It was a soggy day yesterday, but not enough to hinder fun at a brewfest. The drive up to Easton took a little over an hour. We were lucky to get there early enough to park in the parking lot across the street from the little park where the festival was held, woohoo!

We met up with Bob and John, both of whom used to work with Michael.

John, Bob, and Lyz on the PA side of the Delaware River

Michael, who played cameraman for the day

Most of the festival took place inside a big tent they had up – but it wasn’t nearly big enough. The first hour or so was OK and we could get to the beer tables without too much trouble, but then it just got so crowded you could hardly move. I’m not the best with crowds (it’s a good thing we were drinking! Hah!) so I wasn’t too pleased with how crowded it got.

I was a bit disappointed at the food offering too, pretty much everything they had was spicy and overpriced. Who thinks spicy food is good at a beer tasting? Not I! I want to taste the beer, and spicy food just ruins that.

The highlights of the day for me ended up being:

Riverhorse table

River Horse – They aren’t one of those microbreweries like Victory or Sly Fox whose beers are all outstanding, but River Horse does have two that I really like – the HOP hAZARD PALE ALE and one of my favorite Belgian style winter ales, the BELGIAN fROSTBITE WINTER ALE. Guess which two they were serving? THOSE! It was great to introduce John to the Frostbite, and even better that he enjoyed it ;)

Cricket Hill – I had their Hopnotic IPA on tap last week at Ortino’s Northside and wasn’t too impressed, but I tried it again at this festival and both Bob and I were forced to revise our opinion of the brew. I think freshness really matters with this one. Plus, their mascot is a silly cricket and Michael picked me up a pint glass with the logo – woo!

Weyerbacher – I finally got to try their Double Simcoe IPA! Yum!

And of course our favorites were there, Victory, Sly Fox…

We left the festival around 3 and took 611 home, stopping to pick up a pizza to enjoy for a quiet evening in.

Michael has the rest of the photos from the day posted here.

YAY! Thank you Michael!

I actually got the DS earlier this week, but I didn’t open the box from Amazon until I got home from work last night. I’m in love. I’ve never owned a hand held game machine before, and this is a nice one! I was up until past 10 playing with it, Michael played with it for about 20 minutes and was all “oooh this is so addictive” – and we were just playing New Super Mario Brothers!

I don’t know how this gaming machine compares to anything Nintendo put since the NES, but I totally feel like us original NES generation people are the target market for these things. I was so delighted to see old Super Mario Brothers 1, 3 and the original Zelda on the top screen and hear the music for those while playing the marathon version of Tetris on the DS. I feel so comfortable with this Mario and the Tetris already, having games so similar to the ones I grew up with at my fingertips!

I’ll be firing up Animal Crossing: Wild World after I finish this entry.

And my boss, the attentive person she is, bought me a gift certificate to Toys R Us. In passing I had told her that I was getting one (we were talking about how much her son loved video games) and she wanted to get me a game for my birthday but didn’t know which one – so Toys R Us gift card! It was really sweet of her %) The women at work also brought in a bunch of food and a giant carrot cake to celebrate my birthday (no doubt they enjoyed it too, a nice diversion from the insanity that was year end).

Michael also got me a giant chocolate bar, a very cute card, and took me out to Sly Fox (no, he’s not cheap and boring bringing me to the place we always go to – I didn’t get home from work until 7 last night and I was too tired to go anywhere nicer or further from home).

It was a good birthday – and now we’re getting ready to head up to Easton for the Lehigh Valley Brewfest – I’m so excited!

I’m now a quarter century old.

And happy 35th birthday to !

My allergies have calmed down some, but this morning I woke up with a splitting headache. Some Advil solved my problem within an hour, but by then it was too late to make it to the gym, bleh.

The past weekend was spent organizing more wedding things, I got about half the invitations out (waiting to get addresses from the other people). There is still some ceremony stuff to work out, we really should sit down sometime this week and get that formalized.

Michael and I also got the opportunity to review a chapter for an upcoming Linux book, it was nice working together. Between my knack for details and writing things in a very user-friendly manner and his wealth of knowledge in theoretical and real world applications of software I think my dream of writing a book some day is being transformed into writing a book with Michael some day.

