Saturday, March 11th, 2006

Well, I'm going to attend again this year, and I'll brag-um, blog about it again, too. Visit my new home site to see the 2006 Brainshare blog.

Saturday, March 26th

Well, that's it. Brainshare 2005 is over, and I'm heading back to my family: SLC to Washington, Washington to Amsterdam, where, due to odd things happening in time zones, I'll be landing early Sunday morning if all goes well.
I'd like to give a big thank you to (a) my boss, who made it possible for me to go to Brainshare SLC this year; (b) all the folks over at Novell who've made Brainshare not only a great technical conference, but also a wonderful social gathering; and last but not least (c) my family, who I've had to miss the whole week.
This weblog -- such as it is -- is finished; I hope you had as much reading it as I had writing it.

Friday, March 25th

Today's sessions:

0900-1045: Keynote was opened by Bill Hewitt, Novells chief marketing officer. Being chief marketing officer with Novell isn't an enviable job: there have been a lot of complaints from IT personnel that Novell isn't getting the message across.
There was an impressive demo of hardware virtualization using XEN, which is sort of an open source variant of VMWare. What Novell is busy doing is integrating XEN into eDirectory. What that means is that you can create objects in the tree that represent physical servers, ones that represent virtual servers, configuration objects for virtual servers, and so on. It also means that virtual servers can be moved from physical to physical server without any interruption to the end users (they were playing a video on screen while the virtual server was moved); it also means that this could happen automagically, depending on the physical server's node. In addition, all of this can be managed using iManager - i.e. from anywhere in the world. As a nice add-on, they also showed a virtualized NetWare server running in XEN on SLES9. VMWare had better watch out.
There was also some talk on high performance computing using Linux clusters, which I sort of missed because I was typing the above paragraph :-)

Next followed a presentation on Mono. Miguel de Icaza created a small app in Visual Studio, which was then moved over, unmodified, to a Linux box, and also a Mac box. They did the same thing with a demo-app that Microsoft created. They claimed it also could've run on Solaris, 64 bit environments and so on. Pretty impressive. Mono 1.2 is due out in Q2 2005. Mono 2.0, due out in Q2 2006, will include a GUI designer (MonoDevelop) and support for .NET 2.0.

Nat Friedman got to talk (as I expected) on desktop tools, such as Beagle, the integrated desktop search tool. Nat showed off Beagle's live query functionality - which basically means that anything you do is indexed immediately. He also showed off F-Spot, a picture organising (and editing) tool. Hula Web Calendaring was also demo'd. Lastly he'd play with something cool (openGL drivers on Linux, or some such): He'd be moving windows about, and they'd flutter as if they were real pieces of paper.
Nat finished remarking that real user experience innovation is now mainly happening in the open source community. He may not be far off the mark.
1100-1300: Identity Management course Actually, I've never really used DirXML, or Identity Manager (IDM) as it's called these days. I know what it can do, more or less, but having read the documentation doesn't compare to actually seeing the magic in motion. During this NUI hotlab I used IDM to sync information to a MySQL database. Then I'd got to play with the Text driver to import comma-delimited files into eDirectory; setting a default password policy consisting of the substrings of the user name, and playing with a placement policy to determine where they'd end up in the tree, depending on what function they had within the company. The Hotlab documentation should be on their website sometime after Brainshare. Highly recommended. That goes for IDM, too.
1445-1600: Deploying Novell Linux Desktop in the Enterprise By the time this session began, I had wandered out of the Salt Lake Convention Center and was breathing the outside air for the first time in days. I was able to get some presents for the kids, and to take a look at the Salt Lake Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Sure enough, while I was busy taking a snapshot of the Temple (the outside; the unwashed masses aren't allowed inside) I was addressed by two Sisters who inquired after state of my immortal soul. Not wishing to impose on their time I told them it was safely backed up, and made off.
I took the Uta Trax back to the hotel, but I wasn't paying attention and went almost all the way to Sandy. I did get to see where people actually live: I hadn't seen any 'normal' houses during the week. I also had a better view of the mountains nearby, always an impressive sight for someone who lives in Flatland. They look a odd, though: like faithfull dogs waiting behind the front door until the boss comes back. Wish I had more time to go explore more of Utah, but that'll have to wait until another time.

iPrint

LDS temple

Thursday, March 24th

Today's sessions:

