Today is IBM partner day, much like yesterday was H-P partner day.  Like the H-P event, my registration is not in order, and I have to go through heroics to get registered.   Unlike the H-P event IBM does not have anything cool to give away, but then I don’t really care as I certainly don’t need more crap to carry home.
    Today was pretty much a carbon copy of yesterday, except I did not decide to take two totally unnecessary trips to the Marriot for events that didn’t exist.  I again had lunch with the partners (chicken and carrot cake and that paint thinner they call coffee), met a couple of really cool clients, and spent much of my day switching hats from IBM to H-P and back again.  I was able to stay slightly less sweaty today in the process.

    Actually, I haven’t had much opportunity to digress and talk about the weather.  In a nutshell - it’s perfect here this time of year.  It’s like a long string of perfect summer days - 72 to 78 degrees, sunny most of the day, usually a nice cool breeze blowing in, and cool nights down around 60.  Back at home we’ve continued to have a string of 80 to 90 + degree days.  The humidity is a little high, however, hence all the heretofore mentioned swine-like sweating.

    During the day I get a voicemail from a friend (well, royalty, really - Princess, give the "girls" a squeeze for me) at BrandX - she tells me that another friend ("Butch") is here at the show and that we should get together and break something or get arrested in her honor.  So, I head over to the BrandX booth and sure enough he’s working a demo.  (BrandX and Butch used to protect anonymity)
    We chat a bit and decide to catch dinner - neither of us particularly caring for any more quality time with our respective co-workers.  I have no idea what event IBM has planned, but I’m too tired for much other than dinner.  Butch is at the Marriot, BrandX taking better care of thier folks on the road than some other companies I know of.
    After a bit of clean-up back at our respective hotels we meet and start to walk down Market, as I was told at my hotel than everything good was "south of Market".  We walked for like 10 blocks and finally said "F" it, we're going to someplace I know.
    Anyway - One of the easiest places to get to for both of us (that has decent food and you can walk around without fear of getting clunked in the head or at least verbally accosted by dozens of homeless) happens to be the Castro district, reportedly the “gay” part of town.  I say reportedly because it's pretty much gay all over town, gay folks just happen to be a bit more concentrated in that area.  Of course, there is the street names like the intersection of Dyke & Twink, but most folks miss that anyway.  I also suppose the store names like "Bob's Gay Coffee" and "Ghirardelli Chocolate..... for Gays" might be unsettling to some.  I am, of course, making a point - tourists might call it the gay part of town, but it's just like any other part of SFO with lots of little overpriced shops full of crap, places to eat of various distinction, and loads of people of every possible description on the streets.  There is a restaurant called "The Sausage Factory" that, while I find the name quite amusing, have no intention of getting anywhere near.
    Anyway - Castro - It’s straight (sic) down Market Street on the “F” trolley.  Butch happens to be gay and actually has no particular feelings one way or another about going to Castro, (or “The ‘Stro” as I was told to call it) but I assure him that it’s one of the few good restaurants that I know of in the area.
    So of course, we end up not eating there.  We ended up going to a place called “Nirvana” - a weird Thai Noodle meets Vegetarian meets Haute Seafood Cuisine kind of joint.  Typical of SFO it’s small, cramped, and noisy - so we do our best to fit in.  My seat faces the bar, and I watch as the bartender does an incredible job of mixing the most complicated crap I've ever seen - one drink had a salad bar on top of it.  Our waitress has an interesting collection of piercings and tattoos, but relatively well done and not at all like "prison" ink.  She brings me a baby bottle of Pelligrino and I ask her about the ink on the backs of her arms (if they have some signifigance).  She tells me no, that they’re part of a larger design she’s having done little by little, and that pretty much everything across her shoulders is tattooed.  But she's trying to keep things symmettrical.
    I mention that I have finally decided to get one, having had a fake one applied the night before (I forgot to mention that part of the Hippy Hippy Shake - they had some old guy spray painting tattoos under the guise of face painting).  I told her I’d been thinking about getting one of those bands done around my arm.  She told me pretty much what every person that has several tattoos has told me - that the adrenaline rush from getting a tattoo is like nothing else you can experience, and that it’s kind of addictive.  We were getting along just swell until she turned down my Corporate AmEx card.  Damn tattooed freak!
