A Lotusphere Diary, 2001 edition

A story of a Domino addict

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NEW! I've now set up about 100 images from Lotusphere in their original "raw" form in The Lotusphere 2001 Image Gallery. Go see if you can see yourself or other people you know.

Prologue - October, 2000

This piece got its start in some missives I sent back to people I work with who were left home during Lotusphere 1996. I would post nightly updates and commentary on the goings-on in Orlando to a replicated Notes database that would then appear overnight back at the office. Over the years, I stopped writing to those people and instead started dragging some of them along so they could see for themselves what it was like.

That meant I lost my audience. In 1999, though, I created the Totally Unofficial Gonzo Lotusphere Page (you're looking at it) and a new audience appeared: people who'd never been to Lotusphere before, or maybe veterans who had been several times and were interested in someone else's take on it. I started keeping these notes as a way to show what the whole chaotic, monstrous affair is about.

Registration just closed. It opened at 9:00am on Tuesday, October 3, and closed at 12:30. The waitlist will probably fill by tonight. I seem to remember that it took Lotusphere 1995 nearly two months to sell out. Then one month (1996), then one week (1997) then two days (1998) then one day (1999) then five and a half hours (2000) and now three and a half.

Next year, we'll all have bots, and the thing will be gone in 20 minutes. Nearly 10,000 registrations vacuumed up without human intervention.

I managed to get all six of our people registered, and, incredibly, got decent hotel rooms. While I've liked staying offsite these last six years, to finally get the funding and the OK to stay onsite is an opportunity I won't turn down, though if Dolphin sucks, you bet I'll be back at the Comfort Inn in 2002. I opened the registration exchange back up for the year, warning people against scalping. Who knows? I can't control what they do out of my sight. Or, more properly, "site."

New and strange things - later in October, 2000

I don't know how I get into these things, but I've been vacuumed into a whole bunch of strange Lotusphere-related projects and tasks lately. Strangest among them was that a couple of people on the Exchange were having problems sorting out how to transfer their registration from one to the other, and they were upset that an internet escrow service wouldn't escrow "a registration," so I offered to help. Sometime this week I get to be the middleman when a registration and a pile of money change hands. Don't spread this around... I don't want hundreds of people sending me their stuff. I really don't normally do this.

I was surprised to find out I'm going to be speaking at the Sphere this year... they took my agency's proposal for a Big-Ass Presentation and accepted it, so now all I have to do is write it up. I have to try to persuade my cow-orkers to remember that our audience here is real technical types, not their usual audience of other government drones, and we can bag all the political niceness and talk about the hard decisions we made when we put up Domino internally and externally. One of our executives, a real hand-wringer if there ever was one, was all concerned that we not appear to be "endorsing" the product, but how in hell do you do that when the stuff is as cool as this? The fact that we use it doesn't constitute an endorsement, I figure. Now, if they gave me a check for a hundred thousand bucks and I said "I shore do luuuuv Domino," that could be considered an endorsement!

Lastly, while I can't discuss much in the way of details, an article by me, about Lotusphere and the surrounding chaos, is going to appear in A Major Groupware Magazine in January, just in time for people to laugh at it on their way to the airport. Hey, I'm getting paid, so I'm not concerned about the chuckling.

All of this just seems kind of weird, like maybe it's pointing me toward other things I should do for a living. I'm starting to get tired of slamming on the same stupid political issues and just want to be somewhere where I'm not getting second-guessed by magazine-reading hack "executives" and can just go build and design interesting stuff people can use. I think I'm also getting depressed by Lotus' habit of releasing cool software that obviates all the code I just got done custom-hacking. If you've used the TeamRoom 5.0 templates or really played hard with QuickPlace 2.05, you probably know what I'm talking about.

October's almost over. November comes, then December, and then I have a bunch of stuff to do.

Looking at the number - last week of November, 2000

I got home tonight and looked at the counter on the front page of the site. Forty-six days until Lotusphere. Seems like the last time I looked at that, it was over a hundred. It probably was. I can't even remember now. There's far too much stuff going on... we got the OK to do a presentation this year, so I've been working on that, I've been working on the magazine article about it, somebody asked me to review some software for yet another magazine, I have logos and stuff to design, and oh, by the way, I guess I have to go to my normal job.

