Today is the day of my talk. I’m always a bit nervous before these things, because I’m never sure if what I’m going to present matches up with what people are expecting. Most people who come to my PDC talk don’t know who I am, so they aren’t expecting me to toss out a few catch phrases, use my psychic powers, and tell stories about how a bug in a 16-bit scanner driver written in 1993 is the reason why TCP/IP is so complicated. (That last part was a parody.)

Today’s notes:

• They certainly don’t make navigating around the Los Angeles Convention Center easy. My talk is in room 406A. Since the room number is in the 400’s, it is naturally on the third floor. And to get to the third floor, you get into the elevator and push 2.
• Someday, they will remember to put a clock in the room where the speaker can see it. That way, you have a clue how you’re doing on time. You might think that when I glance at my laptop, I’m consulting some speaker notes. Nope, I’m just checking the time.
• A relatively quiet place to work is in the valley outside meeting room 151. The operative word here is relatively. It’s still noisy, but the carpeting muffles the noise better than the big open spaces which are more echoey.
• The meals at the PDC are free. The snacks are free. The milk, juice, soda, water, and coffee are free. There is only one thing that isn’t free, and that’s the coffee at the Starbuck’s stand near the main room. And there’s always a line. Leave it to the geeks to find the one thing that they have to pay for and line up for it.