Day 2

The inclusion of a self-serve machine for making an on-demand Dirty Chai is instantly successful.

Using beer as an analogy for TCP transmission is nice.  If you don’t mind near 100% packet loss.

The History of Network Protocols isn’t nearly as exciting as you might believe.

Setting up an IRC channel was easier than I thought.  Controlling it is an entirely different matter.

Some people don’t like IPv6.  Some people really like NAT.  These people should be rounded up and forced to eat lunch with me so I can prove them wrong.

Deduping the word “dedupe” from Tech Field Day 5 might have trimmed 4 hours from the total presentation time.

Standards are good.  Unless they are bad.  Then they can still be good, but only if you aren’t bad.

Jay Mellman is really tall.  And coming from me, that’s high praise.

Don’t let your kids succumb to George Lucas Syndrome.

Even 10-year-olds need to go on a date every once in a while.

Even a van full of the Tech Field Day Gold Support Team can’t make some people see reason.

Hotels don’t frown on you bringing your own beer to the pool at 9:00 p.m.

I can be entertaining and funny so long as everyone else is highly intoxicated.

Tech Field Day 5 has come to a close.  I have gained a lot from my experience here, while at the same time realizing I have much more to learn.  Seeing my online friends in reality was as fun as I imagined, and meeting new friends was great as well (yes, even Curtis Preston).  I have a healthy respect for Stephen Foskett and his crew and the wonderful job that they do putting together each Tech Field Day.  The coordination that allows us to seamlessly move from one briefing to another so easily takes a crack team to pull off.

In the coming days, I will have many more words to write about the sponsors of TFD 5.  While they did pay to fly me to California and gave me a place to catch a combat nap between sessions, I am in no way beholden to them.  I plan on giving my fair and honest opinion about the things I’ve seen.  I hope that my readers will find my condensation and appraisals to be useful and maybe even a little insightful.

In the end, I have found this experience to be quite unique.  I look forward to the day when I might be able to attend another TFD and gain even more knowledge that I can share with my friends and colleagues.  Who knows what I might learn next time?  I might even bring a belt.