Farata Systems      

After attending half a dozen conferences this year I took a break and did not go to MAX. I check MXNA blog aggregator daily, but finding useful info is not easy. This is how a typical blog looks like. Yo man, it’s so cool! I’m going to MAX in three days! Two days till the conference… One…I’m in the airport. My flight is delayed. And again. And again. Finally I’m up in the air. What happen to the beer? Five bucks? You gotta be kidding me. That’s a bummer. The good news is that now they allow three ounce shampoo on the plain. I should not forget to take a dozen of these little shampoo and body lotions from my Venetian hotel room. By the way, anyone knows what the body lotion is for? Is it supposed to be used while in shower or after? There is no instructions on the bottle. Need to check Wikipedia…

I’m in Vegas! They gave me this military bag with some promo junk. Let me throw it away real quick. This bag is going to be for my cousin Vinni. Need to pick up a couple of XXL T-shirts on the vendor’s floor for my ant and mom.

Almost forgot about the Flex/ActionScript posters! Here they are! Yep, they are free! Adobe wanted to sell them for ten bucks each, but the entire blogosphere said, “Ain’t gonna buy no stinking posters for ten bucks”. I like Adobe. They always listen to the community, and now these great posters are free. This poster discussion is the most popular subject of the week at mxna. Finally I can get rid of this old J-Lo poster in my cube. She’s not that hot anymore.

Let me check the mxna feed and see what other guys are blogging about. Lemme see…Max is so cool…Cool is Max… Is Max Cool?…Adobe has released Flex Builder 2 for Mac OS X. Is there such thing as Flex Builder 1?

Several guys are leaking. They are leaking this tomorrow’s opening keynote. Everyone’s saying that we should be there at least for the first ten minutes. Some Blue Guys are giving either a demo or a show. I need more T-shirts.
My schedule for tomorrow is finally shaping up:
8:30-8:40 – keynote. Ben Forta hits 3 millionth mile spreading the good word about ColdFusion. I hope he’s in American Express miles award program. Ben, Bloomingdales gives away gift certificates: $1 for each hundred Amex miles. Your wife deserves these thirty grand! I have great respect of this man, really!
100K Flex developers. I wonder how they count? Is this just a number of downloads? Since Flex framework is free, you can’t even count sold licenses now. This raises one more question. The MAX book store was carrying 60 copies of the Flex Training from the source book, which is the only Flex tutorial available today and you can’t but it in stores yet. Hello Adobe marketing! I guess you’ve never heard of 100K Flex developers. No worries. The store promises another 40 copies of the book for the day 2. Round of applause to the newly hired Adobe Senior VP of marketing…I guess she needs some more time.

8:45-9:30 – hit some slot machines to warm up
9:30-10:30 – Black Jack table
10:30-11:15 – I’m presenting on Flex 2 tips and tricks
11:15-2PM – Roulette table

Hmmm, if you use the random number generator from ActionScript and the PieChart component from Flex Charting, you can easily emulate a roulette table! I just need to learn how to spin it! Should I register a new startup Online Flex Gambling right here in Vegas or Delaware is still the best for incorporation? I’ll need to create a number of skins for the roulette, a couple of transitions effects for showing the winning number, add some audio, which is piece of cake in Flash Player.

2:15 –4PM Hit the vendors floor. Do not get intimidated. Like the design of this T-shirt? Just stop by the booth, introduce yourself and spend five minutes listening to the brouhaha about how the product XYZ will revolutionize your life. Get the T-shirt and move to the next table. Look at these nice little glowing pens! Aren’t they something? Just give these vendors your business card and bring home a couple of pens for your kids. You’ll sure get this annoying phone call from their salesman in a month or so, but it’s in a month… while your kids will start enjoying these pens next week. Daddy came back from the business trip! What did you get for us? Look at this lady in red: she carries a huge bag of freebies and brochures. Trust me, she’s not going to read them. In the best case scenario, she’ll bring them to her office after MAX. But most likely she’ll leave them in the hotel room instead of tipping the maid.

4-5PM Attending a session on E4X. I need to learn how to write an RSS feed.

OK, Create XMLListCollection, declare a Filter object on it. Got it. The call to refresh functions will actually remove unwanted blog entries. How many mxna aggregates? More then 900? I’ll keep a couple of dozens in my feed. Where Celine Dion is singing? In Caesars? E4X rules! Flex 2 rules! Flex rules 2! Adobe is cool! Can’t wait till MAX 2007!

Yours truly,

Yakov

P.S. There are two bloggers that take good notes at MAX: Jen deHaan and Tariq Ahmed Thank you, guys!