Busy day yesterday.

I got up early and after some conversations had Desktop Debian on my mind, so I wrote about it: O’Reilly Linux DevCenter Blog: Desktop Debian Etch (and Ubuntu). Which reminds me, I need to drop a note to them to get my name changed…

Yesterday morning our PA Ubuntu LoCo Team was made an “Approved” team by the Community Council. Luckily a bunch of people were able to show up, so my input wasn’t really needed aside from me saying “I’m here for PA” (I was working, and didn’t want to take too much of a break for the approval meeting if I didn’t have to). This is exciting news, approved teams are recognized as Official Ubuntu Projects and are thus entitled to some nice benefits (including Ubuntu “stuff” and official CDs, woo!). It’s exciting for the team, we’ve been working hard and planning lots more events for the near future.

Joe Terranova was approved as an Ubuntu Member during the meeting as well – go Joe! He’s helped tons with the PA team (even though he lives in New Jersey). They had to cut the meeting short before another woman I joined the meeting to cheer was approved though. The membership approval requests are increasing quite a bit, enough so that the CC meeting is regularly running over 2 hours and still not getting everything accomplished, I expect a new process will be developed soon.

First off, Michael brought Simcoe to the vet last Thursday to get her sutures removed. It went as expected, snip snip snip and the sutures were gone without a struggle! The only problem was an infection in one of her paws, she was put on antibiotics and we asked Jane to stop in an check on them Friday as well as Saturday so she could get her medication. She appears to be healing up nicely. Yay!

I thought removal of her claws would mean she’d stop with her terrible habit of destroying toilet paper and paper towels that required us to keep the bathroom door closed for months. Not so. Yesterday I was cleaning something up, put the paper towel roll behind me for a minute, and no sooner I see Simcoe with her entire body wrapped around the roll tearing it to pieces. But you don’t have claws! How do you managed to destroy so thoroughly?!

This morning I woke up to a similarly destroyed toilet paper roll hanging in the bathroom. A quick search online for this behavior turned up this page which has a section on toilet paper, the suggestion of “You can balance a small paper cup full of water on top of the roll.” gave me quite a chuckle, until I realized I’d have to clean it up and she’s a cat so would probably manage to escape the deluge. I’ll think of something. Ah kitties.

We returned from the Gaian Mind Summer Festival around 4PM yesterday afternoon. I had a great time. The weather was perfect, it was all very relaxing, we met some awesome people and in all it was a lot of fun.

We drove out Thursday after a busy work day for me, ended up getting on the road around 6PM. On the way we stopped at Stoudt’s Brewery (because that’s what we do!), we didn’t order any beer (gasp) but I did order their decadent “House Pizza” which was: Wild mushrooms, artisanal blue, baby spinach, cheddar cheese, and roasted garlic pizza. – yikes! It was good, the perfect thing to send me off on our camping trip where we ate fruit, bread and granola for 3 days. By the time we arrived at the camp site it was around 11PM, we checked in at the gate and were given a pass to camp in the Members Area since we’d been to the camp before – score! When we got to the site had to pull the car in and shine the car lights at our camp site to put the tent up. It was around 1AM when we crashed onto our blowup mattress in the tent – and it got cold! I planned badly for the cold, having only brought a sheet and a couple blankets, but we survived. Oh and there was poison ivy everywhere that I walked all through with sandals on while putting up the tent, but I’m not itching yet so it looks like I survived that too.

