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Ubuntu at ITT Tech, Linux Format and SCALE

Friday, Dec 16th, 2011 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

Wednesday night I held a well-attended Ubuntu Hour and Debian dinner here in San Francisco. Lots of great discussion at both meetups, huge thanks to everyone who came out!

Last night I gave another (first was in September) “Introduction to Ubuntu” talk for a Linux class at ITT Tech in Oakland.

After my short talk (slides here: pdf, odp) the class was small enough for me to be able to give everyone an Ubuntu 11.10 CD that they could try live on the lab PCs (with the blessing of one of the folks from IT) and I was able to bring up one on the projector to show everyone the basics of Unity. Thanks again to Professor Michael Roth for inviting me out, it’s always a pleasure to talk to people who are truly interested in learning more about Ubuntu and F/OSS.

Back in October Laura Czajkowski put me in touch with Paula Graham who was doing research for a Women in F/OSS Linux Format magazine article. I gave her details about the Ubuntu Women project, a quick blurb about my own journey and some photos from Ubuntu Women gatherings. The article titled “Women, know your Linux!” appeared in Issue 152 of Linux Format. I was quite honored to be the second of two profile blurbs in the article, the first of which went to the amazing Valerie Aurora, a Linux kernel developer whose latest project is the Ada Initiative (donate now!). The Debian Women and Ubuntu Women projects also got a nice sidebar in the article.

Finally, the Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE) is coming up in just over a month! I received notification on December 5th from the SCALE committee that my talk “Bringing Linux into Public Schools and Community Centers” had been accepted in their Open Source Software In Education track on Saturday, January 21st. The Ubuntu California team itself has been working to put together details and volunteers for an Ubuntu booth at the event like we’ve done in years past and Nathan Haines has been working with other volunteers to put together an Ubucon for Friday the 20th.

Ubucon

I’ve submitted a talk proposal for a casual “Get involved with Ubuntu” Ubucon session where I’ll outline basics of getting involved with various areas and then open up the floor to specific involvement questions from the audience. There is still at least one slot open for Ubucon speakers, so if you’re interested see the details here (yes, the stated deadline has passed, so please submit proposals ASAP if you’re interested).

Filed under: events, LoCo, tech, ubuntu planet

Simcoe has Kidney Disease

Wednesday, Dec 14th, 2011 by pleia2 | 10 Comments

Last week I noticed that little Simcoe had lost the pouch of fat on her belly. At the time I assumed that it was just the diet food we’d switched both cats to in order to manage Caligula’s weight. MJ had a look at her too and we realized she’d actually lost more than just her pouch of fat, she was quite skinny. A vet appointment was made for Saturday the 10th.

At the vet visit on Saturday we learned that she had dropped from 9.09lbs in January to just 6.06lbs. Her temperature was low, she was dehydrated and a physical exam caused the doctor to be concerned about her kidneys. They ordered a full blood panel and urine analysis for her.

Simcoe the Siamese at the Saturday vet visit (Caligula came along too)

The results would be in on Monday, and I spent a fair amount of time on Sunday reading just how bad kidney problems were in cats. Very upsetting, but I was hopeful that her activeness, appetite and absence of vomiting were good signs.

The results that came in on Monday were not good. Her kidney function was very low and all kinds of levels were wrong. We made an appointment to drop her off for an ultrasound Tuesday morning. I spent Monday evening hanging out with her on the couch, it was clear at this point that her energy levels were lower than normal.

The vet called Tuesday afternoon with the crushing news, severe kidney disease and a prognosis of a few months to a couple of years to live. We moved forward with the suggested initial treatment of a 72 hour diuretic treatment to flush out bad stuff and to increase hydration. She’ll get to come home Friday evening.

Last night we went to visit her and was able to speak with the vet for a few minutes. The treatment includes regular subcutaneous fluid therapy, special diet and managing of symptoms, but in the end it’s still a non-curable disease because servery damaged kidneys don’t heal. Non-experimental kidney transplants for cats are available these days, and there is a transplant facility just an hour north of here (one of just 11 in the country), but transplants are very expensive, hold a fair amount of risk, require adoption of the donor cat, and twice daily medication for the rest of her life.

