Pond Boss Forums INTRO Common Pond Q&A (archives) POND BOSS NEWS: Nearly Live from PondCon2

WE'RE BAAAAAAAAACK! in Arlington.

The Second Pond Boss Conference is underway. Vendors, staff members, and Unpaid Senior Staff Analysts (such as your truly) are busy putting the finishing touches on all the booths in the Arlington Convention Center, with formal activities scheduled to begin in less than an hour and a half.

A great many forum regulars have made it down (or, alternatively, up) to Arlington to be here. To the best of my current knowledge, the member having travelled the farthest is JHAP (who also brought his lovely wife Ricki) who has comne all the way from Sandy Eggo (where they make the waffles); however, if we find out someone else has sojourned from an even more distant location, we will let you know.

BTW, we now have a couple dozen witnesses who can testify that myself, JHAP, and Brettski ARE NOT multiple personalities inhabiting one body! It's either that, or one of our personalities ("Dr. Weizel") is a master group hypnotist.

NOTE: Different folks may be utilizing the same log-on name for posts from Arlington (like last year), so we (I, at least) will try to put a hard signature in after posts for positive poster I.D.

-Theo Gallus

Does anyone have any Advil?

Sunil

Sunil:

Crawl out from under the lampshade and see me.

Hey, ya'll. I sent in registration with payment info Wed. by email. Should I have gotten a conf. back or anything?

Hail, Hail...the gang's all here.
Wow, what a great opening evening last night....and we haven't even officically started the convention. I finally get to meet so many of the friends that were, up until now, only identified with text imprints. The personalities all come to real-time life and a pack of fish nutz take it to another level of insanity fun.
Bruce....you owe me a new pair of reading glasses. That guy has SO MUCH ENERGY. When we first met, he hugged me (in a manly way) so freakin' hard that he snapped the reading glasses in my shirt pocket. No kidding.
-
That's the level of comradery that's buzzin' thru this Pond Boss family. Wish you were here.

Cecil and SDSU's Northern Pond.

Keep up on the pics for us bumbs that couldn't make it.

Don't know, burger. Bring what confirmation you can (copy of e-mail) and come on down (up?). Kathy and everyone else from the PB Staff are here to straighten things out if need be.

-Theo

Will Do. I have shots I will be posting after I get home.

-Theo

P.S. Thanks to all the folks that couldn't make it who contributed items for the silent auction. Many of them are getting bids run up high.

Thanks for the pictures Eric........keep'm coming!

Good to hear you all are alive and well. Sorry we couldn't make it this year. We had a great time last year! Our southern Illinois cabin is about finished and our pond is looking great. I hope to post some pics soon. Y'all be careful navigating around Arlington and vicinity. Sunil, you keep Theo and Bill Cody in line. I'm toasting you all as I type!!

Some of you don't know how fine a lady clarbird is, and we are missing her this year.

Across the road from the Arlington Sheraton is a great horking big amusement park (IIRC "Six Flags Over Larry Hagman"), with what looks like world-class roller coasters. But rather than enjoy such minor thrills, last night the bravest two dozen PMs at the PB Conference road to North Main Street Barbeque in two hotel shuttle vans. I had the pleasure of being in the van driven by last year's award winning death-defying driver, Howard the Jamaican Van Driver.

It should be noted that less brave (or, alternatively, more intelligent) members of the PM community here travelled to the BBQ via private vehicles directed by DFW natives who actually knew the way. Wusses.

Forum regulars may remember the hair-raising acoounts of last year's drive with Howard. Last night's ride was even more entertaining, if somewhat less terrifying. Apparently, the shortest way to the BBQ place now goes through Norman, Oklahoma. Fortunately, both vans (and the poor, lost tourists following us in a Hyundai), eventually made it to the BBQ while it was still open for business. The hotel's nominal 3 mile limit for shuttle rides was probably not exceeded by over a hundred miles.

The highlight of the trip was when Howard, who had a cell-phone connected to the restaurant in one hand, a cell-phone connected to BBQ Trip Navigation Officer Dave Davidson in the other hand, a point-to-point walkie-talkie connection to the second van in the gripping hand, the Rangers baseball game on the radio, and rap music playing on his mp3 player, took time out from steering to exclaim "WHOA!" at a traffic accident we were passing (for the record, Howard did not cause this accident).

The food was just as great as last year!

-Theo

The auction. Theo eyes the computer.



Dave Davidson interview for Purina.



The Vertex Crew

What's happening with the auction?

I haven't heard a final $ amount for the auction yesterday, but the preliminary total was higher than last year IIRC. In general, there were more top-end items that attracted higher bids.

Speaking personally, I was chasing the laptop computer and made several bids which were approaching my personal limit for that particular item. My concerned friend Bruce Condello pulled me aside and inquired how much higher I might go for it. I named a figure.

5 minutes later Bruce made his first bid on the laptop, at an amount that happened to be just above the limit I had mentioned. Sheer coincidence, I think.














I ran the (descriptive expletive) up another few bucks before letting it go.

-Theo

I am glad to hear there was a little friendly competition going on down there in Arlington!

Friendly. Right.

Quote from Mike Otto's talk:

"The Bible talks about water and fish. So does Pond Boss. If you don't have time to read the Bible, you should definitely read Pond Boss."

Dale Hall and Mongo (Dave Sefton)


Dr. Mark Griffin, unknown, unknown, JHAP, rmedgar, (obscured), George Glazener

keep the pics comin eric, thanks......

JHAP why the glazed look? would that be too much "info" the night before or too much info on fly fishin??

Wonder if George had to strike any of his audience with that rod? Bet not..... he was talking fly-fishin' for sure.

P.S. Is the "Guvenor" running for office again???????? I don't even see the cue cards.

The meeting was great again this year, folks. Sure enjoyed myself.

Dwight -- I don't have a final figure on the auction, either. However, we will be at least 30% above last year. I'll post the total later after everything is reported to me. Many thanks for that notebook -- it sparked a lot of interest.

My only regret from the meeting -- not spending more quality time visiting with Sunil. However, every time my beer got low, he suddenly appeared beside me with another one! My guardian angel.