A visit to the Edmonton UNIX User Group

Last night I was able to go to the March meeting of the Edmonton UNIX User Group. I was primarily interested in listening to Sun Microsystems' Darren Schultz's presentation about storage technologies and what goodies Sun might be offering us in the future, but I was also interested in meeting some kindred spirits, and maybe making a new friend or two.

After helping myself to the obligatory doughnuts and drink, I introduced myself to Steve Sutphen, EUG's president. Once he knew who I was, he very kindly allowed me a few minutes to introduce myself. So that's what I did, plugging Solaris Systems Programming and the OpenSolaris pilot program. Much to my surprise, several people in the room had a copy of my book; it's a small world!

Darren's presentation was longer than planned (I think), but it was just about right in my opinion: enough technical content to whet one's appetite, but not so deep as to put all but maybe one or two people to sleep. Those who wanted to know all the technical details about ZFS were invited to Bryan Cantrill's upcoming Solaris 10 presentation.

One of the people I spoke with (hi Rainer!) is a regular reader (so he's the one!), so he was very keen to check out my Ferrari 3400. Fortunately, I anticipated someone might be interested in it and/or checking out Solaris 10, so I had it with me. The Ferrari is currently running build 7 of Nevada, AKA Solaris Express 2/05. Alas, I could demonstrate it for long, as it was already past chucking out time.

After the meeting, Darren and I went for a drink with another guy, also called Darren, in a gret little joint whose name escapes me a present. (This will come as no surprise to people who know me, as I have a terrible memory for names...)

All in all, a very pleasent evening. Not sure if I'll be able to go to subsequent meetings, but I'll try. If you're a UNIX user in the Edmonton, Alberta area, you should check out the Edmonton UNIX User Group. They meet at 19:00 on the second Wednesday of the month, in room 3-33 CSC at the University of ALberta. See you there!