The vet called this morning to say she’s responding well so far to the diuretic treatment and even ate some food this morning after some petting to calm her down.

We’re in research mode now. Soaking in information from felinecrf.com and joined a Feline CRF Support mailing list. We’ll be exploring all the options.

Mostly though? I’ve been crying. Last night I was in the haze of shock. Simcoe just turned 5 years old last month and has never lost her kitten-like playfulness (that, combined with her size, causes me to still call her a kitten). Her and Caligula been my companions through some tough times these past few years. We love this little cat so much.

Filed under: animals, simcoe

Xubuntu Stickers, Twitter and Site Update

Wednesday, Dec 7th, 2011 by pleia2 | 2 Comments

Last month I took over as the Marketing and Website Lead for Xubuntu. Thanks to the rest of the team for supporting me!

There have been several ideas floating around the Marketing wiki page so I decided to start here and make some laptop-worthy Xubuntu stickers.

I went with Moo.com because I really liked the how the Partimus stickers came out (and have survived a lot of abuse living on my netbook these past few months).

The result:

The black border you see does not show up on the sticker itself, it’s just beyond the cut. I’ll try to fix this up during my next order.

And an action shot of the sticker on my netbook!

I’ve included the instructions for how to make these yourself (including the image I used) on the Marketing page under our new Current projects heading.

This week I also created a Twitter account for the project, you can now find us @XubuntuLinux on Twitter. For now we’re just going to aggregate our blog posts and release announcements here, but in the future we may expand it to more if we have more volunteers to help out with it.

Have some ideas for marketing? Please let me know (lyz@ubuntu.com) or just go ahead and add your ideas to the Further ideas section of our Marketing wiki page.

Finally, website update! As I’ve mentioned before we’re moving to WordPress and have been hard at work doing theme and content reviews. Our last site sprint for this was this past Saturday, I’ve summarized the results of that sprint here. Huge thanks to knome, madnick and GridCube for attending and to beardygnome for his work on a new “About Xubuntu” page that’s coming together.

Filed under: tech, ubuntu planet, xubuntu

Thanksgiving weekend in Monterey

Saturday, Dec 3rd, 2011 by pleia2 | 1 Comments

Last weekend MJ and I spent a beautiful weekend down in Monterey. It was a much-needed break, I pretty much ignored all obligations for the weekend (including over 24 hours without looking at IRC!) and soaked in the beautiful scenery.

We drove down on Friday, had lunch in downtown Santa Cruz at Hoffman’s Bistro and Patisserie. From there we took a scenic coastline drive through Santa Cruz and then drove down to Monterey. Upon arrival we checked in to Monterey Clement (an InterContinental hotel) and spent the evening window shopping, enjoying the holiday festivities and browsing the historical information scattered along Cannery Row. Dinner was at the Sardine Factory where we had a spectacular dinner, including a sardine appetizer.

View of Monterey Bay from our room

Saturday we enjoyed breakfast by the bay at The C Restaurant. From there we took a walk up the Monterey Bay Coastal Recreation Trail where we came upon the Hopkins Marine Station of Stanford University and Hopkins State Marine Reserve beach where you can see a bunch of harbor seals!

Video on youtube: Seals at Hopkins Marine Station beach

Cute seal quota satisfied, we headed back toward Cannery Row to the attraction I’ve wanted to visit for years, even before moving out to California, The Monterey Bay Aquarium!

First on the list of things to see was their world-famous kelp forest.

After that we were able to enjoy a demonstration with their albatross (huge bird! but not as big as albatrosses get), wander through the aviary, see the penguin and sea otter feedings. I’ve always loved otters (who doesn’t?) but the sea otter exhibit they have is a really fun one, and the otters are so playful!

