It was a Tuesday. Or a Monday. A gossamer sheet of vapid torpor had established permanent residence in front of my retinae by this point — my very own Real Life Gaussian Blur. Make no mistake: no matter how light and agreeable Texas beer is, if you don’t put it down for five days, you will experience Delirium Tremens.

At this point I was on full-auto mode, and Ian Lloyd seemed like one of the friendliest faces around. The English have that sort of distinguished oddness about them. The man exuded purpose and decision. Thus, Zen navigation etiquette mandated that I end up walking around the convention center with part of the Brit Pack. Dunstan had some sort of quibble with American ATM’s, and Richard Rutter seemed just a bit less disoriented than me.

That was when Dave Shea spotted us and told us to join him and the gang at PF Chang’s.

“The gang”, including the crowd I was hanging out with at the time, included the following:

• Eric Meyer
• Tantek Çelik
• Dave Shea
• Molly Holzschlag (sexeh!)
• Dunstan Orchard
• Ian Lloyd
• Richard Rutter
• Chris Schmidt
• Porter Glendinning

The dream panel that never was.

So we sat down to eat. Meyer pulled out a copy of “More Eric Meyer on CSS” and said whoever wanted it should fight to the death!™ for it. Next thing you know, everyone’s whipping out their authored books and giving them away. I mudwrestled Dave Shea for the CSS Cookbook from Chris Schmidt and won (ok, so we didn’t exactly mudwrestle, and I didn’t exactly win. I did get the book, though, and I’m totally sure I’d whip his canadian ass on a mud wrestling match — unless he calls me on it, in which case: just joking, Dave!).

So we have all these Web Standards/CSS/Programming luminaries sharing chinese. What does the conversation turn to? Why, Bathroom Design, of course.

You’d be surprised to find out how many insights were thrown around that afternoon. We discussed everything from which toilet paper replacement technology is best (slip-out, no spring, half an arm’s length from the toilet), to the optimum placement of entrances and vents. Next time I’m building a bathroom I’m *so* calling these guys.

But that was not the end of it. We had just finished arguing about the inherent evil that is a cold toilet seat, when Eric Meyer asked:

What are your little quirks?

Try to picture this in your head. This is PF Chang’s, and this table is full of Web Standards evangelistas. People who make a living out of endlessly debating the nuances and correctness of using the <strong> tag versus the <b> tag. In short, this little cherub of a question is being thrown at a tableful of borderline-psychotic, obsessive compulsive types.

You can imagine the rest: There was everything. From the guy who always enters escalators using his left foot, to the one that enforces color segregation on his Skittles prior to eating them:

I’ll have all the groups neatly presented in front of me, and then I can start eating them. One group at a time, of course”

I swear, I’m not making any of this up.

— sergio on June 28, 2005