Palo Alto, California -- "I love this spot," proclaims a young man in 20's, as he attempts to recline on bar stool with no backing. His buddy quickly races over in attempt to brace his fall, barely spilling a couple of lagers straight from the tap. "Yeah... Palo Alto: a place where the beer flows like wine, where the women instinctively flock like the salmon of Capistrano." The two men laugh together as one reaches into the cargo pocket of his cut-off khakis, retrieves a pack of smokes, and lights one.
If you couldn't tell the pair were a couple of computer geeks by their messy hair, sandals and shorts, the man bearing the t-shirt with "Blood Sweat and Code" on the front, gives it all away. Their conversation shifts between ramblings of Apple's upcoming World Wide Developers Conference to how appetizing the waitress in the black mini-skirt looks.
"Are they sending you to San Francisco in a couple of weeks?," asks one man, of the other. "Ha, I wish they'd send me home with her," responds the other, as he glances back towards the blonde member of the all female wait-staff.
"Actually, they haven't informed me either way, but its gonna be awesome. The company is going to introduce more new hardware and software products at conference than any other event I can recall."
"New PowerBooks too?" one asks. "Ah yeah, they are bringing the 15" model up to design spec with the other two models...faster chips in all of them," says the seemingly more intoxicated friend.
" I don't know much else as I've been stuck tweaking the enabler code for the G5 Power Macs."
The two men order another round and begin to discuss the rumored Power Mac G5. "It's beautiful, all silver and graphite in color, there is no more chrome or clear plastic on the casing. It actually still retains the 4 handles but they are thinner and less extrusive," rambles the inebriated programmer. "The front of machine is flourished by this mesh metallic surface, with the super drive now higher up on the case."
Just as the two buddies are about to pick up on my eavesdropping, a third party stumbles toward the vacant bar stool adjacent to them. "Hey! Solomon, what's up? Where you at these days?," asks the more sober friend. "Not much, man. I'm still in QuickTime. They got me on the video conference bundle. The steam quality is great."
"Oh yeah? Peer to peer MPEG 4 video conference streaming with iChat and that slick little camera, eh?"
"Yeah for now, but I may be transfered to work on the office suite soon. You hear they are moving File Maker back in-house?"
"Yeah Carlose called me a couple of months ago. Apparently File Maker was bleeding money. They laid him off -- with a bunch of others -- before they began the move. They didn't even give him a damn severance package or nothing."
"Hey Solomon," blurts the drunken programmer, "check out that blonde... damn!"
"Jackson, shouldn't you be putting in overtime? Look at you, you're a mess," laughs Solomon.
"Dude, my eyes hurt, my neck hurts. I've been trying to get Ruby to let me borrow one of those new displays, but he won't bite. I've been stuck with one of those non-adjustable Cinema Displays. It's brutal I tell you! "
"Hey guys, is that Steve over there?"
"Where?"
"The guy cutting the steak!"
"Nah... can't be. Steve's a vegetarian."