We spent the evening walking along some of the beautiful cove beaches near downtown Monterey and then went to Fisherman’s Wharf where we got to visit with the sea lions who lounge about down there. We had dinner back over on Cannery Row at Cannery Row Brewing Company, which had an impressive tap list which included a Simcoe Double IPA, yum!

Sunday morning MJ spotted a wild sea otter floating past our hotel! We took advantage of our two day aquarium tickets to go back to the aquarium to see if we could spot more sea otters from there, and that’s where I caught this photo, taken through one of their telescopes plus zoom on my camera:

We had one last visit with the captive sea otters and the gift shop and then headed out of Monterey for a scenic afternoon down the coast.

First stop was the oldest continuously-operating lighthouse on the United States west coast, Point Pinos Lighthouse. Almost certainly due to the fact that I grew up on Two Lights Road, named such for the two lighthouses that the road goes to, I love old lighthouses. Lights along the coast line are still used by ships, and the light is maintained by the US Coast Guard, however since the historical building itself is not actually necessary in this age of automation, the historical side of the lighthouse building is sponsored by the city of Pacific Grove which also relies upon donations from visitors. The tour guides were super friendly and I’m glad we made the stop.

Our afternoon continued down the 17-Mile Drive at Pebble Beach which included over a dozen marked stops for stunning views along the coast where we could stop and take pictures.

As the sun began to set we made our way to Carmel to see the beautiful white sand beaches.

We also quickly visited the Mission San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo. We wrapped up our weekend with a delicious seafood dinner in downtown Carmel at
Flaherty’s Seafood Grill & Oyster Bar before driving home.

More photos from the weekend are here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pleia2/sets/72157628199907705/

Filed under: animals, travel

Cetacean Institute Earrings

Monday, Nov 28th, 2011 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

I discovered back in May that the scenes with the Cetacean Institute in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home were filmed at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Since we were in Monterey this past weekend I was finally able to see for myself!


Monterey Bay Aquarium entrance from real life, 2011


Cetacean Institute entrance from Star Trek IV, 1986

With this in mind I found the most stunning pair of earrings that will successfully be able to celebrate both my love for marine life and Star Trek all at once!

Perfect.

Filed under: animals, travel

Much of November

Sunday, Nov 27th, 2011 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

My energy the past few weeks has left something to be desired, so much of my energy has been spent at work on a major project. During the week following the Ubuntu Developer Summit I hosted an Ubuntu Hour in San Francisco where I had great chats with Michelle Mastin and Evan Broder and toward the end Eric showed up and we talked a bit about Unity.

That weekend was spent reorganizing our closets. It was no small task but we did manage to get through most of it and it’s so nice to be able to find everything now. We also did a bit of shopping.

Tuesday following that weekend I headed out to BALUG for a “RegEx workshop”. It was a very enjoyable evening, I was able to meet a few new people including Corey from Freenode who I invited out. Thursday I took advantage of the earlier timing of the Americas Ubuntu Membership Board meeting and the fact that there was only one nominee and skipped out right after to head down to the Mountain View Ubuntu Hour. Afterwards I met up with MJ for an interesting dinner at Shabuway in Mountain View, my first Shabu experience!

That weekend I spent the Saturday afternoon on the Xubuntu Website Sprint (results here). I’ll probably talk about this more in a later post. Sunday morning I got up bright and early to take advantage of a free training session at my new gym. I’ve done a few free sessions over the years with the gyms I’ve joined and this was the first time I really felt I had a trainer who would listen to me and my experience at Crunch last year where I was in too much pain to move the next day proved listening is very important. She walked me through some interval training for cardio, which is a huge improvement for me, and we worked on creating a routine for resistance training that I’m very happy with.

On Monday I had lunch with my cousin Audrey who was in town for a conference. She brought along a colleague and another local cousin (unrelated to me) who happens to be a teacher in Oakland so we had a great chat about schools and I got to mention Partimus which she seemed very interested in, we swapped cards, I should follow up with her soon.

Tuesday was Simcoe’s 5th birthday!

