I first met Mr. Pournelle at a party in Philippe Kahns estate in Santa Cruz. After that, several times at Science Fiction conventions. My wife knew him quite well, being a habitual attendee at these things.
Nice. There were 3 people in my DeMolay chapter that were frequent dinner guests at the home of Gene Roddenberry. They contributed many concepts that ended up on the Star Trek series. I was never a part of that, but found it interesting. I always read Pournelle's articles, so his name was familiar on that chance Comdex encounter.
David Korn (of Korn shell fame) is the only person of note that I interacted with in the past. I worked for PacBell and had full source to the Korn shell. I ported it to 30 different platforms. When I found a portability issue, I sent it to David. Most of the time I received a "thank you" and the update was applied. David was a regular attendee at UseNIX, so we did have a few in-person chats. The last time I saw him, he had his entire family in tow at UseNIX. His son was speaking at the event.