My friend Jay promised me a bit ago to put his mad design skills to use on a new design for PrincessLeia.com. He came through today as expected and after work I excitedly wrote up the template html, which I installed this evening.
The result? See for yourself:
A-ma-zing!!! Thank you Jay!
It’s about time I had a professional design it rather than relying on my own paltry design skills :)
While browsing the tourist maps I noticed Simcoe Street! Since my little kitten is named Simcoe, I had to go exploring. So I dragged Stephen through the suburbs so I could walk down the entirety of Simcoe street and take pictures.
I learned this morning via #ubuntu-us that they’re now selling Ubuntu at Best Buy, and couldn’t help myself: during my lunch break I swung out to Best Buy to drop $20 on a copy.
It wasn’t easy to find, I spent about 10 minutes searching through their software section, past their big Microsoft Windows Vista and Office displays. I finally found it on the bottom shelf with lots of other miscellaneous software.
What did I get for $21.19 (after tax)?
Spiffy packaging!
An Ubuntu Hardy, 8.04, CD, and a small quickstart booklet:
The booklet came with a Registration Number, interesting (I whited it out here).
It’s very exciting to see Ubuntu carried on the shelf by a mainstream store like this, even if it is on the bottom shelf right now.
I just returned from Niagara Falls, Canada on Sunday night, I have tons of pictures and lots to say, but before that I’ll catch up on other, non-linuxy, things I’ve been up to the past week or so.
Last Sunday night I took Michael out for an early birthday outing to see Peter Murphy at the Troc in Philadelphia. The concert was amazing! One of the best concerts I’ve ever been to. I discovered Peter Murphy back in 2002 when I was browsing Michael’s mp3 collection on our network. Love at first listen. My favorite song ever is Socrates the Python. So when the opportunity to see him live on his own (rather than touring with the Bauhaus and NIN as he did last year) at the Troc was something we really couldn’t pass up.
I also saw Wall-E, and Pixar didn’t disappoint. Cute, deep, visually satisfying and original. Probably the best movie I’ve see this year. So I went with my friend Mike from NJ. Prior to the movie we wrapped up our respective rough days by hitting Michael’s Deli in KoP. I think I’ve blogged about it before, they’re a jewish deli and diner with a surprisingly fantastic beer selection. So dinner last night? I had a couple Monk’s Flemish Sours and some pancakes, Mike went with Chimay and some French toast. Mmmm breakfast and beer at 8:30PM.
Over that past weekend I also got Blinker, my 2000 Pontiac Grand Am GT, transferred to me officially. She now has a PA plate, the title in my name, and Wednesday morning I dropped her off for inspection… which she failed. A worn out tie rod and a bad break like were her downfall, so I got them replaced, tossed in an oil change and walked out with a significantly lighter wallet but a passed inspection. So the car was ready for my trip to Niagara Falls! I also finally received my PA title in the mail today from Harrisburg, so she’s all super officially mine now :)
And since I can’t seem to stay in town lately, I decided to head with Mike from NJ to HOPE, the 2600 convention, in NYC in 2 weeks. I just received the tickets in the mail late last week. I’ll be staying in Jersey Friday night, and crashing with friends in NYC following a LinuxChix-ish get together at 9PM at the Ninja. Should be a lot of fun, I’ve wanted to go to HOPE for several years and finally decided to make it a priority this year since it’s the last one (gasp!).
Aaaand the weekend after HOPE I’ll be going to the Brew at the Zoo. Last year’s event was a blast at the Norristown Zoo, but I was so excited to learn they’re having a change of venue this year – and moving it to the Philadelphia Zoo! Awesome! The PHILLY zoo in the evening with just adults and microbrews! I should snag some tickets, and some fellow drinkers and a designated driver. Volunteers?
The only trouble with my inability to stay in town lately is gas prices. Now I’m not one to complain about them, and this isn’t a complaint, but I think $4 is officially the mark where I really start noticing the expense. I’ve really had to cut back on other things to afford to drive to all the places I want to drive to, but I really have no place to complain, I have no commute so pretty much all the driving I do is optional/fun.
