We made our way down to the Magical Express area only to find the longest line I’ve ever seen for ME. We were a bit concerned but the line moved pretty fast, so while it took longer than we had anticipated, it really wasn’t long until we were on the bus.

We arrived at All Star Sports (Not our preferred level of resort, but we wanted to minimize the costs for the trip… we miss you Wilderness Lodge!) and put the new online check-in to the test. The idea is you provide all your info ahead of time and check-in by showing photo ID and picking up your pre-printed materials. Honestly I’m not sure we saved all that much time. Perhaps if the lines had been longer for regular check-in, the advantages may have been more apparent. Would definitely do it again however.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that we were in Surf’s Up building 1. Nice and close to the pool and main building but with a room facing away from the noise around the pool. We settled in, changed into warm-weather clothes, and headed for the bus to Downtown Disney. We were easing into things with a park-free day. After arriving at Downtown Disney we spent the rest of the day shopping and eating.

Lunch was at Earl of Sandwich (love their bread), and dinner was at Cooke’s of Dublin (fish and chips!). We’re on the Disney Dining Plan this trip. Used to be a better deal when the tip and appetizer were included for table service meals, but you can’t beat the free dining promotion. Our only complaint was the inclusion of a dessert item with every quick meal. It is OK if the venue has a fruit option, but not ever one does.

We also did some shopping though not as much as in previous years. Nothing was all that compelling. We were disappointed that we couldn’t find a Chipbacca or Mashter Yoda Star Wars Potato Heads. Will check Hollywood Studios and keep our fingers crossed. We had our real dessert at Ghirardelli. As usual there were way too many people there for their seating area. It doesn’t help when people hold a table waiting for the rest of their party to arrive. Wish the staff would police the area and reserve seating for people who have ordered.

We also took the boat up to Port Orleans Riverside (aka Dixie Landings). We honeymooned at Dixie Landings and it remains a favorite of ours. We checked out the Christmas tree in the lobby then boarded the boat back to Downtown Disney. During the trip we had a good look at the reconstructed treehouse villas. Very nice. Curious how many points these go for.

On Saturday, the three of us drove to Milford, CT, to visit the Eells-Stow House. My 9th great-grandfather, Samuel Eells, owned the house (ca. 1700), and I’ve always wanted to visit. Didn’t know when we’ll get out to New England again, so this was my best opportunity.

Since we were going to be driving through the Hartford area, I figured I’d give my 2nd cousin Jeff Ladewig a call and see if we could get together. Jeff is part of the Appleton branch of the Ladewig family, and lives in Connecticut now. He is an Assistant Professor in Political Science at University of Connecticut along with his wife Oksan. We had never met, but had exchanged email on and off. It turned out that they were going to New York on Saturday and would be going right by Milford, so we arranged to stop by the house in the morning on our way down, and then we’d meet up with them after lunch at the Eells-Stow House.

Jeff was waiting outside on the porch as drive up, and we hit it off right away. Felt like we had known each other for a long time. Oksan had to take their son to a birthday party so we chatted with Jeff for 45 minutes or so before we hit the road. Once we reached Milford, the first order of business was lunch. If you’re ever in Milford, I recommend the Stonebridge Restaurant. Delicious! Then we were off to the house.

We arrived to find that Jeff and his family had just arrived, so our timing was perfect. We all headed over to the house for our tour with Dave the docent. We explained the family connection and off we went. In one of the rooms they have a copy of a portrait of Samuel Eells. The original is in the National Gallery of Art in Washington (not on display however) which is itself a copy of an earlier portrait. After we toured the house, we gathered for a photo with the portrait, three generations of Eells descendants.

It was quite an experience to stand in a house where one of my ancestors lived over 300 years ago, still in its original location. There aren’t many people who can say they’ve done that.

There are two other historical houses that have been moved to the site, so we toured them as well before Jeff had to get back on the road to New York. We said our good byes and promised to keep in touch. After they left, we headed over to see the memorial at the Milford Cemetery to those who died from smallpox (including Capt. Stephen Stow) when the British released 200 sick American soldiers at Milford on New Year’s Eve 1776. Then we were back on the road for Westford.

I’ll cover the rest of the trip shortly, but in the mean time, you can check out my Fotki photo album.

USA Today references articles in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel and the Wall Street Journal.

• SEC375 A Hacker’s Diary: Why I can Hack Your Passwords and How You Can Stop Me

  This session by Marcus Murray of TrueSec was a highlight. Entertaining, informative, and frightening all at the same time. If you didn’t walk away from this one concerned about password security in your environment, you’re either very good or in denial. Wish I had attended his wireless security session. Turns out in addition to being a security expert, he is also a world-class tae-kwon-do athlete. Hunter French has a post about this.

• MGT371 Application Virtualization Management: The Enterprise of the Future System Center Configuration Manager 2007 R2 and Microsoft SoftGrid
  
  This session highlighted the new capabilities that will be available when App-V 4.5 is used with SCCM R2. Because app packages can be streamed from Distribution Points now, you don’t need the App-V server. Downside is that it takes longer for apps to show up on the clients because the SCCM client refresh cycle is slower than the App-V client. They highlighted the pros and cons of local app delivery vs. app streaming, but didn’t indicate whether it can figure out for itself which to use. I’m hoping I don’t need two sets of advertisements, one for laptops and one for desktops.

• SVR379 Planning for Windows Server 2008 Terminal Services Using the New Infrastructure Planning and Design Guides

  This was the first time I was made aware of the Infrastructure Planning and Design Guides. You can find them online at: http://www.microsoft.com/ipd. These guides are fairly short and walk you through the different design decisions you nee to make when implementing the various technologies. They don’t make the decision for you, but since knowing the questions to ask and decisions to be made is half the battle, these guides should be quite useful.

I spent the rest of my time at TechEd in the Hands-on Labs. I worked on the following labs:

• CLI55-HOL Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP): Recovering PCs with the Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset
• CLI59-HOL Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP): Implementing Microsoft System Center Desktop Error Monitoring
• IDA51-HOL Microsoft Identity Lifecycle Manager 2

We’ve been using the predecessor to the Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset (DART), back from before Microsoft owned the product. Haven’t ever made time to setup DART, but it looks like they’ve made some improvements, so definitely need to get this in the hands of my techs.

I don’t use ILM currently, and odds are never will since account provisioning/deprovisioning will be moving the central IT at the University next year (Yay!), but thought I’d check out the beta of ILM 2. Huge improvements all around. Nice SharePoint-like portal for account activities and configuration of ILM. It looks much easier to setup all the processes that might have required writing actual code in the current product. And they brought password reset back!

After finishing up the labs, it was time to head to the airport. I took advantage of the option to check my bags at the convention center, so I didn’t need to deal with luggage on the bus. I found a reference to an online form to pre-register for the bag service, so the fee was only $5.

At the airport, folks were watching the monitors which were covering the news of Tim Russert’s death. I was a big fan of him and was stunned when the CNN breaking news text message came across my phone while I was working on the labs. Election coverage won’t be the same without him.

The flight home was uneventful. Waiting for luggage at Lambert was as excruciating as it always is. Now I need to download the slide decks for the sessions I wasn’t able to attend. I’ll probably wind up getting too busy and will just wait for the DVDs to arrive, but it doesn’t hurt to be ambitious.

I’m looking forward to going to LA for TechEd next year. Hopefully they will add Monday back to the conference not be so stingy with the snacks. I dinged them pretty hard on both items in the post-show survey. Hopefully it will make a difference. On the plus side, they did a nice job with the bag.