Monday night I went out with Nita to meet with a woman in Harleysville who sells Indian dresses out of her home. She had some really nice things, but the colors and price ranges were just not what we were looking for. It was a disappointment, but Nita found an online shop that does custom orders and we picked out a nice one from there that she’s going to order this week. After looking at the dresses we headed into Harleysville, which is a black hole for decent food, and ended up having a couple subs at Quiznos (which is only slightly better than Subway, I don’t really like those big sub chains).

Last night Michael and I went out to grab some food and then came home to watch Scary Movie, which we rented this weekend since neither of us had seen it. It wasn’t worth all the trouble we went through to get the DVD running, I am just not a big fan of stupid spoof humor I guess.

Oh and I hate DVDs. We have 3 players capable of playing DVDs in our house, the Playstation 2, the MythTV DVD-ROM and Michael’s laptop DVD-ROM. The Playstation 2 is a lousy DVD player, it’ll play most movies at least half the way through before it starts skipping and gives a horrible “unable to read disk” error – it got about 10 minutes into Scary Movie. The DVD-ROM on the MythTV box is crankie and I’ve almost given up on it, Michael has it working with a few movies, but if anything on the DVD is abnormal ogle and mplayer just won’t play it. Finally Michael has his laptop, which actually did play the movie, but playing it from the laptop to the TV screen is not an optimal situation since we need to unplug a bunch of stuff from the Myth box to plug it in to the laptop, and Michael can’t use his laptop at all while the movie is on. So the solution? We ripped it and dropped onto the MythTV – worked great! All that lovely encoding and protection they put on the DVD forced me to make a copy I never would have if it would just play. Is it legal to make a copy of a movie you rent if you delete the copy when you return the movie? Probably not.

Now the real solution to this DVD trouble is probably just dropping $100 on a decent DVD player whose only job is to play DVDs, it just makes me crazy that we already have 3 players that should be capable of doing this.

My 25th birthday is on Friday, I’ll finally be able to rent SUVs and luxury cars – woo! And age 25 is one of those landmarks where your car insurance goes down, that will be nice. A quarter century on this planet here I come!

Fiscal year end at work falls on my birthday, which is not funny at all. We’re working overtime all week and we’ll all be working late that night, which is not exactly how I wanted to spend my birthday. Still, my boss is always good about organizing little things for our birthdays, so there will probably be food and some decorations around on Friday.

Michael and I are actually celebrating my birthday on Saturday by going to the Lehigh Valley Brewfest in Exton with Bob. I’m so excited! But this will be our only brewfest of this season, with the wedding coming up we just have too much other stuff going on to devote a day to some delicious Octoberfest goodness, sigh %)

I’d say that KDE article went well, everyone whose opinion I care about said very nice things. I received one email about it, and it was from a software developer who wanted to let me know about his project and how much they needed artwork, documentation, usability and internationalization skills – cool!

It’s funny that my first full interview somewhere was on a KDE website, the closest I’ve ever come to KDE is enjoying an evening and fine glass of wine with a local KDE developer and his wife. I’ve never really used it on my desktop.

All the usual flames came. I’d say it was a nice little representation of all the typical views whenever this is brought up:

• support from fellow Linuxchix, friends and others who live and understand my views
• a comment about hot linux babes
• a couple rants about how sexist I am for promoting an outreach to women
• a comment from a woman who feels insulted and believes the experiences of others are invalid because she hasn’t had them (I imagine this is a difficult way to live your life)
• a comment from someone who thinks that we should all deal with assholes at shops to futher our cause (sorry, I’m all for this cause but sometimes I just want to buy a harddrive without being hassled)
• comments from people who might be well-meaning but don’t understand the issue
• a comment meant to be funny by taking my words out of context
• …and my favorite – translating my comment “more women work in documentation, translations and artwork” into “I don’t believe women are technical and they should just do art.”

I only bothered replying to one comment in the article.

The same arguments come up again and again with this women and F/OSS thing, but that just makes them much easier they are to take after a while. I really have gotten to know what is worth replying to (who will listen) and what is better just left alone.

Honestly? I sometimes wish I was one of these fellows who simply didn’t understand the issue. I sometimes wish I could be like the guy who replied and said “Everyone feels they need to prove themselves at LUG meetings.” Somehow I doubt he understands that I’ve actually been asked IF I USE LINUX at a LUG meeting, or better yet, had the guy I happened to catch a ride with be asked “Does your girlfriend use Linux too?” while I’m STANDING RIGHT THERE (Why not ask me directly? Does he think I wouldn’t know if I used Linux or not? Does he just want an “AWESOME YOUR GIRL USES LINUX! SCORE!” moment? Maybe I’m being too harsh and he’s just scared of women).

