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I have returned to the Hollywood Theater again. It is day 2. I started with a set of short films. The Critters was cute and funny–something unique to this form of horror. The jokes are good, and then you scream! The Hidebehind was scary for me. A man lost is suddenly haunted by a tree spirit that disappears behind trees only to reappear and harry the man again. I hope I won’t get worse agoraphobia–a still night in open spaces still scares me. Too many tornados in my childhood. But all were good. I thought one a bit long, Lane 9–but still not bad. It made a bowling ally creepy. This was used in the movie Constantine too.

Then the live H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society did a live version of the story Lurking Fear. They crowd supplies some of the sound effects. It is good fun and so well done that you can’t help enjoying it.

I also picked up my Kickstarter items. I helped fund the festival and get a few items.

Here is my Shoggoth sample (not my lunch!).

I had a long and chaotic lunch next door to the theater. The tables filled as us from the festival came in. There was one waiter! I got my order in, and it came in a slow thirty minutes. The guy next to me never had his order taken and took-off. It took me thirty minutes to pay. One group started clearing tables for them.

I sat next to a friendly couple from San Fransico who popped up to attend the festival. They have been going to these horror film festivals some time. Apparently, the California one is no longer happening, so they attend the Portland one.

I then listened to Victoria Price give a very uplifting keynote after getting seated in the theater again. She apparently finds that the horror fans are the kindest fans. Ms. Price finds it a pleasure to share her father’s life with the fans and doing horror conventions and leading tours. It was an inspirational talk with a horror fan audience. She got a standing ovation.

The next movie was one I knew staring, of course, Vincent Price. I stepped out and headed home. Stopping by to thank Victoria again. I also thanked Brian, the festival director who I often support in various Kickstart campaigns.

Got home, and Susie and Corwin decided they wanted, eye-rolling allowed a movie. And Susie wanted to see Joker! Oh my!

So we got the 10PM showing. It is a fantastic ride and too dark for me–but maybe it fits the current over rev-ing times. I cringed when the soon-to-be-joker could not get his jokes off–I never even noticed when I forgot I was watching a movie. It has been a long time since I felt like a movie put me into the story as a witness. This was no super-hero comic book guy with cool powers that we just there. This was stark and painful to watch. Maybe one of the best movies for this dark type material ever. Again, not a kids’ film and very dark and painful and immersive.

I will not return for the third day of the festival as I have much to do, and Susie misses me.

Well, I have picked up my badge, and I am in Nectar Coffee Bar, enjoying their non-pork pulled pork sandwich. Yes, spicy soy product. It is a veggy place. I also have a Cider product to go with that is not too sweet. The doors open at 6:00 PM at the Hollywood Theater here in Portland, Oregon. I will head into the line soon.

So it is time again for horror films and going for cosmic horror. No cheap scares. This stuff makes you feel like you can fall off the planet when you look up at night! When you look up, it is forever that way! Gravity feels so punny when you understand that is all that keeps you here! That is the cosmic horror these films give to me. You are scared of sharp angles and strange shadows after a few days. Anything can come from a weird angle! Did that shadow move!

The first film for me is The Colour Out of Space, which is pre-release for this version. It is one of the H.P. Lovecraft stories that still scares me.

So a few more shorts and then this film for 111 minutes I understand. Can’t wait.

But before this, I went to Dark Arbor Lodge‘s Innsmouth show. Art inspired by another H.P. Lovecraft’s story about Innsmouth. They had a lot of full-sized works. Most were for sale.

I enjoyed the small display and the fact you could buy them. I passed on the purchase of a $300 graven image of Cthulhu. I already have one!

So off to be scared out of my mind…

Breaking a rule…I have updated this blog.

The short movies were not that scary, but one of them I helped fund. The Last Incantation was a favorite of the crowd, and it was fun to see my name as a supporter! This was its premiere, and even the cast had not seen it before on a full-sized screen. The changed the demon in the story from being a snake to be crushed inside a jar–a slave of the wizard. It worked well.