    As we left the restaurant and headed back to Market to catch the “F” train, I was sad to see that the local tattoo and piercing shop was closed, having convinced Butch that we should both just go get one done.  Butch made a great comment about the cliché of a gay boy getting a tattoo in Castro (oops - sorry - The Stro) so I was actually a bit glad he couldn’t make us follow through!
    At one point over dinner he had mentioned that in conversation he had once used the statement “I love the sound of music” - being said in a generic sense to express a general enjoyment.  Naturally, it had been taken out of context as “I love "The Sound of Music" ” at which point someone broke into a chorus of “The Hills are Alive” or something, so I was sure to mention that several times over the next hour.  He also told me of meeting the worlds foremost authority on veterinary anesthesia while at a rave in Ibiza, Spain - the guy betting that Butch would not know who he was by simply hearing his name.  Butch was somehow involved in that stuff at one point, and knew the guy immediately, telling him "you're the worlds foremost authority on veterinary anesthesia".  It's a small world.
    While we were waiting for the “F” a guy came up to us and decided to get chatty.  He wasn’t really shabby looking but he also wasn’t exactly modeling for J. Crew.  One thing he was though - hammered!  He started asking about where we were from and what the economy was like there, every now and then throwing out non sequeters that make the drunk public so much fun to see and enjoy.  Naturally, when the trolley arrives he simply must sit behind us.  We have been doing our best to pay him little attention, now we’re going into full ignore mode.  He finally asks if we’re “together” - at which point both Butch and I look at one another and start to laugh.  I say no, were business associates.  In hindsight I wonder if I should be pissed of at that or not…. I’m as sexy as the next guy….  Drunk guy does not find this funny and moves across the aisle to sit behind stoned black guy.  I love public transport!
    As we headed back to our hotels, and being the party animals we are (it's near 8:30), we decided to stop at Virgin Records for a coffee, a pee, and a trip to the imports section of the store (I have been looking for copies of CDs by Mourning Windows, Nuno Bettencort’s band).  As we were to discover the days' bad luck was not over for me as 1) there was no longer a coffee shop 2) there were no bathrooms (but we were assured that the ones across the street at Old Navy were “really  quite nice”) and 3) that there was no “import section” - everything was mixed in.  On our way in (as we rode up 3 flights of escalators) I asked if Butch knew that the owner of Virgin was gay, to which he immediately replied that he didn’t have his “Who’s Gay” guide handy tonight.  Touché.  A few minutes later (as we turned away from the now abandoned 3rd floor coffee shop) I spotted a book about Judy Garland, so I naturally had to ask if he was familiar with the work.  I was praying that an opportunity to ask him about show tunes would arise, but I’m sure that by that point he would have hit me in the mouth.
    Having looked around and waited for 10 minutes for something even remotely resembling “helpful and courteous sales staff” my bladder was reaching critical mass so we decided to call it a loss and head back to our hotels.  So much for a wild night on the town - I was back in my hotel by 9:30, but all in all it was a generally fun day with nice company over dinner for idle chit-chat.

    As it turns out the IBM party was also the party for / by the Free Software Foundation.  I had considered going, but I had a little work I wanted to get done, so I headed back to the hotel.  Besides - those geeks party way too hard for a geezer like me.
    When I started digging into my laptop bag I pulled out the DVD I had gotten today - H-P had a give-away of 100 copies of "Revolution OS", and they had the guy that made the movie - J.T.S. Moore - on hand to autograph them.  The DVD is an H-P product, and as far as I know this film is not available on DVD, so it's pretty cool.  I got my H-P contact to snag me one.  As you can guess, any work I had intended to turn my attentions to was put aside and I watched the moive.  It was really quite good, expressing many of the facets of GNU/FSF/OpenSource and highlighting many of the major players quite well.

    It was a good day after all.....
 
 
 

Winding down with Day Six........