Our camp

No reference point here, but Doug called this “Heart Attack Hill” when I walked with him to get coffee Friday morning, it’s quite steep but a nice shortcut from the members camp to the stone circle

Friday we spent chilling out. Met our camp mates, who included 4Quarters members Doug (from DC, whose son showed up during the weekend too), Tammy and Danny (from South Carolina). It turns out we were also camping with some neighbors! They live in the Royersford, which is about 4 miles from our home in Schwenksville. David works for Swathmore and his girlfriend Susan who works for a neat little company called Harmony Channel that makes videos with some amazing nature (and other) cinematography set to music work by artists such as Patirck O’ Hearn(!). We had some great conversations with these folks, and some other neighbors that stopped by our site to enjoy the campfire that we had going most of the weekend. It’s good to be the campfire tenders. Michael ended up hitting a sweat lodge, but I passed in favor of some alone time with a book and crackling fire. Friday night we got some rest before heading up to the Stone Circle to dance to some psytrance until the sun came up.

OK, so the Stone circle is WAY cooler (and more fun) at night when they have all the black lights on and crazy projections everywhere, but I can’t take pictures in the dark! So you’ll have to survive with just some photos in the daytime.

Saturday was similarly chill out-ish (that’s what I do when I’m camping!). We ended up going to a couple workshops in the late afternoon, both of which were busts. One was a “Discussion about sustainable communities” – I’m not sure what I expected, I guess since I was at a campground I was thinking about campgrounds as sustainable communities, that’s neat stuff. Implementing solar panels for power, growing food to feed campers who want on-site meals, all sorts of interesting stuff. The talk was, in fact, about communes, and people living on communes full time. Apparently “Sustainable Community” is the new term for “Commune” – and changing the name didn’t make them any better. I don’t have a problem with these self-righteous rich white kids who want to join a commune and live possibly without electricity per se, if it makes them happy – great! But they do annoy me. Their thoughts about how horrible the world is (I don’t happen to think the world is horrible), their grand plan to solve all these problems being in the entire world turning back into farmers (I think technology and progress away from everyone being a farmer is mostly good), cutting down trees is wrong and we should live in mud huts like the ones she visited when she went to Guatemala to see the poor people and live with them for a week(!) – and while holding all these beliefs – still saying things like using solar panels and organizing things using the Internet is good and important. Oh and when Michael showed up to the “discussion” with some Palo Santa wood to burn for incense she invited him to light it up, as she had just been burning some earlier sdf*(&FDS$fs%!! It’s ok to BURN South American wood as incense but not to build houses with North American woods grown specifically for that purpose?! Sigh, I guess this got personal, I went from “these commune people” to “that crazy woman” – oh well, she bothered me :) The second “workshop” we went to was the Festival’s key speaker – who was the same one as last year, Daniel Pinchbeck. The man is absolutely insane and has done/does far too many drugs, but sometimes such people are interesting to listen to. Not this time, it was the same talk he gave last year, and he managed to annoy me more this year.

The evening on Saturday was spent by the campfire. Lots of great discussion with our neighbors, I nearly finished my book. A sinus headache cut my evening short around midnight, while I greatly enjoyed listening to the music that could be heard as far as our campsite, I passed on the dancing that night. It was fine with me, I got my relaxing and “in the woods” time, so I was perfectly happy with the weekend.

Sunday morning we packed up, swapped contact info with our neighbors and drove home. Guess where we stopped on our way back? Stoudt’s Brewery! I ate a big burger, which tasted so good after a weekend of granola, bread and fruit and washed it down with an IPA, which was a bit more crisp than the Stoudt’s usually is, a nice surprise. As relaxing as I describe the weekend as, sleeping on an air mattress for the weekend isn’t the most comfortable thing and the sleep I got wasn’t the greatest, I was pretty tired when we got home. I’m still tired today but as the day went on and I got back into things at work I started feeling better, more refreshed. Even so, I’m going to have to see about taking off from work Thursday, Friday AND Monday next year instead of just Friday…

After much complaining about how DVDs suck, we finally broke down and bought a cheap Sony DVD player this week, the Sony DVP-NS57P/B Progressive Scan. I don’t care about xvid and region-freeness or any goodies. I just wanted something that would play damaged DVDs (like ones you get rented), DVD-Rs, and whatever other DVD-stuffs we wanted to throw at it. This replaces our PS2 and DVD-ROM drive in the MythTV box that were our two primary (terrible) DVD players. It still annoys me that we had to buy a machine specifically devoted to playing DVDs to get something that would actually work, but what can I do? I only paid $60 for this player, it’s worth it not to have the frustration anymore. Indeed, the DVD-Rs that just wouldn’t play on the other drives play flawlessly on the new player – success!

