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Community Leadership Summit 2013

Sunday, Jul 21st, 2013 by pleia2 | 4 Comments

On Thursday I’m presenting on Code Review for Systems Administrators at OSCON, but was delighted to be able to to come up to Portland a couple days early to join my peers and colleagues at the Community Leadership Summit. Back in 2011 I attended a Community Leadership Summit West, but this was my first time attending the original event.

I arrived Friday night and was able to meet up with my Portland friend B.J. Brown for some burgers and an obligatory doughnut run to Voodoo Doughnut (I got one with Tang on it).

Saturday morning CLS kicked off! I was able to meet up with a number of people I’d met before, like Emma Marshall from System76:

As well as meeting a whole bunch of great people I hadn’t met before, including colleagues from HP and OpenStack.

The first session I attended was one on “Dealing with negative feedback” which had a lot of interesting ideas about soliciting and processing general feedback. The interesting parts of the discussion came up during the difficult problems to solve, like when the community wants things that the governing community or company can’t accommodate. Transparency tended to be the governing takeaway from most problems, when the community understands the reasons and goals behind decisions they are more likely to be sympathetic to decisions being made. It was also amusing to have the definition of Internet Troll be brought up during the discussion so we could discuss how to deal with actual trolls and differentiate these from just unhappy community members who probably mean well. Attendees put notes here.

After lunch I went to a session on Mindful Leadership. It was centered around the core focus of taking care of yourself so you can be more refreshed, energized and empathetic toward your community. Thanks to Van Riper for this reminder, and a session that started with a mindful breathing exercise!

Another interesting session on Saturday was “Gamification, it doesn’t work for me, does it work for you?” where I learned I have really mixed feelings about gamification. It seems I like it when it’s for “fun” stuff (fitbit for steps, untappd for beers) but when it gets into my serious hobbies/work I am really bothered by it. I think my issue is actually poorly implemented gamification that creates arbitrary goals that don’t otherwise create much value for the individual or the project/organization. At best a poorly implemented system just wastes time, at worst it ends up being demotivating as people with a lot of time collect badges and leave others feeling like they can never keep up. I think what I most enjoyed about this session was learning that there were other people out there who felt a bit squeamish about the trend to gamify everything.

At 4PM we gathered outside for a group photo:

I also really enjoyed the session about managing communities of ambassadors and the discussion also covered user groups related to the technology. It was interesting to hear how some groups had planned communities built around individuals (Mozilla ambassador program) while others just have self-appointed local organizers who have to meet certain criteria to be part of the directory (Google Developer Groups) and others that seem to just have organically grown communities that don’t yet have much centralized control by the core project (OpenStack and WordPress groups). Topics included recognition for contributors, benefits of having folks to contact in different geographical areas, dealing with concerns over misrepresentation and some tips for handling shipping of swag (weight and customs concerns may alter what to ship where). Attendees put session notes here.

On Sunday, after a few requests by attendees to explain it, my colleague Mark Atwood and I proposed a session on “OpenStack Gated Trunk Continuous Integration and How it Shapes a Community.”

Mark stood and led the session as I chimed in as support. Not only was it a well-attended session, but it was exciting to talk about the work that’s being done in OpenStack with CI and the technical and social processes that have built up around it. I’m really proud to be a part of a community that puts code review so front and center in the development process and all the automated testing is something that I’m really happy to see more open source projects starting to embrace. This talk led to several more conversations throughout the day and invitations to have folks come to my OSCON talk where I’ll talk about some of the components in more detail ;) Thanks to @zahedab who took a photo of the session, available here:

And thanks to Deirdré Straughan who took the session notes, available here.

In the afternoon I went to a session about Certification and Training programs. It was interesting to hear that there has been discussion in the OpenStack community about some kind of certification program and very early stage ideas floating around for development and deploying training. I also got to share some of my own experiences with the now defunct Ubuntu Certified Professionals course and the largely unsuccessful community efforts around developing classes. Deirdré of Joyent shared some of her experience about the in-house work they’ve done developing and doing training on products on and around their technologies.

