On the surface, Washington DC seems like every other metropolitan area: lots of buildings, lots of people, a reasonable public transit system, some culture, diverse ethic groups oddly segregated, lots of good restaurants.

The differences, however, are in the in the details, and ooo, boy, are they annoying.

Take the diffference between where bathroom orientations.

Here in D.C., perhaps all along the East Coast, I don't know, I haven't checked, the men's bathroom is on the right, and the women's is on the left.

Which is the COMPLETELY WRONG ORIENTATION.

Sure, the doors are marked with big Ms and big Ws. Doesn't help. I've walked into the men's bathroom not once but TWICE today alone.

The women's bathroom should be on the right and the men's on the left.

Everything here is automated, to my annoyance. As if touching a toliet handle, or soap dispenser, or water fountain is beneath the dignity of anyone who lives or visits Washington D.C.

As a result of this mis-configured automation, I've managed to flush the toliet an median of three times for every time my ass has actually touched the toliet seat. That median, however, does count as one all the times I leap off the seat to avoid being sprayed by the toliet that has decided to flush WHILE I'M STILL DOING MY BUSINESS.

The soap dispensers are fine, I can deal with them for the most part. I've finally figured out how to hold my hands when pulling them out of the automatically flowing water from the faucet, so that I don't manage ANOTHER spray of soap on my freshly rinsed hands (which of course, prompts ANOTHER rinsing - vicious cycle that).

The water fountain, oh, the water fountain! It turns on with sensors. Except that, if you don't know this, and push in on the sensors, which is the same as, oh, covering the two sensors and triggering the water. Unfortunately, it doesn't turn OFF until you walk backward away from the sensor by three feet.

I figured I had broken the damn thing.

Jessica and I went out to Bangkok Joe's for dinner tonight. It was Jess' first outing to a restaurant in DC without her coworkers, and, hey, mine, too!

The meal was good, but the dessert? Holy moly, AMAZING!

Recommended restaurant. Completely recommended.

With a title like "Advanced Theming," a theming session is guaranteed to attract a whole lot of people into the room. When the outline of the session is posted online and includes such goodies as how to

# keep themes compact and easy to manage
# take advantage of Drupal 6's sub-theming features
# use the more flexible hooks available to modules to do theming
# use Zen and the Themer package to reduce amount of theming required
# take advantage of existing styles to solve common problems

the room will be PACKED.

Oh, and hey, it was.

The session had so much potential! It was a session I was REALLY interested in attending. There weren't many sessions I figured I'd learn from, this was one of them.

Until less than halfway through, I had to think, "Hello, Tim."

Some guy asked an innocent question. It was clear that a session labelled "advanced" was outside of his experience, and this is okay if you recognize this and adjust your questions accordingly (by, say, NOT asking them). Arguing with the session speakers, however, is NOT okay. The moron would not shut up, and the speakers didn't stop him. He didn't even noticed the ENTIRE ROOM turning to look, no, GLARE at him.

If there were 300 people in the room (a good estimate), the man had just wasted 120 man hours with his inane arguing with the speakers.

Instead of leaving the session with new knowledge, I left frustrated.

My advice to people at a conference can be summarized into one sentence:

"If you don't know what you're talking about, please shut the fuck up."

Yeargh!

If I'm standing in the corner, please don't spread all of your crap out around me, then start moving in towards me.

My personal space is MUCH larger than yours.

Really.

And if I HAVE to pee? It's your laptop I'm running through on my way to the bathroom.