Speaking of reality...

I got back last night from a press tour. I was with Steve Dickson who is the VP of the Windows Management division at Quest and who I report to. I kept joking with him that it was great to be "friends of Steve" so I could share in the limo rides to and fro. When I'm on my own I get schleped around in cabs like everyone else.

Spent Tuesday in Denver where the weather was worse than Seattle and snow was threatened in the forecast. Have you ever been anywhere in the world on the first day that it snows after spring, summer and fall have finally slipped away? Well fortunately that didn't happen on Tuesday because if it did pandemonium would have ensued with all the folks who forget that 4-wheel drive doesn't make you invincible. Anyway, I digress. Tuesday was great. Started the day off meeting my old friend John Fontana at a great coffee shop called "The Garage". He and I go back to my days at Microsoft and is one of the few reporters out there who is technical enough to get it. John wrote a nice article about what we're up to. If you're interested you can find it here. From there, we drove up to visit with Penton Media in Loveland, CO. Penton publishes Windows IT Pro Magazine, SQL Server Magazine and a host of other great mags. I met with Karen Forster and her fine team of folks. Great crew, great visit, great lunch and a bunch of great story ideas I need to follow up with Karen on. Then it was off to the airport to fly to San Francisco.

Wednesday in San Francisco was beautiful. No snow showers in the forecast fortunately. First meeting was with Neil McAllister from InfoWorld. I'd never met Neil before but he's clearly a sharp guy and covering cool stuff around Open Source, Linux and infrastructure. We were then whisked over - by limo, of course - to Coupa Cafe in Palo Alto to meet another old friend, Dave Kearns who writes the Identity Management newsletter for Network World. Great coffee, free wireless and more Macs than I have ever seen in one spot at Coupa Cafe. Said bye to Dave and we were off to the airport homeward bound for Seattle...