I got to have lunch with Ramnivas Laddad today and was great fun. We talked aspects, of course, and he pointed out how to get around my global (static) accesses for communicating in and out of aspects. Wheeee. He explains things well. Go read his book =)
On the bizarre side, getting lunch was very difficult today. They handed out paper lunch tickets at registration. You must trade lunch ticket for lunch. $1700 to get in and they are stingy with the food, go figure (props to the NFJS conferences for handling this better). Of course I forgot my lunch ticket today. Eventually a chain of phone calls probably went all the way to Jonathon Schwartz and they let me get my bag lunch.
What makes it truly absurd (aside from the penny pinching on giving out a bag lunch) is that they scan your badge going into every session. They have the ability to track who has eaten without tickets, in a more reliable, and accurate manner. They certainly don't use it though.
Eventually they let me get food, though, and Ramnivas and I had a good conversation. I need to go play with the Worker Object Creation pattern more -- use it as a closure around the context that I need and pass it around via wormholes =)