Getting ready for training.

I got an email from Apple travel with my itinerary for my trip. This would be the farthest I have ever flown, Albany to San Jose. We had a layover in Chicago as I remember, before that I had been as far as St. Louis. So again, we are in 2001 and I'm getting ready to go. I have my Powerbook Titanium, yes with a handle, loaded with OS 10 Public beta. OSX 10.1 was $129 and bit torrent has not yet been invented. This baby was dual booting to OS9 because as a graphic designer I needed my Photoshop. The trip was scheduled for 2 weeks and being that I was going to be in California for the first time, and this was kinda historic, I wanted to take some photos. I had a SLR camera a Pentax something or other but who uses film when your going to be hired as an "Ambassador to the Macintosh community". Yeah thats a real thing, look it up! So I decided it was time to get digital camera! I decided to do this on the way to the airport, great planning, I know. So of course I stop at Walmart and peruse the digital camera section and checked all of their 10 cameras, if that, they had. What caught my fancy was this beauty with a Carl Zeiss lens!

OK maybe not a Carl Zeiss lens, that came a few years later, but man it looked sweet! That and the 1.3 mega pixels! That took really amazingly grainy pictures that at the time didn't look so bad on your 1024x768 monitors or your tv which is what I did when I came home. I made a sick DVD with toast. In retrospect, these 1.3 mega pixels on display on my crappy CRT TV, I was Ansel Adams. I got all sorts of Oooh's and Ahh's, I swear! Anyhow, I got the camera with this HUGE 8mb Sony memory stick, that is and was, not compatible with anything on the planet. It was a major upgrade and I was going all out, the camera was $199 and the 8MB stick, wait for it, $65! I was ready. I headed to the airport and met with my Macinchat partner and we ran into a big dude carrying an enormous backpack. I think I had 2 weeks of clothes packed in a backpack, I wasn't good at this travel thing. He was sweating as a self proclaimed "fat guy", he had also found out our other genius to round us out at 4. Author of a 4000 page book Troubleshooting, Maintaining, and Repairing Macs, ok it wasn't 4000 pages but it was 5 Pounds. At the time I was thinking, why am I here? I got this fat sweaty guy who went to RPI, an author, the local Mac Guru and then there was me. A graphic designer who kinda knew enough about the Mac to keep his little design firm going. I'm not one to be intimidated and those who knew and know me now, might say I was overly confident, but I was worried I didn't have what it took.