Sometime last week, I had lunch with
Cal Henderson.
I'm sure if I bothered, I could look up which day it was (okay, I looked: Thursday), but, eh, I'm relatively lazy at this point, so let's just say "last week."
Cal had recently discovered this site. Not surprising, though, as I've linked to this or
my other site from
BarCamp and
SHDH He had commented to me that there was no way he was going to read all of what I wrote on a regular basis, as I was writing too much. He was too
busy. So, hey, no problem, I could write anything I wanted about him and he'd never know.
Turns out, however, he lied.
At lunch, he turned to me and commented on my "
10 page post about Chris Messina." The actual quote included a
fuck in there somewhere. I laughed, and continued to be humoured when he admitted after reading it, he paged back to see if I had a post about
meeting him.
I don't, so I have to wonder if Cal isn't maybe a wee bit jealous of Messina.
I met Cal in June at his
Carson Workshop on
"How we built Flickr". I had convinced Mike to go along, so he was there, too. It was then that I first met Chris Messina and Ryan King, too. The presentation was fantastic. Mike and I agreed it was a good confirmation of our processes.
Well, assuming Cal knows what he's talking about.
I had introduced myself to Cal in the bar after the workshop, though I was pretty sure that 1. he didn't hear my name in all the noise, and 2. he wouldn't remember who I was even though I was one of only two women in 40+ people there. You'd think
all the ladies would be memorable, but
no.
Fast foward to last month, and
SHDH. Similar to
BarCamp, I greeted people at the door, told them to label themselves with name tags, indicated where the food, presentations and bathrooms were (three distinct locations, mind you). I'm really beginning to enjoy it, which I think is a bit frightening, actually.
At some point relatively early in the evening, Cal arrived and I reintroduced myself to him. I say "reintroduced" because from my perspective, it was. I knew who the hell he was. From his perspective, it was all
shiny and new!. When I said, yes, we had met before, his response was, "Oh? We have?"
In an adorable English accent, of course.
He promptly took my spot at the development table, and started working.
I promptly messaged Mike, "You are now completely jealous of me. Cal from Flickr is here at SHDH." Mike replied that he was, indeed, jealous, then promptly secured permission to go to the next one (
November 5th, Mike!).
Cal spent the next two hours effectively ignoring all of as he worked. When I asked him why he bothered to show up if all he was going to do was work on work projects, he commented that working at a house full of socializing geeks was ever so much more fun than working at home alone.
Couldn't argue with that one.
Cal ended up leaving sometime around 2 or 3, after watching the
Dojo presentation, switching some work server deployments around, mis-spelling my name with a Y, and trying to root my system with Andy. When he left, everyone started crashing. I fell asleep by
falling over sideways on the couch I was sitting in and passing out.
The following Monday was Flickr Fiesta, which I had intended to go to, but was unable to get away from work that evening. I think I was really tired, too, from a lack of sleep on Friday night and too much ultimate on Sunday.
But, yeah, about Cal.
He shortened his name (sur and family) when he had the chance. Works at Yahoo! on
Flickr (d'uh). His girlfriend's name is Elina (and she's adorable!). They have a white, medium-hair cat (Mr Kitty?) with different color eyes. He moved down from Vancouver, where he had met Andy Smith (which is how he heard about SHDH).
How do I know this? Well, the night before Webzine 2005, I managed to invite myself to dinner with him and E. Okay, not really, he invited me up to their place to meet E, and E invited me out to dinner with them, but I did feel like I was imposing a bit. Elina is heading off to Art School this semester, which is really cool. Boo that Immigration won't recognize her degree forcing her to attend school to stay here in the U.S. Stupid INS.
BTW, the view from their place is
spectacular. And remarkably clutter free. Definitely worth inviting oneself to.
Cal wears only T-shirts and shorts (he owns six pairs, all of the same style, four of the same color).
Even in winter.
Even winter in Edmonton.
The man is clearly insane.
There is, however,
photographic evidence that he has at one point worn pants. We think the picture has been digitally altered.
So, now, if you read posts where I'm talking about Cal, you know who I'm talking about.
Oh, and by the way, Cal doesn't know how to pronounce "schedule" correctly.