0830-0945: UML and other Linux virtualization techniquesVirtual Office instead, since that's what I want to configure - and configure right - on my personal OES box. Unfortunately, I should've just downloaded the slides, because all the information was on there. So I shuffled out, and had a late breakfast instead.
1000-1115: Nterprise Branch Office overview & futures Nterprise Branch Office is one of those products that I've been trying to use as a way to sneak a Novell product into an alien environment. Like iFolder (that other product), it's totally agnostic as to what network it's connected to, be it Linux, NetWare or Windows NT/2K/2K3 based. Branch Office described as a disposable service cache, which basically means that the central office's services (file, print, user provisioning) are available locally, even if the connection between branch office and central office is severed. Nice tool.
I've seen the Branch Office product presentations at Brainshare Europe 2k4; the only new bit was some information about the next version (going into beta in a couple of weeks), which no longer uses NetWare 6.5 under the hood, but -- surprise -- SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 9.
1130-1245: Hot tools and toys 2005 Another one-woman show (no other term for it) by Laura Chappell, where she got to show off some of her more or less vaguely IT related tools and toys. I won't list 'em all, but here's a list of clickable links: Steganography tool; www.minaso.com; HTTP sniffer/reassembler; Wireless components; Thinkgeek.com; 4migo.com Keylogger Scott eVest (with 30 hidden pockets) Biometric USB drive Stealth web browsing Use powerlines as high speed network Laura's humour site Sumobot The consulting notepad The face/butt towel Switch off any tv
One other point to remember: Laura's password (on public stuff, I assume) is usually hide; and the encryption method is blowfish.
1300-1415: Securing Linux Fairly simplistic list of things to do to secure Linux, such as turn off the SMTP daemon on workstations. Hell, it's Windows all over again. I thought Linux was more secure out of the box!
1430-1545: Internet Safety for Children: a presentation for parents Although my kids won't be any trouble anytime soon in this respect (they're aged 3 and 5) I decided to exercise some forethough and sit this session. I wish I hadn't. I knew that the Internet isn't exactly a safe haven for anyone, least of all children, but I never knew how far these people can penetrate your -- or your childrens' -- lives. No laughing matter, this. If you have kids, and like to keep 'em please make sure that you know what they are up to on the internet. Also, make sure that you know what techniques the black hats employ to slowly acquire your children's trust. You can download Laura's presentation (although the /kids url may change to somethingelse, to avoid kids stumbling upon it by accident: some of the material isn't exactly suitable for kids. Netsmartz.org, on the other hand, is targeted specifically at kids. If you're not from the US, make sure you find out what the initiatives are in your country. For my fellow Dutchies out there - take a look at IkSurfVeilig.nl, Surfsleutel.nl, SurfOpSafe.nl, and OudersOnline.nl. The Surfsleutel site is looking for volunteers to give presentations and courses: you can volunteer here.
1600-1715: Novell iManager introduction and configuration Having talked to the iManager people over at the labs, I felt safe to skip this session. I spent some time in the Learning Zone instead, the one place I hadn't visited yet. You have access to virtually all of Novells training offers, including Advanced Technical Trainings, and you can just read this stuff or actually practice it. I've tried mailing myself some of these PDF documents, but that was, unfortunately, not possible...
I did do the CLS exam, and I passed, so - yes! - I'm now a Certified Linux, um, Salesperson. Heh. The score was only 97,5%, though. What did I miss?
1800-2100: Meet the Experts Skipped this one. Spent the time in the hotel swimming pool instead :-)

Hey, here's an interesting fact: 53% of the people reading this blog uses Firefox; 37% uses IE6. Hmm?
By the way, anyone wishing to contact me can do so by mailing to bert at myrealbox dot com.

