It was the best of days, and it was the worst of days...

Last Thursday (January 20th) I was flown down for a job interview with Sun's Technology Evangelism group. Unfortunately, due to my relatively weak presentation skills, I didn't get the job. :-(

However, the good news is that I managed to meet up with Alan Coopersmith, who escorted me on a tour of the campus, so I could visit old friends and colleagues, and put faces to names I've known for years through email and Usenet. I got to meet such people as Casper Dik, Andy Tucker, and Darren Moffat. Alas, I missed my old manager, Peter Brentnall, and a few others, like Alan Duboff and Jim Grisanzio. Maybe next time...

As if that wasn't enough for one day (which, incidentally, started at 04:00!), fellow Solaris advocate and OpenSolaris pilot member, Ben Rockwood, was kind enough to take me out for a steak dinner! We spent hours talking about all things under the, err, Sun, and generally putting the Solaris and open source worlds to rights. Ben's wife, Tamarah, and their daughter, Nova (who has gotta be the cutest Solairs advocate in Silicon Valley!) joined us. Great people, all of them (Sun is lucky to have Ben on their side: I pitty the poor bugger who rubs Ben up the wrong way!).