8
A thud at the table jerked Dale out of his reverie.
A kid had pulled up a chair to the far side of the table and scooted up. The innumerable buttons pinned to his denim jacket glittered beneath the bar’s can lights.
“Guys,” Mallard said, “Jason Hellman. Jason, you know Gerry. This is Misha, and Dale.”
How does he remember names so easily?
Fortunately, names quickly became irrelevant around the tightly packed table. The discussion turned to operating system support for newer networking congestion control features. Dale found discussing the advantages and disadvantages of changing core Internet protocols far more comfortable than discussing himself, and quickly got sucked into arguing the finer points of obscure implementation details.
Mallard saw a friend and split away, letting a s