Wednesday, March 23rd

Today's sessions:

0900-1045: Keynote Surprise appearance of John Huntsman, governor for Utah. Spoke a few lines of Chinese (well, he said it was Chinese), and used the availability to promote Utah. FYI: his favourite aphorism is "when the family is happy, all is well under the heaven." Use it to your advantage.
David Litwack was back again, showing off Identity Manager's automatic provisioning and de-provisioning of a user, going so far as to disable his mobile phone account upon deprovisioning.
Next followed a sneak peek at the upcoming ZENworks 7, by The Evil Zen Scientist, with its new management web interface, and the possibilities to control Linux boxes to the same extent as Windows desktops. I haven't taken a close look at ZENworks since, oh, version 3 or so, so to me this was quite revelatory. Another product I need to take a very close look at.
1100-1215: Identity-enabled applications with Novell Virtual Directory Services I skipped this session. I was over at the developer den (where they offer freshly baked cookies) when I was lured into a session on Virtualization with VMWare, having been bribed with a remote-controlled racer. Unfortunately I was already quite familiar with VMWare (although my own iFolder server actually runs on Virtual PC -- call it inertia -- so I didn't learn anything new. One nice new product they have is called ACE, which more or less completely solves the problem IT admins face when people want to work from home: with ACE you can give 'em a self-contained virtual machine that the admin can control from a distance. No longer will confidential company files end up on p2p networks because daddy's (or mommy's) son/daughter specified that the whole of the family computer's hard disk should be shared. (Don't laugh. I've seen it happen.) By the way, if anyone is reading this in time: in the sponsor hall, VMWare is giving away free VMWare workstation 4.5.2 with a free upgrade to workstation 5. Go and get it!
1315-1430: Groupwise futures: Sequioa and beyond Room chock full of (fairly) loyal Groupwise supporters. There were a lot of questions from the audience, too: Groupwise is definitely a product that people use on a day to day basis and therefore causes them to have pet peeves or likes. Having seen the Sequoia release windows client in the lab yesterday I can see that usability is getting a lot better. With the SOAP/XML interfaces on the post office (which Evolution uses to connect to Groupwise) 3rd party developers have an excellent way to connect into Groupwise, too. There's PDA sync support for several platforms, also a must-have. Also interesting is the Outlook connector, which would enable you to use or keep using Outlook on the desktop, but have the Groupwise reliability on the backend.
For the Aspen timeframe (2nd half 2008), one major issue is to go back to one client interface, from the 5 currently being supported.
1445-1600: Roadmap for exteNd and Nsure technologies Novell exteNd is an unfamiliar product to many of the old school Novell customers. Service Oriented Application development isn't the forte of the traditional network manager who's more concerned with granting file system access to the right data to the right person anywhere on the network. It makes much more sense if you combine exteNd with Identity Manager, and think of the two as tools to provide the right data -- coming from any kind of (legacy) system or database: mainframes, SAP/Peoplesoft, JDBC, SMTP -- to the right person anywhere in the world through a web portal.
Recently, Identity Manager version 2 has been introduced, which is currently recognized as the leading identity management solution, Project Spitfire will add a number of features to that, such as:
- workflow support for approval of entitlements & access requests (we saw a demo of that during today's keynote: you can just request access to information and devices via your personal web portal, and your manager (or manager's manager) can approve or deny that request via his/her personal web portal; upon approval, provisioning is automatic),
- designer tools based on the Eclipse framework (saw nice demo's of that too: it's very easy to create a workflow that way)
- self-service management of passwords (already included in current version ) and other attributes (call it eGuide on steroids)
- light-weight user administration, which allows the admin to create temp users outside of the HR system, which is handy for provisioning contractors and temp workers, or to grant access to extranet or intranet users (customers and partners)
- delegated administration, which allows, for instance, for assistants to assume the manager's role when s/he's on vacation
Very interesting, too, is Virtual Directory Services, which is a sort of a Yellow Pages that can specifically be created for a certain application; call it a virtualization layer that allows developers to information in all available directories (be they LDAP directories such as eDirectory or Active Directory, databases such as Oracle or systems like SAP/Siebel/Peoplesoft) without having to worry about how that information is actually stored (schema changes, anyone?). In addition, the developer can store information in the virtual directory without having to have that information written to the back-end system (which would, again, require schema changes -- something admins aren't too happy about, especially with Active Directory).
There's a lot going on in this area, so it was kinda odd to see that there weren't all that many people in this session. I wonder if, despite the presenters' claims that identity driven, web based services are an enormous growth market, they are talking to the right people. I fear that Brainshare is still largely the domain of the packet driven network admin.
1615-1730: Introduction & overview of iFolder today and tomorrow Jared and Trent had warned me that there wouldn't be any news for current iFolder3 beta testers in this presentation, so I went to the Beta Open House instead to chat with some of the other beta testers.
iFolder 3 should become available this week in open beta, which gives you a chance to test drive this wonderful product for yourself. If you already know iFolder 2, version 3 adds (1) client support for Linux and Mac, (2) workgroup sharing (no server is necessary -- think of it as controlled peer-to-peer file sharing), (3) multiple logins and multiple iFolders, and a few other things I can't think of right at the moment. Highly recommended.
1830-2200: Concert @ the Delta Center (with Train -- you know, 'Drops of Jupiter') Niiiice. No pics, though. Forgot my camera phone, didn't I? *whack*

During Brainshare, Novell takes over most of SLC. Including, apparently, the local water bottling company.

