Jamaica is a very interesting place. If you haven’t been there, I highly recommend that you take the time for a trip. We went to the Rose Hall Resort and Country Club in Montego Bay. It was a beautiful, all-inclusive resort. Right across the highway from our resort was the Rose Hall Great House – the mansion of a great slave plantation said to be haunted (more on that whole experience with some ghostly images in another post to follow). The most amazing thing about the country is the complete lack of a middle class – people are either very rich or very poor. It is a beautiful country with a lot of problems. It is those problems that make the attitude of the Jamaican people so awesome and inspiring.

You see, despite all of the problems down there I did not see a single unhappy Jamaican, even off of the resort. They have adpoted a philosophy whereby they choose to not dwell on their problems and to be just be happy. It really made me think – if they can be so happy that they burst into song in the halls for no good reason, why am I, with a much more comfortable life, not that happy? Don’t get me wrong, I am very happy with everything in my life, but I get weighed down by stress and the general busy-ness of life. I think I am going to make an honest effort to have a much more Jamaican state of mind.

Anyway, I am also going to try and make an effort to start blogging again on a regular basis. I know I have made that effort before and failed, but I am going to keep trying. I think a large part of the problem recently has been my dislike of WordPress. It’s a great application but as a control freak, I was much happier with my previous home-grown, though feature-lacking blog. Prehaps I’ll get back to working on that and get back to posting more often too.

More Jamaican tales and pictures to follow!

There are six of us from Cover-All here for the conference: four from the Engineering department and myself and my boss Rob from the IT department. The main reason Rob and I came here was to meet with the people who make DriveWorks, the automation software we are implementing. They are from England and are a truly awesome group of people. We had a blast with them last night lighting up Bourbon Street. Philip, their lead programmer, is definitely a kindred soul and we had tonnes to talk about. Philip, Glen (the DriveWorks CEO) and I had a few great discussions about our shared love of the old British series Red Dwarf!

The Keynote speaker for the conference this year was Steve Wozniak. It was a real treat to see him speak – the man sure can talk. He talked so fast he was able to tell the story of 2/3 of his book in an hour and fifteen minutes. I was able to meet him and get my copy of his book signed. It was awesome!

Unfortunately, we had a little too much fun last night and Rob and I were not quite able to make it to the general session this morning. So, we missed Leonard Nimoy. He was a surprise guest. As much as this sucks, at least we didn’t miss Shatner!

This week hasn’t been all about fun and games. We have gotten a lot of really good information which will help us finish up our implementation. We had a meeting with the DriveWorks team where we were able to show them our setup in progress and get some feedback and help from them about what we’re doing. We were also able to connect with a guy from Michigan who’s company is doing an implementation in much the same way that we are.

Our flight home leaves tomorrow morning at 6am so this is going to be an early night. I’ll post the few pictures I have been able to take after I get back home.

This coming Sunday I am heading to New Orleans for SolidWorksWorld. My boss/cousin Rob and I are the only IT people from Cover-All going there, but there are another four people from engineering going too. The main reason Rob and I are going is to meet with the developers of DriveWorks and go over a few things with them. In addition, I am hoping to find a company that provides a solution for viewing SolidWorks assemblies on your average computer. We have been playing with a product called eDrawings but our models are so complex that the eDrawings take longer to generate than the models themselves and eDrawings brings even the fastest computers at Cover-All to a crawl.

The really exciting part of the trip for me, other than seeing the French Quarter and staying at the Hilton, is going to be the keynote speaker at the conference. This year it is going to be Steve Wozniak! I am so pumped to see him speak. Lindsay got me iWoz for Christmas and I read the thing in a flash. I really hope that he’ll be available so that I can get my book signed!

In other news, I finally got a photo gallery up and running on the site. I still have a lot of pictures to get posted – San Diego, Nova Scotia, Scotland, our wedding. Just a tonne oif pictures, plus the hundreds I’ll take in New Orleans. Time to hit the gym now. More later…