Jim Roepcke's weblog have browser, will travel (est. 1999)

It was better than life

CP: Fans at outdoor game happy despite cold

Lots of sentiment that matches my own. I thoroughly enjoyed watching the games today, and it was clear that the people in attendance did too. What's done is done, I'm very happy I got to see it at all. Maybe Gretzky and friends will come back next year anyway... if that happens I will pull out all the stops to attend.

The Oilers won the game that really mattered last night... the alumni game. Fuhr and Ranford (Oilers goalies) were sickeningly good, Ranford made at least half a dozen saves he shouldn't have given his time away from the game.

Montreal played well in the "real" game. I don't think Edmonton adapted to the outdoor ice very well. It was pretty clear that the Edmonton/Alberta-based players on the Oilers had a little something extra.

It would have been nice to have seen the game in HDTV (it was CBC's first HD broadcast) but an HD satellite receiver would have been around $800. For that price I might as well have gone to Edmonton and tried scalping a ticket!

Back from COMDEX

Sorry I didn't mention it here, but I was at COMDEX in Las Vegas this week, showing off Plone.

Plone came in 1st place in a O'Reilly vote for open-source projects. The top six projects got pedestals at the show: Plone, KDE, OpenOffice, Zope, GIMP and GNOME. GNOME didn't accept the invite so Eclipse, the 7th place project, went in their place. I was shocked that Eclipse came in 7th instead of... well, 1st, but apparently they didn't know about the vote so they didn't make their community aware of it.

The Plone booth was staffed by Alan Runyan and Alexander Limi (Plone co-founders), Scott Paley of Abstract Edge, and myself. A good time was had by all! Standing for 4 days was tiring, but it worth it.

Las Vegas is a great place to visit. Lots of fun things to do, and lots of good food to eat. On Tuesday evening, Alan, Alex and I had dinner with half a dozen attendees of ApacheCon, including Sam Ruby, Mark Pilgrim, Joe Gregorio and Michael Bernstein. Mark included a picture of Alan, Alex and I in his ApacheCon photo album.

On Wednesday night representatives from the six projects enjoyed a fine dinner with four representatives from O'Reilly, including Mark Stone, Dale Dougherty and Tim O'Reilly himself! (Sorry, I don't remember who the other person was, I don't think he introduced himself to me)

I also had the honour of demoing Plone 2 to Tim O'Reilly at our booth while everyone else was out having lunch.

Another thing I'll never forget was the guy who lost about $100K in 10 minutes playing Blackjack ($1000 minimum bet table) at the Bellagio. There was a big crowd around the table he and his sexy companion were sitting at. He had a big bag of money sitting on the chair text to him... I lost count of the number of bundles of $100 bills he pulled out of it.

Oh, and then there was the guy who turned $50 into $5000 in around the same amount of time playing craps.

One chance to be a kid again

If you've been reading my weblog this year you know I HAD TO GO TO THIS GAME. I said it over and over again. And over and over. And about 5000 times more offline. I've talked people's ears off about it.

Well, it's the morning of, and I'm at home in Victoria. I couldn't get a ticket, and I couldn't afford the scalper's prices on eBay. Well, I could have, in the "I had enough credit to do it" sense, but then there's no presents under the Christmas tree, no going out for dinner for our impending anniversary, no responsibility. I wanted to do it with just about every fiber of my being. To hell with maturity, this is a once-in-a-lifetime thing.

I had one chance to see Halley's Comet, and my parents wouldn't let me stay up late and go outside to see it. (Hopefully I'll live to be about 87 to see it the next time around)

I was the parent saying no this time... to myself.

I had one chance to see my childhood (and current) idols play together again in Oilers silks, and I couldn't afford to. I don't think this is something that's going to happen again. Not with these players, anyway.

Excuse me while I go feel sorry for myself.

Update: It only took nine minutes after posting this for Dad to call to ask me about the Halley's Comet situation mentioned above. They don't remember not letting me go out to see it.... I do!