There are some bona fida programmers walking around here at Brainshare.

The have-nots (most folks have their own laptops) using the Novell provided laptops (running, of course, Novell Linux Desktop)

The main concourse during a quiet moment.

Tuesday, March 22nd

Today's sessions:

0830-0945: NSS file system on Linux Featured a long list of the features that the NSS filesystem-on-Linux has. Some of these are unique, such as the visibility feature (users only see files and directories that they have a right to); rights calculation (rights inheritance); multiple name spaces (Windows, Mac, Linux); file events (file system can track and log changes to files -- used, for instance, in the Novell Archiving and Versioning tool); and salvage (the possibility to restore deleted files).
1000-1115: Bring your own laptop Hands-on course Ethereal - Analysis on a Budget Despite visiting two (european) Brainshares, I'd never been to one of Laura Chappel's sessions. I wasn't prepared, therefore, to see a queue stretching through a large part of the convention center, of people wanting in. There were 400 people in there, with 400 laptops so that was the end of the local wifi network.
Laura did a very good presentation, working us through the (Ethereal) trace of a spyware infected system. I'm not as good at the ip protocol as I would like to be, and Laura really made me wish I'd invested a lot more time tracing packets. I'm definitely going to have a look at the DVD with videos of traces that she promised was in the Brainshare bag. I'm looking forward to the other presentations she's giving.
1130-1245: NetMail & Hula Bit of an odd one, this session. They spent a lot of time outlining the strategy behind GroupWise vs. Netmail vs. Hula (not a peep on Suse Linux Open Exchange -- often horribly abbreviated as SLOX), which basically boils down to: Groupwise = full featured groupware environment, Netmail = quick & fast & easy mail environment with some calendaring thrown in, and Hula. Novell took a large chunk of Netmail code, cleansed it to make it fit for public distribution (one of the tech folks in the lab said that the Netmail code was very fast, but very difficult to maintain) and made it available as open source in Hula. So, Hula is an open source project that, according to these guys, is gaining a lot of momentum. Netmail, on the other hand, is a product. The difference is that you pay for Netmail, get regular support, and is regularly but infrequently updated. Useful bits that appear in Hula will eventually make their way into Netmail.
Hula doesn't use eDirectory; instead it uses the filesystem as a database (although openLDAP and MySQL support is being worked on), which makes it rather slower and therefore less fit for enterprise environments (Hula is aimed more at the hobbyist, smaller companies, and OEMs.)
1300-1415: Windows vs Linux: Getting past the FUD So far this looks like an animated version of Novells "Unbending the truth" website. (...) Yup. I heard nothing new, really, apart from the statement that Microsoft is getting rather nervous that organisations no longer default to installing Windows servers. What I found rather disturbing, at Q&A time, were the comments, no statements from staunch anti-Microsofties in the audience. Peeps, we're gonna have to live with those blue folks for some time to come. Learn to co-exist. Novell is.
1430-1545: A look at Linux filesystems: NFS, ReiserFS and ext3 A good, if rather dry and technical comparison of the various Linux filesystems: ReiserFS v3 and v4, ext2 and ext3, XFS and JFS and the networked file systems such as NFS and CIFS. Guy certainly knows what he's talking about. Well, he should: he's the team leader for the SuSE Labs Kernel development team.
1600-1715: Open Enterprise Server introduction and roadmap I went to this session, not so much for the introduction but for the roadmap: where is Novell taking OES? Turns out they actually do have a new version planned (apart from several service packs, of course), codename Cypress. Most interesting bit I found is that they want to do desktop integration, with Linux on the server and on the desktop. This is both what's made Microsoft so succesful, and also what's been galling an increasing number of people about them. Tying desktop (frontend) and server (backend) software together provides tremendous opportunity to increase user and team productivity. However, it can also make life pretty difficult for 3rd party vendors if they want to extend part of the functionality. With OES, the situation is a bit different, as the foundation technology is open source. If Novell manages to remain a 'good open source citizen' and not lock out 3rd party developers, they might beat Microsoft at their own game. Well, maybe not beat 'em, but this will certainly cause some headaches over in Redmond.
1800-2200: Sponsor Party (Phat Tuesday) The Sponsor party had a Mardi Gras theme. The whole of hall C was turned into New Orleans, and although most people hadn't been able (or willing) to dress up, you could have your face painted in bright colours. There were jugglers and stilt-walkers; unfortunately I haven't seen any sword eaters (high amusement, IMO), and flashing wasn't allowed. You could also win a trip to New Orleans, as well as loads of t-shirts, x-boxes and any kind of mp3-player as long as it was an Apple iPod (surely there are better ones out there? I'd think geekdom would rather go for one of these Archos video devices). Cleverly, the drawing for the trips was at 9pm, and you had to be present, so everybody hung around until that time. Well, nearly everybody: a few folks missed out on a free iPod/xbox/whatever because they'd bailed out off to the hotel. Needless to say, I didn't win even a pencil.

