After the conference wound down, Casey took a few of us to the Stratosphere: Casey West, me, Rasmus Lerdorf, Chris Shiflett, Philippe M. Chiasson ("gozer"), and the ever-wonderful Geoff Young. We had a great meal, looking out over the neon-lit cultural wasteland of Las Vegas, and talked a mixture of shop and non-shop.
The best tech part of the evening was listening to Geoff, Philippe, and Rasmus compare threading approaches for Apache 2 and agreeing firmly that the threading MPM is flawed for all but the rarest of situations because you can never guarantee that your third-party modules/extensions/libraries are thread-safe. The solution to all threading problems is to return to good old pre-forking.
Most of us at the table had families (I think Chris and Philippe were the only two without kids) and some of the best conversations revolved around our families, fears, and dreams. Oh, and Rasmus's "weird food I have eaten" thread. Yow.
What a top way to close out a conference: great food, great conversation, and then an enjoyable walk back home. Oh, and I shouldn't forget the rides at the top of the Stratosphere. Chris and Casey rode the vertical tube that puts you under something like 3G forces going up and down. We all chose to avoid the latest ride up there, a short stretch of rail that angles up and down. The car is flicked down to the end of the rail like it were a booger on a finger, and as it hung over the edge, I got flashes of all the worst horrors of my fear of heights. The ride only opened a few weeks ago, so we also had the programmer's fear of running Release 1.0 ...
And so ends another conference. Usually I return home feeling like "any conference you can walk away from is a success", but last night's dinner left a great taste in my mouth, both literally and metaphorically. I go home happy with the prospect of seeing my family again, and happy that I got to spend such rich time with my geek family.
--Nat
