Greetings from php|works/db|works. It’s a beautiful day in Toronto, or so I’m told, I’m sitting in a conference room in the bowels of a hotel. Once again, I get to don my “Roving Reporter” hat, grab a pack of cigarettes, my old Underwood and pretend that I’m a reporter again.

The conference is being held in the Holiday Inn, Yorkdale in Toronto. I will be honest, when I arrived yesterday I was a bit apprehensive. To get to the hotel, you have to drive through a car dealership. Ok, that’s different but hey, we’re in Canada so I guess there are differences other than the money. (Which, by the way, is much prettier than US currency.) Once I entered the hotel, however, I was pleasantly surprised. The hotel is beautiful and there’s a great mall (Great===(exists(Apple Store) & exists(Sony Store))) across the street and you can get to it without walking through the car dealership.

Today’s schedule is very light as it’s the “tutorial” extra day. I’m attending Paul Reinheimer’s Certification crash course. Paul is going a great job of explaining things, giving helpful hints and pitching his new book. You can tell he’s excited about the book because he’s wearing a T-Shirt with a screenshot of Ed Finkler’s blog about it.

I think my favorite quote from this morning’s session has to be “Regex is some bad scary mojo.” Short of that though, Paul is doing a great job of packing in a 4 week course into 6 hours.

Hopefully after his classes, I’ll be a step closer to passing the exam. not that I’ve got time to take it this week but I’m hoping to take it soon. (For some reason Dhwani won’t take into account my work at Zend and just make me an “honorary” ZCE.)

Check back regularly for updates on the conference. I’ll have pictures of Paul’s T-Shirt and others up on Flickr by this evening.

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