Andrew and I grabbed a quick breakfast of oatmeal from a nearby shitty coffee shop. We were in a hurry though because we wanted to make sure we had seats to see the keynote speaker. Stephen Bourne was the guy who wrote /bin/sh. He was so interesting and so funny. It was a great talk.

We watched several other very good talks, lunch was provided and then more talks. Andrew went to another talk while I stayed out in the hall. I happened to see Dr. Bourne walking alone so took the opportunity to approach him and tell him how much I liked his keynote. He was happy to hear it and joked that it was probably really boring.

After the talks Andrew and I walked in the rain to an Ethiopian restaurant. The food was once again yummy! We were a bit damp from our rain walk so we stopped by the apartment and threw our sweatshirts in the dryer for a while and then headed to the Royal Oak to see if anyone was hanging out. The place was packed and there was Stephen Bourne sitting at a table with a bunch of other people. He waved us over and they made room for us to sit with them. I spent the next five or so hours talking Dr. Bourne’s ear off and encouraging him to tell me stories. We were also sitting with Kirk McKusick and Mike Karels. I didn’t know them before today but they were right there in the beginnings of Unix. Their stories are amazing! The thing that really struck me though is that they know what they did was cool and fun but they were completely down to earth and friendly. I had the best time.

Today I learned so many things. Kirk McKusick designed a display that was used on the space shuttle. It had something to do with radar and the space shuttle docking mechanism. I’m not entirely sure. There were so many interesting stories.