The other session of the day that stood out for me was about handling open source communities that operate alongside paid developer teams. I was excited to learn that Citrix is still paying pure open source developers on Xen now that it’s transitioned to a Linux Foundation Collaboration Project (though I mostly use kvm these days, I do still have a soft spot for Xen, and not just because of their awesome mascot). It was also an interesting exercise for me to contrast my experiences with Ubuntu and OpenStack, being on such different spectrums of centralized control (Ubuntu having a major controlling company, OpenStack actively making sure that doesn’t happen). The consensus from many of the attendees tended to be that when managing a mixed community transparency and communication matter the most. Do companies contributing need to worry that a single company will run off with the product? Do individuals contributing feel animosity toward paid developers? Finally, it is always exciting to be in a discussion with other deeply open source people who are all now paid to do the work they love, “open source is no longer that thing you do nights and weekends because you had to – now it’s your job.”

I wasn’t great at at taking photos (I only took a handful), but Benjamin posted over 350 here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bkerensa/sets/72157634723613485/

Now, on to OSCON!

Filed under: events, tech, travel

Video from TMMC Seal Release

Thursday, Jul 18th, 2013 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

I thought I was done writing about the seal release on Saturday but then the Marine Mammal Center posted a video on their blog on Tuesday showing the release that we attended! You can barely see MJ and I in the middle of the crowd around 35 seconds in, but really – look at the awesome, adorable seals going home :)

Filed under: animals

Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter reaches issue 325!

Monday, Jul 15th, 2013 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

Today the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter released issue 325!

325

Over these past couple of months I’m happy to say we’ve gained the help of Paul White who has not only been doing a great job helping collect links throughout the week for the newsletter, but has also come through for us each week to write summaries (even on Sunday afternoon when we need some final ones quickly!). But it wouldn’t be fair to continue making Paul write so much! So I’m reaching out to the community again to see if we can recruit more folks.

Looking for a way to help Ubuntu? Paul writes of his contributions: “Apart from reporting bugs I think it’s probably the way that I can most contribute to Ubuntu.”

So, what’s involved?

Summary writers. Summary writers receive an email every Friday evening (or early Saturday) with a link to the collaborative news links document (currently a Google Doc) for the past week which lists everything that needs summarizing. These people are vitally important to the newsletter. The time commitment is limited and it is easy to get started with from the first weekend you volunteer. No need to be shy about your writing skills, we have style guidelines to help you on your way and all summaries are reviewed before publishing so it’s easy to improve as you go on.

Interested? Email editor.ubuntu.news@ubuntu.com and we’ll get you added to the list of folks who are emailed each week and you can help as you have time.

Finally, congratulations to Tiago Carrondo who has been writing summaries with us for several issues and was granted Ubuntu Membership last month!

Filed under: tech, ubuntu planet

Seal Release Celebration by TMMC

Monday, Jul 15th, 2013 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

On Saturday MJ and I made the 2 hour drive north to Drake’s Beach near Point Reyes to join other Marine Mammal Center guests to watch the release of 5 harbor seals and 3 elephant seals back into the ocean!

We arrived around noon and pick up box lunches to eat at picnic tables near the beach where we got talking with a family who regularly attended releases. Around 12:45 we gathered to hear a few words from the center about the animals being released and some of their upcoming initiatives at the center. From there we all went to the beach to wait for the animals to be brought out in large carriers.

The first five to be released were the harbor seals, Cece, Chocolate Chip, Ripley, Little Bear and Teacup. A couple were clawing at the door to their carriers, eager to be released. Once their carriers were open they all rushed out and joined each other in a clump of seals as they hurried toward the waves. It took several minutes for them to overcome the initial waves coming in at them, but before we knew it we could see their little heads bobbing in the waves.

Then it was time for the elephant seals, Cyrus, Higgins and Norfolk, to be released. They are much larger animals than the harbor seals so their carriers were significantly bigger. They also were a bit more reluctant to head for the sea. Two of them made it together, meeting up with one of the harbor seals in the process, and the third required a bit more convincing from the staff.

The experience was an exciting and a bit of a sad one. We hadn’t personally been involved with these seals, and getting them released into the wild is the best thing for them, but it’s still emotional to watch the little rescued animals disappear into the water, uncertain of what their fate will be. We’ll have to see when other releases are this year, I’d like to attend another if we’ll be in town for it.

