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Tourist in the other Portland (Oregon)

Monday, Jul 23rd, 2012 by pleia2 | 1 Comments

After OSCON wrapped up on Friday I took the opportunity of a free afternoon to play the tourist in Portland. It occurred to me as I booked this trip that I managed to visit both Portlands this month, this one had less lobster though. And I will take this opportunity to say that I was really impressed with Portland’s (Metropolitan Area Express) Light Rail service. I had planned on taking a taxi as needed, but the light rail ended up being quite sufficient for everywhere I needed to go, from getting downtown from the airport for a reasonable fee ($2.40) to getting to the conference each day (which was free!).

My first stop after getting back to the hotel was Voodoo Doughnut, which I’d heard all about from friends who had visited Portland.

I waited in line for about a half hour to get my precious few doughnuts, but it was worth it for the adventure and the delicious treats that result (like this guy). Writing about it now makes me want more.

I dropped off the box at my hotel and then went off to the next destination on my list, Powell’s Books. I didn’t actually know about this place until I came to Portland, and then was delighted to learn that their massive bookstore was just a couple blocks from my hotel. The bookstore was wonderful. I ended up with several books from their main store, and then went across the street to Powell Books 2 (formerly Powell’s Technical books) to enjoy a paradise of Science, Computer and Engineering books, including a whole section for trains (which includes street cars and cable cars!), I thought I would never leave, but I did… with some books about trains, street cars and cable cars.

Dinner was some slices from Sizzle Pie (conveniently located near the hotel).

The next day I met up with my friend B.J. Brown. I met B.J. online via a Mystery Science Theater 3000 IRC chat we both belonged to, so we’ve probably known each other for over 10 years, this was the first time we had the opportunity to meet in person.

Our first stop was a Rogue Ale House. There is also one in San Francisco, but this is a Rogue in Oregon, where Rogue was born! We both ordered a sampler to go along with our lunch, I predictably went very hoppy with the exception of the Dead Guy Ale, which is a long time favorite.

After lunch we hopped on the MAX and headed out to the Oregon Zoo.

I didn’t know much about the zoo when I arrived, but it turned out to be one of the better ones I’ve been to. The layout was quite natural and I really loved their whole “Great Northwest” section.

The weather was nice, but the temperature crept up as the afternoon wore on and I think a lot of the animals ended up hiding. No lions or tigers to be seen! They were also closing early for an event, so I only got a quick look at one of their elephants and we had to skip the zoo train, a 35 minute trip around the zoo and surrounding park. I was very happy that B.J. was willing to put up with my zoo dorkiness, we ended up having a great time.

We wrapped up at the zoo and headed back downtown to meet up with another friend I’ve known online for many years, Chris LaPlante. Unfortunately by the time we met up it was getting late and we only really had time for him to drive me to the airport. Even so, we had a good half hour to talk and that was fun.

More photos from my trip are here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pleia2/sets/72157630699644634/

And that ended my short Portland trip! I hope to go back at some point, it’s a nice city and there is more downtown to check out, plus OSCON will be there again and I would like to attend again in the future, perhaps for a whole week next time.

Filed under: animals, beer, travel

Thursday and Friday at OSCON 2012

Monday, Jul 23rd, 2012 by pleia2 | 1 Comments

Although I’ve always wanted to go, I hadn’t actually planned on attending OSCON this year due to several factors (work, budget, etc). That changed when I received the email about winning the Open Source Award on July 9th, I was able to quickly schedule a couple days off of work to attend the last two days of the conference and accept the award. I arrived at the conference center on Thursday morning.

Thursday morning started off with a keynote by our very own Mark Shuttleworth, who spoke about and demoed juju, went into his long term vision for Unity on the desktop and beyond and introduced the new Ubuntu Web Apps (discussed here on the Canonical blog).

The second keynote, Open Source: A Recipe For Success by John Mone is also worth mentioning. He discussed ways in which open source is changing small business, making it significantly easier and cheaper to start your own website for your business, and shared the following stats for “Startup Costs” for a small company online:

2000:

  • 50mb Hosting Account $20/mo.
  • Shopping Cart $1,000
  • SQL Server License $1,800
  • Email Accounts $1,500

2012:

  • Bluehost Hosting Account ~$5/mo.
  • Open source tools Free
  • One-click installation Free

“Today, users get all the solutions they need and reliable web hosting for the cost of a latte per month.”

