I have been exceptionally busy lately. I have a lot going on with work, some exciting but loosely scheduled plans for travel are upcoming in October, today I learned that I’ll be going to the Ubuntu Developer Summit in Copenhagen October 29th – Nov 1st, and we have personal things like wedding planning and some family things going on. It’s certainly easier to manage my large load of open source projects when I don’t have all this going on! It’s probably due to all of this that I haven’t been sleeping all that well, but I’m happy to report that while under this much pressure it’s been easy to stick to my diet, I just eat what I’ve planned to eat and get back to work.
Tuesday the 21st I attended a BALUG meeting and in spite of lacking a topic, it ended up being a great networking opportunity. Thursday of that week I headed down to Mountain View for an Ubuntu Hour. It’s always a pleasure to meet up with the folks who attend that one, even if it’s sometimes a small group. After the Ubuntu Hour I met up with MJ and some of his coworkers for dinner.
On the Xubuntu side we’ve been quite busy. Recently the 12.04.1 release of Xubuntu came out with some bug fixes. We’ve also been feverishly working on rewriting the offline documentation, Pasi Lallinaho writes about it here Working on the Xubuntu documentation rewrite. The wiki I’m maintaining for it has been fun to maintain given the number of spammers making accounts, so I’ll be shutting it down once the writing is complete (or at least, shutting down new accounts!). We also released the new Xubuntu Strategy Document, after months of review by project members. I used to think strategy documents were a bit too wordy and legal-sounding to actually be useful, but I’ve since adjusted my opinion. Decisions we make in the project often have to be made with a greater purpose in mind, and by having a formal strategy document we can make sure that we’re at least starting with the same goals and vision in mind, even if there are still disagreements about specific decisions.
While working on some of this Xubuntu stuff, I’ve been able to enjoy new deck furniture recently installed on the roof in the building we live in. I’ve always enjoyed going up there, but now there are some taller (and more comfortable!) chairs and tables that actually allow you to enjoy the view while you work. It’s made for a great change of scenery.
A couple weekends ago MJ and I were out and decided to get some brunch and then head over to the zoo to visit their new bobcat and give ourselves a much needed pause to our busy lives lately. I also got to have my picture taken with a monkey statue.
Speaking of animals, California Academy of Sciences is hosting a Penguins+Pajamas for Grownups event on September 21st. I don’t want to go alone, so if any friends are willing to sleep on the floor of a musuem for a night (think of it as a call back to your days in scouts!) let me know. Sadly I probably won’t end up going unless I can find a friend or two to go along (guilt trip applied, check!).
My friend David from Philly was in town recently for work and we were able to meet up at Noisebridge’s Linux night to hang out and then have a very burrito dinner over at Pancho Villa in the Mission. It was a good evening and nicely broke up all the work-hard-and-late evenings I’ve been having lately.
This past weekend MJ and I took an unexpected trip to Philly to take care of some family business. The trip started off with a redeye flight across the country Friday night which we had to stay awake after to get things done on Saturday. Appointments and things caused the whole weekend to be quite rushed and exhausting and it all flew by, before I knew it we were back at the airport!
Our trip wrapped up with an unexpected night in Phoenix, our flight was delayed out of Phildelphia so we missed our connection. Fortunately for our tight weekend schedule, it was the best time for any kind of logistical problem, had the delay been on the way out the disruption of Saturday’s plans would have been very bad for our trip. Our bags were waiting for us at the San Francisco airport when we arrived this morning and I was able to hop on BART to head home while MJ took a car down to work.
I did notice this trip that my Dell Mini9 really is beginning to show its age. At 1.6ghz with a gig of RAM it wasn’t exactly a powerhorse when I got it almost 4 years ago, and while the hardware has largely held up (well, the speakers no longer work), even the extended battery isn’t getting me more than 2 hours anymore and the speed overall doesn’t allow for watching of flash videos reasonably. I was able to catch up on a Coursera video I hadn’t watched yet, but the sound and video ended up so out of sync that I had to reset it often to see slides matching up. I’m now pondering whether I should spend $30 to upgrade to 2G of RAM or start looking into other similarly-sized devices to replace it, like one of the 11″ Lenovos.
Finally, I was approached by Amber Graner last month to be interviewed in Ubuntu User’s 14th issue, the digital copy of the article has now been released, available here: Ubuntu User Magazine: Interview with Elizabeth Krumbach
Now I need to find something to do so I am not tempted to go to bed right now.
