San Jose - Day Three

Day three dawned bright and early. I was optimistic as I rounded the trade show floor and saw part of my booth up. That optimism faded when I heard that one of our crates had accidently been delivered somewhere else. At that point we didn't know where, all we did know was that it wasn't in our booth or anywhere in our convention center.

No big deal typically...however this crate contained all of my graphics, all of my countertops and shelves as well as all of my dispensers. So ideally all I had for a booth was 18 feet of metal trusses with nothing to put on them and 50 boxes of product with no shelves or tabletops to display them on.

So the sleuth in me went to work and we figured out that there was a palatte of gamma vacuum tubes near our booth that didn't belong to anyone...so we looked at the weighbill and it belonged to Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and probably if we could get a hold of someone maybe they might have our stuff on their dock.

In an episode right out of the simpons...we called over to the center (mind you it's about 11 a.m. on a Saturday) and got through to security...who told us they understood our plight but that they didn't have "clearance" to go to the dock and even if they did they wouldn't be able to release the product.

So we kept calling security...every ten minutes or so for the next two hours. We also tried calling every person we knew who might know someone at standford...and well...it wasnt' looking good.

Concurrently I'm trying to figure out what to do to pull together maybe some sort of graphics on the fly, without a computer or high resolution photography and not even a logo downloaded to my computer.

And I prayed.

A Lot.

Around 3:30 p.m. just when we figured all was lost and I had arranged graphics with my friends at APIC and Freeman Display, I hear a rumor on the show floor (because at this time EVERYONE knew my pathetic story) that my crate had been loaded to a truck and was winging it's way to the convention center.

At 4:45, we got the crate, and by 8 pm we had the booth somewhat up.

And all is well with the world and I'm heading for bed.

Tomorrow will be a better day.