Last night, I repeated to Kris a conversation I had with an acquaintance here at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference. Said acquaintance had expressed surprise I was leaving early (where early was 10 at night) instead of hanging around for the free (free!) beer. Who would leave early when there is free beer? Unheard of!

Not being a big drinker, much less a beer drinker, said free beer had little appeal. Sleep, now that had appeal.

Kris chuckled at the conversation, too, and remarked, "What is it about free that gets people flocking?" People always descend on the free stuff, in a mob mentality, rushing the free stuff. Free! Free! Free! Gone.

Today, after all the sessions were done, the conference provided small appetizer items to tide over the attendees until the party at 7:30 (Yahoo1). Providing a hint of food makes sure people will stay around and check out the vendor booths, instead of splitting for downtown to get interesting nutrition.

After gathering my food, I sat opposite the O'Reilly booth. The booth had a dozen or so stacks of books, which, I later found out, they were giving away for free. When I initially sat down across from the table, I looked at the books and thought, "I have that one, and that one, and that one, just bought that one, have that one and that one and that one." I thought they were selling the books, so, although there was one title I didn't have, but was considering getting, I didn't grab it.

As I sat, ate and watched, the books disappeared in the span of five minutes. Zoom! The geeks descended on the booth and grabbed up all the books, including the one I was interested in. I would have joined the frenzy, admittedly, if only I knew. I would have taken it for free, even though I wouldn't buy it at full price. Sorry I missed it, though the ones I really want, well, I already own.

So, for every 7 pictures taken of me, I'm happy with one. I don't think much of that ratio, it is what it is.

Valleywag is a Silicon Valley gossip website. That I made it into an article on that site, which is dominated by Google hotties and Yahooligans, even though I made it only peripherally, makes me giggle.

A thanks to Scott of Laughing Squid for deleting what I'm sure was the other even-worse photos of me in his ETech photos. Me with Derek Powazek, on the first day at ETech:

Man, I wish my sides didn't hurt so much from laughing at that picture.

I flew home today from Colorado. This trip was supposed to be the end of the contract. It's not. I shouldn't be surprised, but this job is completely a job-never-ending. I want to be done with the job, but I don't want to leave Will, Melanie, Kyle, Ryan or Tim in the cold with half done features or systems that don't work well. It's a rock and a hard place and a bad situation.

I managed to get a great seat for the flight home: second row aisle. I'm usually all the way in the back with the unwashed masses, so the front was nice. The bad part of the front of the plane is that, if it's not first class, you board last. Which invariably means the guy in the fifth row has put his luggage in the compartment over the second row, forcing the person in the second row (read: me) to put luggage in the compartment over the fifth row, if it's available. Annoying people. Just put your luggage over your own freakin' row.

The flight was mostly uneventful. I worked squished in the most uncomfortable position because the person in front of me reclined his seat. I'm 100% sure the person who decided 1" of leg room is enough for anyone, didn't have a laptop open.

The event part of the "mostly uneventful" happened near the end of the flight. About half an hour before descent, the man sitting in the middle seat of row one opposite me went to the bathroom, lavatory, restroom, toliet, whatever (no, that's not the event part). He came back out, and the woman seated to his left went. From overheard conversations, the woman was the first man's mother. When she returned, the first guy stood up, and hovered over the elder man sitting in the aisle in the first row. "Come on, Dad, it's your turn."

The old guy looked up, shook his head, then replied, "No, I don't need to go."

The younger (but still in his fifties) guy insisted.

"You need to go. Let's go."

"I don't need to go."

"Dad, you need to go before we start landing. Get up."

At this point, I wondered who was going to win this argument. The old guy didn't want to go to the bathroom, the younger guy really wanted him to.

The son won by standing in the aisle next to his dad and forcibly lifting him half way from his seat. The old guy had little choice but to stand up.

When he did stand up, it became very clear, very quickly why he didn't want to go to the bathroom. He had problems standing, much less walking, and even less walking on an airplane, which he didn't seem to realize he was in. The four foot journey from the front row to the lavatory took a good 4-5 minutes of foot shuffling and son prodding.

When the dad made it to the lavatory, the son helped him turn around, then dropped his pants for him, and settled him on the seat. All with the door wide open and his ass sticking out. The door was open long enough for me to wonder if the cockpit crew would get nervous not being able to see out the cockpit door eyehole.

The son closed the lavatory door, and went back to his seat, but didn't sit. He sort of hovered near his row, since hovering near the front of the plane isn't allowed. He talked to his mom for a while, looked outside, talked to the flight attendant, hovered, then finally knocked on the lavatory door again.