Nicolas Cage starred in Color Out Of Space. This is a major horror film, and it was given a pre-release play. The director said he made it for the Portland audience and is happy to see that it is doing well for the other audiences.

I am home now, and my laundry is nearly done, I am doing the additional laundry that I found after I unloaded my suitcase and washed all of that. Soon that will be done too. I have made the coffee and had peanut butter toast. I have gone through the mail and found the check for the claim I paid for an accident in Florida–it is short $150 as the cheap-ass insurance, AIG, did not pay the handling fees for the claim from Enterprise. I backed my rented car into a parked car. I was also shocked to learn that this insurance has a maximum payout of $35,000. So if I had rolled the car in Florida, I would be out more than ten-thousand. So much for buying car coverage on Expedia. Next time I will get it through my own insurance–“Mayhem” resisting Allstate. There are always new lessons that are really the same that I already know: Don’t buy insurance from companies famous for their mistakes like AIG and not on-line from a discounting site like Expedia.

I have no plans today. Usually, I have a boardgame planned for Friday night or Saturday, but with the travel, none could be planned.

I was home about 10:30 Friday night. Airplanes and airports all worked. I did hang out in Las Vegas airport for a while watching a movie, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2009), and then dinner at Chili’s. I had them make me a special burger that they use to serve– chili on a cheeseburger with pickles. I flew to LAX and connected there in the former Virgin Airlines area. Delta bought Virgin, and it is going away. Nice to see a few bits of original Virgin Airlines before it disappears into Delta’s logos and processes.

Returning to Vegas, the conference ended with me see a wrapping line to get into a hands-on session. So I did not do that one but saw Peter Keller and we took in a presentation on security. Peter’s daughter is now working for SAP, daughter like father, and is specializing in security. The presentation was hard to enjoy after a short night–presenter reading all the slides in a monotone German accent, but I learned a few things. I do wonder why I am installing all some software at Nike when this presenter, a colleague of Peter’s daughter, says it is built-in and free. I see a few questions coming for Monday–maybe an email.

I had started Friday morning at 5:30, which was very early considering I did not reach my bed until after Friday has started! Friday morning, I did the usual things and then packed up and dragged my roller bags after me. Checked out. Stored bags. Off to hands-on class, registered, at 8:00 with Boris, a software product owner as SAP, on how to set-up software change process (transports in SAP Cloud Platform for those who know this stuff). The class was mostly a system admin class, and lucky for me a talented system admin (SAP BASIS for you SAP experts) sat down with me, and we were mostly able to finish the work with only one mistake–mine. I was laughing with my new friend (I have forgotten his name, maybe Venkat) as I commented on how familiar I was with the screens. We at Nike had spent weeks trying to figure them out by trial and error. My new friend watched me copy and paste and never type. He said he would start doing that too as he saw how likely a mistake was without copy and paste. I just smiled at him and reminded him I have been involved in waiting weeks for Nike and SAP to figure out the newest typo in the set-up for SAP Cloud Platform connections!

After that, I saw the line and then saw Peter walking, and he suggested we take in the security lecture. We then went for lunch at the speaker ready room, both being speakers. We meet some more SAP folks there and chatted about various random topics. Peter headed out.

Before Friday started was, of course, Thursday and it ended with a concert at Brooklyn Bowl. I and many of my friends are used to more standard concerts at SAP TechEd like a great on by Train a few years ago. Headed to a Vega styled bowling ally to hear a somewhat unknown country band was a bit of a step-down. But, John Garr Band played for almost three hours without a break and was exceptional. Most of the music was fast and played very well. It is hard to imagine for some of an Austin Texas-based country band with a full keyboard, three back-up singers who took the lead for half-a-dozen songs, three horns, and the normal drummer and base. It was a full sound and done with skill! We stayed for the full set.