For Thanksgiving we had planned on one of my aunts being in town, but when those plans didn’t pan out we instead decided to book a trip to Monterey for the long weekend. On Thanksgiving itself we headed over to the San Francisco Zoo! We got to visit the dinosaur bird cassowary who was quite lively, the bears, penguins and rounded off our trip by visiting the reindeer who just arrived a week ago.

For dinner we picked up some prepared Thanksgiving foods to enjoy at home.

More photos from Thanksgiving (mostly the zoo!) are here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pleia2/sets/72157628147780395/

MJ and I are now wrapping up a beautiful weekend in Monterey, but I’ll write about that later :)

Filed under: animals, family, food, life

Holiday cards!

Friday, Nov 25th, 2011 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

Every year I send out a big batch of wintertime holiday cards to friends and acquaintances online.

Reading this? That means you! Even if you’re outside the United States! Just drop me an email at lyz@princessleia.com with your postal address, please put “Holiday Card” in the subject so I can filter it appropriately. Please do this even if I’ve sent you a card in the past, I won’t be reusing the list from last year.

Typical disclaimer: I’m not a Christian and the cards will be secular in theme.

Filed under: holiday cards

Ubuntu Community Appreciation Day: Thank you LoCo Teams

Sunday, Nov 20th, 2011 by pleia2 | 2 Comments

I’ve put a lot of thought into what I’d write about today, but my ideas didn’t really come together until I read Daniel Holbach’s It’s human beings who make Ubuntu! that it became clear to me what I should write about: the way LoCo teams make Ubuntu human.

Prior to my involvement with Ubuntu my F/OSS work had been with people I didn’t know and never thought I’d meet. I attended Linux User Group meetings and LinuxChix events but these were never with people I actually worked with on any real projects, our association was very social. LoCo teams changed all this for me, and some of the first projects I was involved with on the Pennsylvania team touched upon things I were really passionate about, like when we set up a bunch of dual-boot systems for Girls Inc. In addition to some of the great work we did, I met several people who continue to be some of my closest friends. Huge thanks to Alex Launi, Jim Fisher, Randy Gold and Kevin Valentine who were so active and inspiring in my early LoCo days.


Pennsylvania

But it didn’t stop with Pennsylvania!

The Pennsylvania team regularly headed over the border to attend events put on by the New Jersey LoCo team, like LAN parties and the Trenton Computer Festival.

In 2009 when my fiance MJ (not my fiance at the time) was in Dublin and mentioned that he was looking for some geeks to meet up with in Dublin I pointed him at the Ireland LoCo, Laura Czajkowski blogs about the meetup here. When I was visiting California in September of 2009 I contacted the LoCo team there and we had a very fun meetup at Thirsty Bear Brewing, huge thanks to Grant Bowman for organizing it and making me feel immediately welcome in my soon-to-be new home. In November was invited up to spend the weekend with the New York LoCo for their Karmic Release Party in Waterloo, I was finally able to meet Charles Profitt, Jeremy Austin-Bardo and Landon Jurgens, all of whom made me feel like I was part of the team and whom I look forward to visiting with every time we’re in the same area.


New Jersey


California


New York

But wait, there’s more! While in Dublin during the Maverick Release MJ and I met up with the Irish team for their Maverick Meerkat Release Party and the next day I got to spend lots of great social time touristing around Dublin with Laura Czajkowski. When I was vacationing in Puerto Rico earlier this year Melvin Garcia of the Puerto Rico LoCo gave me lots of great tips for places to visit. While in Budapest for the Ubuntu Developer Summit for Oneiric I contacted Hajnalka Horváth, a member of the Hungarian LoCo and she, László Torma, Gabor Kelemen and others from the team not only took a group of 30+ out to the Invisible Exhibition on Wednesday to help raise Accessibility awareness, but also took a group of us out on Thursday night for an amazing sight-seeing adventure! And let’s not forget Horror Movie Night by the Florida LoCo just weeks ago at UDS for Precise!


