I started my day at 6AM, which is earlier than normal. I haven’t set the alarm for work since my daughter was born, always waiting for her to wake us up, which is generally earlier than desired. The alarm and 6AM wake-up didn’t hurt much though.

The cab came by at 7:10AM, 20 mins late. That was OK though, as I booked it 10mins earlier than I needed. Also, my daughter didn’t wake up until 6:55, so I would have missed her by 5 mins if the taxi had arrived on time, which would have put a lot worse feeling on the day.

For some strange reason, I opted to fly to Vancouver and then to Toronto. We always fly direct on Air Canada from SEA (Seattle) to YYZ (Toronto). Actually, I didn’t choose to do it; it was a mixup on my part of understanding how to use our travel booking website. Better luck next time. It adds 3 hours (or so) to the trip to Toronto, but that’s OK. Vancouver airport is one of the nicest that I’ve ever had the pleasure of visiting. Seattle’s is pretty bad in comparison.

Now I’m on the flight from YVR (Vancouver) to YYZ. Interestingly enough, Air Canada decided to cut free in-flight meals last week. I applaud the change, actually. I care a lot about the food I eat, both from the standpoint of nutrition and taste. Airplane meals, as you know, generally lack in both categories. It would be great if appropriate price cuts accompany the reduction of service.

The guy just came by asking “anything from the restaurant”. Last time I checked, a rolling cart with a bunch of pre-packaged food on top didn’t count as a restaurant!

I opted for lunch at Whitespot, a household name in Vancouver. They even have Whitespot available on the BC fairies. I opted for a veggie burger and a salad. I’m feeling pretty good about that after seeing what folks are ordering on the flight. Maybe next time, I’ll bring a steaming Indian curry on to the plane. Either that or a Coleman stove and a filet of salmon to bake.

Enough of the logistics … I’m really looking forward to the launch. I’m heading to a pre-launch event at a restaurant on Dixon (Lonestar Texas Grill) as soon as I land. I believe that I land at something like 7:24PM and the event starts at 7:30PM. Watch in-flight feature film “Must love dogs” à Land à Deplane à Get baggage (1 item) à Get Taxi à Enter restaurant à Order supper à Watch meal get cold as I talk Whidbey with .NET MVPs.

Craig Symonds is doing the keynote tomorrow in Toronto. Craig is the General Manager of the Visual Studio division. Surprisingly enough, they produce this thing called Visual Studio. I’m in its sister/brother division called NDP or .Net Developer Platform, which produces the .NET Framework. I don’t exactly work with Craig, as he’s an executive and I’m an “individual contributor”. That being said, I work with folks from his division all the time, generally working on two things: designing/implementing VS/.NET Framework integration and determining which product a given bug resides it (it often isn’t clear on first look). Actually, the last part is the most interesting to me. More on that another time.

Last I heard, there are four or five thousand people registered for the Launch event in Toronto. I also heard – and I think that this is amazing – that all attendees are being given a fully-fledged version of VS 2005 and SQL Server 2005. Wow! The VS version is apparently a “special edition”. I have no idea what that means, but the product is apparently not time-bombed or crippled in any way. It might just be a special box, which would actually be kinda cool. I have a special Windows XP box that I was given for working on that, and I still get a kick out of that.

Hope to see you there … or in Ottawa a couple days later.