Tonight I had a nice dinner with Tripwire‘s Karen Hepner and Steve Beaver and a group of other well known virtualization friends and experts at a restaurant called Marina Cafe. A great time was had by all and the conversations were lively thanks to Tom Howarth and Mike Laverick being in attendance. I wish I snapped a better photo; this one is a bit blurry (absent from the photo is Alan Renouf who showed up a little later):

After dinner, the group separated.

• Karen went back to her room and may have later went out to a VMUG party according to Twitter.
• The Dutch and UK guys (and Brenda) went to a pub and supposedly Tom Howarth was arrested and hauled off to French jail for perpetuating the joke about Alan Renouf being French. Duncan Epping was later heard saying Alan looks more English than the Beatles. Clearly, the insults are plenty and don’t end until dawn. Tom’s cell mate, if you are reading this, I’m taking all callers live right now – what is the scoop and what is Tom’s current condition?
• Steve and I walked a few blocks to find a tobacco shop so I could purchase a cigar. While there, I lent a Frenchman some coin and hopefully picked up some positive French karma along the way. On the walk back to our hotels, we talked about some good stuff.

It’s 1:20am. Tomorrow is when things get pretty exciting from a VMworld/VMware virtualization standpoint. In closing, here are pictures of one of the two casinos I know of on Charles de Gaulle Boulevard. This casino is next to the Palais Des Festivals on the marina which is where VMworld 2009 Europe is being held:

By the way, the yachts in the marina are ABSOLUTELY SICK. My poor photography skills at night do not do these beautiful boats justice (click on the thumbnails for the larger image):

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