Sweet baby jesus! I almost wet myself with excitement with the news of a new release of the zfs port for osx!

Finally size doesn't matter. Big or little (endian that is!), we can accommodate you and swap your bites for you on the fly. You want datascrubbing, or infinite, instantaneous, big O performing, snapshotting and cloning - no problem!

Gawd I'm excited. Now if only they had bootable zfs working I think we'd have the happy ending we've all been waiting for.

Sure I may be in business school, but sometimes you gotta put the DCF away, stop talking about Porter for a few minutes and just let the real world excite you!

(Find out why zfs is so awesome with Bill Moore's presentation.)

I wake up with a start.

It's 3am. Christmas Eve.

At least I got a few minutes of sleep on these airport benches.

I decide to collect by bags and head toward the ticket counter to see if I can get my boarding pass for the last leg of my journey. Just 36 hours ago I was leaving Hong Kong. It has been a long trip filled with flight delays and cramped intercontinental flights.

As I round a corner, I hear a woman crying. Not just crying, sobbing. This is not the crying of a person who is love sick or homesick. This is the kind of sobbing that reaches deap into your soul. This is the cry of a person stricken with grief.

She is trying to talk on a cell phone with one hand. The other covering her mouth with disbelief. A young woman, barely 20, awkwardly has her arm wrapped around the weeping woman. Someone from airport authority is standing a respectful distance and talking into her walkie-talkie.

I take a deep breath. I know what this feels like. I want to help, but there is nothing I can do that will fix this. I want to offer her the prayers from the book of common prayer that I once committed to memory - prayers to console, and to greave.

That was a different lifetime. I cannot offer the prayers that I no longer believe in. It would be hollow. It would be demeaning.

Instead I pass by and stand in line to check in. I can still hear her in the distance. Soon an ambulance pulls up in front of the terminal with its lights flashing. Two paramedics and a gurney come through the doors.

I can see a host of airport personnel congregating near where I think the woman is. I turn my back for a moment and when I return my focus on the scene, I catch a glimpse of the paramedics navigating the gurney through the sliding doors. I can't tell if it is occupied or not, but it looks like it is taking a little more effort to navigate.

The ambulance pulls away and the flashing lights become only a memory.

A teenager with a surf board passes by oblivious. A family passes where the woman was, dressed in shorts, looking eager to spend Christmas somewhere tropical. The world goes on.

"Merry Christmas," I think.

Another deep breath. I exhale the brewing emotion of the moment as I fumble for my passport.

"Just two bags to check in for you today sir?"

"Yea.