You know, this year feels different than previous years. It's like there's not the same mad rush for everything. Almost like there's apathy out there. I can't place it. Some of that can be credited to Lotus confusing the shit out of everyone with their on-again, off-again waitlisting and registration. As far as I can tell, there are still slots available. A lot of people I've known from previous years aren't going to be on hand this year, so I have no idea who I'm going to hang out with. The first "official" Sphere Big Deal Dinner Invite showed up a week or two ago, so you know things are heating up, but it just... doesn't... feel... like it.

We'll see how it turns out. Me, from the crap I'm going through at work, I am already looking forward to my yearly booster shot.

I have to actually talk - mid-Dovember, 2000

The next three weeks are going to be a study in bullshit and theater. We got the OK from all sides to do the presentation at the Sphere, and fortunately nobody has jumped out of the wings demanding that they, and not I, deliver the presentation, so it's up to me to write it and do it. I already sent Lotus the draft version, and next weekend I have to send the canned version. At least once in the last few weeks, the guy who runs our department asked me, "how dedicated are you to the idea of doing this presentation," and I told him flatly that if I didn't do it -- if WE didn't do it, we'd look like retards because the books have already gone to print with my name in them, and I would not be coming back from Lotusphere. Apparently the ways were paved, and the powers that be in our agency found the topic sufficiently inoffensive that they OK'd it. We have one particular person in our executive staff who's something of a paranoid whiner and she raised all sorts of bullshit issues surrounding the presentation -- never mind that scores of companies and people more important than us do this stuff every year. They think we're somehow Mo' Speshul.

The presentation itself is one thing, but I intend to demo some stuff. Thanks to delays and foot-dragging, on the part of some people whose job it is to decide what our current system is to do and not do, I am in real danger of having to demo stuff that doesn't actually exist yet. This is not a real problem (I've done it before) but it does make the demo a challenge. Bill Gates, one of his minor positive points, was a master of doing the minefield demo, keeping track of all the menu items and functions that don't work or explode and talking around them. I am also good at it, but it's been a while since I've had to do it so baldly.

I can already feel myself getting pulled into the vortex where I think and act about nothing except the Sphere from now until it's well over.

The clock is running down - January 7, 2001

I've got the guts of a Linux machine all over my living room. I'm slowly transferring two gig worth of demo data to the thing... it's been running for three hours and I have about 1.6 gig to go. FTP is a wondrous if slow thing. This, folks, is the machine through which I'll be doing my demo barely ten days from now. It has to work. To that end I went out and bought it a new drive, rather than rely on a flaky Western Digital three-gig that has seen more than a little abuse.

The tunnel effect is starting to take hold. Somebody who emailed me describer the Sphere as an illness, a sort of weird addiction that affects more than a few people. For me, I start into the tunnel in mid-December, and sometimes don't come out until March or April. All I'm thinking about right now is my presentation, about trying to keep track of all the stuff I'm already signed up to do apart from the presentation, mostly media stuff and social events, and trying to figure out how to survive it. All my intentions to get into better shape went by the wayside this fall and winter, and once again I think I'm going to be stuck surviving through Lotusphere on this weird sort of last-ditch energy reserve I've had all my life. I learned five or six years ago that I can get through the Sphere on that last little knot of adrenaline-fired enthusiasm, but every year it gets more difficult and every year I have at least one experience where I'm worried whether I literally will survive.

I'm preparing. The spring water available in Florida absolutely sucks, so I'm taking a supply of several gallons of our own spring water (from our actual spring here). I know I'll need new shoes (last year's are whipped from too many days out on the tractor). I may get a new suitcase, because the cats have kindly whizzed on my existing one. I've laid out all my maps in StreetAtlas and checked on construction zones on the way down and back. reservations for the trip are all in place. The Saab is getting new front brakes, the tires are getting rotated front-to-rear and I'm replacing the plugs.

And I've already gone into a sort of bunker mode where I just don't really want to talk to any of the people I work with. I don't want to talk to them about the Sphere unless they're actually going. I don't want to deal with non-Sphere-related stuff. I want people to stop calling me or emailing me. I want my damn alpha pager to work right.

I am probably insufferable for those people around me at work right now. But when I'm in Sphere Mode, I could not possibly care less.

