SIGGRAPH day 0

Consider this the first of my SIGGRAPH reports.I figured I'd write things up this year to capture the event for posterity.
Approaching the building, I began to again meet the realization of the sheer enormity of the event.The venue (the LA convention center) is giant, just like all the other venues have been.Somehow I always forget this.
I was early for registration and thus about the third person in line for contributer registration.For some reason I never got the mini-guide that is so useful for finding one's way about the conference. I'll have to get one tomorrow.
Also, I didn't get the ribbons I was entitled to (I got "Paper Author" and had to ask for "Poster Contributer" and "Paper Reviewer" -- by number, in fact)The ribbon-accounting is relatively poor, so I could probably easily have gotten some other ribbons I wasn't quite entitled to (I recall that Wojtan may have managed something of the sort last year).Nonetheless.I think there might also be a speaker ribbon or paper presenter ribbon or something.Really, it's all just silliness anyway.
But, on a positive note, I did get the copy of the proceedings I was entitled to (unlike last year).Of course, maybe it would have been better not to -- given as I spent the next five hours walking around with it in my backpack.
I did manage to relieve myself of one burden: my gigantic 8'x3' poster barely squeezed onto the provided board. (I did see at least one 8'x4' poster already up, so while I was tied for maximum width I was not at maximum area.)I put some post-it notes nearby with a request-for-comments; I'll see if anyone uses this novel system to interact with the poster.
So that's about it for day zero: some items lost, some gained, some not gained that should have been and some gained that perhaps, more prudently, shouldn't have been.