As if my role as an activist for Women in F/OSS was not already solidified, I guess this article does it. I never would have classified myself as this until recently, which may seem surprising since I’ve coordinated the PhillyChix for a few years now. I think there is just too much bad press about feminists and I didn’t want to be put into the category with all that, so I didn’t put myself into that category in my head.

I guess “Feminist” should be put with “Atheist” and “Liberal” in that pile of words I’m Taking Back ;)

I’ve been interviewed :)

I have ruined oatmeal. I started bringing a box of instant oatmeal packets to work about a year ago, a quick and yummy breakfast I could prepare here at work with just some hot water. But now I’ve started to associate this yummy cinnamon apple oatmeal taste with work. It hasn’t been a terribly appealing thing to eat these past few weeks. Not wanting oatmeal is not good, if I don’t want to eat the oatmeal I’m more tempted to stop and get a bagel. I need to find a new, healthy breakfast food.

Last night I purchased the plane tickets to Phoenix for our honeymoon. I didn’t just jump on the cheapest ones available because the departure times just wouldn’t work for us. I wanted as much time in Arizona on Monday as possible without having to leave Philadelphia at *too much* of an insane hour. And I wanted the flight out of Phoenix to be reasonably late in the morning – to allow for 4 hours of getting to the airport, check-in, strip-searches, and whatever else you need to do to get on a plane – but I didn’t want to get back to Philadelphia too late in the evening, considering the time difference and all. Unfortunately meeting with Phoenix folks won’t be an option this time because of the logistics of it all, but after all I’ve heard about Arizona I’m sure this won’t be our only trip out that way :)

I also reserved a rental car for the week.

I didn’t sleep well last night. I was too wound up for some reason and then my allergies started acting up. I don’t remember having allergies this bad before, I’m probably going to have to drag myself to the doctor next year if it’s this bad again. I actually tried some over-the-counter Tylenol Sinus medicine last week at the advice of a co-worker (who was quite concerned about how sniffly and sneezy I was). It’s daytime formula, but still made me feel a bit spacey and didn’t as much as I would have liked. Someday I’ll find an allergy medication that works in the day and doesn’t put me into a coma!

On the plus side, I have bright pink tissues.

My sister Heather and her Husband Randy are back from their honeymoon and sent me a whole bunch of pictures last night!

She wrote about the wedding and honeymoon here (hey sis, couldn’t you think of a happier title for your wedding and honeymoon post? ;)).

I’ve posted all the photos she sent me over in an images directory here.

I picked out a few that I especially liked for this entry.

Wedding

Heather and Randy walking down the aisle. When I spoke with her on the phone after the wedding she said she doesn’t remember the ceremony, she does look like she’s in a bit of a daze here!

They got to ride around in a limo after the wedding (oh my gosh, she looks like our mother in his picture)

Woohoo! Cake!

Honeymoon

They spent their honeymoon in the canadian rockies, very pretty!

More pretty.

What a beautiful place!

I had to include this one, I’m a sucker for waterfalls, very nice.

They also saw some deer things.

…and a dragon. I don’t think there are dragons in the Canadian Rockies, so I suspect this photo was from when they were visiting the mall.

I’m so happy for her %D

I’ve been searching for a good Mexican place in Pennsylvania since I moved here. I’ve tried:

• TexMex in North Wales – Not bad, but a little too Tex for me, french fries just don’t go with mexican
• Tortugas in Collegeville – I’ve gone here twice, but it’s really not all that good (in spite of good reviews)
• Mexican place in Kennett Square – Good! But Kennett Square is an hour from my house, a bit far to drive and I’m rarely in the area

Last night Michael surrendered to my want of Mexican food and we tried El Cactus (what a horrible name!) in Souderton. It got good reviews so we though it would be decent. Unfortunately it was basically another Torugas, meh. Clearly people in PA don’t know Mexican food. The guacamole was good and fresh though.

