You lucky bastard. I still think I was born a bit too late to have a lot of the fun I could have had.
BTW, the Skein hash algorithm made by Bruce and his usual collaborators is in the second round of the NIST hash function competition. Wish him luck. Their Twofish algorithm made it to the final five for the encryption standard, but didn't get chosen.
I started attending UseNIX in 1988. It was a great place to rub elbows with my peers in the industry and meet some of the giants who created it. Dennis Ritchie, David Korn, Mike Karels, Chris Torek and a long list of others were folks I had the pleasure of meeting at those events. By 1996, the UseNIX meetings were getting less productive. Linus Torvalds did a very amusing presentation at the last one I attended. He is a real live wire in person. Not all of the luminaries are pleasant folks in person. I won't elaborate, but one meeting was sufficient for a few. I really liked Larry Wall. He always showed up in a tux for his talks.
The first time I met Phil Karn, I was on a technical business trip to Bellcore. Phil's office was in an adjacent building. It was a real maze of passages. It was around 1 PM when I was looking for his office. A nearby office mate said it was "a little early for Phil". He did walk in a few minutes later. That day he was preparing to attend the Dayton Hamvention. It was nice to finally meet in person. A couple months later, Phil signed on with Qualcomm and made his trek to San Diego with a Qualstar device on the roof of his car.