First Entry

From: darrinm@dac98.com
To: lm_eagle@lmc.com
Subject: DAC Update - Chapter 1: The Beginning
Date: Tue, 16 Jun 1998 09:17:51 -0700

Okay, here I am. Finally got a chance to log in to the DACNet stuff so that I can send some email.

Everything is going great so far. Robo and I travelled down on Sunday with JayH and the flight was fine. A short delay for a "ground stop" due to fog in SF, but it lifted after about 15 minutes.

Once we got here, we took the machine to DAC, got our badges and set up demoman. It came up first time with no difficulty. Our demo was working! The rest of the Synopsys contingent was not so lucky as the DACNetwork was not up yet. They weren't running until about 7pm.

Since we had our stuff working and weren't expected until 7pm-ish, I talked Robo into adventure time. We went back to his hotel where we bumped into Bart. We recruited him as well. We headed down to the cable cars where the plan was to cable to NorthBeach where they were having a street fair I wanted to go to. We got into line and Bart decided he wanted to go get his DAC badge so in the twenty minutes it took us to progress through the Cable Car line, he manged to find the Moscone Center, get in, get his badge and get back to us in line just in time to get three places hanging on the side of the cable car. Go Bart!

We found the North Beach street fair. North Beach is a predominantly Italian neighborhood, so the fair is theoretically Italian. MMMmmm, Italian food and music. So, we ate Cajun. It, too, was very good.

We hung around there for a while then decided to hoof it the three blocks to the Coit Tower. Three blocks basically up hill. It was, um, vertical. The view was nice and we stayed up there long enough for Robo to get his $3 (the cost of entry to the tower) worth. We walked back and did the stree fair for a while.

Then we decided to catch the cable car back to the hotel so Bart could meet a frien and we could go do a little more demo time. Unfortunately, it became clear after about 45 minutes that we had clearly entered the Bermuda Triangle of cable car hell. No fewer than 10 cable cars went by us towards Fisherman's Wharf, two came back. And they were full. Somehow they must have snuck them by us on trucks on the backstreets or something. So instead, we hoofed it back over the hill. First up then back down. We actually made good time. SF is a fun walking city.

We got back, dropped off Bart (who showed up shortly thereafter, having been blown off for the evening by his friend), and got back to DAC to do some more demo time.

That all went well and we finished around 10pm-ish, after helping the guys on the floor get the Siemen's demo working. Thus began "The Endless Dinner"...

We got to TGIFriday's, whose sole distinction is being close to DAC, at a bit after 10pm. We ordered drinks. We ordered food. Our drinks showed up about 10:40. Our food hadn't shown up by 11pm. Nor 11:15pm. We were joined by John Swanson and another gentleman. Upon our suggestion they ordered their food and drinks immediately. Their food actually showed up before about half of ours. When the food did show up, it was cold and sort of nasty. About midnight, Dave Park, our MealTicket, um, host, took the bill to management and they tore it up. Yea! Dave!

I went back to my hotel room and became unconscious.

Next day, we started at 11am, I had the first demo. Needless to say, I was a bit nervous. The first demo went fine. Robo had the next one and he was great, too. We were over the demo-hump! Yippee!!

The rest of the demos went just fine and we finished about 4pm. Robo and I returned to our prospective hotels (where Robo had a much better view than I did - Bikinis as far as the eye could see! He overlooked the pool.) and we got a bit of rest. Then we hoofed it to ChinaTown where we found small things for a smaller price. We dined at the Empress of China which has great chinese food and impeccable service. It was very nice. We wandered back to our hotels and called a fairly early night since while the demos where only about five hours, we were both a bit drained.

It's now 8:30am on Tuesday, Robo is giving a demo, I'm on at 9pm. The demos have been well attended and with the exception of a cranky NEC guy that tried to ambush Dave Park with his theory that we really didn't know how to right models as an integrated ISS/BFM was really the *only* way to go, the customers have been polite and attentive.

We're probably overwhelming them with too much information, but hey! that's DAC. We seem to have allayed any fears that Robo or I would become catatonic or mute during the demos, so that's good news.

Well, I need to head off to give my demo, so I'll sign off. I'll send something more later and let you know how things are going.

See you on Friday!

-Darrin at DAC


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Darrin Mossor
Last modified: Mon Jul 13 08:53:44 1998