Many well known CEOs here today. My impressions follow.

Steve Ballmer - big, blustery presence. Supremely confident. Undertone of arrogance. Does not seem to understand what matters to his customers. The fact that someone buys a piece of technology does not mean that the believe the design is the best, or even very good at all, merely that it is the least objectionable design for accomplishing their purpose. MSFT is not an evil company; they are a model of capitalism at its most ruthless and Darwinian. They are, however, out of touch with what their customers want (simple technology that works correctly the first time, every time) and are enamored, as are many software companies, of picking up the next shiny shell on the beach, despite the fact that the current shells in their pocket are broken and need fixing and polishing.

Craig Barrett - spent his first few minutes bashing California, labeling the state as anti-business without any apparent desire to understand what the root causes of those provisions and regulations are. There has been a decided lack of balance in CA between the needs of business owners and managers and those who do the work. The lack of balance has ended up driving business of out CA. Barrett does not apparently have the stomach to try to fix this.

Carly Fiorina - a complete contrast to Barrett, she outlined the delicate predicament that CA is in and talked about dealing with the state's competitiveness. She was forthright with some answers, skirted the issue on others, and repeated the HP mantra at least three times during her interview. She talked a lot about what HP learned during the integration of Compaq and came on stage with her sleeves literally rolled up, clearly sending a signal that the work is not done. In fact, she commented that companies who ever believe that the changes they need to implement are done, are indeed done as organizations.

Comment from another session: "If engineers built bridges the way programmers develop code, we'd all be dead and buried."

Geek haiku:
The boss wants to know
Why the web site is defaced
I blame Microsoft

I've spilled something on every single article of clothing I've brought with me, despite my customary overpacking, save the rose colored t-shirt I'm now wearing (this is a sure jinx and will cause the cranberry juice I'm drinking to leap out of the cup and dribble itself in an obscene pattern down my front). I take small consolation in the fact that Steve Ballmer had a spot on the front of his shirt this morning. He also needs to wear over-the-calf socks if he's going to insist on crossing his legs. Snark, snark.

Anyway, this evening, instead of visiting the Magic Kingdom with several thousand other conference-goers, I am doing laundry and feeding the Disney money machine. Yesterday I also contributed to their coffers by purchasing five shirts for various family members, one of which might be me.