Yes the business trip to St. Louis was yet another success in my cache of work experience. So here's a summary.

Wednesday morning pack a bag, take Sebastian to the babysitters and head in to work. Work about 5 or 6 hours assisting in the assembly of 50 training notebooks (about 150 sheets of documentation in 5 sections, a burned labeled CD, all in a 3 hole binder) and pile into a 12 passenger van. It was only 5 of us in the van, but good thing we had it. We left for St. Louis around 2:00. Around 2:56 I got a call. The number wasn't recognized by my cell phone, so I wasn't certain who it was. Then I heard the voice, and I distinctly remember hearing the same voice back around New Year's. Yup, it's my boss. Not just my boss, the CEO of the company. We don't talk that often together so I knew this must be a "special occasion." He goes on to tell me about what was happening in St. Louis. Apparently at the event someone tried to stick it to Arxan. Essentially it went something like this, a member of the audience posed the question: If "this technology" is so good, why do we need Arxan? Then the presenter went on to say: It is my belief we don't.

Yeah that can kinda make a CEO edgey. You know when a room full of people are told by a fairly respected presenter, your stuff is crap. Needless to say the CEO was conveying this agitation. After about five minutes the whole van triaged to counter this falsehood of "our stuff is crap." The "technology" that was "better" than ours had a severe limitation. You had to use custom hardware. Furthermore the presenter was making the technology out to be the holy grail of security. This is perhaps a good presentation, but not the full truth. Security needs to be at all levels, for it to be effective. Anyhow, our technology doesn't require specialized hardware. After about an hour (now 4:00) we were able to calm ourselves down, and be ready for our presentation.

Then we hit the storm. We drove through hours rain and heavy wind. Fortunately just as we were on the outskirts of St. Louis the storm was over.

At 7:00 we get to the hotel, check-in, meet another fellow employee, and are off to a casino for dinner. It was a really tasty meal. I had a salad to start, and then for the entree filet mignon, mashed potatoes, and broccoli. Very good. Once dinner was over it was around 9:00. Time for bed eh? We got back to the hotel, reviewed the presentation and slept.

Thursday 7:00a breakfast. Got to the customer's location around 8:00a. Setup 25 laptops and put out the 50 training notebooks. People starting filing in around 8:30 - 9:00. Soon everyone was there and we were presenting. We drove home the point that we like the other technology are but one piece in the puzzle. Once again we were able to captivate the audience, everyone loves to learn how to hack. Unfortunately some were expecting something else from the presentation. Originally we were going to train the group on our product.

In the past, Mike and I trained 6 students together, each student had their own laptop. For us to be able to train the 50 proposed students would have meant we needed 16 trainers and 25 more laptops, not going to happen. Anyhow, the training went well. We got alot of positive feedback and some negative feedback, not without constructive criticism though. By 3:00 we were all packed. But before we left we got to tour their facility. It was indeed impressive. By 4:00 we were back on the road. Got back to my car around 9:00p, and was in bed by 9:15p.