I certainly know some of the benefits of open source for SMBs, as my day job almost exclusively is tied to doing open source deployments for SMBs, but I hadn’t recently stopped to not only compare current open source vs. proprietary solutions, but also to consider that 12 years ago there simply weren’t open source solutions for the most common things a little online start-up may need. I highly recommend checking out the slides (linked above) for some other interesting stats he presented, and the results are also covered in this eWeek article.

After the keynotes wrapped up, it was off to the first talks of the day! I selected Girl Developers will Save the World! presented by Cheryl Miller of greenlight for girls. I hadn’t heard of the program before, and it was exciting to learn that they were doing an event for girls there at OSCON. Miller’s talk covered hopes for getting more girls involved at a young age and the importance of starting while they’re young. She also explored some of the reasons for low representation of women in STEM and potential solutions (including controversial ones like government-mandated quotas). I think what struck me most about this session was that it was overwhelmingly attended by females, most of the audience members who spoke up were male, offering a textbook case of what tends to happen in mixed gender environments when technology is the subject, and why it’s important to have some girls-only events.

The next session I attended was US Government v. Open Source: A History and Lessons Learned by Karl Fogel and Gunnar Hellekson. Their presentation centered around the timeline being compiled at gov-oss.org and discussed some of the major points for Open Source in the US Government, both in terms of releasing it and using it. What’s most notable is that the federal government actually does use a large amount of OSS, and has for many years at the urging of several key technologists within the government.

Next up was When Cloud Networking meets Cloud Computing: Software-Defined Networking (SDN) by Mike Cohen and Faan DeSwardt. The talk really focused on the OpenFlow technology, and DeSwardt described a real world case in which the high availability of services (including CPU and RAM management) and storage had been solved, but network woes were becoming the new blocker for cloud scaling. I then went to the overflowing Development is Production Too talk by John Goulah and Erik Kastner where they examined some best practices for deploying and running development environments. They discussed deployment of development infrastructures and tools to developers, benefits and drawbacks of shared development environments, importance of reusing of as much configuration management infrastructure from production as possible and some of the strategies for what data should be used when testing (snapshot of production data shared on the development network? subset of data referenced locally?). I then attended Allison Randal’s Ubuntu Home Hacks talk. It was another packed room and a lot of fun! She showed off the Arduino devices and software tools she used for home automation and monitoring of things like indoor temperature and outside weather, much of it linked here. The last talk I attended was Frequently Asked and Infrequently Answered Questions About Software Patents with Mishi Choudhary, Deb Nicholson and Justin Colannino. Much of what was discussed I was already familiar with, but I didn’t know much about Defensive Publications prior to this talk, or that there were organizations out there that would help Open Source projects file them.

In addition to talks, I also got to check out the expo hall. I talked to the Linbit folks about new features in DRBD, including some of their replication scaling plans (cool!) and I got myself a nice DRBD t-shirt. I was also able to say hello to the Linode folks, and swung by the Linux New Media booth and they were kind enough to give me a copy of the latest Ubuntu User Magazine when I showed them I was in it:

Presenting updates about Xubuntu at UDS! Thanks again to Benjamin Kerensa for submitting that photo along with his article.

Friday was the last day of the conference, there were some amusing keynotes, including one by Chris DiBona of Google on M-Lab where he shared some statistics about internet speeds gathered from the project and encouraged attendees to get involved. The first talk I attended was Bringing the Open Source to the Enterprise! An incomplete story by Mohamed Elmallah where he discussed his experiences promoting and deploying Open Source solutions in companies he’s worked for, including challenges he’s faced with maturity of projects, quality of support, polish/prettiness of the applications and how they’ve compared to their proprietary counterparts. He wrapped up by saying that they would often go with “open enough” solutions when full Open Source wouldn’t do, like proprietary solutions that offered extensive APIs, and would often end up with a blend of proprietary and Open Source solutions. I then went to Running a high performance LAMP stack on a $20 Virtual server by Jay Janssen. His tips included using something like Lighttpd to serve static content (just passing non-static to Apache), using a caching server like Varnish or caching service like CloudFlare. He also went into some ways you could tune Apache’s worker settings when using mod_php, and ways to avoid using mod_php and tune MySQL for better performance. It is interesting to note that all of his solutions included using Apache rather than switching entirely to another webserver. The last talk of the day I could only attend part of, but I chose to go with How To Multiply Your Community By A Factor Of X with Brian King and Benjamin Kerensa. The portion of the session I was able to attend really focused on the basics of the Mozilla Reps program and some of the challenges they’ve faced.

