Palo Alto for Sharkfest

This week I spent three days over in California, specifically Palo Alto for a conference held on the campus of Stanford University.

(Yes, I know some of you are sadden by the loss of the daily blogs from Europe... but we had to come home sometime...)

The campus of Stanford was simply amazing. I've driven past the entrance many many times, and never thought to enter and look around. The campus is about 3 square miles of prime California property. Built by Leland Stanford (the guy who owned the Central Pacific Railroad over the Sierras) - was Governor of California, Senator, and even drove in the Golden Spike in Promontory Utah.

Having just returned from our trip to Europe, I was greatly impressed with the architecture and stone-work and mosaic work on the campus. The buildings were 'made' of stone, not just as a facade, but like the buildings and cathedrals of Europe. There is no way someone could build such a campus today. There are thousands and thousands of beautiful trees on the property as well. The campus arborists must be very busy taking care of them all. The conference was called Sharkfest - in homage to the product in question - Wireshark. (get it, the whole 'shark' theme)It was a group of techie, nerd, geeks, who like to understand networking from the packet level. Folks who use packet analysis to keep all our networks running smoothly.

It was good to meet face-to-face with many of my contacts and friends who I have worked with for years, but only over the phone or via e-mail.

A more detailed explanation of the course offerings and what I learned is over at my professional blog at http://wlaniconoclast.blogspot.com - if you care...

It is good to be back home, where people speak English with the correct accent ;-)