Nita tells me that Coyote Crossing in Conshohocken is pretty good, I’ll have to drag her there someday when I’m at her place visiting %)

I really wish the Margaritas chain extended down here to PA, it’s sad that you can get better mexican at a chain in New England than you can here. I’ll have to hit the one in Nasuha, NH the next time I’m up there visiting family.

But this blabbering about lousy mexican food in PA was only an intro to the real news of this entry – we decided where we are going for our honeymoon!

I know, this is generally something planned months in advance, but we just weren’t sure what we were going to do. Should we just do another hiking and B&B trip around West Virginia and take a more extravagant honeymoon later? Should we just wait on the honeymoon altogether until we can afford a trip to Europe? Should we go with the suggestion of a couple we met at a beer-tasting and check out the Grand Canyon?

The Grand Canyon! That’s where we should go! It’s in the US, so we don’t need to get passports. The flights inside the US are still reasonable (under $300 per ticket out to Phoenix from Philadelphia and back). With all the Native American studies we’ve been into it’d be interesting to finally get out there, as neither of us has been to any of the states out west.

So I told my boss on friday that I’d be taking the week off after my wedding, and I started browsing travel sites for the area. Of course browsing travel sites is a horrible thing to do, since they’re all trying to sell you something and it’s horribly overwhelming.

Very lucky for us, one of the couples we’re inviting to our wedding owns a house in Sedona, AZ (their primary residence is in Maine, we visited them for New Years last year). So I hit up our friend for some tips and advice about the area – must see spots, good places to stay. She insisted that this couldn’t be discussed over IRC (too much to say!) and wanted to call me.

I spent the next half hour on the phone with her, a conversation that began “First of all, we decided you should stay at our house in Sedona.” SQUEE!!! How fantastic!!! How sweet of them!!! Then she went into all sorts of places we should visit, asked about what we wanted to do. We narrowed it down to staying in Sedona for most of the week, and taking a quick trip out for a day and night at the Grand Canyon. Later in the day she sent a .txt file detailing a possible outline of each day of our trip, lots of information about places in the area, tips about where we’re going and all sorts of fantasticness. Wow! It was so awesome of her to take the time to do that. We’re so lucky to have such good friends.

So we’ll be flying into Phoenix on Monday morning, renting a car, driving to Sedona, spend a couple days there relaxing and hiking. Head to the Grand Canyon probably Wednesday and spend the day and the night there, maybe some time Thursday too before driving back to Sedona. Relax/hike/shop more in Sedona on Friday. Drive back to Phoenix Saturday to catch our flight home. Spend Sunday recovering from time difference so we can go to work on Monday. I wish we could spend more time there, but I don’t have enough vacation time to be gone much longer.

Not bad for only planning a month in advance. I’m so excited! Buying plane tickets today.

Last night Michael and I watched Night of the Living Dead (1968). I downloaded it from Archive.org’s directory of feature films – a resource that I found via Romana’s blog entry mentioning it. This is a really great site. Lots of old classics that I haven’t seen are available for streaming or direct download, Night of the Living Dead was available for direct download in three quality levels:

64Kb MPEG4 (109 MB)
256Kb MPEG4 (247 MB)
MPEG2 (4.1 GB)

I grabbed the 247 MB one, the quality was pretty decent, but I still might grab the 4.1 GB one and re-encode it. The download speed was decent too, last night I was grabbing the movies at between 150-200 KBPS.

Mostly I’m looking forward to going through their horror films. I love watching old horror movies around Halloween, and since getting rid of cable I’ve really missed this yearly tradition. Now I can do it again! Hurrah! Although I think we might skip hosting a Halloween party with friends this year, with the whole wedding thing happening the weekend before.

Speaking of the wedding, we’ve made some progress with plans and things.

• Confirmed that our friend Juliana can do the photography (she went to school for it)
• Received new camera, Canon Digital Rebel XL 8MP EOS Digital SLR (it’s very nice)
• Received wedding invitations we ordered (they look great!)
• Made final payments on location (we’ve also secured the 3 room Cottage for Saturday night)
• Made the Wedding Celebration Ale

We need to send out the invitations, finish buying wedding clothes (this is stressing me out a bit, we REALLY need to get this done ASAP so alterations can be made if needed), pick/write our vows and tend to other details of the ceremony itself. Still, I’m pleased with where we are right now in planning, I haven’t freaked out too much about anything yet.