Simcoe is healing up. One of her paws concerns me as it’s not healed up as quickly as the rest, but Michael is taking her over to the vet tomorrow at 1:30 to get the sutures removed, they can look at her paw then. I mentioned this to the woman who will be watching her while we’re gone and she’s prepared, so we have our bases covered for a guilt-free weekend.

Tomorrow afternoon after work we’re heading out to the Gaian Mind Summer Festival. It’ll be nice to attend the whole festival this year (had to drive out Friday last year). Camping in a tent, no cellphones, and a cooler full of food and water to keep us alive for the weekend. The weather is looking great (much better than last year – so much rain and mud!). Music all night, dancing, sweat lodges, drum circles, swimming in the creek! I’m so excited, I really could use the break from everything (especially computers).

Well I let my disgust for the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) flow over into the work I do with Ubuntu. I didn’t mean for it to happen, but when someone added “Boy/Girl Scouts Computer Merit Badge Counseling” to our list of possible projects I had to let my personal objection be known.

For the uninitiated, the BSA is a private scouting organization in the US. Some would argue its existence is very much part of American culture and many American men have been involved with the group. The controversy? Somewhere along the way the BSA decided to become quite vocal about not accepting homosexuals in their organization. I personally know one gay Eagle scout who left the organization when the news broke, and many have since – either forced out when it was learned they were gay, or leaving on their own. OK, so they’re a private organization, they can do this, right? Sure, except they’ve been supported by public funds for years. Much of the direct contributions from the government have ceased, but public schools and buildings still offer them meeting space, portions of local, state and federal governments have worked out deals to lease land for events for the token amount of $1 – all at the expense of American taxpayers. I have a serious problem with this. If they didn’t get my tax money I’d still be opposed to them, but it wouldn’t make me so angry, but that is a tangent and doesn’t really have anything to do with this particular discussion.

Bottom line – I will never work on a project with the BSA. I don’t know the official Ubuntu stance on this (if any), so I won’t go as far as to say the team shouldn’t work with them. I pretty much just wanted to voice my objection.

Apparently I touched nerve. The team leader responded to my objection with this forum thread: Politics, Theology, and Ubuntu LoCo Teams. His intention is to reply to me (even if he misunderstood me) and try to bring the whole thing up for discussion and resolution. He made some excellent points that highlight the fact that it’s a complex problem. Since he wanted to make it a bigger discussion I posted a link to the Ubuntu-Women list with the OT header of “Ubuntu for All” (a mailing list for UFA was requested today in light of this). We’ll see where it goes. I honestly don’t think there is a clear cut solution unless the CC stands up and says “We don’t support discriminatory organizations” or “Spreading Ubuntu is more important than anything else” – I think discussion on a case-by-case basis is really the key. An objection from one person may be shared and an event just won’t happen if there isn’t enough support.

Discussion is good and I expect we’ll all come out of this more enlightened (I’d like to think we’re all friends), but I think my activism and “rocking the boat” does bother some people.

In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been pretty busy lately. A lot of stuff has come up in the F/OSS arena that I’m excited to be working on. I’m very glad that I realized recently that my capacity to take on more projects had ceased and so I wasn’t tempted to volunteer for any LinuxChix related things that have come up lately (I’m sticking around the volunteers list and channel so I am kept aware of things and can pitch in for small things, but no more volunteering for giant projects!).

