Tonight I was honored to participate in a delightful dinner at Hotel Monaco in San Francisco, hosted by our friends from PwC.  Ironically, the first topic of conversation around our table was started by Danielle Butke, whom I have known for several years.  Back in June, 2006, I posted on this blog a less-than-flattering photo I took of her taken at the Catalyst Identity Management conference.  I later posted a better photo, but apparently, Danielle has been the subject of a lot of ribbing over the years from her PwC colleagues because of those photos, so she requested tonight that I remove the photos from my  blog.  I am pleased to report that all photos of Danielle have been successfully removed from this blog and my Flickr account.  All that remains are mysterious frames where Danielle’s face used to grace the pages:

But around the dinner table, we agreed that I needed to replace the photos.  We chose Rex Thexton, PwC Identity Management guru extraordinaire, to replace Danielle on my blog.  So here is Rex on the left, striking his best “Velocity” pose. 

Plus, for good measure, on the right is my Oracle colleague Joe Palastro, who happened to be sitting next to me and somewhat reluctantly agreed that I could post his photo.

Sorry about the the grainy photos, but what more can an iPhone offer?

Thank you, my good friends, for a delightful evening and memories!

Here is to a great year ahead of us!

As Sun transitions into Oracle, the bright expectations of new opportunities have been accompanied with the gut-wrenching impact of learning which friends were not invited to make the leap.  Thursday and Friday were difficult for me, as I heard from outstanding people I have learned to admire and trust that they were opening new doors in their lives.

As a tribute to them and all other friends I have come to know and respect during my sojourn at Sun, I offer a few lines I penned several years ago …

A Tapestry Of Miracles

Like brilliant golden strands
Woven delicately yet boldly
Among more dreary threads
To create a magnificent tapestry,
Our lives converge
In brief but sparkling brightness,
And then intertwine into
Radiant relationships
Borne of common hopes and dreams.

Countless encounters
Of human souls,
Guided by an unseen hand,
Link our lives together,
Creating cascading
Miracles of light,
Illuminating our hearts and minds
Amidst the harshness and the gloom
Of mortal life,
Ever weaving and preparing
The glorious, eternal tapestry
Of humankind.

Mark G. Dixon
November 15, 1996

Photo credit: A quilt entitled “The Woodpeckers” by Kathy Swartz, based on a tapestry of the same name by William Morris.