Compaq chaos

There’s a nifty new iPaq from Compaq for all participants. We’ll be able
to receive and send messages (like last year), but also sign up for
sessions, read the news and even see clips of sessions to judge whether we
want to go.

But after weathering the crush this morning to get my iPaq, the poor
folk at Compaq suffered database problems. A few hundred of us have been
asked to return in an hour. I shrug at these events, but there are plenty
of people here who aren’t used to it. One, who was standing beside me, was
the governor of a major swathe of Saudi Arabia. I don’t think he’s used to
being told, “Come back in an hour.”