For the most part, I was startled at how old everyone looks, and I can only assume I looked startlingly old to them as well; though I just think of myself as looking like ‘me’.

There were lots of lumpier faces, balding heads and beer guts on the men. Most women were wider in the hips and had some crows feet on their faces.

Several of the ladies (and I’ll not name names) looked more attractive now than in high school but, AFAIK, none of the men fared as well. I think that’s more a testament to the God-awful clothes and hairstyles women wore in the late eighties than anything else.
In any case, I tried mingling, with middling success. I’d strike up a conversation, which almost always started with, “I’m Joe Whited and you are…?”, moved through the “where do you live?” and “what do you do?” stages, on to the “any children?” side-shot and tapered off with the awkward denouement, “yeah.. well…”

The group was small, but that fits the size of our class, really. (~80 graduates) And when we adjourned to the “rock” room @ ~22:00, Derek Jenza queued up an earsplitting assortment of period tunes the likes of which I’d grown tired of when still a virgin. This would be more tolerable had it not been mind-numbingly loud. I tired of trying to read lips and Heather and I beat a hasty retreat shortly thereafter.

I left regretting not the reunion, as it was inevitable and missing it would have left a nagging doubt in my mind forevermore, but I’m certainly reassured that my dogged resistance to looking back has been the correct path all along.
I thank the organizers, the ringleaders of which seemed to be Jessica Fritz-Echols, Sula and Derek Jenza. The latter seemed far more gregarious than I remembered him being, but it may be that the gloom-tinted glasses I wore in high school prevented me from seeing it. Class acts, all of them.

    More importantly, why would anyone be browsing the internet from their server console?

    Some people really shouldn’t be allowed to operate their own computer equipment.

    Microsoft, I know you’ve taken plenty of heat lately on security issues, and that IE7 is actually pretty secure provided it is

1. updated constantly with the many security fixes you provide
2. operated in a completely paranoid manner by technically savvy individuals

    But if a user is even slightly incompetent or credulous–as the average human is–then within an alarmingly short period of time most Windows-based computers are compromised. Add this to the many shortcomings of the bloated server offerings and unwieldy desktop offerings and I am more satisfied with my decision to use Linux on my laptop every day.

    And yet what alternative do we have in the business space? I can’t sell open source business solutions to save my life! People always complain that they aren’t compatible enough, can’t be integrated easily enough. And if I do happen to sell an open source–or even a non-Microsoft closed source–solution and ANYTHING goes wrong with it I get blamed for the recommendation. You sold me this crap. It’s your fault, says Mr. Unhappy Customer.
    If a Microsoft solution fails–as they sometimes do–then I can usually pass the blame on Microsoft, and the customer is cool with it.

    In the really old days there was a phrase: “No one gets fired for buying IBM.”
    Unfortunately, these days this phrase equally applies to Microsoft.