It was then off to the keynote room so I could meet up with the folks organizing the Open Source Award presentation. It was a pleasure to meet the organizers and my fellow award winners during the time we had before the presentation and they gave us a quick rundown of how the presentation would work.

The video of the Open Source Awards is now up on youtube here: OSCON 2012: O’Reilly Open Source Awards.

Since the award is a lightbulb and I had to fly home, they offered to have it shipped to me and I took them up on the offer upon realizing how impossible it would be to check it and the risk I’d be taking if I tried to carry it on (they aren’t explicitly prohibited in carry on luggage, but the TSA has flexibility when it comes to determining what they feel may be dangerous).

With OSCON wrapped up, I headed back to my hotel for some touristing around Portland, but that’s for another post!

Filed under: events, tech, ubuntu planet

O’Reilly Open Source Award

Friday, Jul 20th, 2012 by pleia2 | 13 Comments

This afternoon I had the incredible honor of accepting an O’Reilly Open Source Award at OSCON for my work in the Ubuntu community.

It’s been an exciting day and thanks to all my supportive friends at OSCON who were there with hugs and handshakes, it was an unforgettable experience.

Now I would like to extend a heartfelt thank you to the Ubuntu community for being a community that I’ve wanted to spend all this time with. Through my work in the Ubuntu community I have not only found exceptional colleagues, but a support network that I have come to rely upon both personally and professionally and I wouldn’t be where I am today without it.

Without hesitation, I can say “I am what I am because of who we all are.”

Thank you everyone!

And congratulations to the others who also accepted an O’Reilly Open Source award today, Bradley Kuhn, Christie Koehler, Jim Jagielski and Massimo Banzi!

Award announcement details, along with blurbs about our work here: O’Reilly Open Source Awards 2012. Also, the folks at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories wrote a cool blog post about how they created the awards with one of their Eggbot kits. They were also gracious enough to gift us with Eggbots of our own, I’m excited to go home and build mine!

Filed under: events, tech, ubuntu planet

Santa Cruz and this week

Sunday, Jul 15th, 2012 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

I mentioned in my last post that following Felton LUG I went with Bob Lewis (and Peter Belew) over to Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park. It’s a beautiful park, that I later learned is much larger than the part week walked, with a number of trails and even a campground.

We ended up doing a pretty simple loop trail where I got to see a number of huge redwoods, and even one you could stand up inside, and enjoy the fresh forest air. Throughout the walk Bob and Peter shared tech stories from work Bell Labs and SCO to recent successes with converting users to Ubuntu.

After the trail, it was over to the railroad inside the park, Roaring Camp Railroads. It features a pair of trains, a narrow-gauge steam train (pictured below) that goes up the mountain and a diesel train that takes people to the boardwalk in Santa Cruz. It was pretty tempting to take the diesel train and tell MJ to take the car and meet me in Santa Cruz!

After these forest adventures, MJ and I left Felton to spend the evening in Santa Cruz. The last time we were in Santa Cruz was on our way to Monterey Bay back in November, when we stopped downtown for a quick lunch. I’d never actually been to the boardwalk, so we took full advantage of being down there to finally visit it.

It was quite the touristy boardwalk, but in all the best ways. I was impressed with how clean it was kept (there was boardwalk staff cleaning up constantly, including in the public rest rooms). We ended up at the nearby Casablanca Inn and Bistro for dinner, where, along with some delicious burgers, they had a great raw sea bass appetizer special.

After dinner, it was time for some boardwalk fun. We took the Sky Glider which gives you an overhead view of the whole boardwalk. It was then on to the Ferris wheel.

While we were there, I knew I had to ride on their big, old wooden roller coaster, the Giant Dipper. I’d never actually ridden a roller coaster on a boardwalk before, and this one was no disappointment. I’ve also grown in my appreciation of old wooden coasters since I learned that the relatively recent get-sick-when-riding-coasters affliction only applies to ones that go upside down (so, none of the wooden ones).

After the coaster we found some dessert (I went with a chocolate-covered banana, which was actually one of the healthier options) and took a walk on the beach. We left Santa Cruz around 9:30PM.

