An audience of two

Saturday September 30, 2006

Day -1: Setup begins

Spent the day at Moscone West, setting up for CEC. That place is way bigger than you think! It takes up the whole block, and is on several floors. Between the stairs and the artery-hardening caramel brownies I may gain or lose 10lbs this week.

Initial set up is complete. Much easier than in previous years, thanks to the efforts of Steve's trade show team. All the systems were configured and ready to roll; a few minor issues such as not actually having a subnet assigned to us, but nothing tricky. Not like last year, when we were up past midnight re-jumpstarting fifty clapped out Ultra 5s.

The conference planners seem to be a good bunch. But I'm not sure about their choice of conference logo - it looks like a Tramp Stamp to me. I hope they don't expect us all to get inked - I know very few engineers that look good in low rise jeans.

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Friday September 29, 2006

Protesting 101
Driving home this evening I passed a group of demonstrators at the corner of Mowry and Fremont, protesting about immigration. Or at least I assume that's what they were doing. For all I know it could have been Improv Everywhere having a laugh.

I saw several US flags and a banner of some kind. There were placards on which the only words I could read were "Legal" and "Immigrant" plus another that was partly folded over and so all I read was "HONK IF YOU ... ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS".

From this I deduced that these people were passionately concerned with the issue of immigration. However it wasn't clear to me what their position was - whether they were for or against it.

It seems to me that if you're going to get a group of people out on the streets on a Friday evening to protest an issue, you really owe it to all of us to make some damn sense. Judging by all the Vote Frederick Maria Truong-Katzenovic For Senior Deputy District Undersupervisor posters it's election time, so presumably you want me to go out and vote for something. Or against it. Or maybe you want me to abstain. Frankly I've got no idea. And until I understand your position, I'm not honking.

As for voting - can't help you there. I don't get a vote. I'm an immigrant.

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Another year, another conference ...
It's STS - sorry - CEC time again. Since 1998 I've been one of the team behind the scenes, ensuring that everything went OK, particularly the technical side. Whether it's replacing frame buffers and systems damaged by static in Denver or helping speakers recover their presentations that they'd left behind, there's always something to go wrong. Hopefully things will go smoothly and I'll get chance to attend some of the presentations. I may even get chance to blog a little.

This year feels very different. For one thing, it's the first year that Denise Webster hasn't been running the show; instead much of it has been outsourced to the company that handles Java One, so I'm expecting a big budget production. I hear talk of plasma screens instead of posterboards, which is a shame as every year I've taken one of the posterboards home and now have them all over my office. Do you think they'd miss a plasma screen?

It's also my first time in Moscone West; I haven't even set foot in it before. So if you see a fat bloke running around with a length of Ethernet cable and a stressed expression it's probably me. Stop me and say hi, once I've finished fixing whatever crisis has arisen.

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Thursday September 28, 2006

Another question answered
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Wednesday September 13, 2006

Dinosaurs rule.
There seems to be a lot of people out there that don't like Sun. They're always having snide digs at us. Yesterday the Motley Fool called us "dinosaurs".

At first I was annoyed, but then I got to thinking. When people think of dinosaurs they think of slow, lunbering plant eaters. But they weren't all like that. Think of the Velociraptor - fast, mean buggers that would have your arm off in no time.

If Sun is a dinosaur then we are the Archaeopteryx. We've dragged ourselves out of the seas onto land, then we've developed wings and invented feathers. Got that? We invented things that weak little creatures like penguins take for granted. Plus we've got teeth, we've got claws. We can fly. Oh, can we fly.

Never forget, the dinosaurs ruled the planet. It took a catastrophic crash to change that, but even then there were survivors. And they continued to evolve. So yeah, we're dinosaurs. And you mammals and birds had better watch out, cause we're predators and we're hungry.

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