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Philadelphia Flower Show

Sunday, Mar 1st, 2009 by pleia2 | 1 Comments

Yesterday morning I met up with Stephen, Alisa and their mother to head over to the Members Preview day of the Philadelphia Flower Show. We hit Sam’s Coventry Diner prior for some breakfast and headed down to Philly around 11.

I’d never been to the show before (which is billed as the biggest indoor flower show in the world), so I was pretty excited, and just HAD to snag one of the official flower show bouquets for myself on my way out. The theme of the show was “Bella Italia”, which made for some really amazing Italian-themed exhibits – a lot of Rome! Plus loads of delicious looking wine/pizza and pasta/food themed presentations.

I took something like 150 pictures as we wandered around the show, I uploaded my favorites to flickr and this directory.

There was quite a lot of variety to the show, primarily being whole landscapes made of flowers and plants, but also displays of individual flowers, trees… a really spectacular show, which I should have taken Benadryl prior to! My allergies hit harder than I expected, and while it was totally worth it, the sinus headache I came home with was a bit unpleasant.

The crowds weren’t too bad, and toward the end of the day we were able to happily browse the vendor stands, where I acquired a cactus and some dried flowers, along with the show bouquet. The show closed up for the day at 3:30 (earlier than the rest of the days this week, since it was the preview), and we headed out of Philly then and I was home by 5PM.

Filed under: events, philadelphia

Clutter

Sunday, Mar 1st, 2009 by pleia2 | 2 Comments

I moved in to this apartment with a lot of books and stuff. I think the pack rat part of me took comfort in being surrounded by my things, especially now that I’m living alone for the first time. I moved three times last year with all of this stuff, never going through any of it, most of it staying in piles and boxes.

For a while I had “Ikea bookcase” on the shopping list, until I finally realized that I don’t need more bookshelves, I need fewer books. This realization follows a long period of “I’ll get around to reading that” and the ever growing bedside reading pile. I used to read all the time, but these days so much else fills my days, between work, projects and stuff I read online (including long articles and ebooks). Last weekend I went through my large storage closet and my bookshelves. I have a pile of tech books I have no use for, so I’m giving them away at PLUG and TCF next month. A full three boxes of primarily fiction books was carted up to Gently Used Books in Douglassville, where they’ll be giving me store credit for what they can use, and donating the rest to local charities (yes, I could have sold them online and made a few bucks, but there simply isn’t enough money in used books these days to make it worth my time).

In addition to books, I was also able to go through the mountains of other stuff clogging up my closet, piles of paperwork and documents I haven’t had the heart to go through and cull until now. Unfortunately it needed to be done, I wasn’t able to find anything (where is my birth certificate?) and I kept stumbling upon things randomly that made my heart sink (oh, here’s my father’s death certificate! sigh…). I’ve now got all the vital documents sorted out and filed, threw away loads of junk and no longer have bags of books littering the floor of my bedroom closet, everything has a shelf. I then moved on to my piles of stuffed toys, thinking that I didn’t actually need over 100 beanie babies (certainly not ALL of them are important to me!) but quickly stopped my purge there, I can’t part with them right now, and parting with things prematurely will only hurt. Clothes are next on my list, I don’t have much that I don’t wear anymore, but now that winter is wrapping up (snowstorm this evening notwithstanding) it’s time to go through my closet and take inventory of what I actually wore this year, and what I’ll probably never touch again.

The purge extended beyond physical things though, and made it onto my wordpress blog, which is about as stripped down as I ever see myself going with a blog ever. My mirrored livejournal has similarly undergone transformation, as has twitter. Catch a theme yet? Bright and simple. Here’s to new beginnings!

Filed under: life

Philadelphia Bug Jam!

Monday, Feb 23rd, 2009 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

On Saturday the Philadelphia team of Ubuntu US Pennsylvania hosted our BugJam. PLUG member Art Alexion graciously offered us space at Resources for Human Development in great room with wired connections for the event, and access to a kitchen for our goodies.