Budapest, Hungary

And of course there is the team I’m involved with now. Ubuntu California is a very active team Ubuntu Hours all over the state and leaders from all over the state planning parties, conference booths and a yearly Ubucon. Thanks to Nathan Haines, Grant Bowman, iheartubuntu, Philip Ballew, James Tatum, nUboon2Age, David Wonderly and countless others who contribute to our vibrant California team!

Finally, thanks to all the teams in the future I may visit. It’s been an extraordinary adventure so far to be able to get local tips from and visit with LoCo teams that aren’t my own while I’m traveling. It’s great to feel so welcome and accepted in an unfamiliar place!

Filed under: LoCo, tech, ubuntu planet

Xubuntu Website Sprint on Saturday November 19th at 22:00 UTC

Thursday, Nov 17th, 2011 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

Several months ago I tossed up a devel site on one of my servers so Pasi Lallinaho and I could get to work on the newly planned Xubuntu website. He blogged about it with a teaser here back in August.

It’s taken some time, but we now have a formal staging server on one of Canonical’s servers and have pulled over all the content from the current site and are now wrapping up the last task items before we launch and doing a final, thorough, content review.

Want to help?

This weekend, on Saturday, November 19th, at 22:00 UTC, the Xubuntu website team will be hosting a Website Sprint in #xubuntu-devel on irc.freenode.net. Everyone is welcome to join us!

During this sprint we will:

Unable to attend? We’ll be updating https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Xubuntu/Website/Sprint throughout the next couple days to provide a full list of tasks we wish to get to during this sprint so even if you’re not available during the IRC-based sprint itself we invite you to review that page to see what tasks we have available and outstanding. You’re also welcome to email me directly at lyz@ubuntu.com with suggestions or join #xubuntu-devel to talk to myself (pleia2) or Pasi (knome) at any time to offer suggestions. Or, of course, leave comments here!

Filed under: tech, ubuntu planet, xubuntu

We went to Disney World!

Thursday, Nov 10th, 2011 by pleia2 | 2 Comments

Our visit to Disney World was wonderful. After waiting 17 years I was somewhat concerned that I had built myself up for something that would just be another amusement park so I was happy to learn that my fears were unfounded. Disney World really focuses on attractions and stories rather than thrill rides, every employee (“cast member”) of Disney I encountered was cheerful and friendly and their FastPass ticketing system which allows you to reserve a ticket for a ride rather than waiting in the full line for everything worked out really, really well.

We checked in at the brand new Wyndham Grand Orlando Resort, Bonnet Creek on Thursday morning after our redeye flight into Orlando Wednesday night, very thankful for their ability to accommodate our early check-in. We took a nap and then headed over to Epcot where we were planning on meeting my aunt Mary Ellen and uncle Joe to spend the evening with them enjoying the Epcot International Food and Wine Festival.

Epcot was the park I actually got to visit on my failed trip to Disney 17 years ago but I was still feeling a bit sick that day and Spaceship Earth (the big ball thing) was closed for repairs. This time I was finally able to enjoy and remember it! Upon arrival we grabbed some food and wandered around some attractions in Future World, including my first ride on Spaceship Earth (hooray!) and visiting a couple attractions in The Land. We met up with my aunt and uncle in the early evening. We went into Imagination! – perhaps the only attraction I did remember from my last visit and I picked up a Figment stuffed animal. We spent the rest of the evening enjoying the International Food and Wine Festival where you walk around the World Showcase and buy small portions of dinner and dessert cuisine from all the different countries (with a few countries like “cheese” and “desserts” thrown in). The night finished off by watching the fireworks.

Friday we spent the whole day at Epcot. We ended up taking a hotel shuttle to the Disney transportation center and taking the monorail to Epcot, my first Disney monorail ride! Their monorail system is pretty cool, on the one to Epcot they do a quick loop around Epcot to give you the basics of what to visit.

