Tiffany made a comment on my last post that reminded me of something from my dark past. Many years ago, back when I was at Microsoft, a couple of Senior Sales Critters were going to a meeting with the senior execs of Big Company. I was a techo type, yet capable of sounding mildly coherent to normal people, so they dragged me along.

Big Company wanted to integrate their wildly conflicted databases and do data mining and yada yada yada. No problem. Things were chugging along fine between the Sales Critters and the potential customer. Eventually someone asked a vaguely technical question. Since I am incapable of talking about technical stuff without drawing diagrams on boards, I picked up a pen and drew a diagram. Big Company's boardroom had a whiteboard that stretched from one end to the other, and that was a long way. They were interested and I talked some more and they got more excited and, before you knew it we'd covered the board with diagrams for how they might solve their problems.

But time had flown and The Enemy, also known as Oracle Corp., was waiting outside to have their turn. I took a cloth and wiped the board. Nothing came off.

I'd picked up a permanent marker.