I have managed to check in from my hotel room in Columbus, OH. If you're not here, you're missing out!

Shhhhhh.... Don't tell anyone, but geeks really know how to party! Tonight was a night of Free Beer down at Barley's Brewery. I managed to sneak a pint of the brewery's homemade IPA - from the firkin. And then there was the barley wine. And did I mention hanging out with all the really cool folks?

Yeah, Paul Ferris, Greg Boehnlein, Richard Weait (Ontario LinuxFest Organizer), and John Maddog Hall were all on hand. I got to meet Paul's Dad as well. And there were the folks whom I had never met before, but were definitely on hand from Ohio, Indiana, Georgia, and South Carolina. Jeff Hatfield, from the Middle Georgia Linux Users Group, had managed to create his own penguin decoration for his laptop using some surplus aircraft decal material he had.

I got to know Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier a little better this evening, and met an experienced lady UNIX admin from right here in Columbus who is attending OLF for the first time. She's been in computing longer than I have, and has two Masters and two undergraduate degrees. She was hanging out with Jason Elwell (LP Software), Greg, and myself down at Barley's. Mike Meffie, one of OLF's sponsors took a break from checking people in to come hang out, too.

We did not manage to free any software, but definitely freed the IPA from the firkin in less than 2 hours - a record at Barley's. O.k., I only had a couple - I don't know who drank all the rest - might have been Greg. ;-) There were probably 150 or so people on hand. Barley's manager - great guy, by the way - said the OLF crowd was definitely over the top for a typical Friday night. Meanwhile, some mysterious stranger from Digium pitched in to help with the bar tab.

Well, I better hit the hay - got to sleep sometime! Tomorrow we'll fill you in on the excitement from the conference and the after party. Which reminds me. Greg made an interesting observation - it's not about the community; it's about the free beer. I need to mention this notion to the Charlotte Linux User Group and see what kind of response we get. I bet people would drive to Charlotte from Ohio to attend our meetings if they knew the beer was free!