The (in)famous ad that could be seen right in front of the convention center, and also at the SLC airport (thanks to Michael Schwab)

The LAN tournament. All work and no play...

Fat pigs @ Brainshare

St Charles street relocated. Hey, somebody want to buy the Brooklyn bridge?

Handing out the prizes.

Monday, March 21st

Today's sessions:

0900-1045: Keynote It may have been just me, but I found this initial keynote fairly boring. Of course, most of the stuff on Open Enterprise Server I had already seen @ Brainshare Barcelona in 2004; and all those happy lines on how Linux is being used more and more within organisations ("53% of CIO's believe open source will be the major technology used in their companies") -- well, so far I know it hasn't made a mark on the bottom line for my company yet. Most interesting thing I found the announcement of Novell Small Business Suite for Linux. Must see if I can get some more info on that.
1100-1215: Architecting Identity Management Solutions with Dave Cox. What's the design process and what are the design guidelines for eDirectory when you want to use it with IDM2. Made me think of the old NDS Design & Implementation course.
1315-1515: Hotlab Advanced OES Throw a lot of machines into a room, put VMWare on 'em, put OES inside VMWare, create a step-by-step guide to do things like perform a patterned install, work through iManager screens, and so on. This is mostly geared towards those having little or no experience with OES apart from the other introductory OES hotlab. Me, I've been using OES since its closed beta, so to me, this wasn't too hot. Unfortunately, they'd used the OES open beta code, rather than the released version.
In between I talked to a couple of people in the technology lab. Had a very good look at the beta for Groupwise 7 client. I don't use Groupwise myself: I use Fastmail at the backend, and Thunderbird as the client. I tried GW6 as a client, but it had a very shaky IMAP implementation, so I skipped that. Having seen the possibilities of the GW7 client, with its panels and views, I think I'll try it once more once it becomes available.
Also talked to Jared Allen and Trent Badger from the iFolder team, and was happy to learn that some of my pet peeves with iFolder3 will --probably-- be remedied.
1615-1730: Identity Manager 2 Competetive Comparisons Started of with a comparison framework, which was very useful, then went on to compare Novell IDM2 to offerings from IBM, Sun, Microsoft and some smaller parties. Unsurprisingly IDM2 beat 'em all. There was even some faint praise for Microsofts offering-- the user interface is really good!
1800-1915: Birds of a Feather Discussion: Service Oriented Architecture - .Net, Mono and J2ee - Co-exist or choose a path I started to get a bit tired, so I didn't exactly get the answer (co-exist of choose a path?). It didn't help that, with the discussion running heated occasionally, people were talking very fast.
1945-2100: Birds of a Feather Discussion: Operational Security Policies: FISMA, ISO17799, COBIT, Sarbanes-Oxley By this time, I was back in the hotel sitting in a hot bath massaging my tired feet.

Sunday, March 20th

Hells bells, it was snowing in SLC this morning! Apparently I was quite lucky to actually have arrived yesterday: on the Brainshare newsgroup there is a horror story by Andreas Bach about how he and some friends had to drive down to SLC all the way from Minneapolis as their flight was cancelled because of lots of snow.