Unfortunately all this has taken a bit of a toll on me mentally and physically. I am taking plenty of time to relax (reading, watching movies and going out with Michael), and while important, it’s not working as an exclusive form of relaxation. I went to the sweat lodge Thursday night and it dawned on me that I haven’t taken much time alone to completely detach and meditate, journey or do a rune cast in months, I even slacked off on going to the gym until I joined the YMCA last week. Days have been flowing into each other, I’m feeling all disconnected and my stress level has risen when it should be falling. By work day Friday I’m so wiped out that my brain sometimes doesn’t want to work properly.

The solution is not drastically cutting back on volunteer work. I can probably continue at this pace now that I’ve found my limits, afterall – I love doing this stuff and it’s very rewarding, or else I wouldn’t be doing it! But I do need to take more time out of my day each day to detach and get grounded. Even if it’s just 30 minutes of meditation after work, or going outside to sit in the grass for a while. This would be a much better use of time than unwinding by going to silly internet links and laughing about them in IRC or on mailing lists. Getting far away from the computer and all my projects off my mind is important and relaxing in a whole different way. When all is said and done I’ll probably end up being more productive.

So now I have a plan! Must execute now.

There was a bit of a firestorm over at LinuxChix this week. It boiled down to some decisions that were made by the new coordinator not being popular, many long-time members and volunteers in the group stood up and objected and the whole thing got out of hand. Of course this took hundreds of emails burying us for days. All waiting and hoping it would end peacefully and the group would arise intact. It was a tough time, mostly due to the parties involved being so respected and popular within the community. It certainly was tough for me, I’ve been a member since 2002 and have been running the Philadelphia chapter since 2003. There were a few hours there where I really was quite worried and let myself wonder what I’d do without LinuxChix.

This week has made me stop and realize what a vital part of my involvement with LinuxChix has been for my involvement with Linux. The contacts I’ve made through PhillyChix have been vital to my career, the amazing and brilliant women I’ve met and had a chance to view as role models has been transformational to my whole outlook of the field. The friends I’ve made through it have made it so sometimes I am able to almost forget that women are a minority in Linux. My sphere of friends has changed from being almost entirely male to include just as many women who share my interests and wouldn’t hesitate to take me up on a conversation about Linux and beer. It’s so good not to feel alone, and like such an oddball all the time.

And to be perfectly honest, I don’t think I would have kept up with involvement in the Linux world without LinuxChix. I might have still used Linux, but it certainly wouldn’t have been my career, and I wouldn’t be involved with F/OSS at all. So I don’t care what people who don’t “get” women in IT groups say, groups like LinuxChix can be vital to the growth of a woman looking to advance herself in the field. I’m living proof. I could point you to others who would say the same.

The LinuxChix thing has settled down quite a bit now. The coordinator has stepped down (very gracefully, and she will remain involved with the community – yay!) and talks have started about a new coordinator (or group of coordinators). Damage has been done by this, LinuxChix has lost some volunteers and I fear what some of the people new to the group must think (indeed, some have actually voiced their opinions, and they haven’t been favorable). But I have no doubt that the group will recover from this and learn from mistakes of the past, LinuxChix is an intelligent group of women. Good thing too, LinuxChix remains very important to me. In the end I’m going to just file this whole thing under “growing pains” – the way things were decided in the past isn’t working so well in a group of over 1000 members world-wide (no one knows how many members there actually are, could be several thousand women who call themselves LinuxChix). The volunteers are now hard at work forumlating a plan to move forward.

And while I’m on the subject of LinuxChix, I got around to posting about the Girls Inc Event yesterday morning before work (and emailed mailing lists this morning), enjoy: Girls Inc Computer Installation/Introduction Event

I should have gone to the Bear Creek Beer Festival on Sunday, Michael crashed in bed for most of the day after coming home from Starscape but I could have caught a ride! Our friends who went said they had a great time and told us stories of the fantastic beers brought from Crabby Larry’s (a place that got a new brewer, who happens to be a guy from our local homebrew shop and a great brewer) and other breweries. Next year I’m SO THERE!

