jkeating (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} jkeating) wrote,@ 2004-08-06 20:04:00 |
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Damn, bullets! My only weakness.... How did you know?
So I spent the week in San Fran for Linux World. What a blast. This was totally a better show than last year, and better than the last few years according to some people that have been there. Many a cool people stopped by our booth, lots that were really interested in what we do, what Linux is, how we can help them, etc... not just people looking for a free shirt (scream louder, get a free shirt!). Hung out with Jack Aboutboul, Tom Callaway, and Justin Forbes. Had a great time with these guys, I'd do it again in a heartbeat. One highlight was our spur of the moment idea to go see "Harold and Kumar go to White Castle" Wed. night. That was a very very very funny movie, and I look forward to seeing it again, maybe a few times. I highly recommend it.
Had a fun time w/ my airline. First my shuttle to the airport showed up 1/2 hour early, prompting me to scramble to get my bag packed, and thus I forgot the special dress shirts I was issued for the show. Joy. Then when I get to the airport the electronic checkin doesn't seem to know who I am, nor anything about the flight i was supposed to be on. I wait 10 minutes and finally the assistant comes to look at my info. A couple minutes of clacking on her terminal she asks me what my name is (although it's clearly written on the paper she's looking at), clacks away for another minute or 3, then promptly states "Oh! Give me your bag and follow me.". Ohhh kay, I hand her my bag and she runs off to the end of the counter. As I catch up I ask whats going on? (My flight isn't supposed to leave for another 1.5 hours thanks to the early shuttle). She tells me that my flight has been 'moved' from 11:30am to 9:30am. I blink, blink again, and then look at my watch to realize that it is now 10:05am. She says "Oh yeah, but it's been delayed and is just now boarding." So she rushes me through security and I run to the gate, just in time to get on the flight. As I land in San Fran, and look for my bag, I get paged to the airline office where I'm told that my bag didn't make the flight I was on, but not to worry as they will deliver it to my hotel when it comes in on the next flight. They should have my bag there by 3:30pm, 4 at the latest. Ok fine, I go to Mascone center so that I can help my company set up our booth (you know, we don't have the army there that NovellSuSEXimian does. They had more people at the show than Pogo has employees). Around 5pm I get a bit antsy about my bags as I haven't been called by the hotel. They haven't gotten the bag, so I call the airline. After about 20 line transfers, I finally get to the people I'm supposed to get to. They inform me that my bag is now in the hands of a courier service. Fine, I call the courier service and all I get is their answering service. Of course they don't call back. No bother, I go out to dinner with my co-workers and all is good. I get back to the hotel around 10:30pm, and there is still no bag. Now I'm getting worried. I sit down in my room and start looking for people to call to bitch at, when there is a knock on my door. My bag had finally arrived, at 11:00pm. Joy. So now all that is missing is my shirts. My lovely wife had driven them down to FedEx and paid extra for 8:00am delivery for my shirts. Next morning I call the desk at 8:30am, no delivery. Joy. So I borrow a shirt for the day. Around 11:00am I get a call saying my shirt has arrived. Joy. It ends up that my original flight DID exist, and it was at the right time. Somehow the lady had misclacked and I got put on the wrong flight. My bag was on the right flight, which ended up being delayed for 3~ hours. (my coworker was on that flight, he was not happy). After that, things went pretty smoothly (:
So we (the guys I was hanging out with) ran the Fedora BOF session, as well as the Fedora Panel Discussion. Both went pretty well, and I just found out that the Fedora session had the most people at it out of all the sessions at LWCE. Thats pretty cool! Havoc was with us at the Panel discussion to discuss some aspects of where FC is going, so maybe that was part of it. I'd love to do another talk at either Boston LWCE or next years SF LWCE (or both). We'll see.
