I’m tired. There’s so much to do and see here at the conference that I’ve worn myself out — and it’s only day 2! I’ve generally concentrated on the conference sessions and have been well rewarded. The amount of walking, however, is phenomenal. I can’t count how many times I’ve walked the passway underneath the street between Moscone Center North and Moscone Center South. Right now I’m in a key note speach by the Executive VP of IBM’s e-Business Division. His talk is very good with a lot of content and not necessarily hawking IBM’s products. Last night we ended with the CEO of RedHat giving his talk, which was really a challenge to the commmunity to step up the innovation and integration of products in the OpenSource arena. I’ve attended sessions on LDAP and Spam detection as well as discussions on various OpenSource projects. That combined with the show floor, where I haven’t spend nearly enough time, and I’m tired, but excited. I’d like to get home and do something with the things I’ve learned. It’ll just be a matter of getting enough time to do everything I want to do.

San Francisco is quite a town. I took a very long walk on Monday evening — down Market Street to the Embarcaderro, then up California Street (which is definitely UP) to China Town where I did a little shopping. I then walked down to Union Square, and then west to the Trolley station. That’s where this picture was taken. I arrived as a street vendors were starting to setup their stands and hawking their wares. This guy set up a massage chair, but wasn’t offering a massage, but rather some kind of a spiritual experience. The fellow in the bright baseball cap was hawking the services. Meanwhile, the bearded guy stands behind the customer, hands hovering over the customer’s head, chanting something in a different language. I took the picture up at street level (this setup was in the passway under Market Street going into the shopping center across the street). I wasn’t about to get any closer to the action! Certainly are some interested (and very strange) people in San Francisco!