Finally, I’m moving out of Nita’s this month. I am thoroughly thankful for her for offering me space here, she’s really a great friend, but it’s been almost 5 months and it’s time for me to move on. I need to be somewhere bigger than a room where I am comfortable, I think I’ve done all the healing I can under these circumstances and need a change of living arrangement. More on that later though, I have a lot of thinking to do, wish me luck!
Now that all of us have “recovered” from the busy Hardy release, we’re prepared to get back to work on the Classroom Project.
The idea of the Classroom Project is to provide a place for teams and individuals to:
Classes range from teaching users how to use Ubuntu to teaching them how to contribute back to the project.
The Classroom team itself focuses on a variety of tasks that are required for managing the joining of expert teachers and students, such as contacting interested teams, doing marketing and confirming that conflicts don’t come up. This is where you come in. Following our last meeting (meeting minutes here) we’re having a discussion on the mailing list regarding the defining of tasks, and have created a volunteers page aggregating these tasks, along with a place to sign up:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Classroom/Volunteer
Please join us! Or drop a note to our mailing list if you’re part of a project that wants to get involved in holding classes with us.
Last year Matt Mossholder held a very successful MythTV seminar using Mythbuntu for the Ubuntu Pennsylvania team. Due to the great interest in the community and much remorse from folks who missed the first session, we hosted a second session on June 21st.
The session went very well, with approx a dozen people in attendance, several with their machines ready to either install or solve problems with their existing installs (I brought along my roommate’s box, which had a remote issue that I haven’t had a chance, or inclination, to look at). The session began with a presentation and then moved into discussion and building and fix-ups. I went home with a fixed remote and a very happy roommate!
Details from the session: MythTV Seminar and Installations by Matt Mossholder
The two presentation documents from the seminar can be found on Matt’s site:
Our host, The ATS Group once again provided a fantastic location with a conference room, plenty of power and internet access, and this time around sprung for pizza and other refreshments!
And finally, WRT the radio program Alex and I appeared on a few weeks ago the company I work for has done a very flattering press release promoting it: LinuxForce Systems Administrator Elizabeth Bevilacqua Interviewed. *grin, blush*
Last week we had a PhillyChix meeting for the first time since the Girls Inc Event last year.
It was pretty much just a social meeting. Danita Fries and Stephanie Layton were in attendance with me, and though the meeting was small we had some really great discussions ranging from Stephanie’s Debian packaging, to general women in the IT industry talk to yoga. Fun night, and always a pleasure to get to chill out for an evening with some like-minded folks and unwind with a couple beers :)
I think I’ll plan the next meeting to be downtown, see if that gathers a different crowd. And another meet up with the DC Chix sometime soon would be fun.
The last time I posted a status update on the project was August 2007.
As an advocacy project, we don’t make the swift changes that development projects make, but I’d like to comment on that previous post and move forward with what we’ve accomplished in these past 10 months. The primary concerns in the last post were: lack of direction (no RoadMap) and poor image in the community. The goal was to change both of these things, as well as transform our Courses program into something useful for the whole Ubuntu Community.
How are we doing with these goals?
Thanks to a considerable amount of work by emmajane we now have a RoadMap
We’ve transferred our Course program into a partnership with Ubuntu Classroom, which is working through formation and hosting regular classes, but is well on its way.
I’ve seen overall participation of women in the Ubuntu community and in leadership positions grow over the past year. Regardless of the reason (certainly much of the credit goes to these women directly, and less to this project), it’s giving the community a better impression of women within the project and gradually decreasing the surprise within the community when people see women participating.
Ubuntu Women is focusing more on helping women and getting involved with core projects (like Ubuntu Classroom) rather than striking out on our own initiatives which led some to believe our project was separatist. We’ve come back to our core values and narrowed our focus to the issue of women in Ubuntu (and F/OSS in general).
In keeping with a return to our core, we’ve worked to make the website and wiki documentation be more specific to our goals and easier to navigate. There are fewer “off-topic” links, with the assumption that folks looking for more Ubuntu core materials will be looking in a more appropriate place, and come to the Ubuntu Women site for women-specific resources.
