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Players: jmiz, rob, patrick, michael, sklarm, joseph, rien, goose, ber, anthony, adam, ike, jeff.

As people wandered in we did continuous introductions for a while: hello anthony, I'm brian, this is john and rob. Ah, jeff. Jeff meet john, rob and michael. I'm brian. Oh here comes someone. Isaac. Isaac, I'm brian, this is jeff, that's rob and michael. Here comes mikey. Mikey, jeff, michael and ike... and so forth. Then we played with the PDP11/70 console and then the bell rang and we took our seats.

Apple introduced its Keynote presentation software earlier in the month so Mikey prepared his PIC microcontroller programming under OS/X talk with it (more on that later) and I demoed it with my list of talking points. Rien made a projection screen from a bed sheet and it was showtime. Kinda like the Little Rascals clubhouse. I went first.

For those of you in the back rows, this slide ticks off the product announcements from MacWorld San Francisco. New powerbooks, new wireless, an Apple browser, presentation software, new versions of iPhoto, iMovie and iDVD and something that Jobs didn't even mentioned at MWSF, Apple's X11 distribution based on XFree86.

We had a couple 12" powerbooks in attendance and one was doing the slide show through mikey's projector. It even had a keyspan IR thingy to flip the slides remotely. It was like totally cool (once I figured out how to push the button.)

There was a fair amount of interest in Keynote vis-à-vis Powerpoint. There are thoughtful comparisons on the web. I reported my experience, having never created a powerpoint presentation. I was blown away by how simple and intuitive it was to put together slides with text, quicktime, jpegs and pdf.

Soon after MWSF Apple announced faster desktops, some with firewire 800 and airport extreme and a 20" Cinema Display. And the 23" price dropped from $3,500 to $2,000.

Xserve RAID came out after the meeting albeit without S3200. We're still waiting for the new iPods and the new $3,500 display.

We went over the titles available in the LESMUUG lending library.

And the "did you know" discussion points.

Mentioned Snak, an IRC client for OS X and demonstrated a PDF in Keynote. This one looked bigger on the bed sheet.

Pointing out we can get some reasonable discounts from a guy at MacMall (PC Mall) corporate sales.

Made note of the MetroMac user groiup that meets at NYU every other month or so.

And LESMUUG will meet in a trailer in The Netherlands in February.

Then we had soup (well most people went for the beer) while Mikey prepared his show. He talked about programming PIC microcontrollers from OS/X, covered the hardware needed, and software utilities that will be necessary. A brief demo with 40 lasers (some sequencing) and some solid, with a fog machine was shown at the end of his presentation. Smoke and lights - didn't see any mirrors but I guess you're not supposed to see the mirrors. Rien thinks it went over some of our heads judging by the fact everyone was paying attention and acknowledged the show with applause. It was good. Mikey chose a less boring Keynote style.

After the light show (or was it before?) I passed around samples I'd picked up from the Apple Logo Merchandise page - which I think is the Company Store. Brushed metal pens, a very cool brushed metal key chain, an even cooler brushed metal combo luggage lock (which can double as a key chain) and a Victorinox Swiss Army Knive. We passed out Microsoft Romance stickers (candy heart design) with which few were impressed.

By unanimous consent we decided to award a key chain to everyone who reviews a book or software for the group. Mikey was presented his on the spot for his opinion of Mac OS X for Geeks. We owe lenny one but are thinking about making him return The Naked Truth. After some cajoling Virtual PC 6 and MySQL flew off the shelves.

The last hour or so of the meeting we milled around in groups. Here are some random recollections.

• Rob learned the snow power adapters have retractable thingies to wrap the cord on which can also be used for feet. And... the cord that goes to the wall can be slid off and interchanged with a stubby plug or cord with a different plug.
• Adam blew my mind when he showed how his bluetooth phone works with the 12" powerbook surfing at 9600 baud. Now I want such a phone.
• Approximately two dozen beers came in with the attendees but when all was said and done only one dozen empties were located. Meaning there will be beer for the next meeting even if no one shows up. 1/2 dozen Philadelphia soft pretzels were consumed. It would have been more but I didn't point out they were edible until the last 3rd of the meeting.
• If the Apple store were open until midnight they would have sold a couple more 12" powerbooks.
• The meeting was routinely interrupted with me trying to get my venerable Fuji to take pictures. It would just hang.
• Everyone who looked at the no nonsense guide to Mac OS X cover thought the book must be nonsense.
• I mentioned that a lot of the talking points come from Mac OS X Hints and people should consider registering with them for $10 in order to support a most relevant site.

The meeting adjourned at 10 o'clock. I haven't seen the x-rays so I can't say if anyone was really hurt or not.