More photos from the day are here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pleia2/sets/72157630589008812/

Today my plans have been much less exciting, but much more productive. Spent the morning on email, some Xubuntu and UWN work, and then spent some time on the roof deck catching up on a couple magazines. This evening we have a very long list of things we need to do, including grocery shopping. I also need to unpack from our Maine trip and start getting my things together for another trip… to Portland, Oregon. Based on some recent news (I’ll elaborate when I return) I decided to go up to OSCON to attend the conference on Thursday and Friday. The flight is booked, leaving Wednesday evening, but I still need to find a hotel room (all the conference-rate hotels are booked!). I am staying through Saturday evening so I have the opportunity to also meet up with a couple friends from Portland who I’ve known online for quite some time. Should be an interesting trip, and my first opportunity to attend part of OSCON!

Filed under: life

Xubuntu Presentation at FeltonLUG

Sunday, Jul 15th, 2012 by pleia2 | 4 Comments

Yesterday afternoon MJ and I headed south to Felton LUG so I could give a presentation with the ambitious title of “Everything you ever wanted to know about Xubuntu” for the group.

The group was incredibly welcoming and engaged during my presentation, asking interesting questions throughout. At the end I was able to give a demo of the Xubuntu 12.10 daily build from the 13th so I could show off some of the new features of Xfce 4.10.

Slides: PDF, ODP
Slide template: http://spreadubuntu.org/en/material/presentation/xubuntu-presentation

Thanks again to Bob Lewis for inviting me to speak and afterwords taking me out to visit nearby Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park where I got to see some huge trees and Roaring Camp Railroads (I’ll have to go back some time to actually ride the trains!).

Filed under: events, LoCo, LUG, tech, ubuntu planet, xubuntu

My friends at FOSSCON 2012

Tuesday, Jul 10th, 2012 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

Last summer MJ and I flew to Philadelphia in the middle of the biggest heat wave of the year so I could give the keynote at FOSSCON, I wrote about it here. Unfortunately the timing didn’t sync up well for us this year and I won’t be able to make the trip back to attend.

But it is happening! They are hosting it at the Venturef0rth facility in Central Philadelphia, on August 11th. Basic admission is free with registration, but I’d strongly recommend the paid adminssion of $25 which helps keep FOSSCON running (and will also include a special gift).

This year they have a new feature: Air conditioning. I have to admit, there was a memorable and bonding-through-adversity vibe from the last FOSSCON happening when it was over 100F degrees outside, and inside, but air conditioning would have been very nice. This year they’ll also have a keynote by Bradley M. Kuhn, Executive Director of the Software Freedom Conservancy, who will be speaking on “Promoting Software Freedom Development via Non-Profits.” O’Reilly has also pitched in to donate books to give away at the conference.

From the announcement, FOSSCON will also include…

six general-interest talks, dozens of smaller talks, and workshops on topics including development, community building, hackerspace activities, and more. Learn about 3D printing, security, and protecting your privacy. Network with the local tech community and discover new technologies. The Ubuntu PA group will also be hosting an Ubuntu Village, with experts ready to help you dive into an Ubuntu install and troubleshoot issues. Fosscon is also searching for speakers, sponsors, and exhibitors for this year’s event.

Full details available here.

Hopefully I’ll be able to make it out again next year!

Filed under: events, tech, ubuntu planet

The rest of our Maine trip

Tuesday, Jul 10th, 2012 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

Our trip to Maine continued on Friday with a trip back to my hometown of Cape Elizabeth to give MJ the grand tour of where I grew up. We drove past the first house I grew up in in Cape Elizabeth, past the schools and the town center and then down to the Two Lights area where I spent the next 10 years.

We ended up going into Two Lights State Park, a staple of my childhood in that area. Upon entering I was surprised at just how small the park really is, it felt so big when I was growing up! We took a walk up to the fire tower and then down along the rocky coast.

After the park we headed down the street to see the actual “Two Lights” for which the areas is named, a pair of lighthouses. We then had a delicious lunch of fried seafood and blueberry pie there at The Lobster Shack.

From there we made the trip up to see my family again, spending the rest of the evening with little Xavier who was due to be discharged on Sunday.

Saturday we went to Dunkin’ Donuts for a late breakfast before heading back up north. My sister had been formally discharged, and while she couldn’t leave for long we were able to take her out for a little while to pick up some of the remaining baby supplies that she would need.

That evening we made dinner reservations at The Muddy Rudder so I could get one of my favorite Maine dishes: lobster pie. Unfortunately, to my great disappointment, they no longer had the dish! Instead I went with steamers (steamed clams) and some lobster ravioli. I will miss the lobster pie.

