My php|tek 2007 experience started on Monday at 10:30pm when I realized I was all ready to go… oh, except for being whole being packed thing.
My flight was at 6:45am, and I am an hour from the airport, so after hastily packing (and i only forgot my cell phone charger), I went to bed at around midnight. I woke up at 3am to get ready for my flight, and got myself to the airport and to Chicago with relative ease.
A special note to floridians, if flying in flip-flops (which are the only type of shoes I own) don’t get the 1st row seats, there is a cold draft that will freeze your toes off. Oh well, live and learn.
So I arrive at the Regency hotel on Tuesday right at about 8:45, and got my badge and schwag from Marco, Sean, Paul and their minions, and meet some other people who at this moment I don’t recall.
Some time after, Sara and Elizabeth (Smith) turned up and that’s when the fun started. I also met Vidyut Luther, Elizabeth Naramore and Cal Evans.
I attended Sara’s 3hr Extensions tutorial, which was very good, I learned a lot, and I look forward to making the move into PECL before too long. Yes… phear me!
Tuesday night, started almost immediately after the sessions at around 5:30pm in the hotel bar, where I started drinking with both Elizabeths, Sara and Johanna Cherry (yes, Axe body spray works!)
The night went from there, with myself, Andrei, Derick, Jay Pipes (MySQL), John and Sara all played Texas Hold’em, Sara was first out, Jay second… then things start to get fuzzy, I know I didn’t win, and I know John did… what happened though, is a little blurry. I swear, the waitress was trying to get me drunk, she just kept bringing me drinks 
We closed out the hotel bar at around 1:30am.
That night I was quite adamant that Elizabeth Smith was not allowed to drive after drinking and gave up my bed to her (and on a plus note, my back has been much happier after a night on a flat floor!). I have found in my copious drinking experience, it’s always easier to be a little uncomfortable than stressing on someone else driving home, so it was a more selfish move than it might appear 
We (somehow) woke up at 8am the next morning and I spent my Wednesday completing my slides for my “Everything But The Code” talk. Yes, a talk on project planning that I wasn’t as well planned for as I had thought I would be. I wore my SLUT shirt, for the first time in public, which was a little nerve wracking, but I had pretty much been dared to do so, and well, we must show our true colors with our friends, no? The reaction from the crowds were mostly what I wanted. Though I got a few weird looks, and then Derick says “Why does your shirt say ‘The End’?” Turns out SLUT is swedish for “The End” so thats my excuse from now on.
Wednesday night we took a “short” (2 miles, Jason Sweat, I swear to god dude, you need to work on your distance perception) walk to a nice restaurant which was a little overwhelmed when it was swarmed under with about 30 geeks wanting food and beer. The walk would have been OK, say, in sunlight. Warm sunlight. But it felt like 30 below, and I am now very aware of why they call this place the windy city. I don’t own anything but Flip Flops (I can wear them 365 days a year in FL) and was just lucky I thought to bring some long pants (and I only own 2 pairs of those, and can get by with wearing them for about a week in an entire year). Unfortunately, I forgot to bring my swanky new Right Media scarf. By the time we got to the restaurant, I had walked through several puddles and could no longer feel my feet. The pizza helped with that though, and we got a cab back thankfully.
We had decided that Elizabeth Smith would stay with my for the rest of the week to save on Gas (yeah, stickin’ it to the man!) and after playing the hotel shuffle we ended up
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