We’ve committed to a monthly article in Full Circle Magazine
Finally, we recently had a meeting where many of these things were discussed and plans for moving forward outlined. In particular, we’d like to see our mentoring program become more of a success. We saw considerable interest for Ubuntu Women mentoring during the meeting and I’m hopeful someone will pick up where Vid and I have left off with the mostly idle portion of this project.
Meeting notes from our latest meeting are now available here: http://wiki.ubuntu-women.org/Meetings/20080612
…also, I really must get better at Team Reporting again. Missed the deadline this month, oops :)
On the 12th of this month Alex Launi and I were invited back to WCOJ 1420 AM’s Computer Corner to discuss the release of Ubuntu Hardy.
As with last time, Alex and I met up with Gene and Joe shortly before 8AM for the 8-9AM broadcast. Jim graciously donated sticky buns and dropped off a whole bunch of Hardy CDs for the Computer Corner guys and some for me to give out to the local LUGs.
The show went well (even if in the beginning Alex and I had quiet mics!). We were able to discuss some of the features of the Hardy release, let the audience know that there were free CDs available from Canonical, and we were invited to come back more often – hurrah!
The podcast is now up, I am borrowing hosting from Stephen Nicols for this podcast – so thank you Stephen! You can download it here:
It’s been a busy weekend. Friday night I met up with Stephen for dinner at Union Barrel Works in Reamstown. I’d never heard of this brewpub, and their beers were pretty mild, but everything in the sampler we got was clean finishing and good (Sampler: Kolsch, Mai Bock, Pale Ale, Dopplebock, Dubbel, and one other I’ve forgotten..). The food was good and reasonably priced, and it’s right down the street from Stoudt’s so it’s good to know there are other options for good food and beer around there. I didn’t stay out too late though, since I needed to get up early the next morning.
I got up shortly after 6 on Saturday morning to hop down 202 to be the guest on another Computer Corner show to talk about Ubuntu. Once the podcast is up I’ll post it and discuss this more.
After the show I drove back home, relaxed for a bit and then headed out to Jersey to meet up with my friend Mike and 4 of his friends to grab some lunch and then hit that evening’s Iron Maiden concert. Now metal isn’t really my “thing” – if I have a “thing” when it comes to music. But I do enjoy a bit of it from time to time, and I tend to enjoy concerts of all kinds. Plus, I’ll try anything once! So we grabbed lunch, left Mike’s around 4:30, got parked, picked up our tickets, and were seated by 7. We went with box seats, which were a bit expensive but when the sky opened up and a huge thunderstorm swept through we were glad to have the seats we had – and doubly glad we didn’t go for lawn seats, those people got drenched.
The first opening band had the lead singer who was the daughter of one of the Iron Maiden guys. I’m not much of a judge of metal, but I wasn’t overly impressed. I’ll be fair though, they had just released their first album so they’re quite new at this. The second opening band was Trivium, and while really not my style I found myself enjoying their set a lot.
During the set change to Maiden was when the thunderstorms rolled in. The crowd was already pumped, and the storm really “charged” the whole place, cheers erupting for each big wave of lightning and thunder. Around 9 Maiden came on – and played an amazing show. This was my first metal show, so I wasn’t sure what to expect, but the music was loud and fun, the crowd was great, the sets were spectacular, the pyrotechnics were awesome and the band really rocked out, the lead singer running all over the stage with different costumes throughout the show. Wow, it was fun. I really must go to one again sometime!
When the concert wrapped up I got my first taste of having my ears not work properly after a metal show. A couple of the people I went with had earplugs, which after last night really seem like a good investment, my ears are still ringing a bit. Four of us then went for food at a diner not too far from where Mike lives, and finally around 2:30AM I made the drive home – putting me back home around 3:30AM. As such I didn’t wake up until noon today. Mmmmm sleep.
Now I have some Work to do – starting on a data migration for our accounting system, later I’ll be heading over to the house to work through some financial stuff with Michael.
The weekend isn’t long enough.