not nearly cool enough
I was invited by Simon to a get-togeather last night at Tantek's with a bunch of WaSP people. It was one of the most engaging evenings I've had in a long time, and I got to meet all kinds of neat folks (too many in fact to list here, lest I leave anyone out).
It feels strange and akward to be a geek among uber-geeks again. In Wisconsin, I used to hang out with security folks most of the time and last night felt a little bit like that. Security folks are, by definition, the most proficient (and cocky) geeks on the planet. They don't just need to know things at a level that's sufficient to build on it, but deep enough to both break and defend weak systems. But with that level of acomplishment in a field that does not yeild to anything but brute willpower comes a much tougher shell. Web people fight similarly nasty problems, but there seems to be a much more accepting and socializing aspect to solving web-dev problems. There's still a feeling that we're down in the trenches, but that somehow we're all in it together.
Most of the night, I wound up engaging in technical discussions because I don't know many of the people who showed up well enough to talk about anything else, so I'm afraid I was a fantastic bore. Regardless, I had a wonderful time. Maybe next time I'll have the common decency to read some of the blogs of people showing up so that I don't seem an utter dolt = )