Since we were near Freeport, we also had plans to visit L. L. Bean that night too. The assumption was that since it was almost 10PM by the time we got there it would be relatively easy to get in and out without too much fuss. We were wrong. It turns out that L. L. Bean is celebrating their 100th anniversary this year and we arrived just in time for the tail end of celebrations from July 4 through 7th! We saw the early moments of the fireworks show from the road on our way down and entered Freeport to masses of traffic and people walking and watching the fireworks. We made it to the entrance of the L. L. Bean parking lots before all traffic stopped to watch the fireworks. It was one of the most impressive local shows I’ve ever seen! I uploaded a video of part of the finale here.

After the show we probably spent 45 minutes in gridlock before we actually made it to a parking spot to begin our shopping adventure at the store itself. True to my Maineness, I love L. L. Bean. I didn’t end up buying much, but going to that flagship store is always a treat. With the unplanned traffic madness it was after midnight before we left to finally drive back down to our hotel.

Sunday was our last full day in Maine! After a lobster roll lunch at Newick’s in South Portland we headed north to see my family, finally all discharged from the hospital and settling in at home. I bought my netbook and we spent much of the day just hanging out and chatting casually. We grabbed some pizza for dinner and had an enjoyable dinner together before we headed out.

Monday we checked out of the hotel at 10AM so we could make it to Nashua, New Hampshire by noon.

We met up with my Aunt Meg at her house in Nashua and we all headed over to my grandmother’s for lunch. It’s always such a pleasure to see both of them, I’m glad we could squeeze in a quick visit at the end of our trip.

It was then off to the Manchester, NH airport for our long trip home! It was pretty uneventful aside from an hour delay on the runway in Philadelphia due to a recent traffic change on the runway.

More photos of the trip are here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pleia2/sets/72157630515701810/

I’m still tired, but it was a great trip!

Filed under: family, travel

Travel to Maine and meeting Xavier

Friday, Jul 6th, 2012 by pleia2 | 3 Comments

On Tuesday night I managed to get a few hours of sleep before MJ woke me up at 3AM to get ready to leave at 4AM for our 6AM flight out of San Francisco to Manchester, NH via Philadelphia. The flights were uneventful, we picked up our rental car in Manchester and made the drive up to Maine. Our first stop was Kennebunkport where we had dinner at Hurricane Restaurant. Not to have a repeat of my last trip to Maine where I didn’t get my lobster dinner, I started off my trip by having it there!

After that delicious lobster dinner, we were leaving the restaurant when the 4th of July fireworks show for Kennebunkport was starting, so we were able to watch it from the parking lot.

Thursday we started off our day by heading out to Fort Williams Park on the north edge of Cape Elizabeth to see the iconic Portland Head Light. While there we got to visit the museum and take some touristy photos:

Fort Williams is also where they held my high school graduation ceremony, so I got to show MJ the location of that. We rounded off our afternoon at the park by stopping at Bite into Maine, a food truck in the park (a recent addition, they didn’t have food trucks when I was living here!) where we had some delicious lobster rolls.

From there we made the drive up to Farmington to do what we were planning on for this trip… finally see my sister and her new son Xavier, my first nephew!

I have to admit not being much of a baby person, had never actually held such a young newborn (less than 2 days!) and at under 6lbs Xavier is an extra small newborn, my mother kept telling me to relax while I was holding him. Easier said than done, but by the end of the evening I was feeling slightly more comfortable. We left Annette and Xavier around 8 and had dinner with my mother at the delicious little Mill St. Cafe in Jay before driving back to our hotel for the night. On our way home we were driving through Auburn when they had a fireworks show (we assume it was postponed due to rain the night of the 4th), we stopped in a parking lot to watch.

Today I’m planning on showing MJ around a bit of Cape Elizabeth, my hometown, before making the trek back up to see my family again.

Filed under: family, travel

Xavier Carl Krumbach is born!

Tuesday, Jul 3rd, 2012 by pleia2 | 1 Comments

This evening my youngest sister, Annette, gave birth to Xavier Carl Krumbach at 5 lbs 14.8 oz and 20in long.

I’ve been checking in on Facebook all day to see the updates, and spoke with my mother earlier in the day to see how it was all going. All went well, she was in labor for a total of 7 hours.