More photos from the release are here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pleia2/sets/72157634633455929/

Since we were all the way up there, we decided to make a day of the Point Reyes area. First stop after the seal release was to Point Reyes Lighthouse and the epic walk down the long walk down the stairs to get to the actual building. We waited to go inside the lighthouse where a park guide shared stories with the small crowd and told us about the Fresnel lens. Most amusingly given all the fog, he explained that we had come on one of the clearest days of the year, saying that most days the visibility isn’t more than about 20 feet.

More photos from Point Reyes here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pleia2/sets/72157634637630583/

We spent the evening in the town of Point Reyes Station, about 45 minutes from the lighthouse. We had a few minutes before dinner, so stopped in at the charming little Point Reyes Books where I picked up a couple California-themed books. We then had dinner at Osteria Stellina, a little California Italian restaurant in town and made for an enjoyable wrap up to the day before driving home to San Francisco through the curving back roads of Marin county.

Filed under: animals

Midtown Manhattan

Sunday, Jul 7th, 2013 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

Last Sunday my friend Danita and I walked a total of 10 miles around midtown Manhattan. It wasn’t exactly walking weather, very humid and temperatures topping out in the mid 80s, but it was worth it :)

First up on our list was to grab some bagels for breakfast, and then to use our tickets to the Empire State Building! We splurged for the Fast Pass tickets that took us to both the 86th and 102nd floors. We got there early enough that I initially thought it was a waste, but as we breezed through lines inside I was quickly glad we had. We had just one day in the city, I didn’t want to spend it waiting in line!

It was a bit foggy, but the views of the city were still awesome. I’m also a total sucker for Manhattan’s Art Deco buildings, of which the Empire State Building exemplifies so that was quite a treat.

A walk down 5th Avenue was next. Being me, I seem to have given myself the toy tour of 5th Avenue. We went to the biggest Build A Bear workshop in the world, the LEGO store at Rockefeller Center and of course, the epic FAO Schwarz.

Perhaps most exciting toy-wise was something I couldn’t bring home. The New York Public Library had a free exhibit on books for children, the star of which for me is the original Winnie the Pooh toys! Wow! The rest of the exhibit was great too, lots of interesting information about the evolution of books for youth and other artifacts from the history of the literature.

Around 3PM we headed over to Times Square to get some tickets to a Broadway show. I’d never been to one, so we went with a classic: Phantom of the Opera.

Tickets in hand, we hopped on the subway north to Central Park to visit the Central Park Zoo. It’s a small zoo and on such a hot day the snow leopard and polar bears were no where to be seen, but we did get to see a pair of lively red pandas, a bunch of penguins, lemurs and sea lions.

More photos from Central Park Zoo here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pleia2/sets/72157634442977251/

By the time we finished up at the zoo and a bit more browsing on 5th Avenue it was time to head to the theater.

As much as I love musicals, I can count the number I’ve seen live on one hand. This show immediately made it to the top of my short favorites list. Beautiful costumes and effects, great music (most of which I knew) and the whole atmosphere made for an experience you could full get lost in. I’m planning to start seeing more shows here in San Francisco.

We wrapped up the evening after the show with dinner at Jekyll and Hyde Club right near the theater. The whole place is total kitsch, filled with 19th century death, science and surgical gear themed items. Cast for the restaurant goes around to tables as various characters interacting with the guests. The food was nothing to write home about, but I ate up the dorky tourist experience.

After dinner we made our way through Times Square to the subway to get back to the hotel. It was after midnight but the lights of Times Square made it look like day time out, totally surreal. And even at that time the streets were packed with people and many of the stores still open.

More photos from our day here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pleia2/sets/72157634449027980/

On Sunday morning we parted ways and by noon it was time to leave Manhattan behind and I was on my way back to San Francisco.

Filed under: travel

Lower Manhattan

Thursday, Jul 4th, 2013 by pleia2 | 1 Comments

I grew up in a small tourist town in Maine. By default, I was pretty much afraid and apprehensive about the noise and chaos of cities. That began to change in 2009 when I started making more frequent trips to downtown Philadelphia and has evolved into loving cities since moving to San Francisco. There is always so much to do and see, and I absolutely love being able to walk everywhere, particularly in San Francisco where the weather is pleasant all year around.

