# Thanks Max and James!

- Author: Joichi Ito
- Date: 2003-05-23T15:40:46Z


Dinner with Max Levchin and James HongJames and Max lookin' hot in their convertibleWhen I showed up at FiRe, I noticed a guy wearing a PayPal T-Shirt and a guy wearing HotorNot T-Shirt. They looked a bit out-of-place in the crowd. I noticed it was Max and James. Max was a co-founder of PayPal and the CTO. James is the founder of HotorNot. I met them at my party in Palo Alto a few months ago. Max left PayPal and is thinking of the next big thing. James still runs HotorNot. During the conference, (ironically during the Future of WiFi panel) the WiFi network flaked out and Max figured out a cool hack to get me back on the network. Somehow another network with the same name as the hotel network got created and the stupid Macintosh API only chose networks by name and would latch me on to the wrong network. Max figured out how to switch the order of the two networks and get me on the right one... Anyway, that was cool. James was zapping through all of the HotorNot postings from San Diego and that was a bit distracting. ;-)

Max and James make me feel like an old fart. I guess I better get used to it since that's what I'm quickly becoming. Anyway, I'm happy that they'd hang out with me. They even drove me to the airport, although Max kept getting lost. Max told me he thought I was involved in way too much stuff that was just a waste of time. James and Max also turned me on to Yatta.





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