The fog - January 9, 2001

The clock on the cow now shows five days and two hours... I am way down deep in the fog today. I was up until 2:30 last night trying to resolve a bizarre problem with the Linux server on which I'll be doing my demo a week from today, and tonight when I go home I have to put new brakes in the Saab. It'd be nice to be able to actually stop when zooming around Orlando doing battle with the silly plastic pocket-rockets on Hotel Plaza Blvd.

The thing is, in spite of the fog, that sort of malaise where I just don't feel like dealing with or even hearing about people, events, stuff or problems not related to Lotusphere, I am in this sort of very clear bubble where if I am dealing with Sphere-related stuff, I can make decisions fast and am typing like mad. Email from people, email TO people, updates to the site, directions to my cow-orkers on what not to touch while I'm gone, last-minute travel stuff... I just wish that clarity would help me figure out why the hell Directory Assistance isn't working on my Linux box. If I have to, I'll dump the thing and install NT Server on it for the demo, but even thinking about it makes my teeth hurt. As obscure as Linux can be, it's better than NT, because it tends to assume I know what I'm doing even when I don't, where NT assumes you're a moron even when you're not.

One other thing came to me while I was driving in today, and that's the definite feeling this one is going to shoot by too damn fast, just like all the others. I stop to get some water, and suddenly it's Thursday morning and I didn't do half the cool stuff I wanted to do. It happens every year (except 1995, for some reason) and it goes faster and faster every year. A huge blur from Saturday afternoon to Thursday morning, and then the realization on Thursday afternoon that DAMN, I let another one whip by without taking enough large bites out of it as it passed.

I'm going home and ripping the Saab's brakes apart, then going in and dealing with the Linux server. Now that is a wide range of skills.

On the road - January 12, 2001

I actually like that time best of all. It's the one time that I feel like I'm getting my money's worth out of the taxes we pay. I have this endless Interstate basically to myself, and only occasionally do I have to share parts of it with anyone else. It's a useful feeling, because shortly I'll be dumped into an area where it's impossible to look three feet without seeing... somebody else, or their stuff.

I'm letting myself get further and further behind on the last bits of work I need to do for my presentation Tuesday. In some ways, that's deliberate. I lack inspiration right now and the looming deadline of having to actually show code that isn't even written yet will force me into doing something really interesting... probably during breakfast on Tuesday morning. I've done that all my life and have no reason to assume Lotusphere's any different than 8th grade French class with Miss Christiano. It's just more expensive and the food's better.

I'll be curious to see how many West Coasters come in late as a result of the weather out there. It's snowing in Tucson. For those of you who give a shit, I'm in Smithfield, North Carolina, having dinner at a place called "Historic" Ribeye Joes. I suspect the "historic" part must have something to do with the building or something nearby, because there are all the signs that the place has completely changed themes and menus at least two or three times in recent years... from fish to an oyster bar to a steak place. Maybe it's "historically" underpatronized or something. It's food, it's better than Crapper Barrel, and it's on expense. Eat.

Something I noticed about this place is a large, obviously-locally-painted mural on one wall that features what I guess to be local historical figures or something. I'm racking my brain to figure out which white jazz saxophone players might be from Smithfield... Stan Getz? Paul Desmond? Boots Randolph?

The only readily-recognizable figure in the mural is Ava Gardner, recognizable only because of her enormous purple pupils, the size and exact color of large plums, in a face that otherwise looks like a black-haired Lucille Ball. There's some hydrocephalic New York Yankees player pictured, but he kinda looks like Rowlf, the piano-playing dog from the Muppet Show. Ah, art.

This place, like a lot of places in the south, doesn't have iced tea as you may know it. They have "sweet tea," which is a fiercely-sweetened beverage with little identifiable tea flavor, with sugar so supersaturated in solution I'm tempted to find a piece of twine and see if I can grow crystals like all the grade-school science books say you can.

I packed three gallons of spring water from home. MY spring.

Day -1 - January 13, 2001

I'm calling Saturday "Day Minus One" because traditionally, Sunday is Day Zero and this is the day before.

I actually got here at the time I had intended. There weren't swarms of people at either the hotel checkin or speaker registration, and I got everything done I needed to do there in about five minutes flat. Carting the stuff up from the Saab to the 17th floor -- yes, way the hell up in the top of the "pyramid" part of Dolphin" -- took another 20 minutes. The view up here is pretty amazing. I am pretty much at eye level with the swans, and can look down on just about all the Dolphin fountains (which are not running right now and look nasty from above).