Last week marked my second trip to Manhattan since I had discovered this love of cities (my first, in 2009, was a short day trip). Given my past apprehension, it’s not surprising that I’d only been to the city a handful of times in my life. My first trips were as a child with my grandparents to visit the American Museum of Natural History where I first saw dinosaurs, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and to the top of the World Trade Center. As an adult my only other visit had been to go to The Last HOPE conference, in 2008.

I was pretty excited on this work trip to carve out some tourist time in Manhattan, which began Friday night after the bootcamp as I walked south into the heart of lower Manhattan, following the spire of the new One World Trade Center. I hadn’t actually been to lower Manhattan since that trip to the WTC as a youth, never saw ground zero, so I figured it was time. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I was fortunate enough to get one of the by-donation passes at the 9/11 Memorial and walk in without too much of a line.

The memorial is a beautiful park and while previously unconvinced, I was really impressed with how stunning the reflecting pools are. I was also surprised by my own emotions. I was working at a convenience store in upstate New York when 9/11 happened, for my entire shift that day there was an outpouring of love, horror and solidarity that I’d never seen in my neighbors before. People scrambled to contact loved ones in the city and emergency and medical professionals all over town geared up to drive down to help in any way they could. The memory of all that emotion came back to me as I looked across those pools. Powerful, sad stuff.

I left the memorial and considered heading back to my hotel before I found myself in front of a street side tourist map and learned that the New York Stock Exchange was just a short walk away, I’d never seen it before!

After 5PM on a Friday Wall Street is pretty dead, so I got to take a bunch of pictures of the classic building.

Then I went in search of the Charging Bull sculpture and was delighted to see him too!

By this time it was getting to be around 7PM so I began walking back to my hotel. On the way back I walked through City Hall Park where lots of squirrels live, and got a glimpse of New York City Hall. Then walked past the New York County Courthouse and other older municipal buildings.

Back at the hotel I met up with my friend Danita who had driven up from Philadelphia to spend the weekend in the city with me. We ended up having dinner in a random Italian restaurant in Little Italy, just a short walk from our hotel. I wrapped up my meal with a delicious cannoli!

More photos from lower Manhattan here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pleia2/sets/72157634433427073/

Next up – our Saturday adventures in midtown!

Filed under: travel

OpenStack Infrastructure Bootcamp in NYC

Sunday, Jun 30th, 2013 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

On Wednesday of last week I hopped on a flight to New York City for a meeting with several of my OpenStack Infrastructure colleagues and potential contributors for the first “Infrastructure Bootcamp” ever held! Thursday morning the bootcamp began with a quick overview of expectations and topics we wished to cover and then we went around the room for introductions. Of the 20 folks present, we had a very diverse crowd representing several companies (including HP, Dell, IBM, DreamHost, Red Hat, Citrix and VMware), development and operations backgrounds and various interests for learning more about the infrastructure that keeps OpenStack development going. Next time we’ll have to be sure we have materials to make name tags.

After introductions, we got to what was dubbed “habits of successful infra-core members” where we dove into the communication workflow we use in the project. Of most stress was how important IRC (and our channel #openstack-infra on Freenode) is to our workflow and that many of us maintain persistent connection to it. The team has a mailing list but as a team culture all the core folks are used to using IRC for discussing and working through almost everything, reserving our mailing list primarily for announcements. The team also has meetings in #openstack-meeting every Tuesday at 17:00 (details here).

Next up on the agenda was a shift into some of the practical philosophies that govern the technical decisions made in the project. One of the things that really drew me to this team was the realization that in addition to being the team that makes the OpenStack’s development infrastructure tick, the infrastructure is an Open Source project unto itself. Configuration of our infrastructure is publicly available and goes through the code review process just like other projects in OpenStack. We strive to use tools which are Open Source and self-hosted, when it’s not we’re actively seeking alternatives (see, the irony of saying this after using a GitHub link was not lost on me, I’m working on that one). All the tools we create to work on the infrastructure are open sourced, both Zuul and Jenkins Job Builder were developed for our project but are also used by other projects.