I've been trudging through most of town this morning, partly to revive my legs after the long flight yesterday, but also to try and find a power plug adapter for my laptop. (I actually did pack a plug adapter -- I'm not that stupid -- but I didn't think it necessary to test whether that adapter would actually take my laptop power cord.) I had a fun time in one of the few shops that was actually open on Sunday morning, Sam Weller's Zion Bookstore. I bought Terry Pratchett's Monstrous Regiment (see also Wikipedia!), which I'd already 'read' as an audiobook, and a second hand copy of Douglas Coupland's Shampoo Planet , on which, for some odd reason, someone had pencilled 'chumpoo planet'. Not wishing to overload before Brainshare had actually started, I had to leave Yann Martel's Life of Pi, Dan Brown's Digital Fortress (I'm still busy with the audiobook version of Da Vinci Code), Robert A. Heinlein's The Man Who Sold The Moon, and a P.G. Wodehouse Jeeves omnibus behind. I was also temped by a book called Mormonism for Dummies. Hey, I'm in Salt Lake City, ok?

I also managed to register at Brainshare, and pick up my bag of goodies. The bag ('the coolest bag you've ever seen') is a smaller version of the bag they handed out at Brainshare 2004 in Barcelona, which makes it more usable on a day to day basis. Inside the bag was the usual collection of sponsor material, and a whole bunch of forms to fill out and hand in to those same sponsors, so that you get the chance to win an iPod or something similar, and they get your name and address and the right to pester you with their material until the end of time...

I was a bit woozy at the reception, and, no, it wasn't the drinks -- my body is still at Central European Time. Had a talk with a couple of people, such as fellow dutchie Rob Bastiaansen (of VMWare+NetWare fame), who admitted that with the load of new and changed software coming out of Novell these days it becomes increasingly difficult to be a general Novell specialist: you have to specialise into a certain direction.

When I arrived at the convention center, there was a semi-truck standing in front, with a bill board saying "Are you sure Novell is getting you where you want to be? Take a look at Microsoft Windows Server!" (or something similar -- I said I was woozy). When I went out again to take a snapshot, they had gone. Dunno if they went of their own accord...

Early Sunday morning in SLC

Ditto, with snow-covered mountains

The convention center before it was overrun with a few thousand bag-toting geeks

The coolest bag you've ever seen ;-)

Crappy pic (hey, phone camera, all right?) of the band at the reception. The female lead singer has approx the same qualifications as the one in the Dutch band Rubber (bit of an inside joke..)

Saturday, March 19th

I made it. I'm in SLC. I'm staying in the Little America hotel, which I recommend to all my millionaire friends. It's nearly midnight (local time) now, and about 8am body time, so I'll go and get some sleep.
View from my hotel room...

Friday, March 18th

Brainshare is the annual get-together for anyone involved with, or interested in, Novell or it's software.

I used to be a trainer on Novell software, and later on even a Novell Support Engineer, but when I started work for my current boss, my professional involvement with Novell has mostly stopped. My current employer is nothing but pragmatical, and if the customers want Microsoft, -- and that, by and large, is what they want -- that's what they're going to get.

Nevertheless I've always kept an eye on developments at Novell; occasionally, I've informed my collegues about these, and I tried to make 'em see that any advice would be a better advice -- or at least a better-founded one -- if we took into account all that the market had to offer, rather than just what the customer had heard about.

This has earned me the epithet "The Novell man".

Occasionally, some of my collegues try to get my goat by exclaiming that "Novell is dead". And, in a way, they'd be right, to the extent that the customers, by and large, weren't interested in Novell, or its solutions. "Novell... NetWare, wasn't it? Great product, great product. Very stable. Unfortunately, we're using Windows, now. Well, we had to: we needed an application server after all."

Recently, however, with the acquisition of Ximian and SuSE, Novell is trying to reinvent itself as a Linux company. Few companies ever get a second chance (anyone remember Banyan?); Novell hasn't pulled it off, yet, but at least they're moving again. It'll be interesting to see what Novell is going to do in the next few months... Anyways.

Flight schedule: Sat 19th @ 16.35 from Amsterdam to Minneapolis (flight NW55, 9 hours), then at 21.23 on to Salt Lake City (NW677, 2.43), where I'll be landing 23.11. I'm staying in hotel Little America, in one of the Tower rooms.