Recently in MySQL Users Conference Category

I've been making a list of what shows I have to tell my Time-Warner DVR not to delete until I tell it to. Why? Because Saturday I fly out to San Jose to the MySQL Users Conference. The catch? I'm bunking on Jeremy's couch for the week, and he's long since given up on any sort of television or cable service in his house.

I'll be supplementing, to a limited extent, what I miss from the iTunes Music Store, but it looks like the only shows I watch that iTMS sells are Lost and The Apprentice. So things like West Wing, Sopranos, Big Love, 24, What About Brian (great new show by the way, you should watch, really), Boston Legal, to a much more limited extent American Idol (I've been sucked into that vortex by D, damn her to hell *grin*), and Survivor, are all going to have to either be downloaded illicitly, surreptitiously watched at some kind soul's place, or otherwise stored until I get back (and hopefully, keep myself spoiler-free for a week.... which reminds me essentially that if there's anyone else with a West Wing or 24 fetish in the Bay Area, I'd really like to hang out with you Sunday or Monday night, especially if you're rockin' the HD).

Sunday afternoon, I'll be making a pilgrimage over to Bay101, and hopefully playing in their Sunday afternoon limit tourney. I much prefer no-limit to limit poker, but, eh, you take what you can get. If there's any poker players who want to tag along, let me know.

Yesterday was mostly a blur to me, mainly because I kept waiting impatiently to get to the end of the day when the exhibit hall opened up, because then the O'Reilly booth would be available to the public, and then then first paying-recipient of the book would receive their copy. Folks who ordered from online retailers haven't gotten their copies yet, nobody has. Every copy ORA could come up with was boxed and sent here for the Conference.

As I waited around like a nervous mother, I finally got the opportunity to thank Ken Jordan, who was the first person to walk away with a copy. I know it was stupid, but after that I was able to relax, hang out with Ray, Jess, Jeremy and Andy, and just enjoy the rest of the evening. The book seems to be selling fairly briskly. I need to actually buy a few copies so I can get Jeremy to sign them while we're together, so they can be gifts and such. (Unfortunately, the booth isn't actually run by O'Reilly, so I can't just get my free author's copies or anything like that).

For the record, Jeremy was way cooler about it than I was yesterday.... he didn't even swing by the booth until like 90 minutes into the dealers-hall reception. Nerves of steel, I tell ya'....

After I previously mentioned MySQL Licensing issues, Zak from MySQL A.B. invited me to attend the Licensing BOF this evening, so I did.

What really struck me most was that the MySQL folks really do seem to be stuck on this belief that "moral obligations should dictate businesses' legal obligations."

At previous conferences I've attended (namely LISA and OSCON), there were a metric assload of Apple users on iChat/Rendezvous. OSCON would frequently have upwards of two dozen folks using the chat service.

Now, OSCON only has about 3 times the attendance of the MySQL Users' Conference does, but has about 6-8 times the Rendezvous proliferation it does. At the moment, there are three other Rendezvous users online, two of which are my friends sitting right near me.

It's a different crowd, and there's nothing wrong with that, but given how much of a presence Apple has here, I guess I expected a proliferation at least somewhat close to the other conferences, per capita, as it were.

Tomorrow is the first day of the Users' Conference. Jeremy abandoned me today so he could go flying a glider, so I decided to head over to Universal Studios. (I got the better end of that deal, though, since he didn't get any flying in because of weather issues). I ended up realizing I'm not nearly the amusement park aficionado I used to be. Maybe it was that every ride dropped you into the middle of a store before you actually "exited" (in at least one case, where that store had nothing to do with the ride).

Ray (who really should blog more often so his blog doesn't seem empty) and Jess are here as well, so the four of us went to dinner. Ray paid a small fortune for a bowl of Campbell's soup, and I ended up with a plate that had nothing but a piece of filet mignon on it (but damn was it good!)

Jeremy and I came back right after because we had some evening plans (which it turns out fell through), but Ray and Jess went out in search of Ray's beloved ice cream. Of course, once Jeremy and I ended up sitting around in our room with no plans, I got to thinking about how much I wanted ice cream too. After a fruitless trip to the gift-shop, hoping they had overpriced ice-cream snack-bars or something, I ended up paying for room service ice cream that cost me enough to buy about three pints in the real world.

I took a couple pictures, but don't have enough yet to make it worth hooking the camera to the laptop yet. More tomorrow....

It looks like the debut of High Performance MySQL, the book Jeremy and I co-wrote, will be at the MySQL Users' Conference.

Our editor happily announced to us this morning that he had, in his grubby mitts, the real final book, as it came from the presses. It's not really "real" yet, because I haven't got my copy in my hands yet, but it'll be real pretty darned quick, it looks like.

I'm sure O'Reilly is planning some sort of publicity surrounding the release of the book, since it's obviously been timed to coincide with the conference. So, if you see Jeremy or I at the conference, we'll have that obvious look of relief on our faces. :-)