Since we do have such an open infrastructure with code review, it has really allowed us to encourage autonomy for new contributors and foster a “just do it” attitude when it comes to contributing. Everyone should feel free to browse our bug list (or find an issue to fix themselves) and submit patches for review.

We then spent time doing an overview walkthrough of our infrastructure, starting with Sean Dague’s familiar diagram from the Gerrit Workflow wiki.

The afternoon was spent on a shift to actually walking everyone through a more detailed overview as the current core infrastructure team (Monty Taylor, Jim Blair, Clark Boyland, and Jeremy Stanley) and various other committers worked together to write and explain as much as they could about the infrastructure on a pair of white paper boards. It quickly became apparent why we all needed to come together at a bootcamp to do this – it’s not simple!

The result by the end of the day:

We had one volunteer to actually put this together as a more formal SVG, which would be an significant improvement over the much more limited one I wrote for the InfraTeam wiki. I’m looking forward to seeing that.

The evening was spent with a majority of attendees by going to an outstanding dinner at PUBLIC Restaurant where Monty had arranged a private room for us.

Sean Dague, who could only join us for the first day, also wrote about the day here: OpenStack Infrastructure Bootcamp

Friday morning began with another pile of bagels, cream cheese and lox (my favorite!) as we took to diving into the specifics of many of the services we had discussed in the overview the previous day. The first stop of the day was to look at the recently reformatted Infrastructure Documentation at ci.openstack.org.

From there we talked about the public configuration of our infrastructure and then there was a demonstration of how we go about making and testing our puppet patches, documented here. Jim selected our paste service puppet packages for a demonstration and ended up finding a couple bugs which he was able to submit a patch for which made for a really great demonstration of testing.

The next major infrastructure piece we looked at was Zuul, our pipeline-oriented project gating system which “facilitates running tests and automated tasks in response to Gerrit events.” In this demonstration it was discussed how to go about testing Zuul itself when developing for it (which I hope to see documented in a simple way soon) as well as providing a deeper look at how Zuul is configured and why certain pieces work the way they do in the various pipelines it manages.

Going through these two topics caused us to touch upon most of the more complicate pieces of the infrastructure and so the rest of the day was spent going through more minor portions and answering questions. We were able to review the IRC-based services we maintain (docs), discuss Jenkins Job Builder (docs), show where we track bugs (here) and how we typically manage them.

More photos from the event here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pleia2/sets/72157634407480547/

In all it was a really great event and it was nice to be a part of it. I was able to fill in some gaps in my own knowledge about the infrastructure (particularly when it comes to pieces like Zuul which I haven’t really dug into yet). The loose event structure that included meals delivered and breaks allowed me to sit down and share what I know with other attendees as the topics arose. The food for the event was quite accommodating (I don’t eat pork and at least one attendee was a vegetarian) and the Manhattan venues for each day gave us really great spaces to work in that were easy to get to. Huge props to Monty for putting this together!

Filed under: openstack, tech, travel

Ubuntu tie clips or tie pins?

Wednesday, Jun 26th, 2013 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

Over the past couple of years Boutique Academia has made a name for themselves in the Ubuntu community by selling Ubuntu Earrings and Ubuntu Necklaces.

I recently received an email from the company founder, Maile Urbancic, about the possibility of adding more to their lineup in the form of tie clips and during the discussion the alternate idea of tie pins came up.

This is where you come in, would you be interested in purchasing an Ubuntu tie clip? How about an Ubuntu tie pin?

I’ve created a Google form to collect responses and comments: Vote now!

tie clip
Imagine an Ubuntu logo!

I plan on closing this poll on July 10th and sending the results off to Maile.

Filed under: partimus, tech, ubuntu planet

Tea, to do lists and books

Sunday, Jun 23rd, 2013 by pleia2 | 5 Comments

We have had a lot of stuff to work on at home lately. The most fun has been integrating our new wedding gifts into our small kitchen, which is somewhat challenging but I’m really happy to finally own a nice set of knives and pots. I’ve also been using the bread maker almost weekly to make dough for challah, which I think I’ve mastered the art of three strand braiding for (hooray!).