People started arriving around noon and we got things set up, retrieved the Oreo Cake and sticky buns donated by Pechter’s Bread. We started things off pretty socially, answering basic questions and getting everyone online, with launchpad accounts. I had drafted up some handouts the night before and Jim Fisher supplied a bunch of printouts of the bug workflow charts. When people were finally settled in Connor Imes did a short presentation tour of the important Wiki pages and basics on how to find and handle bugs.

More photos were posted on our gallery: http://gallery.ubuntupennsylvania.org/main.php?g2_itemId=523.

We spent until 6PM there, a six hours that went by far more quickly than any of us had anticipated. All told, we had 9 people show up, 7 who were able to attend for the entire BugJam. We even saw some new faces, which is always a delight.

Great event! Awesome work everyone!

Filed under: computers, events, philadelphia, plug, ubuntu planet

Extending London trip for UKUUG Spring Conference!

Monday, Feb 16th, 2009 by pleia2 | 2 Comments

As I’ve mentioned, earlier this year I decided to skip over to London for a week. After sorting out my plans to visit from March 14-22 I learned about the UKUUG Spring Conference from March 24-26, and perhaps more importantly, I learned about the conference bursaries. I put off ordering my plane tickets and checked with my boss to confirm that I could extend my trip if I was sponsored for the conference, got his go ahead, and applied.

I learned today that my application was accepted! Wow! Saying I’m excited doesn’t even begin to cover it, and while reviewing the topics today my boss said “where is my passport? I want to go.” Suffice to say, the topics are right up our alley at work and I’ll be taking lots of notes to bring back home.

Decided to purchase my plane tickets for March 14-29th, so I will be flying out late on Saturday 14th for an overnight flight and coming back Sunday afternoon on the 29th. I still need to sort out how to get there/back from the Philadelphia airport, what I’m doing with the cats (Michael wants to look after them, as usual, but settlement on the house is during that time so it might be tricky/impossible) and there some transportation logistics once I’m there to work out. But in all, things are coming together nicely, it should be a fantastic trip, and I’m delighted that I can take a full two weeks for my first overseas trip.

Yay!!! :)

Filed under: computers, plug, travel, ubuntu planet

UCP, US Teams, Ubuntu BugJam in Philly

Saturday, Feb 7th, 2009 by pleia2 | 1 Comments

As many of my local friends can attest, I spent much of my January as a bit of a hermit. I made it out for a PLUG North meeting (great talk on zsh by Paul Snyder), but otherwise spent a lot of time hanging in. February is shaping up to be a more active month.

I rang in February in Baltimore, where I was spending a weekend at an Ubuntu Certified Professionals course redevelopment sprint. I was able to meet Belinda Lopez and Nick Barcet from Canonical, as well as Adam Sommer (The Awesome), Dan Trevino, and others who were a real pleasure to work with. The weekend was a lot of fun, and hopefully just as productive :)

Wednesday night I headed down to the city for a PLUG Central meeting, where there was a talk on clustering and Lustre. Thursday evening I had dinner with a friend at Blue Pacific down in King of Prussia. Friday I had dinner with a former co-worker at Michael’s Deli in King of Prussia (diner+great beer, yay!) and then got home a bit late for another USTeams Meeting in #ubuntu-us. We defined the mentor qualifications for the team and the board will accept volunteers for the mentor positions soon. We’re continuing to move forward with revitalizing the team, I have a few tasks on my plate that I hope to get to this afternoon. Plus we were able to take some time to talk to a couple Global Bug Jam events that US teams are holding.

Finally, the Ubuntu Pennsylvania team has an event of our own planned in Philadelphia for the Global Bug Jam! We’ll be hosting it on Saturday, February 21, 2009 from noon-6PM, after which we’ll head out for optional dinner and beers.

Filed under: events, philadelphia, plug, ubuntu planet

Going International!

