The SAS Global Forum 2008 that is.

I spent much of this morning in the Coders’ Corner sessions, which were short sessions with tips for programmers and users alike.  Ten minutes in length, I found these sessions quite useful.

I also attended another session on OLAP data cubes and one that discussed a factor analysis of a health care provider survey.  The latter was of interest to me because it used a technique that I’d like to use at work.

Papers from each of the streams were judged and the best were recognized during the closing ceremony.  I was unexpectedly asked to grade one of the sessions I was in this morning, which was kind of neat.

The closing ceremonies also had some pretty cool door prizes ranging from clothing donated by the various sponsors to a pair of airline travel vouchers to a pre-paid registration to SAS Global Forum 2009.  A ripple of "oohs" washed through the audience when they announced that prize.  Unfortunately, my name wasn’t drawn for that one or any of the other prizes.

After things wrapped up, I walked back to the hotel with a colleague who was staying here.  Along the way, we stopped to do a couple of geocaches before heading off to do our own things this afternoon.  I continued geocaching and ended up logging 5 caches in total today: 3 traditional caches, a virtual cache and a webcam cache.  My friend Rob helped out with the webcam cache by making a screen capture of me standing in front of a webcam that’s pointed at the Alamo.

I hopped in the pool for a few minutes upon my return to the hotel before I headed out to find somewhere to eat.  I ended up having dinner at Boudro’s on the Riverwalk where I was lucky and only had to wait about 5 minutes for a table.  Other people were being given wait times of an hour or more.  (It would have been worth waiting that long.)

Dinner consisted of their signature blackened prime rib, a glass of Simi 2004 cabernet and crème brulée for dessert.  The blackened prime rib was a 12 ounce cut of one of — if not the — best pieces of beef I’ve ever had.  It was simply amazing and words can’t do it justice.  If you’re ever in San Antonio, you must have dinner at Boudro’s.

After dinner, I explored an arm of the Riverwalk that I hadn’t explored and ended up going on the last boat tour of the evening.  It took about half an hour and saw us do the full loop.  The captain told us the stories of the buildings and landmarks we passed.  I learned that the extension we started and ended in was actually man made for the 1968 World’s Fair and that the Hilton hotel on the Riverwalk was built in a couple of hundred days and used advanced modular construction techniques.  Basically, they built the rooms as individual modules with everything in them and then stuck them together like Lego blocks.  They were awarded a Guinness Record for the fastest hotel built at the time.

I walked back to the hotel and started thinking about how to pack everything for my trip home tomorrow.  As always, pictures can be found in my gallery.