We also received a tea pot, which inspired me to finally give loose leaf tea a try. I wasn’t sure how it would go, since making tea is more work than making coffee (never underestimate the amount of laziness I have early in the morning) and in general my past attempts at teabag tea have ended with switching back to coffee. It turns out that the loose leaf stuff is a different beast entirely! After trying several that it tastes much better than teabag tea and you can totally geek out when researching, selecting and buying the stuff. Fun all around. I now have a counter full of 7 types with varying degrees of caffeine.

Our Ketubah has been framed and is now hanging in our den/my office. I’m really pleased with the framing job by Chandler Fine Art & Framing, they took time to work with us on frame selection and composition and it looks beautiful on the wall.

I recently came to the conclusion that we need another filing cabinet to rein in our mail situation (most of it currently lives in boxes rather than being properly filed, sigh). Unfortunately a prerequisite to getting another filing cabinet is finding a place for it, which means cleaning up our storage units. This is a massive undertaking, and after a couple overwhelming attempts last year that ended in surrender, I’ve decided to change my approach. Instead of tackling the entire project all at once, I’m devoting 3-4 hours a week on it, no more than 1 hour per day. Each day I’ve taken time to assess and work on one specific part of cleaning it up (find all file boxes, put all collapsed boxes in one place, find all my book boxes, take all CRTs to recycling center). This week I did this for 4 days and while it still looks like chaos, I have made progress and can take satisfaction from the specific parts I’ve been able to tackle.

Speaking of tasks, I realized the other day that I’ve now been using Taskwarrior for over 2 years, having started on June 6th of 2011. It’s command-line based and so far the only todo list tool I’ve managed to use for more than 3 months. Unfortunately I also came to the realization that as my todo list approached 50 tasks again, I had some on there that were over 2 years old. Psychologically this was really bad for me, life may actually contain a never-ending todo list, but using this tool is a way of managing specific tasks I am consciously making time for, not tracking the unattainable goal of everything-I-ever-want todo. I wanted to change this, since the really old stuff would realistically never come off the list until I turned them into serious action items – either by making progress or sending apologies and letting them go. So, much like my storage unit cleaning, I decided to take one really old task per day and do a serious assessment of it. I have more to do, but my list is down to 22 items and most have been chopped into manageable tasks.

But it has not all been todo lists and home stuff! I’ve started taking time to read more. This started on my honeymoon where I spent days just relaxing on the beach with a book and remembered the regenerative powers of such relaxing. I really didn’t want to let that go upon returning home. I just finished up Close to the Machine: Technophilia and Its Discontents by Ellen Ullman, whose style took some getting used to, but which I thought was really fun. I also read Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg, which I got at the Women of OpenStack breakfast at the OpenStack summit. This one has taken some processing and it’s not for everyone, but it certainly is targeted at professionals like myself who want to have a family and intend on continuing to pursue their career. I first heard about her ideas via her TED talk and it struck a chord for me (particularly about leaving before you leave), so the book itself had a lot of valuable advice and interesting commentary that I’ve missed in other arenas. I’m so glad people are talking about this stuff. I’m about halfway through Frankenstein’s Cat: Cuddling Up to Biotech’s Brave New Beasts by Emily Anthes, which is a fascinating book, but I can’t help pondering at every turn “oooh, that would be cool!” – not surprising since I do admit that I owned some GloFish several years ago. Next up in my pile (which is a pile, not everything is on my Nook) is a collection of essays from geeky women called She’s Such a Geek: Women Write About Science, Technology, and Other Nerdy Stuff, edited by Annalee Newitz and Charlie Anders. Looking forward to drawing some inspiration from these stories.

Today we’ve been working through some more home stuff and errands. We also have some flights to book and post-wedding things to get to. On Wednesday I fly out to New York City for the OpenStack Infrastructure Bootcamp, and I’ll be staying the weekend to hang out with my friend Danita who is coming up from Philly.

Filed under: books, life

My past month of warriors, bread and a baby giraffe

Wednesday, Jun 12th, 2013 by pleia2 | 6 Comments

Since returning from the honeymoon a month ago our lives have continued to be very busy, catching up with work and projects while we were gone and catching up with all other life stuff we postponed while we were preparing for the wedding.

