Well. It’s the end to yet another Collaborate. It’s been fun. I’m thankful to IOUG for accepting my submission, “Optimizing Database Network Protocols,” which covered the basics of networking, the OSI model, Oracle/MySQL protocols, and their optimization. Likewise, after such a long hiatus, it was great to see a few of my Collaborate cronies, such as Craig Shallahamer, Arup Nanda, Alex Gorbachev, and many others, in addition to finally meeting Frits Hoogland and Maxym Kharchenko. I also dropped by OakTable World Las Vegas for a couple sessions, including a moving personal story from Kellyn Pot’Vin, a discussion with Graham Wood about the increasing difficulty in hiring strong C.S. graduates, and the market needs for a good, modern C programming book with Jonathan Gennick.