When I didn’t get the permanent spot as a team manager, I accepted the position of coach which always felt like the bronze medal. One concession I did receive was the opportunity to attend Macworld in NYC as a representative of AppleCare.
Travel is always something I love to do in my line of work because it doesn’t come up very often and it breaks up the monotony. The year before I got to spend a week in exciting Sacramento but I still found the time away productive, interesting and rewarding; I told my co-workers how good we had it in Austin. My brother always disagreed after his time as a Systems Engineer with Apple, he said all hotel rooms look alike.
He would be correct when most of his destinations were the blah Midwestern cities in his territory. However, I was going to the largest city in the United States, the home of the world-weary poseur and source of the rudest Americans according to stereotypes…New York. Apple put me up in a fancy hotel in Times Square (The Millennium) which was relatively close to the convention.
The flight from Austin to La Guardia was uneventful despite the change at Houston. (Nowadays there are a couple airlines which go non-stop to NYC.) Then came a relatively long cab ride from the airport to Time Square. I tried to absorb the scenery along the way, trying to place what I knew from other media: TV, movies, books and photos. After settling into the room I scored a pizza from a nearby restaurant and took a nap until my roommate/co-worker arrived. One big surprise was seeing Rich Dellinger again; he recently made the news with his return to Apple after leaving Palm. We were in the same training class way back in 1995 and he had recently transferred to Cupertino so I had numerous questions to ask.
Overall, MacWorld was a bit of a disappointment. I expected it to be a trade show yet I didn’t plan on feeling rather useless at the AppleCare booth. After living through supporting the PowerBook 5300 and handling the socially retarded at GenCon 1992, I was prepared to do my best to resolve, answer or refer. All my preparation wasn’t really needed nor would it have mattered.
- Most people approaching the AppleCare booth were looking for other Apple employees they knew, usually members of Engineering, Marketing or Sales. Rarely did we receive a technical question.
- This show was the G4 Cube’s debut and G4 towers were upgraded to having dual-processors on their logic boards. Nobody on the phones was given any training or warning about these products.
I still made the best of it because a free trip to NYC only happens once in a lifetime. Couldn’t resist some guilt over it.
When I didn’t have to work my shift, I took in the gist of MacWorld. Saw all the upcoming releases for 2000 and early 2001. Bought a discounted version of SoundJam (iTunes’ ancestor) and Balder’s Gate (a contributing reason why younger D&D players lack good tabletop etiquette). A couple years later, MacWorld abandoned its Summer expo to focus only on the January convention in San Francisco. After attending this, I could understand because few people have deep-enough pockets to keep upgrading, buying, etc. every six months. An annual event is enough to plan out an IT department’s spending.
The man who "owned" Broadway for several decades.
The remaining time I had I spent taking in Times Square. I didn’t have a map or a street-smart guide to assist me so I figured staying close to the convention or hotel was wisest. Much to my relief, NYC didn’t have a permeating aroma of urine as Bill Hicks warned; it did have garbage bags strewn in the streets and I spotted a rat. The residents weren’t as gruff as I was told but when buying things with my credit card, they tended to ignore the “Check ID” written on the back. I scored a couple import CDs from the Virgin MegaStore which is now gone, one being the Tom Jones duet album called Reload. Besides pizza, I tried a couple other strengths NYC was supposed to have in the food department: the nearby deli joint was fair but I preferred Katz’s in Austin. I’m sure there were more authentic places if I had the means to find them. Locating the Katz’s in NYC where Marc Katz came from would’ve been cool. Another meal was spent at a steak joint which didn’t close until 1 AM. I enjoyed it yet it wasn’t a memorable piece of meat.
My biggest thrill was seeing an actual Broadway show. It wasn’t an original but the revival of Annie Get Your Gun starring Bernadette Peters and Tom Wopat (yeah, the less-famous star from The Dukes of Hazard). To prepare, I listened to the current casts’ CD on my Diamond Rio MP3 player (iPods were a year off) several times. Then I scored an eighth-row seat through the mayor’s office of tourism in Time Square, the only good thing I can thank Benito Guiliani for. I wore a suit that evening because my friend Sonia had trained me well; I often rant on about seeing Austinites wearing jeans at the opera. The show was fantastic. Seeing the real thing on Broadway is certainly better than the touring company, much like gambling in Las Vegas is way cooler than driving over to Louisiana or an Indian reservation.
Somara and I would like to make a trip there in the near future but as you know, Las Vegas beckons in about a week.