Sipping from a Firehose

Recently returned from Linuxworld, from the fine city of San Francisco, and as this was my first convention not staring out from behind the dark screen of a large-headed comic character costume (which was part of a comic strip I wrote called Wexler), well, when I hear the phrase "It's like trying to take a sip from a firehose," I now know exactly what they mean.

Linuxworld is a big wide open source world. Information was coming at me from all directions, abbreviations and acronyms I'd never even heards of, I mean WTF?!?

So I just hid my know-nothing quizzical deer-in-the-headlights stare as best I could, and when some genius geek strode up and prodded me with information, I just let them talk, and it didn't take me long to realize that's all they wanted to do, talk, they wanted to prove they knew something I didn't know, and I just knitted my brow and gave them a look like, hey, thanks for the info bud.

I mean, in this computer world, there is just so much to know, and in the phrasology of Rumsfeld, I don't even know what I don't know, but I am starting to learn what I don't need to know, which I guess is a big start.

I mean, in writing marketing and other literature for Message Partners, I've learned so damned much, and I thought I actually had some sort of bead on this computer stuff, but as one person after another came and prodded me about my product, it really is so much different to go from this here computer out into the real world talking to real people answering real questions.

Hence, it’s like taking a sip from a firehouse, and it’s one week later from the end of the convention, and I’m still swallowing water as fast as I can.

But I did get to ride a Segway, got to race around the convention center until it felt as natural as walking. So when are they gonna add Segway trick-riding to the X Games?