SAP had the Brooklyn Bowl for just the SAP crowd. Booze and snacks all free. Of course, free bowling–I never left the bar.

After the show and as folks were leaving, people stopped me and told me how much they liked my Python presentation on Wednesday. That made it a grand night, indeed.

Brooklyn Bowl is in the Linq complex in Las Vegas. I have been there with my family. Susie’s family used to live in Vegas–they moved to New Hampshire. I had forgotten about the locally priced (that is not priced-for-expense-reports food) and had great pizza here and bought a cute wool hat for Susie and its required hatbox. Michael and I looked at the prices for Gordon Ramsey’s Fish and Chips and only wished we had checked this out sooner–better and vastly cheaper.

Which all is moot as the next SAP Teched will be in November and in Austin, Texas. That was announced and explained the choice of John Garr Band. Next year in Texas!

On Thursday morning I got started a bit later than Friday but started to pack a bit already. I also had a presentation. Peter and I held the ASUG Influence Council meeting at 9:30 and had about eight people–all shared their needs for test data. Peter and I went over how we can influence SAP, thus the name of the meeting, to develop a new solution for test data. I got their emails and will meet off-line next month or so. Excellent!

After that lunch and meeting more folks on the floor. Folks again stopped me and thanked me for getting them to look at Python and Machine Learning!

Returning to classes, I am working with master data governance and thought it good to try out a class. So I walked into another hands-on, and these folks work with our SAP folks at Nike for data governance. It was fun to try out all their new stuff. I learned about the ability to automatically have some data in the SAP Cloud Platform instead of building it myself, which I even have stories for in the current workload for developers. I see a proof-of-concept (POC) in my near future at Nike!

I walked into another hands-on after that. I invited Michael G to join me. We took a tour of using SAP Data Hub for data governance and what I call data purification. The software allows you to make changes to the data to make it better and to automate this. The example is to normalize the country code of ‘USA’ to ‘US’, for example. Michael and I had not considered this option before. It presents us with some exciting choices. More POC!

From there, instead of going to Linq and having good food and locally priced food–only if we had known–we went to SugarCane at the hotel. The food was small plates and very tasty. It was not inexpensive.

And that brings me to the end of the trip. Here in Reedville, Oregon finishing up the laundry and dishes. It is good to be home.

And I have all those games to get too…

 

I started with actual sleeping for most of the night. My wife is ill, and she is at a hazard to fall, so any noise while asleep wakes me with a start. Combine that with the unique hot and cold AC in use at The Palazzo, and it can be a tough night, and it was the previous night. This night I managed to sleep most of the night with only a few door slams walking me from some of the early raising folks at 5 and 6. The AC stabilized at freezing and I slept buried in the covers. I awoke without headache and feeling rested.

Which was excellent as today I had my challenging presentation. I was presenting how to code Python for ABAP-ers (ABAP being the special software language used by the SAP company) and why it was important for ABAP-er to learn Python. For the presentation, I had written a group of demo programs that went from a basic Monte Carlo generation of Pi–it was better than a yet-another-hello-world program–to a full-blown Machine Learning demonstration Pythonic program. All the code runs in a virtual Linux Cloud9 server in a western AWS cloud. I also brought a microPython device, the Amazing Fez, a fez from a costume that uses a wearable microprocessor, LCD display,  and GPS all coded in Python to create an amazing display.

So I did the normal start for a morning and then headed to the speaker ready room. There a hot breakfast is served and more importantly are copies of the hardware I would use for my presentation. I needed to practice and check that everything worked.

I had breakfast with some SAP folks that I knew from past meetings. They chatted while I ate quickly and then headed to the laptops. I turned on the Amazing Fez which got me some attention from the technical support team of SAP for presenters. They loved the Fez. I showed them Adafruit’s Playground Express that is the basis for the hat. I brought one to hand around, so they looked at that.