Now I'm home, and trying to get settled into the new house we moved into the day before I flew out to San Fran. I like the place but there is a lot of work to do to get settled in. I'm also going to be settling into a slightly new position at work. I'll no longer be doing end user tech support, I'm not full time production engineering. This is a great move for me, as I get to do lots more software development and r & d on new products, as well as spend less time talking with end customers (or rather less time speaking to them when they have problems. I love talking to end users when everything is working well (: ). So Monday I get to start in on the laundry list of things that need to be worked on. Fun for me (:
So I spent the week in San Fran for Linux World. What a blast. This was totally a better show than last year, and better than the last few years according to some people that have been there. Many a cool people stopped by our booth, lots that were really interested in what we do, what Linux is, how we can help them, etc... not just people looking for a free shirt (scream louder, get a free shirt!). Hung out with Jack Aboutboul, Tom Callaway, and Justin Forbes. Had a great time with these guys, I'd do it again in a heartbeat. One highlight was our spur of the moment idea to go see "Harold and Kumar go to White Castle" Wed. night. That was a very very very funny movie, and I look forward to seeing it again, maybe a few times. I highly recommend it.
Had a fun time w/ my airline. First my shuttle to the airport showed up 1/2 hour early, prompting me to scramble to get my bag packed, and thus I forgot the special dress shirts I was issued for the show. Joy. Then when I get to the airport the electronic checkin doesn't seem to know who I am, nor anything about the flight i was supposed to be on. I wait 10 minutes and finally the assistant comes to look at my info. A couple minutes of clacking on her terminal she asks me what my name is (although it's clearly written on the paper she's looking at), clacks away for another minute or 3, then promptly states "Oh! Give me your bag and follow me.". Ohhh kay, I hand her my bag and she runs off to the end of the counter. As I catch up I ask whats going on? (My flight isn't supposed to leave for another 1.5 hours thanks to the early shuttle). She tells me that my flight has been 'moved' from 11:30am to 9:30am. I blink, blink again, and then look at my watch to realize that it is now 10:05am. She says "Oh yeah, but it's been delayed and is just now boarding." So she rushes me through security and I run to the gate, just in time to get on the flight. As I land in San Fran, and look for my bag, I get paged to the airline office where I'm told that my bag didn't make the flight I was on, but not to worry as they will deliver it to my hotel when it comes in on the next flight. They should have my bag there by 3:30pm, 4 at the latest. Ok fine, I go to Mascone center so that I can help my company set up our booth (you know, we don't have the army there that NovellSuSEXimian does. They had more people at the show than Pogo has employees). Around 5pm I get a bit antsy about my bags as I haven't been called by the hotel. They haven't gotten the bag, so I call the airline. After about 20 line transfers, I finally get to the people I'm supposed to get to. They inform me that my bag is now in the hands of a courier service. Fine, I call the courier service and all I get is their answering service. Of course they don't call back. No bother, I go out to dinner with my co-workers and all is good. I get back to the hotel around 10:30pm, and there is still no bag. Now I'm getting worried. I sit down in my room and start looking for people to call to bitch at, when there is a knock on my door. My bag had finally arrived, at 11:00pm. Joy. So now all that is missing is my shirts. My lovely wife had driven them down to FedEx and paid extra for 8:00am delivery for my shirts. Next morning I call the desk at 8:30am, no delivery. Joy. So I borrow a shirt for the day. Around 11:00am I get a call saying my shirt has arrived. Joy. It ends up that my original flight DID exist, and it was at the right time. Somehow the lady had misclacked and I got put on the wrong flight. My bag was on the right flight, which ended up being delayed for 3~ hours. (my coworker was on that flight, he was not happy). After that, things went pretty smoothly (:
So we (the guys I was hanging out with) ran the Fedora BOF session, as well as the Fedora Panel Discussion. Both went pretty well, and I just found out that the Fedora session had the most people at it out of all the sessions at LWCE. Thats pretty cool! Havoc was with us at the Panel discussion to discuss some aspects of where FC is going, so maybe that was part of it. I'd love to do another talk at either Boston LWCE or next years SF LWCE (or both). We'll see.
Now I'm home, and trying to get settled into the new house we moved into the day before I flew out to San Fran. I like the place but there is a lot of work to do to get settled in. I'm also going to be settling into a slightly new position at work. I'll no longer be doing end user tech support, I'm not full time production engineering. This is a great move for me, as I get to do lots more software development and r & d on new products, as well as spend less time talking with end customers (or rather less time speaking to them when they have problems. I love talking to end users when everything is working well (: ). So Monday I get to start in on the laundry list of things that need to be worked on. Fun for me (:
