It all started at the Google party last night. Thanks Google for the dinner, beer and ice cream but I have to say it had all the charm of a corporate mixer. Perhaps they should take page out of the Fluendo party handbook on how to throw a compelling mixer. Now that was a party where everyone talked to every one else, even if it was through slured speech.

Rob Taylor and I figured there was still time to catch the 7:30 Literary Pub Crawl so we gracefully ducked out and headed for the exit. Foiled. The door leading us to sweet freedom and good beer was locked. One needed a Google badge to get in or out. Read into that however you would like. Luckily an employee, clad in his black leather motorcycle armor, a guardian of the gate thinks I, was coming in just as we had decided to knock down the door. Actually we were just going to go get someone from the party to open the door but that would have been a bit awkward. As he came in we slipped out and set upon or goal of finding total strangers to drink beer with and listen to prose of long dead writers.

Success - we were a bit late but arrived at the Duke pub on … can you guess? … Duke st. and proceeded to down some Guinness. Each stop was preceded by information about local writers and even scenes from their plays or novels which were acted out by our two professional actor guides. They were quite fun even if I don’t remember the substance of anything they said. And you wonder why they don’t have taps in classrooms. On the other hand I might have gone to class more often. In any case, we stayed at each of the four bars for about 20 minutes a piece. Anyone who knows me knows I don’t normally down a beer in 20 minutes not to mention the thick ambrosia they sling here in Dublin. I was pretty sauced when we reached our last bar where we found Zack Rusin and a small group of other KDE hackers along with a pretty decent performer throwing back classic British and American rock songs on his six string acoustic. We put on a couple of more there and had all sorts of friendly banter until the pub signaled last call with a couple of flicks of the light switch and we shuffled out into the night.

Robert and I then went to look for Daf and Robot101 (aka the other Robert or his royal majesty McQueen). On our way we noticed a bunch of clubs we wanted to try out. One in particular with a large line out the door caught our eye and we decided to go there after we found the others. When we caught up to Daf and Robot101 they were a bit to tired to go clubbing so Rob and I went off to the club by ourselves. This would later prove to be fortunate for us. As we waited on line, a bit of chatter happened between the group ahead of us and a guy behind us. The guy behind us was being a bit of a idiot in his black collared shirt, picking on a guy in front of us for wearing a tee. The entertainment came to a head when a girl who was standing right next to the tee guy mentioned that the collar guy looked good if he was a waiter. She then proceeded to start ordering as if she was in a restaurant. Being sufficiently burned by this and taking a hit to his pride collar guy retorted with something no guy would ever get sympathy for saying in a large crowd. If it were in some bars in the US the guy would have gotten a pretty good beat-down by the other guys in the line but here it just elicited very loud boos. What he said was so over the line it bears no repeating here. Rob and I even came to the woman’s defense at that point which got us high fives from her and scorn from him. He proceeded to start to pick on my tee. I simply ignored him.

When we got to the front of the line Rob and I were pulled aside being that we did not think to tag onto the girl’s group and most clubs are hard asses about letting a group of just men in. We were standing there for a few minutes and Rob wanted to leave and find another place but before we did that I leaned towards one of the bouncers and asked “my friend, is there any chance we will get in sometime tonight?”. “It is just the two of you?”, he asked back. “Yes”. Click. Unlatch. Ding. “Get inside”. It just goes to show, it never hurts to ask. A shot of Jeger and some Jim Beam and Pepsi later ( Rob had a Vodka double and Pepsi) and we were out on the dance floor dancing up a storm.

It ended up being quite a night I thought to myself as I sauntered back to my hostel after the club closed. Pretty soon I leave to go back to Boston where I will start work with my new group. I can say I am very rested and this conference was a great way to transition between my roles at work.

Thanks KDE and thanks Dublin for a great time. Next up is the GNOME Boston Summit in a few weeks.

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