Silicon Valley

I had come to Santa Clara for the MySQL conference and I had found a couch with Julie, a P.E.-teacher living there. Luckily, she had agreed to host me the whole time during the conference so I didn’t have to worry about that at all. She also had to work all week long, so I didn’t have to worry over using her as a hotel or anything, which I hate and never do.In the IT-world, Silicon Valley is always spoken of as a mythical place where everything that is even remotely important in the IT-industry takes place. In reality it is just a couple of cities with an incredibly high number of nerds. It is kind of weird to drive through it. On the way from Julie’s house to the conference centre you pass by a number of office’s of some of the biggest IT companies in the world: nVidia, Citrix, Cisco, Apple and many others.
The conference was a big deal for me: I had just started working with openquery, an Australian MySQL company. I had a whole list of things I needed to do: get my certifications, see a lot of sessions, talk to a bunch of people, get my name out there , etc.
The four days were super-exhausting, but extremely interesting. I had a great time meeting great people and learning a lot. I passed all four exams and am now certified MySQL DBA and Developer.
During the third day I started getting sick, and that got worse during the 4th day. I barely managed to make it to the end of the conference.
During the week, I had very little time to hang out with Julie. Luckily, she had very little time to hang out with me too, so I didn’t have to feel too guilty. Even still, we got along really well and she was a super laid-back host. The day after the conference I stuck around to get rested and get well. In the evening I finally had a chance to hang out with her, and she took me out for a little bit. My new stop sentence is now definitely “it’s all good”, meaning as much as “don’t worry, be happy”.