Today Caroline and I attended Handspring’s 10 Year Reunion party in Palo Alto. We had a great time, but as usual there were several glitches.

When we originally made plans to go, Caroline’s parents were going to be in town this week. That made finding a babysitter easy — leave Mai with grandparents. When Caroline’s parents had to cancel their trip (due to health reasons) at the last moment, we had to scramble to find a babysitter. Fortunately, the second friend we asked was available and willing to watch Mai during the party.  New plan: Caroline would drop Mai off at 5:30pm with the friend babysitting, pick me up at work at 6pm, and we’d get to the party by 6:15pm. 

In reality, Mai got hungry at 5:15pm, so Mai didn’t get dropped off until 5:45pm, and then because of major traffic issues Caroline didn’t get to TiVo until 6:30pm. Because of the same major traffic issues and having to find parking we didn’t get to the party until after 7pm.

Once at the party we had a great time. The venue was loud and crowded, but it was great catching up with old friends, some of which I hadn’t seen in years. Several people, including my old manager from when I worked in IT, flew in from out-of-state. My entire old IT Ops department was there; we had a fun time chatting about what’s been happening in our lives recently. The list of current employers of ex-Handspring’ers read like a who’s-who of Silicon Valley, with companies like Sony-Ericsson, Intuit, and Sharpcast.

Of course, I had my camera, so I took as many pictures as I could. I was happy I took my 17-50 lens, as I needed that 17mm wide-angle a lot in the crowded rooms. The photos are not too bad, but could have been better if I had more practice using a flash in this type of setting; I was expected it to be similar to a convention, but because of the crowding and different ambiant lighting it was very different. I was once again reminded that I still have a lot to learn about how to take photos that are anywhere near pro quality.

In all the noise and excitement, I failed to notice the time, and couldn’t hear or feel the alarm I had set on my Treo. We only realized how late it was when our friend who was babysitting called about 30 minutes after Mai’s scheduled pickup to see where we where. We hurriedly left, drove back to TiVo to pick up Caroline’s car (the one with the car seat). Then I drove to our friend’s house and picked up Mai about an hour later than we had promised, apologizing profusely for the lateness.

Now, I’m finally getting some dinner and letting my voice recover from screaming for two hours while the last of the photos upload.

You can see all the photos I took at http://photo.oscarc.net/gallery/6550394_aopX5.