The peche lambic I mentioned enjoying Saturday night was the St Louis Premium Peche made by Brouwerij Van Honsebrouck in Ingelmunster, Belgium. It’s no Lindemans, but it’ll do when I’m craving a peach lambic and there is no Lindemans to be found.

So I didn’t go to the beerfest and I found myself saturated with boredom on Sunday afternoon. After the installfest and other computer work for days I was not too keen on the idea of another afternoon inside with my cats and computers. Plus it was a bit warm and if I stayed home I’d have to really hide in my office in the air conditioning. I ended up heading down to King of Prussia and doing some much needed shopping. I’ve had a few giftcards in my wallet for nearly a year because of how infrequently I go to the mall. I was able to pick up some clothes, finally grabbed Brain Age for my DS (yay!), got the watch band on a watch my mother gave me a few years ago replaced, and a few other things. It was a productive day, and not as horrible as shopping usually is.

Monday evening we decided to head out to Sly Fox – mostly because all we had to eat in the house was pasta. It was shaping up to be just another night at the Sly Fox when our friendly waiter accidentally spilled a whole glass of soda on Michael’s lap right after delivering our food. Eeek! It pretty much ruined the evening, Michael was so soaked that he needed to leave immediately to get home and change. They packed up our dinner and the manager wrote off the tab (w00t – free dinner! And free beer!). Tuesday evening we had a much better dinner down at the sushi place in Collegeville, our second visit and still superb.

This week is flying by, I went out to get the mail yesterday afternoon and realized that it was Thursday already (how did that happen? eek!). We had my former co-worker Jane over for dinner Wednesday night and to introduce her to the cats. She offered a while back to watch them when we go on vacation, and although we’re only leaving for 3 days we figured since it’s so soon since Simcoe’s surgery that we should have someone come check on them. So we worked it out for Simcoe to get her sutures out Thursday afternoon, and we’ll be leaving home about 4 hours after that to head to Artemis, PA. Jane will stop by on Saturday to feed and check on them.

Simcoe is doing better. She’s been pretty sluggish for the past week, and that did concern me, some of what I read said that they’re usually up and running around like nothing happened within a few days. But I looked into it a bit more and it is generally stated that it can take over a week for a female to get back close to normal and longer for full recovery. I was also worried about the incision site, I noticed it was swollen and the swelling was actually firm when I touched it! Then I found this:

“Later in the recovery period, it is not unusual to notice swelling at the incision site. Cats often react this way to internal sutures and this kind of swelling is common and resolves spontaneously. Such swellings are firm and there is no fluid drainage or bleeding from the incision. They generally resolve in 3-4 weeks.” – Feline Spay FAQ, VeterinaryPartner.com

Phew! There hasn’t been any problem with the incision itself, so she should be fine. In fact, after I got finished doing all this worrying after work Wednesday night she reacted all evening by deciding to be quite active, we had to put her back in her room for the night because we were slightly worried she’d be too active and run around the house like a crazy animal :) I’m glad to see her on the mend.

Thursday evening we went to the Malvern Sweat Lodge. I hadn’t been there in far too long. It was a good evening.

Today I got up shortly before 7, showered, dressed, got my directions and headed down to Cheltenham to catch my ride down to a Girls Inc+Ubuntu PA+PhillyChix+some Philly computer society I forgot the name of. The Philadelphia Stock Exchange donated 10 PCs (1.7ghz – decent machines!) to Girls Inc to give out to girls and it was arranged to get them installed as a dual boot with Ubuntu and Windows. Kevin Valentine did pretty much all the prep work for our group, which was awesome. We arrived at Girls Inc around 10AM and had to wait around a bit for the machines to show up. Kevin had previously imaged most of them, but there were four left to do, so Kevin and I got to work on that while the girls were show around Windows. When the imaging was almost complete they asked me to give the group (about 20 people) a blurb about Ubuntu and tell the girls who I was (Ubuntu Member, a woman working with Linux as a career). It was impromptu and I hope I didn’t speak to quickly or sound dumb, I accepted because I’m trying to get over being so nervous about such things but I still am not the best at it.