Everything worked perfectly. I was able to logon to AWS and bring up my development environment with all the Python ready to use. This inside of the SAP network! I thanked SAP technical support! Actually, I was so excited I got up too fast and knocked over my chair and said: “that the computers work, but I forgot how to use a chair.” That got the German equivalent to an eye-roll–they ignored me. My powerpoint was there even with the typos which I left alone–don’t start editing two hours before your presentation. Accept what you have an use it. Fix it for the next use, if there is another.

I then went over the presentation and did everything in my head and brought up every program and ran each one while thinking about what to say and how it would fit the audience. I learned that the laptop was just as hard to use as my new one (they are the same brand) and practiced moving some windows around–my laptop sucks. To make this an excellent experience for the audience and to be able to handle questions and unexpected glitches, I need the rehearsals and practice.

Now I had to do this on the real laptop in the large room with a mic. So with an hour to go, I headed up to the room to see what I would need to do. I was the first speaker in the room even though it was a 10:30 presentation. So I found the room and set-up. Again, all the servers connected and the powerpoint, with typos, was there ready to use. Excellent!

(my classes is near the bottom of the list)

The support staff was happy to see a speaker forty-five minutes early and that I had set-up and the projector was running my the powerpoint entry slide. I then went off and tried to wait. The worst part for me.

I then met more staff, and they got me a wireless mic–the same I always use–and asked me when to let folks in. There was a line! It was standing room by the time I started. We let people in early.

Folks came twenty minutes early, so I took questions! I answered questions like where did the Swoosh come from, and is the company’s motto “Just Do It.” I pointed out the guy with three stripe shoes on, and he took the ribbing with a smile and suggested I should bring replacements next presentation. I passed around the microPython hardware and turned on the Amazing Fez.

I stated on time to a full room. The presentation went well with many questions, and some folks in the audience answer a few for me. I finished on time. I got two sets of applause. I asked for applause after I did the live demo, and everything was perfect. All the computer folks knew that was taking a risk. They also appreciated that all the code was MIT license and free and available to be used as they wish.

I found that I had used “dockers” and not “docker” in one slide. Dockers are pants. Docker is a computer virtualization product. It got a laugh as I pointed that mistake out. Just have to roll with the typos.

The room cleared out fast–folks had hands-on to get too.

I demurred when after the presentation, a man identified himself as working for a training company in Australia and wanted me to fly, at their cost, to Australia to give the same presentation. He will email me. I met others later in the day, and all were happy with the presentation.  This includes the guy I ribbed about his shoes, and he said he loved the presentation and will do some Python Machine Learning now. Another guy from Catapiller said the same thing. So I guess it went well.

I went to the floor to walk and clear my head. There I meet an old friend, Lonnie Luehmann, who built Nike’s first SAP data warehouse. He works for SAP now and he gave me some trinkets, towels with SAP logo. We talked about old times and how our families are doing and how he and his wife miss Oregon and Nike. He gave me a towel to give to Michael G.

Lunch followed, again in the speaker room–Michael G found me there and gave him the towel. After lunch Michael G and Peter Keller and others had a presentation on Migration. I collected emails for them while the presented went on. We want to obtain the emails of folks interested in the subject to meet again later.

(Michael G after finishing his presentation)

I then attended a rather disorganized presentation on change control but then meet some more old SAP friends, Boris. Again, I volunteered to help SAP better understand our needs for change control and automated change control. It is so nice to see these folks!

Then more hands-on classes. I was a walk-in and thus got there 30 minutes early, so I was first in line. I already had three hands-on reserved so I must wait and fill any remaining seats of hands-on sessions after the reserved seats are filled. I do not usually get a front-row seat as a walk-in, but it was the last hands-on and folks bailed on it, so I enjoyed the front row. In this session, I explored building a computer workflow to control updating business partner from a generated event from the S/4 HANA accounting system. Technology has changed and this was much easier than I expected. I had a glitch at the end, but it was close enough for me.

