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Black Douglas slaughters other Scot, native New Yorker

Not much change there, then...

Knowing, as we did, that we were living life to the edge, and having to meet Mike Capellas and Enrico Pesatori the very next morning, last Tuesday evening when the office closed, we decided to take our chances and tip up and see Gervas "Black" Douglas, and his erstwhile boss, Mike Passmore. Mike was Gervas' boss at Novell, and Mr Passmore helped set up Citrix, with Ed "Grandfather of OS/2" Iacobucci. When it duly IPO'd, Mike made millions upon millions and as we learnt that evening he is only sort of retired. After a couple of Havana cigars and some truly wonderful malt whiskies, Passmore who has far from lost his marbles despite his many multi-millions, remembered the last time we had had such a night. [Here comes a digression. It was in Barcelona, and not Sophie Antopolis, as he and ourselves unerringly re-called, and we Ed, and Black Gervas, took the brave step of ducking out of the official Etre gig, ignoring Philippe Khan, whose flies were untied as he sat on the octagonal table. Oh, we wish we had taken a snap of that -- we had the technology even then, in the shape of the same camera that snapped the first shots of Merced last year. We found ourselves in a place not far from Las Ramblas where we ate the most delicious fish and entertained ourselves so well into the night that we arrived back at the hotel just as many guests were starting to leave for the airport. Right, we thought, we'll pack our stuff and just have a little nap for a few hours and see how the cookie crumbles. Luckily, our hotel room was so placed that the big Spanish sun pierced through a crack in the curtains and woke us up just in time to get up, and meet similarly situated people down at the lobby for check out. We were all flying out from Barcelona to Londinium...but maybe we'll write that story another evening. End of digression.] Passmore is just the same cool guy as he was, albeit ten years after. When he was at Novell he was a top salesman and that habit migrated with him when he helped Ed Iacobucci start up Citrix. He was born in Manhattan Avenue, in Brooklyn, NY NY and he is still as street savvy, in our humble opinion, as he was when he was born there. We asked how our old partner Ed was. He said: "He's fine. He's just been drafted onto Caldera's board." At this point, the Black Douglas interjected and said: "Does Ray Noorda really have Alzheimer's disease?". Passmore was cool and said there was no way he was in any way mind-impaired. Unlike Black Douglas and your staffer here by this point. There then followed fifteen minutes of frantic fun as both Black Douglas and Mr Passmore recounted their versions of the failed Novell-Lotus merger. This club in Ecclestone Street, Victoria, is a lot of fun. Luckily it doesn't have a Web site and so is not virtual but real. For the rest of the evening, we just caroused our time away, listening to the jazz. At the last minute, we remembered that we had to hear Capellas and Pesatori sing their Big Q corporate song in the morning. So at that point we curtailed the activities and even managed to run for a train in the morning, despite our strong addiction to nicotine, and arrive at the Big Q gig not even breathless for the start of Non Stop Computing... By this time you may be wondering why the Black Douglas is held in such revulsion by many Scots (but not this Register staffer). Go to this serious Black Douglas site for enlightenment. By the way, this is not an advertisement for the club in Ecclestone Street. Far from it. We reckon that Passmore, Magee and Douglas are far too old to carry on carousing... ®

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