Girls Inc sprung for lunch (how great of them!) and we showed a few of the girls around Ubuntu. There were a few snags, but considering the time and resources restraints placed on us I think the event went well. Now pictures! I forgot my camera at home so theses are all ones I swiped from ‘s gallery, the photos were taken by him and his girlfriend Christina (yes, she uses linux too, my grand scheme is to teach her Debian and get her to do some linux work at the company I work for). Thanks Joe and Christina!

Some of the organizers working on Windows.

Me working with one of the girls on Ubuntu – just booting up. Alex too!

One of the girls and her mother leaving with their new computer.

Christina taking notes about Windows licenses (how did we get stuck with this job? We’re the Linux people who don’t have to worry about such things!)

One of the other volunteers helping some of the girls with Windows

Things wrapped up around 2:30 and I was home by 5.

And at 5 there was an Ubuntu Women meeting in IRC. I was late for it (had to get settled in once I arrived at home…). I did make it though and the meeting went well. Hopefully I’ll have notes up tomorrow. I was going to do it tonight but it’s getting late and I’m tired.

Shortly after I got back home Michael left for the 2007 Starscape Festival in Baltimore. I totally would have gone if the Girls Inc thing wasn’t today, but from the way I’m feeling now at 11PM I’m sure I would have just been a drag. In light of me being busy today and Michael going to this pretty much all-night festival we decided to pass on the Bear Creek Beerfest tomorrow. We have enough going on in the next few weeks, and I haven’t really been in the mood for beer lately. Aside from that lambic I picked up to enjoy late this evening with an MST episode…

After wrapping things up with the Ubuntu Women I headed down to the YMCA in Spring Valley. I haven’t been getting to LA Fitness in the mornings, it’s just too far, so I’m getting all out of shape, yuck. So I signed up at the YMCA tonight, maybe I’ll start going tomorrow, I could really use a dip in the pool. After the Y I headed over the pet store and picked up some cat food and a few more tetras for the tank. I got a couple Buenos Aires Tetras and three Serpae Tetras – yay!

And then I came home and did some work to get my new laptop-as-debian-development-machine further set up. I think the last thing I need to do is get the svn logged in, but after throwing a few fixes at webcalendar this evening I’m just too tired to do any more.

Simcoe is doing well, Caligula finally stopped being scared of her, now we just have to keep an eye on them when they’re together so he doesn’t bother her sutures. The last remaining problem is the removal of sutures situation – they’re supposed to be removed 16 days after surgery, but we’re supposed to be at Gaian Mind in 16 days. I’ll be calling the vet next week to see if we can remove them in 14 days instead if there are no complications. I really didn’t expect over 2 weeks of recovery from the spay :\

Simcoe is home from the vet, we were able to pick her up in the evening after no complications from the surgery – yay! Except I seemed to have forgotten how invasive a spay is, she’s now got a big old collar on for 16 days to prevent her from tearing at her sutures. She seems to be taking it alright though, the worst part is that we’re keeping her put away in her own room so Caligula leaves her sutures alone too. Plus we need to keep her using the paper litter instead of the clay litter Caligula gets to continue using during this period. Ah cats.

Anyway, here is a picture of her highness in all her “back from vet” glory:

And far from looking for Simcoe to pull out her sutures, Caligula is pretty terrified of the new cat with the funny hat. I let her out of her room for a few minutes this morning and he ran off, I found him sitting on our table looking terrified:

Simcoe has eaten a little this morning (yay!) and Michael gave her some water before we gave her the pan medication this morning. I expect she’ll be back to her old self within a few days, with the exception of still needing that surgery wound to heal and so requiring her lovely collar. I am not exactly sure how I’m going to handle this, it’s only the morning after and already she’s wanting to get out of her room…