Our first look at him:

He’s the first child to be born of my sisters and I, so my first nephew! My mother’s first grandchild! And takes he takes name “Carl” from our father.

Now I need to try and get some rest before our flight out to see them!

Filed under: family

Super Princesses, presentations and anniversary

Tuesday, Jul 3rd, 2012 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

I’ve been going to the movie theater more than usual lately, and still have at least one movie on my list to see. Two of the ones I saw last week stood out for their super princess power (and passing the Bechdel Test): Brave and Snow White and the Huntsman. Both movies centered around a princess and a queen as main characters, but the complexity and depth of all four of them, plus the very non-traditional story line for princesses, made for a captivating experience. Neither of the movies ended with a “happily ever after” of finding the love of a man, instead they find personal reconciliation and show the strength to be powerful, inspirational leaders within their kingdoms. Also? Very happy that Snow White had reasonable armor.

Speaking of awesome women, I had the pleasure of meeting up with Natacha Rodriguez on Friday. She’s a developer from Argentina who was in town for work and we met via the Ubuntu Women mailing list. We took the F from Powell up to Pier 39 and ended up with dinner at Boudin at a great table overlooking the Bay. In spite of not knowing each other all that well, the evening was full of cheerful conversation about work, family and our mutual interest in open source and getting more women involved with STEM. As I always do, I proposed taking the cable car back to Powell to wrap up the night. In all, a very enjoyable evening!

Last Saturday I spent the day hosting the online Ubuntu User Days, 12 hours of Ubuntu tutorials! I wrote up a quick summary of the day, including links to sessions and the Spanish User Days that happened that day as well here. During that event I ended up hosting a bit of a free-form “Community Roundtable” to fill a slot in the schedule where we didn’t have an instructor. It was a bit of an experiment, bringing in “whoever was online” from around the Ubuntu community to answer questions. The beginning of the hour felt a bit forced, but once I realized that a strong moderator was needed (me), I was able to pull volunteers in and allow each to spend a few minutes talking about what they do and how others can get involved doing the same thing. I also did the Xfce portion of a presentation on Ubuntu Flavors.

Thursday evening I headed out to Concord, CA to do an Introduction to Ubuntu talk for a Linux class at ITT Tech (slides here). This is the fourth time I’ve had the opportunity to speak to a class there and each time it’s a different experience. The level of engagement differs a lot between classes, but I was happy that both the professor and the students kept the questions flowing for almost 20 minutes following the conclusion of my 20 minute presentation.

I also made plans to speak at FeltonLUG on July 14th. It took a few emails back and forth with the organizer to pin down a good talk for the group and we settled on “Everything you ever wanted to know about Xubuntu” and here’s the description I sent off to them:

Xubuntu is a recognized flavor of Ubuntu built around the Xfce environment.

This talk will cover what exactly it means to be a “recognized flavor” in the Ubuntu ecosystem, the basics of how development is done and the current community-based projects (and how you can participate). There will then be a review and demonstration of some of the features included in the 12.10 (Quantal Quetzal) release, now in the Alpha 2 phase, including the recently released Xfce 4.10 and GIMP 2.8.

Elizabeth Krumbach has been using the Xfce Desktop Environment since 2004, Xfce on Ubuntu since 2005 and became a formal member of the Xubuntu project in 2011, where she now holds the positions of Marketing Lead and Website Lead. In her day job she works as a Debian Systems Administrator for LinuxForce.net.

I’ve never actually made it down to this LUG, Saturdays being as busy as they are, and have made tentative plans in the past to present, only to discover that they would conflict with travel plans (I think both times it was conflicts with the Ubuntu Developer Summit). I’m really looking forward to finally being able to speak and meet a few of the members who I only have ever communicated with via email.

In the family stuff category, MJ and I have now been together for 3 years and engaged for 1 year, the anniversaries of these falling on July 3rd and 1st, respectively. Due to all the wedding planning and an upcoming trip to Maine, we decided to tone down celebrations this year, no anniversary trips or gifts, just a nice dinner out at Waterfront Restaurant. It was indeed a nice evening out, particularly since it rounded off a very busy weekend of errands and preparing for our trip to Maine.

We’re leaving on our trip to Maine on a flight that leaves at 6:10AM tomorrow morning. The trip is to visit my mother, youngest sister and my new nephew… who hasn’t been born yet. As I write this my sister is at the hospital doing baby-is-coming things. I should be an Aunt in a few hours!

Filed under: family, life
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