A Ghost from Mac World Past

As many people at Mac World pointed out to me, I've been rather silent lately. There's a reason for that. Of the stuff that's on my mind lately, there just isn't a whole heck of a lot I can discuss publicly. Even telling you some of what I did at Mac World this year strays too closely to the realm of forbidden discourse.

So, I'll just relate a story from Mac World past. Right after we shipped Office 98, Ben Waldman decided to take us out to dinner at Fleur de Lys during that year's Mac World. Neat idea, except that I didn't get the e-mail telling us that this place is jacket-and-tie only until I was sitting in my hotel room at the ANA (now the Argent). Great! Now, what do I do?

Well, the dinner was Tuesday night, and I was scheduled to do booth duty Tuesday afternoon. Nordy's is just around the corner, and I was pretty certain I'd be able to get any alterations done by that evening, so I ducked in. Being pressed for time, I didn't pay close attention to prices. I was rather more concerned with whether or not the clothes actually fit.

There was a rack of items on sale, so I figured I'd be OK so long as I chose items from the rack. Everything there was, indeed, on sale, including the rather nice Harris tweed jacked I'd picked out, which turned out to be sale priced at $500.00 off.

Of course, I hadn't noticed that this jacket was sale priced at $500.00 off until we'd finished all the measurements, chalked all the lines and I was standing at the cash register with credit card in hand. At that point, it was either scratch the whole idea of dinner at Fleur du Lys or buy the jacket. So, I bought the jacket. It's still the most expensive item of clothing in my wardrobe.

There's always some kind of dinner thing at Mac World. This year, we had dinner, with some MVP's and members of the customer council, at Frisson, where the food was just as good as the food we'd had at Fleur du Lys, and it didn't cost me a tie and a jacket.

 

Rick

Update: I neglected to mention running into Dave at the Nisus booth. There was customer there who was asking about Nisus. He said he'd bought Word, even though he didn't want to, because Word had the features he needed. The customer then turned, looked at me, and saw the Word icon on my shirt, at which point Dave burst out laughing. I patted Dave on the back, asked him if he was OK, and offered to get him some water. Check out Dave's blog. He has some good comments on stuff found on the Mac World floor.

The Life from the album "Songs In A Minor" by Alicia Keys