Tom Eppenberger Jr’s blog

“So how was Houston?” This seems to be the question of the week…

I spent four days last week at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference, and it sure was something. They were saying something like 12,000 people from 120 difference countries were there with me…

The content of the conference was somewhat disappointing to a technical guy like me, but perhaps my expectations were too high. Only two sessions that I attended were presented by someone whose title didn’t start with “Marketing Director.”

Each morning all 12,000 people walked a block from the convention center to the Toyota Center (the basketball arena for the Houston Rockets). These keynotes were all pretty interesting. All of them had a musical component with lots of customer stories, etc.

The high point of the week for me was getting to see Muhammad Yunus give a half hour speech on Microcredits, and Social Businesses. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for founding Grameen Bank and creating the concept of Microcredits in his native Bangladesh. You can read a whole lot more about him on Wikipedia.

Other than that, the trip surely had its moments. Cell coverage was ridiculously bad, Internet connectivity was a joke, and the humidity was crazy. Luckily for us, we had the luxury of staying at the Hilton that is connected to the convention center, meaning that we only had to go outside a few times.

I had hoped of skipping part of one of the days and making a side trip over to the Houston Space Center, but it didn’t happen. Luckily, the airport had lots of space stuff and so I got Lane a space shuttle, t-shirt and some “astronaut strawberries.”

When people ask me how Houston was, I’ve generally just been saying that I am happy to be home. It’s a quicker answer than restating all of the above every time…

I can’t get in the car these days without having Lane say “Daddy, where’s your Zune? I want to hear my songs!” (Actually, Shelly has the exact same thing happening, but since this is my blog I chose to include myself in the previous sentence… )

So, what are “Lane’s songs” you ask? While the order that he likes to hear them changes on a daily basis, below are the songs that Shelly and I both have included in a “Lane’s mix” playlist.

• Barry Louis Polisar - “All I Want Is You”
• Beastie Boys - “So What’cha Want”
• Beastie Boys - “Intergalactic”
• Beastie Boys - “Sabotage”
• The Clash - “Should I Stay Or Should I Go”
• Danny Elfman - “This Is Halloween”
• Danny Elfman - “What’s This?”
• Eels – “Flyswatter”
• Eels - “I Like Birds”
• The Ramones - “Blitzkrieg Bop”
• They Might Be Giants - “Birdhouse In Your Soul”

On Fourth of July, rather than going out and battling the crowds (and the heat), we decided to do something that Shelly has wanted to do as a family for several weeks now… make Seitan.

What’s Seitan? From Wikipedia:

Wheat gluten, also called seitan ([ˈseɪtɑn]), wheat meat, gluten meat, or simply gluten, is a food made from the gluten of wheat. It is made by washing wheat flour dough with water until all the starch dissolves, leaving insoluble gluten as a gummy mass, which is subject to further processing.

We followed a recipe from one of our Native Foods cookbooks, and it all together took something in the ballpark of 4 hours to complete. This is not bad considering how little the ingredients cost, and how much we generally pay at Whole Foods for the pre-made stuff.

Mixing the dry goods with the sifter, kneading the dough and then finally rinsing the dough were Lane’s favorite steps. He didn’t seem to care for the process of adding water to the dry goods and making the broth.

After the dough had simmered in the broth for an hour and a half, and cooled off on a plate, we prepared our Fourth of July dinner. Lane helped me puree carrots, potatoes and turnips for a base. Shelly steamed and then pan fried asparagus spears with sesame oil. And then we pan fried some steaks made from our homemade Seitan.

Man, was this ever delicious. All the hard work throughout the day really did make the whole meal taste a lot better! And, now we have a whole bunch of Seitan on hand to use over the next few weeks! Hurray!

This week will be my first trip to the Microsoft WorldWide Partner Conference, which is in Houston, TX this year. I’ve managed to escape this each of the past two years, but not this time. And, to be honest, I didn’t really fight going this time. There is a part of me that is looking forward to this, but I really hate the idea of leaving home for a week (especially since I was gone to Huntington Beach part of last week for work).

With 60 to 90 minute long sessions from 8:30 AM to 5:30 PM daily (with an exception on Wednesday morning when there is a 2 1/2 hour long keynote with Steve Ballmer), this will likely be an action packed week. Especially when you consider that I will be attending sessions that have titles like “Transforming IT into a Strategic Asset Through Core Infrastructure,” “Deploy the Optimized Desktop: Windows Vista and Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack,” and “Secure and Reliable Computing: Allow Your Customers to Focus on Their Business While You Do the Rest.”

This week will be equal parts sales/marketing and technical knowledge dump, but it could likely be better described as the yearly ritual of drinking Microsoft blue Kool-Aid. Should be an interesting week.

Shelly’s dad is at Kaiser SF preparing to have his bypass surgery, and so we headed across the Bay to see him this morning. After helping him hatch some escape plots, we decided to grab lunch before going home. Green’s Restaurant at Fort Mason has been at the top of Shelly’s restaurant wish list for a long time now, and we were only 3 miles away!

After I called the restaurant to get proper directions (Google Maps put me in “Upper Fort Mason” with no access to the place), we arrived just 45 minutes prior to the end of “brunch,” plenty of time I thought. I guess I should have taken their website seriously when it said “reservations are recommended,” because they were no longer seating parties greater than 2. At least we could still get food from their “Greens To Go” menu, and boy was it delicious…

Shelly and I each got a goat cheese, tomato and watercress sandwich that came on a (very sour) sourdough baguette and also split a bowl of Black Bean chili with peppers, cheese and creme fraiche. Lane got an Egg Salad sandwich that he mostly just ate the egg out of. We all ate some fruit salad that had strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, nectarines and apples. And, for dessert, we got a Vegan Date Bar!

Not far from the restaurant, we found a bench seated between two piers that looked out just West of Alcatraz. It was quite a view while we ate, and we even got a brief visit from a Sea Lion. Definitely a memorable meal.

After lunch, we walked down to the end of the pier on the right side of the photo, and got to see Alcatraz and the bottom half of the Golden Gate Bridge (the fog was heavy this afternoon). All that was fun, but the game of kick the can that we all played on the way back was likely Lane’s favorite part…