I spent too much time dicking with a set of amplified speakers -- new Labtecs, mind you -- that utterly failed out of the box. To the dumpster with 'em... they're not even worth the gas to take back. I'll go out tomorrow to CompUSA or something and get some more so that I can listen to things while I'm here.

Eventually I made it over to the Lotus Government (and education) gathering in Boardwalk. They need to dig Boardwalk up and move it about 300 yards closer to everything else, or else straighten the path from one to the other. It's maddening to try to walk there and find there's yet another stairway or curve in the walkway and you're still not there yet.

I didn't stick around there long... talked to some very nice ladies from the State of Florida DOT, and then got over to ESPN. Sure enough, I was the first one there, and there was only one chair available at the bar. Not five minutes had gone by when a guy from Russia came up and asked me if I was "associated with Gonzo Lotusphere." It must have been the shirt. That, and I had left a trail of cow logo signs all over the path from Dolphin to the ESPNClub. In a few minutes, a few other people came by, and by eight o'clock we had pretty much taken over that entire corner of the bar, irritating the hell out of the waitrons who were trying to get around us.

There's a lot I could report about the gathering, but in the interest of preserving everyone's modesty I'll just say that a splendid time was had by all and we pretty much closed the place sometime well after midnight. I hooked back up with many of last year's cohorts and all sort of interesting activities are planned this week. Stay tuned.

Day 0 - January 14, 2001

Ah, here we go. Things are slowing building steam, and it's all I can do to survive. Sunday started out interestingly... I went over and heard bits and pieces of the government sessions, went over and got my CLP Lounge Access sticker from Barbara Bowen in Swan, and then had to make a road trip to the real world. I noticed the usually-efficient Disneybots had managed to overlook pulling down this last remaining Cow Sign from Saturday night's adventures. I assume it's gone now, but it was up all morning, confusing and terrorizing innocent tourists.

As I said, I made a road trip. I went over to the enormous Wal-Mart at Sand Lake Road and John Young Drive, over about four miles east on Sand Lake Road, if you need to find it. I went in and got some Pepsi, some other supplies, and when I came out, there was The Wienermobile! Or, rather, one of several Wienermobiles that travel the nation. This one was parked in front of WalRusMart and staffed by smiling young women passing out whistles.

They insisted on taking my picture with the Wienermobile, and an extra picture in front of what they refer to as "the Rhomboid." Shit, I thought it was just a logo. These technical terms, wow...

Anyway, ya see all the fun stuff you miss when you hide in the hotel all week? You have to get out there more.

I also stopped by CompUSA and got a new set of (working) speakers so I could rock out in the room. I got back and wired them up, and put on The Tubes' "White Punks On Dope." Time came to get my butt downstairs and Be The Line. Every year for the past several years I've made it a point to be the head of the Swan line for the Sunday Night gathering, and this year was no exception.

I had my radio with me so I could hear the Ravens' game, and eventually a seething mass of people collected in front of the entrance to the party. Saw a bunch of last night's miscreants as well as people from previous years.

You were probably there, but I have to say that this was quite a nice party. Just the right number of neat giveaways (though the firing of stuffed dogs into the crowd with a bazooka was somewhat disturbing until people knew it was coming), good food, plenty of beer.

I have to do this, since I spend so much webspace every year warning people about fashion sense and the Sunday Night Thang.

	This young lady could be seen sinking her heels into the sand with every step... after I took her picture I told her that the shoes were cute but not the best idea for a beach. She agreed.
	I have no idea how this girl didn't shatter both her ankles up dancing, in the sand, in front of the bandstand. I guess you can get away with that when you're 23. I imagine she was probably up at the Copa later, shaking sand all over the dance floor.
	This English gentleman came over to talk after I took his picture. He said, "Well, I've been wearing suits for 35 years... people would think there was something strange if I didn't wear one."

Afterward people took over the Copa, and saw three guys with the BEST shirts I've ever seen. They were white, and had plastic lobsters attached to the front, with the pocket logo reading "Lobstersphere 2001." The batteries in the digital ran down, or I'd have pictures. They were amazing. I'd have given anything for one.

I eventually collapsed up here around 2:00. Day zero is now in the history books. Best quote I heard at the Beach Party: "They're all just a bunch of... DRUNKARDS!"

