Well, that was a bit of a bust. The instructions said that they’d be opening the doors between 6:15 and 6:30, but it was nearer 6:45 before they did so. I suspect that they also had no idea how long it would take them to load the auditorium, though at least they had the sense to drop the requirement for photo ID to get people in more quickly.

Not that any of this mattered, because at around 7:50 they announced that they were still having tech problems and brought the chant people out to entertain us.

Given that Kevin and I had not had time for dinner beforehand, had to get back to Fremont after the event, and needed to be up really early this morning, we decided to bail at 8:00pm. We did have the signed book, and it is not as if we haven’t seen Neal read before. Besides, Charlie and Annalee from io9 were they, so they’ll doubtless be reporting on the event.

There are, I suppose, all sorts of jokes that could be made about the Long Now folks measuring time in millennia and therefore not quite understanding that we normal humans measure time in minutes, but they were trying hard and appeared genuinely distressed that we had to leave so I’m not going to be snarky. It does occur to me, however, that if a fan group had run the event and been even 15 minutes late starting everyone would be going on about what a bunch of flakes fans are and how they can’t be trusted to get anything right.

Meanwhile I have this 900+ page book staring balefully at me. Somehow I don’t think I’ll finish it any time soon.