13-X-2003.
The whilfest, day two and three.
On the evening of 13th, right after or instead of dinner in the hotel, we went some three blocks away, for beers. In the ballroom where our grand opening was last night, this evening they had a fundraiser. Mostly fun, some draiser. When I think of it, this was about the only time I came to someone in a full tuxedo within spitting range. And not one, there were dozens of them, and their ladies were in full fashion gear. The value of their attire would feed a village for a year or two, and that's without jewelry. They had a real dixie band playing, liveried servants checked their invitations and ushered them to their seats. Later I heard how that works. They pay some hefty ticket, 500$ and up, and then someone from the charity organization makes a speech, shows perhaps a dozen heartrending slides or a video, then they write the checks, payable to the organizer, and then eat drink and have fun, happy to have contributed to a worthy cause, tax deductible at that. The organizer piles up the money, takes out his expense (there's a lot of cost, not one bottle of wine is below 100$) and in the end passes the remainder to some charity fund, which will also have administrative expenses... the poor eventually get some 10%, if they get it.
Speaking about dinner... the first evening I took a spoon of something that looked like some mustard sauce, by color at least. Maybe it did contain mustard, but the main ingredient was he so-called blue cheese, which is cream cheese left to certain bacteria to develop culture, arts and government in it, which gives it its special taste. The effect on me is simultaneous surge of two opposing senses: one is that I'll regurgitate it immediately, with bad aftertaste of stomach acid. The other one is that I already did it. And that's before I even swallowed any. I avoided it ever since, tasting a bit of it here and there, and effect was always the same. I guess that's how far Asians feel when trying to eat liver, it's bitter to them.
The three blocks to the brewery are a rough approximation, as this part of Milwaukee is on the coast, with some tributary river passing through, so we went down to the embankment, went up some stairs... I made a few shots during that short strooll, not more than 500m, and I'm completely sure I wouldn't be able to find the place again.
The place was an artisanal brewery with a beer pub, the vats are right behind the glass.
The beer was... so-so, I tried two or three kinds, nothing to slash wrists over, no letter no postcard, because the Amers like it thin. Doesn't have that fullness of taste... etc, don't get me to air my mouth like the enologists are prone to wax poetic. One older guy lined up a spectrum of seven beers, from tar dark to vampire pale. Paul McNett sat near me, so I asked more about how to fox on Linux, i.e. more than what he explained during the lecture, and I so warmed to the idea (and to stick it to the m$)
[post festum: over the years I tried that, with varying success, and then in 2016. went with Linux for real, and gradually switched all my private apps to run so, including Byo, fes and statcounter.prg]
Then we returned to the hotel and continued, in the showroom, the endless programmers' chat. The guy on whose t-shirt it says he didn't find it is Whil Hentzen in persona.
The next day it got interesting. I'm not counting several dot net related classes, of which there were two kinds - how to call dot net stuff from fox or vice versa, and how to switch to dot net from fox. I avoided both kind in wide arc.
The evening was fun. We went to the spy museum, aka „Safe house“ tavern, all done in the cloak and dagger style of the early cold war years. A red LED in the eye of a newspaper photograph, sandbags, instruction manuals for various weapons and tools of the trade as table mats, rough wooden beams as in a dug in shelter in the trenches, the works. Cute, fun, good time. On the photos I see Barbara P. and I were collecting money to pay the bill. Of others I recognize Mark McCassland and Michele C.
We returned to the hotel then, took a beer each and sat under the catwalk connecting opposing inner terraces, in front of that bar. Circled the armchairs and couches, sat, sipped our beers and had fun. Then one of the girls noticed Tina's camera forgotten in her bag. Tina was supposed to come down for it, but forgot, so we all wanted to make it up for her missing this nice evening, so we made several regular shots with her camera. And then someone said it's too dull this way, so we started making silly shots - Doug's bald spot, my thumbs over my palms, someone's crooked elbow shot so to resemble butt cheeks and a dozen more silly things of the kind. Too bad we never saw the photos.
Mike Valens was our wunderkind. He became a foxer at about age 16. He was about 20 now, grew into a good programmer while staying young, crazy and full of ideas. Too bad that he made too much money at that, so he got used to marijuana much more than what regular dosage would be. He specially wanted to talk with me, I guess he sensed a crazy guy of his own kind, so at some point we took our drinks and went down the hall leading behind the bar. I had no clue what were we looking for, but he found a pianino. On casters. So we pushed it closer to the bar, brought a chair, and he played.
And here's the proof that smoking was permitted in the hotel. Maybe not in all rooms, maybe there weren't ashtrays on tables, but every hall or gathering place had these upstanding examples, with sand.
The next day was more or less just the last speeches until lunch, and then we all flew home.
One of memorable lectures was by Ted Roche, who co-wrote the „Hackers' guide“ with Kristin, Doug and Della, about cleaning up the HTML produced by Word. Because sooner or later, that kind of shit will land on your plate, and you'll want to get rid of it in some automatic way. So yessss, I was not the only one who was seriously pissed off by the amount of bullshit and spaghetti tagging that this worthy PoS produced, and not the only one with the same problem. Felt better right on the spot.
Mentions: Byo (Byo), fes, fox, Kristin Peiser, Majkrosoft (m$), statcounter.prg, Tina Diamond, whilfest, in serbian