Sorry to say, it was another great day. I’m going to have to think of some deep moral question to pose to all the readers out there because I’ve been reporting on how great things are recently. There seems to be a trend here.

The day started with registration (The swag this year was a backpack similar to last year’s [phreaknic](www.phreaknic.info) gifts, but inferior because it doesn’t have baudburn embroidered on it. The mornings talks were quite good. I listened to Scott Thompson, a former head honcho of technology at intel talk about the future of CMOS technology. **HBMS Reference** I can’t go into the details **/HBMS Reference**, but suffice it to say that I enjoyed that talk. The second talk was given by Robert Baumann of Texas Instruments.

Lunch was nothing to write home about, but it wasn’t horrible, which happens to be the same feelings I have towards the lectures of the afternoon.

After the last lecture, I Anu wanted to see the waterfront, so I took her down that way to take a look. I was familiar with the area because of my run the first night. After a walk around, we came back to the hotel because Anu and the rest of the Vandy crew were going to the space needle. I opted out because frankly, I don’t like doing the touristy crap that no local does.

I started by going to the [Dahlia Lounge](http://www.tomdouglas.com/dahlia/) a beautiful upscale restaurant downtown. This place was swank. It’s run by Tom Douglas, a rather well known chef in these parts, and with good reason. I had a lemon-scallion crabcake dish served with an avocado hollandaise sauce with an assortment of grape tomatoes, sauteed spinach, squash, and jicama. It was very good. While there I talked to a few people at the bar including a german guy who works for hotels.com and the bartender who gave me some ideas for local coffee shops to check out.

Leaving the lounge, I headed over to Rebar, a strange alternative type club where I saw some sort of Napolean Dynamite meets the soundtrack from Life Aquatic band play at the art opening for a lady who paints mildly grotesque images of large ladies in various states of undress. The crowed at that place was strange to say the least. I talked to the artist for a few minutes as well as one of her friends who pointed me to my final destination for the night, a cool local coffee shop called [bauhaus](http://seattle.citysearch.com/profile/10798083/). I had one of the best mocha’s of my life there while reading some of the local literature including [The Stranger](http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Home) and some local fetish/conspiracy theory magazine called the Sinner.

And all that leads me back to the lobby here where I’m able to get the limited Internet access I need to bring these reports to you.

So that’s the scoop from Seattle for today. Now it’s time to sleep so I can be awake tomorrow.