Right now my life seems to be filled with opposites. Not sure how to best describe it. But as an example of something I can state here, I am extremely mentally energized and free association ideas are flowing throw my noodle like cartridges through an MP7 but I am just dead tired to the point I ache to lift my arms and on the verge of being sick from running myself ragged at the Directory Experts Conference. It is like being beaten down by your muse while being dragged through a 14 mile marathon - take this idea [kick] and that [punch]and this [body blow] and that [body blow] and some of this[hammer drop], keep up keep up keep up!
Why does this matter to you? Only because if my old age memory and seemingly overly busy life doesn’t kick in, I think I will be spamming the blog for a while. Not sure what it is about the last couple of DECs or so but it really gets my thinking into overdrive. Maybe it is the college type atmosphere. You know what I am talking about, you could give or take on the official classes but love the discussions and high level subtle humour and interesting ideas sliding from between the lips of different people some of which are highly intelligent that raged on into the night. Opinions and viewpoints that are as good as or better than your own but could be in direct conflict with your own. You go until even the double espresso (eXpresso if I am speaking with Dean) can’t keep you going any longer and you have to fall into bed for 2-3 hours of recuperation sleep but then your mind is racing so much you pop back up at out of bed and have another go at it and you keep doing that until you just drop from sheer exhaustion and can’t do it anymore.
As an example of that drive present at DEC, on Sunday we had the Longhorn Workshop. While it didn’t go quite as planned (understatement) it still went amazingly well and towards the end one of the folks there told me a story about using LG to help out with some group cleanup on member machines that I thought was very good valid work. Then he asked if LG would do something that I actually had contemplated previously and decided against because I figured I was one of the few people who would actually find it useful and it was a lot of code for me to for myself for that tool since my heavy lifting use of it has decreased since spending so much time on AD. The idea was a good solid idea and when I am presented with a good solid idea one of a two things will be the likely result, I will forget because too many other things get in the way or it will eat at me until I do it. At times I am not sure which I like better, they both have their draws. 
So anyway, he mentioned this some time in the mid-afternoon of Sunday and then I went off and played and talked with friends and actually bowled (A Las Vegas Resort with a built in 60 lane bowling alley) and had a tremendously great time with some amazingly great friends and learned that when you are bowling in a foreign country in a den of iniquity that casinos are you either need to always have with you suitcases full of charm or a passport proving your age and that a Reuben sandwich at like 1AM is actually pretty good. Finally I stumble off to bed perchance to dream. A few hours later I bolt upright wide awake having written the code in my head for the changes that are needed to LG. I turn on the Bose Wave radio they have in the room (yes quite nice yeah?) to some jazz music (why does Vegas get to have a 24 hour jazz station, don’t recall seeing that before) and enter all the new magic instructions and then work out that I have to figure out how to compile the app since the compiler I had with me was not the same compiler I last compiled LG with so burned through that problem. End result, LG modified in the way the guy who needed it less than 12 hours after describing the need. I then pulled up a chair and watched an amazing sunrise over the mountains and the Vegas strip.
Of course, I didn’t remember the guys name and DEC was so large this year I didn’t find him again to tell him so hopefully he will email me and say “hey remember me, the LG guy??” so I can give him a test version of LG with the mods so he can test it out.
Anyway, more comments and thoughts about DEC - the good the bad, and even the ugly and more should be forthcoming for all of you which hopefully will be interesting to you all.
In the meanwhile, I need to go to the market, coming home after six days away means I have no good food in the house.