The day began with a bit of rain, but it had mostly cleared up by the time we got to the park. We spent the day going around Future Land to catch several of the big rides, including Mission: SPACE, Test Track and Soarin’. We had lunch at the amazing Restaurant Marrakesh on the Morocco Pavilion for a wonderful meal complete with entertainment of live musicians and a belly dancer. It’s amazing how quickly a day goes by, there are still some rides in the World Showcase that I want to go on. In the evening we met up with a couple of MJ’s colleagues who also happened to be at Disney for the weekend with their young daughter. Dinner was in Italy and once again we wrapped up the night by watching the Epcot fireworks.

Saturday was Magic Kingdom day!

We took a hotel shuttle over and then the Ferry from the transportation center to the Magic Kingdom itself. We took a quick train ride around the park and then it was off to Tomorrowland. We took the PeopleMover around to get a view of everything and then enjoyed the Carousel of Progress, Stitch’s Great Escape and Space Mountain! Throughout the day we got to take part in other classics, including the Jungle Cruise, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, a walk through Cinderella’s Castle. The only disappointing thing about the Magical Kingdom was the food, which was mostly a selection of hot dogs and hamburgers and distinctly pales in comparison to the amazing food over at Epcot. In the early evening I waited in the 35 minute line for a short ride on Dumbo the Flying Elephant, after which we met up again with MJ’s colleagues and went on It’s a Small World, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh and then watched the spectacular Magic Kingdom fireworks over Cinderella’s Castle. Wow. The evening was wrapped up with a bit of shopping.

Sunday was Animal Kingdom day! But first we had to check out of our hotel and spent breakfast with my grandfather, his wife, Jo, and my uncle Joe. It was nice to get to see them again so soon (we had just seen my grandfather in Phoenix a couple weeks before) and start the day with a tasty breakfast at the hotel buffet. Once checked out of the hotel we loaded our suitcases into my uncle’s car and the three of us headed over to Animal Kingdom for the day.

Obviously I love animals, so I was always excited about the existence of this park and I was very happy to finally visit it. The first thing we did was go on the Safari, which is really the highlight of the whole park, taking you through different African ecosystems to see a variety of animals. We saw Festival of the Lion King, Flights of Wonder with several birds showcasing natural bird behaviors and explored the Maharajah Jungle Trek where we got to see their tigers actually awake and wandering around their enclosure! We had a delicious lunch at Yak & Yeti Restaurant and then unfortunately it was time for my uncle Joe to drive MJ to the airport for his evening flight back home. Sad!

I stayed at the park until closing, going on the safari again and, my uncle rejoined me again after dropping MJ at the airport. We went into the It’s Tough to be a Bug! attraction and went on the Expedition Everest roller coaster. When the park closed my uncle drove me to my hotel to begin my week at the Ubuntu Developer Summit (UDS).

I extended my Disney ticket for a day on Sunday because my family had planned on going to Epcot on the Saturday following UDS, but their plans didn’t end up syncing well with mine. I planned on going to Epcot anyway but then realized I really wanted to go to the rest of the attractions with MJ, so instead I decided to spend that extra day on my ticket on Saturday by going to Animal Kingdom again by myself where I picked up where I left off attraction-wise. Got to the park at opening (9AM!), went on the safari again, took the first ride of the day on the Wildlife Express Train to Rafiki’s Planet Watch. I got my picture taken with Lilo and Stitch:

Then had lunch at the Rainforest Cafe and then headed over to DinoLand U.S.A. for their DINOSAUR ride. I will say, having a the friendly Disney staff makes all the difference when going to a park alone, it didn’t feel nearly as lonely as other touristing adventures I’ve been on alone were. After DinoLand it was time for me to catch a shuttle back to the hotel.

More photos from our trip are here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pleia2/sets/72157627953468729/

I picked up my bags at the hotel and caught a shuttle to the airport for my evening flight. Between all the Disney, family visiting and UDS fun, it was a wonderful trip! We’re thinking of doing another Disney trip in the future and are thinking we’ll actually stay at The Contemporary, the Disney resort next to Magic Kingdom that actually has the monorail run through it.

Filed under: animals, family, travel
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