When his father didn't answer, he opened the door. A look of complete surprise crossed his face when he realized what had happened inside the lavatory, and he roared. "What did you do? You can't do that here! Dad!"

He then rushed in, grabbed a bunch of paper towels, and started cleaning up something from the floor. The old guy was still sitting on the toliet, pants around his ankles. Being in the second row, that was as much as I could see, but the people in the front row were attempting to suppress laughter, as they had full sight of the old man, his trousers and the mess.

The son spent another 10-15 minutes both cleaning up and trying to get his father back to his seat. It was fairly heart-wrenching to watch this old guy being bullied by his son. When he finally left the lavatory, two flight attendants rushed in to finish the cleaning. I'm not exactly sure what the old guy did. I didn't smell excrement on him, but, well, my nose isn't exactly what it used to be.

Watching the old guy reminded me once again of both my own mortality and my desire to be doing what I want to be doing, and not what someone else wants me to be doing. I'm still wondering what I'll do when I'm that age, how coherent I'll be. There's a history of Alzheimer's in the family, and educated people descend into that hell more rapidly than less formally educated people, so the descent will be quick for me if I'm that unfortunate. I expect to outlive Kris. I don't want kids. Who is going to clean up my airplane lavatory shit when I'm nearly gone?

The Real&trade Reason I went to the UPA:

Well, if you're going to kill yourself, it might as well be for something you love. I haven't worked this hard since college. I've certainly worked this many hours before (thanks, Amerigon, for that lovely nightmare), but not in a long while.

Every morning I think I should walk to work. It's only three quarters of a mile to the office. But then I'd have to walk home in the dark, and I have absolutely no idea what kind of neighborhood I'm in. Hate to trip over the homeless guy hanging out at the bus station.

Sheesh, even the McDonald's closed.

Been seeing a lot of the night crew at the hotel. The front desk clerk and I are getting pretty tight. He asked me what I do that I'm out so late every night. "I'm mapping out new routes for the Columbian Cartel." I'm not sure he believes me.

A couple days ago the cleaning crew faked me out and snuck in one afternoon after I had foolishly removed the "Do Not Disturb" sign from the door, thinking the instructions, "No, do not clean my room." would be sufficient to keep them out. No such luck. The poor woman had to figure out how all the bedding from both beds ended up on one bed. Maybe if they didn't keep the rooms so cold, I could sleep without sixteen blankets on me.

That trick I finally figured out. If you want a warm room at night, you have to leave the heater on during the day. Wasteful, but it works. Now the room is toasty warm at night.

The UPA could have bought a couch for the amount of money I'm spending at this hotel. Given that I'm there more than I'm here, it would have been better spent. Of course, I wouldn't smell as nice.

Speaking of, I'm almost out of clean clothes. Two more days and I'll have to decide: dirty clothes, wash them, or just head home.

I'm thinking the latter.

Moe's for bagels in the morning. Mmmmmm!

Well, since this is, in theory, the last weekend and week I'll be coming out to Colorado (at least for free), I figured I'd best start doing all the little things I meant to do. I'm not sure I'll be able to visit either of my aunts, but all the other little things are getting done.

I'd been meaning to visit a running shoe store for new running shoes. Hit that last Thursday, after getting lost at least a dozen times (and being all of 100 yards away from where I needed to be and not aware of it, then driving another mile to get back to that spot in a long round-about way).

This morning, I decided to take those shoes for a run. When staying with Sandie, we'd pass a trailhead on the way to work every morning. I decided I wanted to run that trail. So, on went the new running shoes and after struggling to actually leave the hotel, I drove (once again, the long round-about way) to the trailhead.

Half way there, I realized I had forgotten my water.

Two thirds of the way there, I realized it was really bright out and I had forgotten my sunglasses.

Arriving there, I realized my iPod was on the fritz and wasn't playing any of my purchased music.

I had driven all the way out here, and, by golly, I was going to go for this hike.

Tragically, the only songs that would play are the songs I had ripped from the pile of CDs that sit in the garage. Each of them reminded me of both my college days, and the absurdity I used to do by buying a $16 for that one song I liked.

Foolish child.

Things I learned on the short run I did despite the lack of water, sunglasses and music that wasn't Cinderella, Motley Crue or Winger:

• Running in shorts when it's 38° outside is fairly stupid. Even if it is sunny.
• When the earphones in your ears keep falling out, check to see if the cord is caught in your necklace. There's a reason why it falls out every other step.
• If you forget your water in winter in Colorado, you could just eat the snow on the ground. If you do, pick the snow far away from the cow turds also on the ground.
• High altitude and hills? Eh, not so much.
• Bubble gum rock from the early 90s still sucks. Including Winger.