Wednesday, March 24, 2004

so much for blogging LIVE

I had planned to post entries more frequently, but actual conference sessions and events have prevented that.

For the past three days, during the day I've attended tutorials and information sessions about various Novell products and technologies. I'm supposed to pay attention during those, so it's hard to blog. The most exciting part of the conference so far was the appearance at Monday's keynote address of Linus Torvalds, the creator of the Linux kernel. He's as close as any of us attendees get to a rock star in our midst, and crowd reacted accordingly. He didn't stay long, but the fact that he was here says a lot about Novell's commitment to Linux and open source software. Torvalds tends to stay out of the spotlight, at least at things like this, and prefers working on Linux code to making appearances. Getting him here was a complete surprise and a real coup by Novell management.

The past two evenings I've been out to dinner and drinks with some of Novell's NY-area customers. Monday night we ate at The Melting Pot, a chain restaurant that serves fondue (cheese and chocolate) and where you cook your own meat in a pot of oil or broth. We had two different kinds of cheese and two different kinds of chocolate fondue for dessert. Last night (Tuesday) we ate at Metropolitan, which was expensive American cuisine. I had a wild mushroom ragout appetizer and a lamb shank entree, with warm apple crisp for dessert. I've been to Port O' Call both nights, but I've managed not to inebriate myself too badly. It's too hard for me to drink at night and then get up early the following morning. I'm not a callow youth anymore.

Tonight is the Sammy Hagar concert at the Delta Center. I hope I can get better pictures of this show than I did of Styx two years ago. I'll put up some more pictures later today or tomorrow. Definitely before I leave on Friday.

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