Day 1 - January 15, 2001

I have to apologize in advance. While I don't think this site is anything approaching rigorous in my approach to journalism, to some extent, I think I am going to be committing journalistic fraud for the next few days.

Let me explain that. I didn't really see it coming, but somehow, I crossed over a line in the last 36 hours. I always thought of myself as the outside observer here, but suddenly I know it's not the case, if it ever was. I've spent the last 36 hours with a lot of different people... people I work with every day, people I know online, people I only see these few days every January in Orlando. What jumped out at me tonight was that I can't fairly write about the things I see and hear here any more... I can't just be the outsider, the fly on the wall. Instead, I find myself pulled into the middle of the stories, into real concern for the people I suppose I'd otherwise write about. I always saw the Sphere as a refuge for us all against the Redmondians of the world, the conformists, the normals. By writing too candidly about some of the things I've seen, heard and done in the last 36 hours or the next 72, I would be violating the sanctity of that refuge. I can't do that, because to some extent, I need it for myself.

What does this mean? It means I won't be writing the stuff that maybe some of you are looking for here... the who-was-hanging-all-over-who at the Copa, the just-how-far-gone-were-they last night after the karaoke bar closed. No. It's not right. These are things I want to seek out and know for myself, but they are no longer things I want to tell the world about. If you're here, you know. If you're not here, your imagination is superior to anything I could write anyway.

I just wanted to get that straight. Understand that I won't be telling you the whole truth... not because I don't know it (though I don't always, I often do) but because... I don't want to.

Tonight's music is The Dead Milkmen, "Born To Love Volcanos."

I'm sitting in the room, it's 2:00am, and I have a substantial portion of my site demo that I have to rebuild before the show tomorrow. It somehow ate itself and is no longer extant in Orlando. I must recreate it from scratch. Shit.

I'm good at this. I'm good at these times, times when I have to pull a rabbit out of a hat and come up with something workable or the day is lost. I can probably talk around any failures, but I don't want to have to. I want it to work the first time, which is likely the only time. I intend to do that.

I will hand out one of my periodic fashion awards... tonight's award is called "Gee, You Look Terrific, But..." The award is made jointly to Lisa Bynum of this afternoon's KM lab and to the unnamed young blonde lady (was that you, Donna?) in the black-and-white dress at the Copa tonight who was verging on rediscovering certain laws of physics. Lisa, you looked adorable, but I can't imagine walking to Y&B or Boardwalk in those shoes. And young lady in the black and white, you were scaring a lot of people when you and your partner were up dancing... be careful, you'll put somebody's eye out with those things.

I have code to write, but instead I'm writing this. Ah, well.

I thought Coppola's talk at the General Session was cool. I was less impressed with Jeanette Horan... Jeanette, we all adore you, but we really can listen faster than that, OK? It was fun listening to Al Franken slam on G.W. Bush... if you listened hard you could hear muted grumbling and booing from the more conservative IBMers in the back of the room.

Did anyone else sense how... staged that sequence in the limo with Ken and Terri and the wireless PO approval seemed? How many drives up and down I-93 did that take, guys?

I only put up 1.4 miles today. 2.5 yesterday. Not as many as in past years.

I really have code to write now.

Day 2 - January 16, 2001

I know this was Day Two because I told people it was. I want to thank those of you who came to my presentation today... it actually worked, by some miracle. I think I talk too long, but people seemed to like it and I was not in fact hooted off the stage.

I would have thought it cool if the tech guys in the room had piped the music I had on the laptop into the sound system. It was The Tubes' "White Punks On Dope." I was amused to learn that my room monitor would be none other than Michele Pennell. She did a good job of keeping out the riff-raff and making sure people filled out their evaluations. Speaking of Michele, she gets the "most surprisingly dolled-up" award for the second day in a row. I ran into her and several cohorts outside the dance hall after the Beacon Awards dinner...

...seen here are Miz Michele, Beverly DeWitt and Chris Reckling... would one of you three please email me and remind me who the lady at the left is? Yep, I are stoopid. I should have remembered. Or written it down.

Today, I gave myself off. I was up until 3:30 in the morning rebuilding part of the site I had to demo, and then got up around 8:30 and checked the server and the laptop. I then carted the Linux server (seen here on the cart) and the laptop and cables and other stuff over to Swan and set it up once the Barclays Bank people left.

Once the show was done, though, I gave myself the afternoon off. No sessions, no worries, but also no food, since I'd missed lunch. I eventually got some snackage with a guy from Network World, enough to tide me over until the evening's adventures began.

As I do, I scrounged invites to almost everything going on within a mile of me. A bunch of us wandered over to the tent behind Yacht for the megabash hosted by IT Factory, GWI, Internoded and Mondosoft, among others (sorry if I left anyone out). Total chaos in the house, man. One part of the room looked immediately familiar... the Internoded "stock car" parked in the middle of the tent, around which food was set up. I remembered the car because the guys driving it had been given a hard time by the Disneybots on Saturday, about the time I checked in. Apparently they resolved whatever weirdness was going on. I doubt they'll get all the handprints off that car now.

The first hour or so of the gathering was OK... decent music, interesting stuff tossed into the growing crowd, some food when you could grab it. Then, a rumor swept the room: THEY'VE RUN OUT OF BEER. Fearing a completely loss of civil order, one other guy and I set off to Swan, to the Interliant gathering at Gulliver's. Along the way, we stopped over toward the Boardwalk and (as noted above) ran into Michele, Bev and Chris Reckling. We talked with them a bit, and then went over to the Interliant to-do. After a little wandering around the event, which I have to say was a little more up-scale than the tent party (they had actual glasses, actual plates, and an actual jazz quartet, as well as a cool parting gift), we discovered none other than Daren Nelson, CEO of GWI Software. None of us asked the obvious question, "Daren, why the hell are you crashing Interliant's party instead of being at your own?" We just all assumed it was because they had run out of beer.

Anyway, Daren gathered an entourage around him -- me, John from Canada, the very tall young lady Shannon, Roxanne with the Mickey Mouse sweatshirt, and a couple of other hangers-on, and we meandered back to the tent. Beer had miraculously reappeared.

I will say that something Daren said on the way over immediately became the Quote Of The Day: "I think grain alcohol should be one of the basic food groups." This replaced the earlier candidate, the delightfully out-of-context "yeah, I've done it on rollerblades."

The music tonight is all over the place. Right now it's The Dovells and "The Bristol Stomp," but I just had on a 1956 Bob Dorough recording of "Old Devil and Moon." Next up, and likely to finish before I get this page done, is Joe Venuti's 1978 recording of "After You've Gone."

I'm certain the maid on this floor thinks I'm a lunatic. I sometimes see her in the hall during the day, and when she realizes I'm the guy who lives in the room with the cables and computer crap all over the floor, let alone the balloons, the stuffed cow, two beach balls, and the chair with the growing pile of socks on it, you can see her eyes get really wide. She's Haitian or something and I think she thinks I'm doing some sort of weird voodoo in here. And, she never knows what kind of music will be playing when she opens the door... I do have some Lord Richard Buckley monologues on the server, and if she came in during "His Majesty The Policeman" I could see where she'd assume I was nuts.

To jump back to the party, I would say that I learned some new "dos" and "don'ts" from the event, but since they were basically all "don'ts," I guess I'll start there.

	Don't toss razor scooters into the crowd as freebies. Toss soft stuff like shirts. Don't use a cannon.
	Don't forget to keep track of all your bottles of wine, lest geeks swipe them and then feel obligated to consume half the contents during one iteration of the "Hokey Pokey."
	Don't use your regional sales manager as an air guitar.
	Don't do... whatever this is.
	...or this, whatever it is.
	Don't allow drunk geeks to throw sharply-pointed objects in tents.
	Don't run out of beer, lest you spark a beer riot which could cost guys like this their lives.
	Don't tell Gabi she shouldn't do the limbo in a dress that short.
	Don't dance on the race cars... people have to eat off them.
	Don't take Daren's picture at the same time he's trying to take yours... if the flashes go off at the same time they could cancel each other out and produce a momentary singularity which could suck the entire known universe into a black hole. We got off lucky this time.

Daren made one other comment tonight, about this page. He referred to it as "twisted genius." I'm not sure what to make of that.

I deliberately put this picture way at the bottom so that all the folks from EDS would have to read the whole page to get to it. Don't, after all, tell them not to be pleased... they just won a Beacon.

OK, yes, there are more things I want to say, but jeez, it's after 4 in the morning and I have stuff to do tomorrow. I think.

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