So anyway, I get off work today -- I think it's the latest I've ever worked at this job -- and arrive home at about 18:50. After roughly 9.5 hours of coding php like a madman, I was feeling quite exhausted. Pooped, really.

I started my rounds of nightly surfing. Slashdot. Conception. Jaegerfesting. Glanced at the communal comment glob. Doh! Jaeger asking if anyone wants to attend BLUG. I glance at the clock. 6:56. Hopeless. Doh!

I surf over to The Lounge, and check the timestamp on his comment. Many hours ago. It just so figures that the one day I don't bother to check in all day, something of timely and immediate relevance is said. I figure it's probably a lost cause, but decide to wander over to the BLUG page, just to see what the topic is. Databases. Doh!

Way too late, and I'm way too tired. But.... Jaeger, bouncing, Linux users, database talk, fun and computing for all.... Too.... tempting.... Resistance... is... futile....

In a fit of decision, I jumped out of my chair, dashed out the door, mounted Tobias, and cracked the whip. Or... figuratively speaking. Performed the finger crossing procedure throughout the trip, hoping no cops would be in the area.

85 down South Boulder Road, got stuck behind a slow poke for a while on Table Mesa, and hit the clear on Broadway, cruising 75 miles per hour through town. What a rush!

I think the NIST clock read 19:08 as I entered the building.

Upon crossing the threshold of the auditorium, I spotted Jaeger and bouncing almost immediately, proceeding directly to their location, and took a seat next to bouncing. Jaeger was wearing a brand new shirt with the source code to the DVD decryption algorithm on the back.

[Bitscape actually ordered a similar shirt last week, but a different color with slightly different insignia on the front, which should be arriving sometime soon.]

Ya know, when somebody gets sued, you just gotta patronize them. Ya just have ta! :)

Back to our topic, when I arrived, the presentation was already getting underway. The first guy, who I guess could also be considered the MC for the event, talked about Postgres, summarizing its features, advantages, weaknesses, etc. Cool stuff. (I guess I should know, given that this rambling will soon be inserted into.... yeah, nevermind.)

The second talked about Sybase for a while, discussing why he had decided to use it in his business, some of the advantages it had, and some of the problems. Quite a number of people in the audience had questions throughout the talk, which were sometimes answered by other audience members, resulting in what at times almost became a general all-out discussion. Interesting, all of it, nonetheless.

The third guy talked about Oracle, its complexities, performance, features, etc. He went on for a while, and LOTS of audience discussion during his talk. Yes indeed.

[And yes, I am hurrying through this, cause I want to get to sleep before too long after midnight.]

Fourth guy, from Aspen systems, came to talk about the database they're developing. Not relational, not SQL, and it's got a different idea of how things should be structured that I'm not going to try to go into detail about here. Basically, it's not a normalized form, but all data about something is kept in a single table, whose data types are more flexible to allow one-to-many relationships and other goodies in columns... yadda yadda yadda.

Anyway, the whole thing went on WAY longer than was planned. Not only did all these guys have presentations that were quite long, but the audience kept egging them on with questions throughout the event. But it made for an interesting time.

By the end, the first guy who had done the postgres talk was also scheduled to talk about MySQL. Due to the lateness of the hour, he summarized his presentation into one sentence by saying it's fast, stripped down, and there ya go. One audience member retorted with something to the effect of: "You think it's fast? Ever tried doing an insert? Hah!"

So anyway, after the talks were over, I think it was around 21:40 or so. At least, that's what the clock said when I looked at it. And of course, everyone had to hang out and discuss all the relevant issues at length afterwards.

bouncing, myself, and bouncing's friend went and sort of hung out amongst ourselves, talking about distros, XFree86 4, databases, Oracle, this Aspen guy's database threory. The friend said that somebody way back in the 70s had actually come up with something very similar, and it had been around for years before being abandoned. Hmmmm....

I nabbed a copy of Caldera Technology Preview boxes that was being given away. It's got kernel 2.4 preview, XFree 4, KDE 2, and some other goodies. Bouncing was lamenting the fact that just yesterday, he had gone to CompUSA and paid $20 for the exact same thing. Now, a big box full of free copies for anyone -- while supplies last -- at the LUG meeting. But, he reported, Caldera did do quite an awesome feat with it. Very easy for him to get it all up and running on Festery. His previous attempts at installing 4.0 manually had failed. This one had worked right out of the box. Cool beans!

More food for Argo! :)

After talking a bunch more about this, that, and the other, bouncing's friend departed. bouncing updated each other on our statuses, and I learned that Festery is completely without without networking. No dialup. (Bad phone lines.) No LAN. Nada. Doh!

After discussing more about databases, web spiders, OS theory, Oracle, file systems, and other goodies, we regrouped with Jaeger, who had been talking with the apparent DB guru of the event. (While the guy was merely member of the audience, I would suspect that his many comments during the talks would have been moderated up as "4 Insightful" or "5 Informative") So I say guru.

The three of us talked more about... stuff. When it was just and a few other people left in the room, and the building attendants were preparing to shut off the lights to get rid of us, we headed out. When we reached the parking lot, a spur of the moment plan was hatched to regroup at the Coffee Pub on The Hill, where we would "Discuss the future of x13". Ahh, yes. Sure!

So we made our way there, each in our respective vehicles, found the place bouncing had in mind, and got our yummies. (I decided against caffeine at this time of day, given my schedule in the morning. I got hot chocolate and a bagel. I think bouncing got hot chocolate too. Not sure about Jaeger.) Sittin in a coffee hours drinking non caffeinated beverages. How strange. But mmmmm, it was good.

Yeah, we.... We discussed the Future of x13! lol.

Can we say Northwestern Productions? I knew we could. When I mentioned this to bouncing, Jagaer didn't get the American Movie reference, and we attempted to explain it to him. Now bouncing wants to see The Worst Scifi Movie Ever. He was attempting to convince Jaeger to schedule a time to view it. Uh oh. There goes the neighborhood!

Well anyway, we got to the coffee place just in time, because just as we were ordering, they decided that it was time to stop admitting new customers. But they weren't going to make people leave until 23:00, so we had a few minutes to sit, drink, and discuss.

At 23:00, we were the last customers to leave. Too bad Jaeger and I didn't leave, and bouncing didn't get locked in the bathroom. Oh well! lol.

(Do I see a pattern here? The three of us entering a place, inhabiting it until it closes, and the proprietors practially have to chase us with torches and pitchforks to get us to leave. Rinse and repeat. Ok, maybe I exaggerate. I do that sometimes. ;)

At that point, we split. I headed home in Tobias, and noted that he is now due for his first oil change. I shall have to get that done.

And so, now being after midnight, this rambling has been far too rushed to put the spin, descriptiveness, and artful detail I usually attempt to convey when doing these things. (Or so I like to think.) Oh well. Such is life in content vulture land sometimes.

I will now sleep, and wake up to another busy day tomorrow.