Because we have been so overwhelmed, I gave Instacart a try and had some groceries delivered from Safeway and Whole Foods. It went well and the couple hours it saved was a huge relief. Not sure if I’ll stick with them or try other grocery delivery services, but it’s great to know that it’s available when we simply don’t have the time on weekends to get the major shopping trips completed.

About a week after returning home, I met up with Grant Bowman and Christian Einfeldt for a Partimus board meeting. It was great to be able to catch up with everything and make some small, concrete plans for moving forward that took into account our busy schedules. I was also able to work with James Howard on a blog post for the Partimus blog about some work they were doing while MJ and I were getting married on April 28th: CACS laptop install day wrap-up

With the release of Ubuntu 13.04, I participated in Ubuntu Open Week with a session on the Ubuntu Women Project. I also was able to work with the Xubuntu docs folks to upload the 13.04 version of our documentation to docs.xubuntu.org/1304/ and install a new splash page at docs.xubuntu.org itself where we will keep all of the documentation for current stable releases. I don’t have much to do with Debian these days, but the release of Debian 7.0 while we were gone got me to upgrade most of my servers a couple weeks ago and it went pretty smoothly. I’ve also been working with the Canonical community team to launch community.ubuntu.com a couple weeks ago, which meant lots of content review and scouring for images to include on the site.

Over Memorial Day Weekend we had a lot of errands to catch up on, one of which was finally purchasing a proper bedroom set. We’ve been casually looking for quite some time and ended up coming back to one we saw at a furniture store in Berkeley a couple years ago. Unfortunately the delivery date is 8-12 weeks out for the set with the combination we ordered, so we’ll be waiting some time. On Memorial Day itself we managed to get over to the Asian Art Museum for the last day of their amazing Terracotta Warriors exhibit.

More photos from the exhibit here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pleia2/sets/72157633750560814/

The week wrapped up with a bread experiment! One of our wedding guests bought us a bread maker, which I’ve so far used to make some white bread and then experimented with making challah fully in the bread machine, which of course makes it come out as a square rather than a traditional braided loaf. So that Friday evening I decided to try making the proper loaf. I used this recipe to start it out in the bread maker (so it would do all the kneading and rising work) and then took it out and braided it. Braiding wasn’t actually as difficult as I had feared, and I had a nice braided loaf to put in the oven:

I think I somehow didn’t let it rise enough, so it rose a lot in the oven and caused some unevenness with how it looked with the egg coating, but it came out tasting and looking pretty much like proper challah, if a bit on the thick side. I’ll give it another try this Friday.

The next day I went to the San Francisco Zoo to visit their newest arrival, a baby giraffe!

She was huge! 5’10” at birth and weighing 130 lbs, these animals are formidable creatures from birth. I was delighted to have the opportunity to not only see her when she was just a little over a week old, but also catch a few minutes of her nursing.

While I was at the zoo I also got to visit the other baby at the zoo – their tiger Jillian! I’ve been to see her a couple of times already, but this was my first time seeing her out in the yard. Got some super-zoomed photos of her snuggling mom, and then a few more of her playing in the yard.

More zoo photos here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pleia2/sets/72157633882815260/

Other miscellaneous things: Went to a BerkeleyLUG meeting recently while we happened to be in the area and needed some lunch (hooray pizza!). After months of not going to the theater, saw Star Trek Into Darkness and The Great Gatsby within a week of each other (still need to see Iron Man 3!). Went to a “State of the Stack” OpenStack meetup where I got to meet Randy Bias, but didn’t talk to anyone else because I’m too shy (d’oh). I have been meeting folks for dinner more recently, as much as I don’t like to believe it, getting out of the house after work really helps break up my day and leads to more productivity in the later evening. Tonight I spent the evening at an Ubuntu Hour and Debian Dinner.

Finally, I’ve sorted out much of my travel schedule for the next few months. In a couple weeks I’m flying to New York City for the OpenStack CI/Infra Bootcamp with my colleagues. At the end of July MJ and I are heading to Boston for a wedding. And finally in early August we’ll be going to Philadelphia where I’ll be speaking at FOSSCON on Open Source Systems Administration, specifically looking at how we do it in the OpenStack project.

Filed under: animals, food, life
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