Saturday, Jan 24th, 2009 by pleia2 | 6 Comments

Every year the world seems smaller to me. Since I got online in ’98 I’ve had friends all over the world, but I think I’ve just gotten more involved with people worldwide, become more conscious of conferences I want to attend, things happening that I’d like to see and getting to know more people I’d like to meet sometime. For a long time I’ve been saying “I will travel more!” but so many things got in the way, whether it was work, money, life events or something else.

Last year I decided to not let this happen anymore. I finally got a passport and I started traveling more, and by taking some long weekends throughout the year I had a great traveling year outside of Pennsylvania:

  • Arlington, Virginia (weekend, D&D Experience)
  • San Francisco, California (long weekend, visited Google, went on a Sonoma County wine tour)
  • Washington DC (weekend, Smithsonians, Zoo)
  • Niagara Falls, Canada (long weekend 4th of July, my first time ever out of the US)
  • New York City, New York (weekend, HOPE conference)
  • Orlando, Florida (funeral, visiting family)

And even within Pennsylvania I finally hit several of the landmarks in Philadelphia, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Mutter Museum, Eastern State Penitentiary, Academy of Natural Sciences. WIthin Pennsylvania I finally wandered all around Lancaster and finally tasted shoo-fly pie, headed up to the Crayola Factory in Easton, went to the Pioneer Tunnel Coal Mine in Ashland, and went on a wine and cheese train ride at the East Stroudsburg Railroad. I finished off the year on New Years watching a giant fiberglass Peep drop in Bethlehem.

This year? Going international, but first I reviewed things in the past that made things so difficult.

Money. Always troublesome, but I’ve cut back in other places to afford trips, and while on trips kept to a strict budget. When it came down to it, I would rather go somewhere and be thrifty than not go at all. I really do know people all over the world, and I know loads of welcoming people who have extended the “If you’re ever in town and need a place to stay…” invite, which helps tremendously with expenses.

Work. I have a stable job with 2 weeks of vacation time, and now only my own work schedule to plan around. Plus, there is a chance I can go to a conference or two this year if I can prove it’s beneficial to my work (woo paid time off!). Ultimately I would like to have a job where I could work from anywhere anytime, I really envy the folks who have such flexibility. Even if I had to work 8 hours each day, I would love to do it telecommuting from a broadband connection in Belgium, Singapore or Peru and use the other 16 hours of my day and weekends to sleep and visit attractions.

Life Events. There is no avoiding these. I have lost three close family members in the past 5 years, and since I have to travel each time to see family it typically ate into my vacation time. All I can do is hope for the best and make the most of it when they happen.

So, with January almost over and all these grand plans in my head, where am I planning to head off to first?

For a week, from March 14-22 I’ll be visiting London!

And later this year? Lots of thoughts, keeping an eye out for Ubuntu Developers Summit locations and probably will do some more Europe traveling. Hoping firm up plans in the next few months.

Filed under: events, philadelphia, travel

New bike tire for trainer, tircd and rearranging desk

Saturday, Jan 10th, 2009 by pleia2 | 4 Comments

I didn’t get out much this week, ended up skipping PLUG on Wednesday when the weather got icy in my neck of the woods, and then Thursday I skipped movie plans with a friend after a tiring work day and need for an early start on Friday.

I did get some stuff done this week though. Finally managed to get down to Tailwind Bicycles to get a back tire for Nessy so I could use it on the trainer. They were very very helpful, showing me how to change the tire so I could do it myself next time, hurrah! Now I have it back home and all set up.

Yesterday I learned about tircd from Mike Greb. Back when I started using Twitter I used it with the official bot in bitlbee, so it all was great with my IRC-centric workflow. Then the twitterbot died and I’ve spent months fiddling with other clients, twhirl for a while, twitbin, then settling upon gwibber – until one of the dependencies broke in the PPA for hardy and made it unusable without snagging packages from Intrepid. So I was pretty excited when I learned I could get twitter back in IRC, so I installed it on r2b1 alongside Bitlbee, opened up the firewall to my server and connected my irc client to twit.cause.a.t.rainwreck.com (yes, there has to be a new subdomain for every service I run) and now I have tweets in IRC again.

