Doors opened at 10 AM for the Tom Cruise event at Yahoo!. I got to work around 9:45, picked the short line to get into the Urls cafeteria (multi-step pun… 1. think “Eat at Joe’s,” 2. now substitute “Eat at Earl’s,” 3. change the spelling and drop the “Eat at,” 4. chuckle). There was a bit of nervous chatter in the line over just how many seats fit in the cafeteria, and how many of the folks would get in. Some folks even lined up some time last night or in the wee hours of the morning to get in to the event.

The engineers started trying to calculate the number of seats, the PMs are calculating the negative productivity impact of the line, and I just kept trying to wake up. As things progressed, the lines swelled… from the middle. Funny thing with an event at a company you work at. You tend to recognize people in line. This is one of the few lines I’ve been in where I had to physically walk backwards a bit.

Once the lines started moving, everyone got in very quickly. Well provided you didn’t leave your badge on the coffee table (at this point Ray is reading this and dashing to the coffee table to check). I did indeed remember my badge today, though it isn’t out of the realm of possibility for me to forget. Unfortunately for others they were not so lucky and were bounced by Y! security.

This event is closed off to all but Y! badge holders. No friends, families or smuggled reporters, unless you count the see of laptops I see that are probably blogging this too. I’m looking at you Jeremy. Well, not really, but I assume you are in here somewhere.

So here we all sit (10:52 now). The presentation was supposed to start at 10:30. I’m sure he is just being fashionably late, so I’m very happy I have my laptop. I think I will wrap this up for now until he gets here. For now I am going to enjoy how one person standing up to stretch or take a picture gets people thinking that someone has spotted… him.