Things I learned at the Nashville Geek Breakfast

As I mentioned last month, it’s hard to sneak up on the Nashville Geek Breakfast,but that doesn’t mean that the geek breakfast can’t sneak up on you. I was running a little late this morning, but I still made it in time to find a seat. Here are a few things I didn’t know before I darkened the door at Noshville this morning:

  • Heather has held a $1 trillion dollar bill in her hand, thanks to her boss, a native of Zimbabwe. Because of rampant hyperinflation and severe poverty, though, that bill is essentially worthless despite its lofty-sounding denomination.
  • Heather’s employer, the United Methodist Church, supports many missionaries in Africa who are working to provide humanitarian relief in Zimbabwe and other countries. That’s a great cause, even if one part of Heather’s job involves trying to make travel arrangements for 18 different missionaries scattered across Africa this week. Wow.
  • Self-described “vernacular ninja” and writer Brett Henley is a Houston native who recently relocated to Nashville. As I’m sure other Houston transplants can understand, Brett’s been enjoying Nashville’s much lighter traffic problems even though he lives in jam-packed Green Hills. I guess traffic, like so many things, is relative.
  • Local hockey blogger Dirk Hoag made his geek breakfast debut this morning. Dirk and I tried not to dominate the conversation by flooding it with puck chatter, but sometimes that’s a challenge. Before we shifted to other subjects, we agreed that Preds broadcaster Pete Weber should be a natural on Twitter. Hopefully we’ll see him there someday, alongside fellow Preds broadcaster Tom Callahan.
  • Chuck is headed to Costa Rica on business next week for the third time in the past year, and he’s got the travel arrangements down pat. Unless you fly US Airways via Charlotte (like Chuck will on Monday), chances are that you’re going to pay $420 round trip to get there–because that’s what nearly every airline charges. US Airways will take you there for about $325.
  • Mitch Canter arrived this morning in style, wearing a beret and his newly received FreshBooks T-shirt, a gift from a pretty savvy company that responded quickly to Mitch’s Twitter praise. Smart thinking, FreshBooks.
  • Mitch has been busy lately with, among other projects, helping out Forrester Research blogger Jeremiah Owyang with an updated design for his blog. Nice work, Mitch.

I’m pretty sure most of these geeks paid their breakfast bills before they departed this morning, but somehow eight attendees did not. I’m figuring that they forgot, but this can’t be good news for our hardworking Noshville server. If you’re suddenly remembering that you had a great “free” breakfast this morning, please make sure you stop back by Noshville to remedy the situation.

NOTE: In the meantime, the late breakfast seating group decided to tip generously (in U.S. rather than Zimbabwean dollars, no less) to make up for the unpaid bills. I didn’t actually dine at Noshville despite attending the early seating today, but many thanks for this generosity, gang.

geek breakfast Comments 7 May 28th, 2009

7 Responses to “Things I learned at the Nashville Geek Breakfast”

  1. David Cintron Says:
    May 28th, 2009 at 11:44 am

    That’s way uncool of the folk that didn’t pay. Perhaps the newbies thought breakfast was free? I do have to say the server often just leaves the receipts at one end of the table and if you don’t know they’re there you might forget to pay when you leave, but that doesn’t justify it.

    I paid btw!

  2. Brett Says:
    May 28th, 2009 at 12:05 pm

    Yikes on the no pay… good to meet you though; kudos on the memory.

  3. techsyslonghorn Says:
    May 28th, 2009 at 12:16 pm

    it wasn’t that bad, in the second group everyone chipped in. It was a blast as usual, sorry I didn’t get to meet you this time around, maybe in the June breakfast.

  4. Dirk Says:
    May 28th, 2009 at 12:21 pm

    It was great to join the group this morning, I’ll definitely be back in June. Twitter was definitely a hot topic of conversation, along with David’s cool Dell Mini (my wife’s already looking into one).

  5. Rob Robinson Says:
    May 28th, 2009 at 12:47 pm

    I’m still scratching my head about the no-pays, too. Techsyslonghorn, that was awfully nice of you late guys to help the server out. He does a great job, so I hope it works out OK for him.

    Thanks for the props, Brett. I enjoyed meeting you, too.

    Dirk, I’m glad you could make it. See you next time.

    David, I only got a glimpse of that Dell Mini, but it did look very cool.

  6. gavin richardson Says:
    May 28th, 2009 at 7:09 pm

    heather is good folk. glad she is making it to the geekbreakfast

    had to miss out this month. too much going on. next month

  7. Rob Robinson Says:
    May 29th, 2009 at 2:20 pm

    Yeah, Heather’s becoming a regular. We missed you this time, but I’m glad we ran into each other this morning. See you in June.

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