Reporter’s Notebook: Morning lines and evening shindigs

It’s laaate, and it’s one tired reporter who’s typing this. The last two days have been hectic.

Tuesday started early. My compadre, Dave Moser, and myself were in line at 7 am to get into Steve Jobs’ keynote address. It was like a cattle call. We and dozens of other members of the press were on our feet for almost two hours before finally getting seated. There’s got to be a better way to do this. Still, I guess I shouldn’t complain.

The press line was long, but nothing compared to that of general expo attendees. The line stretched out in two directions, around both ends of the block, and kept on going. The number of people that turn out to hear Steve Jobs speak can be compared to a rock star.

Of course, a Jobs keynote is great entertainment, as well as giving us information and faster towers, titanium PowerBook, cool new software and a revised OS X. The Reality Distortion Field took over and I was reaching for my credit card, shouting, “I want one, Steve, I want one of each.” (Well, maybe that is an exaggeration, but you get the idea.)

My evening was spent at two very different parties. One was a small Computree gathering at the elegant Hawthorne Lane restaurant. It was great food and great company. Thanks, Kevin, Wiley, Cathy, Curt, Jeff, Scott, John, Jeffrey, and all the other fine folks. It was fun. Afterward, there was the Apple party at 177 Thompson. It was a shoulder to shoulder. When I say I got to rub shoulders with lots of friends and acquaintances, I’m talking literally. And was that Third Eye Blind playing?

And what a day Wednesday was! I was drenched in the downpour of rain that pounded San Francisco. I stupidly went to a Symantec breakfast without my umbrella. It wasn’t raining when I left my hotel. But it certainly wasn’t as I returned.

Still, it was a good day. I thoroughly enjoyed dining with the folks at Symantec at the Sheraton Palace and discussing, along with some fellow journalists, Apple’s announcements of the week. From there it was off to the Microsoft press conference. While the announcement of Outlook 2001 was exciting, I truly got a hoot out of the hilarious mini-flick, “Taxi Confessions at Macworld,” that kicked off the press conference.

By the way, if you want to check out a lighter side of this week’s Macworld Expo in San Francisco, check out the Geek Culture Web site. Cartoonists Nitrozac and Snaggy are doing a special run of expo-related comics called “The Joy of Tech” all this week.

The cartoonists are the creators of the “After Y2k” comic strip and the Geek Culture Web site. The Web site is … well … too weird to explain. You’ll just have to check it out for yourself.