Mark Flider’s Blog

Oh boy my first MacWorld! So exciting!

The Keynote

As it turns out, we didn’t get “full” conference passes, so most of us drove down to the Cupertino campus to watch the Keynote. I, however, stayed and used some trickery (thanks Calin!) to get into the Apple booth and watch it there. It was, as usual, pretty exciting. Feel free to watch it yourself if you haven’t already.

They released my product, Keynote 3, as part of the new iWork ‘06… check out all the cool new transitions.

The Panic

In the excitement of the post-keynote scramble, I left my new leather jacket on my chair as I ran to check out the new products. When I realized that I wasn’t wearing it anymore, some 5-10 minutes later, I hurried back to my chair to find it missing, most likely “cleaned up” in the furious cleaning session that took place just before opening the booth to the media, then public.

Unfortunately, my jacket contained a few important items that I’d rather not replace:

• Cellphone
• Keys to my car, apartment, and office
• iPod
• Expensive iPod earphones
• CryptoCard
• Fake wallet

…basically, my whole identity.

Needless to say, I was panicking. I ran around and asked everyone I saw if they had seen it anywhere. I was even looking for people who happened to be carrying it, though that effort proved a bit fruitless, as 80% of the civilized American population has black leather jackets. I asked fellow employees, staff managers, security guards, conference coordinators, help desks, info desks, random people… I even stopped by the conference’s lost-and-found desk every hour or two, along with the Apple storage area.

The problem was, it could have been anywhere. Someone could have stolen it, or was just holding onto it, it could have been stashed in some tiny storage receptacle somewhere nearby, or taken to security, or lost+found, or thrown in the back of the giant black Apple obelisk… who knows.

Anyway, towards the end of my afternoon shift, around 5pm, someone came over and told me that:

1. They have found my leather jacket, and
2. I owed them a bottle of vodka.

So that was an exciting and stress-filled first day. I’ll have to remember not to do stupid things like that anymore.

Posted 2 years, 12 months ago, under General, Stupidity.
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