and I saw its tail lights vanishing down the street.  Public transportation can bite me.
• had a dinner of appetizers because all the buffet food was gone at the sponsored (that is, free) dinner by the time Jason and I got there "fashionably late."
• talked to a couple at the same dinner who had spent 3 years in China (him) and Japan and Australia and Thailand (her).  They are planning a trip to "Vietnam, or maybe Cambodia" this December, because it's been two years since they've been out of the country, which is to say, practically forever.  I'm jealous.
• gave a talk to the smallest audience of my professional career, about ten people.
• saw a talk by Jeff Davis of Truviso, who is doing some very cool and cutting edge technology in streaming databases.  I gave him my resume but I doubt they will be willing to take a chance on me since my background isn't super related to what they are looking for.  Jeff's boss emailed me back saying they have openings on the reporting team, aka "the boring stuff."
• ate the best damn sandwich I can remember, ever, at a Vietnamese sandwich joint.  The sandwiches were served on freshly-baked demi-baguettes -- this seems weird until you remember that Vietnam was a French colony for a while -- with carrots and cilantro and some crisp shredded white asian vegetable that Jason could not identify.  (But, he said, "it's nasty outside a sandwich.")  I got a bag of their baguettes to take home and tonight I did my best imitation with sirloin and soy sauce and garlic and onion and carrot and cilantro but no white asian vegetable.  I shredded extra carrots instead.  Alas, the baguette had homogenized a bit -- the crust was no longer as crunchy and the inside no longer as moist.  Decent but no longer fantastic.

I like Portland.  It's more expensive than Utah (duh) but not insane like California.  It is temperate but not nearly as rainy as Seattle.  It has a lot of software companies and an active geek scene.  There are even places not too far from the city where you can get five acres for a reasonable sum.  And they have tons of good ethnic restaurants, although when I asked Jason to take me to a Filipino place he was stumped.  Guess no place is perfect.