I, for one, HAVE organized a conference, and a rally. I know of the hard, often thankless, work that it takes to put together a successful conference. If a NANOG meeting ever came to my town (which I would love for my company to host), I would gladly volunteer to pitch in. Unfortunately, there isn't much to do or see in this town, so I suspect that it wouldn't be a highly attended conference. I appreciate the hard work that everyone did to put on what I would consider another successful NANOG. I certainly enjoyed it, and will continue to go to additional meetings, even if there is no "gear". I only have an issue of expecting one thing, and getting quite another, without warning or knowing about the true reason why. It's like going to McDonalds to get a meal and finding out your Big Mac is on a regular bun instead of the sesame seed bun because the guy that cleaned the restrooms took offence to all the seeds in the toilet. Think of the people that went to NANOG like your kids. You go get them a Happy Meal only to find out that there is no surprise inside. Your kids still get to eat, and that was the important thing, but are still disappointed that they didn't get their toy. UK --- Opinions in this email are the personal opinions of the author and are not associated with author's employer. This email account is a not the regular email account of the author and is being used for the protection of the employer. On Wed, Feb 21, Vijay wrote: The Merit people spend an incredible amount of time and effort doing this conference so we (the spoiled brats) can get together face to face and discuss our day jobs and instead of thanking them, we're whining up a storm over some pieces of schwag? Running something this large and running it this well is _hard_, folks. If we had some ham, we could have a ham and cheese sandwich if we had some cheese. /vijay _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com