Yet another night of constant partying....

Well, as the conference winds down, the Informix blowout has occured. This is yet another post at 3:00 CST. The fireworks were good, thanks SGI and Platnium. Some of the party was a bit bizzare but lots of fun. I, your fearless drunk cub reporter scaled the SGI inflatable mountain while in dress pants and a shirt and tie. Oh, yeah I even had my pager. ( I would have brought a beer, but I needed my hands free and I don't think I could have held the bottle with my teeth as I climbed. Besides they wouldn't let me.) Thank God my freinds forgot my pager number. Someone had a cell phone and was willing to page me when I hit the top. The question of the day is: "What strings did Phil [White] pull to get such beautiful weather here in Chicago? Like who does he know and what are his connections?" Rumor has it that Phil did get a tatoo at the European party. Poor Tom Hagarty (?sp) got stuck baby sitting the pyramid at the Informix booth. I was sooo tempted to pull the top CPU and crash the XPS system running then he could join us for beers. Learned a lot on the showroom floor. At the SGI booth, there was a guy from Big Book. Hit their web site search engine. While I'm not trying to sell anything or promote them, the site is based on some software talking to an Online Engine. This sucker is really fast. Thank Hal Spitz. Hal had some interesting comments comparing Oracle to Informix to Sybase. Of course, since we were at and Informix Conference, and his search engine is Online, I think that it is safe to say that he did like the engine.(Sorry I wont post his comments since they were said in private.) But hit the site and try the engine. It is *uck*** fast! After hours, Nils, (sorry for misspelling your name earlier), Bill Thomas, (A cohort at my client site), and some reps from Sun among others, went to a local bar called Iggys. Yeah, I pushed it hard and twisted their arms. But we all had a good time and enjoyed the Martinis. So as we wrap up another conference, I think that it was a smashing success. I don't know how many people showed up, or what a datablade is. (OK, so I know what a datablade is, but right now I am about to crash;-) The one comment I would like to make is that there should be an ongoing birds of a feather breakout session on the engine and tools. Like a room full of Menlo Park Engineers, (Hey they *need* to socialize too! ;-), so we can do some white boards and talk technical turkey. I'm sure that they could take shifts and cover a lot of undocumented secrets to Informix. Oh, two more things. 1) Its great to see that while some of the heavy hitters of postings are at the conference, there are others who have stepped up to help other users out. Keep it up! 2) I think that with an increase in the popularity of USENET, we need to come up with an FAQ about this group and how to post to this group. As in what is acceptable and what is not. It should be posted like the first day of everymonth as a reminder. It should help to cut down on the traffic of nonsense. (NO FLAMES PLEASE.) I think that the IIUG should publish and maintain it so that no one single person becomes a dictator. -Mikey