Three hours for dinner is a long time. We had the customer dinner tonight and for reasons best left unexplored the food took hours to deliver. Mine was not hot. A couple of glasses of wine and taste of a few desserts took the sting out of the long night. Thank you SAP for dinner!

So not a bad day.

It is a lot to ask for me to endure two hours of hands-on and lecture. It is almost impossible to do it twice. Today I did one two-hour and one four-hour hands-on and lecture. I survived. I enjoyed the hands-on. The talk was just too long at over two hours in the afternoon after lunch! I managed to stay awake. But that is after the keynote…

The keynote address was this morning at nine. There was coffee and pastries and fruit available. I was surprised to see donuts–this is usually banned by low-carb folks. I did meet Sandeep, who is here like me for some presentations.

(Sandeep is in the dark suit sitting, and Nike’s Sumit is stand in the blue shirt)

Michael joined me. I saved him a seat. The keynote included some excellent information about SAP’s direction. They, SAP, see three pillars of Data, Intelligence, and Operations in today’s digital enterprise (companies for you who are not hip on the newest lingo). SAP can bring value in these areas as it already covers more than 80% of these areas with their existing software–according to the keynote. SAP’s Chief Technology Officer, Jurgen Mueller, also said that a recent study found that 80% of CEOs believe their company has a right web presence while consumer claim only 8% of these websites are any good. This is quite a gap.

Jurgen believes the answer is to build solutions that use the three pillars. That you must have operational data that for example, tells you the sales numbers are down. You need intelligence to understand if this is an unusual event or a trend or related to some other issue. You need data to make these answers.

This was a pretty good start, but the presentation collapsed into a sales pitch, and there was no follow up on the 80 and 8 numbers at the beginning.  Jurgen should have tied this together and showed how SAP could ensure that a CEO would know if the company he or she heads website are good. Closing the gap if you like. No, he left that flapping in the wind.

My first class followed, and I was not disappointed that Jurgen’s speech ran long, and I had to leave it early. I had a course on Python and AI and how to do Machine Learning in an SAP environment. In the class, I shared a computer with a former Nike coder. We are both now Python coder, and we went to town as did much of the class. We finished all the work and learned a few new things in Python and how SAP HANA uses Python and supplies its own libraries. The presenter had trouble keeping up with the class–an unusual and very positive event.

After that, I went to the speaker ready room for lunch. This is a secret lunch for speakers. There I met an old friend from SmartShift, Abby, and we chatted about how time has treated each of us. We have not seen each other for a few years, so it was nice to revisit old times.

The next class was long–four hours. It was two hours of lecture after lunch and then hours of hands-on. The talk was dreadfully boring but informative as often happens in SAP TechEd. I do not know how these folks learned to present new material by reading every slide in a near monotone. We finally survived the presentations and started into the SAP Data Hub exercises and used it to translate text on-the-fly and then to classify text by getting the AI to make suggestions about what product was being described in the text. This was new as I always thought of SAP Data Hub as well something the shares data, a data hub.

We also built a chatbot. This was easy and took no time at all. Again, all SAP tools.

I then talked to Matthias Kretschmer, one of the presenters, about change control and a CI/CD process to install Data Hub. They, SAP, are just working on this now. I told them we would be interested in working on this with them. He will talk to his associates in SAP and get back to us.

Next was drinks and reception in the vendor area. I bumped into Paul Lui from Oracle, an old friend, and talked about AI and Machine Learning. Yes, I had spent a whole day coding AI and ML, so I was interested in sharing. He might make my session on Python and will grab a copy of my powerpoint if he can’t make it.

Finally, Michael G and I just had a quiet dinner at a place in the hotel. We were both ready to be a bit quieter.

A surprise today. The publishers of the new board game War of the Worlds: The New Wave included my picture of the game in their update on Kickstarter today and thanked me in the update for the photo.