Hi friends… I’m sitting in my little corvette in a parking garage waiting for my friend Gus to show up.. Gus is the friend I ran into miraculously at hertz the the other night.
    I’ll get as much blogging as I can now.. Probably I’ll just post the pictures and add the text tomorrow.

The conference started yesterday morning with a main session. There are about 4100 people here.. quite a crowd. The kick of included some acrobats from disney/ Most impressive

Then  talks from management folks..like Ted.. the companies vP for training.

And Fred the VP for Services..

And my buddy John the Sr VP in charge of research .

The initial session lasted 2 hours..

(more later.. gotta run)

I just spent a very excellent 2 hours catching up with my freind Gus… which was really great.. the only catch is… it’s now 2:30 in the monring.. so My comments on the rest of the blog will be sparce 🙂

Where was I.. Oh yeah… yesterday…

I had a great conversation with my friend Chandu .. He’s in the process of building a crbon nuetral home.. very cool and contentious

We sepnt the rest of the day going to talks of various types.. from the technical to the …. well… non-technical. this one was actually pretty good.

On  thing I did notice.. the gender ratio here is so bad that there line to the men’s room was 10 times longer than the lien to the women’s room.. have you ever seen that ?

Here are Sharron and propeller-head Curry.. both from canada

Curry and me… Curry is one of my favorite mischief makers in out traveling group/

I ren into my old friend Kursad .. originally from Turkey. but now in Raleigh

Here are Jai. Joanne and Dan.. all friends from corporate / the Academy

After the day.. we went back to our hotels.. here’s the view off the balcony near my room.. nice

Then we went to Animal Kingdom for a private party.. very cool. it was strange waling in there.. the last time I was in there was with the sam, gabe and diane.. I think Max came later that trip)

Here are Chandu and Bruce right before we stared riding the Mt. everest Roller coaster a bunch of times.. wheeeeeeee (I’m still dizzy a whole day later)

Me and Mr. Yeti

I tossed a SamStone into the main pond at animal kingdom ..   I felt so much better after I did that !

Here’s Ron with his candy flower

and Lori demonstrating her dance moves…

I drove back to my hotel around 11:30

And found this guy blocking my path.. This palce reminds me aof houston .. where I grew up.. the air is almost as humid as being under water.. all the bugs and slimy things love it !

OK.. now it’s today.. I drove to the convention center.. I got out of the car and my glasses immediately fogged up.. again.. just like Houston

I ran into friend Jose.. who sometimes looks so much like my brother .. it’s spokes me out.. Look around his eyes.

Hey.. I found some lint on the floor in the shape of a valentine.. even in the middle of 4000 walking folks there is sometimes magic.

We had a great meeting of our outreach volunteers at lunch.. many of these folks had never met each other in person.. only over phone and email.. it was pretty cool meeting face to face.

I spent soem time catching up with friend Glehhhhhn from Australia.. he described how he’s wired his new house to be so automatic that the toilet flushing can open the garage door.. if thats what you want. Here he is logged on to his house in Sydney Australia looking to see if anyone is up and walking around at 5AM there.

I also ran into my friend Barbara.. she and I were working in Corporate at the same time. She’s a specialist in the math behind modeling rivers.

And here’s his emminance Chris. my friend and co-conspirator from England.

After the days meetings I drove Joanne. over to our dinner. I took a short stop to help a turtle cross a fast road…   Luckily.. not a snapper !

At the reception we welcomed the newly appointed Distinguished Engineers.. Here are Cara and my friend Romellia..

At the reception I met my friend Peter for the first time face to face.. he’s  an alpha geek here at IBM.. and a great classical musician.

And two friends Sub and Bala.. both with the last names Iyer.. I learned about the cast name Iyer and what it meant..

Hey Leo.. (another canadien)

Ann from Poughkeepsie .

David from California.. he once got us out of a bind in China by producing an American Chinese restaurant menu .. we used it to help us communicate with the waiters in Beijing when we couldn’t speak Chinese.

My hero Karl-heinz from germany

And friend Kerry from SanFran (originally from Cuba.. I think )

I saw my old friend Dave from Enidcott.. We haven’t really tlaked in 24 years !!!

Wendy and Luba (ukranian)

And our patron Nick with Lisa and Karl Heinz