I also rearranged my desk last night. I was getting tired of having the printer, test machine and firewall on the top of my desk taking up precious space. So I piled them all nicely on top of each other with my desktop and sparc and ran power and ethernet wires into my closet to power the printer which now lives in there. I still need another extension cord to get rid of that hanging power strip (nice huh?) but it’s much more workable than it was. The extra desk space is very nice.

And this weekend I’m hanging in. Working on some project stuff, hanging out with my kitties, chatting with a friend. It’s been snowy out today too, love snow, I think I’ll go make some hot chocolate.

Filed under: computers

Valley Forge

Saturday, Jan 10th, 2009 by pleia2 | 3 Comments

I drive past it several times a month, but the last (and first!) time I was actually at Valley Forge National Historical Park was in 2005 with Michael. I always say I’m going to go back, but it never happens.

So last weekend I was coming back from Micro Center having just picked up my new Canon and ran into a wall of traffic on 422. A quick check of KYW‘s traffic report explained there was an event near the Oaks exit, backing up traffic for miles and causing delays of over an hour. So I hopped on 23 through the park and figured I’d get home via Phoenixville. No go, traffic there too. Instead of sitting in traffic for an hour I popped into the park and decided to take a walk. Phew, you wouldn’t think it would take so much to get me to a park I actually do quite enjoy!

It was chilly out, made worse by the wind and the thin jacket I was wearing and lack of gloves (in my other coat!) but once I got walking I warmed up a bit. I got lucky and my brand new camera came with the battery pack partially charged, so I could even try out my new camera.

As usual at the park, I also saw some animals.

It was a nice walk, I will have to take my bike out there sometime this spring for some riding.

Filed under: animals, philadelphia

Pink Electronics :)

Sunday, Jan 4th, 2009 by pleia2 | 12 Comments

Yesterday I headed down to Microcenter to pick up a new camera that I bought through their “buy online, pick up in store” option. I’ve had a 3 megapixel PowerShot A70 for ages, but these past few months it’s been dying, and now most photos end up with green lines or other issues. I was able to snag a PowerShot SD1100 IS Digital ELPH in the color “Pink Melody” for pretty cheap – woohoo! It’s a great compact camera, plus, like all modern Canons it has a great interface, gorgeous screen and works flawlessly in Linux.

Oh and it’s pink, so I get to add it to my pink electronics collection!

Nintendo DS, camera, phone, mini9 and remote… for my pink dvd player.

Filed under: computers, pink, ubuntu planet

Marshmallow Peep NYE

Thursday, Jan 1st, 2009 by pleia2 | 6 Comments

Last night I met up with Stephen to attend the Bethlehem First Night celebration, the height of which was the dropping of a big fiberglass Peep at midnight.

It was cold last night, by the time we arrived and parked in Bethlehem it was shortly after 7, and already 20 degrees out. We wandered around looking for food for about an hour, finally settling on Rosanna’s Restaurant, a pizzeria on Broad street near where we parked for the evening. They closed at 9:30, so we headed back out into the cold at that time and went down to the plaza where the peep drop was taking place.

We mostly just hung out with other people huddled by the fire pits placed throughout the square, but the two hours down there were livened up by a few things, including a friendly crowd…

…ice sculptures!

…Peep roasting!

..for Peep smores! The Peep smore kits were being given away by the event organizers, very fun.

Shortly after 11 I was getting a bit too cold, so we flocked inside town hall with a lot of other people to huddle in the warmth. At around quarter to midnight we went back outside to celebrate the new year with the rest of the crowd.

And so, at midnight to much cheering we watched the big Peep be lowered from a crane in the corner of the square.

It was so cold, did I mention that? We skipped most of the fireworks and headed back to the car at that point. The crowd was actually not that bad, and getting out of the garage (which turned out to be free that night!) and the city of Bethlehem was trivial.

A very fun night! Happy 2009! :)

Filed under: events
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