Prior employer paid $50/day for on call. Not a ton, but it helped me feel like the valued and understood the sacrifice of always having to be within X minutes of a device.
I was there live! Good times. A friend convinced me to dip out of another session to go watch Gary's talk. I feel lucky.
I've seen Gary give a few talks. All fantastic.
The Birth & Death of JavaScript is my second favorite. The fact that he stayed in character as someone from 2035 for the entire talk and used a slightly evolved English.. brilliant. I saw that at Strangeloop and have fonder memories than the PyCon rendition on his site.