Reflections and tidbits from Toronto

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Here are my notes from my trip to Smalltalk Solutions in Toronto:

  • If you ask for a cappuccino at Tim Horton’s you will get regular coffee with milk, really.
  • Don’t try to use your credit card at Tim’s.
  • Tim Horton’s is the parallel universe counterpart to Dunkin Donuts.
  • Coffee shops will serve your coffee in paper cups but without a lid. Why???
  • Some coffee shops (Timothy’s) require that you pick out your paper cup and then hand it over to the coffee people.
  • The Federal goverment charges sales tax on food and so does the state. I was told that it all adds up to about 15% and that of course does not include tip and of course also does not include the “foreign fee” your bank will charge you.
  • Many, many restaurants in the downtown area have TVs in them.
  • Brian Foote is a funny dude —most enjoyed presentation.
  • Eliot has a funny laugh.
  • Martin McClure bakes his own bread.
  • Michael-Lucas Smith woke up at 4 am and then went to an Aikido session.
  • I managed to get in decent amount of guitar time.
  • Michael also slept through dessert last nite, really.
  • Canadian Bob Nemec is the new Executive Director of STIC. I was told that he will decree that from now on all Smalltalk code must be written in both French and English.
  • I am so “web-ed” out but for those that are not there was a lot of useful to potentially useful web technology on display.
  • The crypto stuff, boy that was a snore
  • Apparently, there are only 27,000 sunits for Pollock not 50,000 +
  • Haddocks have loins.
  • A NYC Smalltalker won the coding contest. So Andres, may be the coding contest experience would make a good topic for a presentation?
  • Smalltalk Solutions 2007 will be in Toronto again.
  • Country music and Hockey apparently mix well.
  • Not convinced that we got a lot of exposure to non-Smalltalkers but I guess something is better than nothing. Perhaps better next year. More time to plan, more leverage with the organizers. Maybe.
  • My most satisfying meal came out of a vending machine the very last nite. A “Vickies” Sea salt malt vinegar potato chip bag and some French orange-ade like beverage. Pretty good actually. I wonder if there are any Smalltalker gastrophiles (is that a word ?) i.e. Smalltalkers that like good food and I just mean good and not pretentiously expensive. Just one nice dinner would have sufficed.
  • The Good, the bad and the ugly was a Clint Eastwood film before it was a Jeff Sutherland article. I would be more concerned to piss off Clint than Jeff.
  • I guess overall the content seemed light but then again we had less slots to use because of the combined conference. Perhaps , next year we can elevate the technical content and spread it around, perhaps get more slots from the conference.
  • We should avoid negative PR presentations.
  • Some non-Smalltalker dude asked one of the vendors at the exhibit hall “what are objects”, boy what a flash back.
  • I had a nice chat with the dark angel. Wants to show us stuff. Hmmm.
  • I don’t believe anything got accomplished from the packaging BOF but I guess folks got to express their needs which is a good thing.
  • I don’t fit well in a twin size bed.
  • CanJet worked out pretty well. Will use them again.
  • Overall, great to talk with people again face to face and it was great to see some faces I had not seen in a while.
  • Happy to be home back in this fantastic city. Looking